What the title is a reference to is perhaps slightly unfair - I was doing this mostly while waiting for some results. I wrote a small R package early last year for fast generation of inverse Wishart distributed random variables and a few related functions because it came up and there was a void. I saw that it's possible to define the so-called pseudo-Wishart and its pseudo-inverse (called the generalized inverse Wishart), and it made sense for that to be part of my package, so I put them in. (for those wondering: suppose you have n independent observations of a p-dimensional normal distribution (arranged, say, as X, an n by p matrix) with covariance matrix Sigma - then the p by p scatter matrix X'X is what you're looking at, the pseudo-Wishart is when you don't have enough observations to guarantee this is positive definite). I should also probably include the case where Sigma is not positive definite and the case of non-independent sampling (indeed, also possibly singular) for completeness. But that gets annoying.

I have a mild concern at the back of my mind - I'm on a federal grant this upcoming semester. Hmm.

While trying to poke at the dead tablet, I finally got my phone-to-computer hookup working. I probably should have a newer phone, it was outdated when I got it, but I'm not really a person who either needs or affords the latest tech. However, to my chagrin, I found out when I tried to access my banking app that it no longer supports my version of Android. I also finally got Tor installed and working on my computer, not that I intend to use it for anything, I just thought it was interesting. Tor, like blockchain/cryptocurrency, is mostly silly, though unlike blockchain, it might actually  have some use.

Right now the pod-cast "You're Wrong About..." is popular in this household. Highly recommended. The first one we listened to was the Urban Legends Spectacular, which I think gives a good feel for their style if you also want a good entry point. Other pod-casts we regularly listen to together: Rational Security, FiveThirtyEight Politics, Mass for Shut-Ins, Stay Tuned with Preet. These are generally far more conservative than we are but quite good and informative. One I might recommend beyond this is the Sean's Russia Blog Pod-cast, which is mostly interviews with academics who are somehow connected with the area around Russia about their work - usually Russian history, sometimes Russian current events. As you might expect, much of it is Soviet history and politics. And then there are more partisan or niche pod-casts I don't really recommend unless you have an interest in them.

Trying out Nextcloud as an alternative to Dropbox.

So tumblr has essentially destroyed itself and people are looking for alternatives. Frankly, I think mastodon fits the use case of many of these folks' communities but there are hurdles to that. It looks like the people I know are moving toward Pillow Fort. Hope it works out for them.

Uh, I think that's about it for today.