Wednesday, October 29, 2008

distributing posts

I've been very bad about keeping people informed on what I'm up to, so here's a brief update for you all before I dive back into the mountain of work I need to do for school.

Let's start with some general information about Dublin.

Also, here's a picture of the Liffey.

I'm still enjoying my place, and my real flatmate came back (so far so good on that score, too). Once you get going, it's really not that much different than my life was in the USA, just a bit more local since I don't have a car or anything. The trash goes out on Tuesdays, I applied for the Tesco Clubcard the other day, stamps cost 82c to send things to the USA, Guinness costs EU 3.90/pint at Dec Gallagher's (just down the street) but can be as much as EU 5 around Temple Bar, I still have no idea where to pick up a pencil sharpener...these are the concerns I'm dealing with here. It's a bit odd sometimes to realize that I'm many thousands of miles away from where I was living just a few months ago.

As far as school goes, it's definitely picking up in terms of coursework. Starting from this coming Friday and running through November 14, we have the following things due, in order of impending deadlines: a group research proposal for data communications (my group is going to do something with a sensor network simulator), a general security-related suggestion for Intel (to be fleshed out later), a review of a research paper, an initial stab at a Facebook application (we're doing a way to rate events), a confirmed topic and supervisor for our thesis project (I'm meeting about mine on Friday), and a prototype of a socket-based system that allows booking and cancellation of train tickets across multiple stops and multiple companies (which has to scale up to millions of users and dozens of companies). Anyway, there's a lot to be done.

Luckily, the others in the course are generally reliable, intelligent, and easy to get along with. We've already started a sort of course tradition of hitting the Pav (the Pavilion Bar, the student bar on campus) immediately after class on Thursdays (no class on Friday) to complain about our course load, discuss thesis and project topics, and throw back a collectively vast quantity of cheap, generally horrible beer. That usually turns into a more serious night out and a hangover on Friday, but that's why we wait until Thursday to do it.

The classes themselves aren't too bad, either. In software engineering, we've been talking lately about some of the problems with designing concurrent systems, specifically those that arise from attempting to access shared data and how to avoid things like deadlocks and inconsistency within the system. Network security has been focused on cryptography the last few days, with lectures about encryption algorithms and authentication schemes. Network applications has been focused on the implications of using social networks as a development platform (ala Facebook), and network management has been about various management protocols such as SNMP. Even our formal methods course is interesting (at least to me, with my logic background). I'm sure I'll be posting more about that later, especially once I get into my actual thesis project (which will probably be about inserting causal and temporal reasoning into a knowledge-based event broker network).

In other recent news, I had a very lovely visit from a very lovely visitor a couple weeks ago and went out to Galway for a few days, even down the Cliffs of Moher (which are pretty impressive, as evinced below).

See, I'm so impressed I can't even take my eyes off them!

If you, dear reader, ever do get a chance to go to Galway, I have some things to recommend:
  • First off, we stayed at the Adare Guesthouse (sorry, no website, so no link), which was conveniently close to the city center, clean and comfortable, had a good breakfast (especially the salmon stuff), but was maybe a bit pricey. Still, a fine place to stay, especially on the short notice we gave them.

  • There are a number of really cool pubs in the center of Galway city, including the likes of Taaffes Pub (which is great for traditional music), Coel Tigh Neachtain (with a rather segmented, intimate interior), and Roisin Dubh (which I'd say was the college bar).

  • Go to McDonough's and get the fish and chips. Specifically the smoked fish. That's less of a suggestion and more of a demand.

Ok, so that's all I've got time for right now. Time for some food, and some furious programming on a train ticket booking system.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

coursing along

Well, I managed to survive the first two days of class, and I think I'll be able to manage for a few weeks at least.

The schedule this term (that means until December) is a pretty solid 10-5 with a one-hour lunch break from Monday to Thursday (we have Friday off completely). Of course, add onto that the group projects and research papers and course work and exam study time (well, exams aren't actually until March, so I've got some time for that) and it turns into a much more demanding task.

Right now, things aren't too bad. So far, it's been pretty introductory; we've had a quick review of basic concurrency concepts (e.g., processes, threads, context switching) and a brief overview of the impetus for computer security along with a discussion about why middleware exists. Also, we've received our first individual project assignment (due in 6 weeks) and were told to start picking groups for a data communications research project, which is made more interesting in that very few of us know anything at all about the topics we'll be covering in class.

