Yes, I forgot a lot of stuff.

I went to the CERN open day on Sunday April 6^th - I’ll put up videos (of the Computer Center) and general photos if someone reminds me. For now, here and here.

I saw Muse and The Futureheads on April 12^th (Teenage Cancer Trust) thing with Oliver Jones (I don’t think I give that guy enough credit for his sociopolitical intelligence. A good guy. One to watch.) and it was awesome.

With Bryant Tan and Charlie Patterson being prodigiously good informaticians and Vivan somewhere in Princeton talking to legends of computing, it actually seems like maybe some of the interesting things that are going to happen in computer science could, you know, be initiated by some of us. That’s cool. We’re not bad. As Mr Rokison despairs over our computing set, I can’t help thinking that actually we’ve come a long way - and are, for the most part, totally awesome.

Also, I’m going to buy this. It is an almost-perfect proxy for the experience of old computer stuff. Which I missed. Because of time.

I saw Iron Man. I didn’t think it was a masterpiece… but I thought it was very good, actually. The thing I liked about Fantastic Four was the characterisation (especially The Thing and The Human Torch) - but the rest of it was crap. Iron Man, however, had Mr Downey Jr. (who I thought was really good in this - REALLY!) as well as other general awesomeness. I don’t know about the Stane guy - I don’t think he had the villainous undercurrent these superhero bad guys usually do. I think a subtle hint of what a character will develop into isn’t actually that unrealistic and can be an elegant storytelling device, even if people pan things like that as making the plot too obvious etc.. Done properly, it would have added weight. Anyway, yeah. That was good. Yeah.

Good things coming up: The Dark Knight, Watchmen, The Incredible Hulk
Horrifying things: A-levels

Crippling self-doubt, not helped by genius of peers, can be remedied, I found out, with guitar practise*. Just practise. Seriously. You’ll be a better guitarist and worry less. Coping mechanisms: fun, fun, fun! I don’t even let the self-doubt thing percolate properly anymore. I just refresh my whole brain whenever it starts. It’s pretty good.

Pax

* lulz commas

I like exams. I will revise for them.

I very quickly read Counterknowledge (the book, not the blog). I kept thinking about Baudrillard and his simulations - probably to do with hysteria and mass media stuff. The book is acerbic. I think I like it, although I haven’t really considered it in great detail. It’s very angry. As in most cases, a balance (here of “credulous thinking” and assumption of good faith) is probably necessary.

I’m going to do the Turing Omnibus exercises in more detail and then read Algorithmics, and if I have time (…), The Pleasures of Counting.

Must be ready!

Pax

AS level exams soon. I am really, really going to have to revise. I don’t know any chemistry. Maths is okay but in my case (I’m not particularly intelligent), understanding without practise* means nothing. Some parts are very easy. Some are tricky. Computing will be the easiest if I can pin down Module 2 (it’s full of hand-wavy definitions and irritating database terminology) to the algorithmic process I have going for Module 1 (which has worked pretty well so far). Physics is again okay but as everyone who sits near me frequently reminds me with looks of disgust and horrified comments (I can’t tell if they’re simulating them to belittle me - they don’t really use insults which I suppose is designed to give the impression that they’re trying to help me and therefore suppress my urge to request forgiveness). Essentially, I can’t intuitively understand basic physical concepts. Things that people just “know” seem to evade me. The pressure in a hydraulic system is uniform? It’s obvious NOW. Braking distance proportional to the square of initial velocity? Obvious once I’ve gone home very confused and derived that by rearranging v² = u² + 2as.

The social climate offends me. Apart from computing, in which either Mr Rokison xor [sic] Erroll crushes any sort of retardation, there is almost no social punishment (or it’s unreasonably deferred) for the usual transgressions (showing off, being annoying, cheating etc.).

What makes me slightly worried is that almost everyone from this school will probably “succeed” in later life. Not really something to rely on, but, you know, a reasonable hypothesis.

What am I going to do? Revise hard, get good A levels and gloss over some terrible problem in my understanding? Yes, probably. I suspect people will be loath to tell me how stupid I am in order to make themselves seem like better people. It’s quite difficult to get people to recognise just how terrible they are when this … terrible …ness … is the accepted norm. What to do?

