WordPress and Latex

Well, this doesn’t work too well! *sadface*. How can I show you my funky Gaussian distribution?!

$$p(X) = \frac{1}{\sigma \sqrt{2\pi}} \sigma^{-{\frac{(x-\mu)^2}{2 \sigma^2}}}$$

Sooo. While trivial to install Latex plugins on a self-hosted WP instance how is one to do it at WordPress?

Edit: it turns out there is a blindingly obvious ‘plugins’ tab. Huh, obvious if I’d, you know, looked. Catch is that I need to upgrade from free to paid to do this. pffft. What’s a tightwad to do? Easy.

http://www.latex2png.com/

strip off ‘$$’ from the Latex equation, enter in dialog box, insert png file into post and BABOOM:

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Machine Learning Masters

I began a Masters degree at Glyndwr university in Wrexham in Data Science & Big Data Analytics. I’m doing it part-time over two years. Why Data Science? It’s an interesting topic; I am very interested in statistics and this is a technological application of that. And while ML is hyped both in its ability to deliver results and its role in industry it is a useful discipline. The course so far is fairly disappointing. I’ve done two modules so far, Advanced Data Structures and Algorithms, and ‘Big data Challenges and Opportunities’. The former is, frankly, just an introductory course in Python and very basic data structures like lists and tree; it would have been more honestly called “introductory”, the latter module is more of a sociology and “ethics of data” course. Both are easy, and not very interesting but great time absorbers. Writing academics papers is a major pain in the arse as the amount of effort to read a bazillion papers then absorb precis and regurgitate them is large and unrewarding. I do hope however that the remainder of the course will perk up and become more technical and engaging.

Edit: the database section of the course was very enjoyable. IT stretched my knowledge of SQL and introduced me to Oracle systems as well as visual analytics which is rather fun.

Finding work when returning to IT

Since leaving behind the Law and choosing to reside in rural England I have struggled more than somewhat in finding a job. Shropshire is a lovely county which I adore and do not intend to leave save by the force of man or fate. However. IT is not a sector that exists in any meaningful way outside of London or a few other pockets of the UK: Brighton Cambridge Bristol being a few. Everywhere else it is dreary webshops and random companies sprinkled about thinly. In my area it is all c# or PHP. To say that I find these languages dull would be like saying “the Greeks have financial problems”.

My own programming love is Erlang but I despite the revelation that it underpinned the success of WhatsApp it is also a London only gig. Most Erlangistas seem to be grizzled of hacks who cut their teeth programming on punch cards. From what I can gather most Erlangers who’ve been only been coding in it for 3 or 4 years are regarded as n00bs. I’ve dabbled on and off for a couple of years but not completed anything: my code so far has just been incomplete fleshing out ideas for projects and learning my way. I’ve not used Dialyzer, packaged up code or used a remote shell to hot-code swap or any of those glamorous things that make Erlang so special. So clearly I’m not ready for a heavy duty Erlang role. Given there are no Erlang junior dev roles anywhere in the UK apparently it seems I can only crack on with hobby projects and release as open sores software on Github if I want credibility.

In the meantime I have to piss about with polishing up my old PHP skills in the hope of landing something tolerable. Yuch,

NO views!

Just looking at my stats & I’m not even viewed by bots. This is good, yes good, news. I can say what I like and it’s like I’m shouting to myself. I can say rude words now: ‘bollocks’. There. I liked that.

Of course failing to write regular posts doesn’t help but that only really applies to blogs with a readership. Then the readership will die off. I have none to begin with. I resolve to write more.