Still, it seems like it'll be a rewarding course, even if it is somewhat difficult. My course-mates seem engaged (not too hard on the second day) and competent and generally come across as being almost exactly as intimidated as I feel, which is good. If they were more intimidated I'd feel as though I were missing something, and if they were less I'd feel like an idiot.

I spent some time looking through past projects and dissertations, and many of them seem to involve ad hoc wireless networks, with the more recent ones have to do with mobility (basically, trying to connect a device to an access point while one or both are moving through the coverage). That doesn't mean that's going to be something we have to do, but it seems as though that's where the faculty are steering us (not too surprising, really, given the sorts of projects the Distributed Systems Group at TCD works on)

In any case, I suppose my task now is to figure out exactly what it is I want to get out of this course and start working toward it. I already have some ideas of what I would like to know more about, but these are sort of a mess of potentially unrelated general concepts, like small-world and scale-free networks, models that utilize Bayesian inference such as the Hierarchical Temporal Memory model, self-organizing systems, and even emergence in general.

I think what I'm ultimately after (although I'm not sure how fervently I'll pursue it just yet) is some sort of answer as to what mechanism(s) give rise to complex systems from simple components. That's a pretty tough question, though, so I think I might be satisfied by figuring out some abstract patterns that apply to such systems. I do think that learning more about the structure and properties of communication networks will be very useful in that, and that learning how to produce a distributed application will give me insight into how simple nodes are treated when purposefully constructing a complex system on top of them (although that approach might be a bit to teleological to help in understanding self-organization...)

Anyway, now I'm just sort of blathering so I think this post is over. The main point is that courses have gone well so far, seem likely to go well in the future, and I'm already starting to shift toward academic mode again.

Saturday, October 04, 2008

getting classy

After all this time, my extended vacation is finally coming to a close. Classes start on Monday, so I might actually have to do stuff most of the day again. That's fine, though, given that that was pretty much the entire point of my trip over here.

We had an orientation thing for the computer science postgrads yesterday, so I got to meet everyone and hear a bit about the course itself. It sounds like it'll be pretty intense; teaching runs from 10ish to 6ish every Monday through Thursday, but we have Friday off entirely. That will be the case from now until March, and in March we have exams to qualify us to actually do the dissertation to get the degree. Apparently, students over here usually get a couple of chances to pass their qualifying exams, but in our case we have to pass them the first time or we can't get the degree. It makes sense to me that I'd have to pass all my tests, but to the Europeans in the group (which basically includes everyone else, since I'm the only American in the course this year) that came as a bit of a surprise.

Still, my classmates seem like they'll be good people to be working with, and they're generally a lot of fun. There was a little reception after the orientation sessions today, and after that a bunch of us went to the "Pav" (the Pavilion Bar, which is on Trinity's campus) and had a few beers before taking off for a pub called the Globe on Dame Street. It was pretty packed, given that it was a Friday night and Trinity was just starting classes back up. I guess my actual student experience is starting back up again.

Some other notes from Ireland:
  • It's getting cold here. Yesterday, the high was around 9º C (48º F), and today it's raining (again).

  • After we were done at the pub, we went to Dublin's answer to Lazzari's in Lincoln, a little pizza joint that serves up fresh-cooked slices late into the night. I don't remember the name, but it's just off the Temple Bar area and I imagine I could find it again if I looked.

So, anyway, that's all I've got for now. More updates later!

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

a l'Italia

I just got back from my first trip across the continent, this time to Cesena, Italy to do some training with a partner we have there for work. The flight was cheap and easy, since Ryanair (for now, at least) flies a direct flight from Dublin to the airport in Forli, which is about a 20 minute drive. Anyway, the work went very well, but that's beside the point.

The point is that I got to go to Italy for four days, and I got to see a bunch of really awesome things. First off, I stayed at a little hotel right in the center of Cesena, the Hotel Cappello.

Hotel Cappello.


Cesena is a very pretty little Italian city (around 100,000 people, according to my work host) about 25 minutes from the Adriatic coast in the Emilia-Romagna region. The sun was shining pretty much the whole trip--a welcome change after the standard Dublin weather--and the food was great, of course. We ate a fair bit of local seafood, and also they have a local dish from Romagna called "piadina", which is a type of bread somewhere between a tortilla and a pita. From what I could gather, the main attractions include a fairly imposing pentagonal fortress on the top of a big hill right in the center of town, and the Biblioteca Malatestiana, the first ever public library in Italy (opened somewhere around 1450).

