r3dux.org

When I relaunched this blog on WordPress from the ashes of its PHP-Nuke incarnation back in April 2009, it was just meant to be a place where I could throw some notes about how to go about doing things, so if I ever need to do them again it’s all documented, and if it helps anyone else out whose in the same predicament then all the better. And you know what? That strategy seems to be working out pretty well!

I don’t blog about what I had for dinner, I just post up some notes and how-to’s, along with some pictures and music, and maybe some life related stuff if I think it might be interesting to others, or if I just want to keep a record of what’s going on. And now, 31 months after launch, I’ve reached seven figures worth of hits (not including my own visits) according to WordPress Stats – Woo-Hoo!! Even Google Analytics‘ stats (which I’ve generally found to be lower than the WordPress Stats figures) shows just over a million page views – so maybe I really hit the magic number a couple of days back, but either way I’m absolutely psyched that I’ve managed to get to this point!

As for traffic sources, a large part of that has been driven by StumbleUpon throwing visitors my way, which is something I would never have guessed would happen. When I started up I thought the majority traffic would come from search or links in forums, and I do get a fair amount of that, but the real figures, all the massive spikes you can see below? All from StumbleUpon…

All this isn’t to say that the 1,000,000 page views means 1,000,000 articles read – I’m sure at least half of it all has been people just clicking through Stumble!/Stumble!/Stumble! – and if you look at the Analytics data top-left you can see some interesting trends such as with higher traffic comes lower Time-on-Site (as a result of stumbling here, and not being interested!) – but at least some of it, maybe 10% to 15%, has been directed search, i.e. people looking for something, and finding it. And that’s still a large number! Even skipping over the outliers you can see a definite upward trend of views against time…

So where next? Onward and upward, I guess! I’ll try to post interesting, useful things – and I’ll see if anyone reads them! There’s a whole heap of JSP/Servlet coding to be done over the coming months, as well as trying to put the Stanford AI knowledge to use, and no doubt I’ll be adding a whole heap of random that I couldn’t possibly predict right now. So yeah… it’s all very build it and they will come

To wrap up, I’d just like to give my thanks to everyone who knows and supports me, whether family or friends, and to anyone who’s found or learnt or enjoyed something I’ve put up on this site: This exists for you, whoever and wherever you are.

And finally, the only song I could possibly place in a post like this…

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2n2ov

More hits than playing blackjack with a deck of twos! Love it! [ lyrics ]

That’s just astonishing… wow!

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Explanation

I signed up for the advanced stream of the Stanford AI class (where there’s homework and exams), and it’s brilliant – I love the concept, I love the ambition, I love the teachers (except for Sebastian’s 9′s looking like g’s), I love the format and the content intrigues me no end – it’s all awesome. Hell, I love the price, too! Where else can you get access to truly world class lecturers, giants in their field, without paying a single cent?!

But as much as I love the price, I had no idea about the cost… I just don’t think I have the kind of time needed to do the course any justice, not on top of everything else, and not without losing my sanity and my marriage. So I’m going to continue with the course as if I’m doing the basic no-homework stream, in the only time that I have available to give it. I might give the homeworks a shot, but I’m not going to worry about it anymore. If I fail, then I fail, and no harm has come.

No matter how I do the course I’ll still have learnt a lot, I’ll still have enjoyed it (in fact, I’m likely to enjoy it a lot more with the pressure off) and it’ll still have been worthwhile, whether I get a signed piece of paper or not. But I’m not going to push myself to the brink over it, because as much as I’d like to have that piece of paper, right now the cost is more than I’m willing to pay.

All power to anyone in a similar situation who’s decided to tough it out for the long haul – You can do it! You can do it! You can do it!

And if you can’t then don’t even worry about it – maybe we’ll both do it again next year =D

Update: I managed to stick it out in the end, and finished with an overall grade of 91.7%, putting me in the “top 50%” of the class. I say top 50% in quotes because that’s the top 50% of the 20,000 or so students that completed the course. 150,000 started it. You do the math However you work it, it was a fantastic course, and one of the best things I’ve done in my entire life. Highly recommended.

Some feelgood indie from Brisbane up-and-comers The Jungle Giants I heard on Triple J earlier. Reminds me a bit of Vampire Weekend.

Sunny music for sunny days…

As part of my Ph.D. experience, I’m presenting and have a poster at the upcoming University of Ballarat research conference on the 3rd and 4th of November, and finished my poster the other day. The idea is that all the research students, whether you have results to display and discuss or whether you’re still at the proposal stage like me can have something to show and talk about with people, whether they’re interested in your specific field, or just your idea.

I knocked it together using a combination of Inkscape and trial and error, in full 300dpi for printing on glossy A1 – and when I saw the actual poster today I’ve got to say that was really pleased with how it turned out. As long as it can be read from about 6ft away, or at least most of it, you’ll get people to have a look, and maybe discuss it with you, as well as offer ideas, opinions and maybe criticisms if they feel strongly enough about it. I think the phrase for that is frank academic discussion

Anyways, I thought I’d put up the poster to a wider audience, and ask you – what do you think?

Update: I won 2nd place best poster and 1st place best presentation! Woo-hoo! Show me the book vouchers! =P

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Image Credits (will be shown alongside poster at conference! Sorry I couldn’t fit them all on the poster!):
Retro graphics image: Dire Straits – Money for Nothing © Warner Bros., 1986
Modern graphics image: Jeff Patton – iray interior test © Jeff Patton, 2011
Retro keyboard and mouse: No source author found, IBM products.
Modern keyboard and mouse + Kinect sensor: Stock product shots © Microsoft.
Kinect structured light grid on model: Dancing with Invisible Light by Audrey Penven, 2010 CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Capture from Zdenek Kalal’s TLD Demonstration Video : © Zdenek Kalal
View from Kinect (depth/RGB) : View from OpenNI Kinect Test application, unknown source, 2011
FreeCAD screenshot : Screenshot by JDurston, SourceForge MediaWiki, 2011.
Colourful Kinect grafiti : Kinect graffiti application, © Jean-Christophe Naour, 2011.