Took another wack at some semi-Lagrangian Navier-Stokes code thats I abaondoned some time back. Basically, it worked, but I never bothered to make the LHS symmetric. Instead, being lazy, I just solved with BiCGSTAB_l.

So, after a few really stupid errors, it now works again, solving with conjugate gradients. Unfortunatly, the bloody thing now takes forever to converge. Arg! Guess this means that I have to write preconditioning code. Oof.

It is some consolation that now, at least, each iteration is about 3x as fast

To procrastinate working further on thesis type stuff, I've been playing with graph drawing a bit, also thanks in part to some taunting by an officemate.

I guess its not a total wash, as I need some code for MDS anyway; maybe this can be written off as a debugging project.

Anyhow, in case anyone is interested, there is a binary tree, another view of the same tree, and a grid with connected corners

mmmmm LaTeX. I wonder what was the major motivating factor for various people getting hooked on LaTeX. I got hooked while writing physics lab reports full of equations and derivartions. Now I cringe at the thought of having to put together a bibliography without bibtex, let alone try to get figure references right.

I'll also admin to being a LyX fiend. I may have been using it a bit too much; I had to put together a group report the other day, at home, sans LyX.. and I help having to look commands up. doh!

I try to jab at my friends studing things like communications at their reliance on thing like word, and how pales to LaTeX. They usually fire back with how not-gui-ish it is; Oh well.

hadess

I've been meaning to try and check up on that disc to see if it was any good; I guess its time for a cd store spending spree. Its only debt...

salmoni

What do the IT folks there with 'depreciated' hardware? There must be a big storage someplace here, because folks are forever replacing machines, and the old ones never show up in the trash. When I did my undergrad, the IT dept would put old or dead hardware outside their building for the trash people to collect. Many an evening were spent trying to get old macs to boot.. Anyhow, if there is a mass grave for hardware nearby, might be able to 'acquire' a machine for 'research'. Finding a laptop might be difficult, but you could probably assemble enough parts for a functional desktop..

Have to give a presentation tomarrow, basically improvements on a previous presentation [The old one was about a paper on pulling mattes with principal component analysis; this one is about the same, but with robust PCA]. No motivation to make slides.. Hopefully I can reuse most of them.

In the case of a really bogged down system with plenty of piggy processes, I wonder if at some point it becomes acceptable to block on a allocation request for some given time, to see if anyone gives up their slot at the feeding line..

Oof. Spent yesterday cleaning bottles scavanged from the recycling center. I made a royal mess on the floor, dumping plenty of water on it accidently.. Oh well, I guess its clean(er) now that it was before. Someone suggested adding some baking soda to water for soaking bottles to loosen up the labels. But, the didn't really say how much to use. So, very scientifically, I dumped a few generous pinches into the pot that some bottles are currently soaking. We'll see if that does any good..

zines

I miss zines. I miss rummaging through a pile of warn paper from some lonesome backroom copier.

I also miss having time to poke around at recent developments in graphics. Wandering through journals and web pages is fun, making pretty pictures perhaps even more so. Why are there always so few free hours in the day for fun stuff?! arg!

So, I'm half comtemplating putting together a graphics related newsletter. But wait, aren't there already tons of graphics tech/news/code/whatnot sites out there? Sure, but a majority of them have a heavy focus on realtime applications (e.g. gamasutra, gamedev, flipcode, opengl.org). The good ol Raytracing News was tons of fun, but long times between updates doesn't do well for the fiending folks..

Most likely nobody would read such a thing, but who cares..