Blog Vacation

I know it wasn't too long ago that I declared a blog vacation, but when it comes to this blog I am my own boss, so I am taking another one. It shall last two weeks.

I have a new job (well, two weeks old at this point, but it is keeping me pretty tired), some personal projects, and teacher training starting up on the weekends, so things are going to be pretty busy in the next couple of weeks. I will continue posting weekly quotations and, when something strikes my fancy, This Week on the Internet (TWOTI) posts (so be sure to still check back at least Monday and Friday, or just use the subscribe buttons), but other than that things should be pretty sparse (and Computing Intelligence will also be taking a break).

While you take a break from reading my blog, I invite you to ponder how the Dog Gone machine manages to avoid picking up dirt and other debris:

Title Change, New Blog, and Twitter

There are some rather profound upheavals of my internet presence tonight. I have launched a new wordpress blog: Computing Intelligence. There I will try to put up a post a week discussing some aspect of my research and educational life that I have either been working on or thinking a lot about. Since one cannot have two blogs with the same name, this blog has been renamed to Computing Ignorance. Here I will continue to haphazardly (and, most likely, much more often) post on all the other topics that you are used to reading about (politics, weekly quotations, puzzles, and that sort of thing).

Additionally, I am also making an effort to use Twitter (where you can find me as CaldenWloka).

End of Blog Vacation and New Toys

I think my blog vacation is coming to an end. It was a nice break, but it is time to plough back into being a productive writer. Of course, being that I am ending my vacation on a Friday (and the fact that weekends are inevitably light traffic days for blogs), it will still likely be light posting for the next two days before we properly get back into the swing of things around here.

One exciting recent development is that I bought some new toys today. The first is a 1 TB external harddrive. While an entire terabyte of space seems excessive, the price difference between 1 TB and 320 GB was surprisingly small, so I figured I might as well get the terabyte and back up both my desktop and my laptop. The acquisition of an external harddrive in order to save off the data from my laptop was necessitated by my desire to switch the computer over to a Linux machine... I am so thoroughly unimpressed with Windows Vista that enough is enough and I'm switching to Linux.

The second toy I got is a new digital camera. My old camera is from my first year of university (back in the days of being an engineering student), so it is getting on six years old now. Over the course of its life it has started to develop some annoying quirks (you have to tilt the coverslide just right to make it turn on or off) as well as the fact that it lacked some functionality that I always wished it had (namely, the ability to take videos that are longer than 12 seconds and have sound - I specifically asked the salesman if it took videos with sound, and he said yes. It turns out he lied), so I think it was time for a replacement. The new camera is technically my birthday present from my parents*, and I have to say that I am rather pleased. It is a Canon PowerShot SX200, and packs a surprising amount of functionality into its relatively small frame. While not as tiny as many of the cameras available these days, it makes a happy medium between functionality (it has 12x optical zoom, for example), portability, and ease of use. To test it out, I took a couple of quick shots of the CN Tower from my apartment balcony (one without zoom and the second on maximum zoom). I was rather impressed.

Picture of the CN Tower without zoom.

Picture of the CN Tower on full zoom

*For the record, my birthday is actually in the spring. Also, I believe this is the first year in the last two or three that I have actually gotten a birthday present (not to fault my parents - every year they ask what I want for my birthday as it approaches, I shrug and say I will get back to them, and then forget all about it. When I do actually get a present, though, it tends to be something rather nice (like a digital camera), so I think it balances out in the end). I think the reason birthdays are like this with my family (gift giving is fairly sporadic) is because of how spread out we are. With my parents on the other side of the country (and Canada is a big country to be on the other side of) and both my sisters living in South America, it gets rather hard to do gifts. Excitingly, though, my whole family is going to be together in a couple weeks when I go back to BC.

"What's in a name?"

In a recent comment, Regan asked if I could explain what my pseudonym 'Mozglubov' means. It is a cobbling together of two Russian words, 'mozg' which means 'brain' and 'lubov' which means 'love' (so, the name literally means 'brain-love'). I picked it as a pseudonym when I started this blog for a number of reasons: it is distinctive, I enjoy messing around with Russian words, but most of all because it was tongue-in-cheek. That last bit requires some explanation.

