Myopia, Astigmatism

General image depicting normal eye and abnormal curvature of an astigmatic eye

Results of my test on Wednesday from the CostCo Citrus Heights Pharmacy:

SRX (Spectacle Prescription)
O.D. (Oculus Dexter, my right eye):

1. SPH: +0.25
2. CYL: -1.00
3. AXIS: 0.90
4. ADD: n/a
5. PRISM/BASE: n/a
   

O.S. (Oculus Sinister, my left eye):

1. SPH: -0.50
2. CYL: DS
3. AXIS: n/a
4. ADD: n/a
5. PRISM/BASE: n/a

All measurements represented in units of dioptres, a unit that represents focusing power. More dioptres mean more focusing power--so if the numbers get big, that means you need a "stronger" prescription to see clearly.

SPH means sphere--a positive number represents farsightedness and a negative number represents nearsightedness. Why? In a farsighted eye, the curve of the cornea is flatter than the curve of a normal cornea, so the correction involves "adding" to the farsighted eye to get it back to normal. In a nearsighted eye, the curve of the cornea extends farther than the curve of the normal cornea, so the correction involves "subtracting" from that curve to bring it back to a normal curvature. The point being to get the cornea back to focusing light on the retina like a normally curved cornea does. The larger the number (positive or negative) the larger the deviation from the normal curvature of the cornea, and the blurrier the vision.

CYL means cylinder, and represents the amount of power needed to correct a cornea with astigmatism (a cornea that's oval-shaped, which causes blurring (see the picture at the top), as opposed to a normal cornea that's symmetrically round like a basketball)--DS means no astigmatism. In my right eye, I need one dioptre of focusing power correction.

AXIS, for astigmatic eyes, represents a line passing through the middle of the oval-shaped cornea--in my case through the longer side. In my right eye, I need minus-one dioptre of correction along the 0-/180-degree axis (see the Wikipedia article for an explanation of why it's not "090" like the prescription says)--which means the longer side of the oval-shaped cornea in my cases lies on an imaginary line drawn between my two eyes (the 9 o'clock/3 o'clock positions). I believe reducing the focusing power of the longer part of the oval-shaped cornea helps the cornea focus in a more spherical manner.

20/20 vision means the ability to read a character 8.84 mm high at a distance of 20 feet.

Fushigi Yuugi

Dawn and I made a run through the 52 episode series over the past two months. Thoughts:

1. Japanese voices > English voices
2. After removing the intro song (~1:30m?), intro story recap (1m?), and outro (1:30m?), the shows seemed to average ~20 minutes.
3. 52 episodes of watching Tamahome and Miaka push apart and come together: Tamahome rejects Miaka's declaration of love; Tamahome swallows Kotuko; Miaka can't become spoiled in her quest for the shinzaho; Nakago's assault of Miaka; Tamahome decides to cut off relations to lessen the pain later; Tamahome runs off when he learns he's a character in a book; Tamahome returns to the book; finally, reunited--whew.
   
4. I appreciated Miaka's use of empathy to save Mitsukake's restless lover from the sickness demon--amazing to see it played out in an anime.
5. Always, always, always, kill the bad guys when they're down and out. It cost them the life of Chiriko and the first shinzaho.
6. "Here, I don't know how this item will help you, but I'm sure it will advance the plot in some unknown way in the near future." For example, Hotohori's holy sword.
7. The show didn't pull many punches with taboos regarding sexuality, abuse, and violence.
8. Tokyo really sucks at giant monster defense. It looked like they had planes in the air to dispatch nuclear warheads, but the show left that thought unresolved.
9. Amiboshi's story arc casts an anti-war sentiment to the show, while Miaka's story arc casts a proactive peace through strength sentiment to the show. Sentiment winner in my opinion: Miaka; Amiboshi retreats into memory-less bliss while Miaka saves the day.
   
10. Characters I wish the writers had included more in the action: Mitsukake, Chiriko--these two barely get screen time. It approaches parody watching Mitsukake continually fail to save those close to him, even though he can heal people to complete health "once per day." Chiriko, boy genius and mystical musician, wanders around with the team until he gets possessed--the writers allow him the glory of stabbing himself to death with a blunt top. *sigh*
11. The handling of homosexuality in the show surprised me--Nuriko, after the shock wears off, becomes very endearing in the story, as she takes Miaka under her wing. Tatsuke's "I don't like girls" stance doesn't resonate so much, even though he sacrifices everything in hotheaded defense of Miaka.
    

