Too many entries - let this be the last one for August.
Fantastically, incredibly, unbelievably, implausibly, Monday night I had a dream that directly relates to Monday's entry. I'll leave out irrelevant details: I dreamed that I was experiencing a migraine aura.
In the dream, I noticed the phosphene-like foveal scotoma, and at first had the "is it an afterimage? what bright light did I look at?" reaction, and then realized what it really was. It was upsetting, actually, because the last one was just 1 week previous, and I felt like once a week is a bit too frequent.
I then set about trying to record the aura with my perimetry program, except that my computer was now a large, flat panel lying on the floor, like a giant i-pad. The layout was of course different - not a blank gray screen, but a thin-line black grid, like a Go board, on a wood-brown background. Jingping was there, and kept trying to move the grid around, and I kept telling her to stop.
Once I was trying to record it, the scotoma was no longer foveal, but extended 10-20 degrees out, straight to the left and then arcing downward towards the inferior vertical meridian. This makes me think that I wasn't actually experiencing an aura in my sleep - to get from the foveal scotoma to 10-20 degrees should take 15-20 minutes, and I don't think that much time actually passed in the dream - it seemed like less than a minute. Of course, time and space are both funny in dreams, so who knows. There was no headache on Tuesday, anyways.
It was very frustrating trying to set the fixation point in the dream perimetry program. I just couldn't fixate - I would set it in one place, and then felt that it should be somewhere else. I think I finally gave up and started sticking my hand in the scotoma to probe its size.
So, whether or not I was really experiencing an aura, or just dreaming that I was experiencing one, is an interesting question. It seemed like a real one, and I noted lots of spatial details: the tiny phosphenic bead of the foveal scotoma, the fuzzy noisiness of the peripheral scotoma arc (though the periphery seemed clearer somehow in than true peripheral vision), the thin black lines of the perimetry grid, the unfixable fixation spot.. If visual experience includes V1 activity, and if the visual aura occurs in V1, and if V1 is quiet or suppressed during dreaming, how could I have seen what I did, unless spatial vision includes a good deal of higher-level inference?
It seems that I proposed an experiment on Monday afternoon, and then did the experiment in my sleep that night. I have never been so efficient!
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Monday, August 27, 2012
summation or conclusion?
So, I'm realizing now that this note from a few days ago is touching on this entry from several months back (if only I could keep everything in my head at once...). In the latter, I was talking about the idea that visual experience is a stack of phenomena, extending all the way down to the optical image, even to the light field, and all the way up to cognition and emotion. In the former, I realized that my standing, computational interpretation of the classification image experiment involves an assumption that estimates of a particular psychological construct - perceived contrast - are mediated by the same processes whether the stimulus is simple or complex.
This stance doesn't conflict with the 'stack' idea, but when you think of both together it seems dubious. With simple stimuli, there isn't much else elicited by the visual pattern, so estimates of its properties can be localized to a small set of possible mechanisms, which is the point of using simple stimuli in the first place. So, there are multiple layers to the stack, but most of them are relatively empty or inactive. When the stimulus is complex, all those other stacks are now active, and filled with activity which is ostensibly more important and interesting to the observer. Is it reasonable to continue to assume that the observer can make use of the same information in that 'spatial vision' layer that he could when there was nothing to distract him elsewhere?
I realized this connection because I was thinking of the implications of one alternative (complex visual qualia are the result of highly nonlinear summation of simple visual qualia) or the other (complex qualia may be inferences drawn from 'basis' qualia, that could possibly exist - as perhaps in a dream - independently of those bases). How do you tell the difference? Take away the spatial vision level, and see what is left. How to do this? Lesions maybe, but the first thing that comes to mind is to compare what imagery looks like when you're seeing it versus when you're dreaming it.
This stance doesn't conflict with the 'stack' idea, but when you think of both together it seems dubious. With simple stimuli, there isn't much else elicited by the visual pattern, so estimates of its properties can be localized to a small set of possible mechanisms, which is the point of using simple stimuli in the first place. So, there are multiple layers to the stack, but most of them are relatively empty or inactive. When the stimulus is complex, all those other stacks are now active, and filled with activity which is ostensibly more important and interesting to the observer. Is it reasonable to continue to assume that the observer can make use of the same information in that 'spatial vision' layer that he could when there was nothing to distract him elsewhere?
I realized this connection because I was thinking of the implications of one alternative (complex visual qualia are the result of highly nonlinear summation of simple visual qualia) or the other (complex qualia may be inferences drawn from 'basis' qualia, that could possibly exist - as perhaps in a dream - independently of those bases). How do you tell the difference? Take away the spatial vision level, and see what is left. How to do this? Lesions maybe, but the first thing that comes to mind is to compare what imagery looks like when you're seeing it versus when you're dreaming it.
Friday, August 24, 2012
punched in the head
title says it all. punched a few times in the head, and now i have a headache. feels migrainish. it is possible that getting punched in the head in just the right way can trigger a migraine. or maybe i have a concussion? i do have a big red bruise on my forehead, so maybe the pain is on the outside, muscular, and i just can't tell the difference since it's all just front-of-the-head.
anyways.
**edit, 0:23, 8/27/12
the bruise is still there, fading, and the flesh is a bit tender - worse yesterday - but the headache was gone when i woke up saturday morning.
anyways.
**edit, 0:23, 8/27/12
the bruise is still there, fading, and the flesh is a bit tender - worse yesterday - but the headache was gone when i woke up saturday morning.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
vacation report
Spent the last 5 days (Sat-Wed) down in Tennessee/Alabama, visiting family. Monday morning, Jingping woke up about 8 and went looking around and came back saying that my parents were still home, when she thought they should be out taking a walk somewhere. I was barely awake, still hadn't opened my eyes. When I finally did a few minutes later, I found that I was halfway through a scintillating scotoma, maybe around the 15-20 minute point. It looked a lot like last time, left field, relatively straight scotoma from above fixation leftward, arcing downward and below. I got out of bed and went to sit in the sunroom to watch the rest of it. The scintillation was rather weak, but still noticeable - I knew what was happening within a second or two of opening my eyes. The headache started soon after I got out of bed, and was kind of a bad one. Above-behind my eyes, focused on the right side. Nauseated and dizzy for a day, which sucked because I had to drive down to Huntsville Monday afternoon (in my parents' Prius with an expired Kentucky driver's license, don't tell my mother). Still hurt a bit Tuesday night.
I think that maybe the slight headache I described on the 16th might have been part of the prodrome for this one, otherwise I didn't notice any signs.
**
Last night on the way home I had an insight into how to explain the low-pass gain control that I'm proposing. A basic Barlow-Foldiak type anti-Hebbian learning rule should develop low-pass weights if a set of scaled filters is repeatedly exposed to low-pass input, or maybe even if it's just exposed to white noise. Gonna try this later today!
I think that maybe the slight headache I described on the 16th might have been part of the prodrome for this one, otherwise I didn't notice any signs.
**
Last night on the way home I had an insight into how to explain the low-pass gain control that I'm proposing. A basic Barlow-Foldiak type anti-Hebbian learning rule should develop low-pass weights if a set of scaled filters is repeatedly exposed to low-pass input, or maybe even if it's just exposed to white noise. Gonna try this later today!
Friday, August 17, 2012
contrast or inference?
Norma Graham makes an interesting point, which I've seen quoted many times, in her book on spatial vision. She notes that it is as if the brain is transparent to what is happening in the early levels of visual processing, and that this is curious. It's curious, but it's a typical stance for someone who studies spatial vision; we assume that discrimination or identification or detection of signal strength is mediated almost entirely by the filters that are transducing the signal, not those that understand it, or respond (overtly) to it.
