Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Read it and weep.

Link to the right is updated and submitted. I got a plane to catch.
Flipside: see you there.

D-Day.

Submit today. It is looking ok, verging on good. I have a bit of crap to do in the morning, then print the fucker out, and get on a plane and go to Melbourne. The aim is to be drunk before the echoes die out of the bad boy hitting the submission desk.

Pardon for the radio silence this last week or so, I've been so edgy that skateboarders and base jumpers walk past me and go, WHOA MAN.

Friday, August 26, 2005

Hold your applause.

We've only got through one of the three journal papers so far, so submission is pushed back to next week. Not a huge surprise, really. Party on.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Ooh ooh ooh!

I think I may have found the quote...

"Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable, let's prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams, 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency'

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Cour-ageously...


Cuban sunset in Havana. I wanna go back there real bad, to sink some Mojitos and do terrible Salsa dancing all night...

I was recognized yet again at the gym this morning (the last time was by one of my brother's friends calling me Adam), by a guy who was a year above me. He was looking pretty hard actually. He noted that it was pretty quiet, I agreed, and mentioned that it was always pretty quiet, except on Mondays and Fridays when a group of doddering old ladies come in for their "Living longer, living stronger" excercises. He said, "Well that's a change from working out with a whole lot of murderers and rapists in Gaol." I was like, ah, yeh. He brought up Gaol another few times, without any further explanation. I bet it was for collecting the dole while doing cash work or something pissant like that. His sister was hot, and used to be nice to me. I'll bet she's wide as a bus now, and is working on a collection of fuck trophies, I don't see why she should be any exception. That phrase is courtesy of Choco's uncouth brother, and is one of only two phrases which makes me wince. The other I don't remember right now, but I think it had something to do with a lady's special place.

Went for lunch with the Grandparents today at a cafe which is really trying to be like a city cafe (and actually doing pretty well at it, and in business). My Grandmother was utterly perplexed by the menu, and then when served a lamb cutlet on top of a small round barley pudding, drizzled in a light gravy on an enormous plate blurted out incredulously, "Do you call that a meal? Where are the vegetables?", and later went into a tirade accusing the government, the doctors, and the drug companies for having the cure to cancer, but sticking with Chemotherapy because it makes more money. Various other logic-defying accusations were made, and then we had to go straight afterwards, because my Grandfather hadn't heard a word spoken since we got there due to him being rather hard of hearing driving tractors for many years.

Country Police hilarity time. My parents are friends with a local copper, and sometimes mind his kids. He was saying that during night duty, they have a 'cook-up' and swap receipes. Oh yeh, the mean streets of Ararat. An old lady had a turn down the street recently, and the police took her home. She was driving one of those Gophers (a motorized wheelchair) and one of the cops had to drive the Gopher back to her house. When people gave him a funny look on the drive back, he shook his head, and lamented "Cutbacks, cutbacks..."

Smell ya...

Monday, August 15, 2005

Panini payola.


Not a flash shot, but it's all I got. No need to cover for toughness, either, as this one involves both fire and tractors.

Things are looking good. The thesis draft is now looking schmick-o, however I need to generate a bunch of graphs. I made a solemn oath on the Kabbalah to not be running simulations and generating plots at this stage of the game, but there ya go. I decided to leave out half of another journal paper, because it was too complicated and the results didn't really give me a hard-on. It's now like a tin of John West tuna, as opposed to Sirenia.

I've been thinking for a while about what quote I'd like to put in the first few pages, if at all. I've actually been musing over this for the last few years, intermittently, and settle on something for a few months, then get over it. I was going to put in some choice words from NWA or Kanye, but I've lost the sack to do that. So it's back to putting in some deep pithy quote from someone intelligent, or something wry and ironic even! How novel. Anyway, this is my latest fave, although the context is important, being that the thesis is on asymptotic (infinite) analysis. As an advanced form of procrastination, I've been trawling quotes websites looking for something appropriate. This feels a little cheap and dirty, sort of like picking a tattoo off the wall of the shop.

"If everybody contemplates the infinite instead of fixing the drains, many of us will die of cholera." - John Rich

"I believe in a long, prolonged derangement of the senses to attain the unknown. Our pale reasoning hides the infinite from us." - Jim Morrison

The latter I think is great, with the double whammy being that I was off my tits for a significant portion of the last four years. But that's a bit obvious, and not very professional. Actually, neither of these really raises the wood. I might just leave a blank page.

Be horrified: Geek tatoos.

Be amused: Euphemism generator.

Read red meat, be briefly entertained.

