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Vimrepress View Bug

09 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by bwkeller in computer science

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

vim, writing

Heads up kids, if you are using vimrepress for blogging, and you want to use
the BlogList and one of the edit (BlogEdit, BlogNew, etc.) features, make sure
you use separate vim sessions. Vimpress keeps a “view” state, so it knows
whether your buffer can be pushed to WordPress, and the state is shared between
tabs. So if you start a list in a second tab after you’ve started editing,
vimrepress will not let you save your edit, unless you fire up another tab in
the edit view to knock the state back to edit.

WRITE MORE

09 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by bwkeller in computer science, projects

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Tags

markdown, vim, writing

Well, hopefully I will be blogging a bit more frequently. I just finished
writing a manuscript for a paper from the last 2 years of PhD work, and it was
no fun. I am, at this stage, pretty shitty at scientifc writing. I’m hoping
some practice will help improve me. I’ve installe the wicked
vim-repress which will hopefully
make the whole affair more fun. I can’t stand writing with a tool other than
vim, and markdown is a bicycle to HTML’s 18-wheeler. Lighter and more fun to
use.

I’m back

30 Tuesday Aug 2011

Posted by bwkeller in projects

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Tags

100daychallenge, writing

So, as you are all fully aware, I have been silent for the past few weeks.  Moving across the country can do that to you.  Now that I am no longer living out of boxes, expect a rapid catchup as I make up the posts I missed.

I’ll be keeping track at the bottom of my posts.

24

Ted Chiang’s Exhalation: Science Concepts Presented Through Fiction

27 Sunday Feb 2011

Posted by bwkeller in books, philosophy, review

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

BMC, materialism, science, writing

I was just reading some of Ted Chiang’s excellent short story collection “Stories of Your Life and Others”, and was reminded of a story of his I read much earlier, Exhalation.  This Hugo-winning short story didn’t just catch my imagination and sense of wonder (something that a good Sci-Fi writer can do extremely well in the short format) like Asimov’s Last Question, but also is a wonderful pedagogical tool for explaining thermodynamic concepts.  I won’t blow any of the fascinating world that Chiang built, but I will tell you that the final revelation the protagonist faces is a perfect illustration of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  This story is such a good way of explaining it to people, precisely because it is a story. Any skeptic or psychologist can tell you that the emotional connection a good story provides is among the most effective ways of compelling people (after all, what is mythology but a good collection of stories?).  So, in other words, go read his story here:

Exhalation

Accidental Pilish: Unintentionally Constrained Writing in English Literature

26 Friday Mar 2010

Posted by nfitzgerald in computer science, python

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

computer science, constrained writing, gutenberg, language, nlp, Pilish, writing

Background:

This post is a little late for Pi Day, but it’s never a bad time for discourse related to everyone’s favourite mathematical constant. Twas on Pi Day of this year that I somehow came across this site, which describes the Constrained Writing task of Pilish, in which the length of each word in letters corresponds to the digits of pi:

The first word in this sentence has 3 letters, the next word 1 letter, the next word 4 letters, and so on, following the first fifteen digits of the number π.  A longer example is this poem with ABAB rhyme scheme from Joseph Shipley’s 1960 book Playing With Words:

But a time I spent wandering in gloomy night;

Yon tower, tinkling chimewise, loftily opportune.

Out, up, and together came sudden to Sunday rite,

The one solemnly off to correct plenilune.

Michael Keith, the author of the above website, has created several works in Pilish, including a full-length book covering the first 10,000 digits of pi!

Trying to write under such constraints can feel extremely awkward, but this made me wonder: How often would strings of words adhering to the constraints of Standard Pilish occur unintentionally? Afterall, with the amount of text out there – the sheer rate at which words are being put together by people all over the world every second of every day – it is to be expected that these things should occur with some frequency p > 0. Such is the Law of Large Numbers.

In order to determine this, I would need a large data set. Luckily, such things are readily available. I settled upon the Project Gutenberg ebook catalog – specifically the union of the July 2006 DVD (17,000 books) and the March 2007 Science Fiction Bookshelf CD (most of PG’s Sci-Fi titles). Altogether, this gave me almost 9GB of text (although I later discovered this contained many duplicates, it’s still a hell of alot of words!)

