C[omp]ute

From: andrew cooke <andrew@...>

Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2015 17:17:47 -0300

These were messed up by needing to work Thur+Fri of week 8, and then starting
9 early.  Ended up feeling like I lost more than I gained.  Will try to avoid
that in future (wasn't even particularly productive).

* Read (almost all of) "A Student's Guide To Entropy"
  http://www.amazon.com/Students-Guide-Entropy-Don-Lemons/dp/1107653975
  Good, clear explanations.  The relationship between traditional and
  informational entopy was less sexy than I had hoped.  But certainly a better
  book for my needs) than "The Philosophy Of Information".

* Read Heraldo Muñoz's "The Dictator's Shadow"
  http://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Shadow-Under-Augusto-Pinochet/dp/0465002501
  Review - http://acooke.org/cute/PinochetTh0.html

* Read Mari Akasaka's "Vibrator"
  http://www.amazon.com/Vibrator-Novel-Mari-Akasaka/dp/1933368616
  Interesting view of Japan - much more "normal" than other "classic"
  Japanaese books I've read.  Recommended.

* Read most of Lorraine Justice's "Chain's Design Revolution"
  http://www.amazon.com/Chinas-Design-Revolution-Thinking-Theory/dp/0262017423
  Very little about design.  More like an intro to Chinese culture for 
  someone in middle management who needs to deal with China in some way.
  Not recommended!

* Wrote a Julia package that wraps Cairo.
  https://github.com/andrewcooke/Drawing.jl
  Still not complete, but looking good.  Lost my temper with the Julia
  people who seem to spend more time patrolling commit emails than 
  writing docs that woul dlet me avoid their "helpful comments" (there's
  also a cultural thing that ties in with AskMe that I plan to write more
  on at some point).
  http://acooke.org/cute/AnOutsider0.html
  (This package motivated by work on drawing board mentioned in last
  report - ended up getting tired of the manual repetition and wanted
  to program what I was drawing...)

* Looked into painting my bike frame.  Think it will work if I smooth the
  existing paint down without cutting through to the aluminium.  Planning
  on using light blue once back from the USA (next week off will be in
  San Francisco).

* Medical issues - turns out that the "migraine aura" a while back was
  probably an MS outbreak (inflamation and damage in the optical nerve
  of my left eye).  But one (relatively small) outbreak in 3 years is 
  not enough to change drugs, so staying w Betaferon.

Andrew