Me vs. Thesis

My friends got back from Florida yesterday, a day earlier than I'd been expecting. Other than a few problems on the bus ride down (kind of predictable, since it's a 26 hour bus ride under the best of conditions), it sounds like they had a smashing time.

Meanwhile, I'm going really hard on this thesis thingie right now. Really hard. Tonight, my sleep will no doubt be haunted by dreams of antennas, rectifiers and op. amps. It's terrible. I think it's going to be an exceptionally long week. I've definitely developed a chemical dependence on caffeine. Oh, why do I have to live across the street from a coffee shop? The employees are actually getting to know me, I've been in so much in the last week.

No More Physics Countdown: 51 days, 1 hour exactly

Thesis due in: t-minus 120 hours.

Reading Week is almost over

All my friends are beginning the 26 hour bus ride back from Panama City Beach today. I hope they had a good time, despite my intense jealousy. I'm still working like crazy on the thesis. I'm about half way through writing now, which sounds like not much, since I plan to have a first draft done by Sunday night, but it's actually almost on track when you consider that I didn't really start working on it in earnest until Thursday. I'm not looking forward to the next week or two at all. This week it's try to get your thesis done by the 4 PM Friday deadline while also trying to do reasonably well on my three midterms and probably neglecting all other responsibilities. Next weekend is time to finish my stupid COMM 244 project that's due on Monday, and then I have Monday night to do a Signals assignment, and a couple nights to study for the two more miderms I have on Thursday. But after that it's easy going, and the only thing I have to worry about between then and exams is my thesis defence in week 9. Almost over though! Three weeks from tomorrow I'll be getting my Iron Ring, and graduation is only around the corner from that.

Music: My Morning Jacket - It Still Moves

No More Physics Countdown: 52 days, 5 hours, 51 minutes

Observations on Blogs

That last post seems to have attracted a lot of attention: I've more than tripled my daily visitors since I posted it. I didn't expect a reaction. It's interesting to see the kind of things people post as a comment on the blog of someone they've never met (assuming, of course, that the Anonymous Coward commenters have never met me). It's also interesting to see the spectrum of reactions--especially the guy who called me arrogant, a comment which I think anyone who knew me would laugh out loud at.

I'm finally making some serious progress on my thesis. That may end later tonight though, as Genghis has invited me and a few other people over to watch Animal House. Amazingly, I haven't ever seen it before, so I might have to go.

Being employed vs. Big Oil

So I went and talked to Dr. Greenspan today. The job he wants me for isn't working on the robot pool project; it's working on a computer vision project for monitoring cracks in industrial equipment. First off, this sounds kind of boring. But I could deal with that, because it would at least be good experience. Second, it's privately funded, which I'm not a big fan of, but I could deal with. The part I can't deal with is the fact that the source of the private funding is an oil company: the industrial equipment in question is used for extracting oil from the Athabaska Tar Sands. While I was polite in the interview, there's no way I'm going to work on this project. I wish I'd told him what I really thought.

It's interesting, though, to note that the tar sands are believed to contain more petroleum than the entire Middle East. In other words, we're not going to run out of oil any time soon, so long as we don't mind the environmental devastation or economic cost associated with strip mining an area of northern Alberta twice the size of Lake Ontario, extracting all the oil from it, and then burning that oil to produce billions of tons of greenhouse gases.

Florida/Kingston Temperature Difference: 31 degrees warmer in Florida

No More Physics Countdown: 55 days, 4 hours, 32 minutes

Update: [1:28 PM] I told what I thought of the job. I just emailed him this:

Dr. Greenspan,

After having a couple hours to think about it, I'd like to withdraw myself from consideration for the job we discussed. I cannot, in good conscience, work for an oil company. I would be aiding and abeting the expliotation of the tar sands, a policy which I believe is environmentally disastrous and socially irresponsible. Furthermore, as a student of this university and a citizen of this planet, I am disappointed at the knowledge that you would accept private money to pursue research with this end. The next time a corporation comes offering you money for your research, I urge you to consider carefully whether or not that research is in the long-term best interests of humankind.

Sincerely,
Chris Ball

I invite you to also protest the undermining of our universities by corporate interests by sending letters to any professor who you know is accepting corporate money to pursue research they shouldn't be doing. You can look up Queen's professors, including Dr. Greenspan, here.

Think Links

After coming across this article by this person, I have to amend my blog rules:

2a. I won't post anything that I wouldn't want other people's mothers to read about them.