Whether or not this transparency holds when complex images are viewed is, I think, totally unknown. It may be that the percept elicited by a complex scene really is the sum of its parts, and that it simply provokes additional sensations of meaning, identity, extension, etc., which are tied to spatial locations within the scene. So, the visible scene that we are conscious of is indeed an object of spatial vision. This is the point of view I generally adopt, and I think it is common.
Another view is that the percept is entirely inference. Boundaries, surfaces, colors, textures, etc., are qualities in themselves, inferred from particular organization of spatial structure, and these then are organized in such a way that objects and identities and meanings can be inferred in successive stages. These inferences are what is seen consciously; perhaps inferences, and the evidence for them (the matter of spatial vision), are experienced simultaneously, but the substantive inferences, being the important elements of experience, are what dominate consciousness. So, only a small part of the phenomenal scene is actually constituted by e.g. luminance contrasts, and much more of it is constituted by higher level inferences. I think this point of view is also common, maybe especially in the current generation of visual neuroscientists.
The latter view is not exclusive of Graham's observation. If the patterns that are viewed are simple enough, they will not form objects, and will not have meaning. Or, they will be interpreted only as what they are, which doesn't require much inference, or only circular inference (which isn't a bad thing necessarily, when you really do want to conclude that a thing is itself, e.g. a gaussian blob of light, on the basis of its being a blob of light; usually, you want to infer that there is a letter on a page on the basis of a particular arrangement of blobs of light).
So, in the experiment that I'm currently analyzing to death, I am clearly taking the first view, in which case I think my conclusions are solid. If the second view is more accurate, what does the result mean? It could mean that inferences about image strength are based on higher frequencies just because they are the more susceptible to loss in a weak signal. If I'm asking subjects to judge image contrast, they could easily interpret this as judging image strength, and then their judgments would be biased towards the most delicate parts of the image, but they would still take everything into account.
This latter interpretation is still interesting, but it doesn't require "suppression". It is worth mentioning and I should at least include it in the manuscript, although the FVM talk probably will not have space... already there's barely space for the default story.
Whether or not this transparency holds when complex images are viewed is, I think, totally unknown. It may be that the percept elicited by a complex scene really is the sum of its parts, and that it simply provokes additional sensations of meaning, identity, extension, etc., which are tied to spatial locations within the scene. So, the visible scene that we are conscious of is indeed an object of spatial vision. This is the point of view I generally adopt, and I think it is common.
Another view is that the percept is entirely inference. Boundaries, surfaces, colors, textures, etc., are qualities in themselves, inferred from particular organization of spatial structure, and these then are organized in such a way that objects and identities and meanings can be inferred in successive stages. These inferences are what is seen consciously; perhaps inferences, and the evidence for them (the matter of spatial vision), are experienced simultaneously, but the substantive inferences, being the important elements of experience, are what dominate consciousness. So, only a small part of the phenomenal scene is actually constituted by e.g. luminance contrasts, and much more of it is constituted by higher level inferences. I think this point of view is also common, maybe especially in the current generation of visual neuroscientists.
The latter view is not exclusive of Graham's observation. If the patterns that are viewed are simple enough, they will not form objects, and will not have meaning. Or, they will be interpreted only as what they are, which doesn't require much inference, or only circular inference (which isn't a bad thing necessarily, when you really do want to conclude that a thing is itself, e.g. a gaussian blob of light, on the basis of its being a blob of light; usually, you want to infer that there is a letter on a page on the basis of a particular arrangement of blobs of light).
So, in the experiment that I'm currently analyzing to death, I am clearly taking the first view, in which case I think my conclusions are solid. If the second view is more accurate, what does the result mean? It could mean that inferences about image strength are based on higher frequencies just because they are the more susceptible to loss in a weak signal. If I'm asking subjects to judge image contrast, they could easily interpret this as judging image strength, and then their judgments would be biased towards the most delicate parts of the image, but they would still take everything into account.
This latter interpretation is still interesting, but it doesn't require "suppression". It is worth mentioning and I should at least include it in the manuscript, although the FVM talk probably will not have space... already there's barely space for the default story.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
nausea, photophobia, headache
woke up slightly late today, started to feel sick on the train; slightly nauseated all day long (mainly manifesting as excessive salivation, gross), a bit of photophobia. might be eyestrain or due to my crooked (broken, $10) glasses. briefly on tuesday night inverted the contrast on firefox, but then switched it back. at the time it was because my glasses seemed smudgy and i just couldn't get them clear, thought, "ah, it's a sign!", but decided no, it's the glasses. right now definitely a slight headache. as usual in my forehead, just above my eyes, maybe a bit left of center.
quick note
Something I've been meaning to write a note on for a while. Even as I write this, I don't have the idea quite in my head.
What is it about apparent contrast that is interesting, as opposed to sensitivity? By most measures, they're the same thing. If I ask someone to do an experiment where they have to discriminate between one contrast and another, I'm assuming that they are doing some mental comparison between two apparent contrasts, or memories of two apparent contrasts. By varying the physical difference between the two contrasts, I can then quantify the person's performance on this task, e.g. the difference at which they can no longer measurably discriminate. These are the sorts of measurements that are usually made in psychophysics.
These performance measures are understood to reflect the subjective, phenomenal properties of interest. But they involve a nearly unsolvable confound: we can't tell what part of the discrimination is due to relative internal response strength and what part is due to internal noise.
So to me, measuring apparent contrast is a way at getting around this problem. You get to measure, directly, the internal response to the stimulus. The new problem, then, is in quantifying what you've measured. The reverse correlation experiment that I did, I realize now, was cognizant of all this, but it was subliminal for me. The experiment is not measuring performance, but it is very similar to an experiment that would be measuring discrimination performance. In this experiment, the stimuli are always easily discriminable, so there are no limits to measure. The subject is asked to discriminate between the strengths of the two stimuli, but I measure no interval or reliability of this discrimination. This is because there is no objective stimulus strength.
The purpose of the experiment is to find out what constitutes stimulus strength when strength is defined, to an observer, as luminance contrast. What I get back is (no matter how I measure it) a description of what components count more or less than other components in making decisions about stimulus strength. I then test a bunch of plausible models to see whether they might also count components in similar ways. Lucky for me, only a particular type of model works, so I can make a sort of conclusion from the study.
So, apparent contrast is the way things look, and then behaviors can be carried out on the basis of how things look. Most visual psychophysics directly analyzes the behaviors that are based on appearances. I've tried to directly analyze the appearances themselves. Did I succeed?
What is it about apparent contrast that is interesting, as opposed to sensitivity? By most measures, they're the same thing. If I ask someone to do an experiment where they have to discriminate between one contrast and another, I'm assuming that they are doing some mental comparison between two apparent contrasts, or memories of two apparent contrasts. By varying the physical difference between the two contrasts, I can then quantify the person's performance on this task, e.g. the difference at which they can no longer measurably discriminate. These are the sorts of measurements that are usually made in psychophysics.
These performance measures are understood to reflect the subjective, phenomenal properties of interest. But they involve a nearly unsolvable confound: we can't tell what part of the discrimination is due to relative internal response strength and what part is due to internal noise.
So to me, measuring apparent contrast is a way at getting around this problem. You get to measure, directly, the internal response to the stimulus. The new problem, then, is in quantifying what you've measured. The reverse correlation experiment that I did, I realize now, was cognizant of all this, but it was subliminal for me. The experiment is not measuring performance, but it is very similar to an experiment that would be measuring discrimination performance. In this experiment, the stimuli are always easily discriminable, so there are no limits to measure. The subject is asked to discriminate between the strengths of the two stimuli, but I measure no interval or reliability of this discrimination. This is because there is no objective stimulus strength.
