Quantum Forest

It is almost 10:30 pm and one can still see a little bit of light in the sky. I suddenly thought about the news.

I stopped watching news in 2004. I am preparing breakfast and getting ready to go to work at 7 am. The six pm news are too violent to watch them with children around. The 10.30 pm news are too late to make any sense of them. Newspapers are such a waste of fiber, and what can one find in them that is not available in internet?^§

Thus, my main source of regular news is The Economist, which adds a nice weekly regularity to my view of the world. It also gives a step back from the urge to keep up to date with frantic change. I need to explain; I do not have my own subscription to the magazine, but one of my colleagues does. My rank is third in pecking order, so I am usually one week behind of the current issue. In addition, the preparation cycle for the magazine—writers submit the articles, say, a week in advance—makes for a more meditative approach to news. There is less of sound bite and some elements (at least) of analysis.

Despite of all the time using the web (wasting time since ‘94) and some rusty technical ability to put things together, I cannot cope with the CNN approach to news. I am writing about the split-screen, multilayered approach with text flashing at different levels, because there are too many things happening simultaneously… This, it is the end of the world, so we have to squeeze all the news in the next two minutes. Please, one thing at the time, with more than one sentence, compare/contrast, give examples, What is the opposing view? I know, it sounds Luddite, but I am not against technology, but for using technology to enrich understanding. Slogans are almost opposite to understanding, and that is what the scrolling pieces of text are: slogans.

I now remembered radio. I also stopped listening to radio. I used to follow Radio National in Australia. Well, not all the time, but when driving my Ford Cortina 1972. Then I changed cars and I stopped, not sure why. I liked AM radio, but when moving to NZ I could not find a decent radio program. I am sure if I look around I could find one, but I do not have the motivation. Maybe another day.

That leaves The Economist, supplemented with some web searches if I find something interesting. There has never been so much data available before in the history of humanity. We have never had before the current speed to propagate data. So, How come that we understand so little? Maybe we become so excited about learning new things, that we never want to spend the not-so-exciting time required to deepen our knowledge and understanding. It is harder, it takes longer, but it is richer. I am trying to go for richer.

I wrote the text above with a few interruptions. It is now 11:15 pm. Time to rest, meditate and forget the news.

Last week we did a short trip to the Northern part of the South Island. We spent the first day mostly in Kaikoura, where the best part was visiting the Seal Colony. The best part was jumping between rocks with my sun, trying to get closer to the seals.

Seal on holidays, Kaikoura, New Zealand.

Seal colony [maptype=G_HYBRID_MAP]

Everything on a boat has a different name than it would have if it weren’t on a boat. Either this is ancient seafaring tradition or it’s how people who mess around with boats try to impress the rest of us who actually finished college — P.J. O’Rourke from Holidays in Hell

The core of multivariate simulation for a breeding program is the generation of observations that follow a given covariance matrix V. Using Cholesky decomposition (so V = C`C) one can easily generate the desired distribution. I use the R core.sim function as the basic building block for creating base populations, and progeny tests.

# core.sim generates n.obs observations, which follow a
# n.vars multivariate normal distribution with mean 0
# and variance C`C. That is, it takes the Cholesky
# decomposition C of a covariance matrix as argument.
# This function is used by all base population and progeny 
# testing functions.
core.sim <- function(C, n.obs, n.vars){
	N <- matrix(data = rnorm(n.obs*n.vars), 
	            nrow = n.vars, ncol = n.obs)
	S <- t(C %*% N)
	return(S)
	}

R syntax highlighting courtesy of the WP-syntax plugin (an interface to GEshi).

No one can retell the plot of a Cortázar story; each one consists of determined words in a determined order. If we try to summarize them, we realize that something precious has been lost—Jorge Luis Borges

If you haven’t found something strange during the day, it hasn’t been much of a day—John Archibald Wheeler.

There is a fairly limited amount to say about productivity (or any other topic for that matter) without (i) start repeating oneself and/or (ii) becoming a generator of time wasting posts. A perfunctory visit to sites like ‘43 folders’ or ‘Zen habits’ will show that—after reading a core of good posts—one should avoid them like the pest.

