Leave me alone, Twitter bots!

I have encountered Twitter bots that have either followed me, retweeted (RT'd) my tweet, or mentioned/replied my tweet. If I correctly understand how they work, these bots search tweets for buzz words.

For example, a_transformers RT'd my tweet about a Transformers joke (the one I shared in an earlier post). It's obviously a bot: it searches and retweets every five minutes (look at the timestamps on its posts).

A couple of days ago, I posted about emailing Microsoft regarding Windows 7. Then, I immediately get followed by these accounts virtually simultaneously.



A more clever bot is shakesp. It searches the Twitterverse for the expression "To [some string] or not to [some string]".

And then there's the marketing creeps.

I could make my tweets protected but then they wouldn't show up on the sidebar. I'll just block the bots, then.

Transformers 2!

I liked the robot fighting scenes in Transformers 2. They were awesome! (Nevermind the story. It was the same way with Speed Racer: the racing scenes were exhilirating but the story itself was so-so).

Optimus Prime + Jetfire = imba! The fusion totally dominated Fallen (unimaginative name, btw), much so that it felt like cheating. It was similar to using a cheat code or a Gameshark in order to beat the final boss in a video game.

Most memorable line was: "I am directly under the enemy's scrotum." LOL

Finally, let me share a Transformers math joke c/o joshz in this post on the xkcd forums. :-)

Programming stupidity

I wrote a program in Scilab that computes the (theoretical) bond price of a bond given the required parameters. After successfully doing that, I tried writing a function to solve for ytm (bond yield daw sabi ni John Hull) using bisection method. Hindi gumagana. Ang tagal kong pinag-isipan kung ano mali. Tweak-tweak ng code. Ayaw pa rin. Nag-manual bisection method pa ako sa Scilab console. Matagal yun kasi linear lang yung convergence ng method. Huhu :-(

Tapos, ang kulang lang pala ay yung expression for root guesses:

p = 0.5*(a+b)

STUPID!

Room cleaning

Nagtambak ang papel sa kwarto ko. Four years' worth of readings. Kaya nilinis ko. Tiningnan ko kung ano yung magagamit na scratch paper: Yung walang sulat sa isang side at kasinglaki ng short bond (o mas malaki pa). Itatapon ko yung hindi pumasa sa criteria na yan.


Paper to be discarded



To be used as scratch paper

Yan pa lang yung nasa drawers ko. Meron pa sa cabinet. Hehe. Pero ok lang. Marami akong masusulatan ng math stuff.

Taylor combo

Reading about the Taylor series expansion of

.

This, while listening to Taylor Swift.

A happy combination. :-)

This week: June 22-27

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen! But I might postpone viewing until the following week. There's sure to be huge crowds at the movie houses and I don't like huge crowds.

In related news, Wikipedia apparently has the plot of the movie. Don Michael gave me the link.

Our brief YM conversation:

[caption id="attachment_40" align="alignnone" width="309" caption="Don Michael sending me a link to Transformers 2 movie plot"][/caption]

Hindi ko bubuksan yan bago panoorin yung pelikula!

DLT moved our derivatives class to MWF. More screwing around with our schedule. As a result, (1) I don't get to eat free lunch at home. (2) I'll have to wait three hours between classes on MWF. Whatever.

Prof Roden David is set to lecture for a month. It's supposed to be a continuation of Prof Kaber's lectures on numerical methods in solving PDEs. So this should be fun. And I'm not being sarcastic here.

BTW, was Roden David really a former Ateneo basketball player? I haven't found out yet. I'm afraid to ask him.

"Sorry na!" moment

I was talking with my friend over YM about flu treatment. He produced a "sorry na!" moment:

me: flu
me: magpa-doktor na raw pag
me: Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath Pain or pressure in the chest or abdomen Dizziness Confusion Severe or persistent vomiting
me: hehe
me: ano ung confusion?
Julius: nalilito??
Julius: haha
Julius: nagpadoktor na ko no.. haa
me: pag sinisipon ka
me: tapos may test sa math
me: at nalito ka
me: saan mo iaattribute ung confusion? hehe
Julius: sa sipon
Julius: given normal circumstances hindi ako malilito sa math exam wooooooooohhhoooooooooooo.

Sorry na!

Sudden change in class schedule

So both sections of AMF 240 have been moved to TTh 9-1030 and 1330-1500 (from the original 1330-1430 and 1430-1530). Inconvenience.

I understand that under the original schedules, Doc Mara would have five hours of classes on MWFs, which would be very tiring. Also, I get what the department said about us being full-time students. But abruptly changing class times when the semester has already started is wrong. Personally, I have already submitted to the Manila Observatory (what I thought was) my final schedule for the sem. I did work around the class times they set in the first place. I'll have to talk to the MO people to change it.

Looks like I'll just have to suck it up.

In other news, I plan on not attending the next class for AMF 280. The teacher will just review measure theory. Meh. I'll just do self-review.

Coming up this week (June 15-20)

May pasok na!

I would call my class schedule a good one. No breaks between classes; allows me to avoid rush hour (papasok at pauwi). I have to wake up very early on Tuesdays and Thursdays, though. But that's okay. Also, we have class on Saturdays: Practitioner's Seminar. I don't know what to expect in that class.

Also this week, final interview with the Focal Mechanism Research Project team. I hope I get accepted. Nakakakaba. Huhu. I have to bring some serious math fu.

BTW, birthday nina:
1. Nino Mark today
2. Jason tomorrow
3. Jose Rizal on the 19th
4. Ann on the 20th

LaTeX on Blogger

Trying out on Blogger! Yey! But it's not native on Blogger. I had to use this Greasemonkey script and avail of codecogs Latex service. Not an entirely clean and simple solution, but it's okay.

The Black-Scholes PDE


I should write here the boundary conditions, but I'm lazy. Hehe

LaTeX is awesome!

Trying out LaTeX

The Black-Scholes PDE:

$latex \frac{\partial c}{\partial t} + rS \frac{\partial c}{\partial S} + \frac{1}{2} \sigma^2 S^2 \frac{\partial^2 c}{\partial S^2}=rc$

Wow! This is awesome!