seantime

Looks like a bunch of the top-running groups (“BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos”) collaborated together and finally reached the 10% mark. Considering how badly I’m doing on the UCSD competition, I’m glad I won’t be spending the summer trying to work on the Netflix challenge.

Congrats to them! I’m pretty sure the Netflix prize has aided the development of many methods in data mining.

Here’s to a new and glorious morn. *clink*

A “real” music video of “If A Song Could Get Me You”:

An early birthday present from my sister: pointe shoes signed by Elana Altman!

She’s the girl in the first part of the video, in case you couldn’t tell. HD video is nice.

A movie about ballet, starring Natalie Portman, and directed by Darren Aranofsky? It’s like a triumvirate of awesomeness. I’m pretty excited. Let’s hope this doesn’t turn into The Fountain.

http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/06/15/natalie-portman-cast-in-darren-aronofskys-black-swan/

My summer to-do list:

1. Interning at Climate Central this summer. I’m hoping this will be interesting and/or informative.

2. Trying out this UCSD data mining competition. My goal is to make the top 10 on one or both of the challenges. You can check me out not doing well on the leaderboard. My team name is “cardinal.” Competition ends middle of July.
Leaderboard

3. Work on the fantasy basketball model. I’ve had a few ideas for what to do, but we’ll see how things pan out. It’ll probably be tough to get anything amazing out of it.

4. Figure out whether to apply to Ph.D. programs or not. If so, there are GREs to study for and all that crap.

5. Hopefully do some research with a professor. Will there be time to do everything? Who knows.

6. Finish reading Ulysses.

So on twitter, Marit Larsen was all like “I love being 25. I have the advantages of being an adult, but I still get to act like a child whenever I want.”

Then someone responded with a link to this blog post:
http://tomatonation.com/?p=838

Talk about being a serious buzzkill.

• I subscribed to Jewel and Marit Larsen’s twitter feeds. Marit talked about how Let the Right One In was a great vampire movie. Which it is. She has good taste in movies.
• I parked my Honda Accord in between two Honda Accords. I made a connect four of Accords, because there was another Accord parked next to us as well.
• Not studying for finals makes taking them more interesting. I get a little rush when I look at the exam and wonder if I can solve any of the problems.
• I’m kind of worried about this analysis final tomorrow, but I’m not studying for it, so go figure. I was reading the Tao Te Ching rather than studying for either of my finals this weekend. It sure makes life a little more relaxing that way.
• Summer plans are slowly materializing, but I still don’t know if I should take this job or wait for something that might be able to at least cover living expenses for the summer.
• I really need something to inspire me. Life has seemed so meaningless the last month or more. I’ve stopped caring about almost everything, and it makes me sad.

Without stirring abroad
One can know the whole world;
Without looking out of the window
One can see the way of heaven.
The further one goes
The less one knows.
Therefore the sage knows without having to stir,
Identifies without having to see,
Accomplishes without having to act.