Thoughts on using a pedometer for a month

A little over a month ago, I bought a new copy of Pokemon HeartGold. Those of you who know the game will also know that it comes with a little pedometer that gives you small benefits within the game. I figured I had room for it in my pockets, so I’ve been keeping it on me ever since.

        One thing that’s interesting is that it seems to break up steps into discrete “trips”, separating them after some unknown period of low activity. It’s a feature I wouldn’t know I wanted, if I were shopping around for a “real” pedometer. While it’s not perfect (there’s some required threshold for generating a “trip” report, like having 15+ minutes of walking), it winds up giving me a lot of really interesting information. Assuming I remember what I did on a given day. But, for example, the first day I had it, I walked to school in the morning and after class. When I had to stop at a couple of traffic lights on the way to/from campus, it separated the trip into chunks - so I can figure out the relative distances of each part of the trip (from hose to the first major intersection, from there to campus). Well, that assumes I write down the trip numbers at the moment I transfer them to the game cartridge (more on that in a moment). Also, I say relative because I don’t know exactly how long my stride is, and I can’t claim 100% accuracy of its measurements.

        When I walked both to and from campus, my totals were in the range of ~12,000-15,000 steps. If I walk in the morning and take the bus in the afternoon, it’s down to ~9,000-12,000. After construction finally finished on a bridge near campus, I was able to cut my travel time hugely by taking the bus halfway and walking from the bridge. This put me down around ~7,000-11,000 steps per day. However, that’s all from my mom’s house - from my dad’s, I’m around 6,000-8,000 most days.

        However, the main issue thus far has been that I don’t have access to complete historical data. Data for the last seven days is stored on the device itself, and can be “sent” to the game cartridge for summarizing and getting bonuses. When you sent the information to the cartridge, it gives you your trip reports and updates your total steps thus far. But it doesn’t store the individual daily values that are sent to it (since that could take theoretically infinite storage, which it doesn’t have). So this leaves me with the annoying problem of writing down my daily steps just before bed, and that feels like a lot of effort.

        Interestingly enough, the Nintendo 3DS includes pedometer functionality, and seems to keep track of historical data (hourly summaries and daily summaries) indefinitely on a calendar. From my own use, it seems to count less steps in most cases - but perhaps the Pokemon pedometer is counting too many… I’m inclined towards the former because of the size of the 3DS. I imagine it’s harder for the whole thing to shake and count as a step. That, and it’s just not something I can fit in the pocket of my pants, so it’s not a real alternative. I keep it in my backpack, instead, but that counts far less steps.

If only the 3DS could connect and sync steps with the Pokemon pedometer…

A few specific things I learned in the first few days:

• In the morning, walking to campus from mom’s takes me about 3000-4000 steps
• Going from the lab on one side of campus to my locker takes about 2000-3000 steps, which makes me realize just how much I need to minimize my trips there

        Anyway, it’s been somewhat interesting. The data would be more interesting if I put in more effort, though. I imagine there are super amazing pedometers that would automate most of the drudgery, but those would cost money. I don’t want to go for a phone-based option, either, because the phone’s built-in sensors just aren’t a good alternative to the simpler solution of a pedometer. Reading reviews for Android step counting apps, people report terrible battery drain and a variety of limitations (have to keep the app in the foreground) and I’m not terribly surprised. But, I guess, without spending some real money on something like this I probably wouldn’t get anything better than what I already have (fits in pocket, counts steps for a given day).

Ah, well. Perhaps that’s a Christmas present idea.

I turned 20

…and forgot to tell the internet about it

              So yeah, I turned 20 more than two weeks ago. Wasn’t a huge spectacle, though an old friend from PEI happened to be visiting his aunt so we brought him along to dinner. We went to a new burger place near Dad’s, which was decent. I didn’t really want to throw a party or anything, but I still didn’t have time to sit down and write. I realize nobody was on the edge of their seats waiting for me to bore them with personal junk, but in case you were, that’s my excuse.

              I feel like I should write about what happened during my 19th year, if only for posterity. Trouble is, there hasn’t been a whole lot of spectacle in my life lately. If anything, I’ve achieved a stratospheric level of mellow-ness. Still, a quick scroll down my archive has brought up a few interesting things to talk about. On an unrelated note, this is my four hundredth post. Holy crap.

