Justin Lloyd's Thinkering

Somebody needs to think about this stuff...

Archives for 2002

Getting wealthier by the minute

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Some of the wealthiest and successful people I know are some of the laziest and most procrastinating people I know.

The difference in their laziness and procrastination to the general populace is that they do the things that matter and procrastinate and ignore the things that don’t.

The difference is not their laziness and procrastination but in how they are lazy and what they procrastinate on.

I believe in euthanasia for the very young

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“You will feel different once you have kids of your own.” said the condescending friend rather smugly.

So you’re saying I should undergo a life-altering, irreversible event just to see if I like it.

How about “no.”

Impossible to oversleep

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Today I woke up at the crack of 1:30PM after staying up until 5AM playing video games.

And it was glorious.

It is impossible to oversleep if you pretend that you live in a different time zone.

Paper – On the Information Engine of Circuit Design

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Today I read a paper titled “On the Information Engine of Circuit Design”

The abstract is:
This paper addresses a new approach to find a spectrum of information measures for the process of digital circuit synthesis.

We consider the problem from the information engine point of view.

The circuit synthesis as a whole and different steps of the design process (an example of decision diagram is given) are presented via such measurements as entropy, logical work and information vitality.

We also introduce new information measures to provide better estimates of synthesis criteria.

We show that the basic properties of information engine, such as the conservation law of information flow and the equilibrium law of information can be formulated.

Paper – Using Tree Automata and Regular Expressions to Manipulate Hierarchically Structured Data

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Today I read a paper titled “Using Tree Automata and Regular Expressions to Manipulate Hierarchically Structured Data”

The abstract is:
Information, stored or transmitted in digital form, is often structured.

Individual data records are usually represented as hierarchies of their elements.

Together, records form larger structures.

Information processing applications have to take account of this structuring, which assigns different semantics to different data elements or records.

Big variety of structural schemata in use today often requires much flexibility from applications–for example, to process information coming from different sources.

To ensure application interoperability, translators are needed that can convert one structure into another.

This paper puts forward a formal data model aimed at supporting hierarchical data processing in a simple and flexible way.

The model is based on and extends results of two classical theories, studying finite string and tree automata.

The concept of finite automata and regular languages is applied to the case of arbitrarily structured tree-like hierarchical data records, represented as “structured strings.” These automata are compared with classical string and tree automata; the model is shown to be a superset of the classical models.

Regular grammars and expressions over structured strings are introduced.

Regular expression matching and substitution has been widely used for efficient unstructured text processing; the model described here brings the power of this proven technique to applications that deal with information trees.

A simple generic alternative is offered to replace today’s specialised ad-hoc approaches.

The model unifies structural and content transformations, providing applications with a single data type.

An example scenario of how to build applications based on this theory is discussed.

Further research directions are outlined.

Hodge-Podge

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A couple of people have mentioned that my personal website (otakunozoku.com) is turning in to a hodge-podge of links and badly photographed pictures of M.A.M.E. emulators running on various consoles.

I’m contemplating turning it around, splitting off the personal bio/resume stuff in to a separate section and making a serious effort to turn it in to a competent game development web site with useful information.

My only problem is that I can’t really spend more than an hour or two a week working on it, so I need to concern myself with the scope of information I cover.

Update: Apparently I’ve been informed that something where you dump lots of random shit, link to other people’s web sites, show off cool stuff, and post interesting monologues is called a “blog.” Funny, I always thought such an endeavour was called a web page.

Marketing Consultant: “Address the chair!”
Ford Prefect: “There isn’t chair, there’s only a rock.”
Marketing Consultant: “Well, call it a chair.”
Ford Prefect: “Why not call it a rock?”
Marketing Consultant: “You obviously have no conception of modern business methods.”

This is not a blog.
I’ve never had a blog.
This page has never been a blog.
If it were a blog then it was a blog before any of you bozos actually knew that the internet existed, let alone knew what a blog was.

Another Update: Reading this 14 years later I now have a name for this outlook. It’s called “hipster.” I apparently “had a blog before it was cool.” Oh dear…

Paper – Semiclassical Neural Network

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Today I read a paper titled “Semiclassical Neural Network”

The abstract is:
We have constructed a simple semiclassical model of neural network where neurons have quantum links with one another in a chosen way and affect one another in a fashion analogous to action potentials.

We have examined the role of stochasticity introduced by the quantum potential and compare the system with the classical system of an integrate-and-fire model by Hopfield.

Average periodicity and short term retentivity of input memory are noted.

Paper – Structure of some sand pile model

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Today I read a paper titled “Structure of some sand pile model”

The abstract is:
SPM (Sand Pile Model) is a simple discrete dynamical system used in physics to represent granular objects.

It is deeply related to integer partitions, and many other combinatorics problems, such as tilings or rewriting systems.

The evolution of the system started with n stacked grains generates a lattice, denoted by SPM(n).

We study here the structure of this lattice.

We first explain how it can be constructed, by showing its strong self-similarity property.

Then, we define SPM(infini), a natural extension of SPM when one starts with an infinite number of grains.

Again, we give an efficient construction algorithm and a coding of this lattice using a self-similar tree.

The two approaches give different recursive formulae for the cardinal of SPM(n), where no closed formula have ever been found.

Studying – Managing your time

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This month I am studying “Managing your time”

Going to take a refresher course in time management because I think I have fallen off the time-management wagon a few times over the years.

This is a three day on-site workshop.

Update: Eighteen hours of class time (eight hours a day classes, but you cannot really count lunch and coffee breaks as “learning time”), and three more hours of practice and further reading.

Studying – Linux command-line tools essential training

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This month I am studying “Linux command-line tools essential training”

A month-long (two nights a week) class in how to use Awk, Sed, Grep, and a bunch of other Linux command-line tools. Each class is three hours long and concentrates on one or two specific command line tools each class. I am already pretty good with UNIX and Linux, I think. But I hope to learn stuff that will fill in obvious gaps in my knowledge.

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