Five TV shows this season that I don't miss
Tue, Nov. 13th, 2007, 11:08 pm
TV shows are something that I haven't really been concerned about much lately, but there is still a great number of shows out there that are very good, ad some surprising shows from the new season which are very good. I'm sad that much of this good work may be negated in the coming months by the writer's strike, but I understand the side of the argument for the writers and agree mostly with them. That said, these are the top five shows that I will never miss throughout a week of TV (thanks TiVo)!
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- Chuck - it's on on Monday nights right before Heroes, which makes it get good ratings no matter what. It also helps that the protagonist is a geek and has been thrown into a situation that he's unfamiliar with. This creates a kind of coming-of-age story in which he slowly learns about his newfound powers and abilities. I'm a sucker for coming-of-age stories, so it was a hit for me to begin with. "Greatness thrust upon them", I say, is more interesting. It also has an excellent soundtrack and wonderful opening sequence which is just a joy to watch. If you haven't seen this show yet, I highly recommend. Added bonus, it has Adam Baldwin in it.
- Heroes - wow, big surprise. This show continues to impress, creating a very good story continuing through this season. I like how the seasons themselves stand pretty much alone, with some references to old seasons. I also quite enjoy the comic book like writing of the show, as it fits with the supernatural nature of the characters. Still a top contender.
- Pushing Daisies - this is Diana's favorite show of this season. This most recent show by Brian Fuller doesn't fail to impress - if you're not familiar with Wonderfalls or Dead Like Me, they come highly suggested just as this does. The wonderful stylings which are reminiscent of any Tim Burton filmwork is enough to keep me glued to the screen even without the wonderful premise. The protagonist is someone who has a strange power, which lets him bring people and things back from the dead. Unfortunately, there are a few rules on the power he has - the first is that if he touches the reanimated ever again, he/she/it dies again, and the second is if he doesn't kill he/she/it again within a minute, something of similar "worth" dies nearby. We don't know quite all the rules on the powers yet, but it makes for very interesting storytelling, especially with lovely thematic kitch thrown in. This show is really a triumph of the artform if you ask me, and everyone should be watching it.
- The Soup - it's on cable, and it's brain candy. Joel McHale takes everything that I wouldn't watch on TV because it's completely horrible and depraved, and mocks it lovilingly in The Soup. The humor is not to be understated, and the subjects deserve the humor tossed at them to boot. Definitely a half hour that is worth the TiVo.
- How I Met Your Mother - I started watching the show because it had a hook - Neil Patrick Harris. Honestly, NPH was enough to be the hook not only for one cheezy funny movie, but a SEQUEL TO THAT CHEEZY MOVIE. The show is set as one gigantic flashback, with the main character telling his kids how he met their mother. We haven't met fabled mother yet (and the kids in the future are getting pretty bored after a season and a half), but the premise actually kindof works as a gimmick. That said, the characters are actually good, and the actors are nothing to shake a stick at either. I still think that Allison Hannigan has great comedic timing. I can only hope that this show doesn't go down the crap with the writers strike.
There are a bunch of other shows that I catch when I have the time or am bored. Diana is really the media junkie in the household, and uses the TiVo much more than I do. I have been trying to cut back on TV so as to make more time for other things such as editing my thesis proposal. However, it is important to lay back and enjoy some quality tele every once in a while.
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On happiness
Tue, Nov. 13th, 2007, 10:44 pm
I was viewing one of my most favorite speakers today, Lawrence Lessig, talk about copyright, giving a speech that is very similar to one that I have heard a few times online, but Lessig presents it so well that I end up watching it over and over again. This particular speech was given at TED. The nice thing about coming across a TED talk is that it is almost always enlightening in some way. Lessig's speech is enlightening enough, and it reminded me that I should watch something of his since he has switched to fighting corruption instead of copyright.
Another nice thing about the TED talks is that they are all sitting on the same site - so they are all interlinked with similar topics and they also include the new videos which are being posted fairly often. Sometimes I don't have time to watch more than one talk, but today I was blessed with a dearth of time, so I clicked on another link which interested me. This talk was from Dan Gilbert and was coarsely about happiness, and more importantly synthetic happiness and how our brains work. It started with talk about the foundation of our evolved brains, of which the most important fact was considered the Impact Bias. Gilbert talked about the Impact bias as a primary result of the evolution of the mind from earlier man to modern man - it is the ability of our mind to predict the future without actually trying it. It is the reason why you have an aversion to a food that you haven't even eaten or don't think you will like a movie that isn't even released, or the opposite. I believe that the impact bias is very important to the psychology of human beings - while it may not actually be very important to the state of the world that you eat a pastrami sandwich today instead of a salad, it must mean something to you, or your life will end up seeming meaningless and insignificant. Gilbert focuses on the impact bias in the dual - that choices that we are given to make ourselves will eventually have an effect on our overall happiness. The experiments explained in the video show that, if a choice has been made, the user is more likely to be happy with that choice later, especially if the choice is an irreversible decision. In the talk he talks about simulated happiness and actual happiness, and that the mind is incredible at simulating happiness when placed in a situation where it did not come out for the better - some famous examples include people who are in jail for long times feeling that they are better for their incarceration after being released (or even while incarcerated). One important part which I think wasn't really touched upon by Gilbert was the fact that while the mind can produce synthetic happiness, in the long run the difference between synthetic and "real" happiness is actually rather small - over the long run all the happiness produced tends to even out, and the mind doesn't distinguish about really being happy or not. For a third point, it is a very interesting conclusion (and probably a significant jump) that most people strive to be happy overall, and most people succeed. This means that even though there are people in many different levels of happiness from an outside perspective, it is worthless to look at someone who is rich and happy and someone who is poor and happy and say that one must be happier than the other because they have more of the "real" and less of the synthetic happiness. Happiness is not a zero-sum game - everyone can be happy all of the time, and noone loses out. This may be an interesting ideal to reach for and may seem impossible to achieve considering all of the hate and rage which exists in the world today, but I believe that it is even possible yet - especially considering this "Happiness Bias" which seems to exist within everyone.
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Another nice thing about the TED talks is that they are all sitting on the same site - so they are all interlinked with similar topics and they also include the new videos which are being posted fairly often. Sometimes I don't have time to watch more than one talk, but today I was blessed with a dearth of time, so I clicked on another link which interested me. This talk was from Dan Gilbert and was coarsely about happiness, and more importantly synthetic happiness and how our brains work. It started with talk about the foundation of our evolved brains, of which the most important fact was considered the Impact Bias. Gilbert talked about the Impact bias as a primary result of the evolution of the mind from earlier man to modern man - it is the ability of our mind to predict the future without actually trying it. It is the reason why you have an aversion to a food that you haven't even eaten or don't think you will like a movie that isn't even released, or the opposite. I believe that the impact bias is very important to the psychology of human beings - while it may not actually be very important to the state of the world that you eat a pastrami sandwich today instead of a salad, it must mean something to you, or your life will end up seeming meaningless and insignificant. Gilbert focuses on the impact bias in the dual - that choices that we are given to make ourselves will eventually have an effect on our overall happiness. The experiments explained in the video show that, if a choice has been made, the user is more likely to be happy with that choice later, especially if the choice is an irreversible decision. In the talk he talks about simulated happiness and actual happiness, and that the mind is incredible at simulating happiness when placed in a situation where it did not come out for the better - some famous examples include people who are in jail for long times feeling that they are better for their incarceration after being released (or even while incarcerated). One important part which I think wasn't really touched upon by Gilbert was the fact that while the mind can produce synthetic happiness, in the long run the difference between synthetic and "real" happiness is actually rather small - over the long run all the happiness produced tends to even out, and the mind doesn't distinguish about really being happy or not. For a third point, it is a very interesting conclusion (and probably a significant jump) that most people strive to be happy overall, and most people succeed. This means that even though there are people in many different levels of happiness from an outside perspective, it is worthless to look at someone who is rich and happy and someone who is poor and happy and say that one must be happier than the other because they have more of the "real" and less of the synthetic happiness. Happiness is not a zero-sum game - everyone can be happy all of the time, and noone loses out. This may be an interesting ideal to reach for and may seem impossible to achieve considering all of the hate and rage which exists in the world today, but I believe that it is even possible yet - especially considering this "Happiness Bias" which seems to exist within everyone.