As anyone who knows me or has been reading this blog for a while has likely noticed, I find the brain and how it functions to be a fascinating subject. Understanding how a collection of electrochemical interactions in a distributed network of cells is able to compute the complex behavioural and cognitive life found throughout the animal kingdom is not only a wonderful puzzle, it also provides a beautiful source of inspiration for reproducing similar capabilities in artificial systems (whether you are talking about a physical robot or software operating in a virtual world). While this blog itself might meander all over the place in terms of subject matter, my fascination with the study of intelligence and subsequent desire to share what I learned on the matter is what motivated me to start writing here. Having said all of that, one of the things that really bothered me as I began devouring books on neuroscience was that the vast majority of people writing about the brain seemed to consistently fawn obsequiously over it to a degree that I felt was counterproductive. If you set out to explore a subject that you feel is so complex it can never be properly explored, there is a good chance you will let yourself be confounded. The reverence shown for the brain, of course, also tended to also be exclusively held for only the human brain (something which annoys me, too, and which I have previously gone on about at some length).

Since it seemed like an unofficial rule that to write about the brain required at least an adoring introductory passage paying homage to how wonderful, complex, and magical the human brain is, I figured I would just get it over with and include such genuflection within my very name (albeit hidden within the Russian language). Mozglubov, therefore, is my own private joke about the neuroscience field.

Personal Aside

My imminent departure from Göttingen and return to Toronto suddenly seems much closer this side of the weekend than on Friday... While I have a variety of planned posts, most of them are only partially finished (or only exist right now in my head) and must yield to more pressing concerns such as writing my final research report covering what I've done here at the Max Planck Institute and studying for the exams that are awaiting me in Toronto. While I do find blog maintenance a good tool of procrastination/relaxation between bouts of work, my mental moods do tend to get more unstable and my writing more sporadic when under stress. Thus, I warn you that updates might not flow very smoothly over the next two and a half weeks, but there will likely be the occasional flurry of snippets.

"Anonymity is your name"

When I started this blog over a year ago, I intended to keep it purely anonymous. As it has developed, however, the notion of anonymity has diminished in my mind as something to care about. This is partly motivated by a large portion of my reader base actually knowing me in real life (as well as a few very obvious failures on my part at maintaining anonymity, such as accidentally responding to emails using my name rather than my online label), but it is also partly because I have gotten to the point where I figure if people are doing Google searches for my name anyway, they might as well find this instead of cross country statistics from my junior high days. Plus, for those readers who don't actually know me in person, the following story from this past weekend would not make any sense.

You see, this weekend I took a trip to the German town of Calden. It is not much of a town, with a population of not quite eight thousand, and it was also rather difficult to get there as it is one of the seemingly few places in German not to be situated on a rail line. The reason I wanted to go there, though, is because my name is Calden Wloka. It is an unusual name, chosen by my parents based on the inability of my two year old (at the time of my birth) sister who was unable to say their original choice of Calvin. In my entirely non-objective stance, though, I am rather a fan of my name and prefer it to Calvin (also, being a precocious blonde child named Calden already netted a significant number of references to Calvin and Hobbes... I can only imagine how much more common that would have been had I actually been named Calvin). It is an unusual but not exceedingly difficult name. However, as a child and adolescent, there were times when I lamented it. One thing I always wanted as a little kid was one of those souvenier objects (keychains and the like) that had my name on it. Of course I never actually found one, and that always seemed rather sad for me. When I went through the awkward adolescent experience of moving to a rural town in a foreign country, having not only a Polish last name that had the temerity to follow a 'W' with an 'l' without an intervening vowel, but also an unusual first name meant there was always an awfully unwelcome pause at my name when teachers took attendance. For people with names that they do not have to repeat a few times when they meet someone new (and subsequently just settle for whatever pronunciation seems to suit your new aquaintance best), my giddiness about going to an entire town with my name (replete with signs and business names testifying to that fact) might not make sense. You will just have to take my word, then, that this was an exciting trip for me. Of course, I made the mistake of taking the trip on a Sunday, when everything in Germany seems to be closed, but I still managed to make it there, get plenty of pictures, and then make it back without too much hassle and lack of food (the only thing I found open was an icecream parlour, which wasn't much of a lunch). There were a few awkward moments when I had to explain to people why I was taking pictures of random signs and company names, but on the whole I got through it without too much embarrassment.

