So a new year is coming upon us. I’d like to take this time to share some wisdom obtained over the past year. Hopefully you find something in here useful for your own life.

Ever felt like you were doing way too much? Chances are, you are.

One of the biggest lessons learned this year was to make time for yourself – “me time” if you will. Time for you to do the things you want to do. Time to get yourself away from all the various things that you do. Time to wind down.

You may think that doing things on full speed would make you more successful. Yes, that is true, but only while it lasts.

A car can only run when it has fuel to get it to move. Once it runs out, you can’t use it anymore until you fill it up. Likewise, we only have a certain amount of energy. If we constantly go at things at full speed without taking time to “fill up” (ie. stop and rest), then we eventually burn out and we can’t do anything.

So take some time each week to stop working on your commitments, whether it be school, work, or something else, and have some time for yourself. Not time spent sleeping, mind you, but time spent for yourself.

You’ll thank yourself for it, and so will all those people you work with.

Vancouver does not know how to handle snow – at all. If you are one of those people, then you might learn something about how to handle things.

As you know, Vancouver had a pretty impressive snowfall these past couple of weeks. So many things that I noticed people doing were making me go, “What are you thinking?”

First off, notice how everyone just has a wide shovel for shoveling snow? That is not a snow shovel. That’s a snow pusher. As in, you use it to push snow off places like your sidewalk.

Yet, you see people use the snow pusher to shovel snow (ie. put snow onto the blade, lift, and dump it elsewhere. Not only is this bad for your back, it’s not the right thing to use the snow pusher for.

If you are to shovel snow, use a proper snow shovel, made out of metal. Admittedly, those might damage your sidewalks and such, so you may want to look into a plastic one. But for something that will last, a metal snow shovel would be something worth looking into.

Now that we have that shovel business out of the way and you are aware of what kinds of shovels to actually look for, please shovel and clear out your sidewalk. Walking around these days is ridiculous because some people don’t even bother to shovel, making their part of the sidewalk (ie. the sidewalk in front of their property) extremely slippery and dangerous. My solution to this problem? Walk on the street, where I can’t possibly slip. Dangerous, yes, but still less dangerous than slipping and cracking my head open because some lazy bum can’t be bothered to shovel their sidewalk.

Then we have the footwear. Rain boots are not something you want to wear out there! They may keep your feet dry, but leave close to no insulation for your feet! What you’d want to get are shoes that..

• have good grip to the ground, to keep you from slipping
• will keep your feet/socks dry, to keep you nice and warm

Once you accidentally step into a puddle of melting snow in shoes that are not waterproof, you will start feeling cold. Not a pleasant feeling.

And finally, the getting around in the snow. If you aren’t comfortable driving in snow like I am, simply don’t drive! Take transit to get around. It may be inconvenient, but if you properly plan things out, I’m pretty sure you can make it work. Things to get you started would be making use of Google Maps to look for public transit travel directions.

However if you are brave, have a shovel with you at all times in your vehicle. That way, you can at least dig yourself out of trouble. I did that recently for some strangers whose car was stuck.

Managing your time wisely is probably the best thing you can do for yourself. Also learn to prioritize things.

Time management is important. Probably the best set of tips I found all year came from Eugene’s blog, in an article called The “Not To Do” List. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, it seems his server’s down. On the bright side, it’s archived on my Google Reader, so I can read it again and share my thoughts here with you.

Of particular note to the topic of time management is points 1, 2, and 5, which are

1) Check e-mail at schedule points of the day, or to a maximum amount.

2) As a caveat to the first one, don’t check your e-mail first thing in the morning or just before you go to bed.

5) Stop checking your feed reader so much.

In essence, keep the distractions to a minimum. I do depend on email a lot – it’s my first line of communication with most people, but looking back, there is just so many things that should have just waited there until I am actually ready to handle them (ie. done whatever I was working on). Thinking it would be a good break, it destroyed my focus on the subject at hand and I can not go back to what I was working on.

