Wednesday, June 30, 2004
John is an excellent friend.
He's a good host: he provided an extra bed in his room in Bankside so that I didn't need to worry about today's tube strike, since the residence hall is walking distance from LSE. He is letting me use his internet connection and ethernet cable. Furthermore he endorses lack of impulse control when I am whim-driven.
So when I decided to cut my hair about an hour ago, and discovered hair scissors in my toiletries bag, he didn't exactly egg me on but didn't take on a voice of reason role either.
And, after fixing the back somewhat, he took a picture so you can see the back and front simultaneously:
Bye bye, hair.
This may be a "London and I have started seeing other people" sort of breakup haircut. I may seek professional help (to even up the ends, or go shorter) on my return to Bristol.
Edit: John said that first picture was kind of titillating. He made an "rrrrr" noise. And I don't want it to be titillating! So because this is the internet, I am going to overexplain things and say I was wearing a tank top because I didn't want to get hair on my tshirt. So don't read too much into that. It's not a bra.
MSc Dissertation support links
I'm in London this week, working in the library when I'm not in sessions for MSc Dissertation support week (every afternoon) or attending a session of presentations about our projects with a third of the MSc in OR students (yesterday morning). I enjoyed hearing about others' projects. That there are so many and various potential applications of OR is one of the reasons I'm so glad I did this degree. It was fun listening to ideas on project approaches and potential pitfalls, in the the questions and comments from both the supervisors (lecturers and professors, mostly) and the other students.
Seth asked the easy questions about my project, "So do you consider this a Soft OR project, Christina?" "No, really not at all," I answered. James Gibb accused me of making up the term "render wrangler" before advising me again to "underpromise and overdeliver... not that I've ever managed to do that." Overall the presentation went well and I think I'm on the right track. I've downloaded a bunch of papers about load-balancing to see if there are other strategies I should consider.
The dissertation support sessions have been useful so far. Monday I learned about how to deal with tricky citation issues. Yesterday there were two, the first one emphasising the importance of not plagiarising. The second one on structuring paragraphs was surprisingly entertaining and informative. It was given by Neil McLean of the LSE Language Centre. He's got the teach-them-with-humour thing down cold.
He started off with the three things you need to demonstrate with academic writing at the Masters level:
* that you can think "It's a university and they tend to insist."
* that you read the books "You don't necessarily need to read the books, you just have to show you read the books. [...] If you use the Harvard system you can show you spent all your time in the library and none of your time in The Three Tuns."
* that you have real-world knowledge (no snarky commentary here)
He then went on to discuss the principles of paragraph structure in the British academic model. "And this is culturally specific. In Spanish, you're allowed to digress, to explore other ideas. [...] In a British academic setting: 1 paragraph, 1 idea, please don't confuse us."
He had many ideas for making reading your dissertation easier for your marker, because that makes the marker happy, leading to better marks. "Tired people -- I've just had a baby so I know all about this -- tired people get much more crotchety." One of the ideas was to create a paragraph plan for each paragraph in a section and figure out the logical order for them before writing the section. "The planning stage will take a little more time... I'm sure for many of you, the planning stage is taking very little time at the moment." The plan contains the topic and concluding/linking sentence for each paragraph, as well as bullet points on the ~3 arguments you present to back up the topic sentence. "Three is a good number for arguments. Sometimes it's two, sometimes it's four. If it's five, you need another paragraph. If it's one, you need to go back to the library."
In critiquing a well-constructed sentence that argued it's difficult to describe the Norwegian foreign political tradition, Neil McKay said it's not the sort of sentence you want to give to your marker. "Because remember, you are a genius, expert in your field. You want to give them arguments they can give you marks for, instead of saying... [shrug] I dunno."
Today's workshop session with Peter Levin wasn't quite as funny, but his study skills website is another useful resource, particularly the notes on planning and writing your dissertation.
And links, mostly for me, from the citation and plagiarism slides:
Quote Unquote: The Harvard Style of Referencing Published Material
Cite them Right
On citing electronic sources
International Standard ISO 690-2 on referencing electronic documents
Online!: a reference guide to using internet sources
Manchester Metropolitan University links on citation
(all the above links from Dr. Jane Secker, June 2004)
Research student toolbox
LSE statement on plagiarism
Plagiarism can be cheating or genuine error
Common knowledge and steps to avoid plagiarising by mistake (from Purdue University's OWL site)
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Canadian election (in other words, skip this if that's likely to bore you)
Quentin emailed me:
Martin held on. Is this a good thing?