Next I hacked together a small python script which would find, for each file, the longest string of Standard Pilish. Code for this can be checkedout from my SVN repository: http://svn.nfitz.net/pilish

Results:

Somewhat disappointingly, the longest of any Pilish string was 8 digits of pi. The vast majority of books had a longest Pilish string of around 3-5 words. See the histogram below (note the logarithmic scale in the y-axis).

Five books achieved this 8-digit benchmark, listed below, with the section of Pilish text bolded:

  • The Winning of Barbara Worth, by Harold B Wright (1872-1944)

Dismounting and throwing the reins over his horse’s head he came to her smiling, sombrero in hand. “Buenas dias, Senorita. Please may I have a drink?”

“Certainly, Mr. Holmes ; help yourself.” She pointed to the olla hanging in the shade of the ramada.

  • Humphrey Bold- A Story of the Times of Benbow, by Herbert Strang

I was weary of the humdrum life of idling on shore or aimless sailing up and down the channel. The admiral’s was a peaceful mission, and no fighting was expected, but I felt a great curiosity to behold new scenes.

  • Captain Cook’s Journal During the First Voyage Round the World, by James Cook (1728-1779)

And I have a great Objection to firing with powder only amongst People who know not the difference, for by this they would learn to despise fire Arms and think their own Arms superior, and if ever such an Opinion prevailed they would certainly attack you, the Event of which might prove as unfavourable to you as them.

  • Lectures on Modern History, by Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834-1902)

One was part of the empire, the other was enclosed in Poland, and they were separated by Polish territory. They did not help each other, and each was a source of danger for the other. They could only hope to exist by becoming stronger. That has been, for two centuries and a half, a fixed tradition at Berlin with the rulers and the people. They could not help being aggressive, and they worshipped the authority that could make them successful aggressors.

  • Anne Bradstreet and Her Time, by Helen Campbell (1839-1918)

With the most ambitious of the longer poems–“The Four Monarchies”– and one from which her readers of that day probably derived the most satisfaction, we need not feel compelled to linger. To them its charm lay in its usefulness. There were on sinful fancies; no trifling waste of words, but a good, straightforward narrative of things it was well to know, and Tyler’s comment upon it will be echoed by every one who turns the appallingly matter-of-fact pages…

That last one is the only of the five to have one word of double-digit length, thus covering two digits of pi (‘straightforward = 15 letters = ’15’).

Future Work:

I would like to do a similar analysis of an even larger dataset of more modern language. One possibility is a full archive of Wikipedia. I wonder what is the longest string of unintentional Pilish ever produced?

Another interesting question is how the maximum length of Pilish sections in a document scales with the length of the document, and how well this can be modelled with a simple statistical model such as a Markov Chain.

400 Word Essay 3: Computer Models of Cognitive Processes

27 Tuesday Jan 2009

Posted by nfitzgerald in school

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

cognitive, ethics, philosophy, science, writing

I seriously considered not posting this one. Two things went wrong: I didn’t get my choice of topic in time, meaning I was assigned the negative side of a topic I would usually argue affirmatively on. Secondly, I was super busy this weekend and didn’t leave myself enough time to do a proper job. But I thought in order to maintain the intellectual honesty of this series I should post the less stellar examples along with the ones I am more proud of. It was an interesting exercise the try and argue a position I am opposed to. It’s something everyone should try at least once; I think if you don’t find it difficult you should question how secure your positions really are. So as a last disclaimer, I’m not sure how effective the following arguments are. You decide!

Topic: Human cognitive processes can be investigated by creating computational models. (CON)

Computer models, though important to the study of cognition itself, are of limited use in studying specifically human cognitive processes.
Continue reading →

400 Word Essay 2: Materialism and Science

22 Thursday Jan 2009

Posted by nfitzgerald in philosophy, school

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

materialism, philsophy, science, writing

Time for the second 400 word essay of the term. This week’s topic is quite a bit more philosophical: “There are things in the world that cannot be understood by science”. Those who know me will know which side I took: the negative! It’s very hard to discuss a complex topic like this in so few words – I actually went 50 words over the limit this time… don’t tell anyone!

