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William Matheson's Journal
Nov. 20th, 2009
10:10 pm - memo to self: if wearing a bullet-proof vest, do not brag about it
Saw Battle Royale at SMU tonight. It’s a shocking, gory, violent film, but not without heart. I also loved it because of its being a universe unto itself with its own set of rules and lots of characters and numbers to keep track of. I sat next to a guy who had seen it ten times and who was happy to fill in the blanks a bit as we went along (those Japanese teenagers in their school uniforms all look the same to me!).
Just… wow. What a movie. Lots of twists and turns. I would have done a few things differently, but thinking that way actually made it cooler, because it meant I was buying into the movie’s systems and logic.
We also saw a few minutes of this very funny movie where there’s this famous Chinese painter and his brother comes to him asking for money – I wish I could find the title. Perhaps these guys will play it sometime. So yeah, SMU has a film society! Should be on Facebook; I’ll link it when I see it.
It’s been another hectic week. I’m very happy that today’s chemistry assignment was the second-to-last. Time to chill out and play some video games with my cousin Rickard.
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contentNov. 18th, 2009
01:28 pm - well, on second thought...
I've been thinking (dangerous prospect, I know): I really need to stick with my program and finish out this year, even if it's a super struggle and I only manage straight Cs. Why? Because, if I finish, I will be set up to declare a major / honours in any of these (taking courses from my last degree into account):
Astrophysics
Mathematics
Computer Science
Geography (as a science)
Chemistry
Physics
I mean, holy heck, talk about your options. If instead I just take math and, say, astronomy next semester, I'll royally screw everything up. Now one complicating factor is that I am already about 500 clams short for next semester and I haven't heard anything from SMU student services or my father's industry scholarship people yet. I'll be even more short, because I'm taking my car in for its scheduled maintenance on Friday. But I'll find a way. If I have to shortchange SMU accounts receivable next semester, so be it. I'll be able to pay them eventually.
Now what I want to do next year is actually live on campus. I am going to try to take out the necessary loan and get it done. I should be able to get a senior suite even though I will technically not be an upper-year in a major, just someone doing a second degree... I can say I'm a "GRADUATEd STUDENT" perhaps, and swallow the "d"?
Invariably, I always feel better about this stuff when I'm actually on campus. Everything seems so much more doable than when I'm stuck upstairs in my room, or than the mornings where I have to get up at 5:30am if I want to indulge in such decadencies as having a shower. Ugh. I know why it has to be that way, and I'm not complaining about that, but I really gotta get out. There's really no space for me anymore. I'm not a priority, nor should I be. And living here, I can very easily get the help I may need at any given time, and I can also help others more effectively.
Parking my car here would be expensive, though. It's $500 to park your car under Loyola. I fired off an e-mail to Metro Self-Storage to see if they can give me a quote - I wouldn't be needing the car even so often as every week if I lived here. Sure, I'd have to walk my groceries up from the Queen Street Sobeys, but I need my exercise anyway. I may even sell my car, but I'm already rather attached to it. [OK, forget storage. Their admirably curt reply quotes $216.00 every four weeks, so assuming a 28 week academic year that would be seven times $216... ouch, more than $1500!]
We shall see! I should probably see if anyone I know in the physics department is holding office hours today. It's past time for a serious chat.
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hopefulNov. 17th, 2009
10:50 pm - a new whim every day
As a benefit of being enrolled in chemistry this semester, I've been invited to come in for a 20-minute consultation appointment. I'd say this is long overdue for me - I've always been stubborn enough to figure that only I know what's best for me, which is partially true, but the reality is that I am, at most any given time, incompletely informed. So garbage in, garbage out, as they say, and now I'm 27 with no career and no clear prospects.
I think I can rule out becoming a world-famous astrophysicist within the next five to ten years. The problem with my courses is that I'm merely surviving and only sometimes thriving. They're not much fun, and it's my so-called study skills, rather than my "natural" aptitudes, that are saving me from outright mediocrity. So I dunno. I don't want to be known as "Will the Quitter" or "Will Who Quits as Soon as Things Get Hard". And I didn't want to end up being a high school teacher - I wanted to go big (Honours or double Honours) or go home. So why don't I want to be a high school teacher? Let me put it this way: For a university professor, everybody in the school is fair game. ;-)
Here's the thing. I can do this stuff, but I need a lot of time, and I can only really think about one thing at a time. Or, to put it glibly, I'm slow. I have a precocious vocabulary and a serviceable memory for a few little things, but I'm the kind of person that needs to have things explained to them about five or six times. When things do sink in (they usually do, eventually), I'm good at sharing the knowledge with others, mostly because I had the experience of going through all the work to attain it, and I vividly remember what worked for me on any particular point. This talent has no bearing on my being a good English-language teacher, which is a relief, because I wasn't one. :) Not only was I never formally trained as such, but as a native speaker I don't have the benefit of having learned how to learn English, if you catch my drift. I suspect the whole "native speaker" thing is actually overrated - I think it's a cheap substitute for the best kind of teacher, someone who had to learn the target language and is so accomplished as to be immaculate in execution. I have a lot of respect for such folk, although obviously you can't go expecting even a quarter percent of ESL speakers to get anything like that good, so it's not like I look down my nose at people without such admirable fluency.
I'm thinking I'd like to take out a loan and go to Sainte-Anne for the '10-'11 academic year and get my French. But this done, what would I do? I'd like to be a university professor someday because university is the place to be - in no other place are people so energetic, vibrant, smart, and beautiful. And it's a great cultural meeting place, too: in the physics help room today, I was the only Canadian white male until the last few minutes of the session. And of course I got the help I needed, but educated people know that this is a function of the interactions among individuals as individuals, and has next to nothing to do with race. I guess a few years from now I won't even notice such a thing.
