This semester, I felt, started off strong.

I was on the ball. Things were going right for once. I was enjoying school and everything had a good balance.

Then something happened. I don’t really know just what happened, but it happened fast and brought this sweet, sweet taste of potential academic success down the drain. Perhaps it was the stress? The large amounts of commitments with extra curricular activities? I don’t know.

But in the end, what started off as an alright semester turned into one which I need to seriously look at what I’m doing. Of the three courses I’m taking, I did best in JAPN 100 with a B. Everything else? I did terrible.

After talking with Nancy, one of our advisors in CS, I’ve had a pretty significant wakeup call. My upper division CGPA is approaching 2.0. If that dips below 2, I will not be able to graduate with a BSc in Computing Science. And of course, my overall CGPA isn’t looking that pretty either. It’s not as low, but it’s gradually getting there and once that happens, I have one semester left to redeem myself out of academic probation and then I’m RTW-ed.

So I’m starting to tread on some dangerous ground now. I’ve been strongly advised to take out time from the extracurriculars to go and study more, as well as focus. My problem is that I just know exactly what I need to change, but the focus to make these changes are not there, nor is the motivation.

This should be a good wakeup call to get my stuff together and get myself out of this academic rut once and for all.

A new season of anime started a while ago (around beginning of April), so the list of what I’m watching now appears.

Bleach (ブリーチ) is still ongoing for quite some time now. It’s one of those series that just goes on for quite some time..

Death Note (デスノート) is still ongoing from last season. Canonically speaking, it’s somewhere past the midpoint now, although I haven’t watched anything past episode 23 so far (and the subs I follow are at 25 and the RAW’s at 27). I must say, it really does put the entire series on a whole new level of liveliness, simply because the animation is pretty good.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS (魔法少女リリカルなのはStrikerS) was something I ran across somehow on the vast tubes of the Internets. Despite its main genre lying in the realm of shoujo, its more of something for everyone, which makes it something that’s interesting enough to watch and enjoy. It managed to get me to watch the previous two seasons of Nanoha: Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha (魔法少女リリカルなのは) and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s (魔法少女リリカルなのはエース). The best way to describe the series is that it’s like a magical girl series with various deviations into mecha anime (your typical beam attack), pretty good combat sequences, and gun mechanics (from A’s onward). It’s an interesting find.

Romeo x Juliet (ロミオxジュリエット) is an anime adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, the Shakespearean play. No, there aren’t any mecha involved, nor are there any guns or weapons named “Sword” or “Long Sword” like in the modern-day adaptation movie. In this one, the setting is in a renaissance-esque environment on a floating city named Neo Verona with pegasuses. As well, the Capulets end up mostly murdered by the Montagues, save Juliet. It would be interesting to watch.

In addition to all these, I am still waiting for the final two episodes of Code Geass (コードギアス) to air as well as School Rumble Third Semester (スクールランブル三学期), whenever that comes out because the story really picks up.

As well, I’m currently in the process of getting Azumanga Daioh (あずまんが大王) because of its awesomeness (from various people).

(Note: If you’re wondering “What’s with the Japanese names for the anime?”, the answer is “Because I feel like it.”)

This semester, I tried curbing my caffeine dosage by drinking tea, which is generally considered something that is good for you in any amount and contains caffeine at the same time.

For most of the semester, where I had to wake up latest at 9 on a weekday and get out of the house at 10 so I can make it up to SFU for my first class at 11:30, it worked.

Then finals came. Two days. Three exams. Both starting at 8:30.

This really screws up my schedule. The fact that my sleep schedule is erratic enough as it is regularly isn’t helpful.

In case you were wondering: yes, today was a caffeine fiend day, as said in the previous post.

It really isn’t great for me, I know. But when they give people like myself who aren’t really morning people finals that force you to get up bright and early to write a final, it gets stupid. Here’s a list of caffeinated stuff I’ve had:

• Coffee at home – seemed stronger than usual
• Extra Large Double-Double from Tim Hortons
• 1/4 Costa Rican Rocket Fuel, 3/4 Irish Cream coffee
• 1 bottle of Coca Cola Blak

Yeah. It’s probably not good for me to drink so much coffee. It won’t happen again, exam schedule willing.

Life in Dom Land isn’t fun these days.

I have two finals left to go, both on Saturday, but as much as I try to study, I end up falling asleep. When I want to sleep, I just fail to do so. It’s a vicious cycle.

CMPT 307, the latter of the two finals, has me worried the most. It’s not an easy course, but despite myself believing that I know my stuff for the course, I know that that kind of thinking will kick me in the ass hard, because I know I don’t know my stuff.

