I went to fencing last night, and ended up going to bed around 10:30 - getting up at 6 am was hard for me this morning. I’m considering moving my alarm up to 6:30, because I don’t really need the extra time, but this is as good a time as any to make this post about how early I actually go to bed.

        My schedule this semester is this: I have class at 8:30 AM from Monday until Thursday. It can take a good 40 minutes to get to school, more if I get really unlucky, so it’s best to leave early - the other thing is that early in the morning, the buses are less busy because there are fewer people making their way to work. Busier buses means it takes a lot longer to get to school. So, that’s why I get up so early - I’d rather spend half an hour extra at school than half an hour extra in transit and get to class right on time.

        I happen to like getting up early, and don’t mind going to bed early to do that, which makes me the polar opposite of just about everyone I’ve ever met. A couple people barely every sleep, the rest are all night owls, and so I have this problem where every couple of night at 9 PM I get messages from people who aren’t going to bed any time soon. Maybe they have something important we need to talk about, maybe not, but of course I want to talk. Then I end up staying up for two hours and start getting ready for bed at 11 PM instead of 9, and then I end up crazy tired and it’s not really anyone’s fault. The thing is, I was likely online for hours, and they probably were as well, so why this almost always happens at 9 PM is a mystery to me.

        So here’s my request: By 9 PM, I’m already winding down for the night - I’ve been up for 15 hours already, and I need to sleep. Talk to me earlier. Talk to me at 5 PM. Just keep in mind that I have a totally different sleep schedule from you.

        Actually, there is another option - if and when I mention that it’s late/I’m getting ready for bed/I should sleep/any other not-so-subtle hints, tell me to go to bed and refuse to talk to me. It’s so incredibly nice for you to consider my best interests like that and I’m actually grateful towards the one person who ever does that for me. So that’s something else you can do that takes into account the fact that I may not be ready for bed yet.

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        Listening to an episode of the Hey Ash Whatcha Playin’ Podcast titled Come Here Uli, and here’s a brilliant quote about game design:

        “In a movie, you’re being asked implicitly to empathize with a character. In a game, you’re trying to do two things at once: you are trying to empathize with a character and to be a character at the same time. In something like inFamous, if you’re just trying to empathize with the character, when his girlfriend comes up like ‘raah I’m angry about stuff and later on you’re going to have to decide whether to save me or not’ then you can look at that passively, as in ok, we’re going to learn something about who this character is by how he decides to deal with his girlfriend. When you’re controlling him, and your girlfriend is like 'raah I’m mean at you for blowing up the city completely by accident and not your fault and later you’re going to have to decide whether to save me or not’ then it’s no longer a matter of 'what would Cole do, I’m interested to see how he grows’. It’s like ok, I guess what am I doing in this situation? I guess I’m supposed to manufacture a two year history, mentally, with this girlfriend I’ve just met, and in the entire time I’ve known her she’s just been a bitch to me, but I’m supposed to extrapolate that at one point this character, and therefore kind of me, but kind of not, once cared about her.”

What I’ve been up to: December edition

So I realize I haven’t been posting much, and there’s a very good reason for that: exams. I even had to skip fencing practice saturday because I wanted to do a bit more studying… I kinda spent too much time talking to people on thursday and friday.

        But anyway! The past week has been like this: Linguistics exam on monday (took me about 40 minutes), tuesday was Applied Linguistics (roughly an hour), wednesday was French (a little over an hour - my essay as twice as long as it was supposed to be, lol). Thursday I almost literally didn’t study, friday was more or less the same. I studied 3/7 chapters in those two days, which is like an hour and a half of studying across two days. And I read the easy chapters because I didn’t feel like studying. Friday I spent 3 hours writing up ineffective instructions for Rainmeter, and thursday I was talking to Britt pretty much all day. I even claimed I was leaving to study only to keep talking for a few more hours >.> So that’s why I avoid talking to people when I have things to do.

        Saturday I thought I had my Computers exam at 5 pm. Around 5:30 pm I realized it probably wasn’t at 5 pm. I was hoping to use one of the public computers to check my exam schedule, except some stereotypical jock was on facebook for 45 minutes and then TURNED IT OFF WHEN HE WAS DONE. You know how display consoles at Wal-mart are in little boxes where you can’t touch them? Imagine how rude it would be for someone to turn one of those off, because nobody can turn them on again without opening the case.

        So I was still afraid my exam might start any minute and didn’t want to spend 20 minutes going to get my cell phone, so I used a pay phone to call my mom and get her to check my exam schedule. As I feared, the exam wasn’t set to start until 7 pm. I told her I should be done by 7:30, because it was 45 multiple choice questions and I generally average 45 seconds per multiple choice. At least, on a normal multiple choice question.

