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.

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.

A fairly long rant about this issue. For the curious, I want out. More after the jump.

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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.

I would have become a homicidal maniac.

Today was an alright day. I woke up promptly at 9 am in the morning and after making and eating breakfast, checking my email, and various other morning things, I leave my house at 10:15 AM. Considering how I borrowed my dad’s laptop for the day to write a reference letter and it is raining out, I decided to take the bus to my Skytrain connection instead of doing my usual 20 minute walk to Commercial Skytrain Station.

Getting to my stop in a very short amount of time, I expected to see a bus there in a few minutes time. Ten minutes roll by with no bus in sight. Mind you, the bus route in question does have a bus come by once every 12 minutes at this time. Twenty minutes go by and I heard one of the old ladies at the stop say that she had been waiting at the stop for 35 minutes.

THIRTY FIVE?!?! What the hell is wrong with you? It’s a light shower on a bus route that’s predominantly on a straight line and it’s two to three buses behind schedule?

Thanks a lot Translink. Because of you, I end up walking to the Skytrain station and end up being late for my CMPT 307 class by at least 25 minutes and after that class, I am confused as hell as to what the prof was talking about.

Thanks so fucking much.

Christmas. What’s it all about?

Personally, thinking about this very question irritates me. Simply because of how our society works these days, Christmas is an extremely materialistic event that seems extremely forced. Honestly, it all seems quite fake.

Why do I think that? To answer that question, I ask you to answer this question: Why do people need to be all nice and happy and cheerful and generous during ONE time of the year? Why can’t they be like that throughout the entire year?

And when we all try to go out and be extremely generous with the gifts and stuff, the businesses make big bucks; hence the “extremely materialistic event” bit.

However, when you think back to the real reason why Christmas is celebrated (if you don’t know, the answer’s below), we all do have a reason to be happy.

But back to the main question. What’s Christmas all about? Is it about giving and receiving gifts? Is it about Santa Claus? Is it all about family get-togethers? Is it all about being able to make a crapload of money?

No. Why Christmas exists is is because it celebrates the birth of Jesus, who came down and died on the Cross for our sins.

Now I’m not exactly saying that we should all be just not having fun or not giving gifts not do all that other Christmas-y stuff (besides celebrating the birth of Christ), but rather, remember within us why we celebrate Christmas in the first place.

Unfortunately, most people (myself included) forget the true meaning of Christmas. Let me share an email I got from my mom. I believe it nails the point home, especially if you are Christian like myself.

Something to think about? Definitely.

Especially if you’re Christian.

So yes, I repeat myself from my last post. Merry Christmas! And don’t forget the true meaning of Christmas and why we celebrate it!