So I'm looking at next year's academic calendar, despite having four assignments due next week for this academic year. It looks like I get to make some choices next year. I know that I have to take "Intro to databases" (yawn!) and "Software engineering" (as long as I collect an award winning team, this'll be good), etc.. Then I have these choices:

One of:

• Visual computing - This goes against my "no graphics, no vision" rule to choosing courses. And three days a week at nine a.m.? Get fucking serious.
• Neural networks - The prof's awesome and wants me to take this, but rumour has it that the math is impossible.
• Logical specifications - I would be all over this one, 'cept I'm related to its instructor. Is there a way to have someone else teach it? ;)
• Intro to AI - Maaaaaaybe. Having dropped out of the "Cognitive Science & AI" program, I've been avoiding all things AI. And I hear the course is dull. But what if this is what I'm "supposed" to be doing and I miss my calling? I'll consider it.
• Natural Language Computing - The prof and I get along well and it is in Python. On the other hand, it's not exactly jaw-dropping exciting.
• Business of software - Jooooooke course. If it looks like my other courses are gonna be hard, this might be good filler.

Two of:

• Web Programming - I'm gonna chat with its usual instructor and see if he feels like striking some sort of deal. Let me work on a project instead. He'll probably say no.
• Database System Technology - No thank you.
• Computer Networks - I do find computer networks to be an awesome field, but I've heard from numerous sources that this course completely blows. Enough negative feedback that I may have been scared away from it.
• Compilers - One of the very few courses I've had circled on my calendar since year one. Now I just have to find a worthwhile group...

I wonder if I mash the 'X' button on my life controller whether I have to actually sit through the next year, or if I can just skip ahead.

Some days are just like this. Thanks to buridan for the link.

Google Maps just introduced a new feature: satellite photos. It's so freakin' hot.

Do you remember when I chose to do my degree in five years instead of four? I do. (And not only cuz that insanecats entry has one of my favourite overdramatic paragraphs of all time.)

If I hadn't made that choice, I'd be finishing up my degree right now, like many of my friends are doing. They're on the last few moments of their undergrad and possibly their entire education. I don't know how they keep themselves from running up to random people, shaking them, and shouting, "My world is about to change completely and you're just standing there??" That's what I'd be doing. Perhaps that's why I'm not fit to graduate yet.

If life were a movie (isn't it?), the camera would be on a close-up of me, hugging my knees or a pillar, watching something with ambiguous emotion. The camera would pull back slowly away from me to reveal a large group of people leaving, heading away to a destination we can't see. As the group got further and further, and I got smaller and smaller, we, the audience, would finally be able to interpret my expression: sad to be losing friends, jealous that they get to leave first, secretly glad that I'm still enveloped in the comfort and safety of familiarity, but anxiously watching the crowd depart, knowing that in all too short a time, I'm going to be heading out on the same path. And when I was no more than a dot on the screen, the image would fade, though the music would continue, and the credits would begin.

The audience, disgruntled at having sat through such a crappy film, would start shuffling out of their seats and whispering to each other about where they should go for dinner. A few would ask for their money back.

Regarding the subject of today's entry, I don't mean avoiding work -- shirking -- though I'm doing that too. No, instead of an entry about finishing the year's classes and what that means, I'm gonna talk a little bit about shrieking.

So Mud and I have been watching a few, ahem, scary DVDs recently. And Mud's a shrieker. And I don't just mean "AHHH!". I mean like blood curdling shriek while she writhes and grabs at the arm whoever is nearest (me). The shriek usually lasts about five seconds and by 1.5s, everyone in the room is screaming too. It's just what she does.

Me? I don't scream. At, like, anything. It's not my style.

But I can be a big person and admit it: tonight I screamed. With the whole jumping, spilling my glass of water over everything, etc. It happened in the middle of a Season 7 Buffy episode. I found another site which explains the scene better than I probably could:

For a horror-type show, Buffy rarely phases me on the whole monster thing, but when it does, it does so with serious punch. This moment gave me the wiggins instantly, due in no small part to the fact that it's over with so damned fast. So fast, in fact, that when I was watching it with my husband, he didn't even notice it, so while I'm tazzing out, he has no idea what the problem is. We see Dawn in this shot, nothing on the couch. Then she leans out of frame. The camera follows her. When she comes back, there's Joyce, all looking exactly as she died in "The Body". Then a cut, and when Dawn looks over her shoulder, there's nothing there. Pretty much all of the scenes with Dawn in the house are freaky, but nothing compares to this one. Gyiiah.

