http://emays.dev/ Recent content in Hi. I'm Erica. on Erica Mays Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Sun, 28 Mar 2021 12:45:34 -0500 http://emays.dev/blog/2021/03/a-brief-reintroduction/ Sun, 28 Mar 2021 12:45:34 -0500 http://emays.dev/blog/2021/03/a-brief-reintroduction/ It’s official. I am coming out as transgender. Hi! I’m Erica Lois Mays. I openly came out to my friends and classmates in June of 2020, and have been living as a woman in my personal life more-or-less openly since then. I am now in the process of changing my professional name; if you have my old email address, please update it to erica@emays.dev. I am intending to change my legal name and gender in the near future, although not for the next several months. http://emays.dev/blog/2020/11/surreality-in-the-pilot-of-hannibal/ Fri, 06 Nov 2020 22:01:49 -0600 http://emays.dev/blog/2020/11/surreality-in-the-pilot-of-hannibal/ The pilot of Hannibal has a strong opening five minutes. A crime scene, the conclusion of a murder, is shown; then, time reverses. Blood droplets fly in slow motion off the walls, as an expressionless man reverses his way out the door, passing police standing guard outside the door. A beam of light flashes across the screen, and the street is silent. Calmly, the man walks forward, kicks down the door, and shoots a man coming down the stairs. http://emays.dev/blog/2020/09/toxic-masculinity-in-the-sopranos/ Sun, 27 Sep 2020 00:01:24 -0500 http://emays.dev/blog/2020/09/toxic-masculinity-in-the-sopranos/ In the pilot episode of The Sopranos, protagonist Tony Soprano tells his therapist about a dream in which his penis falls off and gets carried away by a bird. Crude imagery aside, this dream pulls strongly from our cultural conception of a man’s masculinity as being tied up with his potency. Even though, in the rest of the episode, Tony does not lose his, ahem, “manhood,” he is deeply afraid that he is losing his grasp on his family. http://emays.dev/blog/2020/08/an-analysis-of-breaking-bads-pilot/ Sat, 29 Aug 2020 03:21:57 -0500 http://emays.dev/blog/2020/08/an-analysis-of-breaking-bads-pilot/ Assuming that a show is strong (with regards to characters, plot, and craft), an established viewer should have no difficulty maintaining their interest in the show. A pause for exposition here and there won’t make them change the channel (or the stream). However, for the viewer of a new show, the first episode needs to establish its draw much more strongly. An effective pilot balances the needs of exposition with those of “action,” which can include any scene that furthers the plot. http://emays.dev/blog/2020/08/digital-isolation/ Wed, 05 Aug 2020 00:31:32 -0500 http://emays.dev/blog/2020/08/digital-isolation/ Apologies if this one is a little bit rambly and unfocused; I’m writing it late at night, because I think it’s important that I get these words out before my current anger dies. Early Wednesday, about midnight, I sent the following message around to a few different group chats and to a few friends directly. I’m stuck inside and the more I learn the angrier I get. There’s a pandemic going on and 30% of renters are going to be evicted, but Congress is focusing on banning TikTok. http://emays.dev/blog/2020/07/talking-about-bigotry/ Thu, 02 Jul 2020 13:35:46 -0500 http://emays.dev/blog/2020/07/talking-about-bigotry/ Since the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, a lot of privileged people in the United States (and globally) have started having conversations about police brutality and bigotry that they haven’t had before. Within the last month, even as the Supreme Court established a precedent that protected LGBTQ+ people from workplace discrimination, the Trump Administration rolled back healthcare protections for those same folks. Combined with the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic, these last two months have been devastating for minorities. http://emays.dev/blog/2019/10/factorio-and-environmentalism/ Sat, 26 Oct 2019 00:06:39 -0500 http://emays.dev/blog/2019/10/factorio-and-environmentalism/ I’m not usually a huge video games person, but I’ve been playing entirely too much Factorio recently. In this game, you find yourself stranded on a randomly-generated world, and are tasked with launching a satellite into space. To that end, you need to extract resources, refine them, manufacture various products, and eventually build a rocket. All this industry creates pollution, which angers the creatures that already live there; as a result, you need to hold them off with walls, machine guns, and automated weapons. http://emays.dev/blog/2019/07/faster-algorithms-with-preprocessing/ Sat, 20 Jul 