Onmyouji and Life Lesson Coincidence

In my experience, I notice the more I learn the more I learn. In a less abstract way, I notice that the more I take in as experience the more I notice it come up in daily life; which makes sense due to probability. Let me give you an example of a nice coincidence that happened to me today.

One of my favorite Japanese movies is Onmyouji. It’s the telling of a small portion of the life of Abe no Seimei, and court magician/astrologer/priest guy. I put this movie on today because in a past post I was complaining about my lack of commitment to Japanese. As I put the movie on, I remembered a nice little verb in the Japanese language that is used to help people not give up on their current objective. It’s nothing fancy like a parable; it’s just “don’t give up.” Anywho, I started looking for printable images to hang up on the wall to keep me motivated and came across a nice one that said “don’t give up, don’t rush, and don’t over-do it” (my poor translation). I thought it was great and looked very Japanese, so I printed it up. As I was printing it a specific scene came on in the movie that perfectly depicted this exact saying.

Abe no Seimei was summoned to release a demon out of a gourd in the courtyard. The gourd was implied to have been put there by a curse or maybe it was an omen. After Abe no Seimei had materialized the curse/omen into a snake, he set it down and let it start slithering away. It slithered very slowly and Abe no Seimei knew it would take a while to follow it to where it was going to go, but he didn’t give up, he didn’t get impatient, and he didn’t try to hurry along the snake. There was dialog during this portion with another peer of his, but I thought just the walk itself was a powerful scene, and the actor playing Abe no Seimei (野村 萬斎 Nomura Mansai) displayed how those three qualities were inherent in the character.

Here’s the movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0355857/

Here’s some info on Abe no Seimei: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abe_no_Seimei

The verb-form for don’t give up is あきらめない (akiramenai)

the link to the printable image is: http://userdisk.webry.biglobe.ne.jp/006/173/05/N000/000/000/P3110152.jpg

Achievement Unlocked: Coulomb’s Law

Today, I mark the day I received full confidence in figuring out the relations of charged particles. The individual steps in the computation of the forces of charged particles is relatively simple (relative to the understanding of basic vector algebra, geometry and trigonometry), but I had a lot of trouble conceptualizing the math, as is normal for me.
Fortunately, this mental deficiency generally means I get a greater feeling of accomplishment concerning what others would consider daily epiphanies. It feels good, and it makes me excited.

This is only in math/physics however, and with those peaks have been valleys of depression when I think about the love I have for languages. It tortures me that I spend so much time with this mistress when my loyalty should be to what I’ve loved since I was a child. It pains me to think I will now take another path toward my future; the divergence feels dirty to me.

With time comes change, and we have to embrace it. Somewhere inside of me wishes that I had a confident understanding of how to tackle languages, and with that be able to pursue what I first set out to do with stoicism. To counteract this feeling, I keep a laundry list of who I am so that it cannot define me. With that and a bit of childish justification, the majority of the time it doesn’t bother me; yet I still write about it.

I have pushed aside programming a bit because of this fascination with electricity (brought about by the Christmas gift given to me by my fiancee), but I will work through the rest of the Java book I have for the next month until school starts again. I think I should be able to finish the Java book, and maybe half of the MIT course on Electricity and Magnetism. Maybe if I just put some Japanese on in the background while studying I won’t feel so bad, haha.

Anywho, today is a good day because I have a good understanding of a fundamental physical law. I will be moving on to mastering electric fields next and then continuous charge which will allow me to use some of the Calculus I learned last semester. After that comes what I’ve been waiting for, which is Gauss’s Law and then I will probably make another post of achievement.