Take advantage of your opportunities or you may just regret it.

I’ll admit I’m someone who would rather be 100% sure of success before taking a chance on something, but I’m pretty sure this has screwed things up for me at some point this year. I can’t think of any examples at this time, but yeah. Take more chances for things you want to be successful for!

Having a job is a good thing.

Ever since my co-op term ended in April, I have been just doing school. I really wish I got a job, since at least I can have some steady income. But then again, time, my worst enemy, stands in the way. Hopefully I will be able to work something out and get myself employed at a part-time job in the near future.

Computer graphics is hard.

As some people know, I took the computer graphics class offered at my university and was practically given a thorough ass kicking. The most important thing I learned from that class is that I will not go into the area. It has scarred me for life.

So as the clock rolls down to that time when the ball drops and a new year dawns upon us, it’s a good time to look back on the year and think of our successes and failures. Some resolutions for myself for the new year (because I know that I’ll probably fail to follow through) include:

• Get a part time job.
• Manage my time better and make it more controllable.

A fairly short list and realistic. Should be doable, right?

Have a happy new year!

Recently in the news, a man in Cariboo, BC, fought against a black bear in a life-or-death stuggle and came out winning, armed only with a stick. [news link]

Now, the fight was not provoked by Jim West. He was walking his dogs when he turned around and saw an agitated mother black bear. At such a close proximity against a black bear, anyone well-versed in the outdoors (and I’m not talking about just going outside, a walk around Stanley Park or some urban park, but the Great Outdoors that isn’t flooded with concrete or many signs of civilization) would do what West did that fateful day: fight.

Why? Well, the answer is quite simple really. Let’s take a look at some bear facts from the Bear Safety page on the BC Parks website:

• Bears are as fast as racehorses, on the flats, uphill or downhill
• Bears are strong swimmers.
• Bears have good eyesight, good hearing, and an acute sense of smell.
• All black bears and young grizzlies are agile tree climbers; mature grizzlies are poor climbers, but they have a reach up to 4 metres.
• If a bear is standing up it is usually trying to identify you. Talk softly so it knows what you are. Move away, keeping it in view. Do not make direct eye contact.

So what we are dealing with here is an aggressive black bear, possibly fed by some irresponsible humans thinking that feeding the animals will be fun.

If you decided to run for it, the bear will be able to catch up, since they are as fast as racehorses.

If you try climbing a tree, the black bear will be able to climb up it as well. Also, if you don’t climb up high enough, it can probably just stand up and grab at you.

If you tried to play dead with a black bear, you’ll end up dead (for those trying to learn something, playing dead only works for grizzlies). Best thing to do would be to try to retreat, but obviously at such a distance, retreat is practically impossible.

So really, West did the right thing and survived.

But it turns out some people who are uneducated in the outdoors have taken it upon themselves to harass the man for living and killing an animal that would have killed him. [news link]

That’s pretty sick people.

Here is a man who is trying to get over his injuries, only to have a bunch of idiots who know nothing about the outdoors harass him for doing the right thing.

If they were in his shoes, then they would have probably tried doing things like run for it, climb a tree, or play dead because (a) they do not know bears can outrun humans and (b) they can not identify a black bear. As a result, they would be dead.

Now, if it were a person instead of a bear, some of these idiots would have nothing to say. Hell, West probably would have been OK because he was defending himself from a person who was trying to kill him and unfortunately killed him out of self defense.

Yes, love the animals and protect them all you want. But when they start attacking you, you have to do something to survive. It’s a simple matter of survival of the fittest, as Charles Darwin put it.

This past election has shown to us that our democracy is in need of extremely serious reform.

Between this past election and the one before it, electoral rules have changed. Voters are now required to provide identification in order to vote. Despite Election Canada’s best efforts to inform the public and various other people’s grassroots movements to get the word out, people were still unformed.

