Dan Mayer's Blog

Todays random thought: "You can't be funny without taking risks."

I’m in a slump
I’m such a chump
I should have known better than to let my dreams take hold.

It’s been to long
And I was wrong
The mistake was mine and I have to live with it
.....

That is all of that i will post. It continues on but shouldn't be this public. Anyways I recieved an email has twisted my thoughts. On the plus side i also recieved a different email from an old friend who is now back in contact.

I will have pictures of our party and 4th of july stuff up soon. It was a good time and i have seen alot of friends in the last couple days and it has been nice.

I hve been reading the fountainhead and i just came across this quote that i thought was particularly interesting. Perhaps it is true.

"It has been said that men develop brains when they have failed in everything else."
-Ayn Rand

I need to add the following features into news shaker to make it more usefull:

Done (has an X if finished):
X * Delete category and all related sites
X * Delete category place all remaining sites in another category
X * Ability to have one category be a sub category of another
* 2 level categorization (related to the sub category idea above)
X * Automated "real world" testing with accuracy for all categories after a new model build. Should consist of 20 unseen and unmodeled sites that are hand categorized and then have them categorized.
X * A way to save the results from the real world testing in the database and display them.
* A way to post articles that aren't links but are actually html files into the system. (This also allows visitors to view this file.)
X * ability for people to vote for a file that is in the wrong category to be recategorized
X * Increased categorization speed
* Start a test from a new UID and then track where all the results go and view each result individually.
* Making sure that two of the same sites are never added to the database
* Checking and updating sites and getting rid of no longer existant ones.
X * Ability for users to report errors and admins to view them and delete
X * Ability for users to request categories and admins to view them and delete
X * Ability for administrator to recategorize based on users votes to recategorize
On another note i have increased accuracy on testing to the 94% overall accuracy on known documents and i am getting and average of 25% for unknown documents, which isn't horrible but i would like to do much better. I have now began to study and look into a transductive approach that i might begin to use, depending on the results of the next bits of testing.

Well we did our dress up dinner and it was a great time. Here is me and my roommates one of the last times we will be together looking really spiffy. This is the first time i got to were my suit anywhere and it was really cool and fun. Yeaa. I think the next time i will get to wear my suit is at a wedding early in august. Cool peace out...

I wanted you to see
the way i feel right now
i wanted to share how great i feel
i wanted to make you understand

If you could feel what i would
you wouldn't be worried
you wouldn't be concerned
you would know

I want you to see
the way i feel
i want to share how i feel
i want to make you understand

We just sent in apps for a cool looking new place. Lets hope the land lord doesn't screw us over again so we could start planning on where we are going to end up next. It will be by a golf course which is cool because then i can go to the driving range and whack the crap out of balls when i am bored.

Tonight we are supposed to do dinner with scott as it is his last night here in colorado. Scott we will miss you good luck in all your future endevors and keep in touch or i will have to track you down and give you a good beating and the military doesn't like when civilians track their men and attack them. Also since i haven't mentioned it here congrats to Scott and Amy for getting engaged.

Tonight is poker night it should be a good time. I have really enjoyed playing more poker lately especially with people that are more serious about playing poker. It makes for a good time. A cheap evening when compared to the bars or dave and busters or something like that. I think tonight should be fun, simple, and easygoing.

Last night was the last night I will see scott for who knows how long. He moved to boston for probably 3 years. I am sure we will keep in touch through email and such, but it is still upsetting to know there goes another friend that i can't just give a call and see soon. Another friend spread far away. It seems that everyone ends up far in the distance. You always meet new people, but some of the best end up far away and you can never truly find someone equal. Scott I wont find someone that equals you, your a great guy good luck.

Poker night is tonight. To keep me busy and in sight. For that is the way to be when your own mind is so confusing.

Well alot has happened since my last post. Lets go through day by day:

Thursday: Poker night as i posted before about. What i didnt post about was that I won 4 dollars at poker night. Since it was 5 dollar poker that isnt bad at all it means i almost doubled my money. Yeaaa it was a good time.

Friday: I went to denver and partied it up with Jesse, Matt, Krista and some of her friends. We prepartied at jesse's new apartment (which is really cool). Then we went out to the bars and had a good time. It was alot of fun and good to get to know how to get to jesses and how close we actually were to the bars downtown.