Here are the materials I’ve implicitly and explicitly mentioned in this post:

Physics Book: http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Scientists-Engineers-Modern-4th/dp/0131495089

Java Book: http://www.amazon.com/Building-Java-Programs-Basics-Approach/dp/0136091814/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357588145&sr=1-1&keywords=reges+java

Christmas Present (Electronics Learning Lab): http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3814337

MIT Courses: (E&M) http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-02-electricity-and-magnetism-spring-2002/index.htm and (Vector Calculus) http://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-007-calculus-revisited-multivariable-calculus-fall-2011/part-ii/

The Nice Feeling of Accomplishment

I’m going through a book that deals with audio programming in C. The only languages I know at the moment are Java and Python haphazardly. There are still many things that are too abstract for me to understand but I can say, with great pleasure tonight, that pointers and arrays in C are not one of them.

Pointers in particular gave me a bit of an uneasy feeling as they were mentioned in the introduction chapter in the audio programming book. I felt I couldn’t progress because I hadn’t fully understood them and I know the dangers of copying code without complete understanding of it. There was one particular video that really hammered it down, supplemented with a great response by the creator of the video. The internet is truly a great place, when you can receive instruction from a person familiar with a strange concept at 12 am. I will leave a link to the video and the book I am working through at the bottom of the post.

I know that, due to my impulsiveness and lack of commitment, I may not commit to finishing this book but I want to chronicle the fact that, although my interests are fleeting, I can accomplish great things. I am very excited to be able to move on to the next section in this book and I hope that one day I will have worked through it, or a similar book, and be able to understand the underpinnings of how digital audio works in the computer. Good job, to me!

Here’s the video:

And here’s the book:

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/audio-programming-book

 

Turning a Japanese String into a List in Python

Python ships with the default encoding of ASCII which causes a lot of headaches when needing to work with CJK characters. Furthermore, with languages that don’t have spacing, like Chinese and Japanese, working with strings can be a pain for the budding Pythonist (like myself). Here, I go over how to set up Python for UTF-8 in Ubuntu (11.10 64-bit) and I’ll go over a crude way to break a spaceless Japanese sentence up and toss it into a list.

First things first, we need to edit our site.py file to change the default encoding to UTF-8. This file was found, on my machine, at /usr/lib/python2.7/ and the change that needs to be made is the encoding from ascii to utf-8:

def setencoding():
“””Set the string encoding used by the Unicode implementation.  The
default is ‘ascii’, but if you’re willing to experiment, you can
change this.”””
encoding = “utf-8” # Default value set by _PyUnicode_Init()

Now if we check our getdefaultencoding after firing up Python, we should see this:

>>> sys.getdefaultencoding()
‘utf-8’

Great, now let’s start working with some Japanese. Let’s grab some Grade 1 Kanji from http://www.saiga-jp.com/language/kanji_list.html and see if we can change the string of Kanji into a list.

>>> grade1 = ‘一右雨円王音下火花貝学気九休玉金空月犬見五口校左三山子四糸字耳七車手十出女小上森人水正生青夕石赤千川先早草足村大男竹中虫町天田土二日入年白八百文木本名目立力林六’

Now let’s decode it to utf-8 and space each Kanji with the handy join function!

>>> grade1_dec = grade1.decode(‘utf-8’)
>>> print grade1_dec
一右雨円王音下火花貝学気九休玉金空月犬見五口校左三山子四糸字耳七車手十出女小上森人水正生青夕石赤千川先早草足村大男竹中虫町天田土二日入年白八百文木本名目立力林六

>>> grade1_spaced = ‘ ‘.join(grade1_dec)
>>> print grade1_spaced
一 右 雨 円 王 音 下 火 花 貝 学 気 九 休 玉 金 空 月 犬 見 五 口 校 左 三 山 子 四 糸 字 耳 七 車 手 十 出 女 小 上 森 人 水 正 生 青 夕 石 赤 千 川 先 早 草 足 村 大 男 竹 中 虫 町 天 田 土 二 日 入 年 白 八 百 文 木 本 名 目 立 力 林 六

Whoa, this is getting quite nifty, and it’s barely taken any effort. This is why I love Python! Let’s now make a list out of this bad boy with the split function and check a few indexes.

