Aluminium sumps are expensive too

I took my car in for a routine service yesterday, and when Sarah took me back to pick it up at five o'clock, I was surprised to see my car still hoisted up in the garage. I was greeted at the desk with a friendly "You've got a big problem, mate. Come with me..."
As it turns out, years ago at some point, someone used a steel bolt to seal the aluminium oil sump, and with repeated oil changes the steel bolt has stripped away the thread on the sump. I had two options: either drill out the existing thread and glue in a replacement hole with new thread, or replace the entire sump.
Drilling out the existing thread was a less than attractive proposition, because there's no saying how long the glued-in thread would last and it would introduce metal shavings into the inside of the sump - this is the thing that holds oil for lubricating the engine; hardly someplace you want metal shavings.
So I'm replacing the sump. The guy initially quoted me around $300 or more for the sump, but after grimacing a bit I decided to go with it. Fortunately he managed to secure me a second-hand sump for $170 - much more managable.

Sarah's been driving me around while I wait for the part to come, which I'm very grateful for. She even helped me put my new computer chair together, this morning - because I realised after I got home that my tools are in the car at the garage :)

Silver Linings are Expensive

It's been expensive lately... and I haven't even gotten around to Christmas shopping yet!

My loyal Microsoft Natural Keyboard Elite has finally succumbed to the evils of corrosion and one circuit of keys stopped working irreversibly. *sniff* That keyboard has been with me since my Gateway Pentium 300Mhz, and has been my favourite keyboard ever.
Sadly you just can't buy them anywhere; everything is a "multimedia pro deluxe" keyboard these days. The best I could find was a Fellowes split keyboard, which has an almost identical layout. I'm happy with it :)

Tainting my satisfaction with the keyboard though, I lost my sunglasses somewhere in Harvey Norman whilst buying it. Searching turned nothing up, and no-one's called me back to say they've been handed in.
They weren't extremely expensive - $80 - but I'd counted on them lasting several years. It's a pain having to buy new ones now, but it's an opportunity to get polarised lenses; Sarah delights in telling me how clear and colourful everything looks through her sunglasses any time we go to the beach.

And finally, whilst leaning back on my computer chair watching Seven Samurai, I was surprised to find myself tumbling off it backwards following a sharp CRACK! - The backrest had rusted and snapped away from the base.
I guess I have an excuse to buy one of the cool mesh-back chairs I've been envious of my brother having :)

Games

World of Warcraft beta has ended and the Warcraft universe has opened to the public. I played a bit during the beta, but I'm trying to resist playing the game now - I don't want to spend that much time on it; I don't want to spend that much money on it; and it's a hassle to play it on my computer, which is usually without internet access.
For now I'm quite content to watch the others play it :)

I have more than enough games to play right now anyway; I just got Half Life 2 and that's been enthralling me lately. When that's finished I have endless Neverwinter Nights content to play, Far Cry, and if I get through all that, Thief 3. It's tough gaming!

Grumgar the Orcish Jedi

Meet Grumgar, my new orcish jedi friend :D

Click for full size ;)

In between slaying mottled beasts and scorpids in the barren wastelands of the Horde, Grumgar enjoys shopping and modelling his new clothes. But when it's time to kick some arse, nothing beats his 1337 jedi robes (pictured above, rrp 13 copper available at The Den).