Even better than visiting a town with your name, though, is the experience of discovering that your name has an associated coat of arms displayed in stone. Behold, the Calden Coat of Arms:
For a geek, that is an awfully exciting discovery.

Idle Thoughts Can Have Consequences

I'm sure most of my readers, even if they have been reading this blog since October of last year, have likely forgotten about this post on my rather trivial enjoyment of a couple of names. I certainly had forgotten I had posted it... until I got a comment and an email from Cosimo Commisso himself! Thankfully, Cosimo Commisso seems to have a good sense of humour and rather enjoyed the post. Still, it is a reminder for minor bloggers like myself - you might be used to prattling on about whatever happens to pop into your head, but you never know who might actually decide to have a look at what you have written (even months after the fact). So, Dr. Commisso, thank you for having a sense of humour.

Anyway, I am off on a day trip to a nearby town tomorrow, but be sure to check back early next week. I am putting the finishing touches on a review of a talk I went to a couple of weeks ago by the philosopher Timothy Williamson, so that should be up Monday or Tuesday.

Some Miscellaneous Announcements

So... the Robots with Organic Brains post still isn't up. As with most posts that actually relate to my area of study, it has gotten bogged down in my brain with a myriad of details and caveats. It is definitely on the list of things to publish in the near future, but I don't know precisely when that will be.

In the meantime, though, I have apparently graduated despite still having to take my last three exams this August. Clearly there has been some sort of confused mix-up (although I did technically pass two of my three courses with outstanding exams just based on course-work, and those were the two required for my program, so I guess it is possible for me to have graduated...), but my profile information has been due for an update anyway. For posterity, I am going to copy the old profile here:

I am in my final year of undergraduate studies pursuing a specialist in computational neuroscience at the University of Toronto. I spent three years studying aerospace engineering before deciding to switch into a science degree, so I might write some posts about aerospace subjects occasionally as well. I am a bit of a dork, geek, or intellectual, depending on one's perspective.

Now I shall replace it with a more up to date profile.

Ask, and people answer

So, in my post yesterday I made a somewhat flippant remark that people should go out and tell their friends about my blog. Today, I spent most of the afternoon talking to my research supervisor, and missed all the excitement following Jackie posting a link to my recent post on irrational beliefs and public policy on PZ Myer's blog. My page hits nearly quadrupled. Jackie, I think you deserve a thank-you.

Revamping the Reference Game

As my long-time readers may remember, before I started posting puzzles I started what I refer to as the 'Reference Game'. The game consists of titles that are, either in part or whole, pulled from some other source (usually television or film, but sometimes also music lyrics or literature). In its original incarnation, I had wanted people to simply leave comments telling me the context of the reference. However, that format seems to be unwieldy. So, I am changing it. While I will still denote posts in the reference game with quotation marks around the title and the 'Reference Game' tag, I would ask that people send me their solutions to my email: mozglubov@gmail.com. Also, once a month or so I will publish a list of the most recent references (just in case people missed the quotation marks). Then, a few days later, I will publish the solutions to the references in a similar format to the puzzle solutions.

So, for those who missed them earlier, the previous references so far have been:

1.) "That's why I never kiss 'em on the mouth"

2.) "Gonna live it up down old South America way"

3.) "All non-believers stand aside in fear"

4.) From whence came the word "propulgate"

5.) "Kids say the darndest things"

6.) "It's alive"

7.) "In a garb of black we must pay respect to the colour we're born to mourn"

8.) "You, sir, are a mouthful"

Of those titles, 1-3 and 8 have all been solved, while number 4 was mostly solved. 5-7, however, are still open. As with the puzzles, there is an honour system at work here, so you should report whether or not you had to look the solution up or not.

Finding This Blog

Out of curiosity, I recently added a statistics application to this blog. One of the things I just discovered it does is keep track of the keywords to searches that lead one to finding my blog. These results were all-around surprising. The term that came up the most was 'Mozglubov', which sort of makes sense aside from the fact that I honestly cannot imagine why anyone would search for my trans-literated, made-up amalgamation of Russian words unless they already knew about this place. Much more entertainingly, however, were the following:

In the past week:

Five people found the site by searching for 'propulgate'. I had no idea it was such a popular term...