I also came across this article today. Very interesting. The part where he meets Rain Man made me want to cry.

Ooh, I have a job interview tomorrow with the pool-playing robot guy. (Just to clarify: he designs the robots, he isn't actually a robot)

Music: The tune of my thesis not getting done.

Florida/Kingston Temperature Difference: 21 degrees warmer in Florida

No More Physics Countdown: 55 days, 20 hours, 43 minutes

Current weather conditions in Kingston, ON and Panama City Beach, FL: A Comparative Study

Kingston:

• Temperature: -7 Celsuis
• Conditions: Overcast; light snow
• Accumulation: 10-15 cm in the last 12 hours

Panama City Beach:

• Temperature: +21 Celsuis
• Conditions: Partly cloudy; chance of showers or thunderstorms later in the day
• Accumulation: I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess zero. This is Florida we're talking about, people!

In conclusion: I hate it here.

57 days until physics stops sucking my soul.

Music: Bob Marley & The Wailers - Natty Dread

Reading Week from Hell

My friends all left for Florida today. I'm so sad that I'm not going. I don't regret the decision though; I only regret the decision to do eng phys, which is what forced me to make the decision. Boo. The good news is, after consulting everyone else, it turns out I'm finished exams way before everyone else! So I might have to go to Florida that week and leave them all here, just to give them a taste of their own medicine!

Going away party for Joanna tonight at the Griz. It'll be my last chance to party before I start going hardcore on my thesis.

Birthday Shoutouts: Dave C. His birthday was Wednesday, but the party was last night. He's a very big guy, and it shows in his drinking ability!

Music: Kings of Convenience - Versus

Exam timetable is up!

The exam timetable is posted. I can now say for certain that by 5 PM on April 19th, I'll be finished with physics for good. That's 60 days and 18 minutes from now, not that I'm counting.

I'm also feeling pretty good because I was looking at the applied science calendar and I discovered that to graduate with first class honours, I only need to get a 75% average this semester! I can totally do that, no problem. I had been under the impression that you had to get over 80% in your last two years to get honours, but it turns out that you just need over 80% in your last two years or an 80% cumulative average. After my controls mark last semester, I pretty much gave up on the former, but I think I'm a shoe-in for the latter.

The bad news, though, is that it's now Reading Week? Why is that bad, you ask? Because even though this week was clearly designed for such activities as skiing and sitting on the beach in warm Caribbean countries, I'm actually going to be spending it doing work. Specifically, my thesis. The worst part is, all my friends are going to Florida and leaving me here. *sigh*

Music: All Tomorrow's Parties 1.0

The White Man's New Burden

I was having an interesting conversation today, in which I half-jokingly said I felt guilty for being a white person. The person I was talking to (who is not white) said that was silly, but it got me thinking. The phrase that kept running through my head was "The White Man's Burden." I knew I'd heard it before, but I couldn't remember where. So I looked it up. It turns out it's a poem by Rudyard Kipling. The burden referred to in the poem is the moral burden of an imperialist shepherd preventing its colonial sheep from going astray (my metaphor, not his). Kipling (who was apparently an outspoken pro-imperialist) portrays the non-white population of the world as barbarians, incapable of self-rule and totally without morals, except those taught them by their Western occupiers. It's disturbingly racist.

The curious thing is that before looking it up, my interpretation of the phrase was completely the opposite of the standardly accepted meaning--Kipling's meaning. Without thinking about it, I had innocently interpreted the White Man's burden as the moral burden resulting from having virtually enslaved the rest of the world for the last two centuries. It's interesting (and I don't think Kipling intended this interpretation, which almost makes it worse) that it's not even just the White Person's burden--it's the White Man's burden. My particular demographic--the white male--makes up maybe 10% of the world's population, but we have been systematically exploiting the other 90%--women and dark-skinned people alike--for all of modern history. I hope this recognition is not just due to my own far-left political views, but also to a wider recognition of injustice in the world throughout Western society--but a more realistic interpretation of the facts is that that isn't the case: we might not have the gall to imply that the imperialists of the world are only white men any more, but the underlying racism is still there.

So let me give you all a new interpretation of the phrase for a new millenium. The White Man's burden in the 21st century is one we must shed. It is the burden of responsibility. But it cannot be shed idly; it must be shed by ending the imperialist system of oppression that persists throughout the world. We restore dignity to those we have oppressed. We must end Western domination of the Third World and restore the right to self-determination to all peoples of the world. The damage has been done. Now it is time to start repairing it.

