IT’S A BLOG POST
This is how I feel today:
And that’s all you get.
Photographic proof of the kind of week I’ve been having:
Yeah, that’s the mouthpiece for my clarinet. Good thing we don’t have a concert tonight, right?
OH WAIT.
Rain, Rain, Go Away; I Changed the Locks, Just Leave, Okay?
Stupid crap I think about while driving in the rain:
- Do windshield wipers have standard speeds, or is that not a thing that’s regulated?
- Are certain windshield wiper patterns more common than others? By “pattern” I mean the way the wipers go across the glass—like do they both go from right to left and back, or do they open from the middle, that type of thing.
Stupid crap I look up when I get home:
- Okay, it doesn’t look like there are any U.S.-wide standards on what speeds are necessary.
- But windshield wiper geometry is most definitely a thing.
For some reason, that makes me very happy.
The February List…ONE DAY LATE
- Uh, yeah, Google. “Seattle Seahawks” is exactly what I was trying to search for there:
- Chief Inspector Violet Knightton. I’ll take it.
- Petition to call abandoned/forgotten Tumblr blogs Tumblrweeds.
- We’re starting Bayesian estimation in Math-Stats on Wednesday. Time to break out the “posterior distribution” jokes.
- OH MY GOD I should totally re-write Baby Got Back to be about posterior distributions in Bayesian estimation. Baby Got Beta. “This data’s meaning will be none until you claim a prior, hun!”
- Beauty queen:
Zz
So this video quality sucks because my camera—the thing I usually take video with—is out of batteries and all I’ve got is my iPod, but this is a shot of one of the fluorescent light tubes in my office.
I thiiiiiink it’s starting to die on me. But if it dies, it’s going out in style!
In this blog: Claudia Wordles Stuff
I’M SO FREAKING BORED
I WORDLED “ODOR”
I WORDLED WIKIPEDIA’S “LEIBNIZ” PAGE
I WORDLED MY THESIS
I WORDLED THE LYRICS TO INTERACTIVE’S “DILDO”
I THINK I NEED TO SLEEP
Claudia’s Pointless Blog Post of Pointlessness
So I have a metric crapton of pictures on Vaio.
But I think this one is still my favorite.
(Yeah, that’s all I got for today, sorry)
Burfday
Heeeeeeeeeey, look, it’s my birthday.
And the Superbowl.
Woo.
Happy bday, UI!
The U of I is 125 years old today!
About three days ago all these giant person-sized black boxes started appearing all around campus…they actually looked kind of creepy until they finally put bows/ribbons/decorations on them to make them actually look like presents.
Also, no band today! It’s weird just teaching at 8 AM and then being done for the day.
I should probably do homework though.
The January List
- This trigonometry reference circle would make an excellent tattoo (ha, and he designed it for that purpose!)
- These socks ain’t takin’ none of my crap:
- Every once and awhile, I really just need to be Claude.
- I’m just…I’m just going to put this here.
- Back when I was working on “Walking Treadmill Desk Prototype I” I used a rubber mallet to hammer some boards together to make the desk (didn’t work; using stacked-up dresser drawers now). I’ve kept the mallet in the house because Annabelle is freakishly attached to it. I have to put her food and water next to it or else she gets mad. Evidence:
- The biggest thing that bothered me about the movie Titanic was the scene right before Jack drew Rose nude—where she paid him a dime for the drawing. I’d have to watch the movie again to be sure, but I’m 99% sure the dime she gave him had FDR’s head on it. He wouldn’t be President until 1933 and wouldn’t be the face of the dime until 1946. This is the design of the dime that would have been used:
HULA!
I’ve reached the “everything is hilarious and nothing hurts” stage of sleep deprivation.
However, I can’t tell if this infomercial is hysterical because I haven’t slept or because it’s just so freaking absurd.
I laughed for like 15 minutes straight at this. And as often happens with a funny YouTube video, the comments section is just as great:
- Statistically, 79% of this galaxy’s species became extinct within 10 generations after inventing the Hawaii chair.
- Einstein had also a hawaii chair
- When you sit, you can get fit, while looking like a tit
- she looks like she’s spinning on a cock
- Thikljankds fojkrjr reachinfinfg outtt sennnnt irhjdf from mmmmqy yyy Hawaasii ii iii chaaasidsdiiirr
- Oh good, now I can simulate what having Parkinsons is like.
