Oh, September… you’re early! I haven’t even gotten properly dressed yet!

September 5th, 2011 • 2 comments Academics, Goals, Student Life

I’m going to save the seemingly obligatory “What I Did This Summer” essay for a little later and jump right in to this poor, dilapidated, ignored-for-seven-months blog. (As you can see, I’ve signed on for another year of Blogsquadding, though hopefully this will be a year with a little more regularity on the posting front.) So, to reacquaint myself (or newly acquaint myself, as it may be, with new readers that don’t want to sift through old posts).  I’ll be rounding out my fourth (out of a total of five years) at UBC as a Computer Science student in the Faculty of Science. I live on campus in the Marine Drive residence with three other girls. I have lots to say about the aforementioned, believe me.

For those so inclined and well-versed in the succinct categorization geeks are best at, my Geek Code is: GCS/S/FA d? s: a– C++++>$ w+ PS+ PE t+++ R+ !tv b+++ e>++ h– r++.

As far as this year goes, it’ll hopefully go by without too much trouble. This year’s timetables will mostly be filled with graduation requirement classes (a.k.a. not about computers and therefore of questionable interest) so that next year will be devoted to directed studies and thesis writing. Specifically, for first term I will be taking Chem 111 (I tried to weasel my way out of this one but apparently it’s absolutely necessary for my graduation, by some twisted logic), CPSC 317 (“Internet Computing”),  CPSC 344  (“Introduction to Human Computer Interaction” – essentially making computers and robots alike more friendly) and Math 221 (standard linear algebra). Nothing is really piquing my interest, apart from the HCI course, so my hope is I can just plug away at it and chip off the credits one by one.

As I mentioned above, I would like to keep up with this blog on a more regular schedule so as to bring some semblance of discipline into my internet life (since, according to some, diligence with Reddit does not count). One thing that I would like to focus on is carrying on Eric’s fine tradition of UBC 101 posts, since he’s kindly let me thieve the idea. As Eric puts it:

Each [UBC 101 post] will focus on a specific aspect about UBC that I’ve learned/observed. I hope this will help all students considering or already at UBC to get better marks, more sleep, and have a good time at university. Because we don’t pay $4000+ tuition to die before getting our degrees.

I love reading his posts (and all posts of that ilk) so hopefully mine will be useful in some form, if only to see what passes as advice these days. Ho ho!

My more immediate goal, however, will be to somehow, against all odds, get back onto a regular sleeping schedule with as much sanity intact as possible. Over the course of the summer, I became steadily more nocturnal until present day, where bedtime is considered to be 7am. (The fact that I’m writing this post at 4am should speak volumes as to how successful I’ve been, so far… ugh.)

All in all, I’m looking forward to another busy, fun, pleasant-in-retrospect-but-oh-god-the-stress school year.

The drawing, incidentally, is one of my own. You could theoretically view more of my drawings on my website; this, however, was a summer project that got usurped by the release of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. 

Not Much Busier, but Stress++

February 2nd, 2011 • Academics, Student Life

This morning started out comically good compared to most other mornings. Generally, I take one of the express buses along to get to school which is fine so long as you leave early enough. With a 9:00am class, “early enough” is generally around 7:30 to 7:45- an hour and a half early when you live ten minutes away! Otherwise, the bus degenerates into a teeming, sweaty cattle car where you are literally squished against the front windshield, and that’s if you get lucky and a bus actually stops.

Not the best way to start the day.

Alternatively, there is a smaller bus (no, not a “small bus”) that comes once an hour. Whenever I can, I take it since it is hilariously better than the other buses. For example, this morning I managed to catch it at around 8:00ish. The bus route moseyed along Spanish Banks, which looked out upon the pink and golden sunrise against the ocean and the North Shore mountains. The driver was a charmingly jovial elderly man that greeted each person with a little quip. I actually saw puppies gamboling along the beach. Upon arriving to school with time to spare, I grabbed breakfast from Bernoulli’s and strolled leisurely to class in the frosty sunlight with a toasty bagel in one hand and coffee in the other. Tiny birds and butterflies alighted on my shoulder and, at one point, I saw a unicorn! (Not really, but the morning was so nice that I may as well have.) The picture above, by the way, is one I took during the bus ride.

