Python Evolution – part 1

Jason Thibeault, 7 Comments

Sometime mid-December I read a blog with a brilliant little piece of genetic programming, wherein a set of pseudo-DNA is used to generate an image out of a set of, at maximum, fifty semitransparent, overlapping polygons, in an effort to “evolve” this pseudo-DNA toward looking as much as possible like the Mona Lisa.  The idea is, can something specific evolve through only a series of randomly generated mutations?

As genetic programming goes, this is a great example, however I have to take issue with the approach as being an example of “evolution” — by my understanding, at least, not that I’m a geneticist, biologist, or even a decent programmer.   The original program has a population of two, the original and the slightly-mutated “offspring”.  The offspring is compared to the target image, and if it is more like the target image than the original, then it replaces the original for the next iteration.  After almost a million iterations, as shown on his blog, the image looks significantly like the original.

More on my attempt at this same concept below the fold…

Continue reading “Python Evolution – part 1” →

Python Evolution – part 1
{advertisement}

lern 2 rss noob

Jason Thibeault, , 8 Comments

Abby informed me recently that, horror of horrors, she’s a neophyte when it comes to the ways of the Blogosphere, and thus doesn’t know how to use RSS feeds.  So, herein, I shall endeavour to show her, and you, and maybe some random Google searchers, how to make use of the RSS readers that you probably already have installed presently.  If Firefox and IE are insufficient, then I leave it as an exercise for you to find alternative RSS readers.

Continue reading “lern 2 rss noob” →

lern 2 rss noob

Haven’t you always wanted a monkey?

Jason Thibeault

Not a day after Jodi shows me videos of mini horses and monkeys being trained as service animals, Bush’s administration (the DOJ specifically) goes and redefines service animal as “dog” for no other reason than out of sheer ignorance of the state of affairs of the real world.  I’m sick to death of the Bush Junta doing everything they can to make life harder for the unprivileged, the not-wealthy — you know, the opposite of the rich folks, Bush’s self-proclaimed “base”.

I’ll link to the videos as soon as I can find the specific videos Jodi showed me — they involve monkeys being trained to open jars, get things from the fridge, scratch your facial itches, and put DVDs into a DVD player and press play.  It’s seriously impressive what these monkeys can do, and I’m sure they’d be a huge boon for quadriplegics.  For Bush to take that away from these people is disgusting.

Pharyngula posted a discussion about it here, as well.  Oh well… at least this rule change also precludes the very possibility of a helper cuttlefish, meaning the Bush administration may just have saved humanity.  George Bush: Great President, or Greatest President?  …I’ll just put you down for Great.

Update: …oh.  Joke’s on me.   Jodi found those videos while reading previous entries on Culture Dish, the very blog I linked to above.  The consonance of being exposed to the video immediately prior to being shown an example of Bush administration stupidity still stands.

Anyway, here, have a video of a monkey.

Haven’t you always wanted a monkey?

On needing a vacation from my vacation

Jason Thibeault4 Comments

So I’ve been pretty crap at updating the blog despite my earlier intimation that I would. In my defense, it’s been a busy first week of my vacation. First, we visited Pickles and Lisa on my first Saturday night for booze and Wii playing, which was fun as always. We left a bit earlier than usual, hoping to beat the weather home, and we did.

However, the next day, there was a roughly 9-hour power outage in the middle of the continuing bit of cold weather, during which I not only had to barbecue water in order to make tea (and provide heat for Jodi’s snake), but also had to walk the new guy at the other site through bringing his office back up from their own power outages. Nothing like walking people through dealing with getting power back, when you have no power of your own.
Continue reading “On needing a vacation from my vacation” →

On needing a vacation from my vacation

Beaten until he was sorry

Jason Thibeault1 Comment

aleqm5j5j-ymexbdyh_gj0ajjxxwd8ifsw
After showing Bush what the Iraqi people really think about him during the shoe-throwing incident that happened recently, Muntazer al-Zaidi (who looks disturbingly like Clifton — I think it’s the near-unibrow that does it personally) has stated that he is sorry for having misused his shoes as projectiles. Oops, sorry, that’s what I would have apologized for — evidently Zaidi apologized for throwing them specifically at Bush.

There’s some contention as to whether the injuries he sustained were only sustained during his being subdued at the press conference or while in custody afterward, but either way, it seems suspicious that someone driven to this kind of protest of Bush would suddenly have a change of heart and express his regret unless he was facing something other than inhumane and unjust punishment for what he did.

I am of the opinion that the punishment should fit the crime, personally.  While it isn’t a mark of a civilized man to throw something at heads of state, it certainly isn’t an act that merits beatings.  And I say this despite knowing personally the misguided fool who threw a pie at Jean Chretien, yet can’t find it in himself or his alleged “PEI Pie Brigade” to throw one at Harper.

Here’s Countdown’s mashup of the interweb tubes’ take on this one.