Thanks to Brett for letting me try WoW! :D

Kung Fu

I went to Kung Fu on Tuesday night. It was just a couple of guys and the instructor, Kot. Kot has recently come back to Rockhampton after a few years in Brisbane, and is only just restarting the club. Only a few dedicated students from before have currently rejoined, but they're in the process of trying to build it back up.
The rain, which had arrived suddenly earlier that day, held off for the couple of hours that we were in Kot's back yard, but it left the ground muddy causing kicks to be particularly messy. It was different training outdoors through the fading sunlight into the darkness held at bay by a single floodlight. Apparently they also train at a local park; that would be fun.
I didn't actually do much during the 1.5 hours Kot could be there. I got a quick overview of the art and what Kot taught. I stood in a horse stance (thus named because it's like you're riding a horse, not because you look like a horse... I think) until my quadriceps couldn't stop shaking. I did a bit of body hardening - strikes against bone, muscle, solar plexus, and abdomen - while at the same time learning some basic arm and foot movements. I was quite content to just stand back and watch when the knives and sticks came out though.
All in all I found it very interesting. I'll go back, but I don't know exactly how I'm going to fit it in. It seems to be a very real, effective martial art. I had a lot of fun doing Tae Kwon Do as a kid, but as a practical martial art I don't think it compares. One piece of advice I was given about sums it up - "What do you do if you're in a headlock? The easiest thing is to go straight for the balls." (Thankfully, testicle toughening is no longer part of most kung fu curriculums, Kot informed me with a straight face.)

Confusion

If you're reading this and you:

• Talked to me about the "milk run" flight from Rockhampton to Cairns;
• Work as, or know someone who works as, a 3d modeller for an aerospace company;
• Recommended the band "Depeche Mode"; or
  
• Saw "The Bourne Identity" with me 2 years ago

... could you please leave a comment?! There appear to be some inconsistencies in my memory of late. :)

Three Rings to Bind them All...

You can buy ring-binder CD wallets of various sizes from OfficeWorks. They're the tiniest bit bulkier than ordinary CD wallets because of the need for the click-open rings, but they're soo convenient.

• turning pages in a filled up wallet is much easier because the pages just flip over the rings
• you can take a page of CDs out for convenient access or to loan to someone
• you can rearrange the collection easily
• you can buy extra pages
• it looks cool :D

I've had one for my games for a while, and I just got one for my music cds. It makes it so much easier to find the CD you want while driving in the car.
They're relatively cheap compared to other wallets too, for some reason. I'd willingly pay more, but I'm not complaining :)

Blog Fu

I just ran into a friend who conscripted me for the Uni's Kung Fu club - all they needed was a nominal member to up their numbers and get club status with the student association.
But, curious, I took a look at their website.

Kung Fu (or Gung Fu) is a Cantonese Word which has meaning of: “a skill achieved or attained through long hard dedicated & diligent effort and study over a long period of time” or simply “ a skill achieved through time and hard effort”, in the west it has come to mean especially the Chinese Martial Arts which are more correctly termed Mo Sut (“Martial Arts”)
...
One can have “Kung Fu” in any art or discipline such as cooking or dancing. For example a Master Chef would be said to have Cooking Kung Fu.

Cool.
What kung fu do you have?

"MOE" upside-down = "WOE"

I should have listened to the people telling me not to let ITD install the Managed Operating Environment (MOE) on this computer, but I foolishly believed that it wouldn't be too bad. I was placated by promises of local administrative rights to my machine.
But I should have bailed upon hearing the first warning bells, when Conrad informed me that...
"ITD likes staff having MOE. It makes it easier to fix problems."
"Oh, how so?" I enquired.
"We blow away your machine and reinstall MOE." <- actual words

Now, just recently I've been trying to convert my paper (written in Word) to PDF. ITD have this "great" new system that lets them cut back on Adobe Acrobat licenses: instead of installing (and licencing) the software on your local machine, they've set up a network printer service that "prints" to a PDF file for you.
Unfortunately it just doesn't work for my paper, and we don't know why. Chriss Lenz was able to print the document to pdf perfectly from her computer, and since she was using Office 2003 she suggested that I try that.

MOE has other ideas. Conrad has just informed me that you simply cannot install Office 2003 with MOE. If MOE detects that you don't have Office XP installed, it will automatically uninstall whatever you do have, and leave you with nothing. It doesn't even have the grace to put Office XP back for you - you have to do that yourself.
Gah.

Now I don't know how I'm going to convert documents to PDF :|

Vote [1] Honours Room!