The purpose of the experiment is to find out what constitutes stimulus strength when strength is defined, to an observer, as luminance contrast. What I get back is (no matter how I measure it) a description of what components count more or less than other components in making decisions about stimulus strength. I then test a bunch of plausible models to see whether they might also count components in similar ways. Lucky for me, only a particular type of model works, so I can make a sort of conclusion from the study.
So, apparent contrast is the way things look, and then behaviors can be carried out on the basis of how things look. Most visual psychophysics directly analyzes the behaviors that are based on appearances. I've tried to directly analyze the appearances themselves. Did I succeed?
Monday, August 13, 2012
unifications of china 1
Random idea from this weekend: create a set of spatiotemporal maps illustrating the unifying conquests of China. For fun. Let's make a list:
1. Qin: Ying Zheng and Guanzhong
Qin was one of many Warring States in the centuries leading up to the first true unification of China in 9780HE. Qin was based in the area around and to the west of Xi'an, which is protected by mountain ranges and accessible only through narrow passes (I traveled through the Hangu pass to visit Xi'an in 12010HE): hence the region's name of Guanzhong, "within the passes". The conquest has an ill-defined starting point, since the different states had been in contention for centuries. However, it was with Ying Zheng's rule that most of the work was done: between 9771 and 9780, China proper went from seven states to one. This period, the Qin Unification War, could be taken as the first.
2. Han: Liu Bang and Guanzhong
Qin didn't long outlive Ying Zheng, who died in 9791. Soon after his death, Qin was overthrown and broken up into a number of kingdoms, united in theory by the Emperor of Chu, who was in fact a puppet of the warlord Xiang Yu. Xiang Yu's confederation quickly disintegrated into civil war between Xiang's Chu state and Liu Bang's Han state, which lasted from 9795 to 9799, when Chu was finally defeated and absorbed into Han. Han, by the way, based its power in the mountain-protected cities of Hanzhong and Chang'an, as Qin had done. Xiang Yu had placed his capital in Pengcheng, in eastern China. This war, and its result, was messy: at any given point in time, even for a decade after the war ended, it was unclear just who was in charge of particular regions, and a lot rested on the proclaimed allegiances of one or another warlord. However, there are standard interpretations of who was with who and when, that could be used to clarify an illustration.
3. Wei/Jin: Cao Cao and Guandong (east of the passes)
Han lasted for 400 years. When it finally collapsed around 10190, there were more than 20 years of war, followed by a half-century period of fracture into the Three Kingdoms of Wei, Wu, and Shu. The Wei state, based in the western edges of the central plains, just east of the mountain strongholds favored by Qin and early Han, eventually conquered Shu in 10263, was replaced in a coup by Jin in 10265, and finally conquered Wu in 10280. After this, Jin slowly fell apart, and China wouldn't be put together under one government again for another four centuries. The Wei/Jin unification was so slow, taking more than 80 years, that it can't really be considered a 'conquest'; it was a slow succession of local wars, with long spaces of quiet in between. I don't think this one would count.
I don't know much about the establishment of Sui - we'll wait until I've read a bit more on it before I continue.
1. Qin: Ying Zheng and Guanzhong
Qin was one of many Warring States in the centuries leading up to the first true unification of China in 9780HE. Qin was based in the area around and to the west of Xi'an, which is protected by mountain ranges and accessible only through narrow passes (I traveled through the Hangu pass to visit Xi'an in 12010HE): hence the region's name of Guanzhong, "within the passes". The conquest has an ill-defined starting point, since the different states had been in contention for centuries. However, it was with Ying Zheng's rule that most of the work was done: between 9771 and 9780, China proper went from seven states to one. This period, the Qin Unification War, could be taken as the first.
2. Han: Liu Bang and Guanzhong
Qin didn't long outlive Ying Zheng, who died in 9791. Soon after his death, Qin was overthrown and broken up into a number of kingdoms, united in theory by the Emperor of Chu, who was in fact a puppet of the warlord Xiang Yu. Xiang Yu's confederation quickly disintegrated into civil war between Xiang's Chu state and Liu Bang's Han state, which lasted from 9795 to 9799, when Chu was finally defeated and absorbed into Han. Han, by the way, based its power in the mountain-protected cities of Hanzhong and Chang'an, as Qin had done. Xiang Yu had placed his capital in Pengcheng, in eastern China. This war, and its result, was messy: at any given point in time, even for a decade after the war ended, it was unclear just who was in charge of particular regions, and a lot rested on the proclaimed allegiances of one or another warlord. However, there are standard interpretations of who was with who and when, that could be used to clarify an illustration.
3. Wei/Jin: Cao Cao and Guandong (east of the passes)
Han lasted for 400 years. When it finally collapsed around 10190, there were more than 20 years of war, followed by a half-century period of fracture into the Three Kingdoms of Wei, Wu, and Shu. The Wei state, based in the western edges of the central plains, just east of the mountain strongholds favored by Qin and early Han, eventually conquered Shu in 10263, was replaced in a coup by Jin in 10265, and finally conquered Wu in 10280. After this, Jin slowly fell apart, and China wouldn't be put together under one government again for another four centuries. The Wei/Jin unification was so slow, taking more than 80 years, that it can't really be considered a 'conquest'; it was a slow succession of local wars, with long spaces of quiet in between. I don't think this one would count.
I don't know much about the establishment of Sui - we'll wait until I've read a bit more on it before I continue.
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
20/100+
Yes, so my glasses broke about 2 weeks ago. I explained it already in the July 24 post.
I still don't have my new pair. Should be here any day now. I'm wearing a 10-year old pair, over-negative in both eyes, but only at night to watch the Olympics and "work" on my laptop. Otherwise I need to be within 12 inches or so to see clearly.
At distance, my acuity is no better than 20/200. I can tell just by looking into the distance and sticking a finger out: no detail that I can see is much smaller than maybe a quarter of the thickness of a fingernail (a little bigger than a degree). So, my acuity limit is probably not much more than 4cpd.
If this was the best I could do, I would be on the bad end of low vision. But it gets better the closer you get to my face (come on, get closer to my face) - like I said, everything is sharp and clear within a foot or so. But, at distance - which is how I spend a lot of my commuting time, at least, and a lot of time at taekwondo - I'm 20/200. How bad is that?
For one thing, 4cpd is about the acuity limit of a cat (or of some jumping spiders). So it's not bad on a basic vision standard, because cats and jumping spiders are very visual creatures. 4cpd is good enough to get by on vision. But for a human, in the world of humans, it's not too good. At distance I can't recognize faces, at all. Ten days' practice, and I just can't do it if I don't have some other information, and then I don't think it counts. I can't read signage - I can't tell what trains are coming into the station at Government Center. None of that is debilitating, but it makes sense to call it a handicap. High frequencies aren't just details, they're content.
20/200 is resolvable detail of 10 minutes of arc. At 35cm, about where my laptop screen is right now, 10ma is about 1mm, which sounds small. But the dot pitch (vertical/horizontal pixel separation) on my screen is about .227mm. With my corrected acuity being around 20/15, I should be able to see details at least as small as 1ma, about .1mm apart, so I can discriminate individual pixels with my normal acuity. At 20/200, I wouldn't be able to discriminate details smaller than 4 or 5 pixels across; I would definitely not be able to read this text (whose lines are 1 pixel thick, and which tend to about 10x5 pixels HxW).