2019 17:43:38 -0500 http://emays.dev/blog/2019/07/faster-algorithms-with-preprocessing/ When I’m trying to solve problems by writing algorithms, I often run into situations where my algorithm is correct, but is far too slow for the problem I’m trying to solve. Sometimes rethinking the algorithm is simple and easy, but in other cases no obvious alternatives present themselves. In these cases, I find that it’s usually easier to use a preprocessing step to shrink the problem space, which includes all the possible solutions to the problem. http://emays.dev/blog/2019/07/switching-to-digitalocean/ Fri, 05 Jul 2019 23:50:45 -0500 http://emays.dev/blog/2019/07/switching-to-digitalocean/ Since I started this website, it’s been hosted on Github Pages. Originally I was building the site using Jekyll, so this made sense at the time. As I made more and more changes to my theme and began using more plugins, it became untenable to use the regular Github Pages build process. I switched over to building the website locally and then pushing that to the master branch. This works, but it’s extremely hacky and unsatisfying to me. http://emays.dev/blog/2019/07/quick-tip-lazy-loaded-values-in-c/ Wed, 03 Jul 2019 20:00:55 -0500 http://emays.dev/blog/2019/07/quick-tip-lazy-loaded-values-in-c/ At my internship, I’ve been spending the past few weeks overhauling the authentication and authorization for all of the company’s internal applications. The new authorization system uses a third-party service that handles all of the niceties of logging in, two-factor authentication, synchronization with Active Directory permissions, and all the other fluff. All we have to do is set up authentication with OpenId Connect and receive access and id tokens from our third-party provider. http://emays.dev/blog/2019/06/why-is-crosscheck-so-bad-bayesian-statistics/ Sat, 22 Jun 2019 16:20:17 -0500 http://emays.dev/blog/2019/06/why-is-crosscheck-so-bad-bayesian-statistics/ It’s June of 2019, and political tensions are at an all-time high. Fear of election fraud, either from fears of hacking or double voting, is widespread on all political sides. Do you know what this country needs? Another hot take on the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck system. Background I’ve seen plenty of excellent criticisms leveled at this system. For those of you not familiar with it, the Crosscheck system takes voting records from all participating states, then checks for any duplicate people. http://emays.dev/blog/2019/01/creative-writing/ Sat, 05 Jan 2019 22:00:38 -0600 http://emays.dev/blog/2019/01/creative-writing/ Since it’s the new year, it’s allegedly a new me, and starting this semester, I’ll have the opportunity to take a few English classes. I’m starting with Intro to Fiction writing, and I’m thinking of publishing a few of the things that I write in that class on here. Although a lot of the coursework is going to be composed writing exercises that don’t have, y’know, plots or character development, I do know that I’ll be writing a couple short stories at some point this semester. http://emays.dev/blog/2018/12/finally-heh-over/ Thu, 13 Dec 2018 23:32:44 -0600 http://emays.dev/blog/2018/12/finally-heh-over/ I’m done. I’m finally done with finals. It’s been a heck of a semester. My classes were… well, meh, for the most part. Computer Engineering was a challenge, as was Computer Science. I didn’t do as well as I would like in Linear Algebra (retrospectively, I could have, but I slacked off a little too much at the beginning of the semester). UNIX was a joke, as everyone told me. http://emays.dev/blog/2018/12/please-stop-using-weighted-grades/ Sat, 08 Dec 2018 14:14:28 -0600 http://emays.dev/blog/2018/12/please-stop-using-weighted-grades/ Please stop using them. Your students will thank you. Since I’ve entered college, this has been something of a pet peeve of mine. I understand why teachers do it; it’s a very useful tool for structuring how much a particular group of homework, quizzes, or tests affects grades. It’s really very predictable when you calculate grades at the end of the semester. But when you’re checking grades over the course of the year, weighted grades can be very frustrating for a student, because new grades added to a weighted average system can’t affect grades across assignment groups. http://emays.dev/blog/2018/10/switching-to-hugo/ Mon, 22 Oct 2018 19:37:56 -0500 http://emays.dev/blog/2018/10/switching-to-hugo/ I’ve been using Jekyll to host this website since I’ve started it. I originally started using it because it’s what Github Pages provided, but since I wanted to use a custom theme, I had to use several hacks to publish a compiled