Machine learning

I've already mentioned to a couple of people that I'm working on a machine learning algorithm. Tonight I managed to find the bug that made it do things it knew wasn't good (or rather, the bug that made it divide how good it thought something was by the number of times it had happened) and it now passes the first two unit tests I wrote for it. Passing the first one is less impressive though because all it tests for is that the algorithm tries all its options before picking a favorite, but the second test involves it actually learning.
If you would like to play with it, here is the download location. Currently I don't have anything as fancy as a configure script (that's a future feature), but the eclipse project files included are able to build it automatically provided you have the vala compiler installed in /usr/bin/valac.
libHector-0.0.1.tar.bz2
This archive contains full source and linux i386 binary.

Current features:

• Novel input motivated reinforcement learning system
• Rapid convergence to optimum behaviour for low dimensional input
  

Future features will include:

• A means of hierachially organising modules (for increased scalability and generalising)
• Increased ability to learn from sequences of events (partly using the hierarchal arrangement)
• Working memory

New fractal

Well, while keeping my mind nimble for the software engineering exam on Monday I've found a new fractal. It's the same algorithm as the Mandelbrot set, but using tessarines instead of the usual complex numbers.
I've written an applet for viewing the fractal. Left-click zooms in, right click resets to original zoom.

--update:
It turns out the method described above merely produces a computationally expensive square. The fractal on display above is a very pretty algebra mistake which I don't seem to be able to make again.

New letterbox

I have a new letterbox which I made myself. It even gets mail, although that's because someone wrote the wrong address when they wrote to someone else.


Oh, and last weekend I visited my parents, fixed their computer, and photographed the cat. I'll be looking after the house and pets when they go away for the weekend after next, so I can photograph the cat and dog even more!

Tuatara

Certain things in my life right now are like having to run a race, where everyone else is allowed to run but I have to ride a giant tuatara.
Tuatara an ancient family of reptiles vaguely related to lizards. They spend most of their time completely motionless, and when they do move it's usually not very far before they stop for a rest.
I still don't have internet at my home because my landlady postponed it saying there was something else she wanted me to sort out first. That's sorted out now. I'll ask again next week if I'm allowed to get the internet then. In the meantime, I will be using my portable hard-drive a lot. Yesterday I almost used it to install eclipse on my home computer, I think it's just 2 libraries that I still need to fetch.
With that installed, I'll be able to work on the group project from home, although I'll still need to use the university computers every day for the svn update and commit to keep my work up to date with what my teammates are doing (so far they haven't done anything, but I'll be seeing them at class today)
One of my teammates is something of an enigma. He's in my lab but he wasn't there this week and the only time I've spoken with him was when he joined my team. He could be super-smart or he could need our help for everything. The other two are both pretty intelligent and seem to know what they're doing most of the time. I'm less worried about one's aversion to for-loops than the lab tutor is: he managed to get the program running just with while-loops!

Numbers of bits

Last night I installed the AMD64 version of Ubuntu 9.04 onto my new computer. Tonight I'm deleting it and reinstalling the (older) 32 bit version. Basically: the Linux kernel allows you to run 32 bit software under the 64 bit system, but the Ubuntu userspace has several safeguards to prevent you from doing so. I would rather waste some CPU capacity than be unable to run the drivers for my printer, and being unable to run skype once I get the internet at my place would also be a nuisance.
I still don't have the internet at my place, but I will very soon.

new computer

After various parts blowing up, difficulties getting replacements, and even difficulty finding out which parts had failed: I have finally finished building my new computer. It's both the quietest and fastest computer I've ever used, and should be even better when I've finished downloading the more suitable 64-bit operating system for which the cpu was intended.
I also have welcome news for all the people who have been complaining that I'm never online: my landlady and I are getting the internet put on next week.

Oh, just in case any hardware geeks are reading this and want to know what kind of machine I've built: here are the basic specs:
CPU: AMD phenom quad core (forgot the clock speed, but it's fast)
Motherboard: ASI
Hard Disk: Greentech 500GB SATA
Ram: 1GB so far, might add more later.
Video card: NVidia compatible pciE.
Network: onboard ethernet or pci wifi
Sound: C-Media pci card (the onboard sound is probably fine, but my old computer had no onboard sound, and since I had to dismantle that anyway...).

Sorry I forgot to take a picture before I went to university.

And finally

Well anyone paying attention to this blog will have already seen most of the pictures taken with my camera. So for a change here are three taken with my phone. That phone camera doesn't take great photos, especially without full sunlight. But the GNU image manipulation program can turn bad photos into better ones.
She thought I'd given up trying to photograph her.

Here she knows she's being photographed.

Here she's the one holding my phone.