I’m pretty sure you have heard it too. “Bring your ID”, they say. What they all fair to say is to bring specific identification, since you will need to prove your name AND address, not just who you are.

Working as a poll clerk on voting day, I witnessed quite a few people who did not have proper identification. Those lucky enough to be able to drive (ie. have a driver’s license) bring those, and they can vote as a result. Those who don’t? Well, they bring in a whole bunch of other stuff, such as passports, citizenship cards, and the like.

Unfortunately, those pieces of identification alone do not work. They need something to prove their address, like a cable/power/phone bill. Most people don’t carry those things with them, so if they did not hear things correctly and just brought ID, they had to go home, find it, and come back to vote. That’s if they managed to find the time to do so; otherwise, they just left and did not vote.

Of course, one can always vouch for those without proper identification. However, there are limitations to that:

• You can only vouch for someone in the same polling division. In other words, people living in the same house (ie. spouses) or nearby (ie. neighbours).
• You can only vouch for one person.
• Those who got vouched for cannot vouch for anyone.

These limitations makes sense, but at the same time, not everyone will be going to the voting station with people they know AND in the same voting division.

Because of the new rules, we (my deputy returning officer and myself) had to turn back around two people. And in this election, with our broken system, every vote counts.

Which brings me to my next point. You may notice that I said we have a broken system of democracy. The reason is fairly simple; they way in which we elect our officials is unfair.

The current system, “first past the post” basically lets the person with the most votes in a riding win. In the case that quite a few ridings were in this election, this means those in tight races would only win with something significantly less that 50% of the people’s support in that riding.

What does this mean for democracy? In areas where people are split between different representatives, over half of the people there are not satisfied with the representative. If we truly are a democracy, then let there be proportional representation. I have absolutely no idea how we can get this to work, but perhaps we can make it so that we have multiple representatives per riding, based on the popular vote? Our representatives can work together to better represent our interests in the House of Commons, with one representative out of the whole lot of them going to Ottawa.

Speaking of the person we elect to Parliament, in the basics of democracy, we are voting in people who represent us best. All what I see from our wonderful brand of democracy is that we elect the person who is in the party who keeps our best interests at heart because MPs do not vote against the party line.

How does this hurt our interests? Let me bring up a very relevant example:

Let’s say the government tries to pass C-61. If I have a Conservative MP, then no matter what I say or do to oppose the bill, my MP will not listen to me because he/she will need to vote on party lines. This is absolutely ridiculous.

Democracy in Canada needs change. The current state of it is discouraging. In such an important time where there are many things going on in the world, we need to go out and vote for people who best represent us. Yet, we had the lowest voter turnout in Canadian history. We can look at these reasons I stated above as possible reasons why. From things like voting rules making it inconvenient for people to vote to not even getting their voices heard, the reasons are endless. Perhaps the Canadian public is starting to realize that our vote is worthless unless we have electoral reform and are not voting as a result.

Who knows? Maybe you can shed some light on this question.

That’s the name of Microsoft’s information session when they come up to campus next week.

What’s the first thing that comes to mind?

Team Fortress 2 Meet the ??? video trailers. If you somehow have no idea what I’m talking about, you can watch all 6 currently released ones below.

Now if the Microsoft session would be something like that.. that would be pretty sweet.

Anyone who has seen me recently with my messenger bag would notice that there is some damage to it, mainly rips caused by weight. Given the damage, and some frays on the strap supports, I figure it should be time to start looking for a new bag.

However, I don’t know where to look, so I’ll refer to you. Here are some requirements for this bag that I’m looking for, in order of importance:

1. Durable – Most things I own, I use a lot. And when things get used a lot, they tend to wear down. I would like to get a bag that can withstand that.
2. Has a laptop storage area – I have a Thinkpad X61, which isn’t terribly big. It’s approximately 10.5″ wide, 9.5″ long, and 1.5″ thick at its thickest point.
3. Has outer pockets for water bottles/mugs – At this point in time, I have been carrying both a coffee mug (for coffee) and a Nalgene bottle (for water) to school. This gets quite cumbersome with my current bag, which does not have said pockets. I make do with an Outdoor Research water bottle tote that I got from MEC.
4. Has small pockets for stationary – My current messenger bag has two pockets: one big area for the main content and a large back pocket area. I put the little things in there and they just end up getting destroyed over time. I want to prevent that.