        This was not a normal multiple choice test. I was there for an hour and a half, spending five minutes or more on some particularly crazy questions. The questions required you to check every single possible answer - “which of these is not false”, “which of these is not a problem with this code”, “which of these statements is most true” - and was generally designed to be a total asshole. So that was unpleasant but at least it’s over.

        We left my mom’s house by 7 am yesterday (sunday, day after my exam) to drive to my grandparents’ house in Fredericton. Took us ten hours total to drive there, only stopping once for gas and simply eating food we brought with us. My grandmother was worried we might be stranded in a snow storm (the weather was great) so we had supplies for two days. During the drive I finished reading The Art of Manliness, read chapter 9 in my psychology textbook (the first chapter we’ll be doing next semester, or so I assume) and read a bit about Python. Eventually I realized I couldn’t really learn Python just by reading about it, so I stopped.

        Now we’re here, and today I’m going shopping for shoes, winter boots, and pants. I’ll be staying here until the 27th, at which point I’ll be taking a bus to PEI. Staying there until the 31st, then we’ll drive back home. And the best part is the realization that I don’t have to do anything. I read ahead for my psychology course, sure, but aside from that… I really should just relax for the next two weeks. And that’s awesome. I’m going to do whatever I feel like doing, and it’ll be great. Demon’s Souls got an extension on its server expiration date, and they’re doing a Christmas event again this year, so I’m going to play a whole lot of that :D Of course I’ll have to go visiting and shopping and things like that, but I’m old enough now to not cry and complain over not getting to play video games for 12 hours per day.

Exciting research opportunities abound!

I went to a lab fair for Cognitive Science, which means various lab directors from Carleton sat down to chat about their projects and where they needed assistants and things like that. So aside from learning a few names and getting my name out there, I’ve also gotten a position as a volunteer research assistant (i.e. no benefit for me unless we get published), and names of a few people with research grants with which to pay people like me to do things. I’ll go through those in order.

        First, the volunteer stuff. Met a man named Jim Davies, who carries five notebooks with him to write down his research ideas. He has also given a TEDx talk at my school. I haven’t watched it yet, though I will, but first I have some stuff to do. But anyway! So he’s doing research on building a computer that can imagine the way humans do. The ultimate goal is to construct a massive database of images, with various parts labelled, and have the computer construct images based on keywords. So, for example, based on its experience of “car” images, if you say “car” to the computer it will make a car and perhaps put it on a road or driveway. If you say “puppy” it might put it near some grass or flowers.

        So my help with this is to create a Python program (note: I don’t yet know Python, so that’s step 1) that will submit queries to the Oracle of Objects, and so if I say (on the proximity page) “dog” it tells me there’s a 10% chance a picture of a dog will include a man. So that’s the basic “AI” of the imagination-bot, to go through its database of images and calculate these percentages and use them to generate its images. Now, one caveat is that it will be creating a kind of collage out of the images in its database - it isn’t going to spontaneously create these images like a human being might. So someone else needs to work on its ability to do photo-stitching, i.e. super-powered photoshopping.

        So yeah! That’s something to do in my spare time. I have to report back on my progress January 4th.

        Also? Jim Davies had two widescreen monitors set up in his office, except one was vertical (portrait orientation) and it was pretty cool seeing him manage them. Still kinda toying with the idea of more monitors. Also the main method of co-ordination with him and his assistants is shared google calendars. Thanks, Google!

        Now the paid work, which is… well, much more interesting to my wallet. Carleton has a Language and Brain Lab, as well as a Logic, Language, and Information Lab. Both of these labs have acquired research grants, allowing them to pay undergraduate students to do work as research assistants for them during the summer. So, essentially, summer jobs doing interesting research. This is far better than my planned summer jobs working for the government. I have to send out a few e-mails to the people I spoke to today, but one in particular mentioned that he would be looking for applications soon. Perrrrrrrrrrrrrrfect.

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        In unrelated news, I did a cool thing in Echo Bazaar, but it’s pretty spoilerrific. This is the culmination of a long series of silk hunting/spider extermination expeditions at The Silken Chapel near the Wolfstack Docks. Something that was immensely boring, unrewarding, and unsatisfying. Until this happened! Now it’s kinda cool. Image is here, if you want to see it.

PSYCHOLOGY4

Now available: Consciousness (mainly interesting because of sleep) and Learning (entirely interesting). This is good stuff, folks. Very good stuff. Extremely good stuff, even.

Don’t let the learning chapter go by - read that .pdf like your life depends on it. You’ll be a better parent, you’ll be a better person, you’ll be more productive and you’ll be better in bed. Maybe.

Then there’s this gem:

The problem with delayed punishment also explains the ineffectiveness of punishing a pet hours after it has misbehaved, when the owner finally returns home. For instance, it won’t do any good to hit your dog with a newspaper while shoving its face in the feces it previously left on your carpet. This common punishment doesn’t teach your dog to stop defecating on your carpet - it teaches the dog to keep its face out of its feces.