>>> grade1_list = grade1_spaced.split(‘ ‘)
>>> print grade1_list
[u’\u4e00′, u’\u53f3′, u’\u96e8′, u’\u5186′, u’\u738b’, u’\u97f3′, u’\u4e0b’, u’\u706b’, u’\u82b1′, u’\u8c9d’, u’\u5b66′, u’\u6c17′, u’\u4e5d’, u’\u4f11′, u’\u7389′, u’\u91d1′, u’\u7a7a’, u’\u6708′, u’\u72ac’, u’\u898b’, u’\u4e94′, u’\u53e3′, u’\u6821′, u’\u5de6′, u’\u4e09′, u’\u5c71′, u’\u5b50′, u’\u56db’, u’\u7cf8′, u’\u5b57′, u’\u8033′, u’\u4e03′, u’\u8eca’, u’\u624b’, u’\u5341′, u’\u51fa’, u’\u5973′, u’\u5c0f’, u’\u4e0a’, u’\u68ee’, u’\u4eba’, u’\u6c34′, u’\u6b63′, u’\u751f’, u’\u9752′, u’\u5915′, u’\u77f3′, u’\u8d64′, u’\u5343′, u’\u5ddd’, u’\u5148′, u’\u65e9′, u’\u8349′, u’\u8db3′, u’\u6751′, u’\u5927′, u’\u7537′, u’\u7af9′, u’\u4e2d’, u’\u866b’, u’\u753a’, u’\u5929′, u’\u7530′, u’\u571f’, u’\u4e8c’, u’\u65e5′, u’\u5165′, u’\u5e74′, u’\u767d’, u’\u516b’, u’\u767e’, u’\u6587′, u’\u6728′, u’\u672c’, u’\u540d’, u’\u76ee’, u’\u7acb’, u’\u529b’, u’\u6797′, u’\u516d’]
>>> print grade1_list[3]
円
>>> print grade1_list[60]
町
>>> print grade1_list[79]
六
>>> for i in grade1_list[34:37]:
…     print i
…
十
出
女

Now that we got a nice list going on, let’s give this a final hurrah by checking if Kanji are in the list.

>>> ‘見’ in grade1_list
True
>>> ‘絵’ in grade1_list
False
>>> ‘花’ in grade1_list
True

The possibilities are endless from here, and I hope this excites people enough to want to start messing around with other languages in Python (or in programming in general). There is a certain stigma associated with encodings, so I hope this clears up some of the Python confusion.

Installation and Troubleshooting of MeCab on Windows 7 (64 bit)

A few people were having trouble on the Reviewing the Kanji Forums getting MeCab up and running, so I thought I’d make a little screencast and write up a quick install guide here. I’ll embed the video first and then installation notes and links can be found underneath.

The actual installation is actually quite simple. Go to http://code.google.com/p/mecab/downloads/detail?name=mecab-0.994.exe and download the executable there and run it.

When you come to the screen where you can pick the encoding the dictionary uses, choose shift-jis, as this will make the set-up a bit easier.

After it’s installed, open up your command-line prompt by typing “run” in the search bar of the start-up menu, hitting enter, and then typing “cmd” into the run bar.

In the command prompt, navigate to your Desktop and type in “MeCab.lnk” (you can type in mec and hit <tab> for auto-complete).

cd Desktop

MeCab.lnk

You can now enter Japanese and see the MeCab processing of it. For a more detailed explanation and troubleshooting, please see the video above.

How to Approach Self-Studying Math in the Age of the Internet

It is very important to approach self-study in this day and age very carefully as the internet is an endless sea of information and that information can cause such issues as analysis paralysis and pull people into new delusional phenomena such as the “vortex of false understanding.” Therefore, I will outline three important techniques for the beginner to approach self-studying of math and to avoid possible pitfalls that come with the amazing technology that is the internet.