At any rate, people have come from all over the world to be at Saint Mary's, and the same can be said for many other fine universities, such as Mount Saint Vincent, NSCAD, and... um... I'm forgetting the other good one that's near here... oh, that's right, Nova Scotia Agricultural College. And if you think I'm kidding, compare the Teletech floor with Saint Mary's. Working there is like taking the off-ramp from the highway of personal progress. I should know, because I worked there myself! ;-) Oh, I did see quite a few "Dal Poli-Sci" and "Dal Psych" shirts when I was there.
Where was I?
So what I'm thinking of doing is dropping a few courses next semester and focusing on math, keeping only one other course so as to maintain full-time status for the year. But the more I think about that, the less I like it. I'd actually kind of miss the chemistry labs, and we have a really cool prof teaching general university physics. But my weak math background is killing me, especially in physics. Chemistry is a bit more qualitative, so I sometimes have a bit of room to breathe. But this won't last. Next semester, they're going to be cranking things up big time. It's a pity, because being a chemist sounds cool - a lot sexier than being a writer! And, if it isn't glaringly obvious to everyone yet, I have little hope of becoming a writer because I really don't write very often. And as it goes in the plethora of other things I've attempted, as soon as the fun stops, I stop. (In casual post-chem-lab conversation today, somebody asked me why I wasn't a writer or a journalist, and then why I didn't apply to other journalism schools besides King's. Well, the reality was that I wasn't really all that interested in journalism. I like writing about things that interest me as opposed to writing about things I'm told to write about.)
And if I'm just going to do math for a while, well, why don't I just major in math? I know it's just pre-cal review, but I was pretty pleased to get 79.5/80 on the midterm. But maybe math will be like everything else - beyond a certain level, too much for me to take. Man. This bugs me, because up until now I felt like anybody could do anything, if only, if only, if only. Now I'm not so sure. But I'm sure of one thing: I definitely don't like being stuck on the outside of such a fence!
Any thoughts, world? This appointment can't come soon enough - I wish the Astronomy and Physics Department had mandated such - out of sheer embarrassment, I never did have the temerity to walk into any of their offices and state that I was interested in majoring in astrophysics. Almost as soon as I got here (getting turfed from calculus was a particularly significant moment), I knew there was an "it" I didn't have. Namely: three years of dedicated, focused high school math and science. A summer prep course at Dal might bring you up to speed in one weak subject, but trying to do three from scratch like I did is something I cannot recommend. I don't know what alternative I could suggest, though.
"In the future, those who do not understand mathematics will serve hamburgers to those who do." - Paul Lutus
Like I could see making a go of things if I had the math, but I just don't. I could be mistaken, but I feel like what I need is a prolonged, sustained drilling in all things mathematical. And later, when I'm finally comfortable in it, I can come back and pick up some other things, provided that I'm not a) by then a mathematician or b) otherwise occupied.
Bah.
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disappointedOct. 28th, 2009
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curious07:23 pm - driving me crazy
Yeah, I just needed a little time to vent.
Honestly, I'm not twisted enough to think that getting a speeding ticket is an exemplar of the classic struggle of the individual against The Man. Driving too fast doesn't make me a martyr. At the very least, it makes me an idiot.
On a related topic, call me a narcissist, but I don't like the scrutiny that I'm under when I drive. I mean, whether I'm coming to stone-cold stops at the lines or not - either way pisses somebody off.
Of course, having rules and enforcing them is completely necessary - it's a clear safety issue. Maybe I disagree with some of the particulars, but in the end we all need safe roads.
Fuck city driving, though. Not doing this next year - no way, no how.
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numbOct. 26th, 2009
09:32 am - Facilities Disbursement
"Hey, do you have any temporary parking passes for November?"
"We actually stopped selling the month-to-month passes. We have such a long waiting list - it would be a slap in the face to those who are waiting..."
"Ah, yeah."
"You know, you could take public transit, or carpool, or..."
"Well, see, I live in Bedford West. There's one bus. It goes hourly. And I got a car so that my ten-hour days won't turn into fourteen-hour days."
"Ah, I hear ya, I hear ya. You could try street parking-"
"I just got a parking ticket last week!"
"Yeah, they used to have all-day parking on Beaufort Avenue, but they took it all away."
She went on to suggest another place I could try. I'll check it out tomorrow.
All this comes as Metro Transit makes recommendations to city council about getting tough on drivers so that they'll be "encouraged" to take transit. While this will be great for Lexus-owning condo-dwellers who'll live next to the forthcoming bus-rapid-transit routes, I don't think there's much in it for poor exurbians like me. Like I'm all for going green, but not if it means losing sleep and sitting for 1.5 hours on a bus when my car can get me down here in 25 minutes when the traffic* is light.
* - Traffic, n: A situation caused by all the lazy bums who drive instead of taking transit. ... Um, wait a sec...
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awakeOct. 23rd, 2009
09:12 pm - What province is that in?
Someone in Winnipeg doing a survey about higher education on behalf of the Maritime Provinces asked me what province Halifax was in.
I couldn't believe it. I exclaimed, "It's a provincial capital!"
"OK, Manitoba?"
"You're IN Manitoba! Winnipeg is the capital, so it can't be Manitoba, can it?"
"Alberta?"
She admitted she was new to Canada. We continued with the survey, but at the end, I advised her: "Learn your capitals. They'll be on the citizenship test." ;-)
But guess what? She has a job, and I don't. So she may get the last laugh this time.
moroseOct. 22nd, 2009
09:49 pm - Replay for Baseball
Here's how you do it:OK, first let's establish that the strike zone is not up for review. That would get ridiculous. Also "did he swing or not?" The fuzziness of that stuff is kind of part of baseball tradition anyway. Unless you want to take away the home plate umpire entirely and use a machine? Yeah, I don't think anybody but me would even entertain that notion for a nanosecond. [Well, actually, people are starting to talk about this now! We have the technology! It'd be cool to see what would happen if balls and strikes were even 95% consistent with the rules, and I don't think they're even close to that now. My hunch is that it would favour the batters.] And how can a machine call a pitcher for a balk? [The answer here is that the computers call balls and strikes, but the officials watch for the other, more qualitative stuff.]
