Last week was completely insane. Between the homework assignments, extra meetings, and other things that eat up time, I don't think I've been as busy as last week since the wedding. However, I made it through a lengthy statistics problem set, implementing a genetic algorithm learner with a team (Thanks Patrick and Celina!), and a brief observational study for my methods course. My weekends have been eate up by project work on a GUI for coding response data from SMS studies, and that's consistently kept my weekends full.
Fortunately, I have a bit of a respite this week. My statistics problem set is about half the size of last week's and is on stuff that we've already covered (no new equations or tests to apply). My machine learning class also has a brief problem set dealing with probabilities, which I should be able to knock out in short order. My methods class has the usual module, but the data collection's been done for us, so that eliminates a substantial headache. So given the lighter-than-usual homework, I'm going to try and plow through all of it today. Because of a cancelled class, I don't have to make trip to Evanston, so there's an extra hour and half tacked onto my day. Good deal.
In other news, I'm almost finished with reading the complete "Calvin and Hobbes" collection and I'm in the middle of Stephen King's Four Past Midnight and for my research into scanners, I began to read Scanners and Secret Frequencies. I'll finish the comic strips and scanner book by the end of the week and I'll be ready to move on to something else. I recently received Dreaming in Code, a book about story behind the development of the Chandler project. I like reading books about software development, so this should be a good one. On the gaming front, I picked up "Half-Life 2, Episode One" from Steam and I've been working my way through it. The gameplay and levels have been refined and I've been enjoying my escape from City 17. The only downside is the length. I haven't been playing to too often, but I'm already more than halfway finished with the game, when I mentally feel like I should only be through a third of it or so.
I recently signed up for a service that I've been hearing a lot about lately: Twitter. It's a simple idea that is basically the same thing as the status message on an instant messaging buddy list. I'm using Twitter to post updates about what I'm doing at the moment, and my Twitter page is online at http://twitter.com/cjkarr. If you're reading this and use Twitter, feel free to add me to your friends list. If you don't use the service, but still would like to follow my daily routine, sign up for an account and add me to your friends list.
I don't know how long I'll stick with the service, but it seems interesting and not all that intrusive.
The last of of the week's homework was handed in yesterday and I'm enjoying my weekend.
I spent yesterday evening watching some bad horror films that were sent to me by NetFlix. I figure that since I won't be making it to B-Fest this year. Last night's DVD was a double-feature of The Dunwich Horror and Die, Monster, Die! - two films on a single DVD. Holly and I watched "Dunwich" and I was planning on staying up after she went to bed to knock out the other film. "Dunwich" was certainly B material, but it wasn't as removed from the original Lovecraft story as I was led to believe. Holly was not a fan of the film, and I didn't have the energy to stay up for the film on the other side of the DVD. (And you know that a DVD with a separate film on each side oozes quality to begin with.) I may watch "Die" tonight to see how faithful it is to original Lovecraft story, "The Colour Out of Space".
Before I drop this topic for good, I just wanted to share this image. It's my favorite part of the "Dunwich" film:
For those who haven't seen the film and have no desire to do so, the mug shot above is one Dean Stockwell playing the villain. He's an occult figure that is working to bring the "Old Ones" back to Earth to wipe out mankind. The image above is Stockwell's character casting a spell and summoning Yog-Sothoth. It's absolutely goofy and I couldn't stop from laughing each time he fired up the incantations. This wasn't the only goofy summoning practice, but the most entertaining.
It's a certainly a long way from this:
I would have enjoyed doing this work at a cafe, but I've been forced to leave my lapto p at home hooked up and synchronizing my iDisk. Periodically, the iDisk won't be able to synchronize, and I'm forced to start over from scratch, downloading the whole iDisk (2 GB) from Apple's servers. It's a lengthy process and I hope that it's finished sometime tomorrow. It's frustrating that I have to do this, but I really like the iDisk functionality when it works.
This last week of graduate school has been probably the busiest outside of paper-writing season.
