Angela J. Hill

The big day has finally arrived. The Gabriel McClelland Show with Gabriel McClelland will begin airing Thursday mornings from 6 to 9 (Pacific) on KZSU 90.1 FM. And you can listen to a live stream online. AND, I will be joining Gabe for his inaugural broadcast. Topics may include but will not be limited to:

• The search for a formula to predict prime numbers
• Lasagna
• Other cheese-based casserole dishes
• Pluto
• Relative merits of assorted hair colors
• Legos
• Kathy Griffin’s My Life on the D-List

Kayaking turns out to be awesome. Mostly because you can get so close to really big ships that you’re actually under them. Also, you can kayak to a bar, have a drink, and kayak back. Great success. On the downside, was really trying not to drop my camera in the water, therefore fewer photos taken than maybe would have been otherwise. BUT, photos taken in my memory: priceless.

And after kayaking, Bernal Heights at sunset.

All finished. So simple compared to many of the others. I will be painting this number over and over, I think.

First I accidentally destroyed the one I was working on. I tried to do something with a medium and to make a long story short it did not work out the way I’d hoped at ALL. At first the glossiness brought out the depth of the colors but eventually it completely obscured them. Well, you live, you learn. I even tried to fix it, to no avail. It looked even worse afterward, like a preschool art project, and not in a good way.

Then I thought, I’m just going to do this all over again with a different canvas. Something short and wide. So this happened. The paint is still wet and reflecting the lights (since it’s the middle of the night) so a finished photo will come later.

Then I thought, well, if I could do that, why can’t I fix the other one, too? We’ll see when it dries if it worked or not, but regardless I think it gave me a couple of interesting photos.

…by getting the joke in this xkcd comic: http://xkcd.com/599/.

Thank you, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers! Currently in my reading rotation–it’s the bigraphy of Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdös. He was an author of about a bazillion papers and proofs and was known for a few things in particular: 1, being a great collaborator, 2, the elegance of his thinking, and 3, his itinerant lifestyle–he traveled all the time and would often show up on the doorsteps of fellow mathematicians with the pronouncement, “My brain is open.” He’d stay long enough to work on a problem together and then move on to the next place/idea. I like that guy.

Oh, and the joke is basically that mathematicians play their own sort of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game with Erdös because of his prolific collaborative papers, using what’s referred to as an “Erdös Number”. Erdös himself has an Erdös Number of 0; immediate collaborators have an Erdös Number of 1; those who collaborated with those collaborators have an Erdös Number of 2, and so on. It’s been said that 90% of the world’s active mathematicians have an Erdös Number lower than 8.

Making a list of stuff I can do to feel better the other day, I realized that it makes me feel very good to think about the number 7440. I find it very soothing. It’s so smooth…and the color is beautiful, blue, both bright and subdued at the same time. With inner motion but outer stillness.

So I’m painting it. I think this will be the first of potentially several paintings of this number. This is just phase 1. I intend to fill the numbers in with white and do a heavy layer of gloss gel over it.

Given that I love Jan Saudek, and am now obsessed with Josef Koudelka, it’s not surprising that I’m enjoying Josef Sudek a lot as well. When I saw this:

…I thought, hey, that reminds me of a photo I took several years ago from way up in the tower of St. Vitus’s cathedral at the Prague castle.

And then I thought, hey, it reminds me of that because it’s the same thing.

…now come in gold as well as silver. I heart the stamp. I don’t heart cutting out the card stock and doing the stamping, but I do heart the results. With tonight’s cutting/stamping extravaganza, the card drought has officially ended.

I’ve loved this song for years, and I think it’s very under-played. Lately I’m pretending to be Freddie Green, but on the keyboard. I’m not a singer, but exceptions can be made.

…and here’s Woody Allen singing it, in Everyone Says I Love You, which just happens to be the only Woody Allen movie I really like. Actually I also liked Vicky Christina Barcelona, but that’s really not germane to this post.

Let’s talk about web analytics. After all, I am a Math Detective. An International Math Detective.