version of my site to the master branch. I’ve finally switched to Hugo, since I figured that if I was going to have to roll my own publication tools, I might as well use a site generator that fit with my mental model. http://emays.dev/blog/2018/08/internship-post-mortem/ Tue, 07 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2018/08/internship-post-mortem/ On Friday I finished my internship at CBOE. Quite honestly I’m going to miss working there; I learned a lot, both from my coworkers and from the codebase. In this post I’m going to go over what I liked (and disliked) about my summer internship. The Known Unknowns Going into this internship, I knew that I would have to learn how to properly develop software with others. Most of my prior experience involved me writing a program to solve a problem or complete an assignment. http://emays.dev/blog/2018/06/i-distrohopped-again/ Mon, 11 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2018/06/i-distrohopped-again/ If you know any Linux people, you’ll know that many of them seem to have this obsession with changing the distribution of their operating system every few months. I am one of these people. I guess that after so many months of use, Ubuntu just grew too ancient for me. Or something. So now I’m running Fedora 28. I have all kinds of rationalizations for choosing it: it has a better release cycle that lets me use new software sooner, it’s more FOSS than Ubuntu, yadda yadda yadda. http://emays.dev/blog/2018/05/my-first-real-programming-job/ Tue, 29 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2018/05/my-first-real-programming-job/ Last week, I started my first internship at Cboe Global Markets. Hooray! I’m getting paid to do what I do for fun anyway! I was expecting it to be difficult, and it is, but it’s certainly not as difficult as I was led to believe. Obviously I can’t talk about anything that I’m working on in detail (NDAs and all that), but I can say that I’m being much more productive than I expected. http://emays.dev/blog/2018/05/the-physics-of-impossibly-loud-music/ Wed, 16 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2018/05/the-physics-of-impossibly-loud-music/ I was re-reading Douglas Adams’s Restaraunt at the End of the Universe, and I came across one of Adams’s many flights of fancy: “Disaster Area was a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones and was generally regarded as not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but also as being the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert goers judged that the best sound balance was usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles away from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves played their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stayed in orbit around the planet - or more frequently around a completely different planet. http://emays.dev/blog/2018/04/my-first-successful-game-jam/ Wed, 25 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2018/04/my-first-successful-game-jam/ I competed in Ludum Dare 41 last weekend, when I made a small video game in 48 hours. Was that ever a learning experience. First off, you can play my entry, Puzzle Prizon, here! LD 41 is still in its voting rounds, so if you also participated in Ludum Dare, I’d like to have your feedback. Preparation I’ve written about my other failed attempts at participating in game jams. Every time that I’ve gone to join one, life has gotten in the way, whether that be schoolwork or laziness. http://emays.dev/blog/2018/03/why-im-moving-away-from-latex/ Tue, 06 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2018/03/why-im-moving-away-from-latex/ This may come as a shock to you: I, Walter Mays, the ardent LaTeX fanatic, am not going to use LaTeX for every assignment anymore. What is this world coming to?! It’s not that I’m going to stop using LaTeX completely. I think that is a fantastic system for typesetting structured documents, and I’ve been having to put together several of those this semester. I wouldn’t trade the power of LaTex for the world. http://emays.dev/blog/2018/03/learn-you-some-linux-for-great-good-part-3-command-line-syntax/ Mon, 05 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2018/03/learn-you-some-linux-for-great-good-part-3-command-line-syntax/ This is one of several posts in my "Learn You Some Linux For Great Good" series. Part 0: A Word of Caution Part 1: Installation Part 2: Getting Comfortable Part 3: Command Line Syntax To fully understand the command line, you need to have a good grasp of the syntax of the command line. If you already understand how the shell breaks up arguments, and the concepts of