Like the NFL: A challenge system! With limits - let's say each manager gets two.
Not like the NFL: Don't put the head umpire in a little booth behind a curtain.
Instead, like the NHL: The umpire calls a video review headquarters, where a special unit handles the review. Don't make the umpires watch screens - take it out of the ballpark entirely.
Also like the NHL, the general rule is: If not conclusive, the ruling on the field stands.
Also, the umpires should have the power to invoke a review if there are differing opinions among them.
Make a list of what's reviewable and what's not. Safe or out at bases absolutely must be included, as fair / foul will probably be, and home run / not already is.
People are saying it would make baseball games even longer, and while that is nominally true, I sincerely doubt you would see this system abused - it most likely won't even be used every game. Managers won't issue pointless challenges - they probably won't issue any unless a team employee watching the broadcast calls down and lets him know about something the umpires may have gotten wrong.
Now, what happens in cases where play continued / would have continued after the disputed call? This could get messy, but a careful set of rules could take care of most of the permutations. We already have a "ground rule double," where if a ball bounces into the stands off the field, it counts for two bases. Similarly, things could be judged as "that should have been a out / single / double / triple," whatever.
It won't be perfect, and there will still be mistakes. In fact, as it is in the NHL and any sports league, not every game is equally televised - or televised at all! For instance, the net cam in the NHL only comes out in certain games, IIRC. But more often than not, the right calls will be made.
chipper05:10 pm - blowing fuse
The Parking Enforcement Man visited me while I was writing my physics midterm (which I bombed), and gave me his gift when I was in math class. I would have gone out at some point to move my car, but I had to scramble to work on my extra-hard chemistry assignment, which was due a day earlier than usual because of our chemistry midterm tomorrow, which I am probably only slightly better prepared for.
The stupid thing is that I'd have no problem getting an all-day curbside spot if it weren't for the stupid Halifax Urban Greenway and the associated construction. What was parking for a lot of people is now Coneworld. Just like everything else in this stupid place.
So I paid the ticket on my phone, and that reminded me that I have no way to pay the phone bill I received yesterday, nor the credit card bill I will accrue from the parking ticket. I paid for my last 1/4 "fill-up" with change I had stashed in my glove compartment. It's winter tire season, but I can't afford them. But if I get into an accident because I don't have winter tires, I can't afford the consequences! I won't be able to afford my insurance bill when that comes around next year, either.
It's looking like I may have to take a year off - I will be lucky if I can even do these two semesters together! I mean, I have money for second semester tuition, but that's it. I suppose I could rob Peter (Saint Mary's) to pay Paul (everybody else), as SMU does charge late payment fees, but last I checked they weren't usurious.
Of course I applied for a SMU bursary and also an industry scholarship from my father's job. I'm also going to apply for another award targeted at "mature learners." The award is laughably small, but it would look good on a résumé.
Just... I dunno, some days it just seems like things are unnecessarily difficult.
Epilouge: I get to my math recitation and first thing I know is that we're doing a quiz that includes factoring by completing the square. It wasn't on the assignment, so I thought I was prepared for the class - but it was in Tuesday's class, which I missed because...
Well, that's another frustration. You see, to have a shower in the morning, I have to be up at 6. Mom has to get ready for work, and Paul sometimes stays in the bathroom between home care shifts. (They justly take priority, but it doesn't leave me with much to work with.) So my alarm goes off at 6, but because I was up so late preparing for my chem lab and astro lab (which ended up being canceled, and the e-mail went to my bulk folder, so I ended up staying unnecessarily late that day, but I did get some work done), I end up just shutting off the alarm, deciding I'd take a quick wink and wake up at 8 and just wash my hair in the basement set tub like I've been doing most days (I was starting to smell, but I was really tired). But I closed my eyes and next thing I knew it was 10am. I'd miss physics, and I felt that math was going so slow, what would be the point of going? This was the same damn class that spent 30 minutes on y=2x!! So I had a real, honest-to-God shower, and then I went to my chem lab. And now tonight they spring this pile of crap on me. If it was SO important to learn completing the square, why the heck wasn't it on the homework like all of the other weekly quiz topics so far?
I am honestly at my wit's end. This is zarking retarded. I don't know what the hell I'm going to do next semester when I'll have one more course, be obliged to be here for 8:30 three days a week, and have to contend with snow and ice and slush every day. Gah!
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frustratedOct. 21st, 2009
09:05 am - better than a kick in the head
I just got my program audit in the mail from the Registrar's Office today:
Dear Mr. Matheson,
Let me begin by welcoming you back to Saint Mary's University. I trust you will find your programme both interesting and challenging.
You have been re-accepted under the academic rules and regulations delineated in the 2009-2010 academic calendar. The Dean of Science has advised me that for a Bachelor of Science Degree, you have been granted the equivalent of 42.0 credit hours for previous academic work completed at Saint Mary's University. [This is about 1.4 year's worth of courses. - WM]
If you have any questions in connection with your advanced standing or registration at Saint Mary's, please do not hesitate to contact my office by telephone, mail, or fax.
Yours sincerely,
---
---, Registrarial Services
The gory details:
English requirement - Met (Duh)
- I'm just sad that's it's been reduced to 3.0 credits. Back in tha day, you had to take two courses, not just one. I think that's unfortunate. The idea was that the individual departments would provide their own composition courses and thus obviate English Composition. This didn't happen - a first year prospective astrophysics major is simply advised to take two chemistry credits instead of one.
Science Courses not Astrophysics (ie: not astronomy or physics) - Met (!!)
- I was surprised by this. They're counting the non-science-targeted astronomy 215 (A+) and 216 (A-) I took ten years ago! This is rounded out by the computer science I took seven years ago (A+ in the first half) and the chemistry I'm taking this year.