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How long until we have laptops with no moving parts?
Mon, Nov. 12th, 2007, 08:38 pm
Today I was reminded about a thought I was having earlier this year by a twitter from Garrick Van Buren about the new ultra-thin MacBooks. It seems altogether likely that the next laptop computer that I buy will have no moving parts. Currently the only moving parts in the MacBook that I have now are in the optical drive, the fan, and the hard drive. This is of course not counting the moving parts which I move myself - the buttons to actually interact with it and the lid. Apparently the optical drive in the laptop is going the way of the floppy drive in laptops, so there is only the fan for the CPU and the hard drive. Hard drives are also heading toward the realm of non-moving parts with solid state drives gaining acceptance and size. You can now get a 32GB solid state flash drive for pretty cheap, and they are sure to go in the direction all storage goes - faster, larger, and cheaper. That only leaves the fan which cools the CPU. It is not impossible to run a high-end computer without a fan nowadays, but unfortunately the heatsinks required in order to keep the most crucial part of the computer without burning up. The OLPC hardware is already in some ways the wave of the future - there are no moving parts at all. Unfortunately it is also completely underpowered and it's not possible to run a ton of programs on it. I'm not sure that a solid-state laptop for the general public will ever be possible with the general increase in computing power, but if it happens, I would bet it happens in the next 5 years.
People will be pointing out that the optical drive being missing is a new and novel concept and that Apple is pushing the boundaries of laptops, but they are hardly the first ones to ship a laptop without a optical drive. The world of sub notebooks have been taking out the optical drive in their smaller models for a while now. One model that I've seen around quite a bit is the Sony PictureBook which got quite a lot of press because it featured the Transmeta Crusoe chip. There are also a number of other sub notebooks which don't have a drive. However, I don't believe that the drives will be replaced by flash drives or network installs - there will always be a need for boot media for completely broken computers. The common solution in the sub notebook world is to just have a drive which attaches when it's needed, in the mode of the first drives. The solution which uses flash drives is not likely to happen anytime soon - software isn't getting any smaller, and the cost of flash media isn't falling quickly enough to catch up with the cost-effectiveness of pressing CDs.
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People will be pointing out that the optical drive being missing is a new and novel concept and that Apple is pushing the boundaries of laptops, but they are hardly the first ones to ship a laptop without a optical drive. The world of sub notebooks have been taking out the optical drive in their smaller models for a while now. One model that I've seen around quite a bit is the Sony PictureBook which got quite a lot of press because it featured the Transmeta Crusoe chip. There are also a number of other sub notebooks which don't have a drive. However, I don't believe that the drives will be replaced by flash drives or network installs - there will always be a need for boot media for completely broken computers. The common solution in the sub notebook world is to just have a drive which attaches when it's needed, in the mode of the first drives. The solution which uses flash drives is not likely to happen anytime soon - software isn't getting any smaller, and the cost of flash media isn't falling quickly enough to catch up with the cost-effectiveness of pressing CDs.
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Writing and keeping at things.
Sun, Nov. 4th, 2007, 09:05 pm
Life for me lately is a constant struggle between things that I want to do and things that I have to do - then again, this has been the truth for much of my life. The current thing that I have to do is edit my thesis proposal. Some of you may remember that I had a plan to write my thesis proposal over the last two months, and then I would use these last two months of the year to finish some actual pre-thesis work and edit the proposal down to size. I didn't have a problem writing the thing - the work went quickly and spreading it out over two months was definitely the way to go. However, now I have a 18,000 word thesis proposal breathing down my neck, waiting for me to do more research on it and edit it down to a more reasonable 12,000 to 15,000 words. I also need to come up with a good schedule which is reasonable and doable. I get the feeling that I am going to have to tone down my actual thesis work as it would probably take me more than a year to complete what is actually proposed in the thesis. I also feel like I will be at school doing lots of work over the next couple of months getting it edited to just the right amount - I feel like editing is a job which is never done, and I could actually work on getting it just right for a long time.
November, while also being NaNoWriMo, is NaBloWriMo, which is focused on people writing in their blogs. I like this idea because it's much more casual and easier to do. Writing my thesis has shown me that it's pretty easy to write 500 words a day, and I feel like that's about the perfect size for a blog post, so I will probably try to keep each post around 500 words, without pastes and pictures and the like. So look to see a bunch more posts from me - I already need to catch up, I'm 4 posts behind. Diana is also doing the NaBloWriMo, but she is actually doing it on both of her blogs: Magickal Realism, the one for her business, and Fat Chic, her fashion blog. I hope she can get her posts written, and it works out okay.
In the past I have tried to post once every other day, and that didn't work out very well, even though I had a bunch of ideas which were floating around waiting for a blog post. After a while I figured that I just only had a certain amount of writing in me per day, so while I was trying to power out my 500 words a day for the thesis, I couldn't really blog. It was a pretty bad excuse, but it worked for me because honestly the blog is less important than the thesis. It might happen again, especially if I am spending a lot of time honing the thesis down to the bare minimum. That would be okay though, it'll just be the norm for a NaNoWriMo attempt - a strong start and then not much useful at the end, and at least I'd be working hard on things that are important.
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November, while also being NaNoWriMo, is NaBloWriMo, which is focused on people writing in their blogs. I like this idea because it's much more casual and easier to do. Writing my thesis has shown me that it's pretty easy to write 500 words a day, and I feel like that's about the perfect size for a blog post, so I will probably try to keep each post around 500 words, without pastes and pictures and the like. So look to see a bunch more posts from me - I already need to catch up, I'm 4 posts behind. Diana is also doing the NaBloWriMo, but she is actually doing it on both of her blogs: Magickal Realism, the one for her business, and Fat Chic, her fashion blog. I hope she can get her posts written, and it works out okay.
In the past I have tried to post once every other day, and that didn't work out very well, even though I had a bunch of ideas which were floating around waiting for a blog post. After a while I figured that I just only had a certain amount of writing in me per day, so while I was trying to power out my 500 words a day for the thesis, I couldn't really blog. It was a pretty bad excuse, but it worked for me because honestly the blog is less important than the thesis. It might happen again, especially if I am spending a lot of time honing the thesis down to the bare minimum. That would be okay though, it'll just be the norm for a NaNoWriMo attempt - a strong start and then not much useful at the end, and at least I'd be working hard on things that are important.
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Hey hey hey it's magic, you know..
Wed, Oct. 31st, 2007, 01:37 pm
Life is pretty hectic around here with multiple jobs and consulting gigs, as well as personal research to do. I find it's pretty much a requirement to have something to go home to and relax and take some time off. In the past I've used lots of different games in order to accomplish that, but recently one of my labmates reminded me about Magic: The Gathering, the most popular CCG on the planet basically which I used to play a lot. I went to a local shop and played a draft, which was a lot of fun, but a huge hassle. Then I remembered that I still had an account on the online version of the same game. After some confusion over which email I had used to sign up for the service, I re-logged into the account to find that I still had a few cards left, and the game was pretty much just as I left it two years prior. Lately I have been playing it and amassing another collection of cards. Some people are concerned about paying for virtual objects, but I don't have such qualms, as I've paid for virtual objects before (ever buy software?) and the fact that my account was still around so long after I had originally used it and with all the same cards intact is quite a good sign. I also have a small deal going where I am a minor dealer in the game, buying low and selling for slightly less low, making some tickets (the de-facto currency of MTGO) in order to fund my habit. So far I have made back the money that I initially put into the game and have a bunch more cards.
