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!

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 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.

So apparently, from a source, Dr. Michael Monagan, a pretty good prof according to a friend, will be teaching Cryptography next semester. So MACM 442 is definitely going to be on the to-take list.

Carrying on with the crypto-theme, there is a CMPT course that also covers the topic that is being offered in the Fall 2008 semester. This would be CMPT 404, Cryptography and Cryptographic Protocols, a new course that touches on topics that were taught in CMPT 409, a special topics course. I am considering taking this course, but the finals are on the same day (or perhaps assigned at the same time, since MACM 442 is a take-home final). It would definitely be a nice complement.

But what else can I take? Looking at the list of courses I wish to take before graduating, we can see that CMPT 401 (taught by Dr. Richard Vaughan) and CMPT 454 (taught by Dr. Ke Wang) are both being offered. I think I would be leaning towards CMPT 401.

Anyone thinking of taking similar courses or other interesting courses?

EDIT: Just realized that CMPT 401 conflicts with MACM 442 and CMPT 454 conflicts with CMPT 404 so that kinda goes out the window. =/

Don’t you just hate it when someone remembers you but you don’t quite remember who they are?

Happened to me today when I was getting coffee just before my soon-realized-it-was-canceled lecture for CMPT 419. Someone said hi, we chatted shortly, and then he left, leaving me to wonder just who it was, although he did look familiar.

Felt kind of bad though. =/

Oh well.

Note: this is about the remainder of my 8-day vacation out east. Seems weird it just got cut off after day 2, but when the plan to write about day 3 gets shot down due to a lack of wi-fi until getting to the Canadian border, subsequently getting sick, and swarmed with lots of things to complete doesn’t really help.

Before heading out to Manhattan on the last day in New York, we had some dim sum with my distant relative. The place was mediocre at best unfortunately, although it may have been because the place just opened for the day.

Once in South Manhattan, we got on the Staten Island Ferry to see the on-water sights like the Statue of Liberty. People would probably tell you to go to Ellis Island to see the statue up close, but due to a lack of time and a stupidly long lineup to get onto the ferry tour to go there, we decided to take the free way to see the Statue of Liberty, although a bit far away.

After the ferry ride, we wandered around 7th Avenue for a bit before ending up at Macy’s at Herald Square. It’s a huge store, with somewhere around eight floors of retail space. I don’t remember much except for the fact that I was starting to get tired, so I went to one of the four (?) Starbucks they have inside the store and had some coffee.

After that, we got some dinner, grabbed our things, and got onto a yellow cab taxi-van to the bus terminal. Holy crap was that a scary ride.

In any case, we got to the bus terminal, a three-story high complex similar to an airport, sans the security. The bus, from what I gathered from the staff guy, was MIA, so they eventually got a replacement bus for us. Not the Megabus we were on to get to NYC, but whatever. A bus is a bus, and that will get us back to Toronto.

We got back to Toronto with little incident. Amusingly enough, at the border, we had to wait on the bus for 30 minutes because we got in after a shopping tour bus, which had so many shopping bags it was ridiculous. When we all got out of customs and hopped onto the bus, that bus still didn’t leave yet because they were trying to reload the bus and failing.

Now that we were back in Toronto, there wasn’t really much. Saying hi to relatives, including my aunt from Virginia, who drove up to Toronto. Several noteworthy things:

• Did a phone interview for a potential co-op job for Winter (Spring semester) on Friday
• Did some sightseeing at Scarborough Bluffs/Bluffer’s Park. Absolutely remarkable view.
• Flight out of Toronto was delayed for around two hours due to back-to-back thunderstorms near the airport.

So that, in a nutshell, was the remainder of the trip.

Today’s trip started off on Wall Street. You know, where the stock exchange is. The security there is pretty crazy, I must say. Just right off the street from the New York Stock Exchange, there were at least 3 marked police cars, one of which was an emergency services team vehicle with assault gear on hand. Just a bit further down in front of a Starbucks was an interesting mechanical roadblock system, controlled by a security booth. When cars want to head out of the financial district, they would go up to the roadblock, which would be moved down by the security guard. It happens again after the car moves up to the other roadblock. I guess it’s all just in case terrorists decide to attack Wall Street.