So there's an election this weekend. Ordinarily I'm apathetic about elections because I rarely pay attention to the news, let alone anything political. It's not that I don't care what happens to Australia - rather that I'm uninformed and don't know which parties most closely match my values.
A few days back I was bemoaning the fact that there was no easy way to compare the policies of different parties. Well, in the process of having an entirely unresolved but nevertheless entertaining political argument in the virtual Honours Room, I learnt about comparepolicies.com.au - exactly what I needed!

I'm now looking forward to Saturday's election for the for the first time in, like, ever because I know who to vote for :)
And, er, because we're having a LAN and a nothing-to-do-with-the-election celebratory dinner afterwards (birthday for Melanie, graduation for Tanya, hello for Roland - have I missed anyone?)!

As an aside, reading the policies of parties I disagree with really scares me. :|

Weekend Update

I went to Bundy on the weekend to collect my presents and see my family (note priority). I got a pen holder from my brother Carey; a cool Japanese styled set of bowls, saucers, and plates from my sister Michelle; a much wanted New Scientist subscription from mum; and two bags of pork sausages and a bag of spare ribs from mum's boyfriend Russel, who coincidentally owns a pig farm ;)
Other notable loot from the weekend included a cool magnetic arrow-rest and fast-flight string for my bow from John Hans, and my collection of Magic cards from my brother that had been on loan to one of his friends. The collection is quite a bit smaller than I remember it, but it's been years since I played with them so I can't remember what's missing. Oh well.

My mum is quite the entreprenuer now! For a while now she's had her psychology practice, which has taken off recently and she's now booked out three weeks in advance. That's excellent news, but apparently it's not enough. She and a friend have taken out just about an entire arcade in Bundaberg's CBD, and are in the process of transforming it into a health club / weight loss clinic / coffee shop. It sounds very ambitious to me, but they seem confident it will all work, and it certainly seems the market is there. The weight loss industry is huge, especially because of all the recent media attention on certain fast food chains. Furthermore, Queensland Health are apparently very interested in the project and if it works out well there could be funding/endorsement - that sort of thing - to take it state wide.
I'm not exactly sure, but I gather that the unique thing about this project is the way it combines a physical exercise programme (that's the friend, a fitness instructor cum psychologist) and cutting edge psychological counselling (that's mum! :) ) into a comprehensive package targeted at overweight to unhealthily obese clients.
Good luck to mum!

Gah, Blogger hasn't been letting me post this for the last 2 days... *fingers crossed* *clicks Publish*

Woo! Good results, finally.

Mood: happy, relieved

In the last few days, I've been running some function approximation experiments that, in a nutshell, have given me exactly the results I needed!

I wasn't happy with the paper that I submitted to Complex 2004, because I thought I had a good idea but it just didn't work. The results I got from the experiments I included in that paper were statistically inconclusive and I was left grasping at straws to justify the worth of the paper.

Well, I've done two more experiments based on what I've learned recently, and both of them have given excellent results!
I couldn't ask for more conclusive data - it shows that (for fully specified fuzzy logic rulebases) multi-dimensional representations are better than single-dimensional representations. That statement comes with an iron-clad statistical significance of 0.001 - for anyone who doesn't know stats, anything under 0.05 is acceptable and lower is better.

This comes at the perfect time, because I have the opportunity to edit my paper to include the new results, and submit the new version as the final submission. I am quite satisfied with the way things have turned out. My paper is worthwhile, and my intuition has been vindicated :D

On Buying iPods

Now that it's Sarah's birthday and she knows what present she's getting, I can blog about my iPod hunting experience in Rockhampton.

It's been something of a long-running joke (started and maintained mainly by Sarah, of course :p ) that I should buy her an iPod for her birthday/christmas/random day of the week. Well, after tossing the idea around I decided an iPod would actually make a jolly good birthday present. The moment that sold me on the idea was when I was in the Mac Choice store and Trisha passed this tiny pink brushed-metal iPod mini across the counter for me to look at. They're so slick!
That was also the moment that I decided it had to be an iPod mini in particular, even though I could get a fully fledged 20GB iPod for only $40 more.