One mysterious thing that comes up again and again is Direct Traffic. Technically, it’s anything that doesn’t have any information in the referrer field of the request. In theory it accounts only for people who type your URL into their browser, or arrive via a bookmark. In practice, there are a LOT of other ways for the referrer to get stripped from a request. I keep looking around for these lists, so I’m compiling my own here. I reserve the right to update this when I find more.

1. URL typed directly into the browser
2. Visit came from a bookmark
3. Came via link in an email–though if it’s webmail, the webmail domain will show up as a referrer
4. Came from a link in a document
5. The origin page is secure (https) and your page is not (http)
6. The link to your site was via javascript or Flash, and the viewer was using IE
7. The link came from a page behind a proxy or firewall that strips referrers (like an intranet)
8. The visitor set their browser to strip out referrer information
9. Another site is calling your content via an iFrame
10. Some of your site’s pages aren’t tagged, and the visit came from one of those (referrer traffic from your own domain may show up as direct traffic)

So, the question becomes, how do you figure out which of these is applicable? Here are some ideas:

1. In Google, search for “link:www.yourdomain.com” to get a list of links pointing to your site (as indexed by Google. Research those to see if any of these options apply.
2. If there was a sudden increase/decrease in direct traffic, look at your referrers report for a corresponding sudden decrease/increase. Site technology on a major referrrer may have changed.
3. Review your New vs. Returning visitors percentage. In theory, people who have bookmarked you should always look like returning visitors (unless they’re deleting cookies). If your domain isn’t immediately guessable by someone that’s never visited, then theoretically most direct traffic should be returning. If the numbers don’t match up, there may be other forces at play.

I am obsessed with this photograph, and now with Josef Koudelka himself.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I’m reading some short works of Richard Feynman. This is the conclusion of his talk entitled “What Is and What Should Be the Role of Scientific Culture in Modern Society” which was given to an audience of scientists in 1964.

What then is the meaning of the whole world? We do not know what the meaning of existence is. We say, as the result of studying all of the views that we have had before, we find that we do not know the meaning of existence; but in saying that we do not know the meaning of existence, we have probably found the open channel–if we will allow only that, as we progress, we leave open opportunities for alternatives, that we do not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth, but remain always uncertain–[that we] “hazard it”. The English, who have developed their government in this direction, call it “muddling through,” and although a rather silly, stupid sounding thing, it is the most scientific way of progressing. To decide upon the answer is not scientific. In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar–ajar only. We are only at the beginning of the development of the human race; of the development of the human mind, of intelligent life–we have years and years in the future. It is our responsibility not to give the answer today as to what it is all about, to drive everybody down in that direction and to say: “This is a solution to it all.” Because we will be chained then to the limits of our present imagination. We will only be able to do those things that we think today are the things to do. Whereas, if we leave always some room for doubt, some room for discussion, and proceed in a way analogous to the sciences, then this difficulty will not arise…”

This explains how I feel about any endeavour that attempts to give finite, unquestionable, permanent answers to anything. At times this is at odds with my dramatic nature and general desire to make bold statments.

I’m really into this Tricky album, Maxinquaye, right now. Yes, it’s from 1995. If it was remastered it would sound like it was from last week.

Today feels good. Much better than other days this week. I’m thinking I can attribute that to the jacket. In the immortal words of my friend Jesper, “…so when do the other astronauts arrive?”

This spacesuit includes:

• Skirt I made from drapery fabric from Calico Corners
• Shoes given to me by Katie when she realized they were no longer cool (they’re Nike Air heels! There are air cushions in the soles! It’s like they’re FROM THE FUTURE)
• “Meh” t-shirt, a birthday gift from Vivi
• Awesome shiny leather jacket I got at, believe it or not, THE GAP for like $30
• A wallet chain, worn as a necklace (come to think of it, I think that came from Katie as well)
• Iridescent leather cuff bracelet I made
• Silver/grey drusy ring
• Glasses (with no prescription) I got in Tokyo
• Pink hair–can we count that? Why not.