My dad and his high school classmate’s husband were looking for the Charging Bull sculpture. Apparently there’s some superstition that goes around it where it provides stockbrokers good luck if they rub it in the right places (ie. the testicles). When we finally found it, a block or two off of Wall Street, some Chinese tourists were taking turns having their pictures taken while rubbing the bull. Quite a funny sight if you ask me.

After that, we started to look for Ground Zero, the site of the collapsed World Trade Center buildings due to terrorist activities on September 11, 2001. It is by far one of the most unique memorial sites I have ever seen, considering it’s located inside what is currently a construction site for a new World Trade Center building. It consists of a visitor center (which had a fairly long lineup) and a set of signs on the fence surrounding the construction site along the path to the World Financial Center.

We then went to the World Financial Center for lunch, which consisted of soup and sandwiches, the first instance of non-Chinese food during the entire New York trip.

The original plan was to find our way to Battery Park and catch a ferry to let us see the Statue of Liberty, but the intense heat and the discovery of a Century 21 department store, which my dad’s high school classmate was actually looking for. So some shopping was had.

We then went off to SoHo to check it out. We ended up doing some shopping, then walked over to Chinatown for dinner with my cousin who’s working in New York. It was pretty decent Chinese food, somewhat similar to Vancouver’s Chinese food in taste.

After that, it was time to head home and get ready for tomorrow.

Although I went in yesterday (June 8), I would not call that my first day, since it consisted of sitting/sleeping on a bus for around ten hours, catching a taxi to a distant relative’s place at Queens, eating dinner, and sleeping.

In case you were not aware, New York City is having a record-breaking heat wave right now. From what we (parents and two family friends, along with myself) saw at Times Square, it went over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (around 37-38 degrees Celsius)! The humidity didn’t help much either.

Anyway, the day started off with heading out to Central Park to meet the family friends. Walked around there a bit, then proceded to head along Fifth Avenue.

The first stop was the Apple Store sitting at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and East 59 Street. The store is actually underground and all what you see at street level is a glass cube with the Apple logo hovering above a glass elevator and a spiral staircase that goes around it to the sales floor. I poked around with a Macbook Air – it is quite light and thin, but my original opinion on it still stands. Too many sacrifices and too big for my tastes. I’ll stick with my Thinkpad, thanks. I also took the opportunity to look at some of the iPhones. Funny thing is people have apparently used those display iPhones to log onto porn sites. Oh crazy people.

We proceeded to head south along Fifth Avenue, going into various stores with stuff way too expensive for us to buy just to enjoy the free A/C and carry on.

We ended up having some lunch at a Chinese place serving Shanghai food. It wasn’t bad.

More going down Fifth Avenue afterwards. We saw an Anglican church, Saint Thomas, partway down and noticed there was a woman eating a pretzel on the steps, despite a sign up top saying “Please do not eat food on the steps. Thank you.”. Yay for people not paying attention.

We then quickly went through the Museum of Modern Art on the ground floor and the gift shop, since we wanted to see more. Of special note there is that there was a fan-based pendulum swinging around just over the second floor. As I watched it, it came close to hitting people walking through. So asking for a lawsuit with that..

We then came across Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. It’s a fairly beautiful building, being a cathedral and all. Going through it reminded me of some other cathedrals I came across when I went to Germany for World Youth Day in 2005.

Moving on, we reached Rockefeller Plaza. It looks pretty amazing with all those flags around and the NBC news studio nearby.

Our next stop was the New York Public Library. Holy crap this place looks amazing. I had to have my bag checked at least four times (once going in, once going into the research library, once going out of the research library, and once more while leaving). I guess they don’t want people smuggling away things that cannot be borrowed.

We then made our way across to Times Square. So many screens with so many advertisements and stuff. Quite a crazy place and cars moving in an interesting traffic pattern.

Afterwards, we headed over to Gyu-Kaku in East Village for dinner with our family friends and their daughter, who’s studying in New York for a short while for summer. Gyu-Kaku is kinda like Shabusen (for the Vancouver readers), except it only focuses on the BBQ bit and has a very large sake list (4 pages worth). I wanted to do the sampler, where they give you 3 types to try out, but since no one else was drinking, there wasn’t much of a point. Oh well.

Afterwards, we just headed home.

Some miscellaneous notes on the day:

• Pedestrians here don’t really care about the signals. If it looks open, they just go for it. At the end of the day, I’ve just followed their lead.
• I have never seen so many taxis going down a street in my life.
• Speaking of taxis, these taxi drivers are some of the most aggressive drivers I have ever seen.
• I would probably be scared shitless driving through Manhattan. I’ll stick to getting around by subway.
• I seem to really enjoy trains. The subway was fairly pleasant to ride. Makes me want to break out the SimCity 4 and play around with city building and traffic management again.

