My Continued Ramblings

Canadian leader shuts Parliament to keep power

2008-12-04T22:54:00.003-08:00

The title from the Associated Press says it all. Even the BBC noticed. What a disgrace. But hey, it could be worse.

Why do the Comedians seem to be the most rational sources of political analysis around here?

2008-12-03T21:00:00.002-08:00

Rick Mercer provides the most insightful review of events that I have read.

Canadian politics suddenly got interesting

2008-12-03T19:40:00.007-08:00

And so frustrating. At a time when there are massive global issues (economic and environmental among others) that need immediate attention, we have a Prime Minister and government more interested in destroying its political opponents than doing anything else. Stephen Harper is playing political games and the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced he's going to win.

Harper started this crisis when the conservatives tabled a fiscal forecast on Nov 27 that contained a perfect recipe to piss everyone off. (You try to take a political party's money away and see what happens.)

It's possible that the conservatives were all complete idiots and thought they would get away with it. They have a history of acting like bullies in parliament, and a few days ago may have even broken the law, when they covertly recorded NDP Leader Jack Layton in a conference call with his caucus.

But it seems more likely to me they knew exactly what they were doing. They wanted to spark a non-confidence vote because all the likely outcomes would end up with the Conservatives with majority control of parliament.

1. Enough MP's cross the floor to support Harper to defeat the non-confidence motion. This isn't so far-fetched because there are a lot of MP's who aren't comfortable with getting into bed with the Bloc. They don't even have to cross the floor, they can go independent “for the good of national unity” and vote with the Conservatives. If their riding hates the Bloc more than they hate the Conservatives, these MP's are really doing it for the good of their re-election.

In fact, I'd bet it's likely Harper already had those MP lined up before he presented this budget-update and set this whole thing off. And then we have (in effect) a Conservative majority.

2. The non-confidence motion could pass and topple the government, then:

a. The Governor General calls an election. If she does, now Harper can campaign on the fact that the Liberals and NDP formed a coalition (something they promised they wouldn't do) and they were willing to get into bed with separatists.

The Liberals are even weaker than they were two months ago since they are in the middle of choosing a new leader and they're broke! That could be what the Conservatives need to get a majority. Big win for Harper.

b. The Governor General asks the coalition to form government. This plays into Harper's hand well too because its going to be a bad year for any government and there's going to be very little any government can do about it even if it were fully functional.

We're going into a recession and we have no control over that. Whatever bailout/stimulus package we do, we need to coordinate with the US, and they're the ones that got us into this mess in the first place! It's uncharted territory, people are going to loose their jobs, people are loosing their savings, and we just don't know what will help.

It might be the Conservatives' plan to just get out of the way and let the coalition take all the blame. I'm one of the people hoping the Coalition will see the scope of the problems the world faces and usher in a new era of government cooperation that puts the Conservatives to shame. But the cynic in me thinks it will be a miracle if this three-headed experiment in Canadian government can work together.

I'd say Harper expects this, and when the coalition explodes there will be an election, where the Conservatives will rout the other parties that are now discredited due to the coalition.

Huge win for the Conservatives. That would probably cement them in power for a few elections.

Most people expect Harper to ask to the Governor General to prorogue (pause) parliament until the new year. Maybe that time will give the party leaders a chance to sit down and come up with a deal after they cool off a little. But if Harper wanted the non-confidence vote and did this on purpose, then he won't deal. He may think proroguing parliament will help his chance to get and then win an election, but in the end it doesn't change anything. It just delays the inevitable, while the rest Canada get screwed.

Burried in Work

2008-11-26T16:14:00.003-08:00

About a week ago I decided that the most logical course of action for me was to re-do work that has taken me around about a year thus far to do. I've given myself two weeks. This isn't as crazy as it seems for a lot of reasons.

Why would I do this? After discovering some errors in the analysis I had done, I had to go back and fix some things anyway. Also some of the requirements of what we wanted to get out of the results changed, meaning that I would have to go back and change some other things. It wasn't that those things were wrong, I just didn't control or pay too much attention to some details that didn't matter before, but now, they matter.

This work is entirely computer programming and my code was pretty incomprehensible already. To go back and change things now without making more mistakes would have been tricky and would have only resulted in more spaghetti-like code.

Another thing is I was learning how to program as I was working on this project this past year. (Masters degrees often tend to be heavy on the on-the-job training.) Starting fresh means now I'm not held back by a bunch of stupid things that I did before when I didn't know any better.

Plus I'm going to re-use most of the algorithms exactly, I'll just write them better. So there won't be nearly as much problem solving this time around.

So two weeks. Not so crazy... I think.

Star Trek Trailer

2008-11-15T13:32:00.003-08:00

Watch it while you can. I'm sure Paramount won't let this stay on Youtube for long.

*****Update
Now you can check out the trailer in high def.

My first Canadian cold

2008-11-14T16:54:00.004-08:00

Both my roommates were sick this week. I was bound to catch it eventually. I don't feel too bad actually, and I hope I'll be back on my feet tomorrow. Did a lot of web surfing today to pass the time.

-found a cool online app for making free long distance phone calls: freeringer which uses the talkster network

- a very cool series of pictures about urban art that makes things invisible, which reminded me about urban knitting!