I replied:
It's a much MUCH better thing to my mind than if Harper had won -- the "Conservatives" are too socially conservative, and I think Peter McKay, the previous leader of the PC before they merged with the Canadian Alliance (formerly Reform), is a weasel. I'm looking at the breakdown of seats... happy the NDP made inroads enough that they + the Liberals are 50% and that Jack Layton and Ujjal Dosanjh were elected. Not so impressed with the increased Bloc Quebecois representation. Oh well.
The dollar rose, of course, now that I'm actually making pounds.
Upon further reading, I like that Mark Eyking was re-elected. It's cool that what was probably protest voting in Alberta and BC helped the Greens get funding. And that the total seats won by each party came closer than usual to their proportion of the vote, though the NDP were a bit shafted in that respect. I also think calling the "Conservatives" under Harper "Tories" is an insult to real Tories, but I like Joe Clark so of course I'd think that.
And in the time it took to link in all these stories, the dollar gave up early gains.
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Links neither flippant nor absurd
Cory Doctorow's Microsoft Research DRM talk is an excellent piece that succeeded in convincing me that Digital Rights Management systems are bad for society, business and artists.
And in grimmer news, Nicholas D Kristof's recent pieces in the NYTimes were one of the things that convinced me what's happening in Sudan is genocide. You can sign an e-petition here, or read here for other actions you can take.
Sunday, June 20, 2004
Anonymous commentary on the English and the metal bands
I read this email before we went out last night. Due to the pulchritudinous nature of my flatmates and Vivian, there were a few pairs of guys who joined us at various times. I found myself wondering if any of them had a prior "mine is better" conversation, but they weren't all English.
Subject: not many of those to the pound ;)
You neeeeeed to go find "Watching the English" by Kate Fox. So funny, and very useful. Of course, I read the sex chapter first. It started with the following dialogue:
'How's your book about us english going? What chapter you working on now?'
'The one about sex.'
'So that'll be 20 blank pages, then?'
After which she noted the 'knee-jerk humour' rule, which is pretty self-explanatory, and quite amusing.
Also amusing was the discussion of male bonding, and the things they say while doing it, most of which I had never heard before, like the subject line above (a comment indicating appreciation of a passing woman's bosomly endowment, refering to weight and not money, often accompanied by a gesture of both hands held in front of the body palm up seeming to compare weight).
Even better, though, was 'Don't fancy yours much.' Which is said with reference to two (or more) women, indicating that the speaker can tell which one is more attractive, and giving him the one up on his mate by claiming the more attractive one (never questioning, of course, that he has his choice of any woman he wants).
I read all this yesterday (Thursday). Then tonight I was at a gig with a new friend from work. I look over his shoulder, then say to him, 'Aren't they cute, with the same haircut and all.' (brown ponytail with bangs and obvious blonde highlights) and, no word of a lie, after taking a good look himself, he replies 'Yours is nicer though'.
I didn't burst out laughing, but very nearly. My restraint was made that much more admirable, I think, by his generosity. Though of course he had no choice, being English.
An excerpt from Watching the English from the Independent and another review may also amuse you.
And an SMS from someone who was doing sound at an all-day metal band fiesta yesterday:
How's half ten? The metal is sort of skeeeshraaaalmquiuiuiuggxb. That could just be my ear plugs.
Saturday, June 19, 2004
Christina (briefly) in London
Future Thinktanker is packing up for her return to Los Estados Unidos. This morning I awoke early and cleaned the kitchen floor (man, was it disgusting and dude, is it ever clean now. Go me!) and the hall, which entailed moving the magazine folders and binders she'd put in the hall. I asked her if she was getting rid of them.
"Yeah, do you want them?"
"Please."
"Wow, look at me giving you organizational tips. It's like the blind leading the blind."
"More like the myopic leading the blind, to be fair."
"Yeah, I was about to say the one with the bifocals..."
I miss my flatmates. We're all going out together tonight.