Last quarter, my responsibilities were primarily keeping up with seminar readings and the occasional statistics problem set. This quarter, I have reading and regular homework assignments. This is the first week in which I submit assignments for the first time for two of my classes. In my methods course, a lengthy questionnaire assignment was given and in my machine learning course, I had the first programming homework in several years. I'm still working on the questionnaire assignment (it's due at 2:00 PM this afternoon) and I just submitted the programming homework.
I think that there were several factors that made this week busy and fairly stressful. The first factor was simply the terror of submitting a first assignment to an instructor I've never dealt with and I have no idea what their expectations are regarding quality and how they grade. I probably overcompensated this week, and I'll have a better idea for the next go around. The second disruptive factor is that that while last quarter's reading classes fit well with my commuting habits - I got a lot of reading finished going to and from school - this quarter's classes don't work so well on the train. It's difficult to work with an open book and a laptop sitting on the train, so there is basically an hour and a half every day that is simply unusable. Finally, this week also hosted a variety of non-class-related activities that I had to attend. These broke up my day and kept me on campus doing other things more often than usual.
The important thing is that I survived. After I hand in the questionnaire assignment, my weekend will be free for me to work on other projects that I've been neglecting because of this week's course work.
Full confession: I've been somewhat manic-depressive about Apple's iPhone over the last week. I thought that it was a beautiful device when it was unveiled a week ago. It was slick, simple, and had some snazzy new functionality I really wanted (a real voice-mail mailbox).
I began to sour on the device when I found out that Apple was locking down the platform and that the device would be as developer-friendly as the iPod. There's quite a few things that I'd love to program onto that device - including a mini-Books application. Still, I don't program my humble Sony-Ericsson z520a that often, so I was willing to give the device a pass and claim that I was merely uninterested.
My ears perked up when I heard about the trademark issues relating to the "iPhone" moniker. I knew that Cisco owned the mark before the keynote and I thought that Apple had worked something out with the networking equipment manufacturer in order to use the name. When news of a lack of agreement surfaced, I reached for the popcorn and waited for the spectacle of the Cisco vs. Apple trademark lawsuit. (We love watching a good courtroom fight.)
This morning, I read on Slashdot that Apple's lawyers have sent cease-and-desist nasty-grams to hobbyists making mock iPhone skins for non-Apple handhelds and to the bloggers linking to the skins. (Nasty-gram text available here.) Now, I'm not interested in using any of these skins, but I did find it to be an amusing hack. Many people (including a few I know personally) are very interested in the iPhone and I can see this as a fun way to get a taste of the device before you can actually purchase one. For the life of me, I cannot imagine how this course of action makes any sense on the part of Apple. Is Apple trying to set the standard that any screen captures of Apple's products is grounds for legal action? I have posted several OS X screen captures of Books that include parts of Apple's interface. Should I expect a letter soon?
The answer is "of course not". If this was the standard, there'd be no way to review or write about software (without obtaining permission) and I don't understand how Apple discovered that it has the right to make these demands. And given its recent willful disregard for Cisco's intellectual property, I have no sympathy for the company. There's no way that a Windows Mobile smart phone will be mistaken for an iPhone. (I have such a device in my pocket and I've been thoroughly unimpressed with it.) So why not let the enthusiasts have a bit of fun?
I don't know if this newfound attitude reflects the new "Apple, Inc.", but I can state that my opinion of the company has substantially soured over the past week. I'm a big fan of Apple hardware and software, but I don't see any reason for this. I understand that this is Steve Jobs' new favorite toy, but for a guy who started out as a phone phreaker, his company is acting like a real dick about its cell phones.
I spent part of the day watching the annual "Steve-Note". I had fun watching the new product announcements, and here's how I interpreted them:
1. AppleTV - At at the $300 price point, I'm underwhelmed by Apple's new set top box. I like that it's tied to the iTunes platform, but I'm disappointed that it's tied only to the iTunes platform. The $300 price is above my impulse buy line ($150) and I think that I'd get better performance and features per dollar by purchasing a low-end Mac Mini. The current low-end Mini is twice the price ($600) of the AppleTV, but it will run more than Front Row, serve as a DVD player, and can be extended with both third-party hardware and software. It might not end up being iPod Hi-Fi version two, but I was hoping for more from Apple.