-some interesting stuff about copyright which led me to read some scary stuff about the future of copyright in Canada, some ideas about things that are "better than free" and tools to convert online streaming music to MP3's: Chilirec and The Last Ripper

-on a related note, have you heard of Kryders Law? It's the popular name for the predicted exponential growth of hard drive storage capacity. (Kind of like Moores Law is for processor speed.) What's interesting is that within 10 years, the typical home computer hard drive is expected to have so much storage capacity that you could save on your laptop EVERY recorded song in the since 1950. File sharing will no longer be about songs, or albums or even the complete works of an artist. You can just have ALL OF IT. What do you think that would do to the recording industry and the concept copyright as we know it today?

Interesting!

2008-11-13T12:11:00.002-08:00

-a new evolutionary theory that attempts to explain human warfare and male cooperation
-no one knows what will happen, or what we should do about it, but here are two signs that something is seriously wrong with the economy

As for me: I'm getting settled in my new place. I just about have enough food to encompass a balanced diet and only a couple of boxes left to unpack. Work is going reasonably well. Motivation is high but focus is low. Speaking of which, I better get back to it!

The big deal is it shouldn't be a big deal

2008-11-05T13:22:00.001-08:00

I was reflecting on the US election last night and I realized I don't understand racism at all. This is a result of having an incredibly privileged life which is probably the result of some very wise decisions by my parents and some luck. Now re-reading what I wrote last night, it's a bit flowery and maybe trite, but I'm happy that was what immediately came to my mind:

That a competent, well spoken, charismatic man can run and win the presidency of the most powerful democracy in the world shouldn't be a surprise. That any man or woman, of any race, can become president of a country that is founded on the principle that all men are created equal, should simply be obvious.

So there's the proof. The black guy won and you'd say, “so, what's the big deal? I just voted for the best candidate.” I guess that is a big deal.

An extra ticket

2008-10-24T10:10:00.004-07:00

Hey, on Nov 7 I'm going to attend a presentation by Dr. James Orbinski, co-founder of Doctor's Without Borders Canada at the Chan Center, and I have an extra ticket. I still regret not going to see Al Gore when I had tickets to that so I'm not missing this one. Drop me a line if you'd like to join me!

___________
Update

I just gave the ticket away. But if you're interested, go to the Chan Center and go get one! The show is now open to the public so anyone can go, for free!

Colours!

2008-10-23T15:51:00.003-07:00

If you have a chance, take a drive along SW Marine Drive to UBC this week. Today the trees near the road all still had their leaves but were vibrant reds and yellows and really made a spectacular contrast. I wish I had my camera.

That Song

2008-10-22T15:12:00.002-07:00

I've gotten a little obsessed with the song from the game trailer I posted yesterday. The song is called Breath Me by Sia. She is worth checking out and this live version of Breathe Me I found on youtube is heart wrenching.

Discover Sia!

Videos!

2008-10-21T21:26:00.003-07:00

What can I say? I'm still a sucker for a trailer set to good music. It helps that the game looks amazing.

This song is very nice too and I think the dancers look beautiful.

And finally at the end of his interview, right before he endorses Barack Obama, Colin Powell says what people should have been saying from the start.

"It is permitted to be said, such things as, 'Well you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well the correct answer is that he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be President?"

What a Waste

2008-10-15T10:40:00.002-07:00

There was a chance to send a clear message to the Harper and his government that Canada wasn't happy with the direction he was leading us. There was a chance to finally put a price tag on carbon, make a good faith effort to meet our legal obligation to the Kyoto Protocol , and hey maybe elect our first Green seat?

But no, we had a pathetic selection of leaders, too focused on tearing down Harper, and unable to articulate their own vision for the country. Instead, only 59.1% of registered Canadians (13,832,972) even bothered to vote. Instead, our federal government will remain a spineless follower of the USA, unwilling to stand up for the values that separate us, and unable to influence the rest to the world to deal with the crises we all face.

Nobody won last night. This was the best chance Harper had to form a majority government and he blew it. I'm guessing there will be a new leader of both the Liberals and the Conservatives within a year, and another election within 6-months of that. I hope next time it won't be such a waste of time and tax-payers' money.

Not NSFW

2008-10-09T18:46:00.003-07:00

Oh Mal, gone are your days of commanding a smuggling ship, and maybe that super-heroing gig couldn't pay the bills, but did you really have to resort to porn?

Nailing Your Wife | Girls | SPIKE.com

I Think I'm Cured

2008-10-08T09:35:00.003-07:00

My alarm woke me up this morning. I felt like sleeping in past 6:30 and last night I was up past 10. Amazing!

so screwed up

2008-10-07T10:42:00.001-07:00

The jet-lag from coming come from Switzerland is still kicking my ass. Last night I was starting to feel ill by 7 and by 8 I was dizzy and nauseous and passed out immediately after laying down. Today I forced myself to stay in bed until 6:30, which is the latest I've been able to sleep in thus far.

The one time I kept myself up past 9, I was out with some friends and I think it was around 11 when I ended up laughing uncontrollably and drooling under the Boston Pizza table. Sean, being the good friend he is, gave me a ride home shortly thereafter.

