Storage

Oh, unreliable storage. My USB key is dead, it seems. It had been experiencing issues being detected all week, and now that I really want to bring something off of it, I cannot, for it won't be detected at all. Oh woe. I will probably require a new one and presently browse Futureshop and Staples. It is almost sad that I almost exclusively consider the larger retailers for trust and price reasons.

UPDATE: it has made one final (?) contact.

It's brief history saw it purchased in the semester 2006 Winter during a co-op work term. I purchased it from a Canada Computers. I thought the design on it (OCZ Rally, having a race car-type logo) was very ugly and I regretted not letting it be more fashionable, but it had been on sale. I think it was 512MB for $30 or so. The cap quickly lost its grip and during the summer following was lost. The USB key never seemed to suffer from it, despite all the foreign particular matter it must have come in contact with through my pocket. Now, 2 years after its purchase, it is dead.

Now I know a bit more about USB keys, so I hope to get a nice fast one. I think the warranty is still valid on my OCZ Rally, but the warrant information would all be at my father's home. I might try to claim that when I get home next, but I believe I'll need a USB key in the interim and it would be nice to have a bit more space. Though, honestly, I think I will only go with 1GB for their price.

Good bye Rally. I had hoped your logo would fade into the night before you did.

I am implementing an 8-hour schedule for my day. I will spend 8 hours doing work. Perhaps a bit more if I need to, but hopefully not. It's difficult to do on campus when you have friends you only see on campus. At least with some of them, though, I've started seeing them more in the evenings which frees up most of my morning time. I also see them in a working capacity,so perhaps I will get extra hours of work in.

I'm also a T.A. this semester and I find it difficult to fit academic work in between marking sessions and labs. Perhaps I should exclude T.A. hours from my 8-hours of academic work. Treat them like two separate jobs. I am concerned I will overload myself, though. Well, let's see how it goes.

I've discovered that the lectures I probably want for association analysis are day 7 and day 8. The former spends the first half-hour on some basic statistics which was refreshing, though I had a CIS course last semester that dealt heavily with probability and statistics.

I eagrely anticipate the move to video lectures. They'll reduce cost, improve quality, and allow students more versatility in their studies. They might threaten a student's self-organisation, though.

Morning Mania

On Saturday mornings there's a farmers' market in Guelph near the downtown. It runs from N until 12PM. We enjoy shopping there when we manage to make it there in time. Sometimes, even if we wake up with ample time, we still don't make it. This morning, I dawdled with my computer a bit, dawdled on the way to the mall (where we catch a bus), and then dawdled in making change. I dawdle, we dawdle, we missed the last bus to make it before it closed :) I enjoy the apple cider I get there and the inexpensive free range eggs. The rest of the food might be more expensive than through No Frills, but I don't mind very much. I suppose I pay a premium for supporting local growers. Some of the produce isn't actually locally grown - locally imported, perhaps :) It's also pleasant and feels socially edifying (my word for the week). It's fun for me.

Well, we missed, and instead we got to go to No Frills. Hurrah for incredibly inexpensive food. We occasionally shop at an Ultra Food and Drug (A&P) that's nearby. I've taken issue with them for how they handle mislabelled prices (when I worked at a grocery story, we honoured our price tags!), "best before" dates with respect to their "fresh obsessed" policy, and generally high prices. (I'm selfish and want to pay as little as I can, apparently.) The increase in price of Silk soy milk brought an end to my regular business with Ultra, so we're also trying a different soy milk brand at No Frills. The new soy milk was a hundred times better when we taste-tested between the it and the remains of our Silk. Of course, that was because the Silk tasted like a combination of walnuts and Kraft dinner ~ mm, sour. The new soy milk tastes like blended boiled rice, and it's not bad. We'd also be interested in "free range" milk, if we could find it nearby.

I'll try a bit harder to make it to the farmers' market next week. I am concerned with my reliability and my ability to fulfill plans. Arguably, you could say argue that if it was important enough, I would have made it to the farmers' market. I will remain wary all the same.

What else? Right, pet stores. I visited one and as you will probably learn, I dislike it when human actions lead to animal suffering. I am not going to lecture anyone, because I have underdeveloped ideas on it all, but I still dislike it. In this case, we saw a goldfish in a piranha tank with chewed fins. I wanted to scoop it out, but of course didn't (for a variety of reasons). One of which was, if we remove it, or buy it, and save it, it will be replaced by another one. Of course it's the natural thing for piranha to do. The goldfish no longer stands much of a chance, and the fate for this goldfish was determined by a human. Why is this a problem? As a human, I feel like I have a choice in causing another creature harm. What does it mean for another creature to be harmed, of course? What does it mean for a human to be harmed? For a plant? Hmm. Hmm. We have rats.

