blog.erwintang.com

In my opinion, if you don’t have to drive in the stuff, snow can pretty-up almost any landscape. It’s quite beautiful on campus now. Everything looks white and pristine. I took a walk around campus this evening and I love how the snow reflects back nearly every photon of light. It’s as if the number of streetlights has doubled and everything is bathed in light.

I am sure that anyone that has to commute to campus isn’t enjoying the snow as much. The parking lot next to my apartment is usually full on school days, but it’s been nearly empty in the last 48 hours.

I’ll be sure to enjoy the snow while it lasts, because in Vancouver, snow only stays on the ground for a little while before the rain comes back and washes it away.

It is 3:11 am.

The question: Am I hungry?

The answer: Slightly.

It has been several months since I’ve seen Da Ali G Show on Showcase. I wish they’d keep airing the episodes, even if they were repeats.

If you liked the show, you can temporarily slake your thirst for Borat by clicking his picture above. In this episode, Borat shows the people of Kazakhstan a small slice of American politics. Borat goes on the campaign trail with James Broadwater, who at the time, was trying to win the Republican nomination for Congress in his district. Queried about his various positions on issues, Broadwater made the implication that if you were not a Christian, you’d go to Hell (capital ‘H’ because that’s the way Broadwater woulda wanted it). I’ll let you guess his stance on abortion. After the interview aired, Broadwater issued a statement where he tried to salvage his image and blamed the “liberal, anti-God media”.

Surprisingly, despite saying all the seemingly right things to get you elected in the US these days, Broadwater did not win his district’s nomination.

Here’s a picture of my Mom putting a duvet inside a cover.

There’s a great thread going on over at Fark.com about the perils of being a “nice guy”. The thread is in reference to the first of three following articles, all of them really good reads.

“I’ve been in the ‘Friends Zone’ so much I’ve bought property there ’cause it’s cheaper than renting…”

Article one – Hope inspiring…

Article two – um, not so much…

Article three – makes baby Jesus cry…

The U.S. News and World Report recently published a list of 50 things you could do to improve your life. Coming in at number ten was quiting your job. Just shortly after I turned 25, I quit my first job after getting my undergrad degree. I was just starting out and my peers were also just beginning to build their careers.

Five years later, I still don’t regret quitting that job. My peers are now managers, own cars and houses, and make good money, but I make no comparisons. It was probably one of the most important and liberating things I’ve ever done in my entire life. Read the article and take note of any lessons you can learn from it.

Update: I have now included a demo video, click here to see it (450 kb .avi)

For most of the end of November and the beginning of December, I was working on my project for my computer animation class. I am happy enough with the results that I decided to whip up a few pages to display my work.

I used an artificial intelligence method called fuzzy logic to control the behaviour of a defenseman character. It’s a bit rough around the edges, but it turned out pretty good in my estimation.

You can take a look here. If you’re just interested in playing around with the demo, just go right to the downloads page and pay attention to the system requirements! Read the README file for instructions.

I was on the bus today when these two attractive young women got on. They sat in the seats behind me. This is partly what they had to say:

“I am soooooooo lusting after that pair of underwear!”

“Which ones?”

“You know, the turquoise coloured ones… they have the butterflies on them with the thin clear straps on the side…”

“Oh those, you know you’d look good in the beige ones as well…”

“I just decided I can’t wear what I was going to wear to this party I’m going to tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“I just remembered there’s going to be children there and I can’t wear that skirt of mine!”

“What are you going to wear instead?”

“Um, I’m not sure now…”

A walk around UBC today revealed that many people are still away on their holidays. Both pedestrian and vehicle traffic was quite light all over campus. I got an almost ghost town feel. I’m guessing that everyone will be coming back sometime this weekend. It’s hard to believe that in less than a week, this whole place will be bustling with activity again with the start of the new term.

I guess, however, I am not the only one that noticed that everyone is away. Sometime on Wednesday morning, there was a break-in at my beloved former residence, St. John’s College. Apparently, someone broke into the main office and stole access cards and a master key. The audacity and nature of the crime surprised me. It seems the thief knew exactly what to get and this was not a crime of opportunity. With the access cards and the master key, every door is accessible to the thief. That means every resident’s room is essentially vulnerable. You can just imagine how some residents felt reading all of this on the e-mail list while they’re thousands of miles away.

SJC was in lockdown mode when I visited this afternoon to retrieve Picky, my fish. When I got there, some doors had been made exit only. Signs were posted everywhere, warning residents of the intrusion. I was later told that every room lock would be replaced eventually. I am unsure what they’ll do about the access cards. Because they’re computerized, I wonder if they can just change an internal code or something. I also heard that two security guards will now be assigned to SJC on a round the clock basis. If they want to be cautious, I’d restrict access to a single set of external doors and have the guards ID anyone that goes through.

Dangerous times over at good old SJC!

I might come off sounding like an idiot in this post, but oh well, here goes. I just checked the graduation requirements for my degree. As for coursework, it looks like I’m good there. I just need to straighten out one tiny detail (at least I think it’s tiny) and everything should be fine. Well, I also need to pass two more courses next term, but I’m assuming that’s going to happen. There’s also the matter of not having received my grades my last term yet. Yeesh, this is perhaps a little more tenuous than I thought.

Anyways, the biggest problem I have discovered is that I kinda forgot to form a little thing called an “supervisory committee”. This committee is supposed to be headed my academic supervisor (which I have) and one other faculty member. After one semester of coursework, I was supposed to give a presentation to them about the courses I had taken and will take. This presentation would outline the reasons why I thought I should be taking these courses and how this would fit into my graduate education. The committee is then free to make suggestions on course choices and we come to an agreement on what to take.

So, yeah, I kinda forgot to do this. And I’m about to enter my last semester of coursework. Don’t ask me how this happened. I have a little bit of worry, but I am not in a panic. Why? Well, because as I mentioned before, I still have one more semester to correct anything that needs fixing. Is it a lot of room to maneuver? No, but at least I caught this before the point of no return. My supervisor is also a really, really nice person who would like nothing more than to see me graduate and get the hell out of here. Also, I think it’s my choice who the second faculty memeber is on my committee and obviously I’d pick someone who is sympathetic to my cause. I already have the person in mind and I just hope he agrees to it.

Is there still a possibility for disaster? Sure, this is bureaucracy we’re talking about and even under the best circumstances when you follow regulations down to the letter, things can still go wrong. Clearly, in my case I’m forming my committee extremely late and I might run into a whole bunch of roadblocks. The one possible sliver of hope I have is that these types of rules, I believe, can be easily be bent if the people in charge like you enough. That’s a big if, because I’m not sure if I even matter a damn to my department beyond my supervisor. If you ask me though, the MECH department owes me after the whole TA fiasco.

The bottom line is, there is nothing I see that will absolutely prevent me from graduating in May. To get there though, I’m gonna need to fix a few things between now and then.