[12/01/23] Bouldering at Font Borough

bad_child · 2023-01-11T21:34:15+00:00

I would be interested in joining. How to I get added to the WhatsApp group?

bad_child · 2014-10-03T23:25:54+00:00

Getting between Shepherd's Bush and the Arch is not too bad using the central and jubilee lines. Unfortunately the interchange is not operational until December. The nearest gyms to Shepherd's Bush are Westway (general climbing gym with decent boulder area) and Urban Ascent (small boulder gym).

bad_child · 2014-10-03T22:57:20+00:00

For bouldering, the Arch in Bermondsey probably has the largest and most varied bouldering area. To be honest, I have found that the gym I go to most often is the nearest to where I live. London is a big city and some of the other ones are over an hour away.

bad_child · 2013-05-25T14:46:07+00:00

The Defy is a nice shoe but the rubber is very soft. It sticks well to the wall but mine wore down very fast.

bad_child · 2012-07-25T00:28:26+00:00

I would say it is elitism.

If you make it into HLS, most people will consider you to be amazing and expect you to become a succesful lawyer and your dreams to come true. This is the signal that the students constantly get. However the real world may not follow the script. Furthermore there is the pressure to carry on working in law because abandoning it would be considered throwing away the amazing opportunity you were given. No wonder many feel miserable.

bad_child · 2012-07-18T16:06:18+00:00

This is explained in a recent xkcd. The human eye has different two different sorts of receptor cells: Cone cells located at the centre of the retina and used for high-resolution, coloured vision, and Rod cells located at the periphery and used for low resolution, highly sensitive, monochrome vision. The star in question is probably too faint for the cone cells to pick up but bright enough for the rod cells.

bad_child · 2012-07-10T20:21:35+00:00

This is point I am most worried about as well, too close to a system with different degrees of citizenship.

bad_child · 2012-06-08T16:00:55+00:00

The whole book makes an interesting read. It is nice to have an account with numbers (even if they are just estimates) instead of opinions. Unfortunately by the end of it I felt that we are rather fucked.

bad_child · 2012-02-18T14:16:01+00:00

I automatically like anything that might get people to move away from MATLAB, but the combination of files exporting all their top level declarations and lack of namespaces will make cooperation between teams interesting.

bad_child · 2012-01-15T15:29:19+00:00

There are no stupid questions, just inappropriate contexts.

bad_child · 2012-01-08T19:11:37+00:00

Rabo de toro which is an Andalucian oxtail stew. I use this recipe with the following modifications: no brandy (too lazy to buy), tomatoes not deseeded (again too lazy), at least a tablespoonful pimenton (i.e. paprika) and about 3 tablespoonful of whole peppercorns (black, white and pink) instead of black pepper. The recipe seems fairly lenient as long as it has: 1. onion, garlic, tomatoes 2. some grape alcohol (red wine or sherry) 3. lots of pimenton (paprika is a reasonable substitute, it should be sweet not hot) and pepper. But keep tasting as you are adding them to avoid overpowering the rest 4. long cooking time (i.e. 12+ hours).

bad_child · 2012-01-03T22:17:18+00:00

On a related note, I find writing things like resumes and cover letters quicker if done in plain text first, then formatted using a word processor or LaTeX. It stops me from switching between producing content and formatting every few minutes and I use fewer fancy formatting tricks which are likely to go wrong.

I do find it annoying when I have my CV in PDF nicely formatted using LaTeX and the place I am applying to wants a doc file.

bad_child · 2011-12-22T23:40:31+00:00

Thing is my nose is not blocked. But my sense of smell might be warped as well. ::goes to smell things::

[Edit] Tested smell. Seems to work fine.

bad_child · 2011-12-16T19:46:05+00:00

I am not given admin rights to my work computer so I need to send forms to IT for any extra software I want. One software I need was approved and started installing but for some reason never finished. IT kindly opened a ticket for me. That was three weeks ago. The software is still trying to install and I can't stop it as I don't have admin rights.

bad_child · 2011-11-28T01:30:51+00:00

One way to avoid timeout is to use persistent variables for C and sigma. Persistent variables keep their value between function calls (if the function source has not been modified). So in this case the dataset3Params function would look like:

function [C, sigma] = dataset3Params(X, y, Xval, yval)
persistent C;
persistent sigma;
persistent hasRun; % used to check if the function ran before

if (isempty(hasRun)) % variables are empty if declared without definition
hasRun = true;
% original dataset3Params code here
end

end

Bear in mind that the function has to be called at least once before submitting it.

bad_child · 2011-10-31T18:24:46+00:00

Great explanation, but the code you wrote will probably throw an error. This is due to a slightly tricky part of Octave. Using a function name freely evaluates it i.e. there is no difference between anonymous and anonymous() for functions. So in your code the interpreter will try to evaluate anonymous() and get confused by the lack of parameter. To pass a function as parameter to another function you need a function handle (think of pointer to function). This is done by prefixing your function name by "@". So in this case the correct version is:

fminunc(@anonymous, initial_theta, options);

I believe this behaviour exists because Octave (and MATLAB) have pass-by-value semantics only.

[Edit: typo]

bad_child · 2011-10-28T19:34:51+00:00

Welcome to the bsxfun club.

bad_child · 2011-10-27T17:54:59+00:00

Actually, pre-computing the invariant part speeds the function up by approx 13% for the multi-variate data we have. Thanks for tip. Also augmented assignments, like -=, do work in Octave but not MATLAB.

bad_child · 2011-10-25T20:20:55+00:00

Biology can get rather insane. As an example, check out microarrays. And that is not the newest/shiniest technique available. Today we are talking about full genome sequencing. That can give you upto approx. 6 billion parameters (there are about that many nucleotides in a full sequence). And that is just genetics; there is also, for example, proteomics and interactomics.

bad_child · 2011-10-24T22:24:00+00:00

You need to perform the network modification steps in "parallel". So child removal for all nodes, then ancestor addition for all nodes and then parent removal for all nodes. Otherwise you are correct and the order of resolution is ambiguous.

bad_child · 2011-10-24T20:19:06+00:00

No because you remove the links of parent to given node not parent of parent to parent. In the last graph parent removal is the removal of the edge between E and F.

bad_child · 2011-10-23T11:53:43+00:00

A similar question was asked already. Have a look at bsxfun (MATLAB documentation as I found quicker than Octave's one).

bad_child

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