Yeah, I know. Doesn't sound scary. There are no clowns or long hallways or walls that drip blood or any of the other typical "horror" stuff. Those of you who have never watched the series can just smirk, shrug, and move on. But those of you who have watched it can remember this totally wigtastic scene and empathize. As the quote above so elegantly puts it: Gyiiah!

Here are three links which are guaranteed to get your thoughts rolling on a cold Tuesday morning.

1. BoingBoing has recently been featuring a handful of sites that are photos of models. When you mouseover them, though, you see what the model looked like before computer touchups. This is very cool. My favourite change thus far is this one.
2. Paul Ford often writes excellent pieces on his blog. Today's entry is on health insurance and is a good read.
3. Giant NES controller. I want one of these. A lot.

There's your intellectual morning Raisin Bran. Now you can continue your day eating nothing but junk. Enjoy.

Four years ago, JS -- a friend of mine from the moo -- forwarded me a mail message about a job opportunity at UofT, since he knew that I was going to be going there the following year. The message was written by Rochelle about a workstudy for Dr J. It turns out that I'd had some previous interactions with Dr J (there's another long story), so I got the job. Through this relationship, I developed many ties with KMDI. Over a year later, Deebs e-mailed Dr J asking if he knew any hacktivists who wanted to work at the Citizen Lab and Dr J recommended me. This job led to numerous amazing experiences plus I was able to meet Nart and Graeme. When the idea of hosting an OSCONF came up a year and a half ago, my ties with KMDI, Deebs, and Dr J got me on to the committee despite being a puny undergrad. On the committee, I met Greg who asked if I wanted to join his studygroup which eventually led to doing a project course, meeting a whole slough of Greglings, and a whole whack of other opportunities.

Each of these contacts branched off into at least a dozen more contacts and each of those branched off again. I could probably name two hundred people who I know because of this contact tree. And though it's possible that I might have stumbled upon some of the same people by random chance later in life, the point remains that my undergraduate life was drastically changed when JS forwarded me that job opportunity.

In a world where it's all about who you know -- and whether or not they stop and think "hm, maybe I'll forward this to her" when they come across something interesting -- it's funny (and scary) to think that whether or not you take ten seconds to be polite to the guy sitting next to you in class might one day affect the rest of your life.

Exam season is a very productive time. There are few other occasions where I feel so compelled to do anything but study. "Wow, I really should sort all of my pens by colour." "Instead of buying a slice of pizza for dinner, I think I'm going to bake some cornmeal-crusted tilapia." "I wonder what I could do with this ball of yarn and some glue."

And during this not-unfamiliar procrastination festival, I decided to start researching grad schools. Seeing as I'm not sure what I want to specialize in, this isn't exactly an easy research endeavor. It's kinda like trying to get an idea for an essay topic about anything by googling for common English words ("have", "take", "can") to see what comes up.

Thinking about grad school gives me a major headache. I came up with a list of everything in CS that I find interesting (the list started with about 50 items) and then I gradually generalized and filtered through the list to finally come up with five things that I could see myself working on for several years without getting tired of them. Unfortunately, they're all fairly soft and half of them border on interdisciplinary-level soft. "Way to be a friggin' girl", I sighed at myself. "Might as well start handing in your assignments on pink paper with little hearts to dot the 'i's."

I also made a list of the places I could stand to live in between Canada and the US. The list came out as: Toronto, BC, California, and North-Eastern US (as long as the campus isn't small-town tiny). Not a very big list, so that at least narrows down my options.

Between the topics I enjoy, the places I'm willing to live, and the fact that I'm not exactly flying on a 4.0 GPA airplane, the options start to narrow down a lot. So I sent out half a dozen e-mails to various profs around the country to ask for their advice and suggestions. One came back immediately: "Have you checked out KMDI at Toronto? They sound like they'd be perfect for you!"