The Rocca Malatestiana, Cesena's castle


The highlight of this round in Italy came on Saturday of the trip, though, when we caught the train from Cesena down to Florence, via Bologna. The train ride was fun and rather relaxing, and only took about two hours of travel through the beautiful Italian countryside.

The country surrounding Cesena, from the hill in the center of the city


Florence was packed with tourists, and for good reason. Being the seat of the Renaissance, the architecture and the art are amazing, especially the main sights such as the cathedral and the campanile...

The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (Il Duomo) in Florence, with the Campanile di Giotto


...and the Piazza della Signoria, which houses (copies of) a bunch of the famous statues by the Ninja Turtles and their contemporaries, like Michelangelo's David, Donatello's Judith and Holofernes, and Ammanati's Fountain of Neptune.

The copy of David and Bandinelli's Hercules and Cacus.


We also wandered past the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence's most famous art museum, but the line was absurd and our time limited, so we didn't go in.

All in all, I'd say the trip was a resounding success. Good food, good wine, good company (I even met the mayor of Cesena, for some reason), and a great location make for a good weekend. I also got to improve my Italian, which was immediately noticeable when I came home to Dublin and my Italian roommate had his parents visiting.

So, until the next trip, enjoy the pictures!

Sunday, September 14, 2008

if you blow chunks and she comes back

This weekend was a big weekend for me.

I had my first guests (Brian and Erica), so I had an excuse to go do some of the touristy things I hadn't hit since getting here. Some of the highlights:
  • We went down to the Temple Bar region and wandered around for a while (i.e., got a bit lost) looking for Irish music and food (we weren't entirely successful).

  • Saturday started with a tour of the Guinness Storehouse, which is fun if somewhat expensive. It's a self-guided, wandering-around-the-old-brewery sort of thing, where they tell you the basics of beer brewing and talk about the history of Guinness. The marketing floor is the coolest part of the actual tour, but the best thing is the Gravity Bar on the top, which has a killer view of the surrounding city (also that's where you get your free Guinness).

  • Dublin Castle isn't much of a castle. If castles are your thing, go to Blarney.

  • We ate lunch at a little Indian restaurant a bit off Grafton Street; I don't remember the name (Meloti, or something) but it was tasty. It wasn't the best value Indian restaurant on the street, but it was the only one open for lunch on a Saturday.

  • As far as guided tours go, the Old Jameson Distillery one is pretty good. They tell you about whiskey making, and how Irish whiskey differs from scotch and bourbon, then there's a taste comparison for a few lucky volunteers and a free Jameson for everybody.

  • The food at the Brazen Head is pretty good, and for being as big a tourist destination as it is, it is still has a pretty traditional feel.

  • At the end of the night Saturday, we finished at The Cobblestone, a real traditional Northside pub that has live music most nights. When we got there, there were three people with instruments playing away in the corner, and a host of locals crowding the bar, but still enough seating that we got a table in the back. It was great, and I'll be going back.

  • One of my Kiwi friends got the use of the corporate box at Croke Park today, so she offered us some of her free tickets for the hurling and camogie (women's hurling) finals that were going on. It's an interesting game; sort of a cross between field hockey and rugby. Anyway, I might actually try to take in a bit more of the hurling next season.

So, that's the update. I have a lot of pictures, and I'll probably post some of them later. For now, though, I'm tired and I think I'm going to sleep.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

taking it to the house

So, to advance my policy of keeping everyone up-to-date on the benefits and pitfalls of living in Ireland, I think tonight is a good night to give you an update on what I have been doing for the last few days. Let's start with Tuesday.

On Tuesday, I took a psuedo-business trip (there's a woman I've met here who runs a startup tech company who is in sore need of an IT manager) out to Athlone, in the center of Ireland (along the Shannon River, in fact). I met some of the folks at the Athlone Institute of Technology (and for you JDEers/Raikes Scholars reading this, let me assure you--that bullshit we went through for Design Studio is primo experience in Ireland) and after the business was dealt with, I got a free trip out to the ancient monastery at Clonmacnoise. That's one of the best things about Ireland, at least in comparison to the United States; about every 20 miles or so, there's some ancient monastery or circle tomb or something that has been raided by the Celts in 300 AD, and/or the Vikings in 800 AD, and/or the Normans in 1100 AD, and/or the English in 1300 AD, etc. The history here is (dare I say) palpable.