Life is awesome.

*Brit. variant

Pax

Method 1

Method 2

If we consider that the largest square that has to be looked up in method 1 is ((a+b)/2)² and in method 2, a² (if a is the larger of the two), it’s clear that method 1 will require a smaller square table but more operations per run, so there’s some tradeoff involved there.

I’m making an assumption here as I don’t know about general cases for binary subtraction but I think that addition or subtraction of 2 n-digit numbers is O(n·k) while multiplication is definitely O(n²).

Considering binary numbers, 11111111·10101010 will take n² + 2n - 1 operations (New Turing Omnibus p168).

Substituting into method 2:

If each lookup is one operation (and there is a fixed number of lookups and subtractions for the general case) and subtraction is O(n·k), and division by 10 (i.e. by 2) is also O(n·k) (another assumption - I suppose that since we’re dealing with a fixed denominator unlike the multiplication case where it seemed logical for it to be O(n²)) then I think the function increases as n·k.

But it requires a square table. A LARGE ONE. However, this may be okay because you can reuse the squares in many calculations so perhaps in the long run it somehow balances out the initial deficit?

Or maybe the table can be populated as you go so there’s no initial deficit but a general inefficiency which soon disappears as the table values start getting filled in?

I really don’t know though.

It’s a nice thought.

Hmm?

Pax

I’m quite glad that I’m going to have a chance to talk to a real psychologist about this now. I noticed some years ago that my self esteem (should it be hyphenated?) seemed to be influenced by the outside world but also comprised some other more random elements. It wasn’t really reflected in my mood - I would always feel kind of confrontational and angry as I’d never really felt I’d totally excelled in any respect and would thus feel like I had a fight to pick with everyone. The thing was, I would sometimes feel like I was a rubbish, untalented person and want to one-up the arrogant and unfairly successful people I met and would sometimes feel immensely proud of myself and want to maintain some phantom “good reputation” that I never really had. I was never in the middle - it was a little extreme. I think this is what made me work so hard.

My surviving grandparents are now both declining rapidly, my maternal grandmother’s death remains an interesting event and my general angst about the world is at an all time high, but I now feel stable and, really, quite good. Windmill Lodge told me I had a period of depression between September and sometime in January, which seems to make sense. It feels so much better now - to be able to categorise it and seal it off is a tremendous relief.

It’s a surreal situation - consistently failing to perform well in Mr Motion’s tests and generally failing at Dr Zetie’s top set exercises should really be killing me but actually, I find myself beginning to change in a more fundamental way than any of these surface fluctuations that have plagued me for so long.

Computer Science with AI at Imperial - where my dad went for Mechanical Engineering - looks awesome, but then again everyone I’ve talked to wants me to apply for Cambridge. It’s a nice thought but I wonder what the course is really like. I’m fascinated by problems of optimisation, logic and semantics… but I also like programming. Erroll Wood (probably the only person in our computing class who comes close to really understanding computing as a discipline - James and Vivan program well but I don’t really know what their views on actual computer science are) has expressed concern over the level of practical stuff in the Cambridge course… meh, open days will resolve these quibbles (hopefully).

On that note, Mr Brewis, Dominic Yeo and Mr Motion all gave me blank looks when I mentioned the Simplex algorithm. I mentioned it to Mr Brewis when we were discussing optimising the equilibrium in the Haber Process, Dominic Yeo for fun and Mr Motion to see if he could properly explain it to us (we’re doing matrices right now, so it might’ve been possible).

I feel like I’m the only one in the whole school apart from Dr Zetie who takes any sort of computer science seriously! Vivan confused the bogosort with the bucket sort as Will played with Mr Fry’s sorting demo app in computing. For a few hopeful minutes I really thought he know what the bucket sort was but I soon realised that NO-ONE CARES ABOUT ANY REAL COMPUTER SCIENCE. ALL THEY CARE ABOUT IS SHOWING OFF HOW THEY CAN CHEAT AT GAMES AND PROGRAM STUFF IN VB, ONE OF THE WORST LANGUAGES IN THE UNIVERSE.