              Easy cop-out solution to recapping the last year: referencing previous recaps! The last five posts of my 2011 recap happened after my birthday, so that counts. I assume 2011 in review gives a good idea of what the 2011 part of being 19 was like. I distinctly remember being very morose on New Year’s Eve, though, so that played a part in the tone of the review post. Not the recap post, mind you. Sorry about that, it’s confusing in retrospect.

              Anyway, onto more substantial discussion. I wrote during winter break about some goals for 2012, but had a hard time coming up with anything significant. I said I’d like to be consistently happy, but lamented my choice of solitary hobbies. I also said (hang on, have to re-read the sentence five times…) that “I might be miserable because I don’t have any close friends in Ottawa”, or something along those lines. “Might also be good if I were to talk to people, or spend time with them”. Hilariously enough, I resolved all those things… without… really… meaning to. Now, this might be obvious to you, but hanging out with people who share your hobbies turns out to be a two birds, one stone sort of deal. Watching anime, playing games, and reading may be primarily silent activities I do on my own - but it’s just as nice to be alone together, i.e. doing so with someone else engaged in their own game/book. Having hobbies in common also netted me a friend who is close physically as well as emotionally, and it’s nice to have that again.

              I’m also getting pretty good at gathering a group of people and hosting a relatively low-key nerdfest event at home. This allows me to safely avoid individual invitations while still gradually getting to know people. Next step should probably be expanding on the set of people I can comfortably invite to hang out individually. Which isn’t to say that I prefer quantity over quality, but generally you deal with a quantity of quality larger than one. One person is significantly better than an empty set, but it just seems like I’d benefit if I wasn’t so damn scared to say “hey we should hang out and bond over *insert shared hobby*”.

              Related to that is my post about decreasing my misery quotient, which still seems like it’s going to be a valid strategy. But aside from that, I am much more consistently pleased with life than I used to be. As it turns out, computers and video games provide a lot less emotional support (active and passive) than real, live humans. Hooray for nice people!

              I posted near the end of the school year about some goals I had for 2012 and where I was at in life. That was pretty good, and I think it’s still pretty relevant to where I am now. Regarding my second goal, I’ve been reading (thus, learning) voraciously - I cleared out almost all of my list on Read It Later (now Pocket, but the new name doesn’t give you any idea of what the service is about). And then I filled it up again. At any rate, I’m starting to put stars on things I really like and delete things that were lame, so there should be a higher signal/noise ratio in my archive. As for books, you can see what I’ve read over on GoodReads, which I like more and more as time goes on. It’s funny when I recognize names of reviewers on programming books from StackOverflow and parts of the Emacs community. All in all, I think I’ve learned a lot of good stuff over the summer.

              Something I never wrote about was that my roommate is no longer staying with us. Or speaking to me, for that matter. It’s unfortunate, but life goes on. I wish her the best, truly. Don’t be concerned by how little I’m talking about this seemingly significant event; it’s not really fit for public consumption. I’m older (lol 20 isn’t old) and wiser and have a better idea of what I should/shouldn’t post publicly. This is one of the things I shouldn’t write about.

              There’s one small benefit of the above, though - I’ve got my own bedroom back at mom’s. Which is kind of nice, because living in the basement sucked in subtle ways. Meanwhile, I’m getting an awesome place in the basement at my dad’s. It’s still under construction, but I expect it will be nice to have when it’s done.

              Anyway, things are winding down for my work at HotSoft. My project didn’t yield a lot of fruit this summer, but we’re on hold for a week or two to await some information about some of the software we depend on. If the information doesn’t show up, we may plot a fairly different course from here. We’re having a picnic tomorrow and I’m bringing delicious cake. So that will be nice!

              Classes start a week from today, so between now and then I’ve got a couple hundred bucks to drop on textbooks and some time to spend on my own stuff. Not sure yet what I’ll focus on, but I’ve been getting Emacs set up for Python programming lately. Spent hours looking into it and I’m still not done, because there’s literally three solutions to every problem. Sigh.

              Oh, right, I ordered a new laptop! I’ll post more details when it arrives, which should be soon. It’ll be a good opportunity for me to sit down and get digitally organized. This post is mostly about life, though, so I’ll save the tech for another post.