There's an Election Going On

2008-10-06T04:43:00.003-07:00

I was watching the news last night (I think it was on CTV) and the federal election wasn't mentioned! Sarah Palin and some news about the American election was covered but somehow our own election wasn't important enough to make the 6-o'clock Sunday news?! What is wrong with this country? Are we so insecure???

Maybe the Harper Government hasn't screwed things up as badly as the Bush Administration, but it sure wasn't for lack of trying to mould us into a little mini-USA. All the polls I've seen put the Conservatives back in a minority government but I'm worried that people might see that and get complacent. Please vote. Please vote your mind, but if you're going to vote strategically, check out this site with some good info.

Oh! This is a song written by a group of Canadian artists (including K-OS, Ed from Barenaked Ladies, Sarah Harmer, Hawksley Workman, Jason Collett from Broken Social Scene) that have come together to create a Stop Harper anthem "You Have a Choice". I don't think it's quite as good as that Obama one, but this one is ours!

Too Jet-lagged to write good

2008-10-03T21:35:00.004-07:00

The flight was fine. I'm home with my parents. I've been awake for over 24-hours and my body is starting to ... oh come on brain... nope brain on strike... time to sleep.

I Love the Whole World

2008-10-01T02:10:00.002-07:00

My Mom sent this to me. I hope it makes you smile too.

Oh and during breakfast, I watched last night´s Daily Show. Possibly my favourite episode ever. Joel, Dad, this one is especially for you!

And now to go re-pack my bags... 2 more days!!!

Ups and Downs

2008-09-30T04:19:00.002-07:00

The last couple of days (weeks really) have been packed. Working backwards: yesterday was my last (official) day at work. On the weekend I had a wicked hang-over due to a wicked going away party the night before. Earlier that day I got word from home that my cat died. She was 19-years old and in failing health, but I had hoped she would hang on so I could see her again after I got back. She was the best pet I could ever ask for.

I saw Wall-E (it just premiered in Switzerland) with Veronica on Friday. It was nice to have a date night out at the movies. There really oughtta be more robot love stories.

I don't know whether the last couple of days have been fantastic or terrible.

After I get home I'll spend the weekend in Richmond with my parents and enjoy my jet-lag. I'll be in Vancouver on Monday for my first day back to work. Lunch anyone?

How about a party next weekend? Is everyone going away for the long weekend or will anyone be around for a couple of beers on Friday (Oct-10) night?

One More Week

2008-09-26T05:44:00.002-07:00

I gave my final presentation on Wednesday, I started cleaning out my desk yesterday and Monday is my last official day here at the MEM Center. This time next week, I'll be in the air somewhere over the Atlantic coming HOME!

Living Vicariously Through my House-guest

2008-09-24T00:48:00.000-07:00

Following the conference here in Bern one of the guys from my lab in Vancouver stayed at my place for a couple of days. He's never been to Europe before and was getting a great primer in Switzerland before starting a whirlwind 2-week tour (across about 10 countries) with his girlfriend. Every day after coming home from a day-trip he would tell me about the amazing things he saw.

I think I can finally appreciate what it must have been like for Robin (over 3 years ago!) when we met in Zurich and I was freaking out because I'd just visited my first Gothic church. (I think it was Gothic. Anyway it was really old with cool stain-glass windows.) It was fun to be "the experienced one" on the other side of all the excitement and live vicariously through him.

A post about work

2008-09-17T09:42:00.003-07:00

I don't write about work much but this is big. Yesterday I gave my first biomechanics oral presentation at a conference. Sure it was technically the pre-conference workshop, but it's the first time I've presented my work externally not via poster. I'm out of my rut!

Canadian Politics

2008-09-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

While my faith in democracy hasn't been completely restored, I am comforted by the recent political events in Canada. It would appear that the government is still afraid of the people.

I was working on a post about how appalled I was that the Green Party wasn't going to be allowed to participate in the Leaders Debates leading up to the National Election. I also was going to say some snarky stuff about why we let the Bloc in.

But that post isn't needed now because enough other Canadians protested and the Conservatives and NDP reversed their positions and now the networks will let the Greens participate!

My Flight Is Booked

2008-09-11T01:57:00.003-07:00

October 3rd I will fly with Air Berlin from Zurich to Vancouver. I have some mixed feelings about the people and work I will leave behind, unfinished. I don't know how I should feel about it all. But I can't deny how happy I am that I am finally coming home.

Only in Switzerland: Part 2

2008-09-08T04:24:00.002-07:00

Every day at work I look at this sign and say: "I gotta take a picture of this before I leave."

Thank you Sarah Palin and thank you Jon Stewart

2008-09-06T12:26:00.007-07:00

Oh man do I love the Daily Show. Jon Stewart seems to have a natural gift for pointing out political and media hypocrisy. There are other funnier examples (this recent one is great) but I think the following two videos really got to the heart of the political issues about Sarah Palin's pregnant teenage daughter.

The Daily Show does a good job of pointing out that the more the Republicans insist that this is a private family issue and shouldn't be a politician issue, the more they support the rights of a woman to choose.

The other side is, this is of course Bristol Palin's choice and she's choosing to have the baby. Being pro-choice isn't just about having abortions, it's defending the right to choose not to have one too.