Little pink hearts to dot the 'i's, I say.

Dude: "What are you majoring in?"
Me: "Computer Science."
Dude: "Oh, cool. How do you like your program?"
Me: "I like my program crisp."
Dude: "You.........like your program............crisp...?"
Me: "I like my program-crisp!"

I laughed for like ten minutes. He left. I'm so not appreciated in my own time.

Over the past few days, I've been asked by several people how I feel about the new pope. Almost always, my response is a raised eyebrow. The raised eyebrow is supposed to mean, "Why the hell are you asking me?" Apparently it's often interpreted as, "There's a new pope???". Anyway, if you wanted serious discourse then you shouldn't be reading this blog. (Also, as a heads up, you probably also shouldn't call it "discourse". Anything called "discourse" is gonna end up containing a whole lot more "post-modern collaborative synchronization" and "deconstructed hypertextualized techno-empowerment" than, y'know, any serious discourse.) But since you all asked, I'm going to let loose.

Catsy's Official Opinion On The Pope:

First of all, I think that the way in which a new pope is chosen is the remains of an archaic system. We've moved beyond the world of oligarchies: let's get with the times!

I think that the only way in which you should be able to become the new pope is if you kill the previous pope. There will be great instability for a few generations of popehood, but I suspect that this will even itself out when ninja warriors begin to take on the position of pope. It is very difficult to kill a ninja warrior. People would try to find and kill him, because everyone secretly wants to become the pope, but the ninja warrior pope would blend in with his surroundings.

Secondly, I believe that the pope should get magic powers that come at a horrible price. For example, the pope should be able to instantly warm up leftover pizza by just thinking about it, but should become massively allergic to pizza. This may seem random, but it will serve two purposes. First of all, it will remind the public that the pope is a powerful figure with awesome powers. Secondly, it will turn the pope into a humble being. Because, unable to eat pizza, he will always be less than everyone else. Except for the people who can't eat pizza. The pope will be better than them.

What happens if the pope dies of natural causes before one of the greater ninja warriors is there to steal his title? Then the pope will be resurrected from the dead using catholic magic zombie powers. The zombie-pope will wander the earth causing death and destruction wherever he goes and possibly creating other, new zombies. He will then use those zombies as his shield and will quickly grow in power and will become more and more difficult to kill. Especially if he is a ninja warrior zombie pope with a large zombie army. The idea of billions of zombie pope worshippers may sound scary at first, but you may find it reassuring to remember that it won't look very different from the congregation of today. Except for the moaning of "braaaaains".

Lastly, I think that the pope should be allowed to choose a themesong. All rights to that song should be immediately transfered to the pope, and the new duty of cardinals should be to walk behind the pope and play his popesong on huge pope-speakers. If the pope ever needs to go into stealth mode, for example to go on a secret ninja pope mission, the volume of the popesong could be turned down to a quiet whisper. But the popesong should always be playing.

I feel that if these simple rules were followed, we would end up with a much less controversial result. That's my opinion on this whole pope thing.

They say "don't knock it 'til you've tried it". I've given podcasts a try several times now. I search and I search for a podcast that will interest me. And after a few hours of boring crap, I retreat back to my own personal mp3 library and delete the podcast feeds.

Podcasting is a "hip, new, exciting way" to create your own self-published, syndicated online radio show. Then people download your show and listen to it on their iPods. Sounds like a great idea, right? The democratization of the media and all that. Well... As someone who walks for a total of an hour and a half every day (to and from campus) listening to her iPod, I should be the podcast target audience. I've gone through all of my own MP3s ten dozen times now, and so the idea of having a wealth of other people's podcast shows to listen to totally appeals to me. Podcast me up, baby.

But here's the problem:
You people are all boring!

The podcasts are usually monotone reading of topics so dull that it can barely qualify as anything more than white noise. It's like no one ever told these podcasters that it takes more than someone on a microphone to produce quality entertainment, infotainment, or whatever else they're trying to produce. The people who have picked up podcasting aren't the people with lots of interesting things to say; they're the people with so little to say, that they have nothing better to do than sit around and podcast.

Today's podcast is brought to you by the same people who wrote high school newspaper articles about how the cafeteria vegetables are overcooked and how it's hurting the public education system. Argh! You're too boring to listen to!