In which I socialize, go to PAX East, and host a pot luck

Hello, Internet. Long time no see. I’ve been doing things, lately, which is keeping me busy. With what? Well, shockingly, I’ve actually made new friends over the last two months. People I speak to outside of class/whatever location I met them, even! And, like, hang out with. I haven’t done that very often since moving to Ottawa. Mostly, these new friends are all cog sci majors, so we have lots of classes together. But we bonded over PAX East, and that’s the first topic of today’s long-overdue post!

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        A while ago, Vael mentioned that he was going to PAX East with a friend. The timing worked out for me, so I decided to go. I was only able to find one person from Ottawa to come with me, though, and it wasn’t someone I knew very well (my fault). That problem resolved itself when a certain outgoing individual in CGSC 2002 piped up at the end of class to suggest a road trip to the Smithsonian in Washington, DC to see an exhibit they’re having about video games (still in the works). “While we’re on that topic, anyone want to go to PAX East?” said I. And lo, our merry band formed on the spot.

        So off we went around midnight on the last day of class for Carleton, April 5th. My dad and I taking turns driving, everyone else sleeping. Most of us arrived at PAX before noon on Friday - those of us who had bought our tickets in advance… It was good. We saw things. I literally had nothing I knew I wanted to see on the show floor. Though I did want to see if Cryptozoic had anything new on the Penny Arcade card game (which is great), and in fact, they did! They had a new expansion, and it is greater. Anyway, yeah, Friday was a day. That’s not to say I wasn’t excited; I don’t feel like boring you with the details anymore. This is a rare instance of restraint - enjoy it while it lasts!

        Saturday tickets were sold out by the time we got ours, so those of us who didn’t receive a free ticket from a random dude simply hung around Boston. In the evening, though, we went to a gathering for Extra Credits fans, plus James himself, and that was fun. I would have liked to socialize more, but anyway. Doesn’t help that I uh… gave my PSN ID to the few people I spoke to and told them it was my Steam ID. Oops! Those of us without tickets to the show hung out with some guy for a few hours after the event ended. An air traffic controller, he was. Forgot to provide contact info to him AT ALL.

        i am good at people ok why does no one ever believe me when I say this

        Sunday was the most interesting day for me, because that’s the day that Vael was going with Eve Victus! We played a bit of the Penny Arcade expansion, wandered the show floor, went to an OC ReMix panel, met a dude from Ottawa, lost a member of our party for a while, and went out to dinner together. All in all, it was nice to have a short break from work and I think we were all quite inspired by the things we saw and the people we spoke to.

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        Personally, it was a lesson in how much more effective I am at making friends when I, uh, actually spend time with them. Strangely enough, I had no trouble at all being around everyone. We had plenty of things to talk about, and it’s easy to find things to do together - playing games (digital and analog) is an easy option, but we’ve all got some shared interests in film, anime, books, and so on. After the end of exams, I was even so bold as to invite everyone I knew in Ottawa over for a pot luck/games night. And it was good! And we barely played any games because we just ate dinner/chatted for hours. I’m thinking I’ll have another before the end of the summer, but I don’t want to burn everyone out on having to cook.

        In the mean time, I’m spending more time with various folks, and chatting over IM/text when I’m at home (and my hands don’t hurt too badly). Feels good, man. Feels like being back to normal, in fact. Like coming home after spending a while as a cave hermit. It’s funny, really, because it seems like every few months I go through some slight change and declare myself “happy” and feel like I’ve come closer to being the person that I want to be. An anonymous reader noticed this, and sent me a very kind e-mail a few months ago. They weren’t too sure I was as happy as I claimed to be, but they assured me that socializing would get easier as time went on. It was something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: I think this stranger’s kind words helped push me to talk a little bit more and worry a little bit less about what other people might think (because they probably don’t think the worst of me).

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        Events like that are exactly why I have my e-mail address listed on my tumblr page. It’s part of why the internet is so awesome! People I’ve never met, who I don’t actually know are reading what I write, can reach out and share a bit of themselves if they like what I’ve shared of myself. It was a little bit strange when a friend of my father's told him what I’ve been writing about. But it’s kind of cool, too. This is me, and I’m happy that there are people who enjoy it.