Soon after I started playing the game again, I discovered that there was a new client and server being developed. You see, the Magic: The Gathering Online servers have a problem - they don't hold up to pressure very well. From what I have gleaned from the forums (which the developers actually read and respond sometimes) the architecture currently in use looks like the diagram here.
Anyone notice a scalability problem? Would it help to point out that every single client is connected to the "main" server, and absolutely everything that doesn't involve logging in or gameplay is done through that server? This includes trading, chatting, and just navigating to other games. Apparently the previous company who created this server structure didn't think it would grow too large, or they were using it as some type of insurance. Because of this horribleness, the servers crash a lot - sometimes close to daily. The developers at Wizards of the Coast have been working on stability lately and the uptimes have improved. Still, lag is horrendous when using the main server -- at least it doesn't affect games. I'm glad that they're replacing this bad server design with something that is better. I've been playing in the beta the last few weeks, and the new servers held up to a stress test with a large number of actual users -- around 700-800, depending on who you ask -- and a bunch of bots which were simulating a much larger load than a normal user. There wasn't even a blip on my radar. It gives me some hope for the future of the game.
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Soon after I started playing the game again, I discovered that there was a new client and server being developed. You see, the Magic: The Gathering Online servers have a problem - they don't hold up to pressure very well. From what I have gleaned from the forums (which the developers actually read and respond sometimes) the architecture currently in use looks like the diagram here.
Anyone notice a scalability problem? Would it help to point out that every single client is connected to the "main" server, and absolutely everything that doesn't involve logging in or gameplay is done through that server? This includes trading, chatting, and just navigating to other games. Apparently the previous company who created this server structure didn't think it would grow too large, or they were using it as some type of insurance. Because of this horribleness, the servers crash a lot - sometimes close to daily. The developers at Wizards of the Coast have been working on stability lately and the uptimes have improved. Still, lag is horrendous when using the main server -- at least it doesn't affect games. I'm glad that they're replacing this bad server design with something that is better. I've been playing in the beta the last few weeks, and the new servers held up to a stress test with a large number of actual users -- around 700-800, depending on who you ask -- and a bunch of bots which were simulating a much larger load than a normal user. There wasn't even a blip on my radar. It gives me some hope for the future of the game.
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A leaf on the wind.
Thu, Sep. 13th, 2007, 09:36 am
It's meme Friday, which I'm bringing back from.. never doing it. And it isn't Friday.
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 | You scored as Hoban 'Wash' Washburne, The Pilot. You are a leaf on the wind, see how you soar. You have a good job, and a stunning wife who loves you (and can kill people). Life is good, which is why you can't help smiling. Now if you can just get people to actually listen to your opinion things would be perfect.
Which Serenity character are you? created with QuizFarm.com |
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Other Twitter Bots that I use
Tue, Sep. 4th, 2007, 11:35 pm
Earlier this year I blogged about using the twitter bot for Remember the Milk. I still use it fairly well, even though the SMS messages from the RTM come late a bit. It's working for me in order to get a good chain going for the thesis proposal. There are a couple other bots that I'm using which are on twitter as well.
The first bot that I use is the bot at timer. The timer bot will let you set a timer (surprisingly). You only need to send it a direct message with the amount of minutes as well as a reminder for you about what it was set for. For example, if you want to remember to plug the meter before it runs out in 40 minutes, just twitter 'd timer 38 plug the meter' to timer and in 38 minutes it will inform you that your timer is up. You can have multiple timers running at once, which is useful if you are perhaps having tea at a coffee shop while you are parked on the street.
Another bot I use is the gcal. Gcal is a connection to your google calendar through twitter. You can set up new appointments by messaging the gcal bot with something like 'd gcal Pick up joe at 7pm' or 'd gcal set up web application for judy tomorrow' and it will
add it to your calendar. I use it in the morning to track my weight. I just pull out my phone while I am at the scale and SMS 'd gcal my weight is XXX', and it adds the event as a day event on the day it was sent.
The last bot I will go over today is the mymm bot. It is slightly more complicated but still useful. When you're at the pump, you can direct message mymm a little info and get back the MPG that you have done since the last fillup. It helps me keep a tab on how good or bad I'm driving, which is a good thing. The car we drive usually gets about 24 MPG, but I learned through this that when I'm carrying a bunch of crap in the back, the MPG drops 3-4, so it's better for me to have an empty trunk.
I'm sure there are a bunch of other useful bots out there (ququoo is one, which I may cover in another post), but these are the most useful that I've found so far. Twitter is turning out to be much more useful than just random status updates.
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The first bot that I use is the bot at timer. The timer bot will let you set a timer (surprisingly). You only need to send it a direct message with the amount of minutes as well as a reminder for you about what it was set for. For example, if you want to remember to plug the meter before it runs out in 40 minutes, just twitter 'd timer 38 plug the meter' to timer and in 38 minutes it will inform you that your timer is up. You can have multiple timers running at once, which is useful if you are perhaps having tea at a coffee shop while you are parked on the street.
Another bot I use is the gcal. Gcal is a connection to your google calendar through twitter. You can set up new appointments by messaging the gcal bot with something like 'd gcal Pick up joe at 7pm' or 'd gcal set up web application for judy tomorrow' and it will
add it to your calendar. I use it in the morning to track my weight. I just pull out my phone while I am at the scale and SMS 'd gcal my weight is XXX', and it adds the event as a day event on the day it was sent.
The last bot I will go over today is the mymm bot. It is slightly more complicated but still useful. When you're at the pump, you can direct message mymm a little info and get back the MPG that you have done since the last fillup. It helps me keep a tab on how good or bad I'm driving, which is a good thing. The car we drive usually gets about 24 MPG, but I learned through this that when I'm carrying a bunch of crap in the back, the MPG drops 3-4, so it's better for me to have an empty trunk.
I'm sure there are a bunch of other useful bots out there (ququoo is one, which I may cover in another post), but these are the most useful that I've found so far. Twitter is turning out to be much more useful than just random status updates.
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Editing sentences and code
Mon, Sep. 3rd, 2007, 04:43 pm
I've spent the last week on editing the past week for a major paper, and I realized that I am horrible at editing. I can't edit myself worth a damn - I miss every mistake that I've written, and I am horrible at cutting pieces of text. Wishing that I could have a good method for editing like I do for debugging. I suppose it's probably because I do debugging more than I do editing. It may also be because editing doesn't really have a defined end - when you're debugging, when it passes all the tests, it's done.
This one had a defined end date set by a deadline, and beings me to a point. I believe that it is the reason that I tend to put writing projects off until later in the process, almost too late. I end up writing up to the point where I need to ask someone else to do the proofing and editing for me. When I am set by a deadline, I tend to get the writing done even if it's a crunch. It's not the same with coding projects, which will be short-cutted and work worse when I let them go to the last minute. The coding style that I've developed allows for progress in short chunks, a little at a time, incrementally improving. Editing, I understand, should happen the same way, but it is something that I don't really have enough practice about.
This week I start on my progress on my thesis proposal, on the writing part. The writing part is the easy part for me at least. For the next couple months I'll be slowly writing the proposal and then the hard part will occur in the editing. Hopefully a bit of hard work and more time than I usually have for editing will make it work.