Saturday: Signed my lease for a new place. I now know that i have somewhere to live next year. It is out by the flat irons golf course so it is far but it seems like it will be a cool place. Then i went to boulder creek with robin, carrie, and rene to play fetch with robin's dog and just walk around. It was such a beautiful day and it was fun, then i joined them for dinner at robins that evening. I finally finished out the night by going observing with Champ and saw some cool star clusters and the like.

Sunday: sincce Robin had mentioned tubing on sunday i really pushed for it. Robin, Carrie, and myself went tubing down the colorado creek. We started outside of boulder county and went to the boulder library. It was awesome. We were in some pretty hard core stuff for a little while then got to a nice easy lazy river kind of thing for the ending. It was great. It was up there as one of my best days of summer (which there has been quite a few good days.).

Now i am at work trying to improve some results and pondering over all the though created by my eventful pack last few days. Now i guess i need to start coming up with stuff to do this week huh? hehe

Well I post this picture because it was fun... and a fun night. I how ever post it because today was a hard day. So take what you may, think what you might, and I shall not sleep well tonight.

if you believe me...
if you belive me...
then you know i will be fine...
if you feel me if you feel me....
then you should worry if i've died.
if you know me if you know me...
there is probably little you can do
if you know me if you know me
there is nothing to do...
I will be here...
I will be here...
cause i promised forever to you...
i will be here...
i will be here...
cause i promised forever to you...
i will miss this
i will miss this
because i have left my thoughts behind
i will miss this
i wil miss this
because i understand my mind
each pain i take
each pain i take
grows me stronger tonight
each thought i have
each thought i have
makes me stronger tonight
i will feel this
i will feel this
as i cry one night
i will remember you
i will remember you
as i think tonight
i will be reborn
i will be reborn
sometime after your thoughts
i will miss you
i will miss you
but i will find something anew
i will miss you
i will miss you
but your not the end of my life
i will miss you
i will miss you
but it is not my end tonight.

I am going to warped tour today. It should be awesome. I always have a great time at warped tour and I come home and have wonderfull sleep that is really part sleep and part passing out from exhaustion. I will be looking forward to all the good bands i know and all the little bands i have never heard of. I will also enjoy the many beatiful women wearing next to nothing. I mean you really can't complain about that.

rock on new york. rock on chicago. pork the other white meat.

Today I am collecting all of the source and all of the data from News Shaker. I am preparing to move everything to a new machine that is on a live connection that everyone from the outside can get to. I will then continue to add the rest of the features mentioned below. The last week has been used to add these features, while making little to no process on improving the results of the learning. I am going to talk with a few people about how to improve the learning before working with that part of the project to much more. Overall most of the code seems quite stable enough but alot needs to be done on the user interface to make it useable by normal people that aren't accustom to odd design and testing set ups. It must be cleaned up before it could ever really be used.

Well if you haven't gotten a chance to see my movie now is probably the time.

After about 2 weeks the website hosting Dead Awake will no longer exist. So i will have to say adios to those who have seen the film. Thanks to all those invovled and all those who supported me. Thanks to everyone who actually watched it. It was a fun little experiment in life and I hope to make another film sometime, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards for at least a little while. I was hoping to make a film this summer but various things occured and I wasn't in the mood to try to put that kind of dedication towards a project at this time.

It was a fun ride while it lasted. It looks like about 3,500 people have visited the site during the last year. Most of which were all during about a 1 month time when i actually promoted it online for a little while. If you have any last comments or feedback about it i guess you can leave them right here.

adios my little Dead Awake movie you will be missed.

don't know what I am talking about see my movie here.

Well I leave town and will be out of contact for awhile. I should have a good time. I am headed out to one of the virgin islands and I get to play beach volley ball, scuba dive, and enjoy good food. Hopefully I wont be to crazy while I am gone, but come back with some fun stories. It should be an odd trip since it is only with my brother and mother, for the first time. When I get back it is going to be busy busy busy until school starts. I need to move right away when I return. I have to set up a couple of meetings when I return. We have to paint and clean the hell out of my current place. I have to finish learning .net compact framework so I can write a few applications. I have to start applying for jobs.

Oh well I guess all of the stuff I will have to do will keep me busy and out of trouble. Which might be a good thing. Who knows. Anyways everyone have a good week while I am gone, and try not to burn anything to the ground.