The only problem was that Trisha only had 2 blue iPod minis in stock, and I didn't really want a blue one for Sarah. So I asked her to let me know when she found out what else she was getting in stock soon, and I went off on a quest for iPod minis elsewhere.
To cut a long story short, there practically aren't any iPod minis elsewhere.
The Byte Centre had a single blue iPod mini, and no plans to get any more in because apparently they get a $20 profit margin on each iPod and the hassel of getting them isn't worth their while. With that attitude I would be reluctant to buy from them even if they did plan on getting more stock, but the bloke I talked to was at least happy to suggest other places I could get one.
Target don't stock or order iPod minis at all.
eBay had a few on auction, but the auctions close to closing were going for more than I could buy one from Mac Choice for.
Dick Smith don't stock or order iPod minis at all. The obnoxious salesman treated me like I didn't know anything about computers or music players (after I repeatedly showed that I did), and tried to sell me a Creative Nomad Zen instead ("but look... this one holds, um, TEN thousand songs!").
Finally, I called the online Apple Store and asked about availability: Minimum waiting time of about 4 weeks.

So in the end, it looks like I'll wait to see what Trisha gets in her next shipment and pick the best colour out of that. Should be sometime this week! Woohoo :D

And, after all that, Sarah didn't realise that the paper cutout iPod with "Sorry it's not here yet, it's coming!" written on it meant that I was actually getting her a birthday present and not just a card with a paper iPod :p

Paper Accepted!

Well, the paper that I submitted to the AI / Complex 2004 conference - held in Cairns with an Asia-Pacific attendance - was accepted!
(for the record, it was "Multi-Dimensional Encoding to Reduce Bias in Fuzzy Knowledge-bases"... You can stop yawning now ;) )

I guess I should be happy. I honestly didn't expect the paper to be accepted, because the results it presented were somewhat inconclusive (BS... they were almost *entirely* inconclusive :p). Still, I'll do my best to polish it up and improve it where I can, and do a good job of presenting it at the end of the year.
In a way I almost wish it wasn't accepted, because now I have the pressure of making it acceptable in my own eyes! I was kind of hoping to just mostly forget about this research and write it off as a footnote in my thesis.

It raises another question, though, namely: what are the other reviewers thinking?! I reviewed a couple of papers for this conference myself (extra to what I mentioned in an earlier entry), and I spent a good 2-3 hours per paper making sure I understood it and giving a meaningful critique. Two of the three (anonymous) reviews I got were reasonable (if generous IMO), but the third review was just "Excellent" for every criteria and a somewhat trivial comment on presentation at the end. Now, I *know* it didn't deserve that review, and I have to doubt that the reviewer read much of my paper.
To be fair, I guess a lot of the reviewers are very busy and can't give the 2-3 hours per paper that I spent, but still...

But all's well in the end. After all, I get a free trip to Cairns for an interesting conference! :D

Puzzle

This sentence is just so tricky it deserves a post of its own. Can you solve it? There are apparently two valid solutions.

In this sentence, the number of occurrences of '0' is __; of '1' is __; of '2' is __; of '3' is __; of '4' is __; of '5' is __; of '6' is __; of '7' is __; of '8' is __; and of '9' is __.

Self Referential Sentences

Here are some sentences that make you chuckle, do a double-take, or just plain scratch your head in bemusement. These are a select few culled from Douglas Hofstadter's Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern.

Structure

• This sentence no verb.
• because I didn't think of a good beginning for it.
• This sentence was in the past tense.
• A preposition this sentence ends in. (Yoda might have said this...)
• This sentence is a !!!! premature punctuator
• It goes without saying that
• When one this sentence into the German to translate wanted, would one the fact exploit, that the word order and the punctuation already with the German conventions agree.

Identity

• It feels sooo good to have your eyes run over my curves and serifs.
• Do you read me?
• If I said something else, would it still be me saying it?
• If I were you, who would be reading this sentence?

