November 12th, 2009 by josh
I haven’t been posting to my blog as I waited for the arrival of a chair. For the past few months I was unable to sit comfortably at my desk while typing on R (I limit all names to a single letter om this blog.) my laptop. I did manage to join facebook. I had been sitting on a step stool with a pillow on the top step. This hurt my back.
The problem would have been resolved a month ago, had I not foolishly ordered the chair from Sit4Less. They are an enthusiastic sponsor of NPR, but a terrible company. I will wait for inquiries if anyone wants to know what horrors I had to put up with.
My goal for three posts a week, one each on computer assisted horse race wagering, the failures of public libraries as they pursue irrelevance, and my attempts at self-education using the internet haven’t really got off the ground.
Yesterday T and I went for a drive and she saw a barge was going through a Lock on the Champlain canal. I took some pictures with my iPhone. And I’ve decided to make clear that I don’t know how to edit them to appear nicely in my WordPress Blog. And I constantly make two mistakes with my iPhone camera, accidently obstructing the lens and pressing the home button instead of the shutter on the touch screen. For my readers (currently all fictional beings) the pictures either are or aren’t in the post.
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Barge going through Lock 7C
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Barge
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Barge from Lock 7C
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Lock 7 Ft Edward
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Barge from the site of the Old Fort
Tags: Uncategorized
Posted in Horse Race Betting | Comments Off
September 17th, 2009 by josh
One reason I started this blog was to document my participation in The Trackmaster Software Development Challenge and one of the things they give out, to participants, is data.
One reason I post so little and get so little done in general is that I listen to endless podcasts. In the past few days, there were two that dealt directly with representing data. And one that dealt, very indirectly, with organizing.
The first, A Conversation with Ellen Miller, of the Sunlight Foundation featured a lengthy discussion of taking data from the government and repackaging it, to make it useful at sites exemplified by OMBWatch and FedSpending.org.
The second, Ignite, featured Matthias Shapiro, showing ways to visualize information. It’s short enough. Matthias Shapiro, On Effective Visualizations
The third, a podcast of BBC’s Radio 4 show Thinking Allowed had a brief discussion, in the last two programs, of methods of organization. How to arrange books, records, etc. The presenter, Laurie Taylor, quoted Michel Foucault quoting an exemplary scheme from Jorge Luis Borges’s story The Analytical Language Of John Wilkins: It reminded me of Clay Shirky’s Ontologies Is Overated
This is just an introduction to the problem of horse race data.
Posted in Classification, Governance, Horse Race Betting | Comments Off
September 8th, 2009 by josh
I will be working through the book and lectures of the Intro programming class at Berkeley over the next few months.
I never had a really good programming course in college. I took a bunch in the late 70’s, that tended to be one new language either weekly or monthly, as the teachers tried to cover various concepts. So I was exposed to languages that are now effectively dead like Algol and SNOBOL. I managed to learn enough to make a living, and actually received some good OTJ training in IBM assembly language in the early 80’s, most of what I know is out of date by now (or it should be!). At the same time I’m too old, and too short of time, not to take advantage of what I already know.
About two years ago I saw that lectures of what became the standard intro programming course at MIT in 1981, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs is available for download. The lecturers, Abelson and Sussman, text of the same name is also available online here. The final impetus to work through this course is that UC Berkeley provides a current version of the course, and the programming language UCB Scheme.
Posted in LISP, Programming, self-education on the net | Comments Off
September 7th, 2009 by josh
My first post: A brief comment on children and libraries.
Illegally Obtained Services? Library Crime Video???
The Internet trumps public libraries by providing consistent universal service to anyone with access. One of my gripes is the lack of consistent universally available services to the public from public libraries. This is something most people have no control over, as libraries organize themselves to guarantee their funding.
There is no consistent method of funding public libraries and there is no agreement, knowledge, or understanding among the general public as to what services they provide or to whom. Some service districts pay a library tax, some counties, cities, or school districts add a portion to the school taxes, or have a line in their budgets. Some get by on sales of used donated books, bake sales, and volunteers.
The above Colbert Report clip demonstrates one mistake many libraries make. Libraries are used disproportionately by children and a small group of adults. In all communities many more people who are eligible to get a library card never bother. The people who use libraries are not the same as the people who pay to support them. What happened is the library confused the patrons they have, with their supporters in making their policy.
Why should library service be free and open to all who want them? Because that is what the people who pay the taxes want. Do I know this? No! My local library has never asked me by putting the question to a vote. The local library holds the alleged “budget vote” at the library in the middle of April. This guarantees the budget will pass, at least until ten people decide to organize to defeat it, and precludes involvement of the larger community they allegedly serve.
Posted in Cooperation, Governance, Libraries | Comments Off