Saving money

I just thought of a brilliant way to lower our electric bill by at least a dollar or so: Pack a small container full of snow and put it in the fridge. The snow will melt, cooling the fridge and preventing its motor from running. Massive savings!

Debug: Successful. Next step: Uncertain.

I am seeing Very Strange Things.
The heart of my thesis is a log-likelihood fit, which I won’t explain here, because the problem is in computer science rather than mathematics. For this fit I rely on a library called RooFit, which has a class of objects called RooRealVar. I declare a large number of these [...]

Cultures clashing

It’s a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, I quite appreciate the Norwegian custom, where people walking along the street thinking their own thoughts won’t be accosted by perfect strangers saying “Hello” or “How are you?” and apparently expecting some response. A most annoying habit. On the other hand, I can see where [...]

The death penalty

is entirely appropriate for bicycle thieves. Without exception, bicycle thieves are the lowest form of human – well, primate – life. I believe that the death penalty should be applied in this manner: Hook up a bike to a generator, and force the thief to pedal – a whip will keep him in motion. When [...]

Who knew?

So I opened a bank account recently, and I get a huge pamphlet from them with a four-page “Privacy Notice” saying, in effect, “We won’t disclose your personal information unless we can make money off it”. You think I’m kidding? I quote:
We do not disclose any nonpublic personal information about our customers or former customers [...]

Testing, testing…

So I’m trying out this blogging thing. I’ll be uploading my AARs to here, and logging progress in my personal projects and my PhD. Or, as the case may be, not. Perhaps I’ll grow bored with it, who knows?