Printed text, which I like to hold pretty close to my face, at least 20cm, would still be unreadable. I'd have to hold it much closer, where the shadow of my head would start to get in the way. I'd need large print. I wouldn't be able to read music. I'm wondering how much acuity you need to do the classic threading of a needle (I haven't even started to wonder about depth perception - I noticed that it was off for the first few days, but I seem to have adapted pretty well, and I'm not afraid to cross the street as I was at the start), or to slice meat and vegetables without slicing yourself - it's not the same as reading, since you're looking for centroids for those things, but I wouldn't really want to try...
Not that I'm going to try, but I could: visual acuity at about 20 degrees eccentricity is close to 20/200. There you have to contend with crowding, though, so you're effectively worse off.
So 20/200 isn't disabling, but it does prevent you from accessing all sorts of primate-relevant stuff. Faces, reading, music, fine finger-based activities. It's been interesting, but I'm just about ready for my new pair of ($10!!) glasses to arrive.
I still don't have my new pair. Should be here any day now. I'm wearing a 10-year old pair, over-negative in both eyes, but only at night to watch the Olympics and "work" on my laptop. Otherwise I need to be within 12 inches or so to see clearly.
At distance, my acuity is no better than 20/200. I can tell just by looking into the distance and sticking a finger out: no detail that I can see is much smaller than maybe a quarter of the thickness of a fingernail (a little bigger than a degree). So, my acuity limit is probably not much more than 4cpd.
If this was the best I could do, I would be on the bad end of low vision. But it gets better the closer you get to my face (come on, get closer to my face) - like I said, everything is sharp and clear within a foot or so. But, at distance - which is how I spend a lot of my commuting time, at least, and a lot of time at taekwondo - I'm 20/200. How bad is that?
For one thing, 4cpd is about the acuity limit of a cat (or of some jumping spiders). So it's not bad on a basic vision standard, because cats and jumping spiders are very visual creatures. 4cpd is good enough to get by on vision. But for a human, in the world of humans, it's not too good. At distance I can't recognize faces, at all. Ten days' practice, and I just can't do it if I don't have some other information, and then I don't think it counts. I can't read signage - I can't tell what trains are coming into the station at Government Center. None of that is debilitating, but it makes sense to call it a handicap. High frequencies aren't just details, they're content.
20/200 is resolvable detail of 10 minutes of arc. At 35cm, about where my laptop screen is right now, 10ma is about 1mm, which sounds small. But the dot pitch (vertical/horizontal pixel separation) on my screen is about .227mm. With my corrected acuity being around 20/15, I should be able to see details at least as small as 1ma, about .1mm apart, so I can discriminate individual pixels with my normal acuity. At 20/200, I wouldn't be able to discriminate details smaller than 4 or 5 pixels across; I would definitely not be able to read this text (whose lines are 1 pixel thick, and which tend to about 10x5 pixels HxW).
Printed text, which I like to hold pretty close to my face, at least 20cm, would still be unreadable. I'd have to hold it much closer, where the shadow of my head would start to get in the way. I'd need large print. I wouldn't be able to read music. I'm wondering how much acuity you need to do the classic threading of a needle (I haven't even started to wonder about depth perception - I noticed that it was off for the first few days, but I seem to have adapted pretty well, and I'm not afraid to cross the street as I was at the start), or to slice meat and vegetables without slicing yourself - it's not the same as reading, since you're looking for centroids for those things, but I wouldn't really want to try...
Not that I'm going to try, but I could: visual acuity at about 20 degrees eccentricity is close to 20/200. There you have to contend with crowding, though, so you're effectively worse off.
So 20/200 isn't disabling, but it does prevent you from accessing all sorts of primate-relevant stuff. Faces, reading, music, fine finger-based activities. It's been interesting, but I'm just about ready for my new pair of ($10!!) glasses to arrive.
Thursday, August 02, 2012
post
very slight headache lately. nothing obvious beforehand - maybe some occasional false-alarm-foveal-scotoma feelings, but nothing ever showed up.
those false alarms: when reading, i get a feeling that the text is smudged or jumbled, but when i try to see what's wrong, even one eye at a time, i can't actually find any defects. at other times, it's less clear, because the non-text world is more complicated, but i still haven't actually caught and analyzed any of these defects. so, i still don't know if they're false starts, like a CSD bubble that stops soon after is starts, or just high-level false alarms, i.e. paranoia.
anyways, that's it. working on text for a talk next month. tiny bit of writing lately. somehow i have three people reviewing the classification image manuscript. need to get back to the blur adaptation revision sooner rather than later. not looking forward to it, but once i'm into it i think it should be okay.
those false alarms: when reading, i get a feeling that the text is smudged or jumbled, but when i try to see what's wrong, even one eye at a time, i can't actually find any defects. at other times, it's less clear, because the non-text world is more complicated, but i still haven't actually caught and analyzed any of these defects. so, i still don't know if they're false starts, like a CSD bubble that stops soon after is starts, or just high-level false alarms, i.e. paranoia.
anyways, that's it. working on text for a talk next month. tiny bit of writing lately. somehow i have three people reviewing the classification image manuscript. need to get back to the blur adaptation revision sooner rather than later. not looking forward to it, but once i'm into it i think it should be okay.
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
i know this is stupid
I'm dusty,
I'm crusty,
I'm Augusty!
you're crusty,
you're lusty,
you're Augusty!
she's lusty,
she's busty,
she's Augusty!
you're busty,
you're trusty,
you're Augusty!
we're trusty,
we're gusty,
we're musty,
we're Augusty!
we're Augusty.
we're Augusty.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
cloud
Hey! Internet post!
I still do not have a "smart phone" (the quotes there represent my fingers doing the quote gesture as I say "smart phone"). So, you might think that I am behind on the internet times.
But no! If you think this you are wrong. I use three computers (home, office, and lab), and they are all linked together. They share a Dropbox, which has basically replaced FTP in my daily file-shuffling. From what I hear, once MEEI has finished eating SERI, they're going to do away with our FTP server anyways, so that's fine. My computers also are all equipped with Logmein, so I can use any of them from anywhere, so long as they remain connected. Effectively, all three computers can be used as one.
Those are both pretty basic, though. The thing I'm excited about is SVN: version control. D* just taught me about this last week, and I'm already using it to manage my manuscripts. You create a repository to store files for a project, and it contains all versions of the project over time, as you make changes. It is amazing.
Sophisticated users, e.g. software developers, will give SVN its own server so it can be accessed from multiple locations by different users. What I'm doing is leaving the repositories on Dropbox; so, wherever I am, so long as the files are synchronized (i.e. as long as the internet is working between the two relevant computers), I can always get to the current version of my files. This is great. I don't have to worry about whether I'm moving the right ones, or which were the most recent versions (on which computer) after a long pause in a project - the most recent versions are all contained in the central Dropbox location, and I don't have to think about it. I'm sure there's a pitfall there.
The Dropbox is backed up on the lab and office computers, but I haven't set up a backup on my laptop yet. Need to do that. Anyways, I feel this is a great advance in organization. We'll see what my files look like after a few years of this. Next big modeling project should definitely take advantage of this system!
I still do not have a "smart phone" (the quotes there represent my fingers doing the quote gesture as I say "smart phone"). So, you might think that I am behind on the internet times.
But no! If you think this you are wrong. I use three computers (home, office, and lab), and they are all linked together. They share a Dropbox, which has basically replaced FTP in my daily file-shuffling. From what I hear, once MEEI has finished eating SERI, they're going to do away with our FTP server anyways, so that's fine. My computers also are all equipped with Logmein, so I can use any of them from anywhere, so long as they remain connected. Effectively, all three computers can be used as one.
Those are both pretty basic, though. The thing I'm excited about is SVN: version control. D* just taught me about this last week, and I'm already using it to manage my manuscripts. You create a repository to store files for a project, and it contains all versions of the project over time, as you make changes. It is amazing.