I’m thankful for the pleasantries of this morning because I’m so exhausted right now that anything more stressful would have made me collapse into a pathetic, whimpering heap of stress and bus-induced misanthropy. I’m not really significantly busier than last week, but I feel like I am getting a lot more strung out. I’m not entirely sure why- I’ve been OCD-ing out about stuff for a bit so that probably has something to do with it. I just finished my Stat200 assignment (boring, frustrating, overly simple) and after this I am going to spend the rest of the day studying for my CS320 midterm (interesting, frustrating, challenging) tomorrow. After that, though, I have the rest of the weekend to work on the 422 project JX and I are doing due on Monday. It’s a fun assignment so I’m really looking forward to having the time to focus on that and only that. My boyfriend and I might go to Vancouver Island to visit some friends of ours during the weekend too, so I’m super excited for that. Our friends live in the most idyllic part of the island imaginable and the last time I went, I saw baby deers!

Something that might be of interest to my CS-friends is a talk being given tomorrow by Nando called “On Learning”. Based on the abstract, it seems like it’ll just be a general talk on Machine Learning, which is my favourite thing ever, so I’m looking forward to it. If anyone wants to go, it’s from 3:30-4:50pm in Dempster 110. Details are here.

Trains, TODOs and a Curious Sense of Calm

January 28th, 2011 • Academics, Student Life

Just remember that when YOU openly sneeze everywhere, it only looks gross, not strangely provocative.

Today was a culmination of many events, one right after the other.  Now that they are all done, I feel a strange sense of emptiness and I’m not quite suer what to do with myself. I mean, I have lots to work on, just nothing that’s immediately due. Not that that’s a bad thing… at all.

First of all, this morning at 9:00am, I had a CS313 (Computer Hardware and Operating Systems) test- the first of four “midterms”, if you will. Now, I took this class’s precursor, CS213, last spring and TA’d it during the second term of summer as well. While I did quite well in the class, I felt like I didn’t actually learn very much, nor did I find the material particularly enthralling. So, I came into CS313 with low expectations insofar as my interest levels were concerned, but I am actually finding this class pretty enjoyable so far. Our professor, Andrew Warfield, is quite amiable and a good lecturer, which is pretty essential at nine in the morning. Also, lo and behold, the textbook is useful! In CS213, we didn’t use the textbook that much since Professor Feeley wrote a “course companion”, like a mini-textbook, to be used instead. The few glances that I took at the textbook suggested that it was a densely technical, monochrome behemoth but actually reading it now, it’s a great resource.

Anyway. I finished my test around 10 minutes early and then made the long trek (across the Dempster lobby) to my CS422 (Intelligent Systems) class, where I had time to fiddle around with the projector. A relatively large component of our final mark for this class is based on a total of three “mini-projects”- what these are is we essentially investigate applications in the field of AI that are somewhat relevant to the course material, find one that we think is cool and talk about it for three minutes. Today my project was on DepthX and its underlying algorithm SLAM, which probably no one but my nerdfriends from CS will care about. I think that my presentation went pretty well, although there minutes is an incredibly short timeframe to talk about anything meaningful.

Finally, at 3:45pm today, our second CS320 (Intermediate Algorithm Design & Analysis) assignment is due. Let me just say thank goodness for my exceedingly intelligent friend Chris Thompson and his infinite patience with me (and his willingness to collaborate). Not only did I get my assignment done on time, I actually understood (thoroughly understood, as in had the whole “aha” moment thing) every single question. It’s always a pleasure to work with intelligent people, and you really do find that two heads are better than one. I handed this assignment in about half an hour ago.

… so, like I said, strangely empty since nothing is due until mid next-week.

Actually, something non-UBC related happened that’s really neat. A friend of mine from highschool has worked at a design firm for quite awhile, and he recently contacted me saying that they needed a last minute illustration for a kids’ t-shirt for Rocky Mountaineer. Cool, right? I generally do little illustrations from time to time, but I don’t have time to be a full-fledged freelance illustrator… pretty nice when a job falls right into my lap! The best part is that there weren’t really any restrictions besides the fact that they wanted one of their trains in the illustration somewhere. Free rein to draw adorable forest creatures- I seriously could not ask for a more enjoyable job! I’m also happy to report that it sounds like both the design firm and Rocky Mountaineer are pleased with what I’ve done. This kinda stuff really makes me miss being a “professional” artist… Maybe once I get a website set up I can more actively pursue some part time illustration work.

I’d also like to make a public service announcement to everyone to remember to wash your hands! Even if you are indifferent to spreading your own pestilence around with dirty hands and not covering your mouth when you forcibly eject fluids (seriously? how hard is it to cover your goddamn mouth), you should probably care about getting yourself sick. I recently got over a nightmarish bout of stomach flu that left me hating my insides for a week- a week of school missed!- so seriously, be proactive in your hand washing. One sick day can be a nice break, but missing anything more than that is a pretty good way to screw up the rest of your semester.