And get aroused, cos I'll be in Sydney on Saturday with a mighty thirst. xo!

Sunday, August 14, 2005

Non-entry

Can't be arsed this evening, and I've got a hot date with some iron early in the morning, so this random picture will have to do.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Buy low, sell high. Winner!



I restrained myself from getting some shots of a rainbow today, not because it was gay, but because the lighting was crappy. So instead, you get a screenshot from the software that I've been using to play stockbroker. The old man and I have set up a pretend portfolio of shares according to the rules of them books, and are going to track their progress over the next six months or so to get our hand in. I've been reading all about selling short, and that sounds like my kinda game. You sell shares you don't have when the price is high and you're damn sure it's gonna bomb soon, and then buy 'em after they do so, make a truckload of moola, and it's bucket-sized Pina Coladas with minature umbrella garnishes and footlong straws from there on in. Stockbrokers are a bunch of pussies, and I'm gonna fight the next one I meet, out of principle.

I was gently roused from sleep at an ungodly hour this morning by the wondrous sound of a fax machine undergoing an apoplectic fit, as my US supervisor faxed me 50 out of 75 pages of my paper back, with handwritten corrections and editorial comments. At least, that's what went in on his end. I'm worried that I'll get hauled off to Guantanamo Bay for receiving indecipherable coded messages. I got through all his suggestions today though, it mostly consisted of substituting words for their synonyms and adding in an extra three to four thousand commas. Also, anywhere I had "clearly, it can be seen..." had the "clearly" bit removed, which is telling. Telling me to insert joke!

Tomorrow is 8 days to go until this adjective episode is over. I'll fill that bit in later.

Steve has something to say, which he said to me, and I got quite a bit, well, a bit out of, but there's plenty left to share.

Here'th thee Heareth thee Heereth Theee. When the
underwater disco callers speak the abundance will be
necessary. Oh dwellers of the ares be warned of the
great and impending fist that may befall us all.
Mercy, Love, and pnuematic cheese is offered to all
who pray this way;
"Harken hear the red cross call my name
Illuminate my loins
Stir my wisdom over a low flame
Imbibe me with strenth to
Cross the abyss and uncross my legs
Caress the foundation of my ass
And show me the beauty of wall ornaments"
It is this way that you may reach salvation.

Apparently Steve did a performance of "Junkie Jesus" the other night, which he says went down well. He acts like a whacked out junkie, and says things from the Bible in an occer nasally Aussie accent, like, "uh... the meek will, like, ah, inherit the stuff and that, so couldcha spare us two bucks for the tram, n that?" It's piss funny. This isn't really my news, I'm grasping here. I'm gonna start on Alby Mangels again, so night all. Don't think gay thoughts, as B-Roq would wisely advise. Sometimes he appears to me in an ethereal form like Obi-Wan and offers me such sage-like guidance in dark hours such as this.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

You got me in a state of shock. Look at me. Look at me.



It snowed here today. Ok, it was only for a few minutes before it turned into sleet and then rain, but it's still pretty rare. I'm wearing fingerless gloves, which gives me that chic homeless man laissez-fair approach to grooming appeal.

Audioscrobbler has changed to last.fm. Ian's attempt to slip under the radar and use this service covertly didn't work, I uncovered alarming statistics on his unhealthy appetite for glam rock today on my daily survey of the internet. Also, I'm thinking that Pete wouldn't turn down a cuddle with Jamie Cullum.

It's 10 days now till I'm going to be in Sydney. I've advised the regional distributors of Courvoisier, Jack Daniels and Cougar bourbon of the relevant dates, and have had my dear Colombian friend Miguel post a shipping container of his finest cocaine to synchronize with my arrival. Also, Lyrics Born has made the effort to cross the ditch, which I appreciate. He'll be "throwing down" some "bodacious" rapping with his disc jockey on Sunday at the Metro. Cow-a-bunga.

The emu eggs are due to hatch this weekend, so I might get all Alby Mangels and try and get a photo of them. Who was it I was talking to about Alby Mangels to the other day, and they hadn't heard of him? Choco? Well, I think you need to know. He was, as this website boasts, an

Adventurer * Explorer * Entertainer * Movie-Star * Conservationist * Dead Set Legend

He was this rough sexy bloke who made a series of documentry movies "World Safari" of himself travelling all over the joint in beat-up vans with his dog, usually wearing shorts and no shirt (or some budgie smugglers when he could get away with it). He had a different hot chick with him all the time, often several in one movie. When I was a kid, we didn't have television, but I remember a couple of his 'documentries' were played on a projector in the Willaura town hall. I was a blank impressionable canvas, and to me Alby is still my image of a man. And he had some spectacular fuck-ups.