Choose the Right Book

Books give you the tried and true structure of learning that is absolutely crucial to keeping most people (including myself) on task. The right book is the difference between passionate motivation and utter despair. As humans, we like to intuitively solve puzzles and get great pleasure in solving them with minimal help. A book will give you the needed information to approach problems and also exercises to flex the brain muscles you just acquired from working through the text. Furthermore,  the right book will approach the material in a way that you are comfortable with in an accessible manner to you.  This is absolutely crucial in the beginning as different people learn dependent on their own experience.

Luckily, this is where math shines, as there are a multitude of books specifically made for various people with various backgrounds. Do you want to learn Linear Algebra and are a proof heavy, person of the analytic type? There’s a book out there for you? Do you come from a computational background and love algorithms? There’s a Linear Algebra book for you. Are you a Physics buff and love experimentation and real world practicality? I promise, there is a Linear Algebra book out there for you too. And you can replace Linear Algebra with Calculus, Algebra, Trigonometry, etc. The amount of books out there for a wide range of personalities is astounding.

This brings me to an important topic; the choosing of books. After you’ve chosen the type of math you’d like to learn, you need to go through a selection of books to find out which one does indeed click with you. Quora and the Stack sites are great places to get insight into a list of books you may find enjoyable. You can perform searches there like, “best algebra book from a proofs background” or “good linear algebra for a person with no calculus” and if the results aren’t good enough, you can post your own question and expect a great response time from a very relevant user (this is why I avoid Yahoo! Answers).

After you’ve created a little list, spend the next few days pushing through each book’s first chapter. You are sure to find the right book for you, and the extra time invested in choosing that book will be well worth it when you are able to absorb it better than the others. You may even like two of the books and feel they are a good supplement for each other. This may allow you to skip the next portion, and avoid what I call the “vortex of false understanding.”

Supplement Your Learning with Videos

YouTube is an absolutely wonderful resource when it comes to gaining intuition into non-intuitive instances in math. Sometimes it’s difficult for words in a text to convey something very simple visually and so a great many accounts have been created to help learners of math and other subjects on YouTube. Adding to that the amount of free online lectures from prestigious colleges around the world, there is really no way you can get away from gaining intuition of math concepts. But there is a dark side to YouTube, and a reason I put it second in importance to getting yourself the right book. You can very easily get sucked into the “vortex of false understanding.” This vortex, in its simplest form, begins when you watch a video and feel you understand the material because it has been explained so well. The intuition the person has given you was so compelling and the examples so intuitive that it feels as though the subject is that simple and so you move on to the next video; and deeper in the vortex.

This is a very real situation, and I remember distinctly when I was first caught in it. I was learning Trigonometry through the Khan Academy and Sal was so good at teaching the subject, I avoided trying any problems on my own because I felt that I completely understood the material. Luckily the Khan Academy website allows you to attempt generated problems on an example portion of the site, and I was taken aback by my lack of understanding. Personal anecdotes aside, it is very important to get a book to help you structure the lessons and practice the examples at the section’s end.

Relate It to What You Enjoy

Math was mostly created to help us get a better understanding of the world around us, and so the majority of it focuses on real-world problems and practicality. This means that you can relate it to most anything you enjoy. If you are a history buff, there is probably no better history to study than the history of math and all of the very interesting actors that have played a role in it’s transformation and growth, from Pythagoras to al-Khwārizmī to Newton. The history will also take you all around the world if you are a culturephile or linguaphile, such as myself. In the sciences, the connections are obvious, and therefore lend themselves toward motivation and passion in the math subject you are learning.

It is important to connect these synapses and relate math to your everyday life as much as possible. This will make the learning of math more enjoyable and easier to absorb.  This is probably the best skill to get good at as it takes a bit of critical thinking and analysis. Like anything, it becomes easier, and will improve many facets of your life.

I hope this has helped anyone who comes across it, and I hope to update and expand it as I learn more about self-study and grow myself.