Last night Vivian (a visiting Canadian friend) and I went to Hoxton. I snagged a G2 that had been abandoned on the tube, and the Chat Room about cloning human embryos for diabetes research and iTunes's Euro launch made me laugh aloud. It still does as I reread it. It's not online yet, but this one about nuclear supermarkets is almost as good.
In other excellent news, HULK IS BACK.
Friday, June 18, 2004
Statistical observation
Apparently the only comment you're allowed to make upon seeing someone carrying a hockey bag full of laundry and text books is "Whad'you got in there, a body?" Of course, my sample size is only two. I'll see if I can't get more data on my way to London after work today.
The project is going well. It looks like a job for dynamic programming, at least to start. People at work are friendly, irreverent, cynical but direct and open, and wicked smart. My academic supervisor is a good guy. There are language classes starting in September, and yoga and pilates classes in the on-site gym. I like it here.
I biked to and from work Wednesday and Thursday, after buying a bike helmet Tuesday. It's uphill both ways, so I will quickly reacquire the Thighs of Steel I had before dancing ended in March. The downhill bits both ways are WHEEEEE! fun.
Links that you should check out if you've missed them, all but the first of them with sound:
A 4 star recipe -- 83% would make it again. This comment is my favourite:
I modified the recipe by adding a box of store bought spaghetti. After about ten minutes, the spaghetti was soft. Now I don't have to eat crunchy spaghetti anymore.
Trunk Monkey -- the best ads ever, especially the Theft Retrieval System one.
This is pretty and odd and I have no idea what it's about but I like it.
Hearts of Space sample programs -- for those who enjoy ambient, somewhat new-agey music.
CAT RAVE is so good. So are the CAT TOWN denizens' comments on the use of catnip.
Monday, June 14, 2004
Two forms of identity...
... one with a current address on, are what I need to join Bristol & Southwest's leading Video & DVD library (self-proclaimed, but the website is promising).
The Forties Contemporary Film Festival gives me more motivation to get my address changed sooner rather than later. This is also a Public Service Announcement for those who enjoy discussing movies, of course.
Saturday, June 12, 2004
My new abode is delightful.
As I got up this morning to get ready to take the train back to London, I looked out the window. What should I see but an adolescent-seeming fox, picking his way through the greenery on the hill my room overlooks? I said, "Hi, fox," but was ignored.
Friday, June 11, 2004
File Under: Kevin always sends me the best links
Convenience store haiku. I especially like number 7.
And from a few days ago, rude UK place names.
Thursday, June 10, 2004
An excellent life story
Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer's obituary doesn't just describe an interesting life well-lived, it has vividly mundane details of the discovery of the coelacanth:
She did not know what it was - her speciality was birds not fish - but she knew that it was unusual. So she and her native assistant, Enoch, transported the 127 lb fish back to the museum in a taxi.
It was high summer and the weather was sultry, so she and Enoch pushed the fish to the local hospital mortuary on a small handcart.
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Reflective chapter diary entry the first
For my thesis/dissertation/project report/whatever you want to call it I must write a reflective chapter about what I learned from the project, what went wrong, how corporate culture or what have you affected the project, yada yada. The reflective chapter receives a lot of weight when they're marking these things.
The report guidelines mention it might be useful to keep a diary as the project progresses. In case this might be of interest to someone and since Blogger makes storing it here easy, these are my thoughts after my first day of work. The project isn't confidential but I may edit this later if it seems like I can add in more details about what I'm doing without coming too close to spelling out exactly who I'm working for, or violating any confidentiality agreements.
For the next 3 months I'll work on determining if, given a bunch of computing jobs to be processed each with an associated deadline and possibly a priority, it's feasible to
a) figure out if they can be processed in time to meet the deadlines given the computing resource capacity/budget constraints and
b) if not, tell the person submitting or scheduling the jobs how much more CPU/server time they ought to buy in order to be x% confident that deadlines will be met.
While you can estimate how long it will take to process a job, given that it has certain characteristics, that estimate can be off by up to a factor of 3. Which makes calculating the probability that you'll be done on time with your current computing budget (or not, and if not, what is needed) a bit tricky.
It looks like I'll need to make some simplifying assumptions and then, once the thesis is done, see if they can be improved on or someone might have developed better prediction methods for how long job processing will actually take. There is intermediate feedback on progress as jobs are being processed, so it seems like Bayesian updating might be useful.