Mine Me

I'm watching a lecture on statistical aspects of data mining given by a Goolge employee lecturing at Stanford. Some of it is supposed to be relevant to Association Analysis. A sad thing about video is that it's difficult to skip to the parts you need. Skimming is more difficult than with text at present :)

I wish the lectures at the University of Guelph were also available on-line. I would rather be paying almost solely for certification than for access to the knowledge. Is sitting in on classes you're not registered in a theft of intellectual property? What if you're not even a student? What if you're not a citizen of Canada? Does it matter whether a university is public or private?

Well, I feel that lectures can move on-line quite easily and will. It'll be much less expensive than paying lecturers at every university to be present. Instead, a few good lecturers will be hired to be recorded. There'll be greater quality control. Perhaps competing lecturers could produce their own series of lectures and sell them, meeting some curriculum requirements. Cheaper video lectures, fancier video lectures, all "guaranteed" to fulfill course requirements. Standardised exams. The worst aspect is the loss of diversity of course. Oh, what a tremendous loss, too! As my girlfriend suggests, have personalised lectures. "Data Structures by Xining Li" and people could subscribe to certain course approachs. That would be nice. Yup, the future, recorded here for your edification.

The video claims association analysis will be covered the week they look at chapter 6, which concerns it. The textbook is by a few fellows and Kumar. I think I saw that textbook available on-line (legitimately). I suppose I'll investigate.

Mandatory Mass Transit around the corner?

U of G Employees to Get Transit Discount. The city of Guelph is providing a 15% discount on monthly passes to employees of the University of Guelph and the Co-operators as a pilot of a new programme that hopes to persuade people to commute via mass transit to work. Motivations include environmental friendliness, reduced congestion, and generally improved bussing services. I like the environment and like doing things that might have a positive impact on it. I also enjoy the idea of mass transit, though I hope service improves.

Guelph has recently become more digital in that respect. They removed the posted signs advertising bus arrival times (which is awful) in place of a website and phone number you can call. Of course, now unless you own a cellular phone or some such device, you cannot readily deduce when a bus might possibly come from a stop. That's huge disabling to people without the Internet, without cellular phones, to those foreign to a particular bus stop. It's been tortuous in some aspects. Also, routes during prime hours had their intervals increase from 30 to 40 minutes, which meant extra-long wait times if you couldn't better plan out meeting the bus. Guelph Transit hopes to get enough in their next budget to implement 20 minute intervals during peak hours and to be able to post comprehensive schedules (perhaps ala Victoria, BC) to mitigate the disadvantages of the old, predictable 30 minutes + sign system.

Now, if only the buses would actually appear on NextBus ...

The Faux See Scrolls

Credit to Jon Hicks for the method I use to enforce a scrollbar in non-IE browsers on the right-hand side. One thing I dislike is when structural elements whose presence persist between pages alter their position. One good example are navigation buttons for photo galleries that are placed below the image, especially when the image height varies regularly. Then you always have to move your mouse to accommodate. I prefer placing such elements in a constant position, perhaps above the variable dimension elements :)

Kia Ora

We've got rats. I'm not very surprised. They're warm, cuddly, and don't bite, so I think we can be friends.

So, I didn't get everything I wanted with my current provider, but they are much cleaner than my last and allow a lot more. I don't think I will be satisfied until I operate my own server. As far as providers go, I'm happy with the selection, and will recommend webschwerver to all my friends.

Herein will go some social posts (no drama), work, hobby, and school. I'll try to make good use of tags to help separate it all.

I'm not using a CMS and I do not expect I will this year. I do intend on developing a batch of redundant Perl and PHP scripts to generate my website and hopefully enable a semi-professional feel to them, though. That will have to wait until other weekends. I hope everything to share the same header with the pretty stars. They make me happy.

I'm currently TA'ing a course at my university and giving labs on how to use Office and Expression Web. While I wouldn't personally recommend proprietary tools for friends, I think they might be effective for the class's needs.

I've a greatly late German assignment due. Part of me says "Don't discuss it here, a future employer may one day read it and frown!" but then another part says "If I write reality, perhaps they can trust what I write, and not doubt me :)". I feel crippled before this simple assignment, as I fear its making me look foolish, naïve, or just plain stupid. It'll be submitted tonight or tomorrow morning, but I'll have lost 3% of my final mark over this fiasco. It's been very draining and stressful. I somehow think it will be the worst it all gets, which is relieving. I don't know why I feel so optimistic about it, though.

I have an interest in going to New Zealand starting in the summer, hopefully to do graduate studies at the University of Otago. I can't afford it right now, so I hope to work a little once I've graduated, and to earn scholarships that could either reduce my tuition to domestic levels or otherwise eliminate the burden.

Does anyone have a gp2x? I find it to be a fascinating device. The stylus has been lost, but apparently fingers are also effective.

Anyway, if you're interested in contacting me, I'm not too concerned about spammers, so you can actually click this: e-mail. Good bye.