2. "Mechanism design" is sometimes called reverse game theory (see WIkipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design) Could this help my earlier policy design problems?

OK, and a 3rd.... when an agent needs to change their strategy (maybe due to a phase transition caused by the 80/20rule) then pattern matching is involved because this is what helps the agent know when to change, when they detect the new pattern. It's all coming together!!!

Swoogle

I wanted to adjust a setting on my AnyLogic 6 for Mac OS X. To do this, I had to go into the AnyLogic Preferences screen.

So, I went into the AnyLogic menu at the top of my screen then --> Preferences and nothing happened. I closed all my other windows and tried to figure out where the heck my Preferences window went. It was gone! I googled with nothing helpful.

Finally, I found that if you go under Tools --> there is ANOTHER Preferences option, and this one worked.

I think that Apple has documentation on how applications should work with OS X. I suspect this is a convention imposed by Apple but not recognized by AnyLogic. Apple thought that AnyLogic would put their Preferences screen under the AnyLogic menu (because that's where most OSX applications put their Preferences windows) but AnyLogic didn't do that, they put it under Tools.

Anyway, works now.

The whole reason I wanted to get into Preferences was because the Code Completion feature wasn't working on my AnyLogic. (I got a new computer so I had a new AnyLogic installation, and was trying to make the settings work how I'm used to.)

I figured out that my code completion wasn't working because it was set to Alt + Space instead of Control + Space.

Wheee!

http://www.slideshare.net/domenicdenicola/callbacks-promises-and-coroutines-oh-my-the-evolution-of-asynchronicity-in-javascript

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6182028/how-to-return-an-array-from-a-javascript-facebook-api-request

This one is awesome, too: It speaks EXACTLY to my "era", gently guiding me from early 00's technology into modern times...
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-ajaxintro2/

I found out about this article because I am subscribed to a blog called No, Seriously, What About Teh Menz? which I enjoy :).

I love the combination of beautiful piano and heavy guitars in Cycle of Silence.

Anyway, this morning I was getting the SMTP error, "No STARTTLS command has been given."

I was like, um, dude, I am doing this:
props.put("mail.smtp.starttls.enable", "true");

But then the error went away when I deleted mail.jar from my build path, and made sure the path only contained mailapi.jar and smtp.jar. Go figure!!!

I'm having one of those days where I find this hilarious. Broken images! *snicker*

Look at all those little X icons scattered around my blog! Like sprinkles! Oh, I know: Error glitter!

Even though Apple sent me plenty of notices that they were going to change their hosting ( dot Mac or iCloud or whatever the latest services are called) but I didn't figure out this would mean I should change my links on my website.

Anyway, I'm planning to fix it. In the meantime, it kind of looks like renovations around here!

Until I figure that out, and as I focus on learning Hibernate, here's my collection of Hibernate links!

http://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/orm/3.3/reference/en/html/tutorial.html#tutorial-firstapp

This one is JPA, not hibernate, but related:
http://openjpa.apache.org/builds/1.2.3/apache-openjpa/docs/jpa_overview_persistence.html

I'd never heard of Procedural Rhetoric before I clicked into Gail's blog, where she links to Ian Bogost. I am super interested in the implementation details of Procedural Rhetoric because I want to know if some of the approaches are similar to what I've been gathering for my work on pedagogical modelling. Here's an old entry that kind of explains where I am on that: Strategy and Process.

However, I think I need to do a better job of articulating my findings. I've still got Anita Sarkeesian's videos on my brain, and how well she can articulate concepts and present an argument. I aspire to be able to explain my thoughts and ideas like her -- she's a great role model!

Each video describes a way of portraying women in TV, movies, books, comics, games, etc -- basically any kind of work.

Trope #1 - The Manic Pixie Dream Girl
Trope #2 - Women in Refrigerators
Trope #3 - The Smurfette Principle
Trope #4 - The Evil Demon Seductress
Trope #5 - The Mystical Pregnancy
Trope #6 - The Straw Feminist

Having seen these, now as I read books and watch movies and play video games, instead of having feelings of being "glossed over" but not being able to explain it, I can drop my book and say "Ha! That author subscribed to the Smurfette trope!". The reason I feel yucky is not because there's something wrong with me, it's because the authors are subscribing to these tropes.

This video series has helped me strengthen my perspective. When I see these tropes in most modern works, it's like reading a book that was written 200 years ago when "they didn't know better", and you feel kind of sorry for them and their small, limited views.

The problem is that there are still tons of folks today who still subscribe to these tropes. Let's raise some awareness and extinguish that shit.

I just learned about this site on the AnyLogic newsletter -- this looks AWESOME and may satisfy my ravenous cravings for examples of simulation models!!!

http://www.runthemodel.com/

The first time I heard it was from Xeni Jardin, when she said,
"I ragequit this article like, 10 times, and couldn't get past that awful opening line." in reference to David Streitfeld's New York Times article, "Lawsuit Shakes Foundation of a Man’s World of Tech". (This is not a joke, the first sentence of this article is actually: "MEN invented the Internet." Way to gloss over the existence of all the women whose work has also contributed to the existence of the Internet!)

I had a similar experience when I picked up a book on game theory and was slapped in the face with the author's presentation that women are not the ones doing game theory, they are the sex objects who serve to distract the game theorist, who is of course, male. I totally ragequit that book.

This happened AGAIN when I picked up A Game of Thrones and read the first page. One of the characters said something to shame breastfeeding. As a breastfeeding mother, I ragequit this book. I can understand that the book is FICTION and it's just something a character said, not something the author themselves actually believe. But, was it really necessary for the author to shame breastfeeding to accomplish whatever goal they had for weaving this part of the story? I don't know. I'm going to pick up the book and try again sometime soon.

But it's cool to have a word for this now. :) Ragequit.

I predict that some people would say that if you are ragequitting all the time, you are being too sensitive. But that's a mistake. In fact, discrimination is so rampant that everyone is just used to it!!! Since you see so many people ragequitting, it shows how far away our society actually is from equal treatment of everyone.

Several months ago, I treated myself and bought my very own copy of Probabilistic Graphical Models: Principles and Techniques by Daphne Koller and Nir Friedman. When I got it, of course I read thru the table of contents and delightfully skimmed through the book and figured out what I knew already (very little!) and what I did not know yet (most of the book!)

Anyway, this is what makes me happy: I was reading through somebody's work today and I observed that a discussion they had about the nature of human knowledge could be clarified with some analysis a la Russell and James (see previous blog entry, Cognitive Realism & Cognitive Relativism)

Then, I read a little further and noticed they had implemented an algorithm in a certain way, and I wanted to compare their way with a more general way (according to what I assumed I would take in an undergrad course), and so I pulled out the Koller and Friedman book, and I found what I wanted to find. While I was there, I browsed around the book again and some of the other pages jumped out at me, so I read them. The book speaks to me differently as months pass! Different things jump out.

This meandering, this reading and writing, this pushing and being pushed by knowledge is very enjoyable, and rare. It's like the whole universe of books and knowledge just wants to be EXPERIENCED. And that's what I'm doing. I'm "doing" the knowledge on my bookshelf by mixing it with my own thoughts.

This makes me deeply happy.

I also feel really lucky because most people in the world don't have access to books like I do, or the spare time to be able to read them, or a healthy body that is not preoccupied with hunger or illness or other physical challenges preventing them from enjoying intellectual things.