(From the website)

Alby's talents extend far beyond his film-making abilities. Here's a few of them.

  • His ability to fix things, like the broken main traverse spring in the DAF, using a steel tow rope.
  • In terms of "occupations", he has variously been a brick-layer, a mechanic, a baker, a stockman, a jockey, and an insurance salesman. In terms of the latter, he worked for Old Mutual, the biggest life insurance company in South Africa, to raise money to keep WS I going. In the first eleven weeks he made more money in that short time than anyone had ever made in the entire 140 year history of the company.
  • His ability to inspire people to greatness. Tina Dalton was no-one in particular, just a National Parks & Wildlife ranger before she chanced upon Alby near Kangaroo Island during WS III. Now she's an Australian TV *star*.
  • After Piers Souter became a quadriplegic, he and Piers jointly redesigned a wheelchair that would enable disabled people to transfer from bed to chair to car, unaided. Their design won the Australian Design Award and the Premiers Award for design excellence in 1983.
  • He came second in the Australian Water-Skiing Marathon Titles one year.
  • He's a black belt in Taekwondo!


A bit off topic there.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Bollocks

(From my associate supervisor in Chicago)


Mat,
I have spent the past couple of days reading through the revised paper. First, congratulations on making all of this rigorous. This is an impressive effort, and I think goes far beyond what the reviewers should expect. I have some editorial comments, which I plan to fax to you. However, I have a much greater concern. Overall the paper (or at least the derivations in the appendices) has become much more difficult to read, and is quite a bit longer. Frankly, I am no longer able to follow the derivations, at least to the extent I was able to follow them previously, and feel that it would take me an inordinate amount of time to understand all of the steps.

I realize the tremendous time and effort you have spent on this, but wonder if the paper might be revised by starting with the previous submitted version, and adding a separate appendix, which addresses the convergence issues for just one of the main theorems to illustrate how all this can be made rigorous. This would certainly make the paper more accessible. Let me know what you think.
Cheers,
...



Dear ...,

I think that you should suck my balls.

Lots of love,

Mat

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Convert solar energy, into imagery.


Firstly, the album pictured above sounds good, looks good, and is manufactured from the finest tasting polycarbonate available.

Anyone else's weekend would be infinitely more fascinating than mine, so I'll keep it short.

I'm the personification of cranky at the moment, although things are going ok. I decided on Saturday that I was going to rewrite a paper that's been accepted (but not published), because I considered the entire thing an affront to logic and good taste. I've more or less finished that now, and am incorporating it into the thesis. I've finally started uploading drafts of the thesis again, so the link to the right should work if you are either interested or bored.

Now that I've assimilated the bloody Da Vinci code, and my QIT book has still not arrived, another book was unfortunate enough to stumble into my 'radius of absorbtion'. This is, Sam Weinstein's book: "Secrets For Profiting in Bull and Bear Markets", which Dad borrowed from some guy. The first question I had when I saw this book was: Sam, how do you obtain and maintain such a luxuriant head of hair? It has body, a healthy shine, bounce, and not a hint of frizz! Have a look at the cover of the book, and you'll see what I mean. Anyway, this book is very fucking interesting. I just deleted a paragraph of stuff about it, because it was dull. However, I would like to leave you with the impression that it is not dull at all. I am now available to chat about the stockmarket, an area I've previously been vaguely interested in, but never more interested in it than most other things.

At risk of laboring the point, all their fancy 'indicators' are bloody simple filters (from an EE perspective), and it's interesting to see how these curves are interpreted. Not only that, but it's interesting to learn what characteristics are used to suggest buying and selling, and run these rules on the historical data to see how well that policy would return. Fascinating!

We had a dinner visitor, who is a young chap from that damn cult who has a science degree (emphasis not mine). Since universities are incredibly sparing with their precious degrees, and only hand them out to people who meet stringent intellectual requirements, this is meant to somehow serve as an argument against something or other I don't agree with. Anyway, I didn't rise to the bait, but maintained an air of barely concealed contempt. I was trying to be nice, but I kept forgetting. Apart from all that, he kept on starting anecdotes with "Oh, I'm remembering the time when...", which made it seem like he was recovering from amnesia during a seance or perhaps under hypnosis. Jerk.

One more thing, I saw the girl I had a biiiig crush on for 8 years when I was a kid the other day. Coo-ee, even Sir Mix-a-lot would balk at that arse. Despite that, and my relative broad-spectrum success over her overwhelming mediocrity, I was too nervous to talk to her, and even hid around the corner just a bit. Pfff.