I’ve also been thinking of drawing inspiration from Eric’s UBC 101 series and starting my  own set of “how to survive UBC” articles, especially now that midterm season is almost upon us (or already here, for some!). If that’s ok with Eric, of course! Hmm…

First Week

January 7th, 2011 • 1 comment Academics

Image is Life as a Wookie by Nate Beaty

Well, another rousing Friday night in the life of a computer science student… though my quandary of boredom is not related to academic overload (for once). My boyfriend is a professor at an art school (I shall not say more, or else I’d be forced to cut out your tongue to make you guard my secrets) and is teaching a four hour class tonight that started three hours ago, with another one yet to pass. I’ve been whiling away the hours by reading about why Macs (purportedly) don’t get viruses, but I am indeed infected with my own virus (rife with irony, isn’t it… I have my fifth cold of the season) and running on about two hours’ sleep. So I figured that I’d share my misery with you guys since that is what a good blogger does.

Today marked the end of week one, and as far as classes that I really like go, I think I am batting around 2.5 out of 4. Or maybe like… 1.5. It’s sort of too soon to tell. I am enjoying CS320 with Patrice so far, mainly because he is a fantastic teacher and I really appreciate his structured teaching style. Plus the fact that he writes on the whiteboards vs. blazing through slides makes good use of my brand spankin’ new (though they’re already a bit chewed up) spiral notebooks. CS313 is ok… I mean, I got 90-something in CS213 and TA’d the material, for goodness sake, but I still feel like I don’t know anything about computer hardware/operating systems/assembly code, etc. A frustrating experience. This is also the first undergrad class our prof has ever taught, which can be quite good or very bad in my opinion. Time will tell with this one. CS422 is not bad so far… it is very project oriented, which I like. I have my fingers crossed that the material will be more interesting than 322. Finally, Stats 200 is seriously enough to put me asleep ten times over. I am bored out of my skull so far. That combined with the fact that the teacher has a very soothing, melodic voice and it’s my last class of the day usually means I am fighting for every ounce of awakeness I can.

Oh my god… Still fifty minutes left. I am so tiiiired…

First Day Back

January 4th, 2011 • 3 comments Academics, Student Life

Well, it’s Day 0 of 2010W2. Or is it 2011S? Or the spring term? Or… I never know how to properly refer to the terms.

Anyways. My first class is CPSC 320, “Intermediate Algorithm Design and Analysis”. I’ve heard murmurings that this is the worst/hardest class of a CS student’s entire UBC career, though I am not trembling at the knees yet. I come equipped with the past assignments, notes and expertise of a handful of friends that took this last year with the same prof. I’m also imbued with a semi-manic vigor to kick this term’s ass to make up for the pathetic four months that was last term. So, Bernoulli’s bagelwich (delicious) and Starbucks coffee in hand, I’m ready.

Speaking of last term, however, my CS312 grades were finally posted. I did quite well- probably not as well as I should have, and a lot of it is due to my amazing partner who picked up a lot of my slack last term (much to my embarrassment). Also, the average was 81%, for anyone who cares. Kurt’s classes do tend to have higher averages, but I’m not complaining.

Also, I’m not sure if I’ve gone over what I’m taking this term yet. As I said before, I’ll be taking CPSC 320 (“Intermediate Algorithm Design and Analysis”) with Patrice Belleville, starting in an hour or so. Thankfully, this is my only class on Tuesdays and Thursdays! Then my Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays consist of CPSC 313 with Andrew Warfield(“Computer Hardware and Operating Systems”), STAT200 with Eugenia Yu (“Elementary Statistics for Applications”) and CPSC 422 with David Poole (“Intelligent Systems”). Not a bad term! It’ll be nice to have three computer science courses, even if they aren’t ones I was particularly looking forward to. I sure hope that 422 is better than my 322 fiasco from last term.

I’ve bought some spiral notebooks, in hopes that it will help me keep to my New Term’s plan of diligently taking notes in every class. An important part of that being, of course, that you don’t lose your notes, and what better way to do that than have a notetaking format that won’t get lost unless you actively rip out the pages. Ha. I actually have a love-hate relationship with spiral notebooks… love them for the aforementioned reason and the fact that everything is all in one place, sequentially. However, whenever I buy them, I always abandon them because (a) I’m a perfectionist bordering on OCD (in fact, I legitimately do have OCD, but that’s different than just obsessing about notes). This means that if I make a tiny mistake on a page, I have to rip out the page and start over. This generally results in sad, skinny notebooks and me getting frustrated. The other reason I give up on spiral notebooks is (b) there is no good way to insert handouts, etc. However, based on Math 302 last term, where we got a lot of handouts, I actually found it confusing to intersperse them with my handwritten lecture notes anyways.