Humanities requirement - Met
- Mythology of Greece and Rome II (A-)
- The funny thing here is that I got a C+ in the first course of this double-feature. When they can, they take the better grade.
Free Electives - Met
- Including another nice A in Physical Geography and an A+ for Intro Psych.
Math requirement - Not Met
- Will be a 1/4 met by the end of the year, and 1/2 met by the start of next year, then finished by the end of my second year, provided things go according to plan.
Astrophysics major - Not Met
- About twenty more courses to go, and that's after the five from this year! Since there's a stratification of 3rd-year courses requiring the 2nd-year courses and so on up, this isn't really going to be sped up any. But the one good thing is that I have the luxury of pretty much sticking to the one subject area. I'll have the computer science and chemistry that they recommend, too. I'm doing this par le livre - if they recommend I stick a fork in my eye and sing "O Canada" to strangers in the Loyola Colonnade, I will probably do it.
Arts or Economics requirement - Met
- All As! Narrative in Fiction and Film (A), Writing Prose: Non-Fiction (A), and Recent Science Fiction (A+) - 12.0 credits, 4.08GPA!! Awright!
"A" Grades That I Wish Counted Which Aren't Being Used:
Study of Short Fiction A-
Literature of the Fin de siècle A-
Chaucer and the 14th Century A-
American Literature 1914-1950 A-
Contemporary Canadian Fiction A+
Pre-Calculus Review (I expect to utterly annihilate this course.)
Now I have a program GPA of 3.64 and I haven't even written a midterm yet! ;-) That won't last long - my first physics midterm is tomorrow morning at 10!
pleasedOct. 19th, 2009
08:01 am - Ideas Hack
Ever wanted to save an episode of CBC's Ideas, but the episode was "streaming only," and "not available for download?"
Well, all they do is shuttle an MP3 file they host themselves onto an embedded Flash player. So all you have to do is look at the page's source code (View > Page Source), and you'll find the URL for the MP3. Use Ctrl+F and search for "MP3" - then grab the part of the URL that begins with http://
Example: "Looking Up", the current episode about Galileo. It was a cinch to find the URL for the totally savable / downloadable MP3, which I've kindly linked here. Update: And now there's a part 2!
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jubilant01:44 am - We're a very heavy island of stars
I can now say I've personally experienced the limitations of Newtonian physics.
Given the average orbital radius of the Sun around the galactic core combined with its angular velocity, I was to find the acceleration.
No problem! That's just "v-squared over r"! Given a 2.472x10^20m radius and velocity of 220000m/s, I get 1.958x10^-10m/s^2. This seems incredible, but our acceleration to the core really is that slow - I suppose the scale of our galaxy is so vast that the continuing change in velocity (at any given moment, velocity in a circular orbit is tangential - an object requires acceleration to the core to keep it moving in a circle) doesn't seem like very much.
Now I need the period. Well, it takes 2π radians to go around a circle, and that distance over the period equals the velocity. A little algebraic switcheroo, and I have 2π radians over the velocity. m over m/s leaves me with a bunch of seconds, which divide into about 223 million years. The published value is around 220 - so far so good.
I'm making some approximations here... I'm calling the orbit circular, and simply letting the centripetal "force" equal gravitational force. F=ma where m is the mass of the solar system (1.9911x10^30kg) and I get 3.898x10^20 Newtons.
Now I can try for the mass of the galaxy.
Fg = ((G)(M1)(M2)/(R^2))
Here you can see that more mass = stronger force of gravity, but larger radius = way way weaker force of gravity (since we square the distance). G is the gravitational constant, and I'm one of those sorry people who uses it more than they understand it (at least for now). It's a very small number, 6.67x10^-11 N m^2 / kg^2. Gravity is a very weak force. You need a lot of mass before it really adds up to anything. But it's pervasive: in an imaginary, non-expanding universe of all empty space where there are two mosquitoes set 10,000 light-years apart, eventually they will come together! That would actually be fun to calculate, but I need to finish this assignment before the start of tomorrow's class. I'll come back to this later.
A little siwtcheroo, and I isolate "M2" - the mass of the galaxy:
((Fg)(R^2))/((G)(M1)) = M2
When performing this, the items you're pulling over switch sides, so radius squared goes on top while G and the mass of the solar system go to the bottom.
Click click click and I get... 1.794x10^41kg. Basically that's 1 followed by a 794 and 38 more zeros. If that doesn't seem very heavy, take a piece of paper and start writing out all the zeros. I don't know how you'd calibrate a scale big enough to weigh it, though. Keep in mind we're no longer in the Earth's particular gravitational field, so your bathroom scales, even though they display results in kilograms (strictly speaking, they're "converting" to kilograms based on the pull you experience towards the center of the Earth), won't work here.
Now this all sounds well and good right? Except that when I go to check the accepted values for the mass of the galaxy, I'm off by a whole order of magnitude! Wolfram Alpha gives me 6x10^42kg, which is about 33 times more massive than my estimation. Ouch.
I triple-checked what I did, and I welcome people to challenge my numbers. I really wonder about my estimations of acceleration and the centripetal force. My units check out, which is always a good sign.
So I'm digging around, and I find this: Galaxy Rotation Curve
Contrary to what is observed in the solar system, stars revolve around the center of galaxies at a constant speed over a large range of distances from the center of the galaxy. (In the solar system, the velocities slow as you march outward from the Sun (yes, and there's a greater path to sweep).) Well, if the speed stays the same, then anything I do relating the centripetal force to radius, and by extension any calculations of mass, all comes into question.
The best part is that I've "independently" stumbled upon the reality that real astrophysicists and cosmologists face - the galaxy and the universe are more massive than can be explained with what is presently known. In other words, their behaviour is not the same as what you would expect if you took everything you could see and added it all up.
My present goal is to see if I can come to understand some of this stuff.
