Friday, May 29, 2009

Universal Serial Bus

I have strange dreams sometimes. And sometimes I even remember them, at least long enough to retell. In those cases, I like to relive the dream as often as I can, so I won't forget it. A sad (?) side-effect of this procedure is that the dream gets twisted - parts that are forgotten need to be filled in with new inventions, in an attempt to keep the dream cohesive.

On my previous blog, I wrote about a couple of dreams of that sort. Here is another, which I just dreamed last night:

I wake up on a gurney, rolling through a hospital. BONK squeak squeak BONK squeak squeak squeak BONK squeak squeak squeak... rolling through dimly lit hallways, bashing through the double doors. People on both sides, whooshing by in a blur - passing too quickly to distinguish doctor from patient; friend from foe - I was dying.

Catastrophic heart failure. There are no transplants available; the Netherlands has focused more on medical technology than on altruistic behavior like organ donation. There is only one solution - an artificial heart.

The gurney slows to a stop. The walls close in. Silvery metallic - an elevator? Lurch in the stomach - is it the medication, or are we descending? Down, down, down, down, down, down, down down down we go...

Darkness...

Operating room lights, bright and blurry filling my view. Greenish-blue shapes of surgeons moving through the haze. What's going on? Oh yea, the surgery - confusion of the anesthesia, fades back to oblivion.

At this point of the dream it switches from the first-person crazy-view to a documentary television show. It also stops making sense.

After being told about his condition, the patient decides to attempt an experimental procedure. Since the surgeons would already open up the chest cavity for an extremely invasive operation, they might as well take the opportunity to install a device.

The device consists of a high-fidelity patch of electrodes connected to a serial bus. The bus connects to a control circuit on the artificial heart, allowing the brain stem and hypothalamus to adjust the heart rate and diastolic pressure naturally. This small but significant signal doesn't come close to saturating the pipe, though, so the project is brought a step further: a large data-port is installed in the front of the patient's chest.

The data-port enables electronic devices to read signals from the nerves in the spinal chord, enabling everything from cybernetic powered exoskeletons to computer interfaces, GPS and GSM devices to access the peripheral nervous system. The patch also channels received signals into the nervous system, allowing these same devices to provide data for access by the central nervous system. After a short learning process, the patient should be able to fuse seamlessly with the internet and any device connected, directly or indirectly, to the data port.

At this point I realize I'm actually half-awake and thinking more about the possibilities of the technology than the dreaming about the experience of having it, which was a little sad. At any rate, an interesting night, indeed!


Like my momma said to me: "Don't listen to them baby... They just some hatin' ass bitches... that's all..."

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Graveyard Duty

Sleeping with the windows open is living poetry. The sound of rain, pigeons cooing, crows calling in the night; helicopter returning to the hospital - it's definitely not lupus - while an ambulance rolls past in silence; cold sweet air flows in through the window and drops to the floor, the smell of wet compost follows it in and clings to my nostrils; cats arguing about territory or mates, a lonely dog barks in the distance.

Nothing really compares.

But the smell of compost isn't the only thing that follows the cold sweet air into the room - mosquitoes also find their way inside. Once they make it past the spiderwebs, there's nothing stopping them. Nothing, that is, except the loafer. I think I crushed about a hundred mosquitoes last year, perched upon my walls and ceiling. Usually it was dark, very late, and I was very very tired, so I generally didn't bother to scrape their little twisted corpse off the wall. Something I'd rather do in the morning.

Of course, when the morning finally came, I'd wake up late and rush through shower and breakfast, to then race through the streets of Groningen and (hopefully) catch the train at the last second. Ooops - I forgot about the mosquitoes again. I'll clean it up when I get home.

Of course, when I came home after a long day, I had some dinner and relaxed, and only when it was very late did I even think about what the bedroom was like. By then the room was again filled with mosquitoes for me to find and execute, and the cycle continued.

The room became a grotesque graveyard - bodies of the fallen were scattered over the walls, windows, and ceiling. A three-dimensional display of torn and shattered corpses, gruesome poses mimicking their past lives, unidentifiable smears left by bodies long gone. The mosquitoes along the window frame have been taken over by mold - green and blue and black and gray.