I ate lunch with the members of my team and people who are working on related problems. It was educational.
Some were critiquing another researcher's proposed solution for a different resource allocation problem -- it's brilliant technically, but it doesn't allow customers any certainty in reserving computing time. Several other reasons it might be a bad idea were hashed out, but one guy spelled out why he wasn't pushing back harder against the proposal. The person who's come up with it is a senior technology guru-type, with a lot of influence. All sorts of people end up doing favours for him. The guy whose work might be affected by this and who is not arguing too strenuously said something like, "I see the train headed towards me, and I'm not going to try to stop it only to get smushed. No, I will wait until a few seconds before impact and hop gracefully out of the way."
They then moved on to arguing whether another project is too ambitious, and it condensed a lot of the arguments from Problem Structuring Methods and OR Methodology into a two-minute back and forth of "they keep adding more and more stuff into their mathematical program, by adding more information from the real world to the optimization" "I don't think modelling the whole world will work, there's no way some of that data will be available in real life [eg. BT is not going to tell a customer their entire network topology], the real world is messier, and it makes more sense to find satisficing solutions to smaller, incremental bits of the problem than to have a tool that will give you an optimal solution but can't actully work." About 10 seconds into it I thought, "Wait, this is familiar, didn't this argument about the limits of optimization get worn out in the 1980s?" but apparently not. They also mentioned the problem of unforeseen traffic spikes, like if someone mentions your site in their blog. Anyway, interesting research questions, and the company politics seem intriguing as well.
p.s. If you are someone close to me, say for instance my mother or father, and want to know what my new address and phone number are and how I am doing and such and such, please rest assured I will be emailing the details you desire pronto. Like, by Monday. I've booked a car so that Jason can help me move the rest of my stuff Sunday, I am settling in nicely, and life is good though I still have a wretched cough.
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
"Even when I get hay-fever, I find
I may sneeze but I don't really mind
As long as I'm in love with the summertime."
- The Pop Singer's Fear of the Pollen Count, The Divine Comedy
Since Monday night I've had more of a full-fledged, coughing, fever and chills, super sore throat, sneezing uncontrollably thing going on than hay-fever. Yet I continue to feel as though the life I'm leading is a particularly charmed one of late.
Other than the stupid cold-induced misery (check out more funny flash animations with Scandinavian moping at Strindberg + helium), I've been varying degrees of euphoric since 1 p.m. Thursday, the time at which my last exam ended. John and I went shopping that afternoon, which in retrospect seems like a particularly poor idea even though we'd agreed to limit each other's spending. But I found a dress and shoes to wear to the wedding I'm attending in August somewhere in France, so whatev. Then there was celebrating of the end of exams in Hoxton with Decision Scientists, and closing another bar near Regent Street with Operational Researchers. I'm going to miss my classmates.
Friday night I got a ride to Bristol with Andrew; he and I worked together in Vancouver back before the telecom crash. He's been back in the UK since 2002, but we spent a good half hour discussing what he'd do for a Canadian passport, which included selling his nan if that would work. I think I laughed for at least 90 minutes of the two hour drive.
Saturday involved a bunch of seemingly-fruitless calling of flatshare ads, a barbecue at which Andrew's flatmate Matt stated, "I'm not a nutter! I'm zany, I'm off the wall!" and their friend Daniel noted, upon looking at colour pictures from WWII in a magazine, "I always thing of World War II as being in black and white. And the 1920s are in brown and yellow and people walk funny," delicious Thai curry, and visits to Revolution (which has six disco balls and more vodka infusions than seems reasonable) and the Fez Club (where Fiona walked into a deceptive mirror: ""There was a lovely lady walking straight towards me. So I politely moved out of the way, and she headbutted me, the bitch!").
By Sunday night, basking in the backyard of the Victorian house in which Tim and Clare live and devouring a lovely roast dinner, I had a new place to live sorted. With swimming pool use and wireless broadband internet and all bills included, near the Downs. It is also walking distance to my half-dozen or so new friends-through-Andrew-but-they-like-me-for-my-swimming-pool. I'm very much looking forward to living in Bristol. I'm moving some of my stuff with Andrew this weekend, so I should probably get back to packing.