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This one had a defined end date set by a deadline, and beings me to a point. I believe that it is the reason that I tend to put writing projects off until later in the process, almost too late. I end up writing up to the point where I need to ask someone else to do the proofing and editing for me. When I am set by a deadline, I tend to get the writing done even if it's a crunch. It's not the same with coding projects, which will be short-cutted and work worse when I let them go to the last minute. The coding style that I've developed allows for progress in short chunks, a little at a time, incrementally improving. Editing, I understand, should happen the same way, but it is something that I don't really have enough practice about.
This week I start on my progress on my thesis proposal, on the writing part. The writing part is the easy part for me at least. For the next couple months I'll be slowly writing the proposal and then the hard part will occur in the editing. Hopefully a bit of hard work and more time than I usually have for editing will make it work.
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In my own head consume, I sit down in my room
Thu, Aug. 30th, 2007, 07:19 am
Lately I have been tasked with a lot of writing to do. I'm writing a chapter for a book on the field that my research is in, which is a good thing for me to get done, but I started it quite late. I had to finish a 9,000-12,000 word chapter in 2 weeks. Here's how I set it up:
The first half of the schedule was easier than I thought it would be. In general, writing in my field doesn't usually happen that fast, but the subject is something I'm pretty versed in, so it was not too hard to get 2,000 words out. I had a clear defined goal for each day that once I met, I could feel okay about not working on the project for the rest of the day. I also only had to write 6 days, and I was able to take the seventh day off. Both of these combined made it a lot easier to not feel guilty about being behind.
Editing is a bit more abstract and ongoing than the writing part, so it's hard to tell how well it's really going. There are some easy parts like fixing grammar and proofreading to make sure you don't repeat yourself, but there are also a good portion of hard parts as well, like which sections to cut a bunch of words in, and which word choice should be made in a particular spot. I'm at the point where some things NEED to be cut because the document is too long, so I have to make some hard choices.
I also met with my advisor last week and we discussed my progress toward finishing my Ph. D. I had been thinking about this problem for a while now and was glad that it was also on his mind as well. We agreed that I would set the goal for having my orals done by the end of this year (christmas). I am thinking I will use a similar tactic to the chapter that I am writing, but on a much slower schedule, so next week I will start writing 500 words a day, and do that for a couple months. This will leave me with 30,000 words that I will then edit down by quite a bit, reducing it by almost half. Hopefully this will make the process easier as it has for the chapter.
If writing my thesis proposal works well this way, I hope I can use a chunk of it for the final thesis, which I want to finish one year after my orals, putting me on track for graduating at the end of 2009. I'm looking forward to that.
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- For the first week, write 2,000 words each day.
- For the second week, edit the words already written.
The first half of the schedule was easier than I thought it would be. In general, writing in my field doesn't usually happen that fast, but the subject is something I'm pretty versed in, so it was not too hard to get 2,000 words out. I had a clear defined goal for each day that once I met, I could feel okay about not working on the project for the rest of the day. I also only had to write 6 days, and I was able to take the seventh day off. Both of these combined made it a lot easier to not feel guilty about being behind.
Editing is a bit more abstract and ongoing than the writing part, so it's hard to tell how well it's really going. There are some easy parts like fixing grammar and proofreading to make sure you don't repeat yourself, but there are also a good portion of hard parts as well, like which sections to cut a bunch of words in, and which word choice should be made in a particular spot. I'm at the point where some things NEED to be cut because the document is too long, so I have to make some hard choices.
I also met with my advisor last week and we discussed my progress toward finishing my Ph. D. I had been thinking about this problem for a while now and was glad that it was also on his mind as well. We agreed that I would set the goal for having my orals done by the end of this year (christmas). I am thinking I will use a similar tactic to the chapter that I am writing, but on a much slower schedule, so next week I will start writing 500 words a day, and do that for a couple months. This will leave me with 30,000 words that I will then edit down by quite a bit, reducing it by almost half. Hopefully this will make the process easier as it has for the chapter.
If writing my thesis proposal works well this way, I hope I can use a chunk of it for the final thesis, which I want to finish one year after my orals, putting me on track for graduating at the end of 2009. I'm looking forward to that.
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Movie: Hairspray
Sat, Aug. 25th, 2007, 10:22 pm
AMC Southdale 16 8/11/2007
Score: 7
We were actually hoping to see Stardust when we went to the movie theater. It was about 2 hours after we showed up, so we decided to see Hairspray instead. I think we still would have rather seen Stardust. Hairspray is a classic musical movie, similar to Grease or West Side Story in some ways.
People are singing with somewhat no reason, and others don't notice. That is the way of musicals however, and this one is pretty good.
( More after the cut )
Link
Score: 7
We were actually hoping to see Stardust when we went to the movie theater. It was about 2 hours after we showed up, so we decided to see Hairspray instead. I think we still would have rather seen Stardust. Hairspray is a classic musical movie, similar to Grease or West Side Story in some ways.
People are singing with somewhat no reason, and others don't notice. That is the way of musicals however, and this one is pretty good.
( More after the cut )
Link
Things That I Wish Remember The Milk Had
Sun, Aug. 19th, 2007, 10:02 pm
A little bit ago I blogged about how I was using Remember The Milk in order to get some things done around the house and to remind me about stuff that I want to do. Things have been going pretty well on that account, I have been using it to great effect for basically everything that I need to do outside of things that I need to get done at Honeywell (I keep a separate todo list for there). However, when using it these past weeks, I have noticed a few things that I wish it would have or things that could be improved upon, I think in a big way.
I think the twitter interface should have some enhancements. For example, it is impossible currently to mark off an item that repeats through twitter, because you always have more than one of them on your list. I would love to do this with daily tasks so that I can mark them off as soon as I finish them with a few button presses on my cell phone. Also it would be nice to be able to add things to lists and not just the INBOX through twitter. Possibly another command starting with '!' that takes a keyword.
Remember the milk has as a major component the map of locations that items in a list can be placed at. There are a couple improvements that I would like in this area. The first is to have multiple locations that are all just as valid in order to complete the task. Remembering the Milk (the actual task) is a great example. There are literally hundreds of places that I could get milk, and two or three of them that I use regularly, depending on which one I am driving by at the moment. If you could place these three markets in a group of some sort, then they could all be associated with the item and you could see it on your mobile or however you're viewing the map.
The other map improvement is fairly simple - offer to give me directions from one place to another. I don't know how to drive to a random location I've just put in because it is where I need to drop my car or pick someone up or whatever, and a small link to a google maps directions would be nice. Even just a link to google maps (where I could then click on the "directions from..." link) would be a big improvement.
The last improvement that would be nice is to be able to click on the URL or visit the site in the URL field for tasks in some way. Currently the URL field is pretty useless as a URL, because there is no way to click it and actually visit the site. If I click on it, the editing field pops up and I have to do all the hard work myself of cutting and pasting the URL into the location field. It's also a mis-cue because the URL looks like a link before I click it, just like I could click on it as I want to. A keyboard shortcut for visiting the site would be nice as well since I do use the keyboard interface quite a bit.
These improvements I think would make a big difference to RTM users. The map improvements alone would be a big upgrade in my opinion. As for now, I will continue to use RTM whether these are implemented or not - it's a good way to keep an online list in any case. It's kept me writing blog posts at the rate of about once every two days. Not sure if that's a good thing or not yet..
post/read comments
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I think the twitter interface should have some enhancements. For example, it is impossible currently to mark off an item that repeats through twitter, because you always have more than one of them on your list. I would love to do this with daily tasks so that I can mark them off as soon as I finish them with a few button presses on my cell phone. Also it would be nice to be able to add things to lists and not just the INBOX through twitter. Possibly another command starting with '!' that takes a keyword.