JAPN 100, on the other hand, should not generally be something that I would be worrying about, although my 漢字 to ひらがな is a bit off, particularly for the last lesson, as well my rusty vocabulary have me somewhat worried. The time for the final, 9:00 in the morning, isn’t nice either, since I’m not a morning person. This just means I will end up being a caffeine fiend for the day, just like the day of the CMPT 471 final, where I had one cup full of coffee at home, then got a Costa Rican Rocket Fuel/French Vanilla drip coffee mix at Renaissance once I got up to SFU. For those who don’t go to SFU or don’t go to Renaissance Coffee for their coffee mix or just don’t plain drink coffee, Costa Rican Rocket Fuel is the darkest coffee they have available there (saying this fact just in case you did happen to think that I drank actual rocket fuel).

Oh well, I guess I should just sleep a lot today. Being held back just because of sleep is a bit sad, to say the least.

At least finals are over in just two to three days, which means a short hibernation period for myself. That is, until I realize that I have a bunch of side projects to do.

Damn busy-ness!

Whoop-dee-do. Finals.

I’ve finally managed to get some studying done today and frankly, a very small amount of it was actually looking at course notes and such. Taking a good look at the 471 PowerPoint slides does not do much because they are just crammed with ridiculous amounts of information it’s uninformative. Attempts to summarize the slides were for naught because I can not stand reading all that information.

So what did I end up doing? Reviewed everything on Wikipedia, while taking down notes that I can actually make use of and read without falling asleep. All the information on every single topic that we cover in class is there and it is explained in a much more directed manner than the slides could ever provide, for the most part of course. Things like how to use Ethereal/Wireshark and tcpdump cannot be found there, nor can I look up stuff on network security, but for the most part, I can study for my final just by browsing Wikipedia. That’s ridiculous since I should be able to learn the material from the lectures (which I stopped going to three or so weeks before the end of the semester, initially because of the amount of other things to do, but eventually because of the uselessness of going because it’ll just be dictation of PowerPoint slides) and notes from the class alone.

I guess me and PowerPoints don’t mix well. Well, rather, poorly made PowerPoint slides. Here’s my heuristics on evaluating effectiveness of PowerPoint slides:

• Does each slide look like it has way too much text? As in, there is so much information on it such that it overwhelms the reader.
• Does each point consist of multiple sentences instead of one single point?
• Does it take too long to read a slide?
• Does it not make you want to read it?
• Does it make you lost when you go off-topic?
• Is information all over the place?
• Is it not precise and to the point?

If “yes” is a response for any of the above questions, it has failed my own personal heuristics for a PowerPoint presentation.

Frankly, only a very small subset of professors that I have had at SFU who used PowerPoints use them effectively. They are meant to provide points of engagement for the presenter to initiate discussion on a certain topic. They should be used to make the listener think, recall, and easily link things together. They should not be used to be the main basis of the entire presentation.

Why do I say that? It’s very simple. For most, something they can see, like words on a wall, catch the eye of the audience more than the words coming out of the speaker. By throwing a bunch of text at the wall, the listeners would try to read all that information instead of the more important part, which is listening to the speaker. Therefore, it makes the entire lecture pointless since it’s all on these slides.

However, when the slides themselves are just stuffed full of information that one cannot make good use of them, it gets silly.

So what makes a good PowerPoint presentation? I try to go by the following:

• Tools >> Custom Animation.. >> Add Effect on text area >> Make it so that points show up one by one. Showing your points one-by-one allows the audience to understand you so much better since they just see a point, take note of it, realize what you are trying to communicate to them about, and then listen.
• Points should be short and to the point. They shouldn’t be completely convoluted. Multiple sentences in one point should not even be seen simply because that’s not even short at all!
• Be dynamic when presenting. Don’t just go idly because that’ll just get people to sleep.

Just to illustrate my point, compare the above set of points with the ones below:

• Make points show up one-by-one
• Do this by adding a custom animation effect on the text area of a slide
• Allows audience to be more receptive to what you say
• Each point should be short and to the point
• No massive blobs of text
• More than one sentence in a point = bad
• Dynamic presentation
• Failure to do so leads to nappers

See the difference proper point placement can make?

I wish they would force people who decide to abuse PowerPoint slides to teach their material to go through a class on doing proper slides before they are allowed to even use it. I’m pretty sure students would be thankful.

In AD 2007, election was beginning..

Captain: “What happen?”

Mechanic: “Someone set up us the election.”

Operator: “We get notice.”

Captain: “What?”

Operator: “Voting booth turn on.”

Captain: “It’s you !!”

Cats: “How are you CSSS !!”

Cats: “All your vote are belong to you.”

Cats: “You are on your way to new executive.”

Captain: “What you say !!”

Cats: “You have much time to vote make your time.”

Cats: “Ha ha ha ha …”

Operator: “Captain !!”

Captain: “Take off every ballot !!”

Captain: “You know what you doing.”

Captain: “Cast ballot.”

Captain: “For great democracy.”

——————————

This random moment brought to you by Dom working the CSSS general election.