If America is very lucky this publicity may shed light on the issue of women's choice that could help people on both sides of the argument.

1 year

2008-09-04T09:40:00.000-07:00

What a long, strange trip it's been. 1 year ago today I arrived in Switzerland. It was 1 year and 1 month ago less 1 day I left Vancouver. I'll know for sure soon, but the way things look now: 1 more month to go.

Only in Switzerland

2008-09-03T12:40:00.002-07:00

There must be a chocolate factory nearby or something because once in a while (like tonight on the way home) when the wind is blowing in the right direction, my whole neighbourhood smells like chocolate.

Iraq

2008-09-02T01:52:00.006-07:00

Every American should watch this documentary about the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. It's pretty damn interesting for the rest of us too. It is available to watch for free on Youtube until November 4, 2008.

Here is the Trailer:

Here is the Movie:

Moved!

2008-08-30T02:20:00.002-07:00

My contract with the student house ended and I didn't know I would be staying past the end of August early enough to extend it. So yesterday (with Vero´s help) I moved to another student house that is literally on the other side of the tracks. Although from my new balcony on the 18th floor, I think it was maybe my old place that was on the wrong side of the tracks.

I can stay there for one month and if I stay in Bern after September I´ll have to find somewhere else to stay. I just hope I´ll have a clear plan soon.

Behind the Times

2008-08-27T01:02:00.002-07:00

I'm a little embarrassed to admit it but I just listened to KT Tunstall and Amy Macdonald for the first time today. (I consider hearing a random song on the radio different from listening.) In fact listening to a last.fm radio station created by searching for KT Tunstall is giving me so much great music that I've never listened to before. I'm so sexist.

slow news day

2008-08-26T00:53:00.004-07:00

I thought these were funny:

Okay, I guess I should follow this up with saying I agree with a lot of what Jesus said. Be compassionate and care for other people, even if they do or say things you don't like. Don't hurt or kill other people, even if they started it... all good stuff. I just think the religion and supernatural stuff is at best ridiculous and at worst, a massive dis-information campaign that hurts the most vulnerable people in the world.

Chip Music

2008-08-20T04:07:00.002-07:00

For everyone who grew up playing an NES this music will rock you. Mom, Dad, and all the parents of us kids, well, you're going to hate this, SO MUCH. I think this link is only good for the week then pitchfork takes down the streams, so check it out while you can.

******* Update
I found another video I liked that I can embed.

Bit Shifter // Blip Festival 2007: The Videos from 2 Player Productions on Vimeo.

Extending My Stay

2008-08-18T02:09:00.001-07:00

It seems staying in Switzerland past the end of August has some consequences. I just need one more reference letter and then I can go submit my paperwork to extend my residence permit. A few emails took care of extending my health insurance.

Housing is going to be a problem. I found out on Friday that my contract expires at the end of August. I talked with the house manager today and I got a 1 month extension but after September there is no more room. Bummer. I think I'll move into a hostel if I will stay past September.

Then there's the little issue of all of my possessions. I've acquired too much crap this year. Anyone want a second-hand road bike? Excellent condition, with brand new wheels! (The wheels cost more than the rest of the bike combined!)

Ten Months!

2008-08-16T09:25:00.001-07:00

This morning Veronica and I noticed that today makes 10 months. Sure I can think of 5 friends who are married, 3 more who are engaged, 2 more who might as well be, without even stopping and trying. But for me this is a pretty big milestone. For her too. So I bought her an onion.

Although she probably won't wear it on her belt ...as was the style at the time.

I'll probably come home in September

2008-08-13T04:39:00.001-07:00

So I've exchanged most of my stress over my thesis for frustration. I'm having problems with getting (my already delayed) ethics approval, which I need before I can ship my spine specimens here.

I'd say getting my specimens by the end of August is pretty optimistic, but that's my best estimate right now. In that case I could come back to Vancouver around the end of September.

I just hope my residence permit extension is approved before it runs out on Sept 4! Ha!

China's Coming

2008-08-12T00:22:00.002-07:00

I watched the opening ceremonies on Friday and was blown away by the complexity and synchronicity and the shear number of people involved in the performance. There was one part (with the moving blocks that went up and down) where I thought, "okay this can't be people, it must be computer controlled." But no, at the end the tops open up and a couple thousand Chinese wave up at the camera.

Was it just me or did anyone else get the message the China is going to kick all of our asses?

*Update*
Looks like at least two elements of the opening ceremonies were faked. First the Beijing organizers confirmed that the firework footsteps that marched across Beijing were filmed ahead of time and digitally inserted into television coverage. Now it has been confirmed that the cute girl who sang was actually lip syncing because the girl with the beautiful voice wasn't cute enough.

But what I found amazing was the Chinese response to these accusations was pretty much, "yeah, so what?"

KICKING ALL OF OUR ASSES

consistency

2008-08-11T08:54:00.001-07:00

Not dead! I got sick all last week but am now back to work. August 1 was a holiday in Switzerland so Veronica and I went to Milan and Venice for the long weekend. You know I thought that canal water tasted funny...

More details will have to wait until a future post. I've got a lot of problems with consistency so this post is just to get me writing again.