.msnbcLinks {font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 425px;} .msnbcLinks a {text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px;} .msnbcLinks a:link, .msnbcLinks a:visited {color: #5799db !important;} .msnbcLinks a:hover, .msnbcLinks a:active {color:#CC0000 !important;}

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

If you’re wondering whether the training-up of the new IT guy means I’ll have more time to blog again, well, the answer is yes.  Expect a LOT more of me over the next two weeks as well, as I have some vacation booked.  Time to reconnect with my peeps! (Psst — that means you.)

Update: MORE SHOES!

.msnbcLinks {font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 425px;} .msnbcLinks a {text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px;} .msnbcLinks a:link, .msnbcLinks a:visited {color: #5799db !important;} .msnbcLinks a:hover, .msnbcLinks a:active {color:#CC0000 !important;}

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Beaten until he was sorry

My brilliant would-be scientist gets blogged!

Jason Thibeault, , , ,

And I am blogging about it!  I’m proud of her.  She’s asked how to go about getting into science, biology specifically, and knowing she’s an animal person she’s going to have a fun time.  She has a letter answered by John S. Wilkins of Evolving Thoughts on how to break into the biology field and he makes some excellent suggestions.

In the meantime, I am playing Fallout 3 pretty well every spare minute I can get away from work-and-work, which amounts to maybe a couple hours a night.  I am on call all the time and do what I can where and when I can for everyone, as evidenced by the fact that I have remoted into the “Other Site’s” computers half of the day and altered software for them.  My in-office time is spent avoiding total disaster with software pushes that don’t work quite right when there’s a lingering bad self-made MSI install of Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 that seems to not want to remove itself from certain systems even after the program files directory is removed, requiring removal of a registry key.  Software installs are not fun under Windows.  Now maybe if I had a way to remote into them like SSH, that I could do some awesome system stuff while someone else is logged in, that’d be perfect.  You know, like under a Linux computer.

I bet such a thing already exists for Windows, but I can’t imagine unless you can remotely spawn a local copy of a GUI application that it would be nearly as useful as under Linux.  I believe you can do something like that while remoting into Windows 2003, but unless there’s some third party out there, Microsoft can’t do it intrinsically, I don’t believe.  There’s one mentioned here that I want to look into, which looks to have the command prompt half of it at least.  It’s 1999 stuff though, so who knows how good it’ll be.

My brilliant would-be scientist gets blogged!

Prop 8: The Musical

Jason Thibeault, ,

I’m sorry, all, that I don’t really have the energy to vent about the Canadian political situation right now, despite the laundry list of reasons the length of my arm why Harper needs to be tossed out on his ear, and despite how wholly constitutional and legal the attempt to get rid of Mr. 37% of the Vote right this second.  The only thing I can say right now is, look out Canada, here come the attack ads.

I do however have a small thing to say about this:

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

I’ve always liked Jack Black, despite a number of really good reasons I really shouldn’t. And I couldn’t have picked a better Jesus if I tried.  Also: naturally, musical + gay rights = more Neil Patrick Harris goodness.  He hits on the best way to get conservative blowhards interested in equal rights.

I have a relative, and estranged friends, who are gay. I hope they understand why I’m being indirect in saying this, since I care about their well-being, and would be afraid, in this world of ours, that something bad might happen to them as a result. That even now, in the midst of an unprecedented worldwide economic collapse after horrible mismanagement of that one country that thinks it’s “exceptional”, there are people out there who aren’t satisfied with worrying about their own coffers and would go out of their way to abridge the rights of a minority group (with intention only, as far as I can see, to make themselves feel better after that whole “causing an economic meltdown” silliness)… well, the whole thing baffles me. I have been thinking lately that I’m not nearly cynical enough. If you care about having your rights intact, then you must care about everyone’s rights — yes, including all those people that your damn holy books may or may not (read Leviticus more carefully, asshats) actually condemn.

To my friends and family: I’m sorry I wasn’t around to protect you or “your people” while you were growing up, and discovering you were expected by society to do something unnatural to you, and all the pain that resulted from learning to deal with that dichotomy. In some cases I was oblivious, or had hints, or in some cases just didn’t know you soon enough in your life to have made any kind of difference. Now that I have a voice out here on the interwebs, though, I got your backs now. Small consolation though that might be.

Afterthought: the fact that I have to put this into Politics is sad, considering basic human rights shouldn’t be something up for political debate.

Prop 8: The Musical

Fuck yeah!

Jason Thibeault

Daily Show is always full of goodness, but John Oliver just absolutely BRINGS IT regarding the “industrial strength douchebags” putting together terror attacks in Mumbai. Skip to roughly 3:25 if you don’t care to hear about the Wal-Mart Consumerist Massacre of 2008.

“There have always been motherfuckers. There will always BE motherfuckers. But what we can’t do is let them control our motherfucking lives!” So bringeth John Oliver.

Oh, and Comedy Network? Get with the times and set it up so you can embed clips. Ultimately you drive traffic back to your site for minimal bandwidth costs. I’d have embedded from Comedy Central instead, considering they DO allow embedding, but they don’t allow Canucks on their servers, the ratfink bastards. You Comedy Network dudes are only getting a reprieve because I can at least connect to your servers.

Fuck yeah!