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busyOct. 11th, 2009
05:13 pm - Confessions of a Short-Distance Student-Commuter
I didn’t do any schoolwork yesterday (although that was largely due to our drive up to Mount Uniacke for Thanksgiving dinner) and I’ve so far spent much of today rereading a book written by a computer programmer who bought a boat and sailed it around the world. I guess you have to pay your dues before being able to set off on that kind of adventure.
I’ve lost my interest in chemistry – most non-trivial stoichiometic equations I’ve been seeing are pretty much meaningless. Conservation of mass and balancing equations are all well and good, but determining the specific concentrations required to produce certain results is every bit as boring as it sounds (and then some). The labs are OK – the assistants are pleasant and helpful, and the professor emeritus is a kind, gentle fellow. I also have an affable and competent lab partner, and being fresh out of high school he knows his way around the lab much better than I do – for my part, I take charge of the computer side of things, calibrate the sensors, and prepare the graphs.
Physics is OK, and I got through the second lab with far less stress than the first – my partner from the first session was absent, so I sat alone – then one fellow sat next to me for a few minutes – we were civil, but I guess we didn’t like the look of each other – within a minute he got up and moved to the front end of the room. Then the fellow from the table behind was encouraged to join me. We did alright. Best of all, there are three glorious weeks of no-physics-lab thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday and the alternating schedule.
Pre-cal review is a joke. The homework is boring and tedious, and although a few questions are mildly thought-provoking, it’s not really enough. I am not kidding when I say that we spent half an hour on y=2x. Yeah, I get it. I can’t believe not being “permitted” (an odious word) to study calculus means experiencing the mathematics equivalent of being relegated from the major juniors to junior C.
But I did have one interesting experience: While waiting for the class to commence one day, I looked for a seat in the hall. I asked a fellow if I could sit kitty-corner from him: “Can I sit here?” and he replied, “Sure. Of course, my friend.” He went on to say where he was from (Sudan), it would be automatic – even to sit next to him, there’d have been no need to ask. It’s a public place, is their logic. He told me how he experienced sitting on a bus here – how he’d take an empty seat next to someone when other empty seats were available and how that person would roll their eyes, and he’d wonder why. It was thought-provoking to hear this, and I found myself thankful – not for the first time, and certainly not the last – that Saint Mary’s is such a cosmopolitan school. It’s like a terrestrial Babylon 5.
That leaves astronomy. I wish the professor hadn’t suggested that the sunset observations required for one of the labs make an excellent excuse for a date – I’ve been putting it off until I can find a way and an eligible and willing partner with which to make it into a date or date-ette, and I’ll probably feel a bit chagrined and ashamed when I, in all likelihood, end up doing it by myself. The end of next week is my drop-dead date: if I don’t find someone by Thursday, that’ll be that, and I’ll do it myself.
The class itself is frustrating because while I don’t have much observational or mathematic experience, qualitatively speaking I know about as much about astronomy as anyone, as I’ve devoured and re-read many books on the subject, and themed as many of my science classes at Seiko on it as I could get away with. I can see what’s coming at any given time, and the professor is one of those guys who doesn’t want to get too far ahead. I sympathize with that, but it just emphasizes the inherent absurdity of the lecture-based instructional format. Some days I feel like all that’s being accomplished in all of these courses is getting everyone onto the same page, and I’m being pulled back as much or more than I am being pushed forward. I’m not satisfied with this at all and I don’t believe that I am getting value for my money.
To top it all off, I am ineligible for the achievement-based scholarships that my peers are. Reading the fine print, you have to have taken the full 30 credits (I’m in 27, or nine courses out of ten – the reason being that I don’t have to (re)take Intro Lit), and you also have to be in your first undergraduate program. So I’m pretty much out in the cold, even if I get straight-A-plusses. I think this is unfair, and I’ve already written a letter to student services about this. They seemed willing to hear me out, but at the same time I doubt that any change will come about anytime soon. I’m still eligible for the needs-based bursaries, but as you might imagine I have some distaste for perennially approaching them with my hat in hand. I’m a man, and I must have my pride, or I am nothing.
All of this taken together makes me want to get into my car and drive somewhere – well, anywhere I can go on 7/16 of a tank of gas. But my feeling now is nothing compared to how I was closer to the beginning of the term – I was profoundly depressed, saddened both by the new superficial dynamic my classes had taken and by the conformist attitudes of my new peers. I cried in my beer to my friend Sarah at Chuck’s concert, and she had some sage words that straightened me out a bit. She’d been in the same boat before. I’m also coming to realize that I care too much about what other people think.
That realization takes care of any laments I have about conformist attitudes. Besides that, I’m making a few friends anyway. No, what disturbs me is how much expensive, creativity-stifling drudgery I have to go through to get to a place I would otherwise want to be. It’s not like people are out to make things difficult for me, but I’m different enough that I have a hard time fitting into things that are made for the mainstream.
Anyway, enough with the excuses – it’s time to get back to work, even if I hate it.
moroseOct. 1st, 2009
12:13 pm - Printing at SMU
In my recent trials with the printers in the McNally lab, I've learned how to work around all the proclivities and bizarre default settings. I hope this information will be of help to people who want to print something:
If you want a two-sided print-job, draft quality:
This is the default. Go to Print > Properties... you'll see "FastRes 1200" under the "Paper/Quality" tab's Print Quality box, and over under the Printing Shortcuts tab, "two-sided (Duplex) printing" will be selected.
If you want a two-sided print-job, formal quality:
Same, but you'll want to pick "ProRes 1200 (170lpi)."
When you're going back and forth, check to make sure your number of copies and collation settings in the original print dialogue of the application you're printing from haven't changed. Some programs, including Microsoft Word, may reset to their defaults after you've changed the printer properties.
If you want a single-sided print job:
This is where things get unnecessarily tricky. You have to go to the "Paper/Quality" tab first, then select "General Everyday Printing." New settings appear on the right, and the default paper setting is, bizarrely, A4. Change that to "letter." Now go back to "Paper/Quality" and pick your resolution, FastRes or ProRes, depending on whether you want draft quality or formal quality. And, before you go, select "Tray 2" from "Paper Source." "Auto Select" doesn't work.
