Greg and Kat's blog

It has been a trying day so far:

1. I got up and went for a bike ride. It was raining, so I didn’t do the full Burnaby Mountain circuit, but got a good ride in: starting my day a little worn, but feeling good.
2. As I finished the ride, I came into our underground parking lot, turned the corner on smooth, wet, slightly oily pavement and felt my wheels slide out. The bike hit the ground hard enough to break a pedal. I came to a stop arms out and skidding on my stomach/chest, superhero-style (except not flying). If it hadn’t been for the cold weather layers, it would have scraped my left nipple off, which would have sucked. No blood loss or serious injury, but now I’m sore and tense.
3. After a shower, Kat and I went to the Golden Pita for lunch. Ran into Art and Janice, which was nice.
4. Then we had to do some shopping (for dinner tonight and our planned holiday open house). This involved some obscure ingredients, so many stops were required. The first stop was the dreaded Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon with every cheap person in Burquitlam.
5. Then to Superstore on a Saturday afternoon with every cheap grocery shopper in Burnaby.
6. Then Famous Foods, which rocks and actually had the obscure ingredients we wanted, so that was good. If you need obscure spices or baking ingredients in Vancouver, this is the place to go. Would buy from again, A+++++.
7. Then to T&T. We wanted a lobster (for a seafood boil tonight), which involved waiting for the old Chinese ladies whose lobster-picking algorithm seemed to be (1) pick up a lobster and flip it over, (2) look at its underside for 30 seconds, (3) put it down and talk to each other for 30 seconds, (4) repeat. I managed to not tap any of them on the shoulder and say “if you pick up another lobster, I will cut you”, so it worked out as well as could be expected.
8. Home.

Overall, a generally unpleasant day, with parts 2, 4, 5, and 7 really sucking. Perhaps a decent dinner will raise my spirits.

At some point in the not-too-distant future, I’d like to replace my Myth frontend. I have been doing some thinking about what I really need for this computer, which sits with my home theatre equipment and makes me watch the TV I want to watch.

The current incarnation has a single Hauppauge tuner card for recording. I also have a dual-tuner card in my main computer for a total of three. The magic of MythTV means that I can watch any recordings on the frontend.

I am now starting to think that I don’t really need to record on my frontend. I could do all of the recording on my main computer, and just do playback on the frontend. That would eliminate the need for much storage on the frontend, so I could eliminate the hard drive altogether and just have a few gigs of flash for the operating system. Everything else could be on a network share.

I don’t have any immediate plans to go to high definition, so the processor needs for playback-only would be pretty minimal by modern standards. A little Atom processor should do it. The Atom + motherboard should sip little enough power that it can be passively cooled, if the case is right.

So, my list of requirements becomes:

• Intel Atom or similar low-power processor.
• digital video output (DVI-D or DVI-I or HDMI) and digital audio output (S/PDIF coax or fiber).
• a motherboard that can boot from USB (or a CF card or something).
• some kind of remote control input. I haven’t quite worked this one out yet: it could just be a serial or USB port with some generic IR receiver.
• a nice little case that blends well into a home theatre rack.
• no fans, hard drive, or other moving parts.
• ethernet.

I have looked around, but can’t find anything that hits all of the key points there. (Some of the contenders I have looked at are Shuttle and Hush. The picoPSU could figure into the plan too.)

Anybody have any suggestions?

I have two video links to share, both of which are serious must-sees.

First is Ron Howard’s Call To Action. I’m sure many of you saw this in your favourite aggregator today, but if not, it’s awesome.

Second, I have been wasting my life opening wine bottles! I was shocked when I saw this video about removing wine bottle foil, and even more shocked when I tried it and it worked.

Since my last prediction worked out so well, I have decided I should make more. [Keep in mind that I’m totally making this stuff up: I wouldn’t bet the farm on any of it. I’m also not saying that I want this stuff to happen, just that I think it will.]

First, the most important thing in the whole universe, ever: the US presidential race. It’s no longer terribly controversial to predict that Obama is going to win, so I’ll have to go wackier.

Prediction 1: In the lead-up to the election, McCain will continue personal attacks on Obama. This will annoy voters and open up Obama’s lead. Obama will continue to do what he has been doing the whole time: “I don’t want to make personal attacks; I want to talk about the issues and have this good economic plan.”

Prediction 2: Obama wins with 55–60% of the vote. I’ll say 57% (a 14 point spread). I have no good sense of how that plays out in the electoral college. (At the moment, electoral-vote.com has 343-184 with 11 too close to call.)

Prediction 3: The Dow Jones will continue to slide down until late October, and will begin to rise slowly after that. Pundits will blame this on Obama’s pending victory, even though it’s just bargain hunters in the market. Either way, I will effectively be betting real money that this guy is right (about the market, not the lame money-saving tips). [Edit 10/12: and this guy.]