I'm heading off to bed with Sam Weinstein and his Samson-esque locks. xo.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Coffee's hot. Coffee's black. And sometimes, she's as sweet as sugar.


Chooks have a very limited range of facial expressions, compared to say, a dog, or Jim bloody Carrey. This chook is particularly friendly though, and moves quick if there is an off chance of getting some scraps. On the topic, the Sulphur-crested Cockatoos have worked out how to use the chook's grain hopper thingo, which is pretty clever of them. They have to continuously stand on a lever to open a shutter to get at the grain. I can see them raiding it out of my window at the hull of the starship fucking enterprise, and occaisonally raise the window to yell non-specific threats at the Cockys in an impotent rage.

Dad went to the Sheepvention on Monday, an illustrious event that I'd all but forgotten about. Getting to go to the sheepvention when I was a kid was fucking ace. They have dog trials, lots of big shiny machinery, and all these new gadgets for the modern farmer. I remember distinctly spending ages waiting with Dad one year as he assessed the merits of a rotating lamb-marking cradle, where you lay the lambs in on their back at an angle, and pushed the feet into these spring-locked catches. The lamb was conveniently restrained so as you had a clear shot at all the bits that had to be modified, i.e., balls and tails. Dad bought back a few new gadgets this year, including a fencing tool that looks like it was manufactured in zero-gravity by alien skateboarders.

I've booked my flights to Sydney/Melb/Adelaide/Brisbane now. This is stressful, but manageable. The last two days I got the paper that Chapter 4 is based on, and gave it a much needed injection of accuracy. I'm glad it hasn't been published yet, there were many cringe-worthy things in it. I seemed to be quite happy to assume throughout the entire paper that as a finite difference of random quantities converged, it implied that the random quantities themselves converged. It was true, but required quite a bit more work to show it. Not only that, but I had proved something by essentially assuming that it was true. A neat trick if you can get away with it, and after two rounds of reviews it seemed I had. I don't blame the reviewers for not reading it all that closely though, it could induce narcolepsy at 40 paces. As does this paragraph!

Unfortunately, my goal to become 'the sole human not in a coma to have never read The Da Vinci Code' has been foiled by my conniving brother. He's heard me bang on about never wanting to read it, but knows that I will read literally anything. Also, this house is starved of books of any variety except the crazy, Jesus doorknocking picnic religious cult variety. Before he left for New Zealand, he draped the offending novel across my bedside table at a disarming jaunty angle. I was strong for weeks, and content myself with reading my Quantum info theory book before bed, declaring that it should be removed and dusted for fingerprints in order that my claim would not be invalidated. But cruel fate intervened, and the quantum book was recalled by the library, realizing my worst fears. I swear in the name of sweet, sweet intercourse I tried to resist.

After last night, it seems I may actually be in the running for the category of 'the sole human not in a coma who has read almost the whole thing in a single sitting and who went to sleep terribly terribly early in the morning doing so and felt awfully tired all the next day'. I can see what all the fuss is about, it's got it all. The chapters are short, and the end of each of them are compelling cliffhangers. Cliched to all hell, but no less compelling. It has a chubby inducing love interest between an academic and a cryptography hottie. Add to that a crazy albino, the holy grail, pagan rooting rituals, plus Da Vinci and everyone else being oh-so-clever, a constant sense of urgency and danger... bam! any wonder you're hard pressed finding a non-comatose yak herder who hasn't read it.

The new pop77 mix is grouse, mostly because the first song keeps going on about a guy called Nigel.

In conclusion, Missy Elliot has something to say.


You don't wanna speak my name
Mess around get that ass blown away
Blaaah!
Fool gone away
I didn't even like your tail anyway
Missy got somethin' to say
I ride down the block in an escalade
Bling bling all in your face
I think you might need to put on your shades
Blaaah!
I know you feel me tho
You hatin' on me, but you hear me tho
Twenty inch rims sittin' crazy low
AAAAHHHHHHH! I'm a crazy ho
I'm a keep the party live
Me and Timbaland gonna flip it tonight Missy
Keep yo hands in the sky
Wave 'em round like your crazy high

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Kay eye ess the bee ess good bye.


Coke and Hose. (credit/blame: Choco)

In lieu of a riveting tale about me changing the notation across two hundred odd pages of the circumlocutious drivel which I call my thesis, I present the following narrative.