Remember the milk has as a major component the map of locations that items in a list can be placed at. There are a couple improvements that I would like in this area. The first is to have multiple locations that are all just as valid in order to complete the task. Remembering the Milk (the actual task) is a great example. There are literally hundreds of places that I could get milk, and two or three of them that I use regularly, depending on which one I am driving by at the moment. If you could place these three markets in a group of some sort, then they could all be associated with the item and you could see it on your mobile or however you're viewing the map.
The other map improvement is fairly simple - offer to give me directions from one place to another. I don't know how to drive to a random location I've just put in because it is where I need to drop my car or pick someone up or whatever, and a small link to a google maps directions would be nice. Even just a link to google maps (where I could then click on the "directions from..." link) would be a big improvement.
The last improvement that would be nice is to be able to click on the URL or visit the site in the URL field for tasks in some way. Currently the URL field is pretty useless as a URL, because there is no way to click it and actually visit the site. If I click on it, the editing field pops up and I have to do all the hard work myself of cutting and pasting the URL into the location field. It's also a mis-cue because the URL looks like a link before I click it, just like I could click on it as I want to. A keyboard shortcut for visiting the site would be nice as well since I do use the keyboard interface quite a bit.
These improvements I think would make a big difference to RTM users. The map improvements alone would be a big upgrade in my opinion. As for now, I will continue to use RTM whether these are implemented or not - it's a good way to keep an online list in any case. It's kept me writing blog posts at the rate of about once every two days. Not sure if that's a good thing or not yet..
post/read comments
Link
Got a camera rolling on your back
Sat, Aug. 18th, 2007, 12:22 pm
For the last few weeks, I've been trying to participate in Project 365. For those that don't know about it, it is the idea of taking one picture a day in order to accomplish.. something. I'm mainly just doing it for fun, and in order to improve my picture-taking skills with my camera phone. I have it walking around everywhere basically, so when I see something interesting, I try to have my phone at the ready. Some times I just take pictures of random stuff, but others are more interesting.
I've found that it's pretty useful for me. If you see the set, you can almost notice a perceptible increase in quality of the photos. It may just be because I'm taking 2-3 photos per day and choosing the best one, or I may be actually improving in my photo-taking abilities. Hopefully by the end of the year, the set of mine will actually have more than 300 photos in it.
The idea of taking a picture a day is quite interesting to me, if only because if you asked me what I was doing last year this time, I would probably give you a general idea because my life is basically boring - I work in an office, even when I'm at school. This way I might have some idea or get reminded.
I do have a couple of kinks that I would like to work out when I'm doing it though - when I download my photos through Bluetooth using my phone, it sets all of the creation dates to the time that I transfer the photos instead of the time that I took the photos. This means that I need to fiddle with the "taken on" date when I finish uploading the pictures - there's no way to use the Flickr Uploadr to set the date. This, and the horrible VGA camera that I have in the phone make it tempting for me to buy a new phone with a better camera and tools for transferring. Also, some days I just stay in, and don't do anything interesting, so I don't have anything interesting or different to take a picture of. I'm thinking of just taking a self-portrait on those days, but I'm not sure that it would be interesting enough.
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I've found that it's pretty useful for me. If you see the set, you can almost notice a perceptible increase in quality of the photos. It may just be because I'm taking 2-3 photos per day and choosing the best one, or I may be actually improving in my photo-taking abilities. Hopefully by the end of the year, the set of mine will actually have more than 300 photos in it.
The idea of taking a picture a day is quite interesting to me, if only because if you asked me what I was doing last year this time, I would probably give you a general idea because my life is basically boring - I work in an office, even when I'm at school. This way I might have some idea or get reminded.
I do have a couple of kinks that I would like to work out when I'm doing it though - when I download my photos through Bluetooth using my phone, it sets all of the creation dates to the time that I transfer the photos instead of the time that I took the photos. This means that I need to fiddle with the "taken on" date when I finish uploading the pictures - there's no way to use the Flickr Uploadr to set the date. This, and the horrible VGA camera that I have in the phone make it tempting for me to buy a new phone with a better camera and tools for transferring. Also, some days I just stay in, and don't do anything interesting, so I don't have anything interesting or different to take a picture of. I'm thinking of just taking a self-portrait on those days, but I'm not sure that it would be interesting enough.
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Movie: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Wed, Aug. 15th, 2007, 10:09 pm
Riverview Theater 8/9/2007
Score: 3
When I finished watching Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, I was really mad. I thought it was such a cheat to have so many story arcs open when the movie ended. It was obviously leading into the third movie, but I still thought it was cheating the viewer out of a good movie. There were not enough arcs closed in the second part. Unfortunately, the third installment was a huge let down.
( More after the cut )
Link
Score: 3
When I finished watching Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, I was really mad. I thought it was such a cheat to have so many story arcs open when the movie ended. It was obviously leading into the third movie, but I still thought it was cheating the viewer out of a good movie. There were not enough arcs closed in the second part. Unfortunately, the third installment was a huge let down.
( More after the cut )
Link
Don't you (dun dun dun da dun dun) forget about me
Sun, Aug. 12th, 2007, 11:12 pm
Recently I've been using Remember the Milk to remind me to do stuff. In the past I had used the service briefly on my search for an online GTD tool. I discarded it because it was too hard then to add new lists, which I had planned to use for each project. I also was turned off by it because I wasn't keen on requiring the Internet to work.
A couple of events has recently made this decision change. The first thing that happened was my addition of messaging to my cell phone plan. I did it mainly to interact with Twitter while I was on the road. It's something I never saw myself using before, but now that I am, it is really nifty and I can see why people use it from their phones.
However, with their recent introduction of a Twitter bot, it is now much more useful. The bot lets me add things to my Inbox list from anywhere, unchaining me from the Internet. All I have to do is text 'd rtm whatever' to twitter and it automatically adds a item to my inbox, which is where I keep everything I need to do. I have it setup as a template in my phone, so that I can even avoid typing the 'd rtm ' part. Remember The Milk also has notification settings for phones, so at the beginning of the day it will message me with the things due that day. Having it turned on reminds me to do most things, because I check my phone quite often, even though I don't get any calls.
I've stopped trying to use the lists for separate projects. I now use the Inbox as a main list, not caring how long it gets. I also have separate lists for categories of things that I'd like to do, but I don't care what order or when they get done. For example, I have a list for the pizza places that Diana and I might go to on our pizza place tour of the cities. I also have a list of cheaper and more expensive restaurants that we haven't been to, so when we want to go out to eat somewhere but can't decide where, we can just grab one off of the list. Remember the milk is particularly decent for lists like the two described because you can associate a geographical location with any element on a list, so I can see where the restaurants are instead of having to look them up.
There is one special list that I keep which isn't of the two types above - the projects list. This is the list of projects that I have committed myself to. It has one entry for each project, with a note on each entry explaining the past-tense result of the project. It is used in my weekly review, in order to populate the list if I have for some reason marked off a part of the project and not added a task for the next action in the project. I find that it keeps me honest because I can't mark off something from here until the past-tense description has actually come true.
Generally my workflow now goes like this. I add the task to my Inbox list either from the road or from the web interface. Then it gets moved to a special list if it is of a special class like the "Eating out" or "Pizza Places" lists. If it has more than three or four steps, I will put it on the project list instead and create a new task on the Inbox list that is doable and is the logical next action for the list. When I do something, it gets crossed off the list and then I go on to the next item. I know that if I don't have anything left to do on that day in remember the milk, I can just do random stuff from farther down on the list without a due date.
I've been doing this for a couple weeks now and its working out just fine. I was happy to have everything work out together so that I could use Twitter and Remember the milk, and I am being more productive than any other system that I've tried. This may just be an example of Using What Works. I thought I would share just in case it can help someone else find their workflow to get things done.
post/read comments
Link
A couple of events has recently made this decision change. The first thing that happened was my addition of messaging to my cell phone plan. I did it mainly to interact with Twitter while I was on the road. It's something I never saw myself using before, but now that I am, it is really nifty and I can see why people use it from their phones.
