Dang, it's been awhile!

Thank you to my friends in blogtopia for your kind comments in my absence. I'm grateful for your support -- I will try to be a more reliable correspondent. If I am to recover, I have to carry the message to you, and allow you to carry the message to me!

What a marvelous message it is! A message of hope, of life, of love! A message that I don't have to be a slave to alcohol, that I don't have to live in this prison of self-will and self-reliance I spent so many years building! A message that there is a purpose to my life, a place for me in this world, and that all I have to do is open my hands and my heart, and accept it!

ALWAYS WORTH THE BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS!

No updates lately because I've been installing my new mirror on my car (if you didn't know, my former passanger side mirror lost in a fight with a trashcan on Victoria). It's looks pro as hell. My mom even gave me props! But Anyways some interesting things to say since my absence.

NO ONE TAKES RESPONSIBILITY ANYMORE: Leaving work yesterday I was backing out of my parking spot when I notice the lady on the other side of the parking lane backing out to. So I stop seeing as she is not. As luck were habit, she turns right into me and hits me. So I get out take a look at the damage. She just took some paint, no biggie. So being calm about the whole thing I make the remark "Ah, you just took some of my paint." being all cool about the whole deal. But then the kicker comes...


"What are you talking about? YOU HIT ME!", she says. Como what? So we start in on the traditional shouting match which you know means I'm busting my fine obscenities like a donkey shoots shit. I finally say "We can stand here all day screaming shit at each other or you can get your fucking insurance info down on paper and we'll let them settle this!"


She replies with, "Maybe we should file a police report!", which was fine by me since she hit me. After her scare tactic failed horribly she goes to her car and starts writing down her info. Then she says "You know, I live just down the street on Swan, we should go over there and show my husband this."


I looked at her almost in non-belief that she accually would say something so stupid. Yeah, let me drive to your fucking house so your fucking husband can see the damage and attempt to kick my ass. I ask "Why?" just waiting to hear the pitiful excuse she had. She tells me he knows about these things and will be honest.


After hearing this I say "Well you know what, I don't really care about that scratch and I wouldn't even bother calling my insurance company about it, but since you've pissed me off I'm afraid I'm going to have to tell them about this." After attempts at blaming the hit on me I show her on her quarter panel where the red paint from my truck has been streaked, this proves that she hit me because she has moving damage where as mine is apparent that it was hit.


She sits there in silent, then says "Your right. I hit you." I continue taking down my info and look over and see her start to cry. She starts apologizing for screaming at me saying "I'm soooo sorry. I didn't mean to yell at you! I'm just under a lot of stress-", yadayadayada starts giving me the whole life story about how her husbands out of work and this and that and she stressing out blah blah blah.


I finally stop her and say "Look lady, I don't want to know your whole life story! I don't care about the scratch. I'm not going to pursue this anymore as long you just leave it be and stop being a bitch!" in so many words. She gives me this look like I'm a fucking saint or something and thanks me and gives me a half-ass hug almost which I was weirded out bye (mom:"psycho!"). She tells me her name and with that I let her go.


Now I know a bunch of you are going, "Evan! You asshole! She was faking the crying to get out of the whole situation!" Well you know what, I can fix that scratch myself for a few bucks and a couple hours over at Ryan's house. I don't need an accident on my record either, because even though it's not my fault, my rate will go up! Fuck it too, I'm sick of psychos.


WHERE THE FUCK IS GRACA?!: My drawing class has been almost non-existant the last 2 weeks. Mr. Graca went down to Baja for some photo shoot and hasn't been back since. One of the peeps in class said he came back, but he's got some heart trouble going on or something. I think he's still on "Margarita Mode". We had a Sub on tuesday in the class. The dude looked just like Judge Ito! This guys official nick name is now "Kaiser Ito"!


