02.04.06
Posted in University life at 9:06 pm by ducky
I’m in a bad mood. I’m really struggling with an assignment to factor large integers.
Problem #1: it’s a boring problem. It’s been done a million times before, so I’m not contributing a bit to the state of knowledge.
Problem #2: It’s really nit-picky stuff, rife with opportunities to make off-by-one errors. I miss Smalltalk, where it was almost impossible to make off-by-one errors.
Problem #3: The stuff I have to do is boring. In order to deal with large integers you have to use a more complex data structure. That means that there are suddenly a huge number of simple things that you can’t do simply any more. Instead of
int x = 2;
int foo;
foo = x + 3;
cout << foo;
you have to say
mpz_t x;
mpz_t foo;
mpz_init(x);
mpz_init(foo);
mpz_set_ui(x, 2);
mpz_add_ui (foo, x, 3);
cout << mpz_get_str (NULL, 10, foo);
Now, I understand perfectly well why it has to look like that, but boy, it sure isn't pleasant. Furthermore, this class is on parallel algorithms, NOT on big numbers. I do need to be able to pack and unpack big numbers to send them around the network to different computers, but knowing how to do mpz_inits doesn't seem to be particularly important in the grand scheme of things.
Problem #4 -- and this might be the biggest problem -- is that I've been too stupid to dump this and do something else. It shouldn't be this hard, and it is. I should stop and move on.
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02.03.06
Posted in Random thoughts at 7:52 pm by ducky
There is a blog I read, dooce, that is about a particular woman’s day-to-day life. It’s very well written and very funny, but I sometimes feel a little bit uncomfortable reading it. I can feel somewhat voyeuristic, reading about her toilet habits and husband and two-year-old daughter Leta.
I realized that dooce gives the same sense of intimacy and familiarity that soap operas, comic strips, and sports do. The same characters appear, over and over again. I get to know their quirks and fears, hopes and dreams, endearing and annoying traits. That familiarity wins my affection.
It is probably evolutionarily favorable to come to like people I see regularly. The people who liked their neighbors probably got more cooperation and less conflict than those who didn’t, and so they survived preferentially to become my ancestors.
Given that there was no Friends , Family Circus, or ESPN when my ancestors were busy doing most of their evolving, it probably is not surprising that I didn’t evolve to have different reactions to fake characters and real ones. (The Media Equation reports some fascinating experiments that show that people relate to even non-living things as if they were humans to a surprising extent.)
Gossip seems to be one important way that people interact and develop intimacy. There’s even a Gary Larson cartoon that shows one gorilla grooming the other while saying something like, “And then Betty said to Nancy…”
I heard a theory once that gossip magazines exist to fill the need for intimacy that living in small communities used to fill. Once, when you and I both lived down the street from crazy old lady Wilson, we would bond while gossiping about her. Now we don’t have crazy old lady Wilson to talk about, but we might both watch Survivor. We can bond over ruminations about who is going to get voted off the island next.
Dooce, for me, is reality TV without the TV.
And what makes me uncomfortable is realizing that Leta is Truman of The Truman Show.
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02.02.06
Posted in University life at 5:02 pm by ducky
When you think of movies, you probably think of southern California, but I have seen more moviemaking at UBC than I ever saw when I lived in southern California.
Yesterday as I walked home, I passed snow on the ground and a tree covered with lights. Today, the tree was gone, and although the snow was gone, there were still sheets of white plastic (simulating snow) scattered along the main mall.
We had to move our car for a day once so that a movie crew could park their trailers there while they shot at our dorm.
Early on at UBC, I went to what I thought was Koerner Library and discovered a sign over the door that said Health Sciences Center. (Because I’d heard that they were moving a bunch of resources from Koerner over to the new Irving K. Barber Learning Center, I assumed that the sign meant that they had moved everything over to IKBLC. I went all the way over to IKBLC to return my book, only to discover that the sign was a movie prop.)