        I guess what I’m getting at is, if you read this stuff, I would be happy to talk to you. And I will try to be normal and not monologue at you. I learned my lesson, I promise! Shoot me an e-mail, or better yet, IM me in a way that makes it easy to tell you’re not a spambot. If you go for an e-mail and I don’t answer, send it again, because it may have wound up in my spam folder and I don’t wade through that cesspool very often!

Decreasing My Misery Quotient

This post has been in the works for a while - part of why I haven’t posted in a while. I was originally going to write it as commentary on academic culture works. Then I questioned whether I could generalize like that, so I thought I would focus on my own behaviour. Then I saw a post on Facebook linking to an article by a student at University of Toronto touching on many of my own points. The article is slightly tangential to this post, since it’s primarily about mental health in perfectionist university students (who, contrary to what some people may think, exist at every university). But it’s a topic I would love to see discussed more openly, so please read it if you’re interested.

        This problem shows up in varying degrees, obviously. There’s individuals like me and most of the people I’ve met - we want the best and we push for it. Then you’ve got people in programs like engineering or architecture, who regularly camp out beside their workstations. A friend with an undergrad degree in one of Carleton’s engineering programs used the same terms as the article does: it’s a “badge of honour” to work that hard. There’s a twisted form of glory in managing to succeed despite taking on far too much work. It’s a stupid thing to do, but we’re bound to respect anyone who studies more than they sleep.

        There’s even a bit of shame, to a certain degree, in being less overworked and miserable than somoeone else. When people like me complain, it’s almost more like bragging - after all, we all know I’m not going to quit. But when you start complaining to somebody who has more reason to complain than you, well, they must be better than you. Not only are they working harder, but they’re likely getting better grades in the process. How dare you complain about getting five hours of sleep for a couple of nights, to someone who regularly sleeps three?

        For the sake of argument, let’s say we want to quantify this. After all, there’s something to measure and compare. The way I see it, there’s four components involved:

• degree of success (inside and outside class)
• success in spite of oneself (“I started the assignment the night before and still got an A+!”)
• level of challenge (can be directly related to amount of work, but there are other types of challenge)
• amount of sleep

        Taking inspiration from the misery index, and to make things catchy (which is important to scientists), I’ll call this value the misery quotient. MQ = (Success + SuccessInSpiteOfOneself) * Challenge / Sleep. Roughly speaking, it’s the amount of success you have per unit of sleep. More sleep makes for a lower value, with higher values being better. Granted, it might be more accurate to adjust the sleep values according to individual differences, and instead measure it as a percentage of what each individual ought to be sleeping. In this case, if we say I need 8 hours/night and only get 6, it’s the same as someone who needs 5 hours/night getting 3.75 hours - a value of 0.75. Keeping the same formula, higher values are still better, but you get way more credit for barely sleeping.

        Anyway, here’s where I’m going with this: I’m tired of bragging about this. I hate that I still default to “complaining” about work. I have more interesting things to talk to people about than not sleeping, or working too much. That, and I don’t like being miserable. So I’m planning to change things up in the future, which will hopefully allow me to sleep more while still doing well and taking on interesting challenges. I could even have a bit of a social life on the side! It’s a simple change: I’m going to take four classes per semester instead of five from now on. That gives me three hours I would have spent in lectures, and whatever other time studying and doing assignments. It fits perfectly well with the timeline I already had - five years for the degree. I’m also working diligently on time management, these days, so I can make the most of the time I do have.

        So here’s how I’ll end: will you join me in lowering your misery quotient? Can you find a way to do what you want to do, without depriving yourself of valuable sleep? It’s one of a small number of things that people need universally, but it’s not a direct survival need so we skimp on it all the time. Some people don’t need to socialize to stay emotionally healthy, and some people don’t need any recreational activity aside from work. But they still need to sleep, and you don’t know how much it affects you if you never take the time to catch up. Give it a try for a month or so, see how you feel on a good eight hours per night. You may not even be able to sleep properly, at first. But it’ll come, and once you’re properly rested, you’ll actually notice when you’re tired in the future. Or you can stay tired and work sub-optimally forever - it’s your choice, I guess.