Prophecy

• The reader of this sentence exists only while reading me.
• In the time it takes you to read this sentence, eighty-six letters could have been processed by your brain.
• This sentence will end before you can say "Jack Rob
• Does this sentence remind you of Agatha Christie?
• You have, of course, just begun reading the sentence that you have just finished reading.

Truth

• (Here's an interactive sentence! Can you solve it? Fill in the blanks with any digits.)
  In this sentence, the number of occurrences of '0' is __; of '1' is __; of '2' is __; of '3' is __; of '4' is __; of '5' is __; of '6' is __; of '7' is __; of '8' is __; and of '9' is __.
• This sentence contains exactly threee erors. (Get it?)
• This sentence is false. (But it says it's false, so it's true! But if it's true...)

Er... I'm not quite sure what to make of these two quizzes... I haven't done anything Sarah, honest! :|
But online quizzes are fun :D

What book are you?

You're Love in the Time of Cholera!
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Like Odysseus in a work of Homer, you demonstrate undying loyalty by sleeping with as many people as you possibly can. But in your heart you never give consent! This creates a strange quandary of what love really means to you. On the one hand, you've loved the same person your whole life, but on the other, your actions barely speak to this fact. Whatever you do, stick to bottled water. The other stuff could get you killed.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.


What country are you?

You're Thailand!

Calmer and more staunchly independent than almost all those around you, you have a long history of rising above adversity. Recent adversity has led to questions about your sexual promiscuity and the threat of disease, but you still manage to attract a number of tourists and admirers. And despite any setbacks, you can really cook a good meal whenever it's called for. Good enough to make people cry.

Take the Country Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid

Birthday Presents

It's my birthday next Saturday! My family in Bundaberg and Sarah have been hounding me for the past few weeks for a list of birthday presents I'd like that they can choose from. Gosh life is tough. :|

I figure if I actually start a blog entry now then I might actually get it done.

<mumble>whateverhappenedtothoughtfulsurprises...</mumble>

Here's a list of ideas for Mum and Sarah then, but please don't feel limited if, just for example you know, you were going to get me an Apple Powerbook or plasma TV or something... :D

• DVDs: Kill Bill vol. 1, 2; Ran; The Seven Samurai (anything by Akira Kurosawa looks interesting); Master & Commander; old Star Wars; Transformers; Voltron


• Music: Anything - even/especially something different.


• Computer Games: Thief 3; Arcanum; Neverwinter Nights; (ask Carey)


• Computer: Domain/hosting (here); slick keyboard; small MP3 player


• Clothing: Sports socks; anything (size small)


• Toys: Plush; board/card games; puzzles; Shoto/tanto (here)


• Books: The Never Ending Story; The Princess Bride; science, philosophy, eg Douglas Hofstadter, Paul Davies, etc; recipe; anything


• Misc: Towel; small bright LED torch; New Scientist subscription; anything

Note the "anything" under miscellaneous :)

Reviewing Papers

I feel important, though perhaps undeservedly so. Recently I got an email beginning,
"Dear Dr. Young..." from the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics Part B asking me to review a paper!
I declined, telling the fellow that I was still undertaking my PhD. I told Russel about it and he said to write back and say that we would do it - which I felt better about because I'd be interested in doing it, just so long as it's under Russel's name and supervision :D

I've just given my feedback to Russel on two of the many papers he's currently reviewing. The first one came to me in an email out of the blue, just stating "Note the method to find the membership functions. What is missing. Regards Russel.". I dutifully read the paper and picked it apart (it was pretty shocking) and when I ran into Russel next I asked him what the deal was. He said it was a test of sorts to see how I would go at reviewing a paper. The sneaky devil!
So I've just commented on a second paper he sent me as well, as a second opinion for Russel. It's nothing that Russel couldn't (and didn't) do in a fraction of the time it took me, but all the same I feel important :)

Picking apart some bad research is a nice break from struggling with my own ;)

To Blog or Not to Blog?