Sophisticated users, e.g. software developers, will give SVN its own server so it can be accessed from multiple locations by different users. What I'm doing is leaving the repositories on Dropbox; so, wherever I am, so long as the files are synchronized (i.e. as long as the internet is working between the two relevant computers), I can always get to the current version of my files. This is great. I don't have to worry about whether I'm moving the right ones, or which were the most recent versions (on which computer) after a long pause in a project - the most recent versions are all contained in the central Dropbox location, and I don't have to think about it. I'm sure there's a pitfall there.
The Dropbox is backed up on the lab and office computers, but I haven't set up a backup on my laptop yet. Need to do that. Anyways, I feel this is a great advance in organization. We'll see what my files look like after a few years of this. Next big modeling project should definitely take advantage of this system!
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
height and a black belt
two posts in a day, this is bad.
just been meaning to write this down: saturday afternoon I leave the apt to go to tkd, walking down the sidewalk, take off my glasses to blow off some dust, then go to put them back on, and they snap in half. so my glasses broke.
i go to tkd, not wearing glasses, and not really able to precisely recognize faces beyond a couple of meters. in the distance i see a woman practicing something, a black belt, with mid-length black hair pulled back in a ponytail. at first i think, that's j*, just i guess because her style and general characteristics seemed right. but then i thought, no, that's not her, she's too small. i got a little closer, and yes, this woman was too small to be j* - a couple of inches shorter than me. a little closer and, then, yes - it was indeed j*.
i felt certain that j* was taller than me - if you had asked me before how tall i thought j* was, i would have guessed, oh, maybe 6' or so, she's a real amazon. apparently she's closer to 5'8". taller than the average woman, and still an amazon, okay, but not what i thought. in my mind, i guess, her high status (at tkd) had me convinced that she was actually larger than in reality. i've noticed this effect before (it's been studied for a long time, and probably known forever), but never in a context like this: certain that a person had a relatively unusual trait (woman taller than me), and then unable to recognize her because i don't see the trait, when it was never there in the first place.
"she's actual size, but she seems much bigger to me"
just been meaning to write this down: saturday afternoon I leave the apt to go to tkd, walking down the sidewalk, take off my glasses to blow off some dust, then go to put them back on, and they snap in half. so my glasses broke.
i go to tkd, not wearing glasses, and not really able to precisely recognize faces beyond a couple of meters. in the distance i see a woman practicing something, a black belt, with mid-length black hair pulled back in a ponytail. at first i think, that's j*, just i guess because her style and general characteristics seemed right. but then i thought, no, that's not her, she's too small. i got a little closer, and yes, this woman was too small to be j* - a couple of inches shorter than me. a little closer and, then, yes - it was indeed j*.
i felt certain that j* was taller than me - if you had asked me before how tall i thought j* was, i would have guessed, oh, maybe 6' or so, she's a real amazon. apparently she's closer to 5'8". taller than the average woman, and still an amazon, okay, but not what i thought. in my mind, i guess, her high status (at tkd) had me convinced that she was actually larger than in reality. i've noticed this effect before (it's been studied for a long time, and probably known forever), but never in a context like this: certain that a person had a relatively unusual trait (woman taller than me), and then unable to recognize her because i don't see the trait, when it was never there in the first place.
"she's actual size, but she seems much bigger to me"
City System
A couple of years ago, - no, oh God, nearly 3 years ago - I got talked into trying to write a Nanowrimo novel. I made it to the end of November with something like 15,000 words, about 35k short (of the official 50k target), but then I kept going, and finally stopped towards the end of the spring in 2010. There was other writing that was more important, and I had reached what seemed like a good stopping point, about halfway through the story - and, coincidentally, I had reached 50,000 words.
Anyways, I still think about the story sometimes. Maybe someday I'll finish it. Yesterday I was thinking about the world that I had set up, vaguely, in the background. It's a reflection of some of my political thinking, but I never made any of it really concrete, just alluding to details here and there. A lot more of it is put together in my head than there in the story. Since it's on my mind, though, I thought maybe I'd write some of it out here. First some background for the background:
The story is centered on a few characters over the course of two days of what I would call the Second NEL Crisis. The setting is the distant future (the year Akan Era 852, sometime during the fourth millennium of the Common Era), on the planet Akan, populated by hundreds of millions of humans. Soon after the initial phases of the colonization, interstellar ships stopped arriving from Earth, and there has been no contact between the worlds in more than 800 years. It is unknown what stopped the ships, but some sort of natural or man-made disaster is assumed to have severely disrupted Earth's civilization, which was already dangerously unstable.
The Akan civilization is based around something called the City System, where the only sovereign entities are city-states, of which there are hundreds, and where certain rules maintain the independence and adaptability of the units of the System. Different Cities (always capitalized in this context) operate under different rules, according to their own preferences. Some may be libertarian or anarchistic, some may be communistic or totalitarian, etc., but they all have to abide by certain City Laws, established long ago, which ensure the stability of the overall system. There must be a dozen or more of these Laws, but I have only really thought about a few of of them:
The 1st City Law institutes an Intercity Congress, where revisions to the original laws are discussed and passed. Decisions can only be made through consensus of the entire body, so as new Cities are added, deliberations slow down more and more. Revisions to the Laws typically take decades. The more immediate responsibility of the IC is to monitor the City Law Enforcement Agency, which is discussed below.
The 2nd City Law is that no City may make administrative decisions for another: the Independence Law. Administrative control is measured quantitatively, and if more than half of a City's administration can be traced to other Cities, then it is the responsibility of demonstrably independent Cities to rectify the problem through mediation. Naturally, the methods for measuring control are controversial, and change with the times, but they have to be universally applied and agreed on through consensus. A result of the consensus requirement is that while the control measures do change with the times, they change very slowly, and the main problem with them is usually that they are seen as out of date. Consensus on new terms can take generations, and only a few dozen methods have been fully instituted over the 852 years of Akan history.
The 3rd City Law is that all citizens must be able to enter and leave Cities freely: the Open City Law. So, Cities cannot block entry by citizens, and cannot prevent citizens from leaving. The standard exception to this rule is that citizens may be arrested or imprisoned; immigration and emigration, however, are held to be out of the fundamental control of the Cities. Some cities may have such strange and insular cultures that few outsiders want to join, or that few insiders feel capable of disconnecting, but these situations are quantified as matters of individual choice and not City coercion. Cities may have requirements for City registration, and may tax insiders or outsiders differently, but requirements are quantified as prohibitive or not. Again, the methods by which such quantifications are made are instituted by consensus, and change but slowly. Before and after the comet Yandel-Yokum impact of AE832, the 3rd Law was widely suspended as Cities struggled to accommodate enormous population transfers from destroyed or abandoned Cities. This disruption of the System resulted in numerous crises across Akan, including the First NLE Crisis of AE835.
The 4th City Law is that intercity aggression and standing armies are jointly prohibited. Police forces, when they exist, are required to demonstrate that they cannot project force beyond the borders of their respective Cities. Intercity violence triggers intervention from other, non-involved Cities. Given that much of human life in AE852 is virtual, lived through machines and computer networks distributed, in some cases, over many Cities, just what constitutes 'force' is a recurring controversy. It is currently agreed that physical and virtual force should generally be treated as equivalent.