So… my feelings on spiral notebooks. Now you have them. Enthralling, right?

I still have an hour or so before class starts. May as well do some pre-reading or… something. Have a great term everyone!

Finals in the Mi(d)st

December 6th, 2010 • 1 comment Academics

I’ve just finished a 30-minute stretch of practice finals and am luxuriating in my 15-minute break. (Might have to do this current post in stints, actually.) As I think I stated in my last post, I have three finals this week. I figured I’d give a little recap as to how classes have been going- I’d also like to write something on how I go about studying for finals because, even though I’m far from an expert, I genuinely like reading about other people’s work habits.

The first, on Wednesday the 8th (at 8:30am, wtf) is for Math302, my probability class. Strangely enough, I’m sad to see that this class is over. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to taking this at the beginning of term, and figured that it would be just another math class I’d have to attempt to have an interest in. My professor, Michael Kozdron, proved me wrong, however, and made the class consistently relevant, accessible and, dare I say it… a little bit fun! In fact, this is the only class that I’ve stayed caught up with throughout this hellish term since I genuinely liked coming to class and my grade is not so bad either. I’m hoping that the final exam will go well to give a good start to the, er… “season”. So, I’ve been motoring (slowly) through as many practice finals as I can get my paws on.

Then, on Friday the 10th, I have my Ling 101 exam with Strang Burton at the somewhat more reasonable hour of 12pm. This is another interesting class but one that’s sort of fallen by the wayside. I’ve kept up, sure, but I am by no means consistent with my studying. This is probably due to the fact that two of my very good friends in the Computer Science department hold degrees in Linguistics, so any time I need some last minute (ahem, often very last minute) help with an assignment, they’re around to help me through it. So, as a result, I have a very thorough understanding of the material but I am a bit guilty for not working on things once every couple of days like a good student. So far, our midterms have been tricky but not impossible, and the questions are often thought provoking. Arts classes are nice that way (though, in my opinion, Ling is certainly one of the most “sciencey” disciplines in the Faculty of Arts).

On Saturday the 11th (which, coincidentally, is my mom’s birthday) at 3:30pm (that’s more like it), I have my CPSC322 (Artificial Intelligence) final exam with Cristina Conati… which I am dreading. Truly dreading. This class has been the bane of my existence this term, which is both ironic and disappointing since I have been anticipating this class since coming to UBC. A student on RateMyProfessors said it best when they said the class wasn’t what they expected (“where are all the cool robots and stuff?”). Obviously I knew that we wouldn’t be programming the next league of cyborg overlords, buuuut I didn’t expect it to basically just be search algorithms, search algorithms and more search algorithms. I was sort of looking forward to stuff like neural nets, machine learning, etc. but those are saved for other courses, it seems. Anyways, I’ve fallen crazy behind in this class. Like wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat because you had a horrible nightmare about this class’s final exam sort of behind. Basically, I have to thoroughly teach myself the last month of material in the next six days… especially since because I did horribly on the midterm. (The midterm that I thought that I SURELY had gotten an A on, too… sigh.)

Finally, I have my CPSC312 (Functional & Logic Programming) course with Kurt Eiselt on the 17th at 3:30pm. Have I mentioned how Kurt is my favourite prof? Well, it bears mentioning again. He is. I am somewhat behind in this class as well, but I have a programming “blitz” planned with some friends for Tuesday (so dorky) and I think that’ll make me a Prolog pro. B)

Anyways. My “end of fun time” alarm has gone off twice and I’ve been ignoring it… time to go back to writing old final exams depressingly poorly… :/

Good luck studying, everyone!