Anyway, that was Tuesday--during the day, anyway. When I got back that night, I was invited out by my Italian roommate to go to the Temple Bar area, and in fact we went to the Temple Bar itself, which was quite nice. Very touristy, a bit pricey in comparison to the pubs outside the Temple Bar area, but it was fun. They had live Irish music, in any case, which is always a plus.

Yesterday was a bit worthless (I admit, I was a bit hung-over), so I hit Dublin hard again today. I took off around lunch time to go find a good place to eat, and I'd previously found a street (I don't remember which, but if you visit I can show you precisely the one) which had a number of interesting restaurants--Italian, French, Lebanese, Indian, etc. Today, I picked one of the Indian places (Jewel in the Crown) and had their very tasty rendition of lamb madras with some naan bread. With the price at €7.50, that puts it about the same as The Oven (in downtown Lincoln), and I would say that the dish here was better. More complex flavors, in any case.

The real adventure tonight, however, was the place I headed to for my evening pint (or two...or three...or four)--The Porterhouse. This place is Dublin's answer to the microbreweries we have back home, and the beer was quite excellent. According to the website, they have live music every Thurs-Sat, but tonight at the Temple Bar location I did not hear any. Still, I'm not going to give up on them. I had a few really great beers, and had a great chat about American politics with an Irish fellow named Pat (so far, everyone I talk to here would count as a Democrat). Anyway, I promised a review of the beers I tried, so here you go:
  • Hop Head: Even though they don't know it, this was the Porterhouse's answer to Hopluia. It did provide some of the floral, hoppy aroma that we are blessed with back in the States, but I've had far better hopped ales back home. Maybe we should teach these people about dry-hopping...

  • Wrassler's XXXX Stout: This one was a very good stout. If this were exported to Nebraska, I would recommend that you buy as much as possible. When you people come visit, I'm taking you to the Porterhouse, and I'm buying this one.

  • Porterhouse Red: This was a pretty generic (although very smooth) red ale. Not much to say about it really; if anyone remembers the red that Empyrean made back in the spring and the way it tasted on the cask...that's about what this one was like.

  • An Brain Blasta: Ok, so this one is a bit of a challenge for me. In theory, this beer is copper ale, sort of like Singletrack Ale from Boulder. However, it had far more of a hopped flavor than any Singletrack I've ever had. Plus, the alcohol content was the highest of any currently on tap at the Porterhouse (7%, if I remember right). So, it was a strange combination of hoppy and malty, almost as though it were a dry-hopped Belgian-style beer. It's worth a try anyway; when you come visit, and I take you to the Porterhouse to get my Wrassler's XXXX Stout, I will get you a Brain Blasta first.

So, that's the story about Dublin over the last week. Otherwise, St. Stephen's Green is nice, Temple Bar is a great place for tourists, and letters back to the states cost €0.82.

When I have something more to report, I'll let you all know.

Saturday, August 30, 2008

there is no place like Dublin

So, while I'm sitting here tonight listening to the first Husker game of the season (that's a big sad-face right there), I figure I could at least delineate some of the things I have learned about Dublin in the last week.
  • According to the Irish, this is one of the coldest, wettest, and generally worst summers on record. Other than it being overcast all the time, it's been fine with me; when I tell them that it is generally over 30° C (86° F) in Nebraska in the summer, they usually respond with something like "Oh, Jay-sus!".

  • The Irish are pretty keen on their bureaucracy, especially when it comes to banking. In an effort to prevent money laundering, I had to provide proof-of-residence to get a bank account. For me, since I'm a student at Trinity College, the easiest accepted proof would be a letter from Trinity stating that I'm a student and listing both my address back home and my address here in Dublin. However, since I'm not registered yet (and can't register until late September), Trinity College policy wouldn't allow them to provide such a letter. So, what it came down to was that I couldn't get an account until I registered, couldn't register until I paid my fees, and couldn't pay my fees until I had a bank account. It sounds bad, I know, but the key to any bureaucracy is to find the person who's far enough from the center that they don't really care about policy yet still is close enough to have appropriate authority. It only took me a couple of days to track that down, so huzzah for a new, Irish bank account!