Anyone have recommendations?

So back a super-long time ago (almost four months), I sent an email to Vivendi because my key for World in Conflict did not work and I wanted to go play on Massgate. Things got held up because I needed to have proof of purchase of the game (ie. receipt), but that was nearly impossible to find, since I bought the game back in December on Boxing Day.

However, doing some cleanup in my room has let me find my receipts, so I got back to them three months later.

I heard back from them and they asked me for an email address with which to use for Massgate, and I have not heard from them since. It’s been nearly a month since I last heard from them.

Now I realize that this ridiculous delay might be a result of the Activision and Vivendi merger that took place a while ago, but still! 28 days (with two follow-up emails) and still no reply is a bit ridiculous.

The Team Fortress 2 Heavy update surfaced yesterday.

As a result, I decided to try out one of those achievement servers yesterday just to see how they worked. Essentially, (at least on the public servers anyway) it’s a killfest. Players just constantly shoot, because they essentially give you unlimited ammo, and as a result, you die frequently. That’s fine and dandy and all, but not when you managed to somehow get out of the death circle.

As a result of me doing so, if you look at my stats for the game, I have a ridiculous score for pyro. 88 kills and 113 points.

I don’t know how many people have heard of Pandora.

The gist of the site is that it is a music discovery service. You create stations by typing in songs or artists that you like, and using the work done by the Music Genome Project, it finds songs that are similar and plays them. It is a really great way to discover new music.

However, since its conception, it has just been running into various roadblocks, mainly financial ones.

Since I’ve discovered it a few years ago and was happily listening to really interesting and new music that I have never discovered before, the service has been blocked to be accessed by just those in the US due to licensing issues, which means that if I am to go and listen to Pandora, I’ll need to make use of proxy servers in the US.

Now apparently the US has doubled the cost of Internet-based royalties and Pandora is reportedly close to having to pull the plug on the service soon.

Really unfortunate situation here, because Pandora is a really awesome service that I am pretty sure helps expose people to new music that they would actually like instead of all that mainstream crap on the media nowadays.

I just hope that Pandora doesn’t have to shut down. However, if it does, that’s just another stab in the foot of the music industry, done so by those organizations like the RIAA who claim to represent these artists. Pandora getting killed off is essentially killing off ways for obscure, yet potentially talented, musicians to be exposed to a fairly large audience, which would simply mean less exposure for these struggling artists and more exposure (to fill in the gaps) for the crap that’s out there nowadays.

It’s just a few days before C74 happens, so just a short listing of things to look out for. All links are to Japanese sites unless otherwise stated, considering.. you know…. Comiket happens in Japan.. and what happens in Japan is usually catered towards the Japanese.

Magical Battle Arena

Category: Arena Fighter

Website: http://fly-system.net/product/mba/chara.htm

Although I am not really much of a fan of fighting games (because I’m terrible at them for the most part), they usually do not come up. MBA is a bit different because it features characters from the Nanoha series. Besides, who doesn’t want to befriend other people by beating the crap out of them with maximum power? =P

Note: This game has been mentioned previously on this blog.

Magical Cannon Girl 2

Category: Shoot ‘em Up

Website: http://www.kit-station.com/mcg2/

The fairly well-done (and challenging) shooter Magical Cannon Girl, which has been blogged about before, from KIT-Station has a sequel! I will be looking forward to this, considering how much I enjoyed the first one.