Prediction 4: As to the Canadian election, electionprediction.org is currently predicting another Conservative minority, which is probably where the smart money would go. I’m going to go crazy and predict a Liberal minority. No real reason other than 4 parties beating up on Harper might take its toll.

Let’s see how I do. Anybody got anything to add?

I don’t generally like posting digg/reddit-style hilarious links (that’s what they’re for). But, this video of an ex-Formula 1 driver terrorizing his wife is just too funny to let it go.

The video doesn’t really get going until 1:30, so you might want to bump it ahead. You can see the G forces by the way her hair hangs. Here’s a summary, in case you can’t see it for yourself:

One side of the car: TalktalktalktalktalkTALKtalk. Talktalktalk. TalktalktalkTALKtalkTALK! SCREAM! SCREECH! WAIL!

Other side of the car: Calm… driving… calm… driving… slight smirk… calm… driving.

Of course he’s calm: he’s a Formula 1 driver. The scenery is coming at him at like 1/2 the pace he’s used to. And, concentrating on driving no matter what happens is his job.

Edit: I just watched it again. I noticed how totally-immovable he is while cornering, while she struggles against the Gs. Probably also part of the “professional driver” thing.

It’s Friday, and many of you have probably had a hard week. I personally haven’t: it has been my first actual week of being left alone to my study leave. Anyway…

The Discovery Channel has recently started airing a new promo commercial. Apparently, Discovery USA has been airing its version for six months or so, but Discovery Canada has just put together their version. I love the spot and think of it as video prozac.

Being unable to find it online, I had to take matters into my own hands and hope I don’t incur the wrath of Discovery’s laywers (for promoting their promotion… I think they might let it go). So, you can watch the 60 second Canadian version or the 30 second Canadian version.

If you watch that a couple of times and don’t feel like the weekend’s going to be all right, you just have a heart of stone.

Because I’m nothing if not obsessive, I will also include some links to other versions: the 1 minute US version, the 30 second US version, and a 3 minute live performance at some Discovery party or something.

All of this means I finally understand the xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel comic. The original ad has also earned a World of Games parody and a Wikipedia entry.

The song is based on the campfire song (that I had never heard before) “I Love the Mountains”. If you’d like a sample, CD Baby comes through with a sample of it from Let’s Go! by Susie Tallman.

On Saturday, me, Kat, Oli, Tina, and Oli’s brother Jon went canoeing. We rented canoes somewhere up the Pitt River where I’ve never been before and paddled up a little tributary.

Canoeing is something I grew up doing, and it’s something very personal for me. For someone who isn’t sentimental or nostalgic about anything, I’m deeply sentimental about canoes. They remind me of where I grew up, my father, and a lot of great times messing around on lakes. To give you an idea, here is a summary of days in my life:

The hulking fibreglass barges that you can rent really bear little resemblance to canoes as I remember them. As far as I’m concerned, canoes are made from cedar and canvas (even though kevlar or other exotic materials are tougher and lighter), have no keel, a very rounded bottom (left-to-right), some rocker (curve front-to-back), and tumblehome (sides curve in at the top).

All of those shape choices make for a canoe that will happily throw you into the water if not shown the respect it deserves, and needs a little skill to get it to go in a straight line. But, they are truly beautiful, and maneuver like a dream.

I have only really found one video that properly shows how beautiful and effortless solo paddling can be in a nice canoe. To give you an idea of the skill here, the bow jam (the stroke that guy does around 0:45) has two possible outcomes: (1) the canoe turns sharply away from the paddle side; or (2) you find yourself suddenly in the water, with the canoe drifting slowly away. These outcomes are equally likely on your first few attempts.

I hadn’t really realized the extent to which this style of paddling is descended from one guy: Omer Stringer. He taught my father (and hundreds of others) how to paddle, and my father taught me (and hundreds of other school kids and boy scouts). This style is apparently now known as “classic Canadian soloing” or “Omering“. It’s what the guy in the video above is doing, and it’s what I’m doing if you’ve ever seen me in a canoe.

At my parents’ place, there is a framed picture that my dad took of Omer doing a headstand in a canoe. He would have been into his 70s when the picture was taken. He was probably past doing the running-jump off the dock into a canoe by then.

Anyway, there wasn’t really any point to that. It’s just the only nostalgia I’ve got.

Many people have asked what I am doing on my sabbatical (officially “study leave“). I guess I should say a little more. According to the University,

The purpose of study leave for Lecturers… is to provide a period of time during which the individual is relieved of his/her employment duties in order to complete a project or course of study which will enhance his/her work at the University in the future.