If you leave it in auto select, the printer will halt when it's time to do your print job. You can still get your print job, you'll just have to go up to the printer and hit the green check button twice - once to "print from another tray" and the second time to "print from Tray 2." It's really a joke, and sometimes print jobs get ridiculously backed up.
Yesterday I had to frig around with the printer to get someone else's job to print, then that and a bunch of other jobs came out, then it stalled again with mine. And then I realized that the "auto select" wasn't working when people wanted non-duplex printing. Seated back down, I laughed to myself when the clueless ITSS assistant was like, "Uh... the printer's working again." She was a lot of authoritarian bluster and not much skill - earlier she'd said, "Just a reminder, when the labs are full like this, they're restricted to academic work only. No e-mail, no Facebook*..." That's gotta be a joke - the labs are always "full like this," unless you're here at three in the morning.
* - This rubbed me the wrong way, because at the moment I was using Facebook messages to communicate with a friend about a possible job opportunity. It's not academic work, but since part of the point of my being here is to make myself more employable, I believe this sort of use is acceptable at any time.
Anyway, hope this helps. Just remember to select "General Everyday Printing," "letter" and "Tray 2" in printer properties when you want single-sided printing, and you should be A-OK.
hungrySep. 26th, 2009
07:23 pm - Where did my files go?
This evening I discovered that all but three of the folders on one of my partitions of my desk-sitting laptop's hard drive were missing. Ulp.
I didn't panic, because I have been keeping backups. Especially with photos - since returning from Japan I've been just buying new memory cards instead of formatting and re-using them. Plus most of my photos that are any good are already on Flickr at their full resolution anyway.
Now I needed a program that wasn't payware or crippleware so that I could get my files back. I found a free, legit utility to undelete files - though in this case the files weren't "deleted," but I think what happened is the Master File Table went bad and "forgot" most of the resources on the drive. The program works just as well for forgotten files as it does for deleted ones. Actually, deleting is just forgetting. Deleting a file used to amount to just striking its entry off the table, but not actually doing anything with the bits. Now it means "moving" the file to the Recycling Bin folder, and when you delete from there it's struck off the table - but still, nothing's done with the bits.
So that's the good news - the bad news is that when you write new files to or modify existing ones on that partition, there's a chance that the new bits will just happen to chew up your "invisible" old bits. So a prompt recovery operation is key - not only that, the program authors advise recovering to other partitions / drives for these kinds of operations. Good advice, because that way the recovered files won't overwrite or chew up your yet-to-be recovered files.
The recovery is going quite well - it's even recovering stuff I actually didn't want to recover, like discarded exposures from bracketing. So when you do something like this, try to make sure you don't ask it to restore any folders named "RECYCLED," as that's basically your Recycling Bin for that drive - nice to know you can recover from there just the same as anywhere else, though.
busySep. 16th, 2009
01:08 pm - Chemistry: A Slice of Life
From the row behind me: "I got this MSN from her and she was like, 'Do you understand binary code?' and I'm like, 'Pfft! No! Convert it on Google or something.'"
His female friend laughs. I turn to them at the next opening. "Well, you know, there are only 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don't." We share a chuckle. She's beaming - it's a good one.
We have a quiz. On goes the lecture. I hear the two students in question whispering. A quick whisper is OK, this was kind of sustained. While it doesn't bother me, I find the behavior curious. I surreptitiously turned and glanced to them, out of curiosity to see what was so important.
After I turned my head, I stopped to think - perhaps I was calling them out by looking. And nobody likes a tattletale. I don't even like a tattletale. So next time, I'll try harder not to look. I don't want to send the message, "Hey everybody, notice how distracting these two are." If you haven't already guessed, everything we do sends a message.
Anyway, after the class is over - and it had that infuriating quality of everybody packing up and standing before the professor was even finished; I'd forgotten how scare commodities maturity and patience really are among some frosh - another girl, uncommonly pretty, is saying to this same pair, "I don't mean to be prudish..." She was instantly understood. The atmosphere is fairly light, by the way - I'm not writing this to vent. "I have a large scholarship and I want to keep it." Most remarkably, she said it in a way that didn't arouse resentment.
Being on friendly terms with the "offending" pair, I could venture to sympathize: "I know what you mean - I'm risking my life savings." (OK, a slight simplification.) We laugh. Everybody gets the message.
A moment later, she comes into my row: "Hey, what calculus class are you in?"
Aw crap. I should have been prepared for this with a smart, confident answer. I demurred and explained that I narrowly failed the tests and was in 1190 ("pre-calculus review").
(I have my new answer: "Oh, I'm with the naughty kids - 1190." And say it with a smile.)
In an instant I was no longer her intellectual peer. But I think that's a hill I can climb back up, even if there will always be people (perhaps she among them) who are leaps-and-bounds beyond me in mathematical skill.
Anyway, I'm having a pretty good time with this, all told. Nobody's expecting us to move mountains yet. The workload is reasonable, but I do miss the ease and comfort of writing essays (though not the boredom and the imperative to reach an arbitrary though numerically-pleasing word count).
Mmmkay, should I stay here or go home? I find it hard to study at home because there are so many little temptations and out-and-out distractions. But here I can't eat for free. Well, I'll have a slice of pizza here, do some work, and then go home for supper.
cheerfulSep. 14th, 2009
09:03 pm - Pre-Pre-Pre-Pre-Cal
This week has been nuts. Saint Mary’s is a sea of humanity. Sometimes it’s instructive just to watch the people stream by. Most folks are young and hyper-conscious about appearances and fitting in. People rarely speak up in my classes. I miss this summer’s dynamic of learning when a large percentage of the classes were other adults.