Even more exciting was the walk home where I had to weave through Seattle Fire Department ladder trucks, police cars, a bomb squad truck, ambulances, about fifty police officers, a bunch of gurneys, and twenty or thirty medical personnel. All associated with some movie. That movie also brought a big impressive-looking “stone” sign that said, “University of Northwestern Washington”.
While I was sure that I would have new experiences at UBC, I certainly never thought that walking through movie sets would be one of them.
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02.01.06
Posted in Married life at 5:39 pm by ducky
Yesterday, I whined about how my space keeps shrinking. In reality, shrinking the amount of space that I live in isn’t inherently bad. In fact, I sort of liked moving in to the 412 square feet at Green College.
The thing that really disturbs me is clutter — having too much stuff for the space. My beloved husband (who I love dearly!) and I have different attitudes towards stuff. He’s an optimist; I’m a pessimist.
When I see a newspaper article that might be interesting but that I don’t have time to deal with right now, I figure that there will never come a day in the future when I will have the liberty to deal with it, and it probably isn’t that interesting.
Not only that, I am sure that the next time I move, I will have to carry every box by hand myself up seventeen flights of stairs on the hottest day of the year in a place with flocks of angry mosquitoes accompanying me. (And the mosquitoes probably have malaria, to boot.)
That article would be just one more thing to move, so I throw it out.
My beloved husband (who I love dearly!) is an optimist. In my mental model of the universe, he’s sure that some day he will be languidly reposing by the pool, with nary a care in the world except how to best entertain himself. He’s certain that that article, that particular article, will be absolutely riveting, funny, and so profound that it will change his life.
Imagining how much pleasure the article will bring him on that far-off day, he cannot bear to throw the article away today.
(I’m not completely sure how his life could be any improved from his vision of lying languidly by the pool, but in my mental model, it’s his fantasy, and so doesn’t need to make sense to me in my mental model.)
And because my beloved husband (who I love dearly!) does so many nice things for me on such a regular basis, I don’t just throw out all the stupid newspaper article when he isn’t looking, even though
- he won’t ever lounge by the pool for so long that he’ll run out of reading material
- even if he did, he wouldn’t remember that this newspaper article ever existed
- and even if he did, the article is boring enough that he would be disappointed by it
Because, you see, I am enough of a pessimist to believe that he would someday find out that I’d been throwing out his newspaper articles, and divorce me in a fit of rage.
Sigh. Jim wins.
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01.31.06
Posted in Married life at 10:21 pm by ducky
At the time when I met my beloved husband, I was living in a big old house in San Jose. It had 1700 square feet upstairs, and a finished basement that brought the total up to 3200 square feet. There were four or five people living there, but still, it was a big house.
When I married Jim, I moved into his 1100 square foot condo (that he had gotten used to living in by himself).
When we moved up to UBC, we moved into a room at Green College that is 412 square feet.
When we went to Guatemala, we stayed in what was essentially a short-term boarding house, where our room and attached bathroom gave us about 113 square feet.
When we went skiing last weekend at Whistler, we stayed at a hostel with a bunch of of Green College folks. We managed to get a private room (with bathroom down two stories) that was only about 70 square feet.
When I commented on this to Jim, he said that I at least knew that 36 square feet was the limit because he’s six feet tall. I laughed and pointed out that he’s only six feet tall in one dimension.
Most people, if their spouse started visiting casket shops, would start worrying that their spouse was thinking of murdering them. Me, I’d worry that he was shopping for a new home.
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01.30.06
Posted in Politics at 11:31 pm by ducky
I was talking with someone about our Governer, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Recently, he was in a motorcycle accident, and it was discovered that he didn’t have a motorcycle license. I see a disturbing pattern. He seems to think that rules are for other people.
- Motorcycle licenses are for other people.
- Sexual harassment laws are for other people.
- Competitive rules against steroids are for other people.
- Immigration laws are for other people.