Kickback: All The Right Reasons

Years ago, when I would listen to songs that made me think of anything related to relationships, I didn’t stop to put into words what the song made me feel. I’d get a vague approximation of some thoughts, and I’d be appropriately happy/miserable/both, and that was all I needed. Now that I’ve got more time between myself and the relationship in question, I don’t get the same feelings, and so I literally can’t remember what it was that I liked about these songs. Listening to them now, I know there was something about the song, but can’t quite grasp it.

        You can see the vague, unformed idea effect in some of the music posts I made back in 2010 - I’d post the song and the lyrics, but not say a whole lot about it. A prime example is this post about Kickback UK’s All The Wrong Reasons. I was listening to the song last night and thinking it meant something to me in 2010, but I couldn’t say what it was. At a guess, I’d say I felt like I was trying to help people so I could feel better about myself - the most cynical way of reading my behaviour at the time. There were a couple people I was “friends” with at the time mostly for that reason, and it took me a while to realize that wasn’t the way to go. But that’s only a guess - I can’t say for sure what I was thinking when I made that post.

        What I can tell you is what the song makes me think now, which you will (hopefully) be glad to hear is much more positive. I was up late writing an essay for my Linguistic Analysis class, and I took the lyrics in a very different way. (Chalk it up to vague interpretations, I guess, when the same song can mean a totally different thing two years later.) I was feeling good about the essay and wanted to reflect a bit on how I’ve changed lately, and where I’m heading in the future. Moral of the story, for the tl;dr crowd - I feel like I’ve gone from “all the wrong reasons” to “all the right reasons”, and I’ve got big plans. Read on if you’re interested! Best if you take a stop by the old post, first.

        "Head’s in the future, but your heart’s in the past" is an apt description of me circa 2010. Things were looking up, but definitely not all the way up. Which is a stupid metaphor if you try to picture it, but it works verbally. “And we’ve seen it all before, you’re holding out for more” follows from that, obviously. Neither of those things still apply to me, which is a good sign. Head and heart are both set on the future, I suppose. Getting to the future I want means working hard in the present, but it feels more and more and more natural as I put out work I’m legitimately proud of. Nobody’s ever going to look at the C++ assignment I’m working on right now, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t make it good and shoot for a mark of 110%.

        The next line is what gets me now, and probably what got to me in the past as well. “When that call never comes it’s time to face what you’ve become - there’s no point doing all of this unless you know you’re having fun.” At the time, there were a lot of things I wasn’t terribly happy with. I wasn’t having a whole lot of fun with the work I was doing back then. Although it got me here, so I can’t complain - but it was all delayed gratification at the time. At least now I get some of that gratification! A little, anyway. Still lots of delay right now. But I’ve recently realized what I should be working towards, although I’d been thinking about it for a few weeks. I said I didn’t have many important goals for 2012, but I take that back now! I’ve got two, which I strongly feel I can accomplish, and which all of my work now contributes to:

• The first: have my name on a publication.
• The second: learn as much as possible, with an eye towards distinguishing myself from the competition.

Both of these are practical goals that will, hopefully, put me in a great position when I finish my education and set out for a job. So - “what have I become”? Someone who strives to be the best they can be. (Time will tell where I’ll fall on the sweet/awesome dichotomy.) I’m not necessarily having fun, but I’m seeing the big picture now.

        From where I stand, that means a number of different things. Most recently, it means improving my writing consciously, the way I used to while I was in AP English. (If you’re interested in that writing analysis tool but not interested in Emacs, I can look into creating an independent version, with the author’s permission.) Going back a few weeks, I’ve started to really dedicate myself to programming well. I’m getting tons of inspiration on that topic as I dig up tidbits of information about Emacs, and inevitably get linked to some other brilliant piece. There’s Steve Yegge and Avdi Grimm over the past few days, who have both Emacs secrets I can steal and general programming knowledge. Meanwhile, Jeff Atwood and Scott Hanselman write about quality of life as a programmer - improving your tools, improving your office, improving your lighting, etc. Aside from that, I’m always trying to synthesize what I know about the seemingly-disparate areas of linguistics (at least, that’s what the separation in course content would lead you to believe). I want to say with some confidence that I’m a linguist - not some kid who “maybe heard about that in university, but didn’t think it was important”.