If any of you guys listen to podcasts and have found anything even remotely interesting to listen to, let me know. Otherwise, it's back to ye ol' trusty mp3 library for me.

Many moons ago, Slogs and I decided that for every degree she gets, we'll both get some sort of piercing. On further reflection, this sounds like a really stupid idea. Anyway, high school graduation came around and we both got a small ring on the top of our left ears. Slogs is now graduating from her undergrad and decided we're both getting rook piercings. It's not an extremely uncommon one, so I figured that this could be done in an easy afternoon and I could get back to studying.

Our torturer of the day, Dave did a fairly good job at making it as quick as possible. Huge friggin' nail goes in, few seconds pass, earring goes where nail went, hoop closed with pliers. Then we had explained to us how to clean it for two months, possible side effects of cartilage piercing, etc. And we went home. The whole piercing process took from 3:05 to 3:17 for both of us. Easy easy easy. No problem, right?

4:00 pm: Arrive at home. My ear hurts but, like, duh. It just got stabbed and isn't allowed to heal cuz there's a friggin' piece of metal in there. Nothing special.
9:08 pm: My whole head hurts too much to stay awake. I crawl into bed and try to make the pounding stop.
1:30 am: I accidentally roll over on to the wrong side. Swearing ensues. I get up to make sure that my whole ear hasn't fallen off, cuz that's what it feels like.
3:00 am: I wake up shaking. I remember getting hot-cold shivers from the last cartilage piercing four years ago, so I just try to ignore it and go back to sleep.
5:30 am: There's definitely a fever going on or something. Head pounding. Can't sleep. Stomach kinda queezy. Shaking.
7:00 am: Wake up Mud to borrow some aspirin. That'll make the pain stop, right?
7:30 am: Throw up asprin. Goddamnit.
7:45 am: Write an insanecats entry to try to distract myself from the little crew of drummers who decided to set up base camp inside of my skull.

Studying for my exam is gonna go oh-so-well today. I can just tell. Who the hell decided that sticking painful holes in yourself was a good idea? Goddamnit.

I've had my laptop (aka: my first born) for exactly one year now. And I've gotta say: I have no idea how I lived without it. Not only because the OS is constantly making my drool and everything mac is just so purdy! and all that stuff, but also for "having a laptop" academic reasons.

In my classes where a handful of people always have a laptop open, there's a subculture of wired (well, I guess "wireless") students who are busy engaging in their own academic experience. The laptop-enabled students all grin simultaneously as they glance down at their screens. One raises his hand and brings up a point from a webpage he has on his monitor. This goes far beyond just taking class notes in Notepad and saving them to one's Desktop.

If you're standing in the front of a classroom, you're likely to notice that the Mac users are all doing the one-mind borgish thing. They all grin, then they all type, then they all listen. Chances are very high that they're all using SubEthaEdit to collaboratively take notes. One student types in the main content of what is being said. Another follows behind and corrects spelling mistakes while a third adds a few extra points. Perhaps another is ahead of the rest, creating structure for the rest of the document -- preparing HTML lists and section headings. Collaborative note taking doesn't just happen in the classroom. It's become a new fad for everything from conferences to meeting minutes to collaborative email composition and more.

One of the coolest uses of SubEthaEdit in the classroom that I've seen though is by a prof. While lecturing, SubEthaEdit was running in the background on the same document that the students were collaboratively taking notes in. Once the class was over, the prof was able to go over the students' notes to see what they got out of the class. What concepts did they interpret as being important? What concepts did they miss entirely? If several students collaboratively didn't understand a concept, chances are high that the whole class missed it. It's a brilliant and easy way to get a bit more feedback between students and lecturers.

Thus far, these collaborative notes haven't entered the sponsored course webspace in any courses that I've taken so far. But I can imagine taking a course where a notes wiki is available and the course notes can be published so that those without laptops can continue to engage in the collaboration by annotating the notes or adding other bits of information. Nothing for credit. Everything just because it makes everyone's life easier.