  • In St. Stephen's Green park, just south of Trinity's campus, they have a little photo exhibit thing titled "Wild Poland" showing pictures of Polish wildlife and natural parks. Apparently, there's a pretty sizable Polish presence in Dublin, which is fun.

  • There's a place on Grafton Street (which is a pedestrian-only shopping area/tourist trap) called "Capt. America's". Despite their claims to have brought over Ireland's first American-style burger, the burgers aren't very good. It's not that the beef here is bad, per se, but the hamburger is just off somehow. Also, I was told that they don't really pluck their chickens all that well, so the chicken wings you buy at the grocery stores sometimes still have bits of feather. I'll have to check the butcher down the street to see if it's the same there.

  • Living with an Italian (my Dutch roommate is in San Francisco right now, and is subletting his room) leads to good dinners. Apparently, Irish food is not up to the standards of southern Europe, which is fine with me--I like pasta!

  • When it comes to Gaelic football (which I have yet to experience), the Cork vs. Kerry match is about as heated as it gets. The whole city center was covered with fans last weekend. Not quite like downtown Lincoln on a game day, but still...
Anyway, that's pretty much all I can tell you so far. I'll learn more as I go, I expect, and hopefully I'll be able to head out to the rest of the island soon. I think tomorrow I might brave the bus system to get to a BBQ/college football watch party with some other American ex-patriots. Wish me luck...

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Seo teach dom

I managed to take some pictures yesterday of the new place, so here you all go:



Here's the door into the place.



This is the view down the street.



From just inside the front door.



Here's a shot of the living room, toward the street.



It's me, in the kitchen area!



The hallway toward the bedrooms. Mine is just to the left.



The "garden". They aren't big on grass in Dublin.



This is where I sleep.



This is my bathroom (I know, I know...the picture you'd all been waiting for...).


Anyway, that's where I am. More pictures of the city to follow, I'm sure.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

regularity

Mountjoy Street is a great place to live.

I spent most of the day (well, the afternoon; I slept in to finish off the jet-lag) roaming around the area around the room I rented. It was quite informative. Here are the things I have learned:
  • Just a couple blocks south of here is Parnell Street, which is one of the major streets for shopping in the area. Just off Parnell and further down Jervis Street are where the main malls and department stores are located. Also, Moore Street is a pretty major fresh produce market, and there's a Tesco, a Lidl, and an Aldi all within a block or so.

  • In the other direction, you get into the heart of Phibsborough, the part of Dublin I'm in. Phibsborogh is famous as the home of the Bohemian F.C., a pretty successful Irish League football club. They play at Dalymount Park, which is about an 8-10 minute walk.

  • The McDonald's off O'Connall Street (which is about 8-10 minutes away as well) serves spring rolls.

  • The pub on the corner--Dec Gallagher's--is a pretty classic little local pub. I was the only stranger in it, and by the time I left tonight, the barman knew my name anyway.
So, that's what I've picked up on my third day in Dublin. No fun Irish story tonight, so you'll have to just tide yourselves over with the Dublin facts above.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

home, home off the range

I am now an official resident of Dublin. I have found myself a place.

So, I suppose now that I'm official, I should tell the story, and tell about all my happenings. First off, let me just say that all the flights went really well. Took off on time (or even early, as was the case in Lincoln) and got to their destinations without trouble. The airport in Philadelphia was nice--didn't even have to go through security again for the international leg! Also, my baggage arrived at the same time I did, so things were great!

While in Philadelphia, I met these two Irish ladies, one of whom had just dropped her daughter off at Cornell for college. They were very friendly, and gave me some good, motherly advice about where to live, where to avoid, and how to watch myself while in Dublin. They even gave me their contact info, so I could tell them if I found the hostel all right.

Since arrival, things have been a bit of a blur. I wandered around campus for a while, tried to find some advice about accommodation (as they call it here), but Trinity College wasn't expecting any post-grads to show up until September, so they were rather useless. Did get an O2 sim card out of it for the phone, though, so I wrangled an Irish phone number.

The next step was to sit in the hostel (with the free wifi) and email people about rooms they'd posted on the little website dedicated for such things, daft.ie. It was very useful; I had three tours booked less than 12 hours after I'd arrived!

In any case, I went to check them out. Met some nice people, mostly couples with extra rooms (one from New Zealand, one from France) and finally decided to room with a guy named from Holland who is in Dublin for work. It's a nice place--roomy, kind of quaint. It's on a little street about a block away from a mid-level thoroughfare, so pretty quiet but still lots of conveniences around. Also, the pair of girls living upstairs seem cool and the landlady is really nice and laid-back as well. I'm already moved in, and I think I'll get on well here.