        In a similar vein, I’m connecting all the dots in this “cognitive science” thing. Philosophy is cognitive psychology, cognitive psychology is neuroscience, neuroscience is linguistics, linguistics is computer science… And the whole conglomerate is cognitive science. I may not use every part of it for the rest of my life, but understanding them all matters. Even if I were to be a career programmer, I’d keep usability testing in mind. Even if I were a linguist for the rest of my life, I know for a fact I’d land in a crossover field - computational linguistics and neurolinguistics seem equally likely right now.

        So what I’m getting at is: I know what I’m doing here, and I know who I am. I can’t tell you what I’ll settle on for a job, but I know what the core components of that job will be. This is where I belong. The lows may be low, but the highs are home.

Goals for 2012?

A long time ago on a tumblr far, far away a challenge was issued to create a post about goals for 2012. Bonus points if a summary of 2011 was written. I took it the other way and made the 2011 part primary, with the future goals as a bonus assignment. I didn’t get around to the 2012 post during the Christmas holiday, and then school happened, so that kept me away. School has stopped happening for a week, so now I’m catching up on a ton of stuff. I made a to-do list of things I wanted to accomplish between February 17th and February 27th, mostly school related, but there’s a few fun things as well. I’m happy to say that writing this post is the 14th item accomplished out of a total of 27! Although I’ve really just been taking care of the small annoying things, it’s nice to get them out of the way and be on the ball a bit more. At this point I’ve got a couple big projects to take care of, four items related to fixing up scripts for LBL, and a week-long studying project. Ideally, if I take care of this stuff now, it’ll put me in a really good situation for the rest of the semseter. So there’s my short-term goals for the next week.

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Goals for the year?

        For the rest of 2012, I have a bit more difficulty deciding what my goals are. The main problem is that I haven’t managed to dedicate a significant amount of time to anything but school for a few years now. It’s definitely my number one priority, and that’s a good thing, I guess. But I’ve always seen school as an obligation, something I do no matter what. I could just say that my goal is to keep my average where it’s been, or to do really well in a certain course. But it feels like saying “my goal for 2012 is to continue breathing, not starving, and not dying of dehydration.” It’s the absolute baseline of what I’d need to do throughout the year before even looking at other things. That’s why other goals I make tend to fall by the wayside. I’ve said a few times that I would like to find ways to do get everything done and still have some spare time, and as you can tell, that hasn’t happened yet. I suspect the answer to that problem isn’t going to be finding some amazing way to revolutionize my workflow. The biggest hindrance is probably the fact that I get so miserable I don’t even realize it, which does more to keep me from working than anything else. The cycle of “procrastinate in a subconscious attempt to find some kind of joy,” followed by “oh no I have no time I must work constantly” is really not optimal. If the first week of this semester and the last few days are any indication, I can do a lot more when I’m happy - and I can actually enjoy my work, too.

        So I figure the best thing I could probably do in 2012 is find some way to stay consistently happy. Problem is, I don’t know where to start. I don’t think the answer is to set aside time for my hobbies (playing games, reading, tweaking my computer, sometimes anime) because all of that stuff is solitary. Although working on some open-source programming projects and seeing actual results from my work might be a rewarding exception. In reality, I’m actually not sure I can distinguish between being lonely for real and just feeling guilty letting my relationships wither. Sometimes I think it’s the latter. Either way, I keep wondering if I might not be miserable if I had more close friends (which would involve talking to people sometimes, or maybe even hanging out with them - but that would be crazy). Or that it might be nice to not be single (even crazier). The fact that I find both of those things incredibly difficult makes them both fine contenders for ways I could improve in the long-term… I just don’t know if I’m willing to commit to either one. If I did say for sure that I would accomplish one or die trying, I would probably work at it. I might also just tell myself that I’ll work on it for a few hours and then chicken out. I need a real push to get it done, I guess.

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Trivial goals

        As for a trivial goal that I will definitely accomplish because it’d be impossible not to, I’m going to finish the last half of FF VI this year. I might even finish FF XIII-2 before Reading Week is over. With both of those things done, I can safely say I’ve finished the entire main Final Fantasy series. Depending on when I finish FF VI, I can see myself getting through Dark Souls as well. That, I would actually be proud of. It’s incredibly rewarding to make any progress at all in that game. If I’ve got extra time left in 2012 after that, I’d actually looking forward to playing Nier. I hear fantastic things about its narrative, despite a lot of serious flaws in the rest of the game. I’ll write more about that if it does turn out to be amazing, anyway, and if nothing else I’ll write about how its soundtrack blew my mind.

