A lot of stuff goes into my brain, some of it by choice. If I decided to watch, read, play, or do it, I'd like to talk about it here. I'm a musician, a sometime actor, a frequent player of electronic and table-top games, and a lapsed reader (though I'm getting better). I write long and awkward sentences, because the more things resemble Douglas Adams' writing, the more I want to live in the world. Thanks for reading.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

got it

Here's how I know I'm wasting my time.

I don't think I've get to submit a single assignment, or piece of work (except for the occasional comment in class or answer on a test, which are scarcely considered in the scheme of evaluation) of which I've ever felt proud.

I think this is basically how one figures out that they're in the wrong field. I don't feel good about the work that I do. I don't feel good about myself when I do it. I just don't do this well.

I take no pride in my work. I think that's how I know that I'm doing the wrong work.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

tough love

Well. Well well.

That was a marathon of programming right there. Learning new stuff is sometimes as much fun as cramming a shoe into your ear. But sometimes it can be rewarding.

Monday, July 25, 2005

with a little help

Talked to C.

What a difference a friend can make.

Sunday, July 24, 2005

this one

I haven't been back to this particular blog in a little while. But it feels like, for the first time in, well, some time, things aren't in bad shape. Except for the myriad ways in which they're not great. But I've finally got some ideas and some tools to work with.

The essay didn't go so well, that one from last semester. I don't want to talk about it anymore, but it's behind me and I'm moving on. For all intents and purposes the coursework in the political science minor is done. I just wish I'd shone like I'd been hoping to.

Math, this semester, is challenging. I have started something of a regimen, one which I hope will actually see me not losing the "easy marks", and I've got a much better rapport with my professor than has ever been the case. This means I don't feel bad asking questions, for instance.

Web programming? That'd be the kicker. The assignment is big, I don't feel comfortable asking or answering questions to or from other students or the prof. And for a while I'd been pretty well stuck as far as tools went -- eyestrain, lack of motivation and time, and grindy, grindy performance from my Main Box.

Right now, I'm in possession of a couple of edges I previously lacked. I've got glasses. I've got a portable computer which works fairly well, far from distractogenic locales. And, if necessary, I can ask C for advice, though I know I'd receive a much longer answer than I was hoping for.

Those two are the biggies. Math and Web. The "smallies", namely music and work (which aren't small in terms of their impact on my life, just in terms of the sisyphean obstacles they seem to represent) are going reasonably well. I'm Treasurer (cf Neil Schweiber: "Tell me about it. I was elected treasurer of my middle school; I didn't even run!") and I am psyched about the new 'ductor. And I'm documentist at work, which I think I can do pretty well.

Web programming. Back to it.

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Booked

Well, look at this. I seem to be operating on a new platform.

Sunday, June 12, 2005

renewal

Hm.

Things have started up for the summer. Well, they've been going for almost a month. Two courses in school -- Vector Calculus, and its evil sidekick Web Programming. This week we've got some evaluation happening in the math domain, and next week, the web assignment's being handed in. I may well put it up for people to try playing with.

The maths, once again, are about floating three-dimensional shapes. The professor makes the pain less acute.

The programming is very tangible. You see the results very quickly. For now, we make toys. Soon we make the clockwork on which the toys rest.

Music's going slowly. The choir is auditioning a new conductor -- we're in the process of having them run rehearsals, to get a sense of their vibe with the choir. Part of the trick is that there's a certain feeling we're trying to replicate, something involving an "older, cooler kid" with respect to the rest of the group.

Dunno whether that unfairly biases us against younger and less cool candidates.

Thursday, March 03, 2005

speaking up

I've been speaking up in class of late.

Either I'm understanding a lot of what's going on,
or I'm becoming so disillusioned that I feel
like it doesn't matter at all.

Whenever Prof. Chambers teaches us something new,
I feel inspired. Today, discussing Nietzsche, and even
in tutorial dissecting Marx,
I felt that there was something
to embrace in each thinker's thoughts.
Something to embrace personally, if not on
a broader scale of "goals in the world".

I think I even "got" what we discussed in ML and
Algorithms today. ML was about anonymous functions,
pattern matching, and the word "and" for mutual recursion.

Algorithms began discussion of Network Flow problems,
and since it was only the first lecture,
I wasn't yet confused by the end.

I guess I almost feel okay.

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

back on track?

This semester is slightly different.

Instead of just singing, I'm working too. That is on the other page when it's discussed at all. Within these confines I'll be focusing on school and music.

School, for the newcomer, consists both of Computer Science and Political Science. In the former category, the current semester includes the repetition of a course which proved overambitious of me to attempt to salvage last semester: Programming Languages. In that capacity, however, I've managed to complete the first assignment and midterm with a reasonable expectation of having done medium-well to well.

This semester also sees me biting off courses in Algorithm Design and Databases. Both are a bit sticky so far. More on those in the coming week or so.

Musically, I'm down one choir. No longer able to stretch myself as thinly on campus, I've dropped my commitment to the Varsity Jews and focused on my tenure with Onoscatopoeia. What this means is that I'll only be spending Monday nights until 7:00pm, and not Thursdays as well, wearing my vocal cords threadbare. For love.

Politically, I'm looking around. I don't think anyone I know will be surprised to know that I'm disenchanted both with Israeli political orthodoxy and with the Canadian Liberal Party, and that I'm trying to figure out where I fit in the spectrum; while I espouse the viewpoints and goals, in general, of the two aforementioned entities (ie. I believe that Israel should exist, and should attempt to end the all-but-declared war within and without, and I believe in socially progressive but financially restrained government) I don't think that their current incarnations can continue to command my loyalties, which means either I try to change them or I try to find a better fit for myself.

I was fairly outraged at the behaviour of the students and guests in attendance at the Hart House Debate tonight, with apology to co-ordinator J. I'm glad I went, but the jerkiness of all in attendance, except for the debaters, speaker and judge themselves, was in full force, with the Arab Student Coalition boorishly turning their chairs around when the guest speaker (Israeli Ambassador Baker) spoke, and the Hillel crowd laughing loudly scornfully at those students.

I'm considering (and I've already come up with an acronym, "SHED" -- students for hopeful, earnest discussion) some kind of initiative to have this debate take place on campus without so much bullshit. Both sides are unwilling to tell anything resembling the truth.

Janice Stein's lecture on Humanitarian Intervention (I'm taking a class with Janice Stein) was wrenching today. It was painful and hopeful and inspiring and depressing. We spoke of Rwanda, Srebrinica, and Somalia. We learned of the roles of Canadian soldiers, generals, and politicians in those affairs, and how we seem to make some difference even with the paucity of our government's commitment to maintaining our military as an instrument of statecraft. (Sometimes I really, really like school.)

Monday, January 17, 2005

re-wired

New semester.

New course load.

New job.

New repertoire.

New outlook? Not sure. The courses, beside the two carry-over Political Science classes, include CSC401 (Natural Language Computing, aka "munging giant swathes of text in Python"), CSC343 (Databases, aka "welcome to db2, here's your accordion") and CSC373 (Algorithms, aka "if it were any more theoretical, it would be theological").

Music is a little more "directed" this semester. It's all about a series of recording sessions, which should encompass about 10-14 tunes, all of which appear fairly difficult. Onoscat is definitely giving its members a push.

And, er. Dude. I just realized that song I'd been trying to identify for about 4 months was in fact a Sneaker Pimps tune, "How Do". There we go. Much better.