Really, though, that's all I have to report. It's been mostly business so far, but now that I'm settled, the fun begins!

As a sign off, though, have a random story about Ireland:
So, last night (my first in Dublin) I went down the street from the hostel (Jacob's Inn) to a pub called Molloy's. It was a pretty traditional looking place, green walls and woodwork sort of thing. At the bar, there was a group of people--an older couple (maybe mid-60s) and two of their slightly younger friends (35-40, I'd guess). They were talking and carrying on, so I sat down next to them for my Guinness. After a few songs and some banter back and forth amongst them, one of them caught my eye as I observed and invited me over.

They seemed pretty taken aback that my name was "Clay"--apparently not to common over there. But still, they were quite friendly; they asked about Nebraska, sang me some old Irish tunes, and even had me sing a couple "Nebraska" songs ("There is No Place Like Nebraska" was a big hit, and they all sang along for "King of the Road").

In any case, they heard that I was coming to Trinity and was looking for accommodation, so the older gent, Jack, offered me a room in his own house, supposedly a 15 minute walk from Trinity! He even gave me his number so I could call and go see it (he suggested Friday; I probably will call him, just for the novelty and because I told him I would).

So there you go--that's a story about Ireland for you. Guinness and singing in a pub, and extending your hospitality to complete strangers.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

a dubliner

So, I arrived in Dublin today (at 9:00 am for me, which was what...3? 4? at home?). Anyway, things have gone swimmingly so far. Already wandered around campus, got an Irish phone set up, toured three places to live (two of which are locked in, should I want them) and have one tour tomorrow and possibly a fifth tour on Friday.

In any case, I'm tired now, and need to sleep so I can visit Sinead up on Killarny Street in the morning. A full report to follow later, and possibly a place to live as well!

Friday, August 01, 2008

eMigration

So, for those of you who don't know, I'm moving to Dublin on August 18th. In fewer than eighteen days, I will become an expatriate (well, for a year or so).

The circumstances are that I got accepted into a Master's degree program at Trinity College Dublin, so I'm packing up, getting on an airplane, and flying away, to be back sometime after next September. It'll be the first time I've been out of Nebraska for longer than a month contiguously.

Needless to say, it's quite exciting as well as more than a little frightening. I'm giving up my apartment, my job (sort of), my culture (a lot of it anyway), my currency, my absurd network of local friends (they'll just be non-local), etc. It's going to be quite the change.

Anyway, since this is my last day at the office--and the start of my last month in America for a while--I though I should put in a note, just to chronicle it. Besides, I figure everyone is going to have to start reading this to see what I'm up to over there anyway, so you probably deserve an update every now and then.

Monday, April 21, 2008

my net works

I finished up a couple of books in the last few days (it's as though this blog is turning into Clay's personal reading recommendations...), Critical Mass by Phillip Ball, and On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. I also went to a play tonight, one Preludes and Fugues by someone named John Glore, and prior to that, I'd spent some time reading up on a current "documentary" called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (propaganda does not deserve a link).

Now, whether these things in particular (well, the first two mainly) have evoked some sort of connections in my mind or whether my current overall state had already been leading to it, I don't know. Regardless, a few things have managed to click lately, which for some reason I feel I need to divulge to the Web.

First, Critical Mass is generally about networks, and how certain general statistical properties reliably emerge from large numbers of agents, whether those agents be atoms in a magnetic material, people walking down a hallway, or stock brokers on the buying room floor. Nothing that arises is individually predictive, mind you, but certain things can be said about certain types of networks as a system. The part that interested me the most about this book was the section on small-world and scale-free networks (small-world networks being the topic of another book I like, Six Degrees by Duncan Watts). Small-world networks are those wherein the average path length connecting any two nodes is small and the "clustering coefficient" ("the average over all vertices, of the number of edges connecting a vertex v divided by the total number of possible edges in the neighborhood of v", Ball 367). It turns out that in certain circumstances, a "scale-free" network can be arranged such that its topography fits the small-world requirements as well, such as in the way networks of interconnect websites seem to have developed (seriously, if you are getting any of this--or want to--just read Critical Mass). In any case, that intrigues me--especially considering that I'm intending to get an advanced degree in networks and distributed systems. The thought that these scale-free, small-world networks can arise from an undirected addition of nodes based on some sort of criterion for survivability is definitely something I would like to pursue, which brings me directly to my next point, about Expelled.