Music: Bob Dylan - self-titled

Edit: (11:55 PM) I just realized that in one possible reading of the second sentence of this post, I refer to my non-white associate as an "it." Given the nature of the post, I think this slip is way too funny to correct, but I'd just like to point out to the overly-observant reader that I didn't mean it that way!

Thoughts on SPAM and monkeys

No, this isn't a post about Monty Python, though I wish it was. It's a post about the other kind of spam--the email kind. On a side note though, the latter is named after the former, as I learned from this website about the history of spam. Anyway, my ponderance of the most hated phenomenon on the Internet revolves around those emails you get. You know, the ones trying to sell you porn, stocks, penis/breast enlargement pills, Rolexes, etc. You know, the ones that have those computer generated names in the From field with the seemingly random words as the first name and last name and some middle initial. My question is, how do the spammers come up with a database of words to generate those names? Because they're not just everyday words. The reason I'm wondering about it is (here comes the punchline) that today I got a piece of spam from probably the funniest computer generated name I've ever seen:

Circumcision V. Batman

It sounds like some kind of hilarious legal battle. This is proof of the monkeys and typewriters theorem: an infinite number of monkeys sitting at an infinite number of typewriters will produce all the great works of English literature. To phrase it in more mathematical terms, if you have n monkeys sitting at n typewriters, then in the limit as n approaches infinity, the probability that all the great works of English literature will be produced by them approaches one. What most people don't think about is the fact that the probability approaches one very slowly as a function of n. This lack of recognition is the reason the theorem is often misquoted as:

A million monkeys sitting at a million typewriters will
eventually produce all the great works of English literature.

Wrong! It is, in fact, mind-bogglingly unlikely that a mere million monkeys would accomplish such a feat within the lifetime of a normal monkey. Even if you wanted to produce just one of the great works, say Great Expectations, you can make some pretty easy simplifying assumptions and calculate that you'd need well over 10¹⁰⁰⁰ monkeys just to have a reasonable shot. That's more monkeys than there are atoms in the universe (Not to even mention the prohibitively large number of typewriters required)! This is why the best the spammers' computers can come up with is Circumcision V. Batman. Nonetheless, I thought it was funny.

Links:

• The Meatrix - by far the most creative (and corniest) pro-vegetarian/vegan website I've ever seen.

Music: Grandaddy - A Pretty Mess by This One Band

Valentine's Schmalentine's

I really wonder who came up with the idea of Valentine's Day. Undoubtedly it was somebody trying to make a buck. It's a horribly consumeristic holiday that makes a point of ruthlessly excluding single people, gay people, and flower industry workers in the third world. Well, that's what I thought until I tried to find some good links, only to find that gay people everywhere are apparently getting more action than I am tonight (check out the link anyway, it's pretty funny). Still I shouldn't complain--my years-long February 14th single streak came to an end last year, and while I don't exactly have a date for tonight, things are at least looking up in that department. Regardless: boo Hallmark, boo roses, boo chocolate, boo red and pink things, and most of all, boo Valentine's Day!

In non-holiday-related news, Studio Q put out probably its best episode ever last night. Joel managed to work himself into nearly every sketch. His very own sequel to the critically acclaimed Forbzy & LaMarshe was featured, and I thought it was even better than the original. They haven't posted the new episode on the website yet, but when they do, hop on over and download it!

Music: The Starlight Mints - Built on Squares

Birthday Shoutouts: Dad, just think: you're half-way to being 110. Also, my awesome cousin Nicola turns the big bad three-oh today; it's now getting to the point where the fact that she still gets carded at bars is flattering instead of insulting.

Baguettefest

Last night Ian and Tim hosted Baguettefest, the sequel to December's Rouladenfest (but this time, of course, with a French rather than a German theme). Note that the two French guys in the picture bear a striking resemblance to Ian and Tim. I managed to drag Joel out with me too, even though he only knew one other person there. Unfortunately, the wine ran out pretty early on, and we ended up at MyBar by 1:00, where we ran into our housemate Dave C. It was an interesting night. *sigh* Too bad this is the last weekend before all my friends go to Florida for Reading Week and leave me here to write my thesis.

Edit: (4:14 PM) Tim has posted some pictures of the event here. As you can see, the wine shortage didn't stop Ian; it merely prompted him to have a little too much Scotch.

Last night I saw the two greatest movies ever made

So last night no one really had anything to do, so Joel, Craig, James and I went to see Hotel Rwanda. Fantastic movie. Very moving. It's unfortunate that they got some of the historical facts wrong (according to James, who read Gen. Romeo Dallaire's book on the subject), but it was still awesome, and I hope Don Cheadle wins Best Actor for his fantastic performance.