Did I mention reading this would make you a better parent?

Sleep cycle alarm clock4

Here’s some great science for you folks. This iPhone app tracks your movement throughout the night, which differs based on the cycle of sleep you’re in, and uses that to calculate the optimal time to wake you up. I heard about it. I considered it. I realized it would work because I am spending lots of money to learn SCIENCE! And then I decided to file it away in case I ever get an iPod Touch.

        Then I waited a few days and decided to write a tumblr post about it.

        There’s plenty of stuff on their site, and in this review, about how it “works” in terms of the waking you up bit, but none of these have explained the coolest part - how the hell does it work? Here’s the thing - when you’re in the deepest stage of sleep, REM, your body is basically paralysed. Maybe so you don’t act out your dreams or something. At any rate, should you wake up during REM sleep, you’ll feel awful. You cycle through the five stages of sleep in around 90 minutes, so the alarm has a 30 minute leeway before your scheduled awakening to wake you up. If you enter the lightest stage of sleep in that period, it wakes you up. If you’re in REM, it’ll wait for you to pass out of it.

        Gosh, isn’t science fun!?

        Also cool are dawn simulators. Yet another thing from Lifehacker, this site allegedly has a good dawn simulator for $40. Or they would if they weren’t sold out until january 2011. I know it looks horrible, but it probably is legit, all things considered. Just bad web design. If you’re too lazy to read the page: “slowly lights a bedside lamp to simulate dawn. This simulates sunrise and tells your brain that it is time to get up and start the day.” So I guess you plug your lamp into it or whatever which is why it’s not big and fancy.

        I’m kinda tempted by the 205 model though, for $20. Couldn’t hurt. It actually does suck waking up to complete darkness. But. Eh. We’ll see.

        edit for bonus SCIENCE!: The dawn simulator isn’t strictly a light-based alarm clock, rather it’s meant to keep your biological clock ticking properly, which is what leads to Seasonal Affective Disorder Syndrome. AKA you get depressed during the winter because light hitting your retinas makes your body secrete melatonin, which gets your body going for the day - and winter is dark so you don’t get that. Thus the dawn simulator, which serves to get your body producing melatonin at the right time and prime you for waking up.

        This also extends to light getting to your eyes before sleep - it’ll keep your brain from knowing it’s night time and that you need to sleep, getting you all out of whack. So keep your monitor brightness down and stuff.

"I write to untangle my yarn of thoughts": Blogging as an art of writing the self and imagining communities4

vael:

Here’s a pet peeve about school.

Language and identity have three connections  - symbolic (language says who we are), instrumental (language enables us to do things), and constructive (language can be used for creation)

When you know a language well enough to express yourself in it, you can re-interpret yourself through the use of it

REALLY?! Whoa! I didn’t know that if you know a language well enough, you can, uh, re-interpret yourself through it! Good thing I learned this obvious fact that I will throw away but be tested on.

        Not so much re-interpreting yourself just by using ANY language, but that if you learn Spanish and start speaking exclusively Spanish, it’ll change your identity the more you use it. This doesn’t sound like much, but for the Kurdish bloggers he was studying (while I didn’t take notes on it, it’s basically illegal to use Kurdish in every country where it has a native population), to publicly use their mother tongue is a huge thing for their identity.

        This class is pretty slack and we don’t get tested on stuff like that. We had a fill-in the blank section on our test (pick one of 14 words to fill 10 blanks) which was worth as much as the two short answer questions. We had one question on the other guest lecture we had on the test, but it was just a random thing.

        The idea, though, is to give free marks to people who show up and don’t sleep in class. Sad but true. The more obscure you go with your questions, the higher you’re aiming those free marks - like, you’re either rewarding the people who show up, or the people who take good notes, or the people who take PERFECT notes.

        This is also fodder for the papers we’re going to write in a couple of weeks. Whether for quoting or for expanding on.

        And, truth be told, stuff that I jotted down like that was just poor note taking on my part. Grabbing what’s on the slides instead of what comes out of his mouth. But he kinda rushed through that part a bit and I was like eh well I’ll describe this as best I can… But I’ll be trying to fill things out when I get his slides.

        So that’s my response which doesn’t change anything but there’s what I have to say.

3net slum·Source: lamattgrind

"I write to untangle my yarn of thoughts": Blogging as an art of writing the self and imagining communities4

I’m about to run to class, so I can’t say much about this, but here are the notes I took on an amazing presentation by a super smart guy. I’m going to e-mail him and get his slideshow for you guys and ask him a few questions so let me know if there’s anything you’d like to know!

        He knows about all kinds of things, including trolling and griefing, so don’t think your question has to be solely related to blogging. At any rate, his main domains are identity construction and language, so relate those to technology and come up with some things you’d like to ask.