Overall, I appreciated Miaka's personality and the show's attempt (however short) to show the Seiryu warriors as partial products of their environment: Nakago's single minded quest for revenge, Soi's desperation for recognition, Suboshi's unrequited devotion to Yui, the wolf-man's fearfulness and anger of pain. We learn nothing of Tomo or the other magician whom Chiriko dispatches. The random decision for spirits to return to save the day for Tamahome when he fights Suboshi seemed odd to me.

Worth a watch, in my opinion.

Flea Combing

Learning as we go along how to give our cats relief. Applied a fresh batch of Promeris and Fleabusters comes next Thursday.

Happy Towel Day

In memory of Douglas Adams: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towel_Day

I want to hang one of the above near my work desk. Link: http://www.royal-plus.de/dna/indexE.html

UPDATE:

Email from the artist, 2020-10-05: "We are unfortunately sold out. And there will be no new production of the towels. We will close the shop soon. So long, and thanks for all the fish, Kind regards, DON'T PANIC Towel Shop Uli Schuster"

I had emailed in August 2020 to inquire about ordering one, but unfortunately, "Unfortunately the US have stopped the parcel traffic from oversea, due Corona.  So, I keep it on hold, and will let you know when shipping will be possible again. " Then I forgot. So only myself to blame! Will see if one becomes available second-hand.

CSUS Tea Ceremonies

We missed the last one due to finals week, but hopefully they'll have another one in the near future. Link: http://library.csus.edu/tearoom/. From the CSUS event release:

Japanese tea ceremony planned at Sacramento State

The next tea ceremonies for Sacramento State’s Sokiku Nakatani Tea Room and Garden are 10:30 a.m., 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 21; and 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., Thursday, May 22.

The Sokiku Nakatani Tea Room and Garden is located on the lower level of the University Library
Sacramento State is one of only a few campuses in the United States to have a tea room that allows students, faculty and members of the community the opportunity to experience the art of tea through traditional Japanese tea ceremonies. The Sokiku Nakatani Tea Room and Garden was made possible by a gift from an anonymous donor in honor of his mother.

“The practice of tea originated in China, was introduced to Japan in the 12th century by Zen monks and became a spiritual and aesthetic discipline that has had a profound impact on Japanese civilization,” says Sally Hitchcock, University Library outreach coordinator.

She says tea was used by the monks as a mild stimulant for clearing the mind during meditation and was valued for its medicinal qualities, then enjoyed by nobility for lavish functions. Eventually tea gatherings became common among all classes of people and thus the creation of rooms designed especially for such gatherings. Today the practice of tea is still a way for people to come together to find calmness and peace of mind.

“Since the room was dedicated in June 2007, we have held more than 20 tea ceremonies and have enjoyed hosting every age group from kindergarteners to retirees,” Hitchcock says.

For more information on tea room ceremonies, contact Hitchcock at (916) 278-5954. For media assistance, contact Sacramento State’s Public Affairs office at (916) 278-6156.

L-Attributed, Top-Down-Parsable SDD Implementation of the McNaughton-Yamada-Thompson Algorithm

My solution to the 2nd edition Dragon Book's Exercise 5.2.6:

Implement the McNaughton-Yamada-Thompson algorithm, which converts a regular expression into a nondeterministic finite automaton (NFA), by an L-attributed SDD on a top-down parsable grammar. Assume that there is a token char representing any character, and that char.lexval is the character it represents. You may also assume the existence of a function new() that returns a new state, that is, a state never before returned by this function. Use any convenient notation to specify the transitions of the NFA.

Notes:

1. I use the characters '{' and '}' to delimit rules, and the rules end up taking the form "{ state-x -> symbol -> state-y } ... { ... }".
2. The symbol "||" means concatenation.
   
3. Concatenation ( T -> F Tsub1 ) represented a bit of confusion for me, since it "deletes" state Tsub1.Start from the automaton (the exercise doesn't allow for deletion). McNaughton-Yamada-Thompson write, "The accepting state of N(s) and the start state of N(t) are merged into a single state, with all the transitions in or out of either state."
   
   My initial attempt, setting F.EndTransitions = F.EndTransitions || Tsub1.StartTransitions seems reasonable. Since state Tsub1.Start continues to exist, references to it in Tsub1.StartTransitions, Tsub1.InnerTransitions, or Tsub1.EndTransitions do not require modification.
   
