All entries for December 2005

Christmas

Dad bought a new freeview box, and promptly blew up the tv with it.

Merry Christmas.

: 25 Dec 2005 23:38 |  Tags: Christmas |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Jelly TV

It may just be me, but is there a lot of Lemon Jelly being played on the TV these days? I hear is everyone as backing music, most recently on 'Scandal' BBC2 9:50, when His majesty king Raam was played when Martha Stewart appeared.
I'll admit that I've only just become 'aware' of Lemon Jelly so it may have been there all the way along.
Also I've heard Sigur Ros on channel 4 recently, odd.

Maybe I'll post something with a little more content in a bit.

: 21 Dec 2005 22:17 |  Tags: Lemon Jelly TV |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

A little joke

Just thought I'd share a joke as its crimbo:

A turkey was chatting with a bull.
"I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree", sighed the turkey, "but I haven't got the energy."
"Well why don't you nibble on some of my droppings?" replied the bull, "They're packed with nutrients."
The turkey pecked at a lump of dung and found that it actually gave him enough strength to reach the top of the first branch of the tree.
The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch. Finally after a fortnight, there he was proudly perched at the top of the tree. He was promptly spotted by a farmer, who shot him out of the tree.

The moral of this story is:
Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.

: 18 Dec 2005 22:52 |  Tags: Joke |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Cost of books

Mathematics books seem to cost a fortune, so the University library is an absolute godsend, as an exercise I thought I'd add up how much the books I have checked out cost.

1. £23.00 Groups, Rings and Galois Theory
2. £73.49 Number Theory with Computer Applications
3. £18.95 Elementary Number Theory
4. £91.33 Field Arithmetic
5. £21.22 Vector Analysis
6. £16.99 Irresistible Integrals
7. £87.50 Profinite Groups
8. £39.99 Introduction to Fractals and Chaos
9. £34.95 Fractal Geometry
10. £18.95 An Introduction to Harmonic Analysis

Thats £426.37 worth of books, thats quite a hefty chunk of change. Its slightly worrying though, all the books related to Algebra are really expensive, and I would like to buy these books at some point, I'd better get writing some of my own and make some money.

: 13 Dec 2005 19:17 |  Tags: Books Library Mathematics |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Funny Ramble

After-pre-thought:
You will need to know that my name is Steven Jones before reading this post.

I entered "Steven Jones" into Googlism, which now seems to be some strange faux search engine, odd, but anywho, I though I'd try to write a serious entry interspersed with what I'm up to.

steven jones is an outstanding individual and embodies the spirit of service we should all have toward our fellow man.

Wow, did you see the pictures of the explosion in Hemel Hempstead today, some of them were very impressive. I know its a little weird calling and explosion beautiful, but I find the clouds of smoke amazing to look at, almost infinite detail, and beauty in something so destructive. I wondered if anyone I know was near the explosion, then I thought: Oh yeah one of my housemates lives not 20 miles from it. So a polite, and seemingly required text was fired off.

steven jones is going to be teaching his female undergraduates that men are parasites.

It seems that this Christmas is going to be like all the others I've had to endure, you see it forces my family to spend time together, which is never a good thing. Unfortunately everyone like to have a go at each other, and sometimes very carefully, building an argument over a period of hours before the final sucker punch, but then all hell breaks loose, and its not pretty. Memories of my childhood came flooding back twice today, once when I was looking through some old cross-stitch pieces that I'd made when I was about 8, happy times, there were ones that my brother and sister had made too, I had completely forgotten about some of the pieces, I was quite good.

steven jones is crazier than cat shit.

The second time was when my parents started to argue, oh how it takes you back eh? I really don't want to go into all my problems here, and I bet you don't want to read them, so I'll leave it there.

steven jones is a biomedical technician originally from rumford.

If you haven't read my other post about Sigor Ros then you won't know they're the best thing since the envelope. I've since found out they sing in 'Hopelandic' how cool is that! The music is so beautiful, I think I'll be listening to it for a long time to come, and avoiding anything crazy or frog like.

steven jones is the person to contact with any questions

I've been writing some of my two mathematical essays due next term, this is so cool. When I first realised that I'd have to write and essay in the second year, in the first, I hated the idea, but now, I love it! One is going to be about public key cryptography and the rsa/eliptic curve algorithms and the other about some simple, yet powerful group theory. I'm going to attempt to make group theory interesting, then if I get a decent mark, foist the essay upon unsuspecting first years to get them interested. After all group theory is really cool, and seriously abstract, which is cool, its a complete construction! Nothing about is real, or meant to be, not in a real sense anyway.

steven jones is pleased to announce the launch of the bioinformatics training program for health research.

Laughing yet, probably not, I'm rarely funny, at least not in the comedic sense, I am what you would call 'funny' though. I talk to myself pretty much all the time, and usually three or four times over, i.e. there are three or four pairs of Stevens having a conversation in my head. Occasionally, one of the pairs will need more of my brain power, and will take over, for example speech, that's when I will talk out loud, to myself, everyone does it, but I do it quite a lot, is that bad? Its quite useful though, I can multitask thought processes, so I can be writing a blog entry, designing the next part of my calculator program and revising Analysis III all at the same time. Useful.

steven jones is little threat in attack.