However, with their recent introduction of a Twitter bot, it is now much more useful. The bot lets me add things to my Inbox list from anywhere, unchaining me from the Internet. All I have to do is text 'd rtm whatever' to twitter and it automatically adds a item to my inbox, which is where I keep everything I need to do. I have it setup as a template in my phone, so that I can even avoid typing the 'd rtm ' part. Remember The Milk also has notification settings for phones, so at the beginning of the day it will message me with the things due that day. Having it turned on reminds me to do most things, because I check my phone quite often, even though I don't get any calls.
I've stopped trying to use the lists for separate projects. I now use the Inbox as a main list, not caring how long it gets. I also have separate lists for categories of things that I'd like to do, but I don't care what order or when they get done. For example, I have a list for the pizza places that Diana and I might go to on our pizza place tour of the cities. I also have a list of cheaper and more expensive restaurants that we haven't been to, so when we want to go out to eat somewhere but can't decide where, we can just grab one off of the list. Remember the milk is particularly decent for lists like the two described because you can associate a geographical location with any element on a list, so I can see where the restaurants are instead of having to look them up.
There is one special list that I keep which isn't of the two types above - the projects list. This is the list of projects that I have committed myself to. It has one entry for each project, with a note on each entry explaining the past-tense result of the project. It is used in my weekly review, in order to populate the list if I have for some reason marked off a part of the project and not added a task for the next action in the project. I find that it keeps me honest because I can't mark off something from here until the past-tense description has actually come true.
Generally my workflow now goes like this. I add the task to my Inbox list either from the road or from the web interface. Then it gets moved to a special list if it is of a special class like the "Eating out" or "Pizza Places" lists. If it has more than three or four steps, I will put it on the project list instead and create a new task on the Inbox list that is doable and is the logical next action for the list. When I do something, it gets crossed off the list and then I go on to the next item. I know that if I don't have anything left to do on that day in remember the milk, I can just do random stuff from farther down on the list without a due date.
I've been doing this for a couple weeks now and its working out just fine. I was happy to have everything work out together so that I could use Twitter and Remember the milk, and I am being more productive than any other system that I've tried. This may just be an example of Using What Works. I thought I would share just in case it can help someone else find their workflow to get things done.
post/read comments
Link
Movie: 1408
Fri, Aug. 10th, 2007, 11:12 pm
Riverview Theater 8/7/07
Score: 8
When I first saw the trailer for this movie, with it's boasting of being based on a short story by Stephen King, I was skeptical about having a good time. It was, although, quite a coup-de-force for John Cusack, with good acting and some twists and turns that were hard to spot in advance.
( More after the cut )
Link
Score: 8
When I first saw the trailer for this movie, with it's boasting of being based on a short story by Stephen King, I was skeptical about having a good time. It was, although, quite a coup-de-force for John Cusack, with good acting and some twists and turns that were hard to spot in advance.
( More after the cut )
Link
Movie: 1408
Fri, Aug. 10th, 2007, 11:08 pm
Riverview Theater 8/7/07
Score: 8
When I first saw the trailer for this movie, with it's boasting of being based on a short story by Stephen King, I was skeptical about having a good time. It was, although, quite a coup-de-force for John Cusack, with good acting and some twists and turns that were hard to spot in advance. ( More after the cut )
Link
Score: 8
When I first saw the trailer for this movie, with it's boasting of being based on a short story by Stephen King, I was skeptical about having a good time. It was, although, quite a coup-de-force for John Cusack, with good acting and some twists and turns that were hard to spot in advance. ( More after the cut )
Link
UI Peeves: Locking, Proximity and Purpose
Wed, Aug. 8th, 2007, 10:59 pm
I have had, on occasion in the past, a reason to use the wonderful TortoiseSVN software. It is, by all standards, a really great solution for someone wanting to use SVN in a MS Windows environment, and uses the official svn client in order to leverage open source as much as possible. Recently I have been using it a bit more as I work at Honeywell as a programmer. I've come across a couple things that bug me about the interface.
The first is that some actions inexplicably lock the place that initiates that action. The best example I have of this is when I am looking at the window for an Update, and want to see what happened in the log, I click the button to open the log, and I can't use the window while the log downloads. Sometimes this can be an issue because the server is pretty slow at producing logs for some reason (it's beyond me, and NotMyProblem(tm) because I'm not in charge of the admin). This makes it irritating because I can't inspect other files while the log is downloading. Strangely, the server actually will return other requests quickly, like the request needed to see the diff between the working copy and the tree. It would be much better if the windows were separate - they're not related to each other in effect, so the locking of the initial window is completely useless. I could have called up the log from another action, that would leave the update window perfectly usable, so I know it's possible.
The second problem that I have run across more than once relates to the proximity of actions in the right click menu while committing a change. Take a look at the screenshot of this menu.
There have been many times when using this window that I realize that I forgot to add a file that I need to commit, so I right click on the file and move down to the "Add" menu item, only to miss and click on the "Delete" item. "Delete", when used on a unversioned file, performs a windows delete, causing me to curse at the (now missing) entry in the commit log and go running to the recycle bin to retrieve this temporarily lost file. These two options in the context menu are entirely too close to each other. The "Delete" and "Add" actions have completely opposite meanings and effects, and having the program do exactly the opposite of what you expect is what I consider to be a Very Bad Thing. I would move the "Add" action up to the top of the list (it is, by far, the most common reason for me to use the context menu), or at least place another menu item in between.
I'm feeling like I'm being very unhelpful here, complaining about these issues in an open source project and not producing a patch to fix these issues. I may produce one in the near future - unfortunately when I'm not at Honeywell, I don't really have a Windows development environment setup.
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The first is that some actions inexplicably lock the place that initiates that action. The best example I have of this is when I am looking at the window for an Update, and want to see what happened in the log, I click the button to open the log, and I can't use the window while the log downloads. Sometimes this can be an issue because the server is pretty slow at producing logs for some reason (it's beyond me, and NotMyProblem(tm) because I'm not in charge of the admin). This makes it irritating because I can't inspect other files while the log is downloading. Strangely, the server actually will return other requests quickly, like the request needed to see the diff between the working copy and the tree. It would be much better if the windows were separate - they're not related to each other in effect, so the locking of the initial window is completely useless. I could have called up the log from another action, that would leave the update window perfectly usable, so I know it's possible.
The second problem that I have run across more than once relates to the proximity of actions in the right click menu while committing a change. Take a look at the screenshot of this menu.
TortoiseSVN commit context menu
There have been many times when using this window that I realize that I forgot to add a file that I need to commit, so I right click on the file and move down to the "Add" menu item, only to miss and click on the "Delete" item. "Delete", when used on a unversioned file, performs a windows delete, causing me to curse at the (now missing) entry in the commit log and go running to the recycle bin to retrieve this temporarily lost file. These two options in the context menu are entirely too close to each other. The "Delete" and "Add" actions have completely opposite meanings and effects, and having the program do exactly the opposite of what you expect is what I consider to be a Very Bad Thing. I would move the "Add" action up to the top of the list (it is, by far, the most common reason for me to use the context menu), or at least place another menu item in between.
I'm feeling like I'm being very unhelpful here, complaining about these issues in an open source project and not producing a patch to fix these issues. I may produce one in the near future - unfortunately when I'm not at Honeywell, I don't really have a Windows development environment setup.