I recently received a copy of “The Spiritual Brain” as a gift – so we’ll see if Mario Beauregard will manage to overturn my materialism (not likely – I’m 20 pages in and he’s already questioned the validity of the theory of evolution, and revealed that he is funded by the Templeton Foundation).

Without further ado – this weeks essay:


Topic: There are things in the world that cannot be understood by science. (CON)

In this paper I defend the position that the scientific method can, in principle, understand everything in the world. I take this topic to be a philosophical question of the nature of reality, separate from the pragmatic question of whether or not science ever will reveal everything – before, say, the collapse of civilization (I think it likely will not).

Continue reading →

400 Word Essay 1: Public Libraries in the Digital Age

19 Monday Jan 2009

Posted by nfitzgerald in school

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

books, ereaders, libraries, technology, writing

This term I am taking a really interesting course – “COGS 303 – Research Methods in Cognitive Systems” – which is intended as a guide to doing successful research in Cognitive Science. One of our regular assignments will be to write opinion pieces with a strong 400 word limit – a good exercise in clarity and brevity. We chose our topic from a list and must defend it within the word limit. I’ll post my essays to the interwebs so that they can be evaluated in the harshest of battlefields. Here’s the first:


Topic: The advent of the digital age makes public libraries obsolete. (Affirmative)

Current trends in technological and cultural development make it unlikely that public libraries will survive in their traditional format.

Continue reading →

Letters, Dip-Pens and Elvish

03 Sunday Aug 2008

Posted by nfitzgerald in steampunk

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

calligraphy, elvish, pens, writing

I love writing letters. I love receiving letters too – a happy coincidence – but I find something especially cathartic about penning a missive. It is just one of my many contradictions that while I embrace the demise of the physical book, I find greater enjoyment in writing a letter than an e-mail. I guess it’s some sort of zen, balance-seeking, yin-yang-type thing.

To this end, it has been a Long-Term Life Goal of mine to one day own a set of dip-pens- the type with which one might scrawl an edict on vellum by the guttering light of two-score wax candles. And Lo – it is done! When in Dublin a few weeks ago I finally found what I was looking for, a nice introductory set of nibs with ink. My appetite had been whetted by the setting – for I had just seen the Book of Kells and the Long Room library – and I was in the customary gift-store. So I bought a gift. For myself…

Continue reading →

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Ben’s Tweets

  • RT @OJ_Astro: A blog post by physicist Syksy Räsänen (@SyksyRasanen), who has published with us twice, about why overlay journals are an an… 1 day ago
  • RT @JokesAstro: If the Islands of Hawaii were very massive stars, Kauai would be going supernova soon. https://t.co/NEboP6FRWd 2 days ago
  • RT @AnicaSeelie: @gauravmunjal Imagine if there was a duck but it had human ears 2 days ago
  • RT @jfmclaughlin92: Friendly reminder that if you're at a public university, your institutional email can be searched basically whenever. B… 2 days ago
  • @rcrain_astro Academia has a lot of problems. Precarious employment, massive overworking of junior researchers, poo… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 2 days ago

Nicholas’ Tweet’s

  • RT @michielsdj: New paper! Retrieval-augmented models are expensive. Make them faster by partially pre-computing passage representations. W… 5 days ago
  • RT @michielsdj: New paper! We propose FiDO, an improved version of Fusion-in-Decoder with faster inference and better performance. Work don… 1 month ago
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  • RT @michielsdj: Now accepted to @iclr_conf! 🎆 1 year ago
  • @mjskay Yeah, I feel a major point people were missing is that an endless spiral into the drain is actually the perfect visual metaphor. 1 year ago

Top Posts

  • Basic Data Plotting with Matplotlib Part 3: Histograms

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100daychallenge advertising astronomy bash biology blogs BMC books browsers Bulshytt calligraphy canada coding cognitive computers computer science css EEE elvish ereaders ethics evolution experiments facebook google government html humor humour ICP I hate this class iliad internet explorer irex java javascript lego letter libraries marketing materialism matplotlib maze mindstorms mods morality mysql networking neuroscience pens philosophy philsophy php Pilish prime minister programming psychology reading review robots science SENG servers sociology steampunk stupid technology time ubc UNIX url vim web web design writing

Blogs We Read

  • Bad Astronomy
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  • Rationally Speaking
  • Terry Project (UBC)

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