Matteo's Wasps' Nest » Nerd

Drops of wisdom, food for thoughts.

Matteo — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:16:27 +0000

I am still reading Vapnik’s The Nature of Statistical Learning Theory. I began reading it a first time in March, but then left it aside for months, so I started over in October. It’s enlightening and a pleasure to read, if one can stay focused.

Every now and then, Vapnik lets drops of wit fall on the pages, and the reader that can spot them is able to savour the wisdom of a great mind.

I like this one, which was “buried” in a footnote on page 13:

“Of course it is very interesting to know how humans can learn. However, this is not necessarily the best way for creating an artificial learning machine. It has been noted that the study of birds flying was not very useful in constructing the airplane.”

Interesting thought, and nice counterexample. =)

Posted from Providence, Rhode Island, United States.

Darkroom night

Matteo — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 01:35:46 +0000

Tonight I went to the darkroom just to develop one roll of t-max 100 film from the Mamiya 7. Relax, fun, quiet: everything I could ask for. I’m happy that I went even if it was raining and I wasn’t feeling safe on my bike.

Photo geek note: I’m in love with my Kodak Process Type 3 Thermometer.

The next two months will be “printing months”, because I want to come to Italy for Christmas with a bag full of prints, from 6×7 and 35mm, to give to friends and family as presents.

Posted from Providence, Rhode Island, United States.

What being nerd means, from time to time…

Matteo — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 03:09:43 +0000

I was planning on posting something new about my relationship with photography, but then I got lost tweaking my WordPress installation, upgrading plugins, making sure themes don’t give errors, etc. etc….which means I spent more or less two hours on my wordpress admin panel, on FTP uploads, on editing files in VIM, etc. etc. . It also means I’m not publishing anything new about photography, but given that I could not accept a complete defeat by my nerdiness, I at least manage to publish this post. Better than noting, or not?

Posted from Providence, Rhode Island, United States.

Libri per vacanza

Matteo — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:07:08 +0000

Cinque giorni all’Isola d’Elba. Quattro libri. Uno già letto, uno iniziato di recente, uno iniziato e mai finito, uno letto a tratti. Uno “di lavoro”, uno di novelle, uno sullo scrivere, uno sulla società. Tre di Italiani, uno di un Russo.

Luigi Pirandello — Le Novelle
Italo Calvino — Lezioni Americane
Tommaso Labranca — Neoproletariato
Vladimir N. Vapnik — The Nature of Statistical Learning Theory

In valigia, anche le bozze di tre articoli: uno in via di pubblicazione, uno in divenire, uno da finalizzare. In testa, un’idea per un nuovo articolo.

Posted from Padova, Veneto, Italy.

Sproloqui su xkcd

Matteo — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 14:59:47 +0000

Mi domando sempre se l’immagine sia corretta. Nella terza vignetta in realtà ci sono infinite ricorsioni dell’intera immagine, quindi in quella vignetta c’è inchiostro infinito, per cui la seconda dovrebbe avere la terza barra più alta della seconda. Tuttavia, aumentando la terza, aumenta anche la seconda. Purtroppo non ci sono unità di misura sull’asse delle ordinate della seconda, quindi non è chiaro se l’ammontare di inchiostro indicato è relativo o assoluto. Nel primo caso, si dovrebbe vedere solo la terza barra, nel secondo caso la seconda e la terza dovrebbero avere entrambe altezza infinita. Un problema simile si pone per la prima vignetta: dal momento che la terza ha inchiostro infinito (e potenzialmente anche la seconda, si veda sopra) il grafico a torta non è corretto. Vi è poi un problema di finitezza o meno dei punti non inchiostrati, e a seconda dell’ipotesi il grafico a torta dovrebbe essere completamente nero o metà nero metà bianco.

Sanità mentale, questa sconosciuta…

Posted from Providence, Rhode Island, United States.

Errata and I

Matteo — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 20:22:37 +0000

For some unknown reason (e.g., my being nerd) I love getting the errata for the books I buy and correct the copy in my possession. I don’t go as far as periodically checking whether a new errata came out.

Wait, didn’t I already write a blog post on this topic? Update: No, I just checked.

Posted from Providence, Rhode Island, United States.

GPG key updated

Matteo — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 11:17:49 +0000

Yearly update of my GPG key done (later than usual). See also my GPG key page.

Now off to jogging on the treadmill.

WP Theme

Matteo — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:14:05 +0000

I switched WordPress theme, from the good old blogtxt (heavily modified by me and not always in a good way) to the default wordpress theme (I don’t remember the name). It will be a temporary change. I hope.

Update: it only lasted a few hours. Back to blogtxt with some bugs fixed (pointy hat to me, please).

Posted from Padova, Veneto, Italy.

Firefox 4 and RSS icon

Matteo — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 10:27:49 +0000

A new major version of Firefox (4.0) will soon-ish be released. I have been testing Minefield, the nightly builds of Firefox 4.0 for some months now. Over all, I’m very well impressed and I will not go in depth listing what I like and what I don’t. Still, as a heavy user of RSS feeds, I think the removal of the RSS icon from the “awesomebar” (i.e., the address bar) is not a smart move, and the developers should at least let power users have the icon in place again, if the users want, without the need to install a specific extension to have the RSS icon in the address bar. :/

Posted from Padova, Veneto, Italy.

Ah, IRC.

Matteo — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 20:11:48 +0000

IRC è come l’ Hilbert Hotel, ci sono stanze per tutti.
Io, pochi minuti fa, su IRC.

Posted from Providence, Rhode Island, United States.