2. iPhone - This is certainly a nice-looking PDA, but I think it's disingenuous to claim that it has revolutionized cell phones since it seems to be a (much) better version of the Treo or Blackberry. It's above my price range, so I won't be picking one up anytime in the next couple of years. The thing that I'm most excited about is that it "runs OS X". Now, I don't know exactly what this means, but I'm hoping that this means that Apple's introduced a mobile programming platform that doesn't suck.
Update: TUAW is reporting that the applications for the phone will be locked down and that no user-installable applications can be run on the phone. I'm not all that surprised, but I'm now officially uninterested in this device until I hear otherwise.
3. Mac "stuff" - No announcements were made regarding new Macs or the next version of the operating system. I'll be listening to hear if anyone announces a ship date for Leopard or new versions of the iLife and iWork suite.
I've been peeking at Engadget's coverage of CES. With Macworld starting tomorrow, I figured that it was time for me to rev up the gadget interest. There are some interesting things going at the conference and far too much for me to keep up with. One of these days, I'd like to go to CES, but I think I'd find it more overwhelming than my visit to Wizard World this summer.
As for MacWorld, I don't have any predictions, because I honestly don't really know what's been going on in that realm. I'm most interested in learning more about the iTV device and whether it'll be something useful that can live in the entertainment center, or if it'll be another feature-poor overpriced product like the iPod HiFi. The device has a ton of potential, but I will be surprised if the potential realized/pricing ratio is to my liking.
I'm also interested in knowing more about Leopard (MacOS X 10.5). I don't have any big features that I'm looking forward to, but I would appreciate a refresh of common apps I use like Mail.app and iCal that have some bugs that have been driving me nuts. I've been interested in the rumors of an improvement in the .Mac service, and I think that's overdue for a refresh, too.
This week was also the first week of class for me. I have been to each of my classes now, and I have an idea of what is expected and how much each will burden me for the next ten weeks. I don't expect much different from statistics - I expect it to remain a pretty low-key course. My machine learning course is interesting and I'm ready to jump into that one head-first. The only problem? The book I ordered from Amazon on 12/26 still has yet to arrive.
My methods course also looks interesting. The instructor has crammed a lot of stuff into the course, but I'm not sure if he has more content to cover, or if he's simply being more explicit about all the stuff to cover than some of my previous courses. In any case, I'm looking forward to it.
I've also gotten my foot in the door of a research project and I've been writing code to help out. So, between this and classes, my academic life is as busy as last quarter, if not more so.
I also finished reading Body for Life this weekend. The book seems to be full of decent advice, but I'm not going to do the twelve week program it suggests. For one thing, there's no way that I can swing the "six small meals" plan at the moment. I struggle daily to get three regular meals and six simply isn't realistic at this point. If I had the same schedule day in and day out, it might be a possibility. However, I've already improved my eating by including more vegetables (in the form of V-8 vegetable juice).
As for the workout, I'll be adopting the suggested weight training exercises into my regular routine. The book suggests workouts six days a week - which translates into six trips to the gym every seven days. Again, given my schedule, that's not happening, but I do want to try the exercises and techniques in my three-days-a-week routine.
In some respects, I'm surprised that I'm not more disappointed in myself for not trying to follow the plan verbatim. The plan is attractive - a new body in twelve weeks - but I don't need a new body in twelve weeks while using an unsustainable plan. I'm happy to have a better body in twelve months while going through an exercise plan that I enjoy. In the book, Bill Phillips talks a lot about mental well-being as well as physical. Mentally, I feel as fit as I would like and I am comfortable enjoying myself towards achieving better health.
If I have any discipline, I'll be hitting the sack in about an hour, around nine o'clock. I finished my second day of resumed classes and I'm still getting everything in order. I've been very busy getting ready for classes and other work and I was happy to see myself finish up a bit of code a few days ahead of schedule. There's still more to do, but having something out where others can play with it is a good feeling.