The Tensor Law, effectively the Last City Law (if I knew exactly how many there were, it would be the Nth), institutes the agency of the City Law Enforcers. These are a system of inspector-judges who quietly monitor and evaluate the legal performance of the Cities. Their power derives from the CLE Tensor, a mathematical instantiation of the City Laws, to which individual CLEs (in English, "see-el-eez", not "kleez") are neurologically bound - the Tensor acts as a key for the agents, giving them unrestricted access to City networks all over Akan, but also acts as a strict behavioral constraint: agents are prohibited from directly interfering in City affairs. All of their judgments and observations are reported through public channels to the Intercity Congress, although they strive to act in secrecy. The CLEs are not under the direct control of the IC, however: they act autonomously in accord with the Tensor. CLEs are widely seen as incorruptible and infallible. Changes to the Tensor, like changes to any individual City Law, require IC consensus, and happen only very, very slowly.
By the way, a story from a while back was told from the point of view of an individual CLE.
Other Laws establish the responsibilities and limits of Intercity governance of natural resources, of interplanetary space, and of inhabited areas outside City borders.
The Second NLE Crisis, the subject of the novel, is where this system is subjected to a serious and perhaps permanent breach. What happens when the best course of action is to abandon a deeply entrained system that has persisted for nearly a thousand years?
Anyways, I still think about the story sometimes. Maybe someday I'll finish it. Yesterday I was thinking about the world that I had set up, vaguely, in the background. It's a reflection of some of my political thinking, but I never made any of it really concrete, just alluding to details here and there. A lot more of it is put together in my head than there in the story. Since it's on my mind, though, I thought maybe I'd write some of it out here. First some background for the background:
The story is centered on a few characters over the course of two days of what I would call the Second NEL Crisis. The setting is the distant future (the year Akan Era 852, sometime during the fourth millennium of the Common Era), on the planet Akan, populated by hundreds of millions of humans. Soon after the initial phases of the colonization, interstellar ships stopped arriving from Earth, and there has been no contact between the worlds in more than 800 years. It is unknown what stopped the ships, but some sort of natural or man-made disaster is assumed to have severely disrupted Earth's civilization, which was already dangerously unstable.
The Akan civilization is based around something called the City System, where the only sovereign entities are city-states, of which there are hundreds, and where certain rules maintain the independence and adaptability of the units of the System. Different Cities (always capitalized in this context) operate under different rules, according to their own preferences. Some may be libertarian or anarchistic, some may be communistic or totalitarian, etc., but they all have to abide by certain City Laws, established long ago, which ensure the stability of the overall system. There must be a dozen or more of these Laws, but I have only really thought about a few of of them:
The 1st City Law institutes an Intercity Congress, where revisions to the original laws are discussed and passed. Decisions can only be made through consensus of the entire body, so as new Cities are added, deliberations slow down more and more. Revisions to the Laws typically take decades. The more immediate responsibility of the IC is to monitor the City Law Enforcement Agency, which is discussed below.
The 2nd City Law is that no City may make administrative decisions for another: the Independence Law. Administrative control is measured quantitatively, and if more than half of a City's administration can be traced to other Cities, then it is the responsibility of demonstrably independent Cities to rectify the problem through mediation. Naturally, the methods for measuring control are controversial, and change with the times, but they have to be universally applied and agreed on through consensus. A result of the consensus requirement is that while the control measures do change with the times, they change very slowly, and the main problem with them is usually that they are seen as out of date. Consensus on new terms can take generations, and only a few dozen methods have been fully instituted over the 852 years of Akan history.
The 3rd City Law is that all citizens must be able to enter and leave Cities freely: the Open City Law. So, Cities cannot block entry by citizens, and cannot prevent citizens from leaving. The standard exception to this rule is that citizens may be arrested or imprisoned; immigration and emigration, however, are held to be out of the fundamental control of the Cities. Some cities may have such strange and insular cultures that few outsiders want to join, or that few insiders feel capable of disconnecting, but these situations are quantified as matters of individual choice and not City coercion. Cities may have requirements for City registration, and may tax insiders or outsiders differently, but requirements are quantified as prohibitive or not. Again, the methods by which such quantifications are made are instituted by consensus, and change but slowly. Before and after the comet Yandel-Yokum impact of AE832, the 3rd Law was widely suspended as Cities struggled to accommodate enormous population transfers from destroyed or abandoned Cities. This disruption of the System resulted in numerous crises across Akan, including the First NLE Crisis of AE835.
The 4th City Law is that intercity aggression and standing armies are jointly prohibited. Police forces, when they exist, are required to demonstrate that they cannot project force beyond the borders of their respective Cities. Intercity violence triggers intervention from other, non-involved Cities. Given that much of human life in AE852 is virtual, lived through machines and computer networks distributed, in some cases, over many Cities, just what constitutes 'force' is a recurring controversy. It is currently agreed that physical and virtual force should generally be treated as equivalent.
The Tensor Law, effectively the Last City Law (if I knew exactly how many there were, it would be the Nth), institutes the agency of the City Law Enforcers. These are a system of inspector-judges who quietly monitor and evaluate the legal performance of the Cities. Their power derives from the CLE Tensor, a mathematical instantiation of the City Laws, to which individual CLEs (in English, "see-el-eez", not "kleez") are neurologically bound - the Tensor acts as a key for the agents, giving them unrestricted access to City networks all over Akan, but also acts as a strict behavioral constraint: agents are prohibited from directly interfering in City affairs. All of their judgments and observations are reported through public channels to the Intercity Congress, although they strive to act in secrecy. The CLEs are not under the direct control of the IC, however: they act autonomously in accord with the Tensor. CLEs are widely seen as incorruptible and infallible. Changes to the Tensor, like changes to any individual City Law, require IC consensus, and happen only very, very slowly.
By the way, a story from a while back was told from the point of view of an individual CLE.
Other Laws establish the responsibilities and limits of Intercity governance of natural resources, of interplanetary space, and of inhabited areas outside City borders.
The Second NLE Crisis, the subject of the novel, is where this system is subjected to a serious and perhaps permanent breach. What happens when the best course of action is to abandon a deeply entrained system that has persisted for nearly a thousand years?
Friday, July 20, 2012
update
that last entry was kind of embarrassing. guess it's worthwhile to keep a record of peaks in frustration.
anyways, kind of better now. with the data from the new rivalry experiment, i was 1) making an error in the processing, and 2) even with the error corrected it was a dumb analysis. i did the 'better' analysis, which i had had in mind but thought would be more complicated than it was (and which did require that that error was fixed), and got basically what i was looking for: before a target is reported as seen, there is an increase in its strength.
i then tried to expand it out, looking for effects in non-target locations. this also seems to work; i'll have to figure out how to separate the effects of spatial correlation in target strength, i.e. a part (maybe the major part) of these peripheral effects will be non-interesting because they will be firmly tied to the central target effect.
i also will need to make the analysis more specific, since each time a target is reported, it matters whether the transition is from a different report or an absence of report. this makes a difference in how the data are interpreted: 1) the increase in stimulus strength caused a dominance change (if there was an immediately previous report of a different target), 2) the increase in stimulus strength firmed up an indeterminate state (if the previous report was 'mixed'), or 3) the increase in stimulus strength made the current dominance state noticeable, i.e. made the target color visible.3
so, i expect that i will need much more data to make these sorts of different relationships clear. i will collect another half-hour's worth of data today, then i'll have more than an hour total. may be able to get something interesting out of that...
anyways, kind of better now. with the data from the new rivalry experiment, i was 1) making an error in the processing, and 2) even with the error corrected it was a dumb analysis. i did the 'better' analysis, which i had had in mind but thought would be more complicated than it was (and which did require that that error was fixed), and got basically what i was looking for: before a target is reported as seen, there is an increase in its strength.
i then tried to expand it out, looking for effects in non-target locations. this also seems to work; i'll have to figure out how to separate the effects of spatial correlation in target strength, i.e. a part (maybe the major part) of these peripheral effects will be non-interesting because they will be firmly tied to the central target effect.
i also will need to make the analysis more specific, since each time a target is reported, it matters whether the transition is from a different report or an absence of report. this makes a difference in how the data are interpreted: 1) the increase in stimulus strength caused a dominance change (if there was an immediately previous report of a different target), 2) the increase in stimulus strength firmed up an indeterminate state (if the previous report was 'mixed'), or 3) the increase in stimulus strength made the current dominance state noticeable, i.e. made the target color visible.3
so, i expect that i will need much more data to make these sorts of different relationships clear. i will collect another half-hour's worth of data today, then i'll have more than an hour total. may be able to get something interesting out of that...
