and if I fail,

I rewrote the raytracer, seeing that my first attempt had produced semi-spaghetti code..
( images and technicalia )

If you look closely you can see the jagged edges in the 2nd and 3rd dragon images, especially around the checkerboard squares.. those images weren't supersampled. (The funny patterns in the background, as the checkerboard stretches towards infinity, are due to the same effect.) The other two images were done with 3x3 supersampling.

Also, here's a fairly interesting video on finance and programming:

I'd always thought that it would be rather hard to write a raytracer (thought process: images pretty => producing them must be hard. non sequitur ftw) Then I came across this toy raytracer in python at only 300 lines of code, and I'm like o_O. So I attempted to take a stab at writing my own tracer. The results:
( Images and technicalia )

eh, does anyone want to buy stuff from threadless? they got a $5/$10 sale atm

[edit] closed, because 1) I'm getting a friend to ship and don't want to overload her, and 2) I'm going to be on duty tomorrow, and stuff is selling out fast. sorry!

( this is my heart )
Well. Thanks for the well-wishes, everyone. (:

Anyone interested in checking out the NIS talk this coming Monday? (I'm planning to take off :P)

when I was younger I used to believe that all mistakes that people made were due purely to a lack of understanding.. but then now I'm not so sure. All those times when I curl up in front of the computer instead of going out / doing something I should.. I understand quite well that I shouldn't be doing that, that I am doing it out of perfectionist tendencies.. but zz I can't seem to break out of it.

(still, nothing rules out that more self-knowledge might provide a solution. I don't know what I don't know.)

but god. it has to stop, and soon.

-

A levels.. y'know, I wish that I had taken them a little more seriously, that they had mattered more to me. At least I would have one small link more to connect me to the general population.

Still.. I think that it shouldn't matter as much as it does to some people. The A levels are purely a means to an end (scholarships / uni), but they have little value in themselves. There is some correlation between grades and intelligence + hard work, but there is a fairly large margin of error in the marking (esp for non-science subjects), and there are countless other factors that are not really within your control (teacher quality, peer influence etc). So your grade doesn't say much about you.

More puzzlements I have wrt to general exam/grade attitudes:

If one has been working hard consistently.. one should be able to gone can usually gauge one's grades even before the results come out. There's at most a +- uncertainty of one grade.. and a +- uncertainty of two grades for the whole group of A level papers. (my own ballpark figures.. but I think they are fairly accurate.) Scholarship boards take this into account, too. They look at you holistically, and I doubt the result of your application would turn on the grade of a single subject. And even if you've been zhamming hard only at the end.. there's only so much time between prelims and A levels. Your knowledge and your grades can't have changed that much. So.. why the great pre-release anxiety?

Also.. why do people dislike difficult papers? If you can't do the question, chances are that a person of similar ability + knowledge would not be able to do it either. So everyone scores lower. But the number of scholarships and uni places are still unchanged, so your relative competitiveness is unaffected.

So in the final analysis.. on results day, you are just waiting to see how much effect some random processes beyond your control have on your grades. Sure it might affect your uni and sships by a bit but hey.. it's just impersonal fate, just suck it up.. and it's not that big a deal anyway, the random factor is not that large.

(In case anyone asks why then was I so tied up over PhO.. because I was stupid then and felt that being smart / being good at physics was integral to my identity, and because I believed my application to the ivy league would turn on the olympiad (not really true either), and because I was generally in a bad state of nerves. I was being irrational over a limited span of time.. yet many people are like this all the time. So I'm wondering.. is this just mass irrationality?)

-

I note that the second part of the post seems a little ironic compared to the first: I bemoan my irrationality, yet I ask why people are irrational. but heh I believe that we should strive towards rationality.

Whenever you happen to take your children to the Zoo you may observe in the eyes of the apes, when they are not performing gymnastic feats or cracking nuts, a strange strained sadness. One can almost imagine that they feel they ought to become men, but cannot discover the secret of how to do it. On the road of evolution they have lost their way; their cousins marched on and they were left behind. Something of the same strain and anguish seems to have entered the soul of civilized man. He knows there is something better than himself almost within his grasp, yet he does not know where to seek it or how to find it. In despair he rages against his fellow man, who is equally lost and equally unhappy. - Betrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

I am turning into a quote machine.

well at this point I would just like to be useful for something, or to someone. I complain endlessly about the tribulations of army life, but really, there is a lot of time to do things.. if I could only see, or feel, the point of doing them. as it is I am trying, committing to weekly events so there are things that people will expect me to do, to make up for my unreliable self-expectations.

[addon]
woah I never knew there could be so much science in sport. a very well written article too.

(reading dump post)

So recently I've been reading a number of finance books. I particularly enjoyed Derman's book My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance. Some of my favorite quotes:
( cut for length )
I think this CosmicVariance post deals with some of the issues mentioned in the book. (physics, genius, hard work, useful achievement)

But I'm curious about the finance part too.. so I'm currently working through this book, which is a nice minimal-technical introduction to derivatives.

this is hilarious:
http://lolcode.com/

taken from a list on my desktop:

( Books of 08 )

ok, I think there were more books than these, but I didn't always remember to update my record. and I attempted to read a lot of technical math / chess / science books but that was not really successful :(

365 days ago - I enlisted in this helluva army

365 days forward - I will ORD

Yesterday - Stanford rejected me

I'm doing okay, though. Trying to figure out how best to go about doing the RD apps now. No need for commiseration ;D

after six days of slacking I have no idea how to move my ass to get anything done. I have just been surfing the net and making one too many blogposts--

Judgment Day is in ten days' time. Trepidation, some

Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. They world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
-- Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

Back! Gradually touching back down into my old world. It has been a good trip, yes. I was pretty happy, in the simple uncomplicated way. It has been a really long time since I last felt that way (or did I ever feel that way? It seems that even at my best moments I was always worrying or angsting about something. But things change-- )

The itinerary itself was slacky, but I guess that didn't matter much. It was pretty much just six days of unwinding and chillaxing in good company. Thanks guys for all the fun (:

ok my brain is going out of focus goodnight

I bought a new player today.

It doesn't work.

the most difficult thing about writing is

1. Not writing uglily,

2. Continuing to write despite being unable to avoid it. It is rather painful to watch a pleasant idea get mauled so badly on paper by oneself.

And even if 1) is avoided, the strain of doing so tires one out after a while.

Hi guys: I'm thinking of giving (paid, but cheap; ~$20-25 an hour, negotiable) tuition in sec school math/physics and JC physics. If you know anyone who might be interested do tell. Thanks!

Even the most pointless work, if sufficiently intense, stressful, and sprinkled with accomplishable targets (however trivial), feels much better than sheer boredom. Because when one has nothing to do one has to take responsibility for doing nothing, whereas if things are forced upon you there is no such guilt.

I broke 1400 :)