Sometimes my mind kind of amazes me. I've been futzing around with some data for like a year or so now. I came up with an algorithm which works pretty well, just based on what I saw in the data myself.

Of course, the existing, released, software has another algorithm that does the same thing for a more common mode of data. It'd be cool, says the guy who has to specify said software, if you could just use my algorithm with perhaps some specialized inputs. Then, he rightly points out, we wouldn't have to wait for the software development cycle, and could just put out the calibration file, a much quicker process.

OK, so worth a look, if it'll save like a year getting stuff out.

So, I began to muse. How to go about getting the necessary information from the data we have. Which is lacking y, the most important coordinate. And, when we created the calibration files for the normal data mode, we fit trends of everything in sight vs. y.

Sometime late last week the pieces magically fell together in my head. I can, in fact, measure most of those same things by devious means from the data I have.

So I cranked out some approximation to the calibration file. And tried it on the cal source data. And watched it crash and burn, for reasons that were readily apparent: the algorithm itself depends on knowing y, which, in this mode, we don't.

Ah, well. Maybe for actual observational data (as opposed to the cal source).

But this reminds me of when I was an undergraduate, taking abstract math courses. I'd memorize the salient stuff, and go on a very long walk, and as often as not, the homework problem would have sorted itself out in my head along the way.

And then, in a moment of exceptional mental clarity, write it all down. It's like computer programming. Or novel writing, for that matter. When you can hold the whole algorithm, or plot twist, or whatever, in your head all at once, write it out on the spot in one long sprint, and, at least for me, as often as not, the details are right the first time. After that, it's just a matter of resisting the urge to fix something in the code I don't understand (because I probably did understand it when I wrote it).

I wrote a graphing package once, long ago (didn't everybody?). I recall spending one Saturday mulling over the question of what constitutes a "round number", so that ends of axes, and tick marks, could have pleasing numbers attached, whatever the dynamic range of the data. Figured it out (at least for linear scales; that program never did log scales very well), wrote out the code, and promptly forgot how it works. But it does work, unless I tinker with it.

Anyway.

Busy week coming up. Both choirs end next Sunday. So Monday I drive to Gloucester to sing Palestrina and Byrd in rehearsal for Coro. Wednesday, the church choir rehearses in Boston. Friday is the dress rehearsal in Gloucester again. (I'm always tempted to pronounce that Glue-chester, because of the movie "The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming.") Saturday night, concert the first Coro concert, again in GlueChester. We go on at 8, so I won't get home til well after 11. Sunday, up at 6, no dawdling, for Trinity Sunday service at church (and a couple of challenging pieces). And then back to Gloucester for another Coro concert.

Buy stock in the oil companies. They have a large chunk of my cash coming this week.

Spent some of this afternoon practicing music; but I'm kinda hoarse. ("I'm not a little horse, I'm a pig," said Piglet.) I hope that goes away, cuz I kinda need my voice this week.

And then, at last, we have a chance to get away. Take time off work, just for us, and not because we have a sick relative or a wedding or a funeral or a holiday gathering to attend, or friends to visit. Dunno where we're going; I guess we should think about that. Tropics sounded real nice when we started talking about this in February. But what with deadlines and so forth, we couldn't fit it into our work schedules til now. When many sub-tropical places are presumably booked and hot and stuff. The order is for beach, warm water, warm weather, not too many people, not in NC. Oh, and we don't have passports, so in USia someplace.

Anybody wanna dog-sit?

I'd sorta like some uninterrupted time to think about revising a novel I wrote last November. I doubt the reviews will be in by then, but it's still worth the think.