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
pathetic
okay, i was trying to use this site as a journal, somewhere i could type as a habit, and then take advantage of the indexing and all-in-the-same-placeness of it. the cloudiness, as the kids call it.
but now, for more than a week, i'm just whining into it. whine whine whine. i'm getting sick of myself, and here i have myself, whining into a recording. and i'm keeping score. and i actually look at the web stats to see if anyone visits, even though i am basically not linked to anything. well, i'm linked to the facebook profile, but apparently i don't have any stalkers.
today i got reviews back on a paper submitted more than 3 months ago. not terrible - the editor seems to like it, and one reviewer seems fine with it, and the other reviewer was ambivalent. but they all hate my writing. yes. dense, detailed, opaque, confusing. i keep.. getting.. those.. comments. why? this time, i'm going to blame it on the process. this paper took 2 years and a dozen versions to get assembled and submitted. the main result was scooped, so i came up with some more peripheral material and tried to integrate it, while at the same time trying to please my boss by going along with his terminology suggestions. well, i think the peripheral stuff is going to get cut, at least mostly, and i'm going to go for standard wording. i tried to write for commoners, and it didn't work. the strain was showing. so i'm going to go back to writing for myself, which is what i did in the currently almost-done paper that's about to be sent to the same journal.
okay, that was that whine. next, i talk with a colleague today, t*, and he shows me what he's working on, and mentions that his paper is out on his previous project, and i'm so jealous. not so much jealous of him, as i am hateful of myself. i feel like i've done everything wrong. every single thing. wrong.
then, to top that off, i collect a half hour's worth of data - which is more than it sounds like - on this new experiment i've been slowly, gradually, painstakingly working towards getting started. the basic form of the data, the form i had been looking at in the pilot experiment, looked just fine. then i thought i'd take a shot at the planned analysis, correlation between recording data and video statistics - nothing. flat lines. garbage. i really hope i did something wrong, or that i'm really not thinking about the computations in the right way, otherwise, it's really back to the drawing board. this should have worked.
so, day of self-hate and frustration complete. whine whine whine. who are you, what are you doing here?
but now, for more than a week, i'm just whining into it. whine whine whine. i'm getting sick of myself, and here i have myself, whining into a recording. and i'm keeping score. and i actually look at the web stats to see if anyone visits, even though i am basically not linked to anything. well, i'm linked to the facebook profile, but apparently i don't have any stalkers.
today i got reviews back on a paper submitted more than 3 months ago. not terrible - the editor seems to like it, and one reviewer seems fine with it, and the other reviewer was ambivalent. but they all hate my writing. yes. dense, detailed, opaque, confusing. i keep.. getting.. those.. comments. why? this time, i'm going to blame it on the process. this paper took 2 years and a dozen versions to get assembled and submitted. the main result was scooped, so i came up with some more peripheral material and tried to integrate it, while at the same time trying to please my boss by going along with his terminology suggestions. well, i think the peripheral stuff is going to get cut, at least mostly, and i'm going to go for standard wording. i tried to write for commoners, and it didn't work. the strain was showing. so i'm going to go back to writing for myself, which is what i did in the currently almost-done paper that's about to be sent to the same journal.
okay, that was that whine. next, i talk with a colleague today, t*, and he shows me what he's working on, and mentions that his paper is out on his previous project, and i'm so jealous. not so much jealous of him, as i am hateful of myself. i feel like i've done everything wrong. every single thing. wrong.
then, to top that off, i collect a half hour's worth of data - which is more than it sounds like - on this new experiment i've been slowly, gradually, painstakingly working towards getting started. the basic form of the data, the form i had been looking at in the pilot experiment, looked just fine. then i thought i'd take a shot at the planned analysis, correlation between recording data and video statistics - nothing. flat lines. garbage. i really hope i did something wrong, or that i'm really not thinking about the computations in the right way, otherwise, it's really back to the drawing board. this should have worked.
so, day of self-hate and frustration complete. whine whine whine. who are you, what are you doing here?
Monday, July 16, 2012
ghosts
(I hate to go on and on about a stupid birthday, but it did cause some notable disruptions, including:)
Three nights of the 33rd birthday: three friends of birthdays past, present, and future.
Actually, they didn't come in that order. Here is the account, in pseudo-archaic English, for distance and comedy:
Birthday eve, I drank with the Man of the Past, in an empty pub in the Old Town. Fifteen years older than yours truly, this dissipated fellow, his life a perpetual shambles. Failed in love, in work, trapped forever in some youthful heyday. I have not followed his path, but he brings to mind other possibilities, other ways to fail. Should I feel fear or relief?
Birthday night, I met with the Man of the Future. Nine years younger he, the enthusiastic student, excited thinker. We drank in a crowded tavern in the student ghetto, talked philosophy and science. Across the street we went, and watched a metal show. I never was exactly in his place, but there are clear parallels. Wonder I where he'll go, and where I've gone. Should I feel elation or regret?
Birthday morrow, in the morning I met with the Man of the Now. Our age is the same, down to half a year. We drank coffee in a crowded diner, ate eggs and toast. We went to the market, and I shewed him the Cleveland Circle. We aren't the same, but neither is ahead, neither is behind, neither is greater, neither is smaller. The magnitude of our respective courses seems the same. I feel what I am today.
This weird trilogy is a fact. I wondered if I could make a little parable out of it, and that's the best I will do. I'm going to tag this entry as a coincidence, although really it's an instance of symmetry, which maybe actually is a type of coincidence - or, maybe coincidences are types of symmetry. Argh.
Three nights of the 33rd birthday: three friends of birthdays past, present, and future.
Actually, they didn't come in that order. Here is the account, in pseudo-archaic English, for distance and comedy:
Birthday eve, I drank with the Man of the Past, in an empty pub in the Old Town. Fifteen years older than yours truly, this dissipated fellow, his life a perpetual shambles. Failed in love, in work, trapped forever in some youthful heyday. I have not followed his path, but he brings to mind other possibilities, other ways to fail. Should I feel fear or relief?
Birthday night, I met with the Man of the Future. Nine years younger he, the enthusiastic student, excited thinker. We drank in a crowded tavern in the student ghetto, talked philosophy and science. Across the street we went, and watched a metal show. I never was exactly in his place, but there are clear parallels. Wonder I where he'll go, and where I've gone. Should I feel elation or regret?
Birthday morrow, in the morning I met with the Man of the Now. Our age is the same, down to half a year. We drank coffee in a crowded diner, ate eggs and toast. We went to the market, and I shewed him the Cleveland Circle. We aren't the same, but neither is ahead, neither is behind, neither is greater, neither is smaller. The magnitude of our respective courses seems the same. I feel what I am today.
This weird trilogy is a fact. I wondered if I could make a little parable out of it, and that's the best I will do. I'm going to tag this entry as a coincidence, although really it's an instance of symmetry, which maybe actually is a type of coincidence - or, maybe coincidences are types of symmetry. Argh.