Midterms, Music and Computer Love

October 8th, 2010 • Academics, Student Life, Thoughts

I hope that everyone is managing to survive the inevitable onslaught both of midterms and rain- neither of which seem to stop until Christmas time! (Well… I suppose it’s fair to say that the rain continues right through to June, but I’m not complaining. Rain is my favourite.) My week, academic-wise, has consisted of a a rather hefty handful of assignments and two midterms- one for Math 223 (Honours Linear Algebra) and one for CS312 (Functional & Logic Programming). I was strangely calm for each of them… either I’m getting the hang of this midterm thing or my brain has reverted to some kind of Ritalin-like stupor as a defense mechanism. The CS312 midterm was actually a lot of fun, though in my experience, Professor Eiselt’s midterms are usually strangely delightful to do. Really. Last night at 2am, however, I did bolt up in bed thinking of some dumb mistake I made on the first question… argh! Perhaps if I send my TA $20 they’ll have a temporary moment of dyslexia and not even notice the error… I did draw a robot on the front page, so who knows.

A friend of mine actually had a brilliant idea that I strongly, strongly suggest any student should try- earplugs during exams! My Math 223 exam was marred by someone who, clearly oblivious to the concept of Kleenex, emitted a horribly wet, viscous sniffle every two seconds. So distracting. After lamenting about this to my friend, he was sweet enough to bring me a pair of obnoxiously orange, blessedly sound-cancelling earplugs for our CS312 midterm. Man, does it make a difference! So much easier to focus without listening to all of the various bodily noises that get amplified in a quiet room. Hilariously, though, the student beside me during the 312 midterm insisted on violently cracking  his neck every five minutes, so I kept seeing him flail his head around periodically. As far as seat mates go, I just can’t win!

Anyways, earplugs. Try it.

Something equally auricular that I’d like to recommend is an amazing site: Stereomood. They describe themselves as “free emotional internet radio”. In other words, they have thousands of songs culled from blogs, websites and music sites like Pitchfork- everything from Radiohead to Royksopp to the Beatles to stuff you’ve never heard of- organized by the listeners into playlists suited to a particular mood or emotion. My favourites so far are the “Reading” playlist, and the “Melancholy” one really seems to fit autumn well (a little dark and morose but still beautiful). I have Stereomood on anytime I’m home and it’s great for studying, as well as discovering new music to fill up your iPhone.

Another thing I want to say briefly is…. I love my faculty. Seriously. Computer Science is full of the greatest people. I’ve been staying on campus from 8:30am to 10pm lately, working away in the labs after class since if I go home, I inevitably get nothing accomplished. Nine times out of ten, I’m not the only one tapping away on a computer into the wee hours of the night, and all nine of those nine times, the people also staying are great. It’s so awesome to be able to strike up a conversation with almost anyone and know that you share the same interests, the same love for computing… it’s great. The friends I’ve made at UBC so far are wonderful, deeply intelligent people and I feel really lucky to be able to surround myself with people that love what I love as much as I love it.

Plus, the other day when I was studying with a couple friends in the ICICS Reading Room, Bernice, the lovely lady of the library, let us know that there were free boxed lunches downstairs leftover from a conference earlier. We trooped down and grabbed one each, and lo and behold- gourmet sandwiches! They were soooo good and I attribute any success on my exam to the sugar boost that I got from the cute little Rice Krispie square included alongside the sandwich. Again- compsci rocks.

So who invented this math thing, anyways.

September 30th, 2010 • Academics, Student Life, Thoughts

I’m currently sitting in ICICS, both dreading my meeting with my honors math prof and wishing time would hurry up so I could get it over with. I have another assignment due tomorrow for this class… these assignments, which are worth a little over 1% of our final grade, are composed entirely of proving things and they’ve been taking me a minimum of 10 hours to complete (at the exclusion of my other classes). I’m really getting fed up with it, quite honestly. What’s more is that on my second assignment, which I worked on for a total of twelve hours and spent an hour of one-on-one time with the prof going over my answers, I got a pass. And by pass, I mean like… a bare pass. In the grand scheme of things, this is at most 0.5% off of my final grade. Not a big deal, right? No… but it feels like a giant slap in the face for something that I (a) worked damn hard on and (b) thought I had in the bag.

So, needless to say, I’m grouchy. And I’m not all that motivated to work on this assignment that’s due tomorrow.

Also, for the past four months, I’ve been staying out in Burnaby, which involves a total of three hours of transit on any given day. Transit that is congested, busy and usually involves having someone’s backpack centimeters away from your cheek the whole time. I do have a place in Kitsilano that I rent, but my roommates have been somewhat unsavory. However, just yesterday I got great news… my least favourite roommate (who watches TV in the kitchen for six hours a night, accompanied by talking and singing to himself) is moving out! I was planning on heading back into my place again this weekend, anyways, but this just makes it so much sweeter. Finally I can study without hearing Sex and the City at volume 20, punctuated by his shrill giggles. Yesssss. The best part is, now it takes only 20 minutes to get to school! Fantastic.

