[d] I am like a travel agent !

As I chose to drive to Atlanta for RESNA, I need to arrange all the on road stuff myself. The whole work took me over a hour this morning.

1. Call the Hyatt Regency Hotel to make room reservation.
2. Find and book the lodge at halfway.
3. Print out the driving directions.
4. Make additional air ticket and room reseravations for Ran.

Parties involved:

1. Atlanta Hyatt Regency Hotel.
2. Frontier Airlines.
3. Red Roof Inn SEA-TAC.
4. Greyhound.
5. AAA.
6. National Car Rental.

I am really like a travel agent.

[e] Human Learning; Machine Learning

Driving on Essenhower this morning. I suddenly rised the idea of my own learning process of life. How are people adapting? It's still a black box to me. Yet I do know the machine learning techniques: use training cases to accumulate knowledge; apply it to new, undecided cases; (optionally) adjust the learning effect by feedback.

Now, let me treat myself as a learning machine (LXLearner). It is hard to say that LXLearner is a good one. First, LXLearner don't make judgements fully based on accumulated knowledge, instead, a big portion of arbitory factor is introduced, which makes the output pretty unstable and not converaging; second, LXLearner uses quite outdated and limited training data, makes the decision process inaccurate; third, the robustness is bad: LXLearner is easy to be stressed by faulty and malicious data.

:).

[d] You are a dog, I am a dog

Summer comes in a sudden: the hot air; swimming pool in next door neighbour's yard; I even saw people grilling outside. While change of season does mean little to me, it means much to Sam. Today when I started the car and backed up out of the yard, Sam was following me and greedily sniffing the roadside grasses.
I got down the car and called Sam's name loudly to get him back. He looked back from time to time, but apparently wanted so much a chance staying outside. This called up my sympathy -- poor dog, he stayed in a small yard all day and seldom had a chance to enjoy running in the alley.
I parked my car, put Sam in the harness and brought him to the nearby two blocks. He was so happy, and this mood influenced me. I love dog walking, as myself is also a dog who had long been confined in a cage. A dog's life is anything but just dog food.
It was midnight when I called it a day. Walking on Miller, clock seemed to be spinned back to two years before. A dog, who tried unsuccessfully to be a great dog and just recovered from long-time-no-freedom depression, is now walking himself again.

[d] EMEBC abstract submitted.

Let me cross my fingers......

[e] 盲艺人和他的琴盒

小时候读过一个故事： 从前有一老一少两个盲艺人， 流浪四方，卖艺为生。 奔波的生活， 日复一日枯燥的工作使他们疲惫不堪而又无从逃离。要是眼睛能复明多好啊！ 老盲人一次认识了一位江湖医生，交给他一张可以让盲人重见光明的秘方--只要用一千根弹断的琴弦做引。医生把秘方放在老盲人的琴盒里，嘱咐他收集完药引后 才能打开。
老盲人怀着希望，带着少年卖艺弹琴， 遗憾的是他终究没有等到收集完一千根琴弦的那一天，就撒手西去。少年拿过了琴盒，继续流浪四方，他从少年到了中年，鬓边已有白发的时候，琴弦到了一千根。
当他满心激动地拿着药引，让人打开琴盒拿出秘方抓药时，药店的人呆住了--秘方只是一张白纸。

最近老是回忆起小时候读过的故事。经历，让我慢慢增长了对人生的理解力。 生活的意义到底是流浪，弹琴，在希望中等待，还是最终见到桃花源式的光明时的喜悦？ 幸福和伤痛都是少数，人生更多地是平凡的日子。 为得而喜，为失而悲，莫如看淡得失而静心去做。 且弹一千根琴弦再说罢。