Still Here

2008-07-21T23:12:00.001-07:00

Just a quick word to say I'm still alive and well in CH. Been busy (of course) and I'll have to mention the interesting stuff in another post. Right now it looks like I'll be coming back to Vancouver at the end of August, but I'm starting the paperwork to extend my stay (just in case).

Pictures!

2008-06-16T10:12:00.001-07:00

I was copying the pictures I took during the Eurocup to my computer and I realized how backlogged I am for uploading pictures to Facebook. I'm really sorry guys. I'm sure no one cares about pictures of stuff I did 5 months ago but I'm going to keep uploading in chronological order and make an effort to get caught up over the next few weeks.

So far today I uploaded pictures from My snowshoeing trip with Phil (Feb 10), hiking with Adrian and Marcia around Zermatt (near the Matterhorn, Feb 23), wandering around Thun and Speiz with Adrian (Feb 24), pictures from my birthday (Mar 5) and pictures from the trip Veronica and I took to Grindelwald (Mar 9).

I might have a slight temperature

2008-06-11T09:39:00.004-07:00

Because I got soccer fever baby!

Other than a few games from the World Cup two years ago, I never watch football but I'm actually really getting into the Euro Cup this year. Two games in particular were really entertaining: Netherlands Vs Italy and Spain Vs Russia (if only all the games were that fast-moving).

Switzerland and Austria are co-host countries and Bern is hosting the three Netherlands first-round games. Last week the Dutch descended on Bern. The paper estimated 100,000 Dutch have arrived. Keep in mind the population of Bern is only around 140,000 so with all the extra fans here, the population of the city has about doubled!

I'll try to take a few pictures of my own at the next Dutch game but until then check out this shot I grabbed from the BBC.

As an asside, I'm in some weird transition phase between calling soccer soccer or football, and I keep switching back and forth. I appologize now for any confusion.

Mon temps dans Genève

2008-06-03T11:10:00.002-07:00

So close! I looked it up and it should be “mon temps à Genève.”

I had an great time at the conference last week. Highlights included:

-3 fancy dinners that were organized by the conference. The first began with a boat ride to France, then we sailed back to CH to go to a vineyard for winetasting. Then we went to a BEAUTIFUL country-side mansion to have dinner. I took lots of pictures. The second dinner was under a HUGE tent at the Geneva Polo Club. And the third was on a boat that sailed around lake Geneva.

-The third dinner was all the sweeter because I talked my way into it. I was only supposed to go on two. bwahaha Their flimsy registration system was no match for a grad student hunting for free food!

-Meeting another UBC Master's student (from Physics doing MRI research). First because she gave one of the few scientifically interesting presentations. Second because we were both missing talking to another Canadian (UBC Canadians in particular). Third because the number coincidences connecting us ended up being a bit eerie. She's moving to Bern to start a PhD the same time as I should be leaving. She knows/has peripherally worked with many people from my lab and my supervisor. We shared a co-author on our presentations at the conference. To top it off, I think my mom was one of the subjects in her study! In spite of all that, we'd never met before.

-The conference itself was okay (very clinical = surgeons talking about surgery) but there were some memorable moments. There was one talk about obese patients that had back surgery for pain and if that helped them to loose weight afterwards. Turns out back pain is no excuse and most of them GAINED weight after the surgery. The doctor summed it up during the question period, “I think all I did was improve their ability to walk to the fridge.“

Sometimes it's Eerie

2008-05-25T07:17:00.004-07:00

This comic is entirely too accurate. Seriously.

Except the sensors here are a little too high so I have to jump.

Almost Geneva

2008-05-22T13:37:00.002-07:00

Well, keeping this insane pace of work is almost at a middle. But I think I'm coming to the eye of this storm.

Next week I'm going to Geneva! All week, I'll be living it up on the boss's dime, attending a conference and presenting my crappy results. It seems standards in biological research aren't so stringent and my scatter plots that looked like they were made using a shotgun have enough useful information to be shown in public. Sweet! And I only have a poster so it's not as stressful as giving a talk.

This week I'm having all kinds of messy fun in the cadaver lab. I must say I'm getting pretty handy with a scalpel. But it makes for some loooong days. I don't think I've got home before 10 any of the days I've been doing cadaver work. (But I eat dinner at the office so that adds some time.)

So in general, I'm a little frantic but less frustrated than I have been. I may be hopelessly behind schedule, but at least I'm making good progress these days.

Also helping my disposition was last weekend. I did no work, went out to see Ironman, ate way too much greek salad, and cake (it was Vero's birthday). I really needed some time to decompress.

Is it ironic that my back hurts after working on spines all week? Alanis Morrisett would probably think so.

Dig up stupid!

2008-05-07T10:37:00.002-07:00

After working until at least 10 each night and weekends for the last month, I find myself further behind schedule than I was at the beginning of April. (To be completely honest I still slept in on the weekends.) It's very frustrating to find out that not only do my best efforts not make things better, but in fact they can't even prevent things from getting worse.

But at least I'm not alone and a few of us from the MEM Center who are frustrated with our projects (and convinced they we are completely incompetent, if not the dumbest person in the MEM Center), are going out drinking this Friday. So far it's three of us, but I think it's going to be a big group.