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Tune in next time

        Anyway, I’m going to have a few more posts coming up this week. First, about the current state of my computer customization. I had somebody summarize the reality of that situation pretty well: “If I have to explain why it’s awesome, you probably won’t think it’s awesome.” I’m excited, and you have to respect that. Second post is slightly more accessible - I’m planning to recommend some of my favourite software. Only slightly more accessible, but it’s something I can give to people when they say “what do you recommend for doing x?” Which has happened to me all of once. NEVERTHELESS, I INTEND TO WRITE THAT POST. You might get a super special post after that, depending how the rest of the week goes. So there’s something you can look forward to!

The benefits of outside perspectives

I’ve gotten some surprising compliments during the past week. Surprising in the sense that I personally don’t see myself the way they were describing me. Since I don’t see myself that way, I don’t talk about myself that way, either. A stranger reading my tumblr would probably think I’m a quivering, anxious wreck that never manages to get anything done. That’s a bit of an exaggeration from the reality, but since I prefer to chastise myself for my failures, failure becomes my public face. Although, the way I think about it, the negative posts are all waiting on a future post that declares my ultimate victory over the original problem. It may not appear today, or tomorrow, but it’ll come! Probably!

        The first set of compliments came from an extremely astute co-worker, when I mentioned that Robert Biddle initially assumed I was a graduate student. She said that wasn’t terribly surprising, given that I genuinely enjoy what I do and I’m dedicated to my work (unlike some people my age). Later, when I offered to put in a couple extra hours of work, she said she’d find someone else “because I work hard enough as it is.” Given that I’m taking five classes, running the lab’s current projects, and developing new projects on top of all that. Not to mention maintaining and updating older lab work and making it as “perfect” as I can.

        When you put it that way, it paints a much more flattering picture of me than the one I present. I’ve been disorganized for months now, but I’m still pulling in 90%+ grades on almost everything, as well as managing my work in the Language and Brain Lab. I genuinely think I could be doing more, but that’s just the (probably unhealthy) work ethic I’ve picked up over the last few years. I keep telling myself to do better so I don’t fall behind the difficulty curve, but so far I’m still ahead of the game. Obviously I’m doing something right. Not only that, but as far as tuition and various other costs go, I’m soon to be financially independent entirely because of my own hard work. It’s not like I’m raking in The Big Bucks, but it’s enough that I’ll likely graduate with zero debt. Looking at it a bit more objectively, I feel a lot better about what I’ve accomplished and where things are going from here. Which is a good feeling!

        She also noted that I carry myself like a grad student, as I’m comfortable in my own skin and bold enough to approach professors and ask to work with them. I actually had someone else recently tell me that that they think I’m outgoing, too, so apparently I can make a decent first impression. While it’s a kind thought, I don’t think I really agree with them. Truth be told, I mostly manage to seem “comfortable in my own skin” and outgoing by keeping myself distant (at least, emotionally) from people. Which sort of defeats the purpose, I think. Granted, Google’s definition of outgoing is “friendly and socially confident”. I can see how someone might think I’m outgoing, from that point of view (but I usually associate outgoing with extroversion). I’m perfectly happy to talk to people once a conversation’s been started, so there’s a slightly-qualified version of the friendly part. As for socially confident, that’s definitely just a matter of appearance. It’s not like I’m confident in my social skills, and starting conversations still freaks me out. I’m mainly just surprised that it’s not utterly apparent to everyone involved that I’m shy and frequently awkward.

        All that aside, I’m doing alright. Lots of work to do, just need to juggle it the right way. My difficult/time-consuming classes are at least interesting this semester (introduction to brain and behaviour, programming in C++). Sadly, I have one class that’s a bit of a mystery. Thus far, it’s been almost entirely review of other classes I’ve taken. The prof isn’t giving much in the way of hints about what the exams are going to be like, and he’s not a good enough teacher to consciously emphasize important topics. In fact, he regularly says (and I quote) “they told me not to do this in teacher school, but I do it anyway”. Yeah. So either the exams will be completely trivial, or I’ll be blindsided by questions about unimportant details nobody in their right mind would put on a test. The midterm is a week from tomorrow, and I expect it will be an exciting adventure - just like every other time we enter that classroom.