It doesn’t matter how much you know about iPods or how authoritative you can sound while quoting Wikipedia! AUGH! Don’t mistake this for a rant, however, as I’m not really complaining about a sudden retardation - more like getting emotional while stating the forgotten situation in all its stupidity.

Oh, I’m also very optimistic about the Public Schools this year. I somehow did well last year and I feel like I’m becoming a much better fencer anyway. Yeah. Optimistic.

I’m reading Brainwashing. Its cover is so tacky that I almost didn’t buy it but I’m so glad I did. It’s RIDICULOUSLY good. It is now among my top books (Simulacra and Simulation, The Psychology of Interpersonal Behaviour, Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman? et al [ask Facebook]). Afterwards I need to read The Theory of the Leisure Class. I think The New Turing Omnibus, which is a little textbooky but incidentally contains Conway’s Game of Life as well as Simplex and a load of other pretty great stuff, will probably be up there once I understand it fully. I’m plodding through it. Like a retard on muscle relaxants. Seriously.

Mr Smith alerted me to the correct pronunciation of Proust (”proost”, for phonetically [is this the right word?] retarded people such as myself). I had mentioned it because of (you won’t see this coming) Lain (his madeleines in In Search of Lost Time were used as a metaphor for involuntary memory).

I’ll finish this with a conspicuous ego-boost. I feel immensely happy when I see someone I know giving someone else the finger or calling them fat or even a chode. Elliot and I, in our social ineptness, broke down barriers and behaved oddly until people began to realise that arbitrarily criticising us or trying to be funny to our detriment didn’t work as well as it should and adopted our crap. Even Michael B, someone very, very critical of odd behaviour - someone who would often mock me for trying to be funny in a perceived-to-be-OTT way - was recently seen giving the one finger salute across the atrium.

Poor Mr Rokison still mutters “You’re all so weird/strange” every time he puts his head down in a desperate attempt to renew his self esteem (aha, we’ve come full circle) in front of a class that is no longer captivated by his paradoxical energy or random lapses into making repeated Pingu sounds. It’s refreshing that he mercilessly mocks Will (I’m sure Will finds it funny or he’d assert himself and throw Ollie - sorry, Rokison… sorry, Mr Rokison - to the ground or something). This isn’t a joke, by the way - I’m growing tired of his attitude. Condescension - especially at such a similar age to us - do not help his position at all. I suspect the way this ends will be hilarious.

Imagine turning down a place at Cambridge. My parents and siblings were horrified. That gives me hope - it means they thought I had a real chance of getting a place there.

Pax

I was recently assessed by some counsellor-type people who decided that they “didn’t want me on their books” - I’m not mentally ill; success!

They were quite flattering overall, telling me my interpersonal skills were “highly developed, if in the wrong direction” (highly developed? Hmm…) and I think I realised during the course of the thing just how much psychology, psychiatry and philosophy I actually knew from reading, despite not reading enough. I felt a pang of bitterness that most of my insights (which have recently turned out to be true in many cases but I shan’t go into this for ego-inflating reasons) are ignored by peers who believe they know better*, I think I am beginning to realise that things are going to fall into place, although they may take a long, long time.

This should be interesting.

From the Wikipedia article on psychosis:

Thomas Szasz focused on the social implications of labelling people as psychotic; a label he argues unjustly medicalises different views of reality so such unorthodox people can be controlled by society. Psychoanalysis has a detailed account of psychosis which differs markedly from Psychiatry. Freud and Lacan outlined their perspective on the structure of psychosis in a number of works.

Pax

* There is definitely such a thing as a mixed state in bipolar disorder, Will, and I’m sure Stephen Fry knows it…

Thinking of the metaphorical meaning of The Enigma of Amigara Fault, suicide and such jump to mind. I couldn’t help thinking of Lain being my “hole” - it was perfectly tailored to bring out all my psychological insecurities and quirks, and it did. Interestingly, teachers like Mr Barker, Mr Rokison and Mr Smith have only known me since my shift into mediocrity and insanity, and I think Mr Motion is beginning to understand that my mental arithmetic is sluggish at best. Rambling, rambling, rambling. I think my theme of happy/sad is linked to bipolar disorder or at least mania.

