Research

Lots (read: more than one) of people have been asking what I'm up to nowadays, which has led me to the conclusion that I'm neglecting my blog. The whole purpose of this exercise is to avoid frivolous conversation by publishing the answers to questions which form the bulk of small-talk; that my conversation time may be better spent. The inefficiency of giving the same facts to different people in different conversations is amazingly annoying.

So.

Having finished university (results are out on Thursday 18^th with luck), I'm now...at university. I'm working as a research student for ten weeks, working in the same area as with my final year project.

I'll hopefully be publishing a paper in AAMAS (Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems), and then presenting it in May/June 2010, in Canada. Also it pays for rent and clothes shopping over summer - but let's pretend I'm doing this for the advancement of human knowledge.

We're still finalising a topic - I'll post a dumbed down (read: jargon-free) version of whatever I do up here :)

Xx

PS: I have a small office with (inexplicably) 9 chairs, yet on the rare occasions anyone stops by for a chat, they generally stay standing. Explanations on a postcard please.

One Million Giraffes

Following a (presumably) drunken bet, someone on the Internet is looking to collect 1,000,000 hand-drawn giraffes by 2011. I really can't think of any more noble aim for the future - and it'll be one hell of a puzzle for digital archaeologists in a few hundred years when they find all these pictures without any context.

You can see the (pitiful) 600 or so he's collected here and you can submit your own drawing in myriad ways; the most obvious being simply to email it to him.

For reasons I really can't explain, here's my favourite so far:



For reasons anyone who has ever seen me draw anything will perfectly well understand, I won't post my effort up here. And I think I might even submit it under a pseudonym.

Get drawing :)
Xx

Crazy People

It makes waiting for buses (and the subsequent journeys) so much more interesting when instead of a sullen Brummie looking annoyed at everything, there's a crazy* person repeating the same thing over and over to anyone who might vaguely listen. Top of the list, of course, is an old lady who wants to tell me how lovely my hair is; but crazy people are a close second.

There were two such folks who got the bus in with me today; one alternately shouting and singing "You can't go in this afternoon, mate" and the other with a more elaborate spiel about how "You only ever have one exam, that's music" (although he did then go on to contradict himself, saying how he'd failed two assessments).

That's not the interesting part.

These two, apparently entirely independent people were waiting at the bus stop at 8.30am (ok, 9.30am - but if my supervisor asks, I was in work at 9). They got the bus in to town. As I stepped on the bus at 5.30pm (fine, fine - 4.30pm) - they were both there again, shouting and singing their way home.

What kind of magical, wonderful day did they have? Were they perhaps just getting buses to and from town all day, entertaining the passengers? Or did they get to town, walk into the office and have a full, normal day's work before resuming their alter-egos? Maybe they're brilliant physicists who were doing important research all day, and just do the shouting for a laugh.

Or, even better, is there a club for such people? Do they have a full day at the club, with various shouting and walking oddly and talking to strangers rooms and sessions? Do they pop home at 5 to have dinner and get ready for the club's evening party, where they dress up in their best and bring their partners along for some couples shouting?

Next time I see one of these folks and I'm not so busy, I'll follow them and let you know.

Xx

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*'Crazy' probably isn't the PC term any more, but I may as well continue my downward spiral into immorality.

Your Erdős-Bacon Number

Your Erdős-Bacon number is the sum of your Erdős number and your Bacon number. With an opener like that, I'm sure I've got your attention - now to elaborate.

I've been looking into social network topology for a paper I'm writing (more on that later) - if that doesn't mean anything to you, try and recall the time you saw '6 degrees of separation' in some junk mail; the wildly unsubstantiated and poorly researched idea that everyone in the world is separated by just 6 links.

This has been a topic of some quite interesting research by a number of fairly important chaps you haven't heard of, and it seems a few of them either a) snapped or b) had a sense of humour. I'm banking on a).


_{Paul Erdos - he could easily have been in films with a face like that}

Post snapping (or Schnapps) some mathematicians came up with the concept of an Erdős number - this is your academic degree of separation from influential mathematician Paul Erdős. Your Erdős score is 1 if you've co-authored a paper with Paul, 2 if you've co-authored a paper with someone who's co-authored a paper with Paul...and so on.