Yesterday graveyard duty finally arrived for real - some potential new tenants are coming to view the house tomorrow, so it needs to be clean. A sponge and some soapy water, and the deed was done; headstones removed, memories erased, conscience cleaned.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Smart Cat, Dumb Cat, Fart Cat, Crumb Cat

I don't constantly want to write about things in my life - I generally dislike that kind of blog. But things have been happening that spur my imagination, so I just write what I want. Today's episode: cats.

One of my kittens is very intelligent. As a result, she's afraid of everything. The dog, people, movement, sounds in the night... even her shadow. She apparently has an overactive imagination, too. This is fun(!) because she'll run around trying to escape unseen foes, or catch imaginary prey. Sometimes we'll find her staring down at the ground, pawing at nothing (something?). After achieving no success, she'll change her angle of attack, but ho! her target moved! That's when we realized she's attacking her shadow...

The other kitten is very much the opposite. I'd like to say "dumb as rocks," but rocks are comparatively intelligent because they can't get squished by doors, poisoned by buckets of dilute bleach, or catch on fire.

I lit some incense the other day to mask a bad smell from the kitty litter, and I thought of a little experiment. I took the smoldering stick and held it in front of Izzy, the smart one. "Oh shit oh shit oh shit! It's glowing!" she mewled and hid. A little bit later she came out and approached, having realized it wasn't going to chase her down. *sniff sniff* "Oh shit! It's smoke!!!" Rinse and repeat. But after a while, she figured it out, didn't like it, got bored and left to go play with her little demons.

That was neat - I wondered how Anka would fare. I took the smoldering stick and held it in front of her. "OOoooOOoOOooOoooO! Neat!" and before I could react she ran up and touched the glowing orange tip with her pink little nose, then ran into a corner to hide, face all scrunched up and licking her nose. Dumb cat!

EDIT: 29-05-2009
I retried the experiment (to gather more data, of course) with some mints. These are strong mints, meant to keep fishermen's nostrils clear when they're pulling in tuna or salmon in the North Atlantic. The active ingredients are eucalyptus and capsicum.

Holding it in front of Izzy, she was at first curious, but fearful. Eventually she approached and sniffed in the general direction, decided it was very unzesty, and moved on. Another data point for Izzy - very consistent with expectations.

Holding it in front of Anka, she immediately descended upon the mint, rubbed her pink little nose on it, then backed off three steps and scrunched up her face. Further testing immediately following the experiment were inconclusive, because she backed away from it in mortal terror. Apparently these mint burn about as bad as ... fire. Another data point for Anka - surprisingly consistent!

A free bonus: now I have a cheap and effective Anka repellant. I can just scatter some mints on a table and there is no risk that Anka will jump up and knock over the flowers...

Thursday, May 21, 2009

In sickness and in health...

So my fiance is lying on the floor, recovering from being very very sick. She's been sick for a week; we went to the doctor yesterday, who diagnosed her with food poisoning or intestinal infection. Doctor's orders: starvation diet and rest.

I think it was some bad tofu - I made a stirfry with some flavored tofu strips. The strips smelled suspicious, but I blamed it on the seasoning. Poor choice!

This was in the middle of last week. On Friday, we were running low on money, so we said "hey, let's get some dirt-cheap vodka and see what happens!" What happened was that I spent the better part of Saturday expelling the contents of my digestive tract in every imaginable way. The hangover passed, and time flowed into next week (which is this week). Jessica started feeling worse and worse, while I was just fine. And I'd even had more of the tofu as leftovers the following day!

The only conclusion I can draw here is that the bottom-shelf vodka and the quarter-bottle of Jagermeister that was left conspired to save me from this intestinal infection of doom. Jessica, exercising self-control and moderation, was not quite so lucky...

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Career Highlights, Continued.

What the hell?

I haven't actually updated the "Career Highlights" entry. Just my contact information. I thought my profile was sufficiently funny to leave it up for a bit.

It's about 10am in the morning, and I've already gotten 3 phone calls, one LinkedIn invite, and one scheduled interview.

Apparently building houses for the poor and organizing a recycling program in my appartment are highly desirable skills? Perhaps it was writing for an environmental column in a progressive newspaper that convinced them?

Man, fuck this yuppie shit - I'm gonna be a hippie from now on.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Career Highlights

You know those job search websites? Like... Yahoo! Jobs... and Monster.com?