Does anyone know how the EGM went in the last week of term, was it quorate, how did it vote, and where can I find stuff like this out. It should be on the Union's website, the the democracy pages are very, very, rubbish, and with extra word files added in like chocolate sprinkles on a cheap coffee, it generally pisses me off. I mean, .doc files, published to the web, what were they thinking, obviously not much (by 'they' I mean 'University of Warwick Student's Union'). That's the one thing thee really bothers me about the democratic side of the Union, unless you decide to find out about it, you never really hear about anything except referenda.

steven jones is a major player in the indie film world.

Whoa, rambling a lot now, what else, hmmmmmmm, I'm really just writing all this so it'll keep me awake so I can watch the American football on five tonight, so I apologise for the blatant disregard of purpose for this post. I think I'll end it there, before I make this post into a meta-post.

steven jones is the new vice chancellor.

: 12 Dec 2005 00:55 |  Tags: Google |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

missing chocolate

Follow-up to Odds and Ends from Math.random(anything, everything);

Oh I forgot to mention that I've now gone a week without eating chocolate, as per the terms of my bet with my housemate, this is gonna be easy!

: 10 Dec 2005 00:49 |  Tags: Chocolate |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Odds and Ends

An odd post of some things, but I can't be bothered to split them up!

1. Right so I've been working on a java application for my phone (K750i), more specifically a scientific calculator. There are so many times that I need a calculator, and I only have my phone on me, and the built in calc sucks, it really does. So I've loosely implemented casio's SVPAM system using a recursive descent parser and some clever tricks. Also I've had to make provisions for soft buttons, as the phone doesn't have a sin key. I have places for all the buttons to go, its just making the images that takes the time. Also working within the j2me framework is really difficult, its very crippled. You can't, for example call Math.pow it doesn't exist in the j2me framework, you have to write your own routines for lots of things. Formatting the result of calculations (strictly a decimal at the moment, may add fractions) was a challenge as there is no built in routine, that part took a good hour to write.
But seeing the almost–finished result working on my phone is such a great feeling, there's not much else like it, but it works in really neat ways. I tend to put very cool but frivolous features into most of my programs, but in this app they really are cool, you'll just have to wait and see!
I only need to add error handling and then add all the little soft buttons so I should have a working calculator before long!

2. I've found a place that will repair my fleece, but it'll cost at least £15 for a new zip, rubbish. I only need the actual zipper, which probably costs 50p to produce.

3. Got back into politics this week, and managed to see PMQs, so good, go Cameron, he seems like he will provide some opposition, even if he is policy light at the moment.

4. My housemate gave me a Christmas present, which I opened early :–), that was a musical compact disc type device round thing. But seriously, he'd tried to pick out music that I'd like, but had failed many times in the past, but he got it so right this time.
Sigur Rós
There are two words I'd use to describe them,
Beautifully hunting,
and their transposition (kind of),
hauntingly beautiful.
I got their untitled album, and its stunning. The music sounds so familiar, but so fresh and different, it sounds great. And the singing isn't even in English! Even better, as its all about the sound the voice makes, not the words.
Thank you Tom.

5. I can't quite believe there's only 15 days 'till crimbo, and I haven't bought any presents, well except one, but that was because I needed to give it before I left cov. I have ideas for some people, but others are so hard, the quit smoking book didn't go down too well with my brother last year :)

6. That's enough ramblings methinks, get back to whatever you were doing, go on, stop reading.

don't you ever listen?

: 10 Dec 2005 00:19 |  Tags: Computery Stuff Java Mathematics |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Grammar and Parsing

Today I got interested in the parsing of computer languages. I stumbled upon the definitons of LL(k) and such like things, and was very interested. Then and idea for a parser hit me, so I designed a LL(1) grammar, which was quite easy, and not unlike writing mathematics. Then, I wrote a recursive descent parser to do the parsing of my grammar. Its really sweet, and I have plans to integrate it into a slightly bigger project.
I'm quite proud of the parser since its bitchin' fast and very lightweight, as it will need to be for where I plan to deploy it, oh did I mention I did all this in my least favourite language, java?

: 07 Dec 2005 00:01 |  Tags: Computery Stuff Mathematics |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

No more chocolate

So I made a bet not to eat any chocolate over christmas, oh dear. I thought I'd keep track of how it was going.

Day one – thinking about chocolate a lot, keep getting offered it, and having to turn it down, very frustrating.
I think at the moment that I'm missing the ability to eat chocolate, not the chocolate itself.

: 03 Dec 2005 21:56 |  Tags: Diet Madness |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Silly English Test

To procrastinate from packing even more, I did this english test, and got:

English Genius You scored 78% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 80% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go! Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it! For the complete Answer Key, visit my blog: link.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 5% on Beginner You scored higher than 47% on Intermediate You scored higher than 49% on Advanced You scored higher than 55% on Expert

Link: The Commonly Confused Words Test written by shortredhead78 on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

By the by, I'm a mathematician too.

: 02 Dec 2005 16:56 |  Tags: English Silly Tests |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem