I subscribe to a game-development algorithms list, the messages of which typically bounce right off my minimal mathematical skills. An example, if you will permit:

A linear transformation T, from a vector-space to itself, need not have a non-zero null-space (ie, it is not injective), or it might not be onto (it, it is not surjective; the range of T does not equal the codomain itself).

Yes, exactly so. Sometimes there are discussions on topics other than computational geometry and the sorts of manipulations to which a gentleman does not subject a matrix, and when that happens I’m glad to contribute what little I can.

Anyway, this week a message floated by which drew my attention to a great page about the perception of colour, and I thought I’d share it with you. I haven’t had time to read it all, but what I did get through I found to be fascinating. Perhaps you will also find it fascinating, which would be a sweet reward indeed for reading another handful of paragraphs of my questionable prose.

I went to my new gym today for the first time — excepting the actual orientation and signup visits, which didn’t hurt at all, and therefore don’t count. I learned a few things.

I learned that I’m ten pounds heavier than I thought. If we had a scale in the house, this probably wouldn’t be the case (in that I would know my weight; I don’t think it would have made me any lighter). I’m not sure if that means that I’m in worse shape than I thought, or if I’m just not good at quantifying my unfitness. I think I could lose 20 lbs of fat (of the disgusting 55 lbs I’m currently carrying around on my otherwise-scrawny frame!) and be much better off for it. We’ll see how it goes.

I also learned that my resting heart rate is shameful, and my systolic blood pressure is a little high. I wonder why my last physical didn’t mention that.

The final lesson was that my trainer is going to kick my ass. Three is a pretty big number when it comes right before “more” and right after twenty reps with more weight than I have probably ever maneuvered in that manner before. He’s got his work cut out for him, clearly.

Chelsea, dear, if I’m “grounded in the realities of today’s world”, we are all so very doomed. But I don’t think you’re unnecessarily evil, for whatever record these sorts of things are for.

(Game over, man! Game over!)

The other day, I broke down — by which I mean actually remembered from one day to the next that I wanted to do this — and signed up for NHL Centre Ice. I’d not had a lot of time for Leafs-watching since that happened, and Alasdair’s silly job kept him from coming over to “force me” to watch the Sens, so it wasn’t until last night that I really appreciated the fully power of what I’d wrought.

Matej and Mike arrived with an outrageous selection of beer, and then the man himself showed up around seven, at which point we did truly, and with great gusto, get our hockey on.

It’s all a bit of a blur, truth be told, because there was a lot of beer involved — even my carpet was tipsy! — but we ended up watching, in whole or in part, victories by Toronto, Ottawa, Edmonton (over COL no less!), and Boston. There were easily another half-dozen games to choose from, in case we suffered a collective head injury and were suddenly interested in the fates of the Blue Jackets or Flyers, for example. As Jacob rightly put it, it’s like the first round of the playoffs every night, and it will be that way for some 6 months. If I had a Tivo, I might actually hurt myself.

If this doesn’t get Phil to visit me, I will know that we have truly fallen out of love.

I’m pleased to read that Chelsea was entertained by quislibet’s translation, and further pleased that she located a second verse. I live to serve.

She was also kind enough to return the diversionary favour, in a rather more high-brow manner, with a link to this political compass questionnaire.

While Chelsea wasn’t surprised by her results, I was a little surprised at mine, which seems to place me somewhere along a linear interpolation between Jean Chrétien and the Dalai Lama. I’d thought that I’d come out a little farther right, though much of that might be because the political circles I travel in have a significant leftwards lean to them, and so I just feel like some sort of cryptoconservative in their presence.

I also suspect that some of the questions painted me slightly differently than the test’s authors had intended. Some examples:

“Multinational companies are unethically exploiting the plant genetic resources of developing countries.”

I answered “agree” there, because I think it’s quite likely that some of the practices by some of the companies involved are unethical. I also did my utmost to take “exploiting” in the least leading sense possible.

“First-generation immigrants can never be fully integrated within their new country.”

I have no idea what it means to be “fully integrated” into a new country, perhaps because I haven’t had such an immigration experience. So I chose “strongly disagree”, based on my belief that a first-generation immigrant can be as much a “representative” Canadian as someone born here.

“Marijuana should be legalised.”

I think marijuana should be treated basically like tobacco and alcohol, which can both be consumed legally in many contexts, but are not utterly free of legal restriction (age, location, etc.) I figured that’s what they meant, so I marked “strongly agree” and moved on.

“Protectionism is sometimes necessary in trade.”

I come down pretty completely against long-term protectionism for the purpose of propping up domestic industry — and that includes my own, which is apparently in grave danger of disappearing entirely on this continent, thereby forcing me to choose between dragging Tyla to a run-down shack in Asia and the even more unlikely option of finding another job that I can actually do half as well — but I think that trade sanctions are a useful mechanism for projecting economic force in support of social change (human rights, environmental protection, mandatory cheering of the Leafs). “Agree”.

“Corporations cannot be trusted to voluntarily respect the environment.”

“Agree”, because corporations are collections of people, and I don’t think people can generally be trusted to voluntarily avoid tragedies of commonses. If the question is meant to call out corporations specially, as distinct from other groups of people, then I think my answer is “disagree”. (And I also don’t know if they mean “all corporations”, “most corporations”, “at least one corporation”, “can never be trusted”, “can not usually be trusted”, “cannot always be trusted”, etc.) I suspect now that the question is “marked” on the basis of a different interpretation, and that answering it more “appropriately” would move me a bit to the right (and perhaps up).