A “to hell with authority” attitude might play well in Hollywood, but I get really nervous about political leaders who don’t think the rules apply to them.
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Posted in University life at 11:23 pm by ducky
I went skiing on Saturday, which was a lot of fun despite it being 9 years since I skied last, despite not being used to skiing in powder, and despite being 42 years old. But that’s not what this post is about.
It was busy enough that a (very nice) couple crashed our table at lunch. Making smalltalk, they asked us where we were from, and I didn’t know how to answer.
Let’s see… my Mom lives in Bellingham, WA, where I’ve never lived. I grew up in Illinois. I’m registered to vote in California. Our car is registered in British Columbia. I live in Vancouver. Most of my stuff is in Blaine, Washington. My passport says US. We will probably go back to California, but that’s not 100% certain.
So I’m not sure where I’m from.
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Posted in Hacking at 10:43 pm by ducky
I wanted to keep control over my blog. I wanted to use my own software so that I would have control.
Of course, I never actually got around to finishing setting things up the way I wanted. So I never posted.
I finally decided that keeping tight ownership of non-existant posts wasn’t really buying me much. Besides, it was either set up a new blog or catch up on my studies, so here’s the new one.
Go see the old blog.
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10.30.05
Posted in University life at 9:26 pm by ducky
It’s been interesting to watch the changes in university life over time. I’ve been able to see “snapshots” with ten-year gaps, since I’ve gone back to school a few times.
1984
In 1984, when I got my BS in engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), students didn’t use computers routinely. I only had a few assignments that the teachers insisted be typed, and I only saw computers in my one computer science class or as a whizzy novel cool demo of emerging technology.
Answering machines were highly unusual. I heard a lot of people complain that they were very uncomfortable using answering machines, and a fair number of people thought people who used answering machines were rude. There was a deep suspicion that people just got answering machines so that they could screen calls.
Libraries were difficult to use. The card catalogue was cumbersome.
Email had been around for about ten years by this point, but the vast majority of the population was completely unaware of it.
1994
Ten years later, when I started my MS in engineering (again at UIUC), computer use was routine. Teachers expected papers to be typed. I had one engineering class that relied heavily on Excel and another that relied on Matlab. We had to buy Excel for the former class, but at the student rate it was sort of like buying a textbook.
Libraries were easier to use. The card catalogue had moved online.
Email use was not unusual, but also not universal. Many students had email, but many did not. In computer science, students were guaranteed to have email access, but I think even in engineering, there were occasional students who did not have email. It certainly was not universal outside of the engineering college. And, since if one student didn’t have email, it wouldn’t be fair for the instructor to communicate with the others via email, so instructors didn’t.
Web use was not routine. It existed (barely!), with quite primitive search engines and much more limited content. Most students (and most profs) didn’t know about it.
Cell phones existed but were not routine. I didn’t have a cell phone, and I think only two of my friends did. There was a deep suspicion that people only got cell phones to make themselves look important.
With no cell phones, if you wanted to rendezvous with someone to study, you had to be very very explicit about the exact place and the exact time. “At the library” wasn’t good enough: you had to state “at the library, on the third floor, on the east side reading room, near the window that overlooks the big sculpture”.
Answering machines were routine. People were completely comfortable using answering machines, and thought people were rude if they didn’t have answering machines. There was a suspicion that if someone didn’t have an answering machine, it was because they thought they were too important.
Again, there was no real way for instructors to send information to students except in class, but now students could phone the instructor’s office and leave a message. (I think it was rare, but it happened.)
2004-2005
SJSU
In late 2004, I took two classes part-time at San Jose State University. SJSU was an economically challenged school. Its budget had gotten cut significantly, and the students came from lower economic strata than the average college student.
While laptops were not routine, cellphones, email access, and Web access was routine. I got my assignments via the Web and grades via email. While I didn’t email the instructor all that often, I probably emailed him four to six times over the semester (he taught both of my classes). I don’t remember him emailing us, but am quite happy to believe that if there was a mistake in the assignment as written, he would have emailed us.
