Digital Wanderings

Sorry, haven't had time yet to put up my Osakapella 5th Anniversary pics. I'll get around to that soon, though.

Just wanted to mention two interesting sites I ran across in my digital wanderings today.

The first one is (tangentially) work-related. I'm on a mission to learn how to implement kalman filters, particle filters, and other probabilistic state estimation tools that are commonly used in robotics. Prof. Dan Simon of Cleveland State University recently wrote a book on state estimation that I'm thinking of buying, so I went to check out his homepage today, and I found an essay he wrote on Christianity and Control Theory .

Okay, that's just incredibly nerdy, which of course I highly respect. I love drawing parallels between seemingly unrelated fields (and I've been reprimanded by a number of ex-girlfriends for doing that excessively). Anyway, after reading it, I didn't think it seemed particularly deep, because the patterns he mentions are EVERYWHERE, not just in religion, but everywhere in life. His discussion of control system optimality is something I would immediately apply to singing and playing go, for example. However, I'm glad he wrote it. I think it's always good to see things in a new light and to look at analogies between different systems.

I also like his description of why he is a Christian . I fully agree with all the reasons he rejects for being Christian. I think those are crap reasons too... for example, countless evangelical Christians have tried to convince me that avoidance of Hell is a good reason to be Christian. To me, that seems to me like such a weaselly, hypocritical reason to believe in a religion.

After systematically rejecting several reasons to be Christian, he states, "I am a Christian simply because I believe that Christianity is true." Again, I have to wholeheartedly agree with him. In fact, the exact reason I don't believe in Christianity is because in my heart, I simply believe that it's not true. I don't have a complex logical set of arguments or anything, it just comes down to gut intuition and what seems right or wrong to you.

After N years of my life of being bombarded by inane arguments by evangelical Christians, where N is approximately equal to (L - J), L being the number of years I've been alive and J being the number of years I've been in Japan, it's a relief to finally find somebody who has come to the same conclusion I have on religion, albeit from the opposite perspective.

It's also a good feeling, of sorts, to be in absolute agreement with somebody you thoroughly disagree with. I do think it's always important to keep questioning and reflecting on things, challenging your beliefs so they don't get too rigid and set in their ways. To quote Ani DiFranco, "Buildings and bridges were made to bend in the wind / To withstand the world, that's what it takes / All that steel and stone is no match for the air, my friend / What doesn't bend, breaks".

It's kind of like living in Japan. If you try to live your life in exactly the same way you lived at home, things are going to be rough for you. A lot of those little comforts of home just don't exist here, or they're just not practical. You have to bend in the wind and learn to live like the Japanese do. It's hard to say goodbye, though, to Mexican food, pita bread, juice concentrate, deodorant, baking soda, T-shirts after September 1st, insulated houses... the list goes on and on.

And today the list went on one item further, as I realized that it appears to be impossible to procure Jell-O here. I'm having a little picnic tomorrow with like 15 friends, and I thought it would be cool to make Jell-O shots. (Ok, so I'm not thinking of making them so much FOR the picnic tomorrow as to merely use the picnic tomorrow as a trial run so I can make them correctly for my birthday. ;)

So I scoured the supermarkets and found only a few packs of unflavored gelatin. I guess you're supposed to add juice or something - the dude in the supermarket just goggled at me bug-eyed when I asked if they had "flavored" gelatin. So I looked around on the internet for Jell-O shot recipes, and they pretty much all use Jell-O. Go figure, right? Anyway, I ran across this fascinating page on The Ultimate Jell-O Shot, which presents an extraordinarily thorough scientific analysis of the Jell-O shot, based on extensive experimentation with varying amounts of alcohol, water, sugarless vs. regular Jell-O, etc. It's actually quite well-presented and interesting, with good photos. If you like that page, be sure to check out their other page, Lighting a Jell-O Shot on Fire. That one doesn't look very tasty, but they really push the physical limits of the Jell-O shot, transforming it into unrecognizable phases of matter.

Anyway, sorry no photos again. I've been on the edge of catching a cold lately, so I need to get some sleep. Just wanted to share those links with you.

By the way, I self-nominate this post for "most contrived and convoluted segue". :)

FEVER PITCH FEVER PITCH FEVER PITCH!