Patriot Dark

Category: Shoot ‘em Up (Bullet Hell)

Website: http://temperancelance.orz.hm/download.html

A game from TEMPERANCE LANCE. I downloaded the demo a month or two ago and played. You have two types of ships to control (straight fire or fanned-out). Quite intense and highly recommended if you enjoy bullet hell shooters.

RefleX

Category: Shoot ‘em Up

Website: http://www.siterskain.com/reflex/index.html

This game from SITER SKAIN looks quite retro-y and arcade-y. Downloading the demo as we speak. Apparently, Shoot The Core puts it as the star of the show for them.

RefRain ~prism memories~

Category: Shoot ‘em Up (Bullet Hell)

Website: http://www.rebrank.org/products/r2/

An intense vertical shooter from RebRank, people behind the wonderful 五月雨 ~samidare~. On posting on this a while back, Curtis comments that it “was both visually stunning and fucking insane.” I only hope that it continues to be like that because there aren’t enough hard games out there anymore.

Note: This game has been mentioned previously on this blog.

東方地霊殿 ~ Subterranean Animism

Category: Shoot ‘em up

Website: http://www16.big.or.jp/~zun/html/th11top.html

The latest installment to the very awesome 東方 (Touhou) series, this making it the 11th game of the series. Demo, which has been released for quite some time, features the first three stages of the game. Play as either Reimu or Marisa, paired up with one of three partners.

TWilight refrAIN

Category: Shoot ‘em Up

Website: http://blue.sakura.ne.jp/~loop/twain.html

A sequel (quite a few of these making appearances, aren’t there?) to TWilight INSanity. One thing that I definitely enjoy already about this one compared to TWINS is that it follows standard shmup key mappings by default (and for some reason, no matter what I did, I couldn’t set up TWINS’ controls). It plays like TWINS: you pick a pairing and you can swtich around between the two. It plays quite well.

Expect more about these games this weekend!

So for CMPT 419, the artifical intelligence special topics class with machine learning as the subject, we have chanced from doing a final exam to a final project, something that usually is a “yay!” thing for me.

However, I am absolutely stumped on ideas of what I can do. I will most likely be leaning towards an application-type project.

I was thinking of making use of this as an opportunity to work on stuff for my little Web-based game project, but during brainstorming, I realized that I could not possibly do that because I would need to create the environment for the game to run first, and then actually use said environments to make something useful, so that is out of the question.

Some standard things, like getting a set of data and doing some classification or regression on that data has already been done in previous assignments for the class. Frankly, if I was going to do the project just like that, it would probably have been not enough work anyway.

A really crazy idea that is currently the front runner, simply because nothing else really stands out, is a machine learning project that takes pictures and applies taglines/captions for them. Not just any picture mind you, but pictures of this nature:

That’s right. This project will dabble into the “dark arts” of Internet memes and lolcats and lolruses and other crazy things to come up with things to label pictures as, such as “HALP” (pictured above), “im in ur X, Ying your Z“, “i has a X“, and so on. Silly idea and hated by some, but should I end up being extremely desperate, I would probably end up doing this.

Another one could be doing something with external ballistics. However, this is kind of tricky since (a) I can’t really say I’m brilliant with physics and (b) I don’t know much about ballistics in the first place. There also is no practical way for me to get data for such a thing, seeing how I don’t own firearms, airsoft guns, or paintball markers. It’s just interesting when you see projects like this really amazing paintball sentry.

Something else could be doing some machine learning to determine the value of a home in an area, given common evaluators like floor space, number of stories, age, building type, real estate type, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, and so on. However, in order to get the data I would need for such a project, I would need to do some data scraping which, according to the site’s terms of use, is illegal. If I end up doing this one, I would probably need to send those folks an email requesting permission to obtain the useful information I would need to create something. Or perhaps do something slightly reversed on that: given the price, number of bathrooms/bedrooms, and floor space, determine where this home is located (a classification problem).

Just some ideas that have been floating around and keeping me up at night. But if I am to get this thing done, I need to decide very, very soon just what I will be doing, as I do not have much time left.