One of the courses I took this summer was Pre-Calculus Plus at Dalhousie. Perhaps our instructor was too kind to us – I performed unevenly, but I still managed to eke out an 83. I sat down last week at SMU to take the calculus entry test and scored 20 out of 40. I needed 26. I bought a review booklet and studied all weekend. I took the test again. I scored 23. “Sorry, William,” the professor said.
Before I launch into this, let me tell you something about the current state of math education: It’s somewhere between confusing and abysmal.
I mean when I was in high school, there was university prep math, open math, and, er, the euphemistically named “leaving high school math,” which was known as “trucker math.” And that was just for Grade 10. In Grade 11, the university prep branch branched further into “science math” and “academic math” (known as “arts math”). Same for Grade 12, but in Grade 12 you could also take calculus, though you could and can get into a B.Sc. program with plain old Grade 12 science math.
So let’s see… that’s three years of high school, with twelve different math courses. What a mess!
At Dal this summer I had three choices:
- Pre-Calculus, essentially a quick skim through G11 and 12 science math, yet for people who have G11 and 12 “math” (presumably academic)
- Pre-Calculus Plus, the same but spread over twice the time for students that have been out of math for a few years (this is what I took)
- Academic Math, a run through G11 and 12 “arts” or academic math, which requires G10 math.
This was confusing to me at first because my high school ran science and academic math in parallel, not in sequence. Anyway, a lot of people switched down to Academic Math, and I almost did, but I’d taken “arts math” in high school.
Ah, but there were things that are in Academic Math today that weren’t in the arts math stream in high school, and now I hear that even the “science math” and “arts math” terms are obsolete! So now I don’t even know what I have or how what I might have relates to anything.
Also, I never passed Grade 10 math. (Much to my chagrin, my first G10 math teacher was among the invigilators of these entry tests.) I failed it three times (16, 8, 25 – I’ll admit I wasn’t really trying) and was given the aforementioned “trucker math” credit, given because the guidance counsellors figured the folks in that class would eat me alive. I took a returning grad year of high school, and went into “arts math” because I feared that I couldn’t handle the science math after hearing from friends that were failing it. I did super: I got a 93 in the Grade 11 and an 80-something in the 12 (including a midterm grade of exactly 100 – I slacked off a bit after that and made Artifact).
Now what I should have done after that is taken science math in a summer course or something, but safe within the intellectual confines of a Saint Mary’s B.A. program, I disavowed math and majored in English, which offered the opportunity to be creative in a way that didn’t rely on math. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize at the time that math makes things more interesting, not less.
So I finally came back and did Pre-Calculus Plus but this course wasn’t the science parallel to “arts math” I was expecting – it built on G10 concepts I’d slept through and G11 and 12 concepts not taught or forgotten. But I still fought my way through it, somehow…
Only to find that there’s yet another tier of math. Calculus? No. OK, Pre-Cal? Nope. No, it’s “Pre-Calculus Review.” Based on the number of people being turned away from Calculus, I’d say it’s the de facto collection point for people who did not take calculus in high school. It purports to cover many topics “in greater depth than in Grade 12 mathematics courses.” Say again? Are the school boards and universities in cahoots and covering up a necessary tier of math education?
I believe so. “Pre-Calculus” should really be called “Pre-University Math,” (you get into university with it) and “Pre-Calculus Review” should then be called “Pre-Calculus,” (which you then use to get into calculus) because that’s the long and the short of the situation. There were a number of things on the entry test that I’d never seen before – so much so that I found myself wishing to see things that I knew I’d studied but didn’t fully understand. All my Rumsfeldian logic failed me, though, and I failed the test, and now I’m registered in “Pre-Calculus Review.”
To be fair, many science majors these days never set foot inside a calculus classroom. A lot of folks can escape with statistics and/or pre-cal. Calculus isn’t everyone’s first year math, but I’d gone in this year thinking that it could and should be mine, if only because I took an extended, expensive course called Pre-Calculus. It really should have been Pre-Pre-Calculus. Actually, I joked about not being prepared for Pre-Calculus, so in my ideal world there’d be a Pre-Pre-Pre-Calculus course on offer as well.
If you’re reading this and are still in junior high, do me a favour and study math from this moment forward as if your life depended on it. Take advanced placement and honours everything. At least let my tribulations send a message! ;-)
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complacentSep. 11th, 2009
12:37 am - Ma journée sans gloire
J’ai juste vu la filme « Inglorious Basterds » par Quintin Tarantino. Il et un chef-d’œuvre du cinéma, mais aussi en forme linguistique. Le allemand est le français sont vrai et magnifique. Il a fait une petite appréciation sur ma tête pour le soir, donc je écris cette poste en français. (Il ne sera pas un chef-d’œuvre!)
Ma journée…
Cette après-midi, j’ai écrit ma teste pour entrer du classe de calcul. J’ai échoué. J’ai besoin de six points plus – j’ai un deuxième opportunité à lundi. Je dois étudier par un livre j’ai obtenu pour deux dollars. Vraiment! Mais mes autres livres… pas demander! ;-)
J’ai cherché des chaussures neuves, mais je n’ai rien trouvé. (Ah, merci Google.) Mais, j’ai reçu ma première « Chick Tract ». (Oui, ils ont atteint Halifax.) Il étais « The Present », que vous pouvez voir ici. « La fumée de leur tourment s'élèvera à perpétuité. » (Apocalypse 14:11) Et les lois de la thermodynamique? Allo?!
L'homme a commencé par verrouiller sa voiture. Et puis il dit : « You look familiar. Do you go to church around here? »
« No, but you look like a computer science professor I had! »
« Ha! I like that! It makes me look smart! Well, read this… »
Il me passa la brochure.
« … it’ll make you even smarter. Remember, the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom! »
Je lui ai évité dans le magasin (Wal-Mart). Je pense je lui ai vu en train placer plus brochures en places certaines surtout le magasin.