Then we went back to Mech House and watched (in rather stark contrast) Batman: The Movie (yes, the 1966 version). It was so bad it was hilarious. Joel was literally rolling around on the floor in fits of laughter. They say that something can't be campy if it's trying to be campy, but this was so bad that it was campy in spite of itself.

Music: Testing out the mix CD I just burned for Chantelle

El Presidente

My friend Chris Zabaneh has just been elected president of the Engineering Society. Congratulations Zab!

Birthday Shoutouts: Today my mother begins her sixtieth trip around the sun. Happy Birthday Mum!

A day of firsts

Today was a day of doing things I've never done before. For example:

• I got my first ever filling.
• I voted in my first (and last) AMS election.

There were one or two other things, too. Good luck to Zab, who is running for EngSoc president! I have this disturbing feeling that BMP (aka Team Khaki Snack) are going to win the AMS election. I also had a job interview today with this guy. Neuroeconomics = very cool. And when I say I had a job interview, I mean I emailed him and told him I was coming for a job interview whether he liked it or not! He was very amenable, and basically said that if he had an opening and he had the money, he'd hire me, and I'd know in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I'm thinking of talking to a couple other guys about hiring me, including this guy, this guy, and this guy.

Music: Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Gord Downie is the reason I'm unemployed

Two things happened last summer that pertain to my current story: (1) I worked for this guy, and (2) the Tragically Hip played their first show in Kingston in 10 years.

So why do I blame Gord Downie for me not having a job? Well, Doug Munoz (the prof I worked for) was unable to resist the temptation of Canada's best rock band, and went to the show--even though he had a grant application due the next day! So needless to say, he now has no grant money, so he's not hiring summer students this summer, so I'm out of what would otherwise be a surefire job.

Well, except actually, I'm working for him tomorrow a bit. Even though I don't have the time. He needs something done, so he's gonna pay me to do it for an afternoon. Then I'm going to hunker down in Botterell and do my solid state assignment all night, I think, because I'm not getting anything done tonight.

Music: The Tragically Hip - Phantom Power (ironic, eh?)

Damn you Microsoft!

MSN hasn't been working. I'm pretty sure it's something on their end. The same was happening for a while last night. It's really annoying me. Oh well, I'll have to work on my solid state assignment instead. Ah, deriving material properties of things from quantum mechanics--what could be more fun than that?

Music: The Apples in Stereo - Fun Trick Noisemaker

EDIT (6:33 PM)
I checked again five minutes after I posted, and it's back up. Long live Emperor Gates!

Rules of the Blog

As the blog is now well into its third month, I thought it was time to lay out some groud rules as to exactly what I'm trying to do here. Here goes:

1. You do not talk about the blog.
2. You do not talk about the blog.
3. When someone says "stop," or goes limp, it's time to roll over and go to sleep.
4. Only one guy to a blog.
5. One blog at a time.
6. No shirts, no shoes. (This rule applies only to the ladies)
7. Blog entries go on as long as they have to.
8. If this is your first time reading the blog, you have to write a comment.

For anyone who didn't get the joke here, you really have to see this movie. But (semi) seriously:

1. Blog entries shall be be composed of:
• whimsical obervations about life.
• rants about the state of the world.
• random accounts of what's going on.
• pretty much whatever I feel like posting.
2. I won't post anything I wouldn't want my mother to read--not that she even knows what a blog is.
3. I won't post anything that could get me arrested, or prevent me from taking political office some day, or anything of that sort.
   
4. I won't post stuff about relationships of a romantic and/or sexual nature (not that you have to worry much about that!). If you want the sleazy details, MSN me and we'll talk.
5. The blog will be better than Joel's blog.
6. I will continue to deny all rumours about my sordid past, my ongoing demon worship, and my sexual obsession with the Three Stooges.
7. What demon worship? See how easy that was to deny?

Music: Various Artists (but mostly Aimee Mann) - Magnolia OST

A Perfect Day

Do you ever have one of those dreams that's so awesome that when you wake up and realize it's not real, your really angry? I had one of those last night. It's kind of complicated, but the best way to describe it is to say that it was a dream about what it's going to be like to be finished school in April.

But anyway, that's not the reason for today's Lou Reed reference in the headline. I went for a run a bit earlier (third day in a row!) and I think it's the most beautiful day ever out. Yesterday's and last night's ice fog left the trees covered in tiny ice crystals. Throughout the course of my half-hour run, the sun melted them all off, producing miniature snowfalls beneath all the trees. It was beautiful.

