Sunday, February 22, 2004

Time Flies

I can't believe reading week(end) is over already. :-( I did too much homework to relax enough and too much slacking to get enough homework done.

Probably the most interesting thing I did was going Friday night with a bunch of my friends to an African-cuisine restaurant downtown. I don't think any of us were impressed. The service was really slow. I had a beef dish with beef chunks, sauce, and according to the menu, there were a few vegetables in there too, but there were so few, they were hard to find. It wasn't warm enough either. (Cold food isn't usually good food). The salad consisted exclusively of lettuce and tomatos - nothing else. And I don't like tomatos. The bread was interesting. The plates were pizza dishes and the bread covered the entire plate. It was kind of like a pancake, but cold and rubbery. For the portion-size and the quality of service, the prices were too high too. To be nice though, it was better than the last time we went to Jack Astors...

Other than that I've been working on Distributed Computing a lot. Aside from the midterm on Wednesday, there is a big programming assignment, where we have to implement a RPC middleware with a binder process and a bunch of other bells and whistles. It's not too terrible, except I couldn't find a partner, so I'm doing it all myself. (Hopefully the TAs will be cool with that). I figure I'm about 40% done. Most of the socket stuff is out of the way (I forgot how crazy some of socket stuff can be!). I have the server talking to the binder and vice versa, but I need to write the part where what they say is meaningful. (I think I'm into the outside-in programming methodology - kind of a blend of top-down and bottom-up!). For the client, I can rip-off (i.e. reuse) most of what I've already written as (I think) I've made it all nice and generic.

Thursday, February 19, 2004

Nuclear Science

I survived the nuclear science midterm. 24/25. :-) That's not too bad, considering I was making educated guesses for about a quarter of the questions. Multiple choice is so nice. :-) Hopefully the rest of my midterms will go just as well.

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Reading Week(end)

Thanks to reading week(end), I'm done for the week! No more class! :-) [Alas, most other faculties have the entire week off...but 2 days off is still nice]. I think I'll slack off for the rest of the day and be lazy...watch lots of TV or something like that.

The registrar's office posted the final exam schedule. Once again I have a mediocre schedule - the 6th, 7th, 12th, 17th, and 20th of April. Nice and spread out so I have time to study, but they cover almost the entire exam period (which is the 5th to 22nd), so no chance of escaping early. :-(

Friday, February 13, 2004

New Photos

I put up some of the photos that I've taken this year. Most are from my grandmother's birthday party on Sunday, but the set is fairly assorted. I took a few in black-and-white try out that medium. I think they turned out fairly well for a first try. (Expect the JPEG format doesn't seem to compress black shirts very well when they are in black-and-white...)

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Midterm

Argh! The Nuclear Science midterm was tonight. It was a lot harder than I was anticipating...but it was multiple choice, so as long as there are a lot of E's in the answer key then making educated guesses is sufficient. ;-)

Time to start the CO 351 assignment which is due in 11 hours and 19 minutes. Ram says it is very hard. I hope not...

Saturday, February 07, 2004

Procrastination

I reorganized my digital photos a bit. There are a few new photos. Most were on my old site, but I think the ones of the Westlake Centre fountain and traffic on Battery Street are "new".

I haven't taken too many photos this year, but later in the week, I'll put up some real new ones [unless all my assignments/quizzes/midterms take up all my time - I have 1 quiz, 3 assignments, and 1 midterm to worry about this week. :-(]

Wednesday, February 04, 2004

Night Class

Tuesdays and Wednesdays I have night class. Night class can be a bit of a drag because I have to travel back to school for a second time on those days. Plus the lectures are about 3 hours long, which is way longer than my attention span.

Last night was Psychology. It seems every unit has some kind of unethical experiment. Last night the lecture was about dreams and learning. Apparently Pavlov locked dogs in cages, starved them, and cut up their digestive tracts before teaching them to salivate when he rang a bell. Watson taught a little kid to be afraid of white fluffy things such as rabbits and Santa Claus beards by giving them a rabbit to play with then sneaking up from behind scaring the kid. The experiment ended when the kids mother stopped taking him to day care...

Here's a interesting article by Bruce Schneier that I saw. It is about identification cards and security. He makes a few good arguments against over stating the value of IDs. [Nevertheless, IDs have their (limited) uses].