If you're reading this, and your project is crap, you should come too!

The one where James racks up more doctors bills

2008-05-04T07:04:00.003-07:00

*Update* I should mention that I wrote the post below yesterday and I was in a pretty bad mood and a lot of pain. I realize now it was more of a rant than a description so to sum up: I was having a nice picnic in the park yesterday and I was tossing a disc around with a few people I met there. I was running for a disc when I stepped on my right food funny, I heard a pop, and I went down. So we packed up all of our stuff, a friend helped me go to the hospital and the x-ray confirmed it was nothing serious. Just your run-of-the-mill sprained ankle.

Yesterday I couldn't put any weight on it and any movement was painful but today my ankle is much better. I can stand on it now and when I walk I don't need to put much weight on the crutch. I think I may be off the crutch completely by tomorrow! :-)

And now onto the woe-is-me episode from yesterday...

*This is "the post below" that I was referring to above. I wrote this just after I got home from the hospital on Saturday*

So I've only been running for 24 or 25 years now. You'd think I'd have that one figured out by now, but no. A little uneven ground does me in. I'm now the proud new owner of a shiny pair of crutches to go with my new sprained ankle.

The weather has just started being consistently good over here and I was trying to exercise more often. I still can't play ulti because I still can't wear contacts because I STILL have that eye infection, but I've been on my bike for at least an hour every day that it hasn't been raining this week.

So much for that. Damnit! I know things could be a lot worse and I really should count my blessings but it seems like every time I try to get outside and get a little exercise the world strikes me down!

Scatter Plot Madness!

2008-04-29T07:46:00.002-07:00

Today I made 60 different scatter plots attempting to relate different measures of spinal degeneration to range of motion.

The best one had an r^2 value of 0.59. So basically I would conclude that none of these variables individually correlate to range of motion, except that my sample size is so small, I don't think I have the statistical power to prove the negative hypothesis. So in fact I can conclude nothing.

All that means I tried the simple statistics and nothing worked. So now I try some more complicated stuff. I think this is called statistics hell.

US Politics

2008-04-27T05:35:00.003-07:00

I've been following the American presidential primary race (maybe a little too) closely. Despite what the conventional media makes it sound like, the race for elected delegates is all but decided. Obama built up such a huge lead that Hillary can't catch up unless she wins every remaining state with a greater margin than she has won any other state in this entire primary race. And some of the states remaining are predicted to go to Obama.

However, after all the primaries, neither candidate will have enough elected delegate votes to win the nomination at the convention so the decision will ultimately be made by the super-delegates. They are free to vote any way they choose (as opposed to elected delegates that must vote according the primary results). But if they choose to give the nomination to Hillary, the party will effectively overturn the will of the people. I don't think this will happen because it will fracture the Democratic party and alienate all the citizens that voted for Obama. Disenfranchisement of that magnitude will likely cost the democratic party the November election. An election that currently looks preordained for the democrats to win.

Yet, Hillary is still competing. Some people think that she is either deluded enough to think she can still win the elected delegate race or will use her (and her husband's) political clout at the party convention to convince enough super-delegates to give her the nomination. I think people in the party are aware of the potential consequences and wouldn't go for it, but I don't think that is what Hillary is trying to do. I don't think she is trying to win any more and instead she is trying to raise money.

At the beginning of April, Hillary's campaign was 15-million USD in debt (including a 5-million personal loan Hillary made to the campaign) with 9-million cash on hand. So negative 6-million in total. But a campaign can't raise much money after it has given up. So since the time that it became a foregone conclusion that Obama would win, I think Hillary has been making it look like she is fighting like hell, to inspire people to continue donating money and hopefully get her campaign out of the red.

A lot of Obama supporters want her to give up because they think that Hillary's “kitchen sink” strategy has been hurting him and the Democratic Party's chance of eventually winning the general election. But I think that if Obama wanted to, he could put enough political pressure on Hillary to make her quit now. I think he wants Hillary to keep running (no matter how negative she goes) because:

The longer the primaries keep going, the more popular he becomes. Even in Pennsylvania (where he lost) he held his biggest rally to date. I've read estimates ranging from 20,000-40,000 people attended to listen to him give a stump speech.
During these primaries many states have recorded record voter turn-out. And regardless of whether they vote for Hillary or Obama now, they will mostly vote democrat in November.
As long as the Democratic primaries keep going, it dominates the US news, and the Republican party is marginalized.
Right now Obama is campaigning as if he were already the nominee, mostly addressing McCain but McCain doesn't have a forum to reply. Nor can McCain continue campaigning until the primaries are over because his primary budget is gone. He can only access the rest of his money after the primaries are over, and the presidential race begins.

In the end it all comes down to the money, and while the primaries continue, it is an advantage that Obama can exploit.

Spring has sprung

2008-04-27T05:11:00.002-07:00

In less that a week I've observed the following changes, all on the walk to and from the train station and the lab each day.

The daily high temperature is about 10-15 degrees warmer
Birds are singing again
There are little lizards running across the path
Leaves and flowers on every plant are blooming
I walked past a couple having sex next to a construction dumpster

I think it's all pretty conclusive.