        Or you could just e-mail him yourselves but that might be a bit weird.

        edit: I mention trolling and griefing to say that he knows about internet stuff in general and he’s not like a stuffy dude in a suit who doesn’t really understand what he’s studying

UniNotes has content!4

UniNotes is slowly filling up with delicious, delicious information. Do you like to learn things? I do. I like other people learning things too. For your learning convenience, then, I present to you the first four chapters of my psychology and linguistics (actually linguistics chapter 4 isn’t up yet because we have an assignment due soon, don’t want to give out my answers) textbooks! On top of that, a month of lectures on the subjects covered in the textbooks. For ALDS, we just cover interesting things, so it’s more varied.

        Chapter 4 in my psych textbook is Sensation and Perception, which you would see if you looked at the PSYC 1001 folder. It covers all of the senses, and lightly covers how we perceive these senses. It doesn’t delve hardcore into the subjectivity of experience, and the stuff that was there didn’t make it into my notes. Likewise with the proofs of subjectivity in the second chapter on Research Methods. But there’s interesting examples, such as giving the same replay of a football game to fans of the different teams. Each group of fans saw twice as many penalties made by the OTHER team. So if Team A thought it had 4 penalties and the other team had 10, Team B thought they had 5 penalties and the other team had 8. The recordings were the same, and yet they were watching different games.

        Another example was a video created by laying the video of one basketball game over another. One had been edited to make the players black silhouettes, the other edited to make them white silhouettes. Or something like that. At any rate, the subjects were asked to try to follow both games at the same time.

        When a woman with an umbrella walked onto the court, only half of the subjects noticed. When a man in a gorilla costume jumped in, only ¼ “saw” it.

        The world is a beautiful place :’)

        edit for bonus content: I’m reading Chapter 5 of my psychology textbook right now, and it’s about Consciousness, which basically means sleep, hypnosis, drugs, and a few other things. Anyway, awesome quote:

Americans spend so much time and energy chasing the American Dream, that they don’t have much time left for actual dreaming.

-William Dement

UniNotes NOW ONLINE YEAH4

This is where I will put the notes I take for my university courses. I didn’t want the name to be confusing, so I went with frighteningly blunt instead. I’m putting up notes for Introduction to Psychology I, Introduction to Linguistics, and Introduction to Applied Linguistics and Discourse studies. My other two classes this semester are french (no laptop use there lol) and introduction to object-oriented programming, in which case my notes are basically just extensive “note to self"s. They’d basically be illegible to anyone else.

I’m also including the name of the instructor in parentheses, because different professors do things differently, so I wouldn’t want to mislead anyone.

Different classes have different formats for emphasis, but in particular, the linguistics chapter notes use italics for keywords (the bolded text in the textbook - if you’ve ever read a textbook, you should know exactly what I mean) and I’ve tried to use indentation to keep things together. The lecture notes may be a little rough because it’s not like the professors have to make their lectures linear and well-organized, but I try.

Mad props to one Vael Victus who set me up with a slice of BCN bandwidth to host this. This plug is totally insufficient as thanks but it will have to do because I’m tired and uncreative at the moment. He’s a cool dude! He’ll help you out! He’ll post things that will entertain you! And he brought you this wonderful service by hosting it, so there you go.

I’m sure you were totally interested in my schedule (I know you weren’t) but I’m interested in my progress and it makes me feel good to remember I’ve accomplished something. So, for that selfish reason, here’s the homework I did over the weekend!

ALDS: I did my readings. Nothing crucial here, so nothing exciting to really report. However, my experiment did not lead to any interesting paper subjects. Oh well.

FREN: Watch my movie, read Voltaire, listen to music - and then write about all of those for my cultural journal. This was what I spent most of saturday doing. That’s four hours of stuff without the writing, which is kinda silly because I’d ALREADY DONE four hours for this project, but I decided they weren’t good enough so I started over. But hey it’s good now.

LING: Take notes on chapter 3.

Well damnit. That… looks like a lot less than it felt like. I know where and how I ended up spending time not working, but excuses are pretty useless. I know I’m not in trouble, I mean the next thing I have due is on thursday, and I could probably do it the day-of and print it off at school.

I do wish I had magically finished all of my work this weekend, but I was probably a little bit too optimistic on thursday. I’ve got psych and applied linguistics tomorrow, and since I won’t be starting on that paper just yet, I should get some solid work done on psychology notes. I’ve got from the end of my computers lab (11-11:30 at the latest) until 1 pm, then 2:30 until 4 pm, so that gives me three hours (minus eating lunch and time spent in transit and etc. etc.) to work. I’ll get at least one chapter done for psychology, and likely some of the second. Then that night I’ll do my linguistics assignment and check out my next computers assignment.

Riveting excitement here, folks. Don’t miss a minute.