   Everything works because from F.End the automaton may remain in F, or transition to Tsub1. Once the automaton transitions to Tsub1, however, it never returns--no references in Tsub1 point to states in F. In practical terms, this means the automaton produced contains one extra state Tsub1.Start for every concatenation in the original regular expression.
4. Adding epsilon transitions to Start or End states requires retaining the existing StartTransitions or EndTransitions, respectively.
5. A PDF of this solution produced via LaTeX can be found here.
   

Proposed solution:

S -> E

1. S.Start = E.Start
2. S.End = E.End
3. S.StartTransitions = E.StartTransitions
4. S.EndTransitions = E.EndTransitions
5. S.InnerTransitions = E.InnerTransitions

E -> T

1. E.Start = T.Start
2. E.End = T.End
3. E.StartTransitions = T.StartTransitions
4. E.EndTransitions = T.EndTransitions
5. E.InnerTransitions = T.InnerTransitions

E -> T '|' Esub1

1. E.Start = new()
   
2. E.End = new()
   
3. E.StartTransitions = "{ " || E.Start || " -> epsilon -> " || T.Start || " } { " || E.Start || " -> epsilon -> " || Esub1.Start || " }"
4. E.EndTransitions = Nil
5. T.EndTransitions = T.EndTransitions || "{ " || T.End || " -> epsilon -> " || E.End || " }
6. Esub1.EndTransitions = Esub1.EndTransitions || "{ " || Esub1.End || " -> epsilon -> " || E.End || " }
7. E.InnerTransitions = T.StartTransitions || T.InnerTransitions || T.EndTransitions || Esub1.StartTransitions || Esub1.InnerTransitions || Esub1.EndTransitions
   

T -> F

1. T.Start = F.Start
2. T.End = F.End
3. T.StartTransitions = F.StartTransitions
4. T.EndTransitions = F.EndTransitions
5. T.InnerTransitions = F.InnerTransitions
   

T -> F Tsub1

1. T.Start = F.Start
2. T.End = Tsub1.End
3. T.StartTransitions = F.StartTransitions
4. T.EndTransitions = Tsub1.EndTransitions
5. F.EndTransitions = F.EndTransitions || Tsub1.StartTransitions
   
6. T.InnerTransitions = F.InnerTransitions || F.EndTransitions || Tsub1.InnerTransitions
   

F -> G

1. F.Start = G.Start
2. F.End = G.End
3. F.StartTransitions = G.StartTransitions
4. F.EndTransitions = G.EndTransitions
5. F.InnerTransitions = .InnerTransitions
   

F -> G '*' Fsub1

1. F.Start = new()
2. F.End = Fsub1.End
3. F.StartTransitions = "{ " || F.Start || " -> epsilon -> " || G.Start || " } { " || F.Start || " -> epsilon -> " || Fsub1.Start || " }"
4. F.EndTransitions = Fsub1.EndTransitions
   
5. G.EndTransitions = G.EndTransitions || "{ " || G.End || " -> epsilon -> " || G.Start || " } { " || G.End || " -> epsilon -> " || Fsub1.Start || " }"
6. F.InnerTransitions = G.StartTransitions || G.InnerTransitions || G.EndTransitions || Fsub1.StartTransitions || Fsub1.InnerTransitions
   

G -> '(' E ')'

1. G.Start = E.Start
2. G.End = E.End
3. G.StartTransitions = E.StartTransitions
4. G.EndTransitions = E.EndTransitions
5. G.InnerTransitions = E.InnerTransitions
   

G -> epsilon

1. G.Start = Nil
2. G.End = Nil
3. G.StartTransitions = Nil
4. G.EndTransitions = Nil
5. G.InnerTransitions = Nil
   

G -> char

1. G.Start = new()
2. G.End = new()
3. G.StartTransitions = "{ " || G.Start || " -> " || char.lexval || " -> " || G.End || " }"
4. G.EndTransitions = Nil
5. G.InnerTransitions = Nil
   

Comments, questions, concerns welcome.

Upload Complete!!!

Laughed uncontrollably as I watched Jeff Goldblum in the movie Independence Day upload a virus into the alien mother ship's host--Jeff's PowerBook displays "Negotiating With Host", then "Online With Host" followed by the Apple beep, followed by tappity-tappity as he enters about ten lines of code in two seconds, then "Uploading Virus", then a cut to a cent-com operator reporting, "Sir, he's Uploading the Virus", then the cent-com commander reporting, "Eagle One, The Package Is Being Delivered", then cut back to Jeff's PowerBook reporting "Uploading...Upload Complete!!!", and finally Jeff turning to Will Smith and saying, "The Virus Is In."

High camp.