Techno music and matlab

2008-04-23T06:58:00.005-07:00

So if you haven't seen me around too much lately it's because I've been (nearly) living in my office for about the last two weeks. I'm really pressing to get some results for one of the projects that make up my master's thesis. I'm using a math program called matlab to analyse a bunch of x-rays of geriatric subjects flexing and extending their necks. I'm trying to correlate different measures of degeneration to the spine's range of motion. So far all my results suck. (R^2 values of around 0.1 for anyone out there who knows a little statistics.)

It's pretty frustrating and I think I'm a little too emotionally invested in this work. But I keep reminding myself that this is just the nature of research and I keep trying to mash these variables together in slightly different ways. At least coding is fun. I'm not kidding! I'm really enjoying figuring out all these little logic problems and learning new functions while I get this to work.

Since I've been staying late and eating at my desk every day, it's given me a chance to listen to a lot of new music. I find band recommendations from Pitchfork Media and then listen to the music using Deezer. While coding I've been listening to a lot of "Boards of Canada". One of my favourites also happens to have a really cool video.

A little sunshine

2008-04-13T08:24:00.002-07:00

Today I am in noticeably better spirits than I have been lately. I think this is the direct result of:

Today it was sunny (it's been cold, dreary, and occasionally stormy the last few weeks)
I rode my bike to work, instead of taking the train (the first exercise I've had in over a month)
Veronica made chicken soup that tasted exactly like the soup my mom makes
I ate a lot of the aforementioned soup

healthy but still hideous

2008-04-12T07:54:00.002-07:00

I just wanted to give a quick update let you know that I'm feeling much better. I have been all week and I'm now off all of the antibiotics I was taking. Unfortunately, my tiny eye devil is still with me. One month later this stupid stye, just won't go away! I've been seeing the doctors regularly (with surprisingly little difficulty from my Canadian health insurance) and the current theory is the infection must have been killed by the antibiotics and now it's just inflammation.

So now while I go put some more cortisone cream in my eye, I leave you with this hilarious video by Björk. I was hooked as soon as I saw the cat in the wife-beater, and seeing the cat dance sequence at the end is worth the wait.

sick again

2008-04-01T00:29:00.002-07:00

Really! Unless it's some joke my immune system is pulling on me. At least I'm not flat on my ass but it's enough to make dragging myself to work miserable. It's really getting me down. I can not believe how sickly I've been these last few months. I don't know what's wrong.

A sense of urgency

2008-03-29T08:34:00.000-07:00

I've run out of time on projects before, forced to compromise on quality or punctuality (usually picking the latter) but it's never happened to me with so much time still to go. I have till August! That's lots of time right?

On Tuesday I figured out how much time I will need to do all the experiments I have planned. (It's really a good looking gantt chart.) And assuming everything goes perfectly from now on, I should finish my last experiment on August 2. That's two days before the expiry date of my return ticket to Canada. The only problem is, things already aren't perfect. For one thing, the lab I need to use isn't available on all the days I will need it.

Hard Place:Me:Rock

I blame myself. It's not that I haven't been working these last 6 months. On the contrary, I think my supervisors have been pleased with the progress I've made since I got here. The problem has been I haven't had a sense of urgency. I've been letting my work completion dates be dictated by my working pace, instead of the other way around.

I don't know yet what's going to give. But I'll keep you posted.

This one’s going to be long and rambling

2008-03-23T06:01:00.003-07:00

Okay, you were warned. I’m writing this one with no audience in mind and if you keep reading, it’s your own damn fault.

Of course if I’m going to start a long personal post, I start with music. Nothing can stir emotion in me like music. It makes me feel alive like very few things in my life do. But coming in second is probably a passion for film. I came to this conclusion recently, based on how much time I spend watching movies, and tv shows, and also because film inspires my creativity. It gets me thinking and more importantly, I look at things from different perspectives. (Maybe photos fit into this category too… not sure about that yet.)

This post is mostly a response to my very mixed ideas and feelings about a movie I watched last night, called Into the Wild. The movie is based on the true story of Christopher McCandless who, after graduating from college, gave away all of his possessions and hitchhiked across the USA for two years before going to live alone in the Alaska wilderness.

I first became interested in the movie because I heard a beautiful song, Hard Sun, from the soundtrack. It was a cover by Eddie Vedder, who performed all music and wrote all the original songs for the movie. I think some of the poetry he wrote is the best he’s written.

From the song Society:

Oh it's a mystery to me.
We have a greed, with which we have agreed...
and you think you have to want more than you need...
until you have it all, you won't be free.

Society, you're a crazy breed.
I hope you're not lonely, without me.

When you want more than you have, you think you need...
and when you think more then you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.
I think I need to find a bigger place...
cause when you have more than you think, you need more space.

From the song Guaranteed:

Don't come closer or I'll have to go
Holding me like gravity are places that pull
If ever there was someone to keep me at home
It would be you...

I was moved by the vistas in the movie and I could really identify with the main character’s desire for freedom. But that’s where my mixed feelings began. First because Chris wasn’t just motivated by a desire for freedom, he was deeply angry with his parents and the life he was living in order to satisfy them. He deliberately cut ties and all communication with his former life and family. After he left, he didn’t want to be found.