Friday, July 13, 2012
birthday post!
(general dispatch)
Ok, so, I was born on Friday the 13th of July, 1979. Five years later, in 1984, the date fell on Friday again; then again six years later, in 1990; then again 11 years later, in 2001. It happened again in 2007, which completed a whole cycle: 5/6/11/6. This is how the constant seven day cycle of week days aliases with the yearly cycle of 365+1/4 days. So, the next time this will happen will be in 2018; then a long wait until 2029; and so on. This 28-year 5/6/11/6 cycle keeps up until the end of this century, when we skip the leap year in 2100. Then there's a phase shift, where the position of the cycle moves - but the cycle continues. The same cycle holds whatever your birthday is (the phases are different), unless you were born on leap day, in which case you have a much, much, much slower cycle.
The point is, I may be 33 solar cycles old, but I am only through 5 solar-week cycles, and I am barely more than 1 meta-solar-week old.
***
i am now 33.
gonna try to accomplish some work today. on so many verges at once, how can i fail?
also, i think that this is technically my 200th post on this journal/blog/thing. could change later, since maybe someday i will go back and clean out some of the less respectable ones, making this less than 200th. i am not above that.
but on my 33rd birthday, this was my 200th post, that will be true whatever i do.
excelsior!
Ok, so, I was born on Friday the 13th of July, 1979. Five years later, in 1984, the date fell on Friday again; then again six years later, in 1990; then again 11 years later, in 2001. It happened again in 2007, which completed a whole cycle: 5/6/11/6. This is how the constant seven day cycle of week days aliases with the yearly cycle of 365+1/4 days. So, the next time this will happen will be in 2018; then a long wait until 2029; and so on. This 28-year 5/6/11/6 cycle keeps up until the end of this century, when we skip the leap year in 2100. Then there's a phase shift, where the position of the cycle moves - but the cycle continues. The same cycle holds whatever your birthday is (the phases are different), unless you were born on leap day, in which case you have a much, much, much slower cycle.
The point is, I may be 33 solar cycles old, but I am only through 5 solar-week cycles, and I am barely more than 1 meta-solar-week old.
***
i am now 33.
gonna try to accomplish some work today. on so many verges at once, how can i fail?
also, i think that this is technically my 200th post on this journal/blog/thing. could change later, since maybe someday i will go back and clean out some of the less respectable ones, making this less than 200th. i am not above that.
but on my 33rd birthday, this was my 200th post, that will be true whatever i do.
excelsior!
Thursday, July 12, 2012
a poem about physics
begin by recognizing everything
once all facts are forgot
only when all was forgotten
can we say it was known
then the tense is correct
air presses me, i press the earth
but we don't pass through
these texts,
they say what we once knew
you learn the math
and the shape of space
you learn the motion of the worlds
and the age of the expanse
and you learn its end and beginning
because these are what we remember
but the heart is forgot
these pieces, that produce these ends
see how they mesh together
all have these types
and all are countered
some are manifest
while others abide
some transmit
while others hide
the forces four are only fragments
at the start there was just one
but we can bring them back
together with effort
give it a try
some of the elements
are soft
break them apart
to see what they are
break space itself
see what a piece becomes
once all facts are forgot
only when all was forgotten
can we say it was known
then the tense is correct
air presses me, i press the earth
but we don't pass through
these texts,
they say what we once knew
you learn the math
and the shape of space
you learn the motion of the worlds
and the age of the expanse
and you learn its end and beginning
because these are what we remember
but the heart is forgot
these pieces, that produce these ends
see how they mesh together
all have these types
and all are countered
some are manifest
while others abide
some transmit
while others hide
the forces four are only fragments
at the start there was just one
but we can bring them back
together with effort
give it a try
some of the elements
are soft
break them apart
to see what they are
break space itself
see what a piece becomes
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
no i
hey.
got this paper to work on - been working on it all day. for the last month or two, actually, with some interruptions. also, got that report to finish. and still haven't started collecting data on that rivalry thing. and what's new? anything else in the pipeline? not exactly. a bunch of computer stuff. got to write a review paper for a conference. need to generate some new grant ideas.
don't really feel like doing any of that right now. back kind of hurts. hurt it last year. spent a month on the first version of the fellowship proposal, spent a month sitting typing and reading. got out of that month, went and worked out hard. got tired, worn out. no problem. came home, picked up the cat bucket - not going to explain what the cat bucket is or why it needs to be picked up - and sproing, something went. so now it comes and goes, and now it's summer, time to train and work, and it's come. aggravation.
this summer is like stasis. waiting. nothing happening now. no big changes. no big plans. nothing to look forward to. nothing to be afraid of. turning 33 friday. 33.
could be playing the piano, but the neighbors don't like it so late. got a complaint a few weeks ago. oh well. could be reading a book. started a good one this weekend. "daily life in china on the eve of the mongol invasion". jacques gernet, 1959. academic study, history, culture, anthropology. gift from elizabeth, probably 17 or so years ago. never read it. it's been waiting for this moment, when finally it gets picked up, finally in the right place at the right time.
so, still getting books from elizabeth, she's been gone more than 2 years now.
will do that. get up in a minute, go lay on the bed and read that book. too much sitting here, waiting to start work, start at 11, finish at 1. why? sometimes it's a good idea. not always. jingping just came over, now the mind is changing. might type a bit on that paper. discussion has points to add. ideas to arrange. the rest is basically done. a few features to fix. not many decisions left.
what else? seemed like there was something else. days seem empty. nothing new coming in. jingping so busy. work is all ethereal. birthday coming. dread.
supposed to go out with r* tomorrow night. see if he shows. intuitive estimate odds 4-1 against. joked elliptically about going drinking with j*, then felt guilty about it.
dread and boredom. o july!
got this paper to work on - been working on it all day. for the last month or two, actually, with some interruptions. also, got that report to finish. and still haven't started collecting data on that rivalry thing. and what's new? anything else in the pipeline? not exactly. a bunch of computer stuff. got to write a review paper for a conference. need to generate some new grant ideas.
don't really feel like doing any of that right now. back kind of hurts. hurt it last year. spent a month on the first version of the fellowship proposal, spent a month sitting typing and reading. got out of that month, went and worked out hard. got tired, worn out. no problem. came home, picked up the cat bucket - not going to explain what the cat bucket is or why it needs to be picked up - and sproing, something went. so now it comes and goes, and now it's summer, time to train and work, and it's come. aggravation.
this summer is like stasis. waiting. nothing happening now. no big changes. no big plans. nothing to look forward to. nothing to be afraid of. turning 33 friday. 33.
could be playing the piano, but the neighbors don't like it so late. got a complaint a few weeks ago. oh well. could be reading a book. started a good one this weekend. "daily life in china on the eve of the mongol invasion". jacques gernet, 1959. academic study, history, culture, anthropology. gift from elizabeth, probably 17 or so years ago. never read it. it's been waiting for this moment, when finally it gets picked up, finally in the right place at the right time.
so, still getting books from elizabeth, she's been gone more than 2 years now.
will do that. get up in a minute, go lay on the bed and read that book. too much sitting here, waiting to start work, start at 11, finish at 1. why? sometimes it's a good idea. not always. jingping just came over, now the mind is changing. might type a bit on that paper. discussion has points to add. ideas to arrange. the rest is basically done. a few features to fix. not many decisions left.
what else? seemed like there was something else. days seem empty. nothing new coming in. jingping so busy. work is all ethereal. birthday coming. dread.
supposed to go out with r* tomorrow night. see if he shows. intuitive estimate odds 4-1 against. joked elliptically about going drinking with j*, then felt guilty about it.
dread and boredom. o july!
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