Le soir…
J’en ai mangé. J’ai vu la filme. Il était très intensif. Je pense je ne peux pas voir les filmes de Quintin Tarantino dans le cinéma. J’ai vu « Pulp Fiction » sur VHS en une petite télévision et magnétoscope combinaison. Il était bien. Mais sur le grand écran… o mon dieu. C’est un vraiment chef-d’œuvre, mais il me inquiéter. Je tressaille. Je protège mes yeux. Mais, voyez… en quelque sorte.
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tiredSep. 8th, 2009
11:17 pm - Toronto and Back
Toronto, Toronto, Toronto. Was fine! It really got going on the weekend – before that I kind of had to make my own fun. Catherine’s apartment is looking better by the day. She’s got a good eye for decoration. I think if it were me I would have stopped after the computer and the bed.
I got to see some friends and relatives that I hadn’t seen in a long time – that was really the whole point of going up, as far as I was concerned, though I more or less enjoyed driving the U-Haul. Call that a fringe benefit. But once the gas receipts were tallied up and my share apportioned, it became apparent that if I cared about economy, I really should have flown both ways! Heh! So much for saving money. It became an expensive trip, but I think it was worth it.
Flying back was alright. The Porter experience actually made air travel tolerable. The Ex was on, so getting to the airport took longer than it otherwise might. I also should have taken advantage of the opportunity to check-in on the Toronto side of the channel – I didn’t see the counters until I was in line to board the ferry. That was backed up and slow, too – probably also because of the Ex and the air show. I also didn’t like having to carry my own checked bags to security and have them put through. I kind of feel like screening checked bags is something I shouldn’t have to do. I’m checking them because I don’t want to have to handle them! But most people flying Porter aren’t checking any bags at all, so for a lot of people it makes no difference.
The plane was nice, too. The in-flight mag mentioned that they put 70 seats in their Q400s (basically ultramodern Dash 8s) instead of 78, and I can tell you that makes a difference. It’s to the point where, price being equal, I would prefer flying this way with two-segments (we landed in Ottawa) over a single-segment flight with less comfortable seats. I’m 6'2" and for once my knees weren’t up against the seat in front of me. It was one of the most comfortable trips I’ve ever had – well, not as nice as driving my car on a clear day, but still pretty good. The snacks were good too, but the vegetable chips were just a little too weird and the beer was kind of meh but I had an entire 500ml can of it, so I’m not complaining.
I also liked how they interviewed a ferry crewman and a ramp supervisor in the magazines I read. Not only were the stories fascinating to someone like me who’s an armchair aerospace geek, but the stories must do wonders for the morale of the blue-collar workers in the company. Everybody seems confident with their importance and wants to continue to do their job well. They’re also really friendly.
I slept in until 1 this afternoon, but I eventually got my act together and took my car out for a spin tonight. Oh! I even got my personalized plates in the mail! I’ve got to go to Access NS tomorrow and get them to take the old plate back and swap the sticker. [Update: Done, pictures.] I also put gas in the car – only took $25 since Souris, so that wasn’t bad, and took her through the car wash and boy did she need it. I read that insects and such are actually more attracted to white cars since they reflect more UV. So it’s not just that you can see the crap more readily – there’s actually more of it. I never would have noticed any of this until I had the experience of owning a white car, so what can I say? Actually, not that I want to use weasel words, but some folks are saying it’s the reflectivity, not the color. There are opinions galore on this topic, with forums filled with frustrated car owners. Memo to self: Invest in a garage when I build my house.
Doing alright for textbooks! My pal Elie hooked me up with some second-year stuff I can hang onto, and I’m getting my calculus and chemistry books tomorrow from someone I found through SMUSA’s book exchange. I actually went onto campus earlier this evening, thinking everything would be open extended hours because it was the day before class – nay, everything closed earlier. Like the library closed at five. The heck? So I’ve got to get up early and get going tomorrow if I don’t want to be standing in line all day. I’ll definitely be bringing my MP3 player.
My very first class will be Astronomy, at 10:00. I feel happy about that.
optimisticSep. 2nd, 2009
11:08 am - Toronto!
As everyone probably knows, I'm in Toronto! Am flying out on the 7th and school starts on the 9th. I have about a quarter-hour to kill on this cybercafe workstation until my time expires. I needed to come in here to find things like an honest-to-goodness Superstore near a rapid transit station (looks like it'll be the one near Scarborough Town Centre for me - I've never been on the Scarborough RT before and look forward to seeing it), a convenient library (St. James Town branch is handy my cousin's new apt., and they have workstations and wi-fi)...
I mean, last night I was tasked with finding a nearby pizza place out of the Yellow Pages and it was like going back to the Stone Age. No Google Map, just trial and error checking addresses against the street map in the book, and sometimes also having to find the streets from the index. We found a good place, though: The Big Slice on Yonge between Dundas and Carlton. HUGE by-the-slices (though we were ordering a take-away, it was still something to see), friendly guys behind the counter, good prices.
But I also found cool stuff like ... well, you can get falafel everywhere, and I need to go someplace where you can get good falafel just so I can relive the experience Shelley and I had with a Turkish street vendor in Odessa. Mmmmmmm.
And there are so many open, friendly people! It's like what people say small towns are like (and if you don't live in said town that can sometimes be overrated), only with a zillion people and more visible homelessness issues. When people have something to say, they say it. Everybody talks to me like I'm their best friend. I guess by Toronto standards I'm approchable? I find it funny but also sensible that my new ways are working better here than in smaller, more parochial centres.
But I gotta be honest: I'm a rube. I even audibly exclaimed to Colin: "Oh! A black squirrel!" (Because in Halifax our squirrels are brown.) And as soon as I said it I realized that everyone within earshot would know I was an out-of-towner. Most of the time that is OK, but I know from experiences in Kiev and Tokyo that there are people in large cities who specialize in taking out-of-towners for a ride.
Anyway, my two hours are up! Had a lot of moles to whack this time. Catch you later!
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