I was thinking about trying to speed up my mental maths: if you know your squares up to 20, you could do something like this:

Input: multiply a and b.

Check whether a mod 2 = b mod 2 (i.e. are they both odd or both even? This isn’t necessary but is a vestige of this retardation’s origin in my mental maths crazy stuff - I know a bunch of n²s for ns up to 20 and then some randomers like 25 and some powers of two because of computing jigga.)

If so, use the thing. Using some (like going backward to difference of two squares).

ab = ((a+b)/2-(a+b)/2+a)((a+b)/2+(a+b)/2-a) = ((a+b)/2)² - (a - (a+b)/2)²

So ab = (mean - distanceToMean)(mean + distanceToMean) = mean² - distanceToMean². Yeah.

Hmm. So like: 12 x 14?

1. 12 + 14 = 26
2. 26/2 = 13
3. 13² (lookup, so only one operation, not the fat O(n²) number that multiplication usually takes) = 169
4. 12-13 = -1
5. (-1)² = 1
6. 169 - 1 = 168

Looks retarded but I actually find that easier than going 14 x 10 + 14 x 2 = 140 + 28 = 168. I’m not joking.

Maybe it becomes useful later?

17 x 23 = 20² - 3² = 391

As it pivots on square values and I only want to go up to 20, you can make other stuff:

11 x 29 = 20² - 9² = 319

So it’s “If both numbers are odd or both numbers are even*, their product is the mean squared minus half the distance between them (or the distance to the mean) squared.”

This is fun.

23 x 27 = 625 - 4 = 621. Pimping.

And stuff. Actually, maybe the reason I like this is not to do with number of operations but merely type of operation: I find multiplication difficult; I am an idiot. Addition and subtraction I also dislike but not as much as I dislike multiplication.

*I think I added this constraint so you only get whole numbers. Remember, I’m an idiot!

Having a lookup table of squares and doing this - any good for computational optimisation? MAYBE.

I ordered some of Nakaido Reichi’s music from OCS Books. When I went in there, they started talking Japanese at me - possibly because I was having a bad hair day. Thus, today I got my hair cut. That’s all.

I’m watching this in the hope of properly understanding quantum computing.

Notions of the “observer’s mind” remind me of Lain and obviously Plato’s allegory of the cave reminds me of The Matrix.

These tech talks are awesome. Google aren’t as bad as their (generally) fbugly [functional but ugly] UI design suggests: this is the real deal!

UPDATE: Seriously.

Pax

Well, would you look at that?

Pax

When I first listened to Biffy Clyro’s Puzzle, I thought it was just crap for people who get excited by loud guitar music. It’s actually totally amazing. The 4 + 2 + 9 = 15 thing and the way each song subtly references others within the album and the quirkiness and ability to play the guitar without showing off is actually amazing. In fact, it’s so amazing that I literally do not care whether other people like it because I could just sit here listening to it.

Thus, new awesome list: David Gray, Warren Zevon, bôa, The Wallflowers, Biffy Clyro, Badly Drawn Boy.

Awesome.

Pax

Today, Elliot, Hugh Emerson, Oliver Jones and I went to the “Camden International Cadet Sabre Competition 2008″ (snappy name). The free t-shirt was similar to last year’s but with an “8″ in place of the “7″ and an exaggerated, hammer-and-sickle-esque sabre guard taking up more space than last time.

We met Mathieu there again (he left for France after a while) and Jim refereed some fights. Last time I came 64th out of 71 and this time I came 57th out of 85.

My poule went fairly badly - at the beginning I feel I fenced quite well and kept distance nicely but unfortunately after my first two fights, I fenced someone much better than me, lost the match and my concentration and lost all subsequent fights in the poule. I was seeded 58 and then beat Niall Dowse (seed 71) 15-11. I then lost to Stanislav Konopatskiy (seed 7) 15-2. That’s a slightly better result than last year.

The full results are here.

I’ve been jumping through hoops for so long now. Hmm.

Pax