- Notice the spokesman has solid black eyes
- The one girl has her hands up at 0:14 like it’s some kind of god damn theme park ride lol
- what the fuck is a hula motor
- “that feels great on my abs” thats your balls mate
- boss : “write this neatly; don’t fuck it up!” you : ” can’t ”
- DEAR SANTA…
Wow.
2013 in 12 Sentences
Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, why not.
- January: Super obnoxious depression hits just as the semester starts, ‘cause my brain is just awesome like that!
- February: “Hey, these Achievement Hunter guys look funny…” *50 videos later* “….aaaaaaaaaaaaand I’m addicted.”
- March: Cue incredible amounts of frustration regarding everything school-related (mainly CS 120).
- April: Decide to write about my time in Vancouver for my long essay in Nonfic because I feel like torturing myself.
- May: Yaaaaaay, the semester from hell is over and I get a 4.0 and oh hey it’s time for calc III.
- June: Teach in the morning, calculus in the afternoon, walk in the evening…rinse and repeat.
- July: LEIBNIZ LEIBNIZ LEIBNIZ LEIBNIZ!
- August: I get one week of “doing nothing” and then school starts again.
- September: I write a lot of short stories, most of them horrible.
- October: Kloktober!!
- November: I hit 1,000 miles on my shoes and have multiple freakouts over my second Proofs midterm.
- December: Cold snap and finals and goodbyes, oh my!
Somebody forgot to turn off my pants!
I AM TOO NERVOUS TO BLOG
HERE ARE GIFS
CAN IT BE FRIDAY NOW?
Bias
Are there certain sounds and/or combinations of letters in the English language that you find unappealing, regardless of the words they’re in?
For example, I don’t like the long “o” sound (like in boat or moat or goat), but only if it’s spelled with “oa”. Tote and smote and wrote are fine.
Same with “s”. I only like that sound when it’s spelled with the “s”, like pass or summer or loose. I don’t like pace or rice or ceiling.
Words that end in “b” drive me nuts (job, crib, drab). Even if the “b” is silent (like in limb).
I’ve never really liked “w” in general.
Not a big fan of the long “e” sound, either, especially if it’s spelled with “ea”. Lease, east, peanut. Beer, Weedle, and peer are fine.
So what do I like?
I like the “k” and hard “c” sound. Coin, click, coffin.
I like “ch” and “tch”. Batch, cheddar, kitchen.
The “h” sound isn’t bad, either. Hoop, honor, rehire.
I like “v”, but only at the beginning of words. Vacancy, victorious, vanity. Not glove or rave or reverberate.
I dunno.
The November List
- I’ve made more friends this semester than in the past 3 years combined. I’m not kidding.
- This semester has been awesome, but I’m ready for it to be over.
- THAT ISN’T FUNNY NBC
- Big Life Changes will (hopefully) be happening in the next half-year. Stay tuned.
- I had a dream about the devil last night. But he was a nice devil. He had only one horn so he called himself the Unicorn Devil. I had apparently been hired to keep an eye on hell’s sole (soul?) security camera. Unicorn Devil bought me M&M’s during my first shift.
- RED BULL!
- This is probably one of my favorite blogs ever.
- I didn’t do NaNoWriMo this month because I’m a loserpalooza.
- I’m a loserpalooza who I really enjoys Minecraft.
- (I didn’t do much of that this month, either.)
- This is exactly how I put my laundry away:
I think that’s all!
Random Thought of the Week
If “Anscombe’s Quartet” isn’t the name of some statistics department’s barbershop quartet somewhere, then there is something seriously wrong with this universe.
Ethereal Pantaloons
Claudia’s not-so-genius idea of the day: create a wrapping paper set where each roll of the set has a different wallpaper group pattern on it.
(I’d buy it.)
In Space, No One Can Hear You Transform Linearly
Linear Algebra class has apparently turned into “let’s see how many stupid math puns we can come up with in a 50-minute time period.” Including figuring out the plot to a movie about null spaces.
And then I come home and do this nonsense:
(Yes, I know that’s the symbol for the empty set. It needed something, okay? In the epic movie we’re planning, the empty set saves the day anyway, so there.)
I think I have an idea for my NaNoWriMo endeavors this year now.
Well, this week’s gone to hell.
Things that cheer me up:
- Teaching stats. Lots and lots of stats.