flags, pipes, and redirections, then skip ahead to the next part. http://emays.dev/blog/2018/03/learn-you-some-linux-for-great-good-part-2-getting-comfortable/ Thu, 01 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2018/03/learn-you-some-linux-for-great-good-part-2-getting-comfortable/ This is one of several posts in my "Learn You Some Linux For Great Good" series. Part 0: A Word of Caution Part 1: Installation Part 2: Getting Comfortable Part 3: Command Line Syntax Once you’ve finished installation, your computer should ask you to restart. If it doesn’t, do it anyway. I’m sure you’re just dying to test out your new installation of Linux. Baby Steps When you reboot, you should see a menu pop up. http://emays.dev/blog/2018/03/my-stupid-accident/ Thu, 01 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2018/03/my-stupid-accident/ For those of you who see me every day (or, in the case of my parents, had to deal with this mess), you already know the story. For everyone else: I got in a car accident on February 13th. It was the stupidest accident I’ve ever heard of. I wasn’t hurt, and the other drivers weren’t hurt. It was about as fortunate as an accident like this can be. First off, some backstory: I noticed a few days earlier that my wheel was wobbling somewhat when I drove. http://emays.dev/blog/2018/02/the-aftermath/ Sun, 25 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2018/02/the-aftermath/ Good news everyone! I finished my first session as a GM, and I didn’t die! I’ve found a few strengths and many weaknesses, but I at least have some idea what’s going on. The Preparation I have a couple of close friends who have been GMs before. Neither of them has tons and tons of experience, but they have a good idea of what they’re doing. They recommended that I watch all of Matt Colville’s Running the Game series. http://emays.dev/blog/2018/02/im-absolutely-terrified/ Mon, 19 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2018/02/im-absolutely-terrified/ I’m going to start being a Game Master for a D&D game on Friday. I have no idea what I’m doing. That’s not exactly true. I’ve got a world that a friend built, I’ve got a few ideas going in, and I’ve got some generators I can use. But going into something like this with exactly zero experience is always going to be nerve-wracking. I’ve never run an encounter. I’ve never run a battle. http://emays.dev/blog/2018/02/woah.-i-understand-now/ Sat, 17 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2018/02/woah.-i-understand-now/ Those of you who have been following my blog know that I posted something called “The End Is Nigh,” in which I disparaged those who felt overwhelmed by school. Oh how the turntables… All it took was a good dose of too many credit hours. I was doing a healthy 15 credit hours last semester; this semester it’s up to 19. That isn’t to say I’m not enjoying it. I’m not, but that’s not why. http://emays.dev/blog/2018/02/new-domain/ Mon, 12 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2018/02/new-domain/ It’s official: I’ve shelled out for a domain name, waltermays.com, and pointed it to this very blog. Amazing! I waited a long time to do this, since a) I didn’t have a reason and b) that’s money I didn’t necessarily need to spend. But I think this is well worth it. I actually have something I can put on my resume, plus I get to say I have my own website. http://emays.dev/blog/2018/01/my-third-failed-game-jam/ Tue, 23 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2018/01/my-third-failed-game-jam/ I’ve been playing with game development for several years now. I’ve researched engines and frameworks, looked into drawing, level design, and music programs, and thrown around ideas. I even started programming a few of them. Guess how many I’ve finished. I’m not the only one with this problem. Most “game developers” never really get much farther than a working prototype of a few of their core mechanics. While that can be fun — if you call fiddling with weights until the movement doesn’t seem to floaty or heavy “fun” — it’s not as fulfilling as (I imagine) completing a game would be. http://emays.dev/blog/2017/12/learn-you-some-linux-for-great-good-part-1-installation/ Sun, 10 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2017/12/learn-you-some-linux-for-great-good-part-1-installation/ This is one of several posts in my "Learn You Some Linux For Great Good" series. Part 0: A Word of Caution Part 1: Installation Part 2: Getting Comfortable Part 3: Command Line Syntax So, you’ve decided to forge ahead. In this part we will discuss some important jargon to know, look at some distributions (and discuss how to tell them apart), create