On a slightly depressing note, I hope that everyone is keeping in mind that midterms are soon… and often sooner than you expect. Last year, I got caught off guard by them, thinking that “a whole week” was “more than enough time” to study. Well… it’s usually not. Not if you don’t want to shove everything in your short-term memory and pray for the best the night before. So, my advice to first years and nth years alike… start now! The best and most consistent exam marks come from a constant effort at revisions from day one.

EDITED TO ADD: So I talked to my math teacher and it was an error with Vista… I ended up getting a high A. :) Yahoo! Mood++

In which a horribly overwhelming TODO list is revealed

September 26th, 2010 • 5 comments Academics

Yeah. Horribly overwhelming is an understatement. I always get really excited for the weekend because I figure that’s two days of sixteen hours in which I can “really get stuff done”. What usually happens, however, is that three quarters of Saturday is spent visiting my family (and by that I mainly mean visiting the love of my life (and by THAT I mean my golden retriever)), a block of time which is bookended by a few hours of America’s Next Top Model, cleaning and general dicking around the house. So that’s one day down. Then by Sunday, I am so distraught by the fact that I haven’t even started on my seemingly endless to-do list, I get overwhelmed and what little work I manage to get done in between stressing out and jogging is horribly unfocused.

Ugh! I miss the days when my exams were “paint what you feel when you eat chocolate” or some crap like that. Actually, I don’t. I hated that.

So, I am going to commandeer a whole blog post to a to-do list, mostly for my sake. This gives me a modicum of accountability, at least, and it’s a little more permanent than the wayward scraps of looseleaf I usually write my todo lists on and lose/destroy shortly thereafter. And maybe in a few years, I can look back on this and laugh. If I survive.

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Late Nights, Peter Norvig and the Benefits of Being a Keener

September 24th, 2010 • 2 comments Academics, Student Life

So the second week is now over and I am totally exhausted. It seems like the fact that Fridays have been crap days for me so far is going to be an ongoing trend. The assignments for my honours math class are always due on Fridays at 9am and it seems that no matter how early I start, I’m still up until 3am on Thursday nights finishing up and up again at 7am to get to class. The fatigue seems to be worth it so far, however, since I did end up getting 2% away from an A+ on the first assignment. Now that is a worthwhile trend.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, none of my classes apart from Math302 have had any significant assignments so far and they are just now beginning to come down the pipe so my weeks are going to get even busier. Five classes sure is a lot, and if I didn’t recognize the value in strict time management in first year (because I really, really didn’t) then I sure as hell do now. I don’t think that there is a way to maintain an 80%+ average across five 300-level Science classes without being one of those painfully keen nerds with the colour coded schedules that have slots budgeted for teeth-brushing time. Not that that’s a bad thing. Since the middle of the summer term, I’ve cut out all distractions- MSN, computer games, Facebook and, well, I never had a TV. It makes a massive difference and I’ve seen probably a 10% increase in all of my grades so far. Something to consider if you feel like you’re struggling to meet your deadlines. You’d be amazed at how quickly you stop missing them.

There have been a couple really great things that have happened so far, too. First of all, even though my linguistics class is mind-numblingly basic (I seriously feel guilty for how much of a sandbag class it is), the subject itself is really cool and it’s spurred my own readings and research into the subject. I’ve decided to minor in Linguistics now, as well. So funny- linguistics and computer science were never things that I was introduced to before UBC, so I can’t say that I was one of those kids that tinkered around with circuit boards or pondered the morphology present in Green Eggs and Ham, but they’ve become what I now plan on dedicating the rest of my life to. This is why I cannot emphasize enough that it’s really important to expose yourself to new things, because who knows what you’ll end up loving.

Also, last night I had the distinct honour of seeing Peter Norvig give a talk on what you can do with large sets of data. For the non-computerishly inclined, Peter Norvig is like… the paragon of computer science around today and is my hero. Seriously. Peter Norvig is currently the director of research and development at Google (!!!), and if that wasn’t enough, he was also the senior software development at NASA where he worked on the Mars Rover project. AND he wrote the defining textbook (in my opinion) on AI around today, a copy of which I treasure and should have gotten signed (like some other people did… haha, so nerdy). Last night, I stood two feet away from this guy.

Oh, and the lecture was awesome, too.

It seems like up until now, my posts have only really spanned the tedium of my academic life. I’m going to work on something that other people might actually find useful for next time.