One person searched for 'france diplomacy opening game', and another for 'austria diplomacy allies game'. I hope the advice I gave was good, because I honestly wrote it more for my own amusement than anything else. Since so few of my friends play the game (other than when I manage to force them to), I hardly expected anyone to read my analysis.

Oddly enough, one person searched for, 'hardest life science program at U of T'. I hope I convinced him or her to go into mathematics. Another person searched for '"university of toronto" "class rank"'. I'm not actually even sure how that would bring up my blog, other than my occasional mentioning of U of T.

One person found the site by searching for 'worst logic'. I don't know how to feel about that...

My absolute favourite search, though, was the one person who found this blog by searching for, '"Ancient and Modern Necromancy alias Mesmerism and Hypnotism Denounced" cult'. Yay for the craziness that is Christian Science!

Another Reason to Suggest Favourite Posts

Even if you don't think I am deserving of best science post of the year (a conjecture I would truthfully have to agree with... there are a lot of bloggers out there, many of whom write much better than I), there are two more reasons why I would appreciate some feedback on which posts you have enjoyed and which you have not. The first is that I am planning to add a sidebar element which will highlight a selection of five or so posts which might be worthwhile for new readers to have a look at. So far, I thought perhaps my series on top-down visual processing, my post on free will, and my post explaining the nature of brain waves might all be candidates. Of course, I am not always the best judge of my own work, which leads me to the second reason why feedback would be much appreciated. While a large part of my reason for maintaining this blog is the selfish desire to expound at length about whatever subjects strike my fancy, I also hope it will be an enjoyable reading endeavour. Therefore, I would like to get as broad a sense as possible from my current readership of which posts worked and which did not.

For those who have taken the time to send me your thoughts, thank you. For those who will do so in the future, thank you in advance.

Pseudo-self-promotion

Through my internet wanderings, I have been made aware of a blog contest by a group called 3 Quarks Daily. They are currently looking for science submissions (with nominations ending June 1st). I am posting the link to the contest partly to help them promote it (they asked for bloggers to do so, and I think it sounds like a neat contest), but also partly for my own self-interest. After all, I write a blog (ostensibly) about science. So, in flagrant self-promotion, if any of my readers think I have done a wonderfully grand job of writing about a particular science topic within the last year, I would be very flattered to be nominated (they also allow self-nomination, which I am not above doing. So, even if you don't feel like nominating me but have some strong feelings about previous posts, feel free to send me an email letting me know what your favourite/least favourite posts are to give me an idea of what I might want to submit to the contest). After all, the prize is a thousand dollars, and the worst that could happen is I could be mocked across the amorphous lands of cyberspace as an amateur intellectual groupie. While that might hurt my feelings, I think it is a risk I am willing to take.

Custom Search Added

I just thought I would point out that I have added a custom search to the sidebar just above Places of Interest. I thought it might be easier to use than the "What I've Written About" item when trying to find a specific post considering some of the topic labels have gone into the double digits with number of posts. I tried a couple sample searches myself to see how it works. While it doesn't seem to be that great, if there is an old post that you vaguely remember and for some reason want to reread but cannot seem to find, give it a go and it might help you track the post down (especially since my labelling practises have changed over the course of this blog's lifetime, so they are not always entirely consistent). As always, if there is something else in terms of functionality or subject matter you think should be around here, let me know and I will see if I can be accommodating.

Crunch Time

My readers may have noticed a change in both output of posts as well as content over the recent past. The increase in posts is mostly because writing inconsequential material is a form of stress relief for me (if only writing my assignments had the same response!), while the prevalence of personal anecdotes or quick responses to other content on the internet is because those simply get written faster and therefore get finished before the mounting stress of knowing I'm not working overtakes the stress relief inherent to sitting down and writing. I have several substantial posts started that have been sitting in my collection of drafts for a couple weeks now. The thing is, I have my final project report due this coming Thursday, and then exams starting the following week. I am therefore unlikely to finish anything of any sort of merit in the upcoming little while (but, once exams finish, I am getting my wisdom teeth removed so will likely have a few days of lying around in bed with nothing to do but finish those posts). If you enjoy my questionably amusing anecdotes and other trivial thoughts, however, there will likely be a flurry of those in the next little while as I desperately seek moments of procrastination (like this one). So please bear with me during the end of semester busy period, and the more interesting stuff should be back in a few weeks. I will also continue posting puzzles and quotations (and so far I've only had one response to the most recent puzzle. I know there are more of my readers who are good at word games (Kari... Kim... I'm looking at you two), so send in your solutions by email before I post the solution and you lose your chance at being immortalized in the solution post as a puzzle-solver).

