I know my vacation was technically supposed to be over, and I had promised a return to active blogging. However, between flying to BC, visiting madly with some family friends before they left my hometown (they were only there for the cherry season), and then turning around to drive to Calgary to pick up my girlfriend, I haven't had a lot of time to sit down and do some proper writing. Combined with the fact that my computer seems to want to act up no matter what operating system I use, and even when I do get a moment to sit down and do some work it is usually trying to figure out how to fix some lack of functionality on my laptop.
Anyway, excuses are no good... Hopefully I will do a proper return to regular blogging soon, but for now you will have to be patient.
Subscribe to Computing Intelligence
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Midweek Quotations
Although quotations have only recently returned, this will once again be the last quotations post for a few weeks as I head off to visit my family in BC on Thursday.
"Food comes first, then morals." - Bertolt Brecht, German dramatist, 1898-1956
"Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity." - Vera Brittain, English writer, 1893-1970
"The essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer." - Jacob Bronowski, Polish-born mathematician and humanist, 1908-74
"Everybody favours free speech in the slack moments when no axes are being ground." - Heywood Broun, American journalist, 1888-1939
"Food comes first, then morals." - Bertolt Brecht, German dramatist, 1898-1956
"Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity." - Vera Brittain, English writer, 1893-1970
"The essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer." - Jacob Bronowski, Polish-born mathematician and humanist, 1908-74
"Everybody favours free speech in the slack moments when no axes are being ground." - Heywood Broun, American journalist, 1888-1939
I'm a Role Model...
Monday, August 24, 2009
Software Review: LyX
This summer I learned to use a piece of document composition software called LyX. I think it is quite an interesting and useful piece of software, so I thought it would be worth giving a brief review about it. More information (as well as the software itself, free to download) is available on the Lyx website, so, aside from a brief description of the software, I will concentrate my commentary on my impression of the program.
LyX is, essentially, a more user-friendly layer thrown on top of the typesetting program TeX and the widely used language based on it, LaTeX. If you have never heard of LaTeX before, it is worth looking at its Wikipedia article. LaTeX is, basically, a language which allows one to produce professional looking documents with automated consistency for a wide range of typesetting requirements including citations, section numbering, and formulae.
While LaTeX documents being developed often end up looking similar to html documents or even a program under development (with brackets and labels, such as \title{}), LyX partially compiles a document as it is prepared so that items like section titles and mathematical formulae are displayed with their desired appearance. The final document layout, however, remains unfixed until the document is finished and exported. LyX also provides a set of drop-down menus and toolbars such that you don't have to learn an entire typesetting language. Rather, you simply need to find the necessary option in the correct menu (which, granted, can be frustrating at well, but I think it is quite a bit easier for a first time user than trying to figure out the correct programming syntax). Although menu and toolbar selection is slower than keyboard shortcuts and typed commands for experienced users, LyX does also accept a wide range of keyboard shortcuts and TeX commands to be written in directly.
For an experienced LaTeX user, therefore, LyX does not offer a lot of functional advantages (other than perhaps making the development process a little more aesthetically pleasing and reducing the burden of keeping track of your brackets - much like the difference between composing a blog post using Blogger directly in html versus the 'Compose' option). For someone who needs to quickly learn how to do complicated typesetting (such as a thesis or report), however, but has never learned how to use LaTeX, LyX can be quite valuable. It provides a program with nearly the same power as LaTeX, but with a much shallower learning curve. There is a very worthwhile tutorial bundled with the LyX installation (and I highly recommend a first-time user go through at least the first part of the tutorial - using LyX is, in several important respects, a great deal different than traditional word processing programs like Microsoft Word and Open Office, and the tutorial helps get those concepts across fairly quickly), as well as more extensive help documentation. Even for tasks which are relatively straightforward in a standard word processor, it might be worthwhile experimenting with LyX to accomplish them. LyX can be easily combined with a bibliographical TeX program like BibTeX to create a database of references which can then be automatically compiled into individual reference sets for multiple reports, drastically reducing one of the main sources of frustration in laboratory reports and even essays in the humanities and social sciences.
Rather than continue rambling on about LyX, I will again reiterate that it has quite a straightforward website and accompanying set of documentation. In final summary: if you are in need of a powerful typesetting tool but have not had a chance to learn how to use a typesetting language like LaTeX, or if you know how to use LaTeX but find it generally unpleasant to use due to its tendency to feel more like programming than linguistic composition, you might be interesting in using LyX.
LyX is, essentially, a more user-friendly layer thrown on top of the typesetting program TeX and the widely used language based on it, LaTeX. If you have never heard of LaTeX before, it is worth looking at its Wikipedia article. LaTeX is, basically, a language which allows one to produce professional looking documents with automated consistency for a wide range of typesetting requirements including citations, section numbering, and formulae.
While LaTeX documents being developed often end up looking similar to html documents or even a program under development (with brackets and labels, such as \title{}), LyX partially compiles a document as it is prepared so that items like section titles and mathematical formulae are displayed with their desired appearance. The final document layout, however, remains unfixed until the document is finished and exported. LyX also provides a set of drop-down menus and toolbars such that you don't have to learn an entire typesetting language. Rather, you simply need to find the necessary option in the correct menu (which, granted, can be frustrating at well, but I think it is quite a bit easier for a first time user than trying to figure out the correct programming syntax). Although menu and toolbar selection is slower than keyboard shortcuts and typed commands for experienced users, LyX does also accept a wide range of keyboard shortcuts and TeX commands to be written in directly.
For an experienced LaTeX user, therefore, LyX does not offer a lot of functional advantages (other than perhaps making the development process a little more aesthetically pleasing and reducing the burden of keeping track of your brackets - much like the difference between composing a blog post using Blogger directly in html versus the 'Compose' option). For someone who needs to quickly learn how to do complicated typesetting (such as a thesis or report), however, but has never learned how to use LaTeX, LyX can be quite valuable. It provides a program with nearly the same power as LaTeX, but with a much shallower learning curve. There is a very worthwhile tutorial bundled with the LyX installation (and I highly recommend a first-time user go through at least the first part of the tutorial - using LyX is, in several important respects, a great deal different than traditional word processing programs like Microsoft Word and Open Office, and the tutorial helps get those concepts across fairly quickly), as well as more extensive help documentation. Even for tasks which are relatively straightforward in a standard word processor, it might be worthwhile experimenting with LyX to accomplish them. LyX can be easily combined with a bibliographical TeX program like BibTeX to create a database of references which can then be automatically compiled into individual reference sets for multiple reports, drastically reducing one of the main sources of frustration in laboratory reports and even essays in the humanities and social sciences.
Rather than continue rambling on about LyX, I will again reiterate that it has quite a straightforward website and accompanying set of documentation. In final summary: if you are in need of a powerful typesetting tool but have not had a chance to learn how to use a typesetting language like LaTeX, or if you know how to use LaTeX but find it generally unpleasant to use due to its tendency to feel more like programming than linguistic composition, you might be interesting in using LyX.
Friday, August 21, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, August 17, 2009
"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.
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.
Start of the Week Quotations
Even though I am on a blog vacation, I figured that was no reason to skip out on my quotation posting duties.
"Truth exists; only lies are invented." - Georges Braque, French painter, 1882-1963
"Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." - Werner von Braun, German-born American rocket engineer, 1912-77
"The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error." - Bertolt Brecht, German dramatist, 1898-1956
"Truth exists; only lies are invented." - Georges Braque, French painter, 1882-1963
"Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." - Werner von Braun, German-born American rocket engineer, 1912-77
"The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error." - Bertolt Brecht, German dramatist, 1898-1956
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