- Leibniz. Lots and lots of Leibniz. (Naked.)
- Calculus.
- MENERGY!!
- Rage Quit.
- AH in general.
- This.
- The Hitler in Captain Planet video.
And the comments on the Hitler in Captain Planet video:
- People going back in time to sell Hitler the atomic bomb is my top environmental issue too.
- Why the fuck does Hitler have a Hulk Hogan moustache?
- why the sweet hell does Hitler have a fu-manchu mustache?!
- Well there you have it. Those other kids can have their strong ring powers. Mati headbutted Hitler. All further arguments are invalid…
- What in the actual jumping monkeyfuck?
- Two perfectly weak windows to bust through, Captain chooses the wall.
- I can’t get over the fact that captain planet is so lame, you can literally defeat him by simply *hating* him hard enough.
- If you can’t trust Adolf Hitler, who the hell can you trust?
- those goofy Nazis
- Captain planet has the right idea, throw all of our problems INTO SPACE!!!
- The Furher does not barter. He CONQUERS!
- hahaha ‘stop bidding or else ill invade you’ wish i could use that on ebay
Bitz n’ Thingz
1. School + Peoples
It took awhile to get into this semester for me, but now everything seems to be falling into place nicely (and will hopefully stay that way).
Also, math people are bundles of nerdy fun. Last semester I was taking classes that were mostly full of CS people and…ugh. Our personalities did not mesh at all. But there are several people—especially in Linear Algebra and Proofs—who I talk to on a regular basis. Which is a pretty rare thing for me.
2. Advertising
This is the cutest freaking commercial ever, even though I don’t think it’s intended to be.
Must…CREATE!
NNNNNNNF I want to WRITE but I have NO IDEAS WHATSOEVER. I’m terrified about our next story due in Fiction.
ZERO.
IDEAS.
Of course, I didn’t have any ideas until two days before my first story was due and I managed to crap something out, so who knows.
Also, this anxiety needs to die.
I have a sucktastic headache tonight, so don’t take any of this seriously.
I’ve been employed as a stats lecturer for a year today!
AND SPEAKING OF SCHOOL:
I respectfully disagree with this to a certain extent.
[Realizes she is positioning herself in front of the verbal firing squad by disagreeing with Neil deGrasse Tyson]
Students want good (or at least passing) grades because they want the class to “count” as being mastered. They want the class to count because it’s one step closer to a degree. Why do most students want a degree? To get a good, well-paying job.
In my (probably stupid) opinion, I don’t think the blame for cheating can rest solely on the school system. It rests, rather on the fact that we value the eventual end product—tolerable job + money—over the actual learning itself.
Of course, I’m likely being idealistic if I say, “we should value learning for learning’s sake LOLZ,” but I think we’ve passed the point where that’s even in the back of our minds. “Gotta pass calc II to get into CS 352 to graduate! Who cares about the harmonic series?”
(You should care, dammit, it’s cool.)
I’d like to actually try to better defend my position on this, but I have a super bad headache tonight and I probably just typed a bunch of gibberish up there. If I remember later, I’ll add more to this.
Necessary side rant: why in the name of Captain Buttswag am I still working on this story? The chapter names are hilarious because a few of the chapters are solely about specific numbers. So I’ve got stand-in names like: “Chapter 5: 5” and “Chapter 7: 2.” UGH.
Claudia: Demolishing Sanity One Blog at a Time
So I was dicking around with drawing ideas this evening and eventually started thinking about something cool to do with the zodiac signs. I was scribbling Aquarius’ sign everywhere when I considered how similar it looks to the “approximately equals” sign.
Which led to this:
I wanted to find commonly-used math symbols that best matched the shape of the actual zodiac symbols to give you MATH ZODIAC, but for some of them I had to take a little artistic license. Virgo and Scorpio, I’m looking at you (yes, I just took Virgo’s “M” shape and made it an “N,” deal with it).
And for those of you screaming, “hey u cant mix mathz with pseudoscience SHAME lolz,” I say, “screw you.” Plus, now instead of saying “Taurus” when people ask you your sign, now you can reply “Universal Quantifier!” and confuse the hell out of them. Upturned A’s are cooler than bulls anyway.
Also, as I was waking up this morning, I swear I was trying to explain Euler’s Identity to my cat. Not sure how successful I was considering I was half asleep and she’s a cat.
Eigenblogger 