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wychwood: Kosh has moments of revelation (B5 - moments of revelation)
[personal profile] wychwood
I am on a real reading tear at the moment, and my bedside book pile is down to five! Naturally I then celebrated this by buying another six or seven cheap ebooks, because I delight in causing my own suffering. I'm hoping to finish another couple of the bedside books soon and then do a poll so you all can decide which bits of the epic to-read shelf I should use to rebuild it with.

A proper gaming post is in the works, but I have been delighted by the recent changes which mean that all Steam games now work on Linux - I haven't tested it extensively, but I've already played several previously-Windows-only games with no issues at all. Aside from work that was the main thing causing me to spend time in Windows, so suddenly I'm spending a lot more time logged into Linux, which means I'm getting to more of the tasks I do there! Including writing up my booklog, although at the rate I'm reading it's going to be a while before that's ready to post, and I've already finished six books in September...

Miss H and I are going to see Florence + The Machine in February, which was extortionately expensive but I'm still looking forward to it! This is why I don't believe people who say that classical audiences are low because tickets are too expensive, because you can get into most CBSO concerts for under £30 and the cheapest Florence tickets were £45 plus fees for standing room only. Which is not to say that £30 isn't a lot of money, but if pop artists can sell out in ten minutes for an average price over £100 then I just don't believe that price point is the major issue.

It's really funny how the last couple of weeks are suddenly waving AUTUMN IS COMING signs. We've had more rain this week than in about the previous month, and while it's still warm, I'm becoming increasingly aware that the sheet I sleep under is going to need to be switched for the duvet in the near future, and that there is a limited time for shirt-sleeves at home. On the other hand, I'm looking forward to being able to wear my jacket again. I used the hot water bottle on Tuesday night, but it's not back into the regular rotation quite yet...
purplecat: An open book with a quill pen and a lamp. (General:Academia)
[personal profile] purplecat
One of my post-docs, and I was previously on the supervisory team for her PhD, has been partly occupying her time generating publications from her thesis. This is one such. She's addressing the question of what people actually want when they ask that an autonomous system provide explanations. In particular, though she doesn't really get into that in the paper, most explainability research has focused specifically on neural networks that are classifying things into groups, not on robotic systems that are taking decisions about what to do next.

Eliciting Explainability Requirements for Safety-Critical Systems: A Nuclear Case Study talks through her approach, and tries to categorise her results into groups. There is also some formalisation of the requirements into logic, though via the use of structured English to make it more comprehensible. Lastly she reports on some lessons learned.
purplecat: The Tardis against a sunset (or possibly sunrise) (Doctor Who)
[personal profile] purplecat
Two Doctor Who companion outfits for your delectation and delight! Outfits selected by a mixture of ones I, personally, like; lists on the internet; and a certain random element.


Outfits below the Cut )

Vote for your favourite of these costumes. Use whatever criteria you please - most practical, most outrageously spacey, most of its decade!

Voting will remain open for at least a week, possibly longer!

Costume Bracket Masterlist

Images are a mixture of my own screencaps, screencaps from Lost in Time Graphics, PCJ's Whoniverse Gallery, and random Google searches.

Wish World/The Reality War

1 September 2025 19:22
purplecat: The Fifteenth Doctor (Who:Fifteen)
[personal profile] purplecat
I went into Wish World/The Reality War knowing it was likely to be a hot mess and I was not wrong.

Are we still doing spoilers? )