A later take on this was a Bacon number - your degree of separation from actor Kevin Bacon. If you've starred in a movie with Kevin, score 1. If you've starred in a movie with someone who's starred in a move with Kevin, score 2...and so on.


_{My favourite bacon related picture on the Internet}

Your Erdős-Bacon number is the sum of these.

Unbelievably, there are a whole range of people who actually have an Erdős-Bacon score. There's a messy list of them here - some people have Erdős-Bacon numbers as low as 4 or 5.

I think this goes to prove two points:

1. Some of your favourite actors may be closet mathematicians and..
2. The mathematicians that didn't make it into Hollywood have way too much time on their hands.

Also, consider this post a standing offer from me to buy drinks for the evening for anyone who can prove they have an Erdős-Bacon number.

Mainstream Memes

Since Christopher Columbus discovered Twitter in mid-2008, it's become pretty choked up with users who don't even know where the flux-capacitor in their PC case **I'm reliably informed this is actually called a CPU** is to be found.

It's not all bad though, it hasn't taken too long for people to realise that the 'trending topics' section of Twitter - originally intended to give an overview of the most important and heady up-to-the-minute current affairs - would be far better used for tiny tiny memes.

#geekmusic was a great one a week or so ago, as was #budgetbond (and its spinoffs). You've then got the slightly smuttier trends - #3turnoffwords, #3wordsaftersex et al., which are mostly unfunny - but it is very amusing to see how many people can't even follow the single simple rule of 'three words'.

There's also been some great efforts on Amazon reviews recently. The three wolves t-shirt is fairly infamous around the web now; but someone's just linked me to something which might actually top it: 20 inch box canvas of Paul Ross.



Here's a couple of choice quotes from among the 200 (nearly all amusing) reviews:

"If you only buy one 20 inch canvas print of Paul Ross this year, this is the one to get."

"Don't buy this picture. It looks fine on the website, but the one they send you is upside-down. My wife hasn't stopped crying for a week."

And finally, this masterpiece:

"He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name' sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: For thou art with me;
Thy 20 inch print by MirrorPrintStore, it comfortest me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou annointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I well dwell in the House of the Lord with a lovely picture of Paul Ross forever"

Edit: Thanks to anonymousse for this priceless one too.

Merch

A lot of people say to me, "Ina, I'd love to get a lot of merchandise with approximations of your image on it..." (the real image would cause the lesser objects it was placed on to implode) "...but I can only find an image of you facing forwards. I'd feel foolish wearing a t-shirt with just a picture of your front on the front of it; can you do anything about this?"

To these people I can now offer the following:

_{The left-hand picture belongs on the front of your shirt, the other on the back of your shirt. Similar approaches may be taken for mugs, house-painting and underwear. The images are not licensed for mousemats. Please consult an expert before attempting to transfer the images to stained glass. By reading this paragraph you commit to paying £2 in royalties for each commercial sale featuring these images.}

Now, before you go and get this printed onto a t-shirt (a mere £5 at Vistaprint at the moment; and I can get it cheaper if I bulk order elsewhere) - there's an important point to note. Merely blowing up this small image will lead to something which looks quite boring and fuzzy. Instead, I recommend you scale it up using no interpolation at all in your favourite image editor. Alternatively, just ask me and I'll send some I made earlier (with stickyback plastic).

Enjoy. Can you guess what you're all getting for Christmas?
Xx

A dartboard

Well, my degree's over and I never have to do another piece of coursework, joy! More on that later, but for now, here's a still image from my final piece of coursework:


_{Click to embiggen.}

Unfortunately, that's a nicely rendered image and when played in real-time, the darts game actually looks a lot more...crap. I spent a lot of time choosing that word; it really is the most appropriate. Especially given that the networking (you can play the game online) is sketchy and the Wiimote controls are challenging at best.

Still though, looks pretty doesn't it?
Xx

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Blender Game Engine, Blender Render. Grab me if interested in anything else or if you want a copy of the game.