Sounds good. What I officially proposed to do to make the world a better place is:

• Learn more about programming language design and implementation, so I can teach CMPT 383 (Comparative Programming Languages) and possibly CMPT 379 (Principles of Compiler Design) in the future. This is something I have always been interested in, but one of the gaps left by not doing a full undergrad in CS. (I was mostly math.)
• Revise the distance ed version of CMPT 165 (Intro to the Internet and WWW). The old version is a little crufty and has been shoved into a “breadth course” role that it wasn’t intended for.
• Finish the distance ed version of CMPT 120 (Intro to CS and Programming). That has been almost done for a couple of years, and needs to be polished off.
• Get back to the biological modeling stuff that has been shoved to the side of my desk for two years while I have been undergrad director.
• Continue to participate in the School’s recruitment and outreach activities.

And the unofficial stuff:

• To get to the “more about programming languages” stuff (and because it will be interesting), I intend to learn a programming language a month.
• I’m trying to convince Amanda that she needs a CMPT faculty member to do international recruiting and partnership stuff. (Her new title is “Manager of International Recruiting and Partnerships”.) Basically, I don’t care where she needs me to go: I’m willing to literally go to the ends of the earth for the University… as long as the University foots the bill and I can take a few extra days to tourist-it-up.
• A few games may be played, particularly for the first two weeks. I haven’t taken more than a few days off (to go to North Carolina) for about 20 months. I’m not going to feel even the slightest bit bad about a couple of weeks of god-game addiction.
• I probably should figure out what I want to be when I grow up. In particular, does that involve getting a PhD, or climbing some administrative ladder, or some other career entirely?

As of next week, I’m done my two year stint as Undergrad director (officially, “Director of Undergraduate Programs”). Ted is taking over, and I have no doubt that he’ll to a fine job.

Overall, I’m reasonably pleased with what I accomplished. There are a bunch of things that I’m happy about:

• We introduced concentrations to our major and honors programs. This adds some value to our degrees (e.g. students can go to EA with a “concentration in Computer Graphics and Multimedia” on their resume) but requires just about no work to implement. [Margo’s idea, my push to implement]
• We actually now have a curriculum! This is the first time we have had any standardized expectations for our courses (other than the calendar descriptions). It’s not much, but it’s an important start. [all me, baby]
• We introduced a learning skills workshop in (at least) CMPT 120/126. I think this is the most effective student retention activity in the university. [Diana, with moral support from me]
• Removed our external breadth requirements, falling back on (and removing duplication with) the now-universal University breadth requirements. This will prevent a lot of confusion about which requirement did what. [me, advisors, the undergrad committee]
• Simplified entrance requirements, making it easier for colleges to offer the courses needed to transfer to SFU, and faster for SFU students to transfer in. Kept enough that we still have a decent picture of the students’ ability, but eliminated the hoop-jumping. [me and the committee]
• Countless other cleanups to the calendar. [mostly me, annoyingly]
• We met our admissions targets in 2007 and 2008. That leaves us well positioned to raise our entrance requirements next year.
• The School has better relationships with Student Services. Both Amanda and I worked on getting our faces known over there. She got a shiny new job out of it. I just get asked to be on more committees.
• The Software Systems program was introduced on the Surrey campus. [mostly Tom]
• I started a push to reform/replace CMPT 150 and 250 (our hardware/system courses). It remains to be seen if this really gets off the ground, but there’s some hope. [me and Sasha]
• Our student records are now paperless, thanks to an electronic record keeping thing (except legacy files). [Nathan]
• The recruitment team has several more cool demos (mostly unplugged) that can be pulled out for recruitment fairs and open houses. [me, Dom, Santi]
• After Amanda left for her new position, I spent 6 months as (what I have decided to put on my CV as) “recruiting and advising Team Lead” or maybe “Director of Enrollment Management”. That was a hassle, but I learned a lot. I understand even more now why Amanda wanted me to do it, but I’m still going to get her for talking me into it.
• Somewhere in there, I taught 6 courses (4 × CMPT 470, 2 × CMPT 120) with reasonable success.

Actually, I have to figure out how to condense all of this onto my CV in a reasonable way (i.e. like 3 sentences). All-in-all, I’m pretty pleased with my term. There are a few “I wish…” things, but not too many. Now… sabbatical!

I am finally finished the marking of the CMPT 470 projects. It usually takes me a week (or maybe a little more) to get them done. This semester, the world conspired against me. They were in for a week before I even looked at them.

But in exchange for my lack of 470-mindshare, I live in a nicer place, we had a successful Shad Valley intern for two weeks, we have a new manager (in Amanda’s old position), two co-op students have been hired, and none of our staff quit. It has been a really rough couple of weeks. This quote from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has been on my mind a lot:

The possibility of physical and mental collapse is now very real. No sympathy for the Devil, keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

I bought the ticket, and I took the ride. I’m sure I’m a better person for it. But mostly, I’m ready for my sabbatical.

I finished the marking about 20 minutes ago, and if I’m to be honest, I’m already fairly drunk. Hold on… I can still do that “close your eyes, hold out your hand, and touch your nose” thing. It’s probably because the last drink hasn’t hit my bloodstream yet, though.