Lex Fridman Website

Thoughts: In Search of Dinner and Happiness

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 21:58:54 EST

Thoughts: Top 5 Entertaining Politicians

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 01:06:42 EST

These days I have a lot of trouble taking politics seriously. I do take policy debates seriously, but those usually take place outside of Washington, among academics, and usually with a strong emphasis on a historical perspective.

What goes on in Washington is a food fight televised by CNN, Fox, MSNBC, etc. The more entertaining the food fight, the higher the ratings. An entertaining politician to me is a car wreck. I enjoy watching one as much as the next guy. Here's what it takes:

Some degree of insanity

Radical ideology

Wit and willingness to use it

Bad judgment of what's appropriate to say to an audience

Long list of political and personal enemies

Based on that here are my top 5 entertaining (in a bad way) politicians:

5. Newt Gingrich

"Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods, have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works, so they have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day; they have no habit of "I do this and you give me cash," unless it is illegal."

4. Barney Frank

"Gay people have a different role than other minority groups. ... Very few black kids have ever had to worry about telling their parents that they were black."

3. Herman Cain

"We need a leader, not a reader."

2. Donald Trump

On Muammar Gaddafi: "I rented him a piece of land. ... and then I didn't let him use the land. ... I don't want to use the word `screw,' but I screwed him."

1. Sarah Palin

"Polls are for strippers and cross-country skiers"

Thoughts: Instant-Runoff Voting: Giving the Underdog a Chance

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:13:56 EST

Thoughts: The Mind is Not a Boomerang

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:12:45 EST

Thoughts: When Being Gay Was Illegal

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:39:29 EST

Research: Include Full BibTeX Entry Inside Text

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:27:43 EST

This isn't rocket science, but you can insert BibTeX entries as you go, instead of (dumping all the references at the end in a "References" section. It's useful when writing many chaotic pages of notes as you crawl through dozens of publications on a particular topic you're researching, or when making a slide presentation in Beamer.

[tex]
\usepackage{bibentry}

\begin{document}

% don't show the full list of references
\nobibliography*

% include the bibtex file
\bibliography{database}

% reference individual bibtex entry 'bla'
\bibentry{bla}

% define the style of the bibentry citation
\bibliographystyle{style}

\end{document}
[/tex]

Another way is to use the biblatex package. Note, that at least in Ubuntu, you need to biblatex doesn't come even with the full install of texlive-all and needs to be added seperately in the repository as a package of the same name.

[tex]
% 'style' can be defined as options to this command
\usepackage{biblatex}

% \jobname is the name of this file
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}

% full bibliography section if you like
\printbibliography

% 'bla' is the bibtex entry label
\fullcite{bla}

\end{document}
[/tex]

Poetry: without good reason to look up and smile

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:21:52 EST

the old train approaches
wakes up the rats, the pigeons, the roaches
to the familiar taste of urine-soaked ground
the rush of white light and god's industrial sound

people crunch closer, crossing the line
shoe laces swim on torn brown swine
we're brothers in arms, running down time
long without good reason to look up and smile

Poetry: the punchline of a dying romance

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 02:02:28 EST

watch the fingers of a trembling hand
as we both sink into our sweatpants
and take our salivary glands
to build up to the punchline of a dying romance

Research: Backward Compatibility in C++ Libraries

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:30:55 EST

Poetry: won't return the books i owe

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 23:20:50 EST

won't return the books i owe
to the people who want them back most
would like to remain the butter on their toast
and melt into the tension of their daily being

won't respond to people i love
maybe they'll wonder where i'm fleeing
maybe they'll write searching for meaning
and add a smiley after a dry but witty poke

Poetry: the hairy details on a man's head

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 15:59:19 EST

people forget, even the hairy details
on a man's head, coarse eye brows begging
to be noticed, awkwardly dragging
the conversation through memory lane.
your lips are sweet but your heart is full of pain
since nowhere will the story turn its course.
the end was waiting here from the very beginning.

Poetry: the too late goodbye

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:47:54 EST

swallow if you must the coffee as it burns the cracking tongue.
allow the meanness of travel for the too late goodbye
to make this old heart and gas tank cringe and cry
for the grand schemes that can't even make the grandkids stumble

Poetry: another bag of wrinkled skin

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:07:12 EST

god's eyes rise briefly over the cards
to greet another bag of wrinkled skin
i dare say a great mind sleeps within
but god's already checking on the river

Poetry: the stab wounds do not mean to stare

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 19:55:06 EST

people fake the juicy bits
and leave the honest bait for fools
carried out on streams of drool
into the abyss of half covered tits

it's that time of year, time of night
time to breath, unzip, and pee
hope that the answer is not "not to be"
as the pumpkin admires a penis in low light

you never know but you assume
the stab wounds do not mean to stare
your enemies will take your chair
if you dare to resume

your role, sincere or otherwise,
here, on earth, on halloween.
you are not and never were eighteen
but damn it you will die trying

Poetry: i can only take you one drunk text at a time

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:52:33 EST

i opened a two-year old cheap bottle of wine
and poured some in a cup to make a fruit fly trap.

it was your favorite wine when we were together.
perhaps if i could stand you, it would still be your favorite wine.

but i can only take you one drunk text at a time.
though in that dosage, you are almost a flower.

Poetry: the lenin of my russian revolution

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 00:41:57 EST

she began as the lenin
of my russian revolution
and ended as the stalin
of my rush to take berlin

we had signed our
war powers resolution
but that did little to avert
the escalation in our vietnam

Poetry: stuck on a comma

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 17:59:16 EST

the blink of a light-bulb
the healthy food's done
if the world were to crumble
i would miss everyone

it's cold and it's tired
when a girl's not around
to look and to wonder
where we are and where we're bound

stuck on a comma
dark coffee on my breath
trying hard not to finish
a poem with the word death

Research: WampServer vs XAMPP

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 15:50:33 EST

Research: Sorting a Sorted List in C++

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 15:14:04 EST

Research: Auto Save Files in Emacs

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 22:41:29 EST

I'm resolving to make more frequent and regular posts on this "research" blog that's so far has been just a place where I write down some basic tips and tricks that have to do with tools I use in programming (which is just one part of my research life). I'm not sure it's ever going to be more than that. I take an enormous amounts of notes offline, but never quite make the effort to convert those notes into a form that I'm comfortable making public.

Anyway, to the topic of the post... auto-save functionality in Emacs. By default, Emacs auto-saves a buffer with changes in it to the same directory as the file opened in the buffer, but adds a character such as # or ~ to the beginning or end.

This auto-savin' can be turned off with:

[code]
(setq make-backup-files nil)
[/code]

But today I turned it back on, and decided, since I use SVN anyway for versioning, that I will auto-save into the same file. This is achieved with the following:

[code]
(setq auto-save-visited-file-name t)
[/code]

Also, I turned up the rate at which Emacs auto-saves the files.

[code]
(setq auto-save-interval 20) ; twenty keystrokes
(setq auto-save-timeout 10) ; ten idle seconds
[/code]

Some useful links:

SO: controlling when emacs makes backup files