Tomorrow: South Manhattan.

So starting Saturday and for the 8 days from then, I’m going to be out of Vancouver.

Where will I be heading off to? First off, I will be in Toronto, visiting relatives and my dad’s high school classmates who are there. The day immediately after, I will find myself in New York, which should be interesting since it will be my first time there. Yay for going to a place I’ve never been before!

We apparently know quite a few people over there. One of my cousins is currently working there. If I recall correctly, two of my distant cousins are there studying right now. As well, we have some family friends over there as well. It should be nice to see people I haven’t seen in years/months.

After the few days (don’t ask exactly how many – I didn’t make the itinerary, I just decided to go), we head back to Toronto on the overnight bus and stay over at my aunt’s place. I guess at that point in time, I will be able to find some time to review the CMPT 419 stuff I will be missing during the week, get started on the second assignment, and prepare for some other business. And of course, go around Markham (where my relatives are) and nearby areas.

If there’s anything I learned from my first assignment in CMPT 419, it is “START EARLY”. But then again, I did kinda start early on that first assignment, but I decided to start on the math theory questions first. Bad choice there, Dom. B-a-a-a-d choice indeed.

This time, I’m starting with the MATLAB stuff first. Much simpler (but not by much) and more interesting. Since the assignment’s on classification, we get to do some machine learning stuff on spam detection, which should be fun.

Anyway, time to go to sleep. There are people I know who are convocating tomorrow in both ceremonies, so I should probably go watch and take pictures with them. Or something.

That and pack my stuff for my vacation in the middle of the semester.

Being so close to the end of my degree (at least, unless I decide to do a minor in something or pursue a joint major at this late stage, as mentioned in an old post), I’ve been thinking of things to do before I decide to don the cap and gown to walk across the stage to graduate and step into the “real world” (TM).

I am currently at 108 credits with 3 credits in progress this semester. Assuming I pass CMPT 419, this means I would have completed all my CMPT requirements for graduation and will need to fill in 9 credits worth of coursework.

Of course, in addition to courses, there is also a desire to go and do some more co-op. I hope to make use of the opportunity to explore the various options more. I have yet to do some software development in a work setting, but knowing only Java and fairly basic C that got me through CMPT 300 (Introduction to Operating Systems) is detrimental, which means I need to get myself more experience with other languages that are used in development in areas other than the Web.

In the past, I have mentioned the possibility of using co-op as an opportunity to explore the world (ie. Japan via the Canada Japan Co-Op Program). Perhaps that can still be a reality, but it really depends on how things work out with my academic decisions. If all else fails, there’s always the JET Programme after I graduate.

But in any case, there are a few courses that I would like to take before I leave university, either out of interest, a perceived need, or just something that is useful. I share a list below.

CMPT 379 – Principles of Compiler Design

Reasons: Good to have, Interest

A course traditionally considered to be stupidly hard due to the amount of coding you will need to do. Making use of the course as an opportunity to get good practice with a C-like language (ie. C, C++, Objective C, etc) would be most beneficial. Plus, that talk on parallelism from an architect who works at Electronic Arts a while back has made the course that much more appealing.

CMPT 401 – Distributed Systems

Reason: Useful

Given how we have things like Folding@home or SETI@home, which are examples of distributed computing projects with computing power that exceeds that of the most powerful supercomputers today, we can see distributed systems take on a bigger role in the world around us. Plus, given my interest in Web stuff, knowing about the various necessary things to consider should I decide to distribute servers about would be useful.

CMPT 454 – Database Systems II

Reason: Possible interest

Being a person who enjoys working with information, taking a course that deals with the implementation of databases would be quite interesting. Plus, I did OK in CMPT 354

MACM 442 – Cryptography

Reason: Interest

This course has been on my to-take list for the longest time and next semester has given me the opportunity to do so. It’s just one of those cool little things that you can possibly turn into a hobby or something. I can’t really explain my interest in the subject because I can’t really explain it with words. I just like it.

General Course Outline: http://www.math.sfu.ca/courses/macm442.shtml

That’s the list so far. Maybe we’ll see more on that list in the future. Maybe not.

Who knows?