I'm looking forward toward a busy quarter. I'm taking three courses - Machine Learning (CS), Applied Statistics, and a computer-based methods course. In addition to these classes, I've gotten myself involved with a local research project and the code I've been working on hopefully will enable a new way to survey and collect data about what people do throughout the day. Serious testing of the code begins next week.
I've also had a few moments to fix some Books bugs. I'm pretty proud of the fact that I finally found a way to replicate a months-old crashing bug and squash it. I'm waiting for some translations from the people doing the translating, and then I'll ship the next beta version.
This weekend, I have plans to take Willie to see some new films - Eragon and Night at the Museum - and on Sunday, I'll be working with the fine folks at the House Theatre of Chicago to get some podcasts online for their newest production, The Sparrow.
So, in summary, I'm pretty busy. I've been feeling stretched really thin lately, so earlier this week I gave up my spot on the Chicagoist roster. It was the right decision to make, given that I was having less and less time for contributions, and the site really deserves more than I am able to give at the present. I really enjoyed working with those guys and I'm really going to miss doing the interviews. Where else could I have gotten the opportunity to speak with people making movies, putting on parades, and Mr. T? It was a great thing while it lasted and I hope that they find someone new who appreciates what a great thing gig is.
Oh, and I have I mentioned yet this week what a great television show Friday Night Lights is? I was surprised to find a new episode on my Tivo when I got home, and I wasn't disappointed. I've been very impressed with this season's new programming. If I were giving out awards for the best show on the air right now, it would be Friday Night Lights because of the solid writing, great characters, and how it so thoroughly thrashed the expectations I had for it. I honestly expected the show to live two weeks tops on my weekly TV queue.
I find myself back at Argo Tea plugging away on the laptop. So far, I'm really liking this place. I'm really hoping that it doesn't become too crowded once the Loyola students come back...
Before I forget - Happy New Year! (To my three readers...) 2006 was a good year for me and I'm hoping that 2007 will likewise be a good one. 2006 was a year full of transitions for me and I'm planning on making 2007 a year where I buckle down and really begin focusing and improving on some important facets of my life. So, without further ado, my 2007 resolutions:
1. Continue exercising and improve my physical health - I did alright this last summer with my morning walks and I've really been enjoying the regular trips to the gym to work out over the last month. I got knocked off track when school started, so I'm making a special effort to build on the momentum I've created so far to make this a regular thing. Maybe I'll break open my copy of "Body for Life" and use that as a guide.
2. Focus on improving my writing. I've resumed blogging so that the writing gears remain well-oiled and I'm in the habit of writing regularly. I hope to improve my academic writing in addition to my contributions to other venues such as Chicagoist. I'm debating whether I should start looking for other opportunities to contribute to publications like Free Software Magazine in addition to more formal journals.
At the moment, the only thing that I have close (close being defined loosely) to being ready for journal submissions would be my Lovecraft stuff. It's in good shape and probably needs just some editing work. I'm hoping to begin some research into radio scanner users and amateur operators (hams), but that's just a glint in my eye at the moment. I have some other projects in the works, but I'll have to decline to talk about them until the other participants are ready to spill the beans.
I would also like to take a stab at writing some fiction for fun. My attempts at writing a play were atrocious when I took a playwriting course, but I think next November, I'll throw my hat in the NaNoWriMo ring next November.
3. Enjoy myself more. I feel like I spent too much of this last year in "Type A" mode. Between graduate school applications, summer work, and class work, I feel that much of the past year was overly scheduled and determined too far in advance. I like being organized, but I also feel that there was some spontaneity lost in all of last year's activities that I'd like to regain. My fun Books work decreased and I spent fewer late nights watching random movies or anime by myself. There's something spiritually reinvigorating about watching violent subtitled cartoons while the rest of the world sleeps, and I hope to regain that. It keeps me from taking myself too seriously.
4. Minimize my unread book count. I was doing well over the summer reading many of the books that I acquired and never read. However, the influx of books I had to read for class put a damper on that momentum. My goal is to get my toread list under ten books. Ditto for DVDs.