Apparently (I haven't seen it, so I don't know) Expelled is a very thinly veiled attack by intelligent design proponents against the supposed tyranny of the ruling intellectual elite in the biological sciences--namely, the proponents of modern evolutionary theory (the Darwinists, according to the film). I'm not going to say one way or the other; I haven't seen it, so I don't know. If the reviews are correct, then it sounds like a horrible blight on the face of modern cinema and will actually harm the advancement of knowledge in this world. If not, more power to them. The reason I bring this up is because it got me thinking about evolution, about selection and mutation and about complexity can arise from simple entities. Self-organizing systems are a staple of modern evolutionary thought (check out The Origins of Order by Stuart Kauffman), and combining that with the idea of a scale-free network, with its characteristic robustness and redundancy could have some pretty interesting implications, some of which came up in the next book I read.

On Intelligence had been in the works for a while, since I got it in the same trip as some books on information theory. Still, in two sittings I managed to power through it, and given what I remember from my cognitive science days, Hawkins might be on to something about how the neocortex works. I haven't done any further research yet (although I intend to) but the "memory-prediction framework" (Hawkins 104) he espouses sounds like he's on to something. He gives some pretty detailed conceptual models of how the various layers of a column in the visual cortex might work, and ties it into the functioning of the whole visual processing chain, right up to the hippocampus at the "top" of the pyramid. In doing so, he talks fairly glibly about "connections" and "links", about axons and dendrites connecting from many nearby networks, as well as some elongated ones (specifically in layer 1) that come from the far reaches of the brain. I don't know; sounds like a small-world network to me (high clustering, potentially low path length). Also, given that he posits a hierarchical organization to the whole thing and points out that the plasticity of the brain shows that different parts are functionally identical at the biological level, it seems to me that with a bit more modeling (which may have already been done; I never said I was up to date) it may be shown that the organization of the cortex has some aspects similar to that of a scale-free network. On an interesting note, it seems that Hawkins defines creativity as a novel generation of links between similar parts of the network (he was more about applying partial pattern matches to similar situations, but maybe you can give me a little creative license).

I used to think that creativity was all about generating new content. I even coined a little phrase about it, in the hopes of explaining why I don't paint or write songs or something similar--"I can't create, I can only interpret and facsimilate." (wow, turns out that's not actually a word). The thing I've come to realize is that that interpretation and recombination that I had so often discounted in my own endeavors is creativity. Every painting, every screenplay, every song is composed of parts of the universe as experienced by its creator. The raw materials come from the same mundane sources that I have access to, yet are joined by a network of similarities and linkages that I do not have, because my experiences have provided me with a different set. In any case, I was wrong. Every day I create, by weaving a unique tapestry of familiar entities that itself can be fed back in as a raw material, whether it be something I code, write, say, or just think.

Which brings me to the last bit of raw material I had at the beginning of this post, Preludes and Fugues. I went to see the production primarily because two of the four people in the cast are pretty close friends who have already had a significant impact on my life recently (and one of the remaining two is also a less-connected part of my network) so I felt I should support them. As a brief review, I felt that the actors did a fair job of dealing with what I consider to be a poor script; I'd describe the writing to be the opposite of "subtle", whatever that may be ("blunt" doesn't really work in this case, nor does "trite").

In my own particular nerdy fashion, I started thinking about the play as a system (it didn't really work for me to think of it as a piece of music, as the author obviously intended; like I said, not subtle). The seemingly random story lines and intended (yet poorly executed) continuities of name, location, place, and actor became threads in the tapestry, links in the network (fine...melodies in the symphony). What I found was that the similarities he invoked (or tried to) did not support the piece as a whole; he spread the audience too thin, with too few of the nodes connected to the surrounding ones, yet tried to connect every node in the network to each other node. In a way, the script popped out at me as being a sort of densely-connected network, with too many redundancies and too little clustering to be believable. The overt attempts to tie everything back together became formulaic and boring, while the injection of forced absurdity and convention-breaking comedy simply seemed out of place and disconnected. The network of the script connected only a few nodes, yet there was such strong noise that the intended message got corrupted anyway.