There's some talk about going for Chinese today. I actually really don't like Chinese food, but I think I'm going to go anyway. If I don't keep trying it, I'll never start liking it!

Music: New Pornographers - Electric Version

On weather, running, parties and pub crawls

The first thing I was going to do this morning was go for a run. I get out of bed and open my window to see the tree right outside covered with ice. Beyond the houses directly across the street, everything fades into mist.

"Eeeshhh.... That's not gonna be good for running," I say aloud.

I go on the computer and check the weather report. Later today: mainly sunny, 3 degrees. Perfect running weather for February. Current conditions: -5 degrees, overcast, ice fog. Ice fog! Coolest form of weather ever. The is the kind of winter stuff I can deal with. Maybe I'll go for a run later, once it's all melted.

Anyway, the party last night was good. They managed to not run out of alcohol this time. The girl Joel wanted to pick up was there--with her boyfriend. So that didn't happen. Peel has a bunch of his high school buddies down for the weekend, so I think we're going to do a bit of a pub crawl tomorrow night to show them the sights of Kingston. Should be another wild ride.

CNN: news, or satire lost on its audience?

Okay, everybody has to tune in to CNN at 8:00 tonight. Paula Zahn is doing a piece on Ward Churchill, and how he "compares 9/11 victims to Nazis." Well, okay, that claim is technically true, but as far as I can tell, Churchill is one of the few people to say anything intelligent about 9/11 in the mainstream media. CNN--along with most other American news sources--has gotten so outrageously flag-waving and Bush-supporting since 9/11 that I sometimes think it must be a joke. But alas, It's not. I strongly advise everyone to tune in for a laugh, and then to read this rebuttal.

Music: Elliott Smith - From a Basement on the Hill

Just a Runnin' Fool, or, Groundhogs Can't Predict the Future

I just went for a run, my first run of 2005. It felt good. I'm not as horribly out of shape as I feared. The weather is beautiful today; it feels like spring! I hope it stays like this for the next six weeks, just to bring that groundhog down a notch. Six more weeks of winter indeed! Of course, realistically, we haven't seen the last of winter, and this is just a brief respite. But a man can dream...

Kegger tonight at Kevin and Brian's! Awesome.

Music: The Tragically Hip - Phantom Power

JB to the JR

Since I only have one class on Fridays and it doesn't start until 11:30, I'm always kind of in the mood for doing something on Thursday nights. Last night Joel felt the same way, so at around 10 pm we set off to wander the streets of Kingston and find something to do. It ended up being a pretty fun night.

We eventually found our way to the Grad Club. I think maybe I had subconsciously steered us there, having subconsciously seen a poster for who was playing there last night. It was Jill Barber! I gladly paid the $10 cover, while Joel did so with much less grudge than I would have anticipated. I would guess she was about a third of the way through her set (incidentally, that's the second time I've arrived at a Jill Barber show halfway through--the same thing happened at the Wolfe Island Music Festival in the summer). Then the headliner came on: Josh Ritter. I would describe him as a young Will Oldham, except not as depressing and 1,000,000 times funnier. Great stage presence. Other than the fact that Joel wanted to run off as soon as the show was over, it was a great night of random fun.

Oh, and I made an interesting observation while we were out. My opinion on Creemore Springs beer is very similar to my opinion on the music of Rage Against the Machine: I respect it, I want to like it, but I just can't bring myself to like it.

Anyhoo, off to my one class!

Music: The New Year - Newness Ends

A 3-foot snowflake shines through my window

Way back in mid-November, the City of Kingston went and put up all these glowing Christmas decorations on all the lamp-posts around downtown. One such lamp-post is directly outside my bedroom window. The things are quite bright, and when they first got put up, it probably caused me to lose a bit of sleep before I got used to it. Well, I just noticed last night that despite the fact that it's now February, it's still up! It seems the city may have forgotten to take it down, because it seems to be the only such decoration that's still up. Now normally, I wouldn't still be losing sleep over the thing, because I've adjusted to having the extra light in my room at night, but last night it struck again: when I noticed it was still there, I thought it was so funny that I had to run downstairs and tell Joel, and then we got into a 45-minute conversation about Romantic literature. Thus, the giant snowflake cost me 45 minutes of sleep.

*sigh* Today is going to be one of those "work like crazy on thesis" days. I really don't want to be in that course!