Things

[jack]

Things I've done, not in any particular order.

* Got up at 8.30.
* Bought gel inner tube and more tyre patches.
* Bought extension cables (:p sonic). Albeit in the fourth shop on Newmarket road I went in.
* Reading Cryptonomicon again. It is still good. Is it one of the marks of a classic book that you keep noticing new things every time you reread it?
* Joined atreic and emporer and people in the Castle (their local! just beyond the post box, how cool?) for food and drink. There I:
* Had two binges
* Collected final word on my flowery shirt. I thought they were cheery (and incidently cheap) but everyone, friends and colleages, says 'no'. Though atreic said "no (but I like it)".
* I said many embarassing things some of which got written down ("Being short and froglike is more important than getting the girl").
* I am perceived as short person, despite not being really. This is interesting because I tend to do that, but wasn't sure how much other people did. I don't know if it's psychological, or if I just hunch, and either way if that's from deprecatingness or something else.
* There was mutual hand massaging. This is very relaxing.

Otherly, how come my last post got nearly 50 comments? I should haylp more often, assuming getting comments is the goal in life :)

Comments

[nakedtoes.livejournal.com]

You did used to slouch quite badly. I think you hold yourself better now, but it's worth trying to notice.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I improved! Thank you! *huggles* Maybe I *can* do something about it. I should have listened to mum... :)

[filecoreinuse.livejournal.com]

I am perceived as short person, despite not being really. This is interesting because I tend to do that, but wasn't sure how much other people did. I don't know if it's psychological, or if I just hunch, and either way if that's from deprecatingness or something else.

Probably just your aspect ratio.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh. Yeah.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

It is still good. Is it one of the marks of a classic book that you keep noticing new things every time you reread it?


Yes. But don't bother with the Baroque stuff.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I already did. I did enjoy them, but did think they could possibly do with a big chunk of editing down.

I tend to think of Stephenson's work as a progression from more normal action novels to more rambling historicalesque geeky novels. Most people's favorites are around Diamond Age and Snow Crash, I like Cryptonomicon but think the Baroque takes it a bit far, some people like that.

[mair_in_grenderich]

I like cryptonomicon.

I read half of snow crash and just got bored. Then I lent it to someone and haven't seen it for months. I bought a couple of others recently and had a go at them and couldn't get interested.

I bought Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell the other day, that's better than it looked, but I've been distracted from it by shorter books.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

It took me ages to read JS&MrN. I had to concentrate. But in retrospect, I decided I loved it and SClarke[1] was a goddess.

Maybe you're one of the people who'd like Baroque more :) Snow Crash makes more sense when you realise it's a retelling of the enki namshub myth thing. I liked the earlier Stephenson, but I would have thought one'd like SC at least as much.

[1] Who apparently some CUSFS people knew from way back.

[mair_in_grenderich]

it took me a while to get into cryptonomicon (I think it took me until the scene where randy was eating his cap'n crunch), but I didn't have any other books to distract me at the time.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

LOL. I don't think it took me quite that long, but it was certainly a bit unfollowable the first time, and the first few chapters at least were non-into-it-ness.

But I'm glad I perserved. I can't remember when I first did read it now.

Similarly with JS&mrN I sort of forced my way through from book-drought, but am very glad I did.

[mair_in_grenderich]

binges of what?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Sorry. Last week Mobbsy linked to some research which defined a binge as 5 units, so whenever we have two pints we say oh my god, we're binging in a sarcastic voice.

[mair_in_grenderich]

ah, I'm behind the times. Or behind something, anyway.

(I got woken up. My mother decided at 2pm she could come and check her email.)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

*checks* You don't know[1] Mobbsy so you wouldn't have seen that.

*hug* Were you insomniing last night?

I got woken up by me at 8.30. And then groaned a lot but was in by 9.30ish. Go me!

[1] Lit: have friended

[mair_in_grenderich]

I read friends-of-friends sometimes (when I get bored. not more than once an hour). (I've commented on at least one of Mobbsy's posts). otoh if would require me to be a friend-of, I certainly wouldn't have seen it.

I was making CDs burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrn until 7am.

CDs shiny! shiny CDs! in pink and yellow and blue!

Go you! *bounces sleepily*

[mair_in_grenderich]

otoh if would require me to be a friend-of, I certainly wouldn't have seen it.

oh, no, it wouldn't. I've just looked it up :-)

[mair_in_grenderich]

(but it was more than last week ago)

in other news, I need a mathmo. Why is the line of log(N!)/log(N) straight?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

in other news, I need a mathmo.

Aha! Finally, I am teh irresistable! I knew maths would pay off.

Why is the line of log(N!)/log(N) straight?

Oh. Nevermind :) Is it? I can't remember exactly, but what happens when you substitute in Stirling's approximation (n! ~ sqrt(n).n^n.e^-n).

[mair_in_grenderich]

I looked at Stirling's approximation here:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/StirlingsApproximation.html

and substituted it in,

and tried differentiating it,

and I can't see any reason why it would be straight. It just looked straight when I drew it.

http://flurble.org/plot.eps

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Listen to Simon. The second post called it.

In fact, if you put a ruler against your graph you can see that the first inch *isn't* in line with the rest of it.

Using the approximation you see that the non-straight bit of the graph is about 1/log n, and differentiating gives 1/log n again, which between 20 and 90 gives a change in gradient of about 0.1.

[simont]

(Apologies for my first reply which I immediately deleted because it was drivel. I shouldn't try to do maths while my brain isn't working.)

It's only nearly straight. log(2!)/log(2) is 1; log(3!)/log(3) is 1.63093; and log(4!)/log(4) is 2.29248, whereas for a perfectly straight line it ought to be 2.26186.

As Jack observes, Stirling's formula gives the reason why. log(N!) is approximately equal to N log N - N + (log(2*pi*N))/2, and the first of those terms dominates the others; so log(N!)/log(N) is going to be roughly N plus some less important stuff. However, it would still be only an approximately straight line even if Stirling's approximation were exact.

[mair_in_grenderich]

is N log N straight? *sleepy*

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

OK. I can never remember which of the people I know from different geek groups know each other and which don't.

"CDs shiny! shiny CDs! in pink and yellow and blue!"

OMG psycho mair *hugs* Get some sleep tonight. You an sing a C-D...

It's too easy to stay up that late, isn't it? OTOH it is nice to see the dawn and I barely ever do from the other end :)

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

Ooh, people are talking about me er... *waves* *hides*

The only stuff I friends lock is work-related, and there isn't much of that.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

*waves* Only about twice. You shouldn't be so interesting and helpful :) You know the experience of someone random appearing on your journal and saying "Well, it looked interesting..."? :)

"The only stuff I friends lock is work-related, and there isn't much of that."

Likewise. Well, I would if I ever posted anything about circumventing DVD region encryption or copyright, but I wouldn't :)