A New Feature!

While taking a break from my work tonight, I was struck with inspiration. Though perhaps it is the misguided and poorly thought out inspiration of the caffeine-addled mind, I nevertheless decided I would pursue it. In another attempt to increase the interactivity of this blog, I am creating another semi-regular feature: puzzles! I will post a puzzle of some sort (either one I made up or a clever one I had heard) and then in a few weeks I will post a solution. Given that I now have an email address for this blog (mozglubov@gmail.com), people can send me solutions (or attempts at solutions) there, and when I post the solution I will also post who solved the puzzle (I may also post peoples' incorrect solutions, although I will keep those anonymous). To make things more interesting and in keeping with the ostensible nature of this blog, if people could also send me their reasoning (or at least a brief outline of their reasoning), that would be great. If people have clarifying questions about the puzzle, those can either be emailed to me or left in the comments. In terms of the puzzles themselves, I will try to offer a mixture of subject matters, though the majority are likely to involve mathematics and logic.

Note: Like with my title references, I am going to request people don't cheat and look answers up on the internet. Of course, there is no way for me to enforce my no cheating policy, but once again there is no actual prize (other than pride) for solving these puzzles anyway.

Email Address

I just wanted to point out that I have now created an email address for this blog. If you want to get in touch with me, you can send email to mozglubov@gmail.com. For those who happen to know me in real life, you can still send me email at my other accounts or use the blog account. Feel free to send me comments, suggestions, or criticism.

Just a note: since it is a new email address, I might not check it that regularly at first. I've set up email forwarding, but it didn't work on my test email, so I'm not sure whether I made a mistake in setting it up. Hopefully that will be fixed soon.

The Vacuous Void of Internet Arguments

As some of you may have noticed, there has been a decided lack of posts recently. There really is no good excuse for such a lack of attention since I have been home and unfortunately unproductive with my schoolwork. As far as I can tell, it all boils down to a personal milestone: my first angry commenter. Being the kind of fellow who places far too much emphasis on his own cleverness, I am, as I have shown before, overly susceptible to SIWOTI Syndrome, and I therefore rose to the bait. Of course, internet arguments between strangers are usually vacuously useless things to begin with (much along the lines of theologian hair-splitting, as pointed out by my grandfather), and this one was even more so (if it is possible to be more useless than vacuously useless) since, as I pointed out in the initial post, it was an argument about comparing two utterly different things that are commonly conflated solely because of a trivial coincidence of shared birthdays. I do not mean to dwell, I simply wanted to point out that I have not forgotten about this site, I simply feel like my thoughts might be a little too trivial to get past even my own profundity filter (which, when the thoughts are mine, is a remarkably porous filter, as evidenced by these prior examples of staggeringly triviality ranging from thoughts on the metric system to geekdom). I'm sure this mental self-flagellation will fade shortly as my desire for public wordplay builds back up to sufficient levels, but in the meantime I am going to take a break and try to get more done in the real world. The vacuum tubes of the internet will have to suck on the minds of others for the next few days. I'm looking at you, Cornucrapia and Kari. You both have fertile young minds, so let's see some more stuff from the two of you.

A Stupid Cold

I apologize for the lack of substantive posts lately. I have been working on the third part of my series on top-down visual processing and planned to post it yesterday, but instead I was in bed most of the day feeling sorry for myself with a headache and sore throat. More unfortunate (for me at least) than its interference with blog posting is the fact that being sick right now also interferes with the fact that our college formal is tonight (which is an awkward thing to attend while sick) and I have two midterms next week which I really need to study for (something made difficult by a throbbing head). Therefore, I just wanted to point out that things might be a bit slow around here until after this coming Wednesday (then again, my well-honed procrastination skills might kick in and produce a flurry of posts). One thing that I thought I would link to in the interim is a collection of Star Trek: The Next Generation edited videos my girlfriend told me about this morning. Apparently some of her friends from school showed them to her the other day (being in a physics specialist tends to have all sorts of geeky benefits) and so she relayed their existence to me. They are pretty weird and somewhat inappropriate, but whoever put them together has rather remarkable video editing skills and the occasional moment of comedic gold. Anyway, enough of my rambling, here is a link to the first one. It is rather uneventful, the second one is disturbing, but by the sixth one there have been some clever bits. As they go on the editing improves, and by far my favourite is the most recent fifteenth episode.