I could go on, it now occurs to me, but the point is clear. I wonder if these sorts of tests — and other opinion-response endeavours — would be more or less effective if they were written more clearly. I don’t wonder if I’m just not the sort of person that these things are aimed at, because I’ve become slowly certain over my quarter-century-plus of Earth-dwelling that my brain is a little wrong. But I’m told it’s part of my charm!

In other news, I’m greatly looking forward to Chelsea’s next visit!

Some iTMS love for Canadians, at long last:

By mid to late September, the CRIA will have completed negotia­tions to set up a framework for paying music publishers and com­posers whose music is down­loaded on pay-for-play systems, Mr. Robertson said.

[…]

Canada will be added to the Apple system when the CRIA completes its ne­gotiations in the fall.

And by “at long last”, I guess I mean “please, let it be soon”.

This is mainly for Aven and Mark, but also for George and Alasdair and Tyla and Jack (wherever he might be).

21:39 < neil> i was thinking of shaver when i typed “evil”

I think that’s the nicest thing that anyone’s said to me all day.

I’m starving, and cranky.

Probably because I haven’t eaten anything but a handful of chips today. |_oser!

I have a lot to be thankful for, which is probably why I took both turkey-barrels right in the stomach this past weekend. Totally irresponsible levels of poultry consumption are a hallmark of my harvest-celebration history, though, so it’s not like I couldn’t have seen it coming.

When Tyla and I arrived in Ottawa on Saturday, we discovered that Martha was, along with three classmates, preparing a Thanksgiving meal for that evening. Reckless, perhaps, given that we three could see the Holmes/Schueneman Family Feast on the horizon, but I was in no position to object. Tyla’s Sangria stylings were a hit, and the meal — well, let me just say that the mashed-and-baked potatoes included both sour cream and cream cheese in the ingredient list, and leave the rest to your imaginations.

Once we could barely stand, Tyla and I zipped off to Anatole and Miriam’s housewarming. I cannot but offer the most hearty endorsement of their lovely apartment, and their hospitality is, of course, top-notch. We had a better data point than usual with respect to their kindness and hosting prowess, for Hilary’s amazing wine-throwing powers resulted in quite a few people needing to borrow pants and the like from Anatole’s closet. Happily, I just had to wash my shirt; nobody really wants to see me in Anatole-sized jeans. Amos has a cute Mac laptop, and I’m entering that fiscally-dangerous portion of my depression cycle, but I think I can hold my ground. Think. Madhava’s birthday gift was chipped, so we had to return it the next morning and then hustle it to his parents’ place before we took off to Eric’s farm.

Eric’s friend Lorri’s mother and daughter were involved in a car accident on the way to Eric’s (from Kingston), but neither of them were seriously hurt. (Given that it was a 3-car head-on-head-on-head accident with most cars at 90kph or so, it’s barely short of miraculous that none of the participants were injured in a major way.) We had a bit of a scare when Lisa (Lorri’s mother) had a fainting spell after dinner, but it proved to be nothing more than the triple threat of stress, codeine, and low blood sugar.

Also in attendance were my mother and two of her friends, Larissa and Chris. Larissa was once an exchange-guest in the home of Michael Johnson, with whom I have had no small number of fascinatingly geeky conversations over the past decade. The world felt as small as my belt, I tell you.

Back late Monday night, after a relaxing celebration of Tyla’s birthday in the morning, a nice dinner with Mom at the Grizzly Grill in the evening, and then early to bed; Tyla had a big day ahead of her today, what with the librarianing and suchlike.

At the best of times, I’m a pretty soft touch for interesting gadgets, and when my good friends start acting as “enablers”, well, there’s not a lot that can be done. So I came back from Boston with a shiny not-quite-new iPod, and now I’m stuffing its abundant music hole with the most reckless of abandon. (2.8 gigs of Tragically Hip bootlegs from the year 2000 alone!)

On the way back, I clearly and righteously marked my toy’s value on the customs form, and was then somewhat surprised when they didn’t ask me to pay any duty; I had exceeded the 48-hour limit by a fair margin, and was three days short of the next allowance up (which would, in fact, cover it). I didn’t think it was my job to tell them their jobs — though I am often assertive about such corrective measures, I am pretty much never thusly inclined when dealing with customs and/or immigration officials, duty-owing or no.

I’m enjoying the iPod (30GB, “refreshed” with full warranty, touch-wheel, dock, middlingly-slim) quite a bit so far, which should not surprise anyone familiar with the concept of “new gadget honeymoon”. Tyla seems to like it too, which is an endorsement of a subtly different kind. If the Linux firewire support doesn’t go completely asshat on me tomorrow when I try to attach it to my desktop at the office, I will consider it an unqualified success.

This entry is just here to quell the shame of a totally blank diary page. If my laptop were capable of charging its battery, I’d maybe burn some juice on the plane — DEAR TSA OFFICIALS: I AM SPEAKING METAPHORICALLY; THANK YOU — and write some ridiculously entertaining updates.

But, you know, that’s not how this hand was dealt.