installation media, and install Linux. http://emays.dev/blog/2017/12/adventures-in-haskell/ Fri, 08 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2017/12/adventures-in-haskell/ Something has possessed me to learn Haskell. I’m not sure what exactly, but it must be an evil, illogical demon, since none of my courses nor my possible internships use Haskell. Additionally, I am convinced that Haskell programmers have an IQ of at least 170 (which I most certainly do not have), so it’s probably an impossible task. Nonetheless, I shall soldier on. My first thought was to attempt to port a working program to Haskell. http://emays.dev/blog/2017/12/learn-you-some-linux-for-great-good-part-0-a-word-of-caution/ Tue, 05 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2017/12/learn-you-some-linux-for-great-good-part-0-a-word-of-caution/ This is one of several posts in my "Learn You Some Linux For Great Good" series. Part 0: A Word of Caution Part 1: Installation Part 2: Getting Comfortable Part 3: Command Line Syntax Here be dragons. The Linux world is fraught with pitfalls, gotchas, and undocumented quagmires through which even the most seasoned Linux guru struggle to wade. Using Linux can be productive, but it can also lead to many late nights, many lost files, and many outbursts of frustration. http://emays.dev/blog/2017/12/the-end-is-nigh/ Tue, 05 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2017/12/the-end-is-nigh/ Dead week has begun. When not in their rooms studying, sleepless students with glazed eyes and racing thoughts slowly pace the hallways, eager for a break from relentless business, mathematics, and computer science assignments. And throughout all of Kaufmann, young, clueless freshmen are crying out, “What’s all the fuss about?” I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong, but the end of my first semester seems eerily easy. To be sure, I have a few big tests coming up, some of which count for a large percentage of my grade. http://emays.dev/blog/2017/12/my-crazy-notetaking-setup/ Mon, 04 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/blog/2017/12/my-crazy-notetaking-setup/ Without going into too much detail, let’s just say that I enjoy messing with my workflow far too much. I’m constantly trying to get a more efficient setup, a faster, newer, better, shinier plugin, and a more robust tool to use. I have an addiction for configuration. However, for the past few months, I’ve found a workflow that works pretty consistently for me. Note-Taking I take all of my notes in Vim. http://emays.dev/presentations/handball/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/presentations/handball/ Handball in Deutschland Handball in Deutschland Was ist Handball? You throw a ball with your hands Team sport 7 players on a team Includes a goalie Frontal contact sport Rules Similar to basketball and soccer Attempt to get the ball in the net Separate goalie area around net Players can pass, dribble, shoot Can use body above the knee Must keep passing the ball Penalties give the other team a freethrow The Court History First played on October 29, 1917 Created as a " http://emays.dev/presentations/marketing/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/presentations/marketing/ Presentation: The Dangers of Categorical Thinking The Dangers of Categorical Thinking Bart de Langhe and Philip Fernbach Types of Categorical Thinking Compression Amplification Discrimination Fossilization Two Types of Missteps Interpretation Missing or ignoring critical information Over-emphasizing differences Action Acting on arbitrary distinctions Focusing excessively on a threshold Case Study:Generations Divides people into groups based on age cohorts Often correlates with certain attitudes and beliefs Does not determine every factor of a person Leads to oversimplifications in marketing strategy Solution: combine with other classifications Case Study:Belgian Bailouts After the 2008 financial crisis, the Belgian government bailed out BNP Paribas Retained stock as prices climed Resolved to sell at a threshold price The price got within cents of the threshold, but never got there The government still holds these shares Solution: take " http://emays.dev/learn-you-some-linux/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://emays.dev/learn-you-some-linux/ This is my set of introductory posts for friends (or strangers) trying to learn you install, use, and be productive on Linux. This is all based on my personal experience, so much of it may be anecdotal, apocryphal, or outdated. Proceed at your own risk. Part 0: A Word of Caution Part 1: Installation Part 2: Getting Comfortable Part 3: Command Line Syntax