Aside from collaborative note taking, laptops in classes seem to spend a lot of time hanging around Google. The prof says, "Those of you familiar with Kruskal's algorithm will recognize a similarity in Prim's algorithm, which we'll be discussing today." And from my seat I can see two independent people Googling for Kruskal's algorithm. One lands on wikipedia and begins scanning through the definition. The other saves the search result to some bookmarks folder on his browser. I find that I exhibit a similar behaviour now when watching movies. I make mental notes of things that I want to Google later. "Is that true? Wow, I wanna learn more 'bout that." It's only natural that the desire to go into more detail extends to the classroom.

I know several profs who worry about laptops in the classroom; specifically about how distracting they can be to the students who are using them. Some students will spend the whole class reading their e-mail or chatting about random shit on IM. Rochelle's blog entry Distracted or Bored to Distraction? addresses this beautifully. Students will always find ways to deal with boredom in the classroom. If they have laptops, they'll check e-mail. If they don't, they'll throw paper airplanes at each other (coughSeancough), pass notes, read a book, etc. It doesn't require a laptop to be distracted or distracting.

Of course, until such a day where every student has a laptop the way every student carries a pencil, there are limits as to what kind of cool stuff can be done. But those who do have wireless access in the classroom can still benefit those who don't. For example, by asking questions enlightened by the wealth of googleable information. Or by posting collaborative course notes to a course wiki. Or (and I think this one is especially cool) lecture podcasting. Students are already recording lectures on little tape recorders. How much cooler would it be if they podcasted it for the rest of the class? C'mon, that'd rock. Though some lectures will always require a whiteboard to understand what's going on, the prof who just stands by his podium will be just as understandable via podcast. Especially if you already attended the class. Or have the slides available for download from home.

As I procrastinate from studying by writing up a few paragraphs about laptop and internet use in the classroom, I've gotta say: studying for exams would be a hell of a lot cooler if I had a course notes wiki to read through, lecture podcasts to listen to, and a set of course del.icio.us bookmarks to supplement everything else. It'd just totally rock. And, at least I feel, teach the students something useful in the process.

Over the past few days, I've had to write three short bios for various reasons. Here's how the descriptions of each request were stated:

a very short (maximum of 100 words) biography

a few words about what you're doing. 250 words should do it.

a paragraph or two to describe yourself

I hate writing bios. How do you squeeze a few sentences out of your life? Either the scope is too small ("Hi my name is. Period.") or too large ("In the beginning..."). And though I'd normally be prone to just responding with a fictional bio ("Raised in Tibet by a group of yak herders...") every so often you have to write a real one that's going to appear somewhere where you don't want everyone thinking that you're a sarcastic tool.

So I wrote serious bios for all three of them. Complete with cheesy bios-only phrases like "Her interests include" and "She also spends her time".

Here's what I should have written:

a very short (maximum of 100 words) biography
Was born. Spoke. Ate stuff.

a few words about what you're doing. 250 words should do it.
I'm sitting on a chair, my right leg crossed over my left, and slowly spinning back and forth. I'm typing on my laptop keyboard with my right hand while my left covers a yawn that suddenly emerged. ...

a paragraph or two to describe yourself
A fairly symmetric head is attached via a neck to shoulders and the rest of the body. The head includes two eyes, a nose, a mouth, a pair of ears, and hair that keeps changing colour. ...

Because, let's face it, who actually wants to read another template biography? There's absolutely no way that "[Catspaw] is an undergraduate student in computer science at the University of Toronto" tells you anything about me beyond the fact that I'm exactly identical to hundreds of students this year and thousands more throughout the years.

Whereas a tale involving yak herders, ninjas (there're always ninjas), aliens and giant robots tells you much more about the person. They're creative, sarcastic, and very likely insane.

But nooooooOOOOooooo. I wussed out and went the serious route.
Damn.

Whether it's...

• George Bush singing "Imagine" and "A Walk On The Wild Side" (put together from bits of his various speeches), or
• a thousand-deep photo gallery of a cat looking at another cat looking at another cat looking at...., or
• a website where people submit homemade postcards that share a secret about themselves, or even
• a game where you prevent kitties from squishing on the pavement ...

...I'm continuously amazed that people managed to entertain themselves before there was an internet.

Oh, and I'm studying for my next exam. Really. I swear.