2011 in review: I got edumacated

A little story about the title of this post: I took LING 3002, Phonetics I, this semester. It wasn’t necessarily my cup of tea, but that doesn’t mean it was a bad class. There was a lot of data and practical application involved, and I’m at the point where I’ve been thinking about the phonetics of British English thanks to Xenoblade. I can even develop analyses that provide the right results without giving any of the right answers! In particular, we had one assignment involving “Homeric infixation” where I (at least, I think I did) provided a more-or-less correct analysis based on consonant and vowel clusters rather than stress patterns. So here’s to my continuing edumacation!

        If you look at my archive, there’s a pretty sharp decline in the frequency of my posts over time. At the very beginning, mid-2010, I was doing 20-30 posts per month. That was my last year of high school, and around the time when I’d stopped working at the local convenience store to focus on school. My first semester of university was more or less the same, but then second semester it was down to 10-15 posts per month. Around the same throughout the summer. I’ve practically disappeared this semester, though - I’ve got about 30 posts total from September through to the end of December. The reason for this is pretty obvious - university. I still haven’t really figured out a proper balance to get the most out of my work and my play, and “work” time is still being inflated by procrastination. The work gets done, and my grades haven’t gone down, either. But I’ve been getting more and more distant as I supposedly spend all of my time “working” and then have no dedicated relaxation periods or time for socializing.

        I’m not happy about that, but there’s a pretty obvious pattern - work gets done a lot faster when I’m motivated to do it. When it came to lab work, programming assignments, and studying for my intro to cognitive science class - I was there at all times and totally focused. But it was a challenge with my other classes. That’s probably bad. I’d say being able to do things you don’t enjoy and just generally be dedicated is good. On the other hand, I’m probably going to wind up doing more work that I enjoy as time goes on, not less. Either way, I’m planning to work on it.

        So while I’ve been stumbling in every other area of my life, school is going pretty well. Working at the Language and Brain Lab has been fantastic, and I’m working on a short write-up of what I’ve learned. I think you’ll be allowed to see that when it’s ready. Along with some promo photos of me looking snazzy! Aside from that, the seemingly disparate areas of my degree have started to connect in important ways. I’m starting to feel fairly competent in a number of domains - cognitive science as a whole, linguistics, and programming too (though maybe not computer science, I’m definitely lacking when it comes to algorithms).

        In reference to an article I read earlier this year, it feels like I’m getting an education, not just a degree. For all the people I knew in high school who agonized over where they wanted to go and would be willing to fork over ridiculous sums of money to go to a “better school”, you’d think the degree is all that matters. But if they don’t capitalize on the opportunities available, the way I’m doing at Carleton, no amount of money will help. While I had a brief crisis when I first read that article in April this year, I think it says a lot about how I’ve changed over the year that it now makes me feel better. Including books for two semesters and everything else, I’m probably totalling $7,000 per year of university. Four years for the degree, and I’m really not sure I could get the equivalent elsewhere.

        The only catch to all of this is that I’m probably failing horribly at a number of promises I once made. I said that I would live for the people in my life and find meaning in them, yet I’m mostly focused on myself. I promised I’d always be there for the people I care about, but now I expect them to come to me. I’ve said a lot of things I probably thought were trivial at the time, but I’ve now forgotten them so thoroughly I can only say I’m likely not staying true to my word. This kind of follows on from spending too much time “working,” but that doesn’t make it alright.

        I’ve upset people occasionally, sometimes severely so, but I think what’s worse is all the things I didn’t do. I don’t know if that’s going to change in the future. That’s probably what’s really important here. But I have no guarantees. So while it doesn’t really mean anything, know that I am truly sorry. I sincerely wish I’d been better in a dozen ways, and that I had taken the time to reach out instead of withdrawing. I’m no longer sure that doing too little is better than doing too much. For the people who still read all of this, you know who you are. To the people who cared enough to start reading, but decided to stop - I’m sorry about that, too.

        So here’s to 2011. I learned a lot, and I played a lot of Final Fantasy. Looking forward to 2012 and the downfall of Kefka.