This guy is a drawing nazi if I ever saw one. He came down on us like the god damn gustapo if we didn't do perspective the way he saw fit (quote:"Remember that towards the end of perspective things get out of focus." when I was drawing details into my street corner far away!". And he didn't let up on it even when I chose to ignore him and draw from heart like Graca always says to do.). Then this dude wouldn't let us have a break, so Zack and I bailed early to find subtle humor in Simpsons reruns (subtle my ass!). After dealing with that dude, I can't wait to have Graca back! According to my latest class cancellation message on my voice mail, he WILL be there on Tuesday.


The betting polls are open...


more later. Must catch up on blog reading!

Good, by times which run it becomes very difficult to find good Gibson at a reasonable price... Then when one falls on a beautiful accessible instrument... Quickly, not of hesitation! In fact, I had lately between the hands this SG std which completion date ' 70/beginning ' 80.

Attractive look and color (it is better than the usual cherry in my opinion). The stringed-instrument trade of the body is sympathetic but not what to break three legs with a duck (the poor one!). But in any event, the beautiful stringed-instrument trade, it are not only one research in priority on a SG, not, which one wants it is that that sounds ROCK'N'ROLL, one wants the sound of Angus, one wants a sleeve end and rapid with microphones which tear and which makes it possible to make howl the animal like Carlos with Woodstock... And well there, one has it!!!

Very frankly, one of the best SG than I tested.

Currently dispo at GUITAR VILLAGE (thank you Laurent, your store is super) in Domont (RP), sold in case for 1480 €.

smart computers

My amusement stems from the fact that both articles address essentially the same concept, which is getting a computer to understand written language, but they have (I assume) never met. Certainly their concepts have not intermingled.

It seems to me that for a computer to "read" and understand, it needs that type of contextual grasp that comes from a lot of experience reading progressively more complex material, filled with metaphor and cultural reference. Most of us start with things like "See Spot run." and build from there, learning about what language means based on what we experience in life and what we see other writing employing.

Would you seriously expect to hand a book like Moby Dick to a 2nd grader and have them read and understand it? Of course not. You know that even if they can read, they cannot likely understand all of the complexities contained therein. Certainly they'd miss many cultural references.

(Actually, I missed almost all the cultural references, too, and I was in 10th grade or something...plus I hated the damned book...but that's beside the point.)

The second article's approach seems much more sophisticated, because even though it's still going for "instant understanding", it at least involves a period of learning during which a context system is built up. The likely meaning of words comes from the software's "experience" of what other words it is surrounded by. This is, in a sense, the software tirelessly reading all that material to learn something about language. That is, I would posit, the very basic roots of understanding starting to take hold.

If you have children, you know that when you read to them, they ask you questions, many of them with seemingly obvious answers. We answer them, again and again, gently remembering that with time, they will know these things without asking.

Why, then, are we so abusive to our machines?

Many amateurs versus fewer Experts

I was reading a book review recently on Groklaw about a book called "The Wisdom of Crowds". The basic conclusion is that often, large groups of different types of individuals can figure out problems more accurately than even a group of experts on the topic.
We can see evidence of that with thousands of webmasters trying to manipulate and out fox tens of PHD computer scientists working for search engines.Black hat SEO webmasters are still always one stead ahead of the smartest brains in the world, all trying to be no#1 for terms such as Big Tits.Give me several webmasters ahead of a few university graduates anyday.

It got me thinking...What if we designed an AI system that worked like that? What if, rather than developing a single algorithm (like a big neural net) that could solve every problem we throw at it, we instead designed a system in which we just threw every problem solving algorithm we could find or come up with? There'd have to be some kind of "aggregator" for the results, and certainly any given problem would only be solvable by a subset of the algorithms, but could we expect better results from this approach than from using just one "finely tuned" system?

Perhaps it would be more flexible, more resilient to unexpected situations.

Architecturally, it seems that it would be easy to divide into independent threads/processes to process more efficiently, as well, since the many algorithms would be operating on the same question independently.

My fat Frog

Hi.I have a frog, a fat frog.