It makes me wonder about what network science could say about such things as scripts; maybe, when modeled a certain way, there is an ideal topology for a narrative, just as there's an ideal topology for the brain, for a traffic system, for a power grid, for the Internet, etc.

In any case, it feels good to think about this. Maybe I can actually salvage something out of this random walk that I call a life; maybe it wasn't so random after all.

Saturday, April 05, 2008

overdog

Well, I did it.

On March 28, 2008, at somewhere between 9:00 and 11:00 AM CDT, I managed to drop an application for Trinity College into the FedEx box (with hopefully all the right stuff filled out).

So, there's that. Now I'm just waiting...

...which sucks.

It's something that I've known about myself for a while; anything under my control is something I'll succeed at. Anything I don't control--that's up in the air. That I might fail, even if it isn't my "fault".

It's strange (to me, anyway); I'm used to a world that falls into place, not a world that just falls. I'm used to being able to pick one of the (usually equally good) choices, never to just wait until one of them chooses me. But that's increasingly how I see life becoming--relationships, business interests, scholarship applications, whatever. It's nothing I do; what I say or don't, what I do or don't, whatever happens that I control does not matter. Sure, it may lead to a point here, a different point there. But whenever I reach that point, the outcome is equally (or to a greater extent) decided by someone else, someone independent.

I know, that may just sound like common sense to you. Well, it's not to me. It's hard, for me. It's something I was maybe too socially stunted to realize back in high school, or whenever everyone intuitively understands his or her place in the Grand Scheme (note the capitals). Maybe it's just maturity; maybe it's shedding the naivety and innocence of youth.

Still, at the same time, it's horrible. From where I stand, there's a certain level of hope entwined with my active hand in the Universe. There is always a point at which one can say, "Well, I don't know what they've tried so far, but I can try this...Maybe I can succeed where everyone else--everyone who had more a shot at it than I do--has failed." We love an underdog. And we want to be one. But that's not something we can determine.

I'm no exception; I try to spin my life as though I've fought against something, or risen up above some tribulation. That's what society wants, that's what draws the support, the admiration, the love. It's flaws and imperfections; it's the broken implicit promises, the forgotten incidentals. It's the faults that we love; the strenghts we're only drawn to.

But even so, I can't help but blame myself whenever something doesn't go as I'd like it to do. When the 't's don't get crossed, and the 'i's don't get dotted, I consider it my fault, because I should have known, I should have been observant enough to see. And that's ridiculous; a person that can "see" what another person will do should be doing tarot somewhere. I'm not psychic, I'm not special in any way); I'm just human.

I guess that'll have to be good enough.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

coming soon to a Cartesian theater near you

Immediately prior to waking up this morning, I had a dream. This dream was actually just a movie trailer for a new, independent comedy that was supposedly coming out soon. The actors in the trailer were unrecognizable, and the writers weren't of note (although, it did mention something about "the people who brought you Zoolander"), but the thing I do remember about the movie was its title: Carlos Let the Loose Fish Out.

I think the movie was somehow about some touching-yet-comedic personal journey undergone by Carlos, and that it was either instigated or completed when there were some "loose fish" which Carlos "let out". I do not know if that was to be interpreted metaphorically or literally, or even how many "loose fish" there were. In any case, I kind of felt the movie to be akin to maybe Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with less "crazy", or maybe a more positive Ghost World.

In any case, it looked like a movie I would go see.

And the title is awesome.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

marching on

Given that it's March, and my last post was in December, I think it's a good time to catch up.

First of all, at the end of January, Executive Function, or a Story About a Dog Named Rudolph went up at the Haymarket Theatre. It was an amazing experience--the show was great, the cast was great, the audiences were great (usually). I think it's a good show to go out on; I'm closing the book on theater in Lincoln for the time being.

Of course, that hinges upon actually leaving for Ireland this time (in case you were paying attention in the past, I have had some trouble doing that). I think I'll make it; I have everything but the passport photo for the application and the application fee already lined up and filled out. Plus, I've decided I'm going even if I don't get in the program, so I should be Ireland-bound as of June or July.

In other news:

  • Irish-themed bands (such as The Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly) are awesome. Any bands who have albums with titles like "Drunken Lullabies" and songs like "Kiss me, I'm shitfaced" are just fine in my book.

  • I've decided that complexity theory (especially the study of emergent behavior) is still on the top of my future-academic-pursuits list. Thanks, Philip Ball!


...and that's it.