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Ελλάδα: επίλογος
Thu, Jul. 5th, 2007, 08:47 pm
Well, the last day in Greece went swimmingly. It was mostly just relaxing, playing on the Internet, chatting with lovely Di, and working out logistics of taking a long flight back to the United States. The only strange thing about it is that I haven't slept since the last post, which is away from the norm. It's a kind of forced all-nighter caused by the bad scheduling that I made for myself. The flight from Κώσ to Athens happened at 10:20pm in the evening. This was the latest flight that I could get and assure that I could get to the Athens airport in time for my 7:20 flight to Madrid, which connects through Chicago and back to Minneapolis at last.
I've spent a total of 10 days outside of the United States now, the longest time since I have been alive, according to my knowledge. It has caused some interesting results. I realized that I am inextricably connected to the people who I am familiar with in my life, and being without them decreases my mood significantly, and without contact to them decreases my mood sharply.
I am not alone in this fact. There are many studies that show that people who have more social connections lead happier lives. I am lucky in that I am technologically ept and can connect to my near and dear in a number of ways, and be resourceful in finding other ways to contact them if necessary. I feel that I am lucky to live in a time which it is possible for me to spend so much time apart and still be in connection with people. I am also lucky that I was born in a geological area which enables me to be as such.
At the same time, I am sad to leave this place. It is a nice area, with good food and a very long history. As Nikos reminded me the other day, it is the birthplace of Democracy, which I hold to a fairly high regard. It is also the birthplace of modern medicine, and a significant portion of many early sciences. The wealth of the nation as a whole and as parts is clear to me, and I wish to return.
I've learned part of the language while I am here, and it has made me more cognizant of communication with other cultures. People in Athens seemed put off when I tried to talk in Greek, but in Kos they were at the worst amused at my attempts. The language may not be as romantic to learn as French or Italian, and may not be as useful in the long term as Latin, but it would be interesting to speak nonetheless. I am tempted to start working on some of the i18n Greek QA issues in Debian -- It would help me learn the language more, and also keep me aware of the issues in software when you start working with other countries' characters. I have been lucky to be using a MacBook this entire time with decent Greek support, allowing me to type at least some greek while I was here. It helped me understand even more of the language - I now know mostly the numbers 1-9 at least.
The trip has highlighted for me something which is highly lacking in airports: power. Every airport that I have been to has prominently displayed the signs of wireless access, and has people using their laptops in almost every direction you can look (I am one of those), but they are sorely without power points for people who are using those laptops. This may be a designed flaw in order to save energy, but I don't really believe that 50 or even 5,000 laptops at 65-150W will put a significant dent in the power grid at somewhere as large as an airport, where LCD screens are running 24/7 with ads and bright lights illuminate every corner for all to be seen. I won't even start talking about the airplanes themselves.
All in all, the trip has been a happy one, and I would very much repeat it. I will make different decisions on lodging at some places and probably plan a shorter trip. I however wholly endorse Greece as a vacation spot, and even would consider moving here if offered a position (that would depend highly on Diana as well, obviously). I find it entirely favorable. I hope that this small series on the site has caused you, the reader some pleasure at least, even if it was at my expense.
Now begins the long trip home, on three planes and with 14.5 hours in the airplane and 18 hours in total. It'll be only 10 hours counting local time, unfortunately -- the jet lag will, I'm sure, be horrible.
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I've spent a total of 10 days outside of the United States now, the longest time since I have been alive, according to my knowledge. It has caused some interesting results. I realized that I am inextricably connected to the people who I am familiar with in my life, and being without them decreases my mood significantly, and without contact to them decreases my mood sharply.
I am not alone in this fact. There are many studies that show that people who have more social connections lead happier lives. I am lucky in that I am technologically ept and can connect to my near and dear in a number of ways, and be resourceful in finding other ways to contact them if necessary. I feel that I am lucky to live in a time which it is possible for me to spend so much time apart and still be in connection with people. I am also lucky that I was born in a geological area which enables me to be as such.
At the same time, I am sad to leave this place. It is a nice area, with good food and a very long history. As Nikos reminded me the other day, it is the birthplace of Democracy, which I hold to a fairly high regard. It is also the birthplace of modern medicine, and a significant portion of many early sciences. The wealth of the nation as a whole and as parts is clear to me, and I wish to return.
I've learned part of the language while I am here, and it has made me more cognizant of communication with other cultures. People in Athens seemed put off when I tried to talk in Greek, but in Kos they were at the worst amused at my attempts. The language may not be as romantic to learn as French or Italian, and may not be as useful in the long term as Latin, but it would be interesting to speak nonetheless. I am tempted to start working on some of the i18n Greek QA issues in Debian -- It would help me learn the language more, and also keep me aware of the issues in software when you start working with other countries' characters. I have been lucky to be using a MacBook this entire time with decent Greek support, allowing me to type at least some greek while I was here. It helped me understand even more of the language - I now know mostly the numbers 1-9 at least.
The trip has highlighted for me something which is highly lacking in airports: power. Every airport that I have been to has prominently displayed the signs of wireless access, and has people using their laptops in almost every direction you can look (I am one of those), but they are sorely without power points for people who are using those laptops. This may be a designed flaw in order to save energy, but I don't really believe that 50 or even 5,000 laptops at 65-150W will put a significant dent in the power grid at somewhere as large as an airport, where LCD screens are running 24/7 with ads and bright lights illuminate every corner for all to be seen. I won't even start talking about the airplanes themselves.
All in all, the trip has been a happy one, and I would very much repeat it. I will make different decisions on lodging at some places and probably plan a shorter trip. I however wholly endorse Greece as a vacation spot, and even would consider moving here if offered a position (that would depend highly on Diana as well, obviously). I find it entirely favorable. I hope that this small series on the site has caused you, the reader some pleasure at least, even if it was at my expense.
Now begins the long trip home, on three planes and with 14.5 hours in the airplane and 18 hours in total. It'll be only 10 hours counting local time, unfortunately -- the jet lag will, I'm sure, be horrible.
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Ελλάδα: εζάρτημα εννέα
Thu, Jul. 5th, 2007, 04:01 pm
Yesterday was pretty much a long day of preparation and presenting. The day started with no internet, possibly for the entire island of Kos, I wasn't really every that clear on the whole of it. Apparently there are 2 underwater lines coming to Kos island and both had been severed or put out of service by someone. This was a bad thing, because I had intended to finish some final experiments and do some statistics on results, and Excel wasn't working. I suspect it is because I hadn't installed the updating tool of Office 2004 for Mac. Anyway I could do what I needed to do with R or Gnumeric, but they were both not installed yet. No internet = no new applications.
I finished the experiments and data gathering and the internet came back on just in time for me to download Gnumeric and get some of the stats working correctly. The final presentation didn't change that much, only changing on one slide and adding one small table, but the added result was significant enough to justify all of the work that it entailed. Indeed, it proved that the entire premise of the paper and simulation was valid. That made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
The talk was at 3:30, the first in a session which was mostly unrelated papers. I don't feel as bad because many of the other papers were kind of a hodge-podge as well, and we were probably all placed in the session because we didn't really fit anywhere else. I met a nice researcher who was chairing the session because the actual chair was presenting in another session (something we had worked out with software in the ICRA2006 schedule, but apparently wasn't taken into account here). The actual presentation went well, and Nikos lent me his laser pointer which added a little to the presentation I believe. Nikos said the talk was good, but I also got a comment that it was well-presented later in the day from a unrelated researcher. I was so-so about the presentation until I got the unsolicited comment.
After the talk I called up Diana on Skype and chatted for a while, but the network was too flaky at the conference, so she called my cell phone. Using Skype is one of the things that I have done more in this trip than I have done before ever. It is really a wonderful program and network for people who are far away from each other, and it actually has much more impact when you consider the costs of calling home with other methods. I estimate I saved about $200 in just three days of Skype calling instead of regular calling, even with calling to cell phones in the US every once in a while, and with Diana calling my Hellenic cell phone when my network was flaky as well. It is much more of a disruptive technology in the non-US world where every call isn't already paid for.