I came across an interesting bit of research presented at a recent conference of the British Psychological Society in Edinburgh. (New Scientist link)
Dr Elaine Duncan of Glasgow Caledonian University and Dr David Sheffield of Staffordshire University questioned 94 diary writers and compared them with 41 people who did not keep diaries. Some health workers and researchers encourage their patients to keep diaries, but Duncan and Sheffield found that the diary writers in their sample had statistically significantly greater levels of anxiety and symptoms such as headaches, sleeplessness, and digestive problems.
Unfortunately the study couldn't show causality - whether diary writing was the cause of the symptoms or merely another symptom of an underlying malaise.
Fortunately for fellow bloggers, this seems to apply primarily to people writing about traumatic events or ordeals, so keep your blog happy and all is well :)

In other news, I was somewhat taken aback by the reactions of two friends to whom I proudly showed my new blog. They both made unqualified statements to the effect that bloggers suffer from the delusion that the world finds them interesting and takes them seriously.
To be fair this may well be true for many bloggers (do a search for blogs by misunderstood artists ;) ), but it's also true for many more people who (perhaps thankfully) haven't discovered blogging yet. Point: People = amusing; blog = tool.
And anyway, if my blog provides someone with some small amusement - either at my content or at my expense - then I'll count it a success :)

September Kendo Seminar

The next time I pick a martial art to learn, I'm choosing one where you get to leave your shoes on. That is one of the take-home messages from the September Kendo seminar and grading held in Rockhampton, after having my footwork (suri ashi) alternately and endlessly admonished and corrected. The embarrassment and disappointment wouldn't matter so much - red faces fade quickly, but blisters remain. Ow!

Blisters aside, it was a good weekend. On both days I felt better at the end than at the beginning - that means either I got a lot out of it, or I wasn't working hard enough :p
We did work hard though. Kevin Humphrey described the seminar attendees as small in number but great in spirit. Now, if one were being overly cynical one might interpret that to be "er, well... you had a good try" and, to be objective and euphemistic, one must admit that the Rockhampton club is small and thus skillfully-challenged. However, I honestly believe Kevin and the other sensei weren't being condescending; that we all do give a jolly good try; and if there's anything good about being bad, it's that you can only get better!
I'm not saying we're bad... but we are surely getting better :)

One of the more interesting things we learnt was kihon waza kata. That's basic cutting techniques (kihon waza) taught in the form of precisely choreographed patterns (kata). This is apparently a new approach, and one that I find agreeable.
Kihon waza kata differs from your standard kihon waza in that it uses bokken (wooden sword) rather than shinai (bamboo sparring sword), and you therefore don't actually make contact with your partner because making contact with a wooden sword hurts. In that regard it is similar to your standard kendo kata.
But kihon waza kata differs from standard kendo kata in that it emphasises technique moreso than context. Standard kata is gracefully intricate, using particular techniques in particular situations; it's very much contextual. Kihon waza kata, in contrast, is quite bland and boring because it's all about the basic techniques.
Despite its bland face however, I expect kihon waza kata to prove itself to be a useful complement to kihon waza (using shinai and armour). It is necessarily more controlled and precise, because you really don't want to actually hit your friend. Which, er, I did. A bit. Accidentally!
Anyway, in conclusion I see all three training techniques working together harmoniously. Kihon waza kata teaches the basic techniques precisely; kihon waza teaches your muscles what it actually feels like to make and receive the cuts; and kata brings all the techiques you've learnt together with situational awareness.
And then, natually, in jigeiko (full armour, free sparring) you forget all that and flail, smash, and stomp your way to victory! Raaar!

Personally, I feel that I got a lot out of the seminar and grading. To be exact, I got:

• A video CD of kihon-waza (basic techniques),


• A 2004 Australian Kendo Championships t-shirt, long-sleeved,


• Lots of yummy little sandwich triangles, and strawberry-and-cream lollies, and


• My 5th kyu grade :D

Yay for loot!

First Blog Post

I've finally fallen to the allure of an always-accessible, oecumenically open platform for publishing whatever whimsical words I wish - behold, blogging begins!

So, without further ado (and because I'm all alliterated out), onto the first real post!