Students took notes with paper and pencil at SJSU.
Stanford
In the first two quarters of 2005, I took two classes at Stanford. Stanford had everything that SJSU had, plus fantastic computing resources for the students. The resources were so good (or perhaps tuition so high?) that most CS student undergrads did not have laptops.
For four of the five Stanford classes, the lectures were videotaped and archived on the Web. The lectures also had extensive notes that were passed out on paper to the students. (This is probably not representative of Stanford classes, but an artifact of me being enrolled mostly in the “distance education” courses.) In those four classes, most students basically didn’t take notes, or very few notes. (I did, mostly out of long-standing habit.) In the other class, a stats class that did not have extensive notes posted, students did take notes on paper.
I started at the University of British Columbia in the fall. UBC has everything Stanford does, plus probably about 20% of the CS undergraduates have laptops.
Teachers and teaching assistants at both Stanford routinely communicate with students (and students with each other) via BBSes. (At Stanford it was Usenet newsgroups; at UBC it’s WebCT.) I’m currently a TA at UBC for an undergrad, and it’s hard for me to imagine a course without being able to communicate constantly with the students.
In the undergraduate class that I TA, the lecture is given as PowerPoint, and the students basically don’t take notes. For my three grad classes, one lecture is presented by video from the University of Toronto, one lecture is a PowerPoint presentation, and one is on a blackboard. People take notes for the blackboard one, but only minimal ones for the PowerPoint presentation and none for the video one. (It’s in a dark room, which makes it difficult. Even I don’t take many notes in that one.)
Library buildings are sort of irrelevant. Everyone looks papers up on Google or Google Scholar, and grabs the PDF.
Distance learning / distance education is becoming much more common. I now will occasionally meet random people who are taking distance education classes, and ten years ago people didn’t even know what distance education was. (“Oh, you mean like correspondence courses?”)
What’s next?
VOIP and video chat exist, but are not common. IM is common, but not universal. Different VOIP/video chat/IM applications don’t interoperate, which is slowing adoption.
Blogs are common, everybody knows what they are, but not everybody has one.
Wikis are common, but not everybody knows how to use them.
I expect that ten years from now, everyone I know will be reachable by VOIP, IM, and video-chat. I expect that everyone will know how to use a wiki.
I haven’t heard anyone making snide remarks about adopters or non-adopters of VOIP, video chat, IM, blogs, or wikis yet, but give it time.
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10.13.05
Posted in Email, Technology trends at 9:16 pm by ducky
Two months ago, I wrote an essay on why I thought GMail could seriously impact Microsoft’s Outlook/Exchange business by bundling a (so far non-existent) calendar and Gmail into their search appliance.
I had another idea for how the Google bundle could be superior to Outlook/Exchange.
Gmail — in its current Web service incarnation — has ads along the side of the pages. Presumably, a corporation would get annoyed if they paid good money for a network appliance and they still had to look at ads. So the appliance version of Gmail should lose the ads…. or should they?
Google is good at figuring out which text items are related to which other text items. So what if they (automatically) figured out what things inside your company were related to which other things at your company and displayed them? Scenario: You get an email message from your colleague David Jones about purchasing floss recyclamators for the Cobra project. When you read the message, you see various links in the sidebar:
- David Jones’ home page
- the Cobra project home page
- a page listing your company’s approved floss recyclamator vendors
- a page on this week’s cafeteria menu
- Mabel Garcia’s home page
David’s page, the Cobra page, and the vendors page all make sense to you. (The cafeteria menu is odd, but you shrug it off. Even Google makes mistakes.) But you’ve never heard of this Mabel Garcia person and have no idea why she showed up on your list. You click on her home page, and you find that she’s a new hire, and her resume shows that she spent ten years working at Floss Recycling Incorporated. Hot diggity! You can sure use some of her expertise!
If Google could do that, I could imagine people abandoning Outlook/Exchange in droves.
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