The banquet was next. Usually I don't like going to banquets, but this was set up different than the normal ones that accompany these conferences. Instead of a large service crew bringing out fancy food to a large set of tables, it was setup in a buffet with a large selection of Greek food so you could pick and choose your favorites and even go back for more food if you liked. I ended up trying a large variety of foods and discovering some new tastes that I hadn't had before. It was throughly enjoyable especially when listening to the others at my table of which three or four were Greek.
Then it was back to the hotel by bus, and an early bedtime in order to stock up on sleep for the long hours in the next day. Today I plan on just relaxing, sleeping a bit when I get tired, and maybe trying out some local snacks. I've already arranged for a Taxi. The last installment will be written from the Athens airport tomorrow.
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I finished the experiments and data gathering and the internet came back on just in time for me to download Gnumeric and get some of the stats working correctly. The final presentation didn't change that much, only changing on one slide and adding one small table, but the added result was significant enough to justify all of the work that it entailed. Indeed, it proved that the entire premise of the paper and simulation was valid. That made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
The talk was at 3:30, the first in a session which was mostly unrelated papers. I don't feel as bad because many of the other papers were kind of a hodge-podge as well, and we were probably all placed in the session because we didn't really fit anywhere else. I met a nice researcher who was chairing the session because the actual chair was presenting in another session (something we had worked out with software in the ICRA2006 schedule, but apparently wasn't taken into account here). The actual presentation went well, and Nikos lent me his laser pointer which added a little to the presentation I believe. Nikos said the talk was good, but I also got a comment that it was well-presented later in the day from a unrelated researcher. I was so-so about the presentation until I got the unsolicited comment.
After the talk I called up Diana on Skype and chatted for a while, but the network was too flaky at the conference, so she called my cell phone. Using Skype is one of the things that I have done more in this trip than I have done before ever. It is really a wonderful program and network for people who are far away from each other, and it actually has much more impact when you consider the costs of calling home with other methods. I estimate I saved about $200 in just three days of Skype calling instead of regular calling, even with calling to cell phones in the US every once in a while, and with Diana calling my Hellenic cell phone when my network was flaky as well. It is much more of a disruptive technology in the non-US world where every call isn't already paid for.
The banquet was next. Usually I don't like going to banquets, but this was set up different than the normal ones that accompany these conferences. Instead of a large service crew bringing out fancy food to a large set of tables, it was setup in a buffet with a large selection of Greek food so you could pick and choose your favorites and even go back for more food if you liked. I ended up trying a large variety of foods and discovering some new tastes that I hadn't had before. It was throughly enjoyable especially when listening to the others at my table of which three or four were Greek.
Then it was back to the hotel by bus, and an early bedtime in order to stock up on sleep for the long hours in the next day. Today I plan on just relaxing, sleeping a bit when I get tired, and maybe trying out some local snacks. I've already arranged for a Taxi. The last installment will be written from the Athens airport tomorrow.
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Ελλάδα: εζάρτημα οχτώ
Wed, Jul. 4th, 2007, 08:08 am
The actual conference was not too difficult to get to - I ended up waiting for the bus much longer than I should have, sitting about 30 minutes. That was kind of annoying, but more annoying was the issue that I had to make a connecting bus, but it wouldn't show up for another 40 minutes after the first one dropped me off. This was just intolerable. Luckily there was someone else who was going to the conference as well, and we both decided that waiting was not our cup of tea, and split a cab. The cab was too expensive for 1 but just right to split, between the actual bus fare we would have to wait to pay and the imaginary unreasonable price to pay in order to get that far.
Unfortunately when I got to the conference I was unhappy to discover that the wireless problems I experienced on monday were not fixed by now, and it was completely not working. This is frustrating because a much smaller conference got it down just fine, and we also managed to get it right at ICRA06. Granted, this is a much more remote place, but they had many days to at least get the wireless access points working. One of the main reasons that the wireless wasn't working was because every point was on channel 11, except for a few, that were on channel 10 and broadcasting the same ESSID. This causes insane interference because the channels are very close to each other.
Anyway I was pretty fed up with that, but it was time for some talks. Lots of the talks yesterday were on things that were covered a long time ago in robotics, but are now just being completely formalized by the control people. It's not really my crowd of engineers. The different applications were interesting at least though.
I went to get lunch downtown and was reminded again of the "have to ask for your bill" thing when I well, had to ask for my bill. Carbonara for lunch was decent, but just blandish and not great. Back to the conference for some more talks, but the internet was partially working so I made a stop in order to check email. By the time I got up to the room, it was right to some papers that I was actually interested in. Unfortunately none of them were there. I decided to call the conference a day and go back to relax a bit.
I caught the bus to the hotel and then relaxed quite a bit, enough that I took a short nap. Also I chatted with Diana over Skype a bit, and that was pretty nice, but we got cut off again. I discovered that it's just the link to the repeater that gets severed. I think if I wanted to make a career setting up wireless networks correctly in Europe it would be a definite moneymaking endeavor. None of them seem to be setup correctly, except for the ones in airports and actually the one at MED07 worked fine as well.
After some relaxing time, I went out to eat at the same restaurant as before. There was some interesting motorcycle racing, and the food was again superb. I am kind of sad that I won't be able to go back there again this trip. The banquet is tonight and I will be there, and then I will have to go back to the airport in order to head home. The hotel isn't sure if I can get a late checkout on Thursday so I don't think I will come to the conference then, just stay in my room for a bit and possibly check out the town some more. Today, I give the talk in a session of unrelated talks. Hopefully I will do okay.
post/read comments
Link
Unfortunately when I got to the conference I was unhappy to discover that the wireless problems I experienced on monday were not fixed by now, and it was completely not working. This is frustrating because a much smaller conference got it down just fine, and we also managed to get it right at ICRA06. Granted, this is a much more remote place, but they had many days to at least get the wireless access points working. One of the main reasons that the wireless wasn't working was because every point was on channel 11, except for a few, that were on channel 10 and broadcasting the same ESSID. This causes insane interference because the channels are very close to each other.
Anyway I was pretty fed up with that, but it was time for some talks. Lots of the talks yesterday were on things that were covered a long time ago in robotics, but are now just being completely formalized by the control people. It's not really my crowd of engineers. The different applications were interesting at least though.
I went to get lunch downtown and was reminded again of the "have to ask for your bill" thing when I well, had to ask for my bill. Carbonara for lunch was decent, but just blandish and not great. Back to the conference for some more talks, but the internet was partially working so I made a stop in order to check email. By the time I got up to the room, it was right to some papers that I was actually interested in. Unfortunately none of them were there. I decided to call the conference a day and go back to relax a bit.
I caught the bus to the hotel and then relaxed quite a bit, enough that I took a short nap. Also I chatted with Diana over Skype a bit, and that was pretty nice, but we got cut off again. I discovered that it's just the link to the repeater that gets severed. I think if I wanted to make a career setting up wireless networks correctly in Europe it would be a definite moneymaking endeavor. None of them seem to be setup correctly, except for the ones in airports and actually the one at MED07 worked fine as well.
After some relaxing time, I went out to eat at the same restaurant as before. There was some interesting motorcycle racing, and the food was again superb. I am kind of sad that I won't be able to go back there again this trip. The banquet is tonight and I will be there, and then I will have to go back to the airport in order to head home. The hotel isn't sure if I can get a late checkout on Thursday so I don't think I will come to the conference then, just stay in my room for a bit and possibly check out the town some more. Today, I give the talk in a session of unrelated talks. Hopefully I will do okay.
post/read comments
Link