Well, Monsterboard.nl is a very popular site in the Netherlands. They're pretty cool - lots of features, resumes posted online, people go looking at them...

One of the coolest things is that they regularly update their website. More features, slicker look and feel, faster response times.

It's friggin' sweet. Like a racecar that just gets faster and more comfortable! It doesn't even tell you when it updates - it just happens! From one day to the next, it could get fitted with rocket boosters, or improved stitching on the seams in the leather seats. The best part is that I got an incredibly awesome job through it! Holy shit! Can it get any better?

Of course! Upgrades kept happening while I lived life and advanced my career. While I developed modules for detecting and decoding license plates in a dozen countries around the world, the developers at Monsterboard.nl kept just as busy. I haven't been back to the website since - haven't needed to. Why look for jobs when satisfied with the one you have? Well, my girlfriend posted a new resume, and was happy to report she got like 50 views in a day. So I'm thinking, "hey, my resume should be up there still, I wonder how many views I've gotten."


36 this year.


"Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm"

So I looked at the new "Profile View". A slick overview of who I am, my accomplishments in career, education, and free time. My interests, wishes, dreams. My life in a nutshell; the page that HR managers across the internet use to see if I'm a winner or a loser, a productive software professional or scruffy basement hacker, a potential hire or a neglected file in the browser cache.

This is the section at the top of the page, highlighted for readability and optimal visibility:


Carrièrehoogtepunten:
* Coordinated recycling program in my apartment buil
* Worked building houses for the poor.
* I write the environmental column for a progressive
* I'm working on an application that matches users a


Carrièrehoogtepunten = Career highlights

fml

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Euclid's Vegetables

I thought I'd explain the title a little bit.

A couple of days ago I was coding up some graph making algorithms to visualize the automatic geometry deriver I'm working on at work. I should maybe explain (for those who don't know me) that I work on automatic license/number plate recognition (ALPR/ANPR). Part of it is to check whether the registration number we THINK we read actually makes sense, and part of THAT is to check whether the numbers and letters we think we read are located in the correct spot relative to each other. That's geometry checking, and it's not easy. The difference between some guy in Alabama getting a $20 ticket and some guy in New Mexico getting it can be down to two pixels... and multiplied by tens of thousands of passages per day ... you probably get the picture.

I digress.

Where I was going is that I wanted to draw a little box around the standard deviation on the histogram of errors that our derived model produces in the learning process. Then we can visualize how quickly it learns in a nice, comprehensible way, while it's busy doing it's thing.

Standard Deviation is, of course: SQRT( SUM_OF_SQUARES / NUMBER_OF_SAMPLES ). Easy enough, right? So I type it in, compile, and watch the value explode waaay off the scale. Huh-whut? It turns out that our C library thinks that SQRT(x) is actually x*x...

So, that got me on a train of thought that started with square roots, rolled along the etymology of "root", entered a tunnel containing the life and times of Euclid of Alexandria and his book about geometry and the properties of squares, and exited somewhere in the neighborhood of variance squared.

In other words, I went beyond square roots, all the way to... Euclid's Vegetables.

First Post

Right, so I had this blog a few years ago, bla-bla-bla, and it turns out that everyone who read it likes what they saw. Even better, I really enjoyed writing the entries!

So I really want to return to it, but I haven't been able to. Time goes on, etc etc etc, so I can't just pick up where I left off. Furthermore, that thing was kinda just a dumping-ground for all the weird shit that piles up in my head on a daily basis - and far from everything was actually "post-worthy".

I've therefore made the decision to archive the old blog, consider it a "prototype" or "alpha-version" of the "TheWalruss Blogosphere Phenomenon" (or TWBP), and to make a new blog. A "production" blog, so to speak. One which I wouldn't be embarrassed to show my parents, employers, or up-tight "friends."

Not that it'd be any less weird, but - hopefully - just less amateurischschsch.

With that, I christen the new blog: Euclid's Vegetables!

To Boldly go where no Root has gone before!

...

No, that doesn't work...

Taking Square Roots to unprecedented levels!

...

Darn, I thought this blog title would lend itself effortlessly to snappy slogans. Let's try again.

Eratosthenes would never have seen this coming!

...

Hmmm. I'll have to work on this one...
Suggestions for a subtitle, anyone?