So... I didn't write much in my last post. It was really nice to get a few pictures up, though. You may have noticed I screwed up my template to do it. I blame that on the template. Yes, I know how to fix it, and no, I don't think it's worth the effort. If I had built this site myself, of course I'd fix it, but the whole point of Blogger is that it's supposed to be easy, plug-and-play blogging. I have friends who maintain their own blogs on their own servers, and I think they spend more time tweaking options, futzing with CSS, installing, configuring, reinstalling, updating packages with security fixes, etc. than they do actually blogging.

But then again, I think they enjoy that.

So perhaps it is a sign of my current state that I can't remember why I wrote "FEVER PITCH FEVER PITCH FEVER PITCH!" as the title of this post. I remember that I saw that written on somebody's shirt long ago, either one of my students or one of my fellow teachers. I can't recall what triggered that memory, though.

Anyway, I got home from work around 2:30 tonight. Been working pretty hard on this paper. When I left, the lab was still lively. I guess mine isn't the only deadline this week.

Got home, and the task ahead of me was to throw away my couch. I picked this couch out of the garbage like, back in April or something. Or was it June? Stained and ugly, but it's big and supportive. I spent a lot of time trying to find a cover for it, ended up just throwing a giant futon cover over it, which made it more or less presentable. Then Mikko cracked her head on it really hard after bouncing the wrong way on my exercise ball, and later Takami did something involving her neck on some sort of internal corner or something - still not sure how that happened but she got a big red mark.

So, like many things in my life that are not good for me, I was debating for a long time whether I should keep it or get rid of it. But last week I took some action and bought a replacement. Nice, cushy, leather, and hard to injure yourself on. And tonight was Big Gomi night. Not throwing it away tonight would mean keeping it until December. So I cleared it off, slouched on it three or four different ways, lay down for a while, read a page of Harry Potter curled up in it, and bid the couch farewell. Then I wrestled it out of my house single-handed at 3am trying not to wake up the neighbors.

So sad to see it go, but I need to move on with my life.

In other news, my computer at home died again. Hardware problem this time... not really sure what it is, but my fan stopped working. After futzing with BIOS and jumpers and plugging the fan wires into different headers on the motherboard, I finally got her back up and running again. Except... now, remember, I have the Shuttle ST62K "Zen" system, which is designed for virtually silent operation, with an ultra-efficient ventilation system and advanced Integrated Cooling Engine (ICE) technology to keep the system operating at a nearly inaudible level. What a great idea... if it worked. Instead, I have a little white box sitting next to me roaring like a 727 clawing at the tarmac.

This computer has had no end of problems since I got it. I even bought a replacement system since the old one had so many issues... weird electrical grounding stuff, inadequate ventilation, dead fan, spontaneous rebooting, and horribly noisy sound circuitry. The new system worked like a charm, except for more fan problems, weird bluescreening behavior, and about 30% of the times I shut the system down, it would stop the hard disks but not turn itself off. And now the fan controller is really wacked. If I put it on "Smart Fan" mode or even "Medium" or "Low", it seems to randomly switch between racing the fan and running it at a nonfunctional purr... regardless of the CPU temperature. Yeccch.

Computers suck. Maybe I should start taking abacus lessons again.

But after that little rant I now realize that my fan is what reminded me of the FEVER PITCH T-shirt. :)

A cappella is also running at a moderate fever pitch right now... big preparations for our Amazing Osakapella Fifth Anniversary Spectacular! I don't really have any idea what's going on, though, because all the discussion is in Japanese. I think I might have to make a speech or something. Anyway, I can't believe we're five years old!!

What else is up in my life? Hmm... still debating whether a Ph.D. is worth it, and other "what should I do with my life?" issues. Considering moving to civilization... I think Morinomiya might be nice. But would it? I've been thinking about it a lot lately - how exciting it would be to be able to go to a convenience store after sundown, how novel it would be to have a bar anywhere nearby, what sorts of things I'm going to do on my commute to work ... and also how much more expensive, small, and less safe it will be, how much I'll miss the various seasonal insects bellowing symphonies outside my window, and how I'll miss the stars. Some beautiful stars tonight. It'll also be so much trouble to find an apartment, move all my crap, and then get new furniture and stuff (although the couch is taken care of!). Worth it? Hmm... the jury is still out.

Ok, it's mad late and I've got a very long day ahead of me at work tomorrow. Oyasumi!

Return to Biwako

So... apparently I haven't uploaded any pics since February. That simply will not do.

This time, I'll let the pictures tell the story...