Video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=LQ2ILkiCORo

Child Names

• Anthony Flea "Your life is more than just a read-through"
  
• Ellie
  

Our Popular Restaurants

A list:

1. Sunflower Natural Food Restaurant (Vegetarian/Vegan)
2. Lido's (American)
3. Shar-E Punjab (Indian)
4. Opa-Opa (Greek)
5. Addis Ababa (Ethiopian)
6. Thai Cottage (umm...)
7. Danielle's Creperie (French)
8. Fox and Goose (UK)
9. Hamburger Mary's (American)
10. Udupi Cafe (India)
11. Zelda's Gourmet Pizza (American)

Potential others:

1. La Boheme (French)
2. Carmelita's (Mexican-American)
3. Crepe Escape (French)
4. Rubicon Brewery (American)
5. Jack's Urban Eats (American)
6. Scott's Seafoood and Steaks (American)
7. Silver Sake
8. Pangaea Cafe (next to Vic's Ice Cream)

UPDATE, 2011-07-21:

1. Cafe Rolle
2. Ambrosia Cafe
3. Piatti Ristorante
4. Golden Bear

Radio Songs

Courtesy SomaFM.com:

Brooklyn-based Pete and J's "Sweet Cecilia" from their album "Dressed For Conversation", available online. This song reminds me of Simon and Garfunkle.

Austin, Texas-based Voxtrot's "Missing Pieces" from their 2005 EP "Raised by Wolves" on the Cult Hero Records label.

San Francisco-based Finest Dearest's "Serious" from their EP "Pacemaker" available online.

Melbourne, Australia-based Augie March's "One Crowded Hour" from their 2006 album "Moo, You Bloody Choir" on the Sony BMG Australia label.

Ergonomic Computer Environment

http://ergonomics.about.com/od/office/ss/computer_setup.htm

HelloWorld.tex

Experimenting with Donald Knuth's typesetting language TeX this evening.

Better World Club

I'm a member of one of AAA's most environmentally aware clubs, the Northern and Central California Automobile Club (the CSAA, not named NCAA for obvious reasons).

For most of the same services, including towing, rental discounts, and maps-on-demand, the Better World Club also support mass-transit and the Clean Air act.

I haven't switched yet, but they have successfully planted the seed of the idea.

Young @ Heart

Great flick: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/youngatheart/

The description "comedic tearjerker" fits. A brief review from the Sacramento News and Review's Jim Lane:

"British filmmaker Stephen Walker documents the rehearsal and performance process of the Young@Heart Chorus, a group of 24 seniors (average age 80) who tour the world with a show made up of cover versions of songs by such groups as the Clash (“Should I Stay Or Should I Go?”), the Ramones (“I Wanna Be Sedated”), Coldplay, Talking Heads and others. At first there’s an uneasy sense that Walker may be patronizing these old folks, but no—he plainly loves the group and its patient director Bob Cilman, and by the time they’re all through with us, we do, too. The movie is joyous and brimming with life, but of course, given the subject, the shadow of the Grim Reaper is never far out of camera range, and Walker shows us how they handle that, as well as how they handle the music of Allen Toussaint or Sonic Youth."

At the end of the movie, the credits report that they want to include an emotional performance of U2's One but that they can't gotten permission from the band.

Errata

Hats off to Philippe Deschamp (merci) of the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control and Igor Krassikov (Дякую) for their work on errata submissions to the latest Dragon Book.

I found an error with the book (page 528) and at first I thought the errata failed to list it--but it turns out I failed to see the link to the original errata list, which contains quite a few errors--mostly errors involving missing semi-colons, braces, extra parenthesis, and so forth.

It turns out that editions printed after Spring 2008 no longer contain the bugs on the first errata sheet--one reason that purchasing a new book might make sense, as it took me some time to go through and annotate my copy.

UPDATE: "Claudio on comp.compilers writes "But I would wait for a reprint. The first print of the 2nd edition has way too many mistakes." Yes.

UPDATE: Dr. Ullman, a co-author of the book, granted me credit for reporting an optimization error in Figure 9.9, page 594. Another student identified the error during class--I identified the photocopied handout as the figure from the book, verified the error failed to exist on the errata, and followed-up with Dr. Ullman. In fairness to the identifier, I'm attempting to figure out their name(s) so they might receive due credit.

Agent Ribbons

Purchased Sacramento-based indie duo Agent Ribbons' first album, "On Time Travel and Romance" this afternoon from R5 Records (former site of Tower Records). Low-fi and creative, we both liked it.