Category: dance

02/15/11 10:20 - ID#53622

Reverse baby-freeze

I tried around 12 times to do a baby freeze on my left side. Here's a breakdown statistic of the results:

Crash-landed on my head - (2)
Crash-landed on my left hip - (2)
Flopped around like a dying fish - (3)
Leaned too far and felt my elbows give way under me - (2)
Stopped and stared at the floor in disgust for 10 seconds - (1)
Acquired a nasty 5-minute-cramp on my left upper arm - (1)
Acquired a bruise on my left temple - (1)

It's impossible. My body just doesn't want to rotate on my right forearm and my left elbow just doesn't stay put on my left waist and slips off the minute I try to stabilize it.

On the other hand, baby-freezing to my right is a happier state of affairs. I managed to stretch the time I could hold the freeze to a whole 30 seconds today. And so I celebrated with another 1/4 lb of Justin's Chocolate Hazelnut Butter. I am dangerously close to a nut butter overload and opening the 2nd bottle. Thankfully, the 3rd bottle belongs to (e:Paul).

Permalink: Reverse_baby_freeze.html
Words: 178
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 02/15/11 10:20

Category: linux

02/15/11 06:16 - ID#53620

Linux Command Line

Don't you want to bash your head in when Linux GUI is dense and so extremely useless? No? Well, I do. So I am thrilled to have found a site that throws a command line bash 24/7:

ss64.com/bash

And I have lot of admiration for William E. Shotts because he wrote this

and put the PDF online for free:

Permalink: Linux_Command_Line.html
Words: 71
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 02/15/11 06:16

Category: the odes

02/15/11 11:36 - ID#53616

Tinandroidypliny

I do have two hairy left feet.

Permalink: Tinandroidypliny.html
Words: 9
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 02/15/11 11:36

Category: music

02/12/11 09:54 - ID#53602

Madame Ivonne!!!

It reminds me of you, (e:imk2).

Permalink: Madame_Ivonne_.html
Words: 9
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 02/12/11 09:54

Category: e:strip

02/12/11 07:21 - ID#53601

Doing an Imelda.

I really like your shoes!

Those worn out suede-soles say so much about you! :-)

Permalink: Doing_an_Imelda_.html
Words: 17
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 02/12/11 07:23

Category: dance

02/12/11 07:07 - ID#53600

Up for some hip-hopping?

Verve Studio is starting up some really interesting classes in March including a hip hop class with Micheal Burton, a popping class and a hatha yoga class with T. J. Veith in addition to the breakdancing classes with Shane "Depree" Fry.

I am pretty interested in taking the hip hop with Michael Burton because I really want to incorporate some hip hop flavour to my stick-like salsa.

The current schedule is for Thursdays. They need 3 more people to offer a class on Mondays... Who's up for hip-hopping with me?

Permalink: Up_for_some_hip_hopping_.html
Words: 95
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 02/12/11 07:07

Category: dance

02/12/11 03:16 - ID#53594

I just did a baby-freeze

in breakdancing class with Shane "b-boy Depree" Fry today.

I was in suspended animation floating in an orbit around Uranus. That, and I have somewhat sore elbows.

Permalink: I_just_did_a_baby_freeze.html
Words: 31
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 02/12/11 03:16

Category: dance

02/11/11 10:48 - ID#53592

Salsa PMT-style

First there was the Cuban on1
Then there was the NYC on2
And now, there is the one and only Buffalo onPMT...

Permalink: Salsa_PMT_style.html
Words: 24
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 02/12/11 11:26

Category: dance

02/11/11 02:36 - ID#53587

Virabhadrasana III

I can't hold this pose for more than 3 seconds rooted on my right foot but I can hold it for 2 minutes or more rooted on my left.

And, in a rinse-and-repeat of old news, I am still super-clumsy in the intermediate salsa class. I am just not fierce enough. Anyone know of extreme bare-hands/knife street-fighting classes in the city? I vaguely remember seeing a small sign quietly saying "extreme"-something between the Chinese eatery and the tattoo place on the west-sidewalk in the block between Utica and Bryant on Elmwood. Wonder what it was...

Permalink: Virabhadrasana_III.html
Words: 97
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 02/11/11 02:51

Category: i-tech

02/09/11 06:13 - ID#53577

Computing frustrations

I just need a computing platform to perform many operations (~2000) on a small dataset in a reasonable amount of time without dragging my system to a standstill every time. Is that too much to ask? Apparently, it is. The options I have are dismal.

- Get a computing account at UB's center for computational research. This is easier said than done. There is so much bureaucratic red-tape and craziness involved in just getting a puny account that it makes sense at this point to accept that I will never be able to use their resources.

- Buy a laptop that will run linux and then R on top of it efficiently utilizing all the processing cores and the memory. This is a difficult proposition because R doesn't utilize all cores natively. It's a pain to figure out how to set up linux to utilize all cores with R and make the processing efficient - with my minimal level of expertise. So I am stuck with a spiked up CPU load and system freezes every time I run an analyses. Should I be spending close to $1.5k for such misery. In the end, maybe I will have to.

- Get a mac. NO. Their hardware is appalling. They get away with such mediocrity because of their sheep fanboy base that is blind to the fact that their hard-drives and memory fail with the frequency of a rainstorm in an Amazon forest. I like well-functioning software but if I have to be queuing up at some service center (however fanciful its name) for repairs or replacements every few months, I don't think I will ever wander close to such a product.

I wish things were not this complicated.

tinypliny writes at 08:32:56 02/12/11 - Comment #60629: Aarrgh, I wish computing power were not so expensive...

tinypliny writes at 12:33:12 02/11/11 - Comment #60589: Hmm... I checked my code again. I don't know if I have enough knowledge of S+ to tweak my code so much. (e:carolinian) - I found some useful answered questions at StackOverflow. Thanks! There is a package that makes R use multiple cores under ubuntu. I am going to take the fedora out and put ubuntu into my main laptop and give the data-crunching another whirl (its nearly 400 X 15 data points - not really a huge dataset).

Learning how to write code in C will not really solve my problem. I fear I will be stuck in non-progress mode for ever. R is based on S+ and many PhDs (in statistics/biostatistics/systems engineering) across the world write packages that carry out algorithms and models for R. If I go the C route, not only will that involve learning how to code all those algorithms but also code the options for the algorithms and all the underlying basic statistical procedures that underlie each statistical model. In a sense, it will be like learning to write an equivalent of the R framework, its packages, its command-options AND its code in C or C++ - that is something so daunting, I don't even want to go near that solution! :) I am sure if you made a statistical package repository based on C, they will name it after you! :)

carolinian writes at 03:03:57 02/09/11 - Comment #60557: StackOverflow is a great place to get answers to these kinds of things.
:::link:::

While the easy solution is to throw more hardware at it, if that's not available, you could spend some neurons and learn C and write the program in C, and you could probably get it done all on one core with your old hardware and save some $$$.

paul writes at 09:51:10 02/09/11 - Comment #60548: Is it possible that its your prog? 2000 calculations is not that crazy. How big is the dataset? Perhaps you can find ways to make it more efficient.