Blog Maintenance

Before I get back to finishing my travel story and then trying to get around to some science posts, there were some maintenance issues I wanted to cover.

First, I've expanded the "Areas of Interest" to include some new features. Descriptions are at the end of the post. Also, I added a GoogleAds icon to my blog. If you see something interesting, feel free to click! While I certainly did not start this blog to make money, it would still be gratifying to see someone click... Of course, I recognize that there is an unfortunate predominance of dubious online degree programs advertised (and, more recently, trips to Peru), but occasionally there might be something interesting that pops up.

Oh, and one more thing before I get to descriptions of the new sidebar links - so far only the Jolly Bloger has attempted to solve one of my title references. He correctly identified "Gonna live it up down old South America way" as being said by Gob in Arrested Development after finding tickets to Portugal on the kitchen counter. Hurray for Jolly Bloger! That leaves the following two titles unsolved:
"That's why I never kiss 'em on the mouth"
and
"All non-believers stand aside in fear"

Anyway, now to site descriptions:

Cornucrapia: With a triumphant return to blogging, Cornucrapia is once again active. The author is a childhood friend of mine and his blog (and our email correspondence) is the reason I started blogging. A clever and erudite fellow, I recommend checking out his musings.

Deus Ex Malcontent: This is a somewhat odd blog to add to my list, as I neither know the author nor does he primarily write about any of my purported interests. Most of the content of DXM is cynical and derisive of popular culture, and with a posting frequency that rivals PZ Myers over at Pharyngula, it is a nice blog to look over when one is looking for idle amusement of the sardonic sort.

Halfway There: I am not quite sure how I found this blog (followed a link from somewhere), but I quite enjoy it. The author is a math teacher at a college in California and writes primarily about politics and math teaching. I find his political outlook particularly fascinating, as he tends to be quite liberally aligned but comes from a primarily conservative family.

In No Particular Order: This blog is by a friend of mine who graduated from the same engineering program I started in at U of T (though he didn't end up going into the aerospace option). He is now travelling the world as an engineer for hire, first working in Sweden and now in Taiwan. A fantastically talented photographer (both in taking pictures and digitally manipulating them), most of his posts are collections of pictures related to a recent adventure or trip of his. If you are interested in travel, I recommend giving his blog a perusal.

Paul's Blog: Another friend of mine from engineering, he went into the aerospace option and is now doing graduate work at UTIAS. Well spoken and careful with words, I quite enjoy reading Paul's posts (when he does them... he hasn't been posting a lot lately). I think it was my girlfriend who, when reading something he wrote, made the off-hand remark "You would never know he is an engineer". It is hard to imagine higher literary praise... (of course, I jest about the engineers, but not about the praise).

TBA: Another of my aerospace engineering friends, the author (Kari) is also overseas, in her case working at an engineering firm in Austria. She also is not a very frequent poster, but I greatly enjoy her verbal wit and copious use of allusions (hence, in my opinion, she should post more often). As some may recall, I have linked to her blog before.

The Barefoot Bum: Quite an interesting blog, this one is highly political and, recently, exceedingly bitter towards the American government. I find it quite interesting to read as, though I am rather liberal and rather a fan of many socialized economic policies, I still maintain a great deal of reservations about communism (I would like to believe most of those reservations are carry-overs from my experiences living in Moscow and speaking to some of the people who lived through the transition from communism back to capitalism and not based on unfounded acceptance of the anticommunist propaganda of the Western world, but it is hard to say). Much of the recent output of this blog has become devoted to favourable explanations of communism. Though I do not always agree, they are well written and thought-provoking, and I would therefore suggest they are well worth a perusal.