Uh, probably a very heavy topic for some (so, obvious trigger warnings!). But I've definitely needed to get some thoughts out of my head - was going to do a vlog then realised it probably wouldn't get past the filters.
matthras.com/2026/04...
There was a practise fire drill yesterday and I pitched the alarm at roughly F#₄-G#₄, but one of the moving notes was intentionally making a tritone dissonant interval which made the alarm /really/ irritating to listen to asd;flkjafsdka;ljf
Maybe I should just go buy and play Pragmata and The Last of Us (and any other lone wolf + cub game archtetype) so that they can fulfill the feeling of being a responsible adult/father while I continue working towards hopefully meeting someone to start a family with... 🤔
This is the right decision and very welcome news. Working to make digital accessibility a requirement of public institutions is important and correct, but the one year extension will allow everyone to do things "right" rather than rush into compliance.
Watched the final episode of The Pitt S2. Many tears and feelings, a lot resonated with me.
I don't struggle with passive suicidal ideation much these days (thanks to my current environment), but they got a lot of things right in its portrayal compared to my experience.
TIL the screen-reader NVDA starts dictating the expression inside of a square root as "radicand <expression>" and it only happens when you specifically select an expression inside the square root, otherwise it goes "start root <expression> end root".
Gems:
- This podcast has a transcript! +1 Accessibility!
- Rob: "I will only take on a problem if I don't know how to solve it immediately."
- Rob set up his own publishing company at the time b/c no others did open access + print. Badass!
- Insights that's helped my current stats/ML knowledge.
I basically just have a checklist of job features (and other things to check for) and will be screening against that for future job interviews in anything that I apply to.
I'm happy to admit I have no idea what kind of job that would be.
Once again @vickiboykis.com nails something I've started observing (with just asking free Claude to generate R code for my data analysis) but hadn't been able to put words to: It's that AI tools may not necessarily know best code/env/package practices.
newsletter.vickiboykis.com/archive/mech...
Doing more stats and... I dislike MANOVA as an acronym, because every time I see it a voice in my head goes into pirate mode and goes "MAN OVA BOAAAAAAAAAAAAARD!"
/facepalm
I'm watching Doctor Mike's reaction to The Pitt S2E6 with Sepideh Moafi and I'm amazed at how different Sepideh's overall energy (body language) is with Doctor Mike versus how she acts as Dr. Al-Hashimi (very still!). A testament to her acting 🫡
There's a snippet in Erdö's biography that talks about him being in a room with various other mathematicians working on various problems and he'd just go around various groups and help each of them. Competence in chaos.
Would love to see that orchestrated similar to The Pitt 🤔
If there's one thing I've learnt from making lamb koftas (for the first time! Only because I got discounted lamb mince from ALDI) for meal prep this morning is that I /really/ need to aggressively level up my knowledge and familiarity of spices. Hoowowwee!
The Pitt S2E14 made me feel validated in various ways last night. I'm still mentally churning over things, but if you're not aware of the post-episode podcast/interviews, here's one I recommend after watching the episode:
A quick demo of the new conversion feature!
Two authors back in my time was Adeline Yen Mah and Alice Pung who wrote books on being a child Asian immigrant in Australia and I couldn't relate to most of their experiences, but their experiences certainly felt closer to mine by virtue of shared identity.
One bit of Aussie history that I felt resonate with me was when learning about the Gold Rush in Ballarat and how the Chinese were attacked/discriminated because they were better at finding and collecting smaller gold specks and I had that "Now I do that too, that's relatable!"
Also note that being hard-of-hearing meant I wasn't picking up on everything so obviously I missed probably a large chunk of understanding older (repressed female) British culture back then. Compared to my diaspora Aussie-Asian male experience, just too wide of a chasm, obviously.
Still loving the The Pitt's actors being interviewed about their character and how they interpret them. It's like the literature discussions I wish I had back in high school.
Trying to understand Austen in high school as a sheltered Asian kid, of course I'd fall flat.
Its inclusion also has me scratching my head, more in the sense of "I can't really see where it leads/contributes to later on in the university maths curriculum in a meaningful way". For people that end up doing data analysis, it's easy enough to pick up transformations by then.
He's reasonably passionate, in my very polite way of putting it 😅
No, not really, no. Just a Twitch streamer who does an awful lot of political commentary who blows up every now and then due to the occasional "strong" opinion. If that's your jam, feel free to follow him. If not, add his name to the muted words list.
Crochet project that looks like a cloth strip a little too thin for a scarf. The pattern is of red and white alternating zigzag patterns on both sides, done using an "interlocking" crochet style.
Haven't posted about crochet in a while. Current home project. Taking suggestions for what to transform this into.
Today I managed to sit down and journal to work through some extreme anger I felt earlier this week.
It took 4 hours because I procrastinated a lot and got a lot of housework done while not wanting to do it.
Then after that I needed an afternoon nap. But it's done.
Why was π afraid of θ? Because θηζ.
Only thing I'm keen to do this Easter weekend so far is working through this Signal Processing textbook I've nicked from work /sheepish look
Mmm, I came to the conclusion that if I don't say anything, people won't do anything. But if I say something then at least people are aware of my situation and it plants the initial seed of thought, even if they don't end up doing anything.
Yeah, there was nothing wrong with their language. It just matches the same pattern of "We're saying lots of words to acknowledge your feelings but ultimately not take any visible action about it and still excusing the actual people who offended" grandstanding that I've seen a lot.
Couldn't sleep until 4am last night.
Lesson Learnt: Don't get angry at other (younger-than-me, white, abled) postgrad students when they have no experience navigating a conversation on accessibility with someone who's been marginalised for years. Sigh.
I'm mulling over yesterday when I presented stats/ML results to my biology supervisors and I'm realising how crazy it feels that I condensed 3 weeks worth of experimenting into an hour-long presentation/discussion sesh and not even being able to show all the results. Hmmmm