As I was heading through Ballarat on the way back from skiing the other weekend, I was getting a bit bored, and saw a guy hitchhiking on the side of the road, and so I picked him up, for vague reasons that escape me now. However, I wish to pre-empt any predictable withering jibes about homosexuality now by saying that I wished to copulate with him, and raise his furry hitchhiking babies on the nectar of my bosom. That aside, he thanked me for pulling over, threw his razor scooter and a big backpack in the back, and we took off. In future, I'll make sure to hop out and give any hitchhikers a good sniffing over before I let them into the car, as this guy smelt pretty bad. Not homeless guy bad, but halfway between that and nerdy guy smell bad. Nerds can smell real bad sometimes, I think they should work on that. He wanted to go to Stawell, but I said I'd take him as far as Ararat. After we'd worked that out, he engaged me in a bit of get-to-know you stuff, and he revealed (in order) that he was broke and unemployed (this was probably so I didn't ask him for any money), and had Perthes disease and so his hip and leg were fused together with a titanium plate, and that he'd lost his license for speeding. I lamented the efficiency of the Victorian police force, and he disagreed, saying that he'd done 45,000km in the last 4 months, speeding the entire time, and only been caught 3 times. "Oh,", I gently enquired, "whatever were you doing on the road so much?" to which he equally casually replied "Running drugs. The whole bit. Choof, eccies, meth, coke, you name it.", "I would have thought that you'd obey the speed limit if your car was full of drugs, yeh?" Apparently not. I couldn't get a straight answer out of him why, and he was getting edgy when I pushed it, and he ended up telling me stories of dubious authenticity about how a front-wheel drive with any engine capacity is able to outrun the more powerful rear-wheel drive police cars, on dirt or in the bush or something, and in the hands of the unsung Peter Brock he indubitably was. I was then educated in extraordinary detail on the economics of growing and running a hydroponic dope growing operation, including (but certainly not limited to!) how to conceal power use, the optimal ratios of light and dark in order to produce the illest skunk, how to obtain hydroponic equipment and chemicals without raising suspicion, and given a vision of his solar-powered hydroponic utopia. And so on, until I happily dropped him off in Ararat.

He said he was heading back to Ballarat the following day. And seemed the type who would change his clothes oh, say, biannually. Damn he had a big backpack.

Dad got a good price for the lambs, and he's going to use the money to 'invest' in the stock market, DIY style. It's something he's wanted to do for a while, and some bloke has been in his ear about it who lives in town and claims to be averaging a 46% return at the moment. He subscribed to the ASX datafeed, and got me to get him a dodgy version of the portfolio software, which is called Aquis Metastock. Having 'saved' 700 bucks on the software, he is as happy a boatload of Larrys. He continually (and unconsciously) refers to it as Megastock, which is kinda funny except when he's on the phone to the tech support for the datafeed and keeps saying Aquine Megastock. Actually that is pretty funny, it just wasn't at the time.

Monday, August 01, 2005

Just another hurdle, I bounced through a portal.



I need to sound tuff to put this shot up.... Well, when I took this shot I was all like "Make me some honey, bitch!" to the bee, and then I slapped it around a bit, and it stung me and I didn't care, but when it died I blinked away a small tear for the plucky little bee who dared to care. I buried his fragile body and gave him a nine-gun salute by getting really drunk and letting off the shotty.

I got sweet fanny adams done today, but had fun not doing it. Instead, I continued my quest to sculpt my body into a mockery of Adonnis, and took some photos of bees. Then I spent 70 minutues on the phone to my supervisor getting advice, which was good. After a session in the mens room giving myself the "you're a rockstar, you're a rockstar" treatment, I got up the sack to call the guy and left a vague message on his answering machine. Then some chaps came over who are looking to put some beehives on the farm. Then Dad wanted me to help draft some sheep to sort out the ones which need crutching (they have daggy arses) before they are sold, which ended up with me chasing and grappling sheep for a while, and helping Dad crutch them. I tore arse around the place on the motorbike herding sheep, but tried to look like I wasn't enjoying it too much, because we were working. Then we went over to the neighbours to borrow his ramp for when the truck comes, then shedded the sheep, and fuck me, the day's over. Then Chappelle's show was on after tea, and I was hoping he might say "I'm Rick James, bitch!", but he didn't.

I'm listening the Mylo Essential Mix from April'05, which just finished downloading before I begun composing this Homerian epic, and penetrate me without consent if it aint the shiznit.

Barry whispered the following sweet nothing into my internet ear from Europe this morning, where it would have been around mid morning:

hurry up an reply cocksucker!!!

p.s- im drunk