I think that one could summarize productivity tips as follows:

• Procrastination: Figure out your biggest time wasters; likely culprits: internet, TV, video games. Make an effort to reduce your reliance on them (doh!). We procrastinate with our time wasters to avoid either success (and its attached responsibilities) or failure (ah, the pain). Grow up and accept success. Split project in to small, manageable pieces to avoid failure. Avoid perfect, learn to live with good enough. Perfectionism is a slow death.
• Email: Figure out your most productive time of the day (mine is from 9 to 11 am) and block it for doing your most relevant work. Avoid email and internet at that time. Adjust your email program to check for new email every hour (not every 30 seconds). Even better, manually check email only a couple of times a day. Unsubscribe from all email lists. There is no point for a complex email folder system. A single ‘old’ folder will work well. Use the search function if needed. Be ruthless with email: delete irrelevant messages, act immediately on simple/short tasks, write down longer tasks. Now you should be in ‘inbox zero’ or ‘email zen’.
• GTD: Avoid complex—and expensive—setups to Getting Things Done. We are in a recession. You don’t need an iPhone, a Moleskine or Backpack to keep track of stuff. A piece of paper, text file or a simple web system will do.
• Present in present: What is the best use of my time right now? Remember, multitasking is a myth, so the previous question uses ‘is’ as in singular and it requires undivided attention.

You can read this list and go back to work. Or you could read Getting Things Done, The Now Habit and Time Management for Unmanageable People, test a huge number of GTD software and end up with something similar to this list. So, why are you following these links? Remember the productivity p0rn paradox (aka P cubed): ‘productivity’ sites induce a non-productive life style. A fad is a fad and it will not make a difference in your output or stress level.

Where should one start? Go for something simple first: do not check your email and enjoy the extra time. After that, avoid thinking of perfection when planning what to do. Finally, beware of hyperlinks: they are the route to distraction.

On leave. Gone to the beach. Or Camping. Thinking a lot. Too much. Back to basics. Gone to the beach. Or camping.

In other news, changed blog theme from plaintxtBlog to Emptyness. I also streamlined the theme for uncronopio’s main site.

Gone to the beach. Or camping.

…All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?—Reg in ‘Life of Brian’, Monthy Python.

Nearing the end of the year I keep track of the software that I use the most in my mac. Firstly, I am a researcher—I always struggle with the word scientist—so the programs I use the most have my own bias:

• Statistical analysis: R (free). R it is the closest thing to a lingua franca for computational statistics: it is cross-platform, flexible and its graphics are great. The mac version comes with a much better script editor than its windows counterpart.
• Writing: LaTeX, for which I use MacTeX (free). Sometimes I do provide in this blog my reasons for this choice. Initially I was using TexShop as editor, but I have moved to TextMate.
• Reference management: Bibdesk (free). Some eye-candy on top of the time-proof BibTeX format.
• Text editor: TextMate (€39). Well, I do pay for good software, and TextMate has the right combination of features, footprint and macness. I do miss one or two features, but clearly not enough.
• Presentations: Keynote, which is part of the iWork suite ($79). In fact, this is the only part of iWork that I do use. When teaching some subjects (like statistics) I do require a fair number of equations in the presentations, for which I use LaTeXiT (free). Some times I embed Google Earth flyovers in presentations, for which I use iShowU ($20).
• Keeping it organized: EagleFiler ($40) for project archives, web snippets and email archiving. Good quality software and a very responsive developer.
• Keyboard goodness: Quicksilver (free) acts as application launcher, search utility, etc.

Concerning web interaction (I do keep a few sites), my list is not that long:

• Browser: Firefox (free). Safari is nice, but I would miss the following plugins: Firebug, Zotero and Delicious (in that order).
• FTP: Cyberduck (free). I have fairly simple requirements in this department, so I find it difficult to justify paying for something like Transmit.
• Blogging: MarsEdit ($30) is a solid and straightforward piece of software; worth the money.
• Twitter: I use Twitterrific (the ad-supported version) to update twitter, which updates this site’s sidebar and my facebook status.

By the way, Rui Carmo keeps a good list of mac alternatives to windows software.

Important new addition: MoneyWorks.

A cursory web search on accounting software for the mac will lead mostly to disappointment. The big players (Quickbooks and MYOB) have shocking versions for the mac. On the other hand, most small players (like iBank or Cha-Ching) only target the personal finance market. I just started working with MoneyWorks, which is a decent and usable (I have no better adjectives for this category, it is accounting software for God’s sake) program for small businesses. Almost enjoyable!