I can hardly think of a worse way to punish those who love me and whom I love. It’s really just a fraction away from suicide isn’t it?

But still, that freedom is temping. To live and learn and test yourself and form relationships with people, but never staying in one place long enough to create any lasting bonds. To have no responsibilities to others and in turn, not let anyone else become responsible for you. I’m not suggesting becoming some kind of sociopath that doesn’t care about others or the consequences of your actions, but this would be a release from obligations. In the movie, for a short time Chris lived a life of complete physical, and emotional independence. Or at least tried to.

I would characterize that as adolescence, if childhood is dependence on others, and adulthood is becoming responsible for and depended on by others. But I don’t think being a child, an adolescent or an adult are necessarily mutually exclusive. It’s just a matter of proportions. I think that’s why starting a family is such a significant step toward adulthood.

In my life I feel like I’m coming to an end of adolescence. I’m not ready to stop serving myself and I lust for independence, but I can see the shape of adulthood forming on the horizon. My desire, need, obligation to serve someone or something greater than myself is coming closer. Right now I don’t know who or what I would serve, and if I found the right career, person, purpose, to serve tomorrow, I don’t think I’m prepared to commit to it yet. But it’s coming.

ZeFrank Day

2008-03-17T01:46:00.004-07:00

Sure SOME of you might prefer to celebrate some little Irish holiday today, but today marks a much more significant event in my life.

One year a video blog ended it's one-year run. Not only was it the funniest damn thing on the internet I've ever watched, it challenged me to think frequently, made me acutely aware of editing in film, and it got people involved around the world. If you can spare a few minutes go check out some of the archives, remember the hilarity, and maybe make an open-faced earth sandwich. This one's for you Ze:

As for me, this weekend was chocked full of antibiotic fun. But I'm happy that my eye devil is responding to the new drugs and seems to be retreating back into the unholy realm of it's origin. Be-gone tiny devil! Bring not your hell-spawn forth through mine eyelid! I waged my devine war the way I always do when I'm sick.

I watched a lot of movies. I was plesently surprised by a movie called Next. I'm not a big fan of Nicolas Cage. I think he's about on par with Keanu Reaves for acting ability, but they both have been in a few movies I enjoyed very much. Next is about a guy who can see 2 minutes into his own future and the movie exploits this with great success.

Strange Swiss Ilnesses

2008-03-12T09:13:00.003-07:00

My current theory: I'm allergic to hiking. This is based on my (clearly) statistically significant sample of two cases.

Couple of weeks ago, I went snowshoing with Phil. We went to Elsigen-alp which is close to Aldelboden where I've gone a few times for snowboarding. It nearly killed me and Phil pushed me to walk higher and farther than I thought possible. Eventually we summated after gaining a little more than 500m vertical and had lunch around 3pm. It was a lot of fun (both the climb and coming back down) and now I have the pictures to prove it. If I can find some co-operative internet at home one of these days, I'll even upload them.

The next day I came down with the flu. Pain, fever, loss of appetite, inability to stay awake for more than a couple of hours at time. The works for a full week!

Last weekend Veronica and I finally gave our Christmas gifts to each other: a weekend trip to Grindelwald. We lived it up in a 4 star hotel and on Sunday we went for a hike/sledding trip. Of course this is no ordinary sledding, this is Swiss sledding where I caught more air than I typically do during a day of snowboarding! We rode down the longest sled run in the world which lasted for 15 km and 1.5km vertical. To get to the beginning of the sled run we hiked from the top of the gondola (2168m) to the next mountain peak, which was a little over 500m accent. I should mention that this was Vero's first time in a gondola, first hike, and the highest altitude she's ever visited. She did amazingly well. I thought I was handling it no problem but...

That night I got an eye infection. I just got back from the doctor's office with some antibiotics. I'll spare you the gooey details but I think there is a tiny devil living in my lower eyelid and he's growing!

*night falls and our hero slumbers*

I wrote that post last night at home when I had no internet. Now I'm at work and I just remembered that I went for a little hike with Adrian and Marcia. (Their visit deserves a post all for itself!) And my health was fine following that. Curious. Maybe I was sick and I didn't realize it.

So does that mean I have two birthdays?

2008-03-04T09:37:00.003-08:00

See I was born on March 5, 1982, around 9pm in Montreal. Which, at that same moment was around 3am March 6th here in Bern. So which day should I celebrate? I'm leaning towards both... But would that make me 27 when all is said and done? Now I just need to remember to bring a cake or something into work tomorrow. Probably some croissants.

In other news, experiments are awesome. But very tiring. After all the x-rays I shot at this pig spine today, I'm surprised the thing doesn't glow or didn't spontaneously come back to life as some kind of a zombie-hulk-spine-thing. It was looking pretty green by the end of the day tho. Gross... but you do kind of get used to the smell eventually.

Well, that's all from the rotting flesh department. You may now return to your regularly planned mockery of the fact that I'm closer to 30 that 20.

Way too many people here on a Friday night.

2008-02-29T09:34:00.003-08:00

Well, it's 6:34 and I'm just packing up at my desk to go home for the weekend. It's really not that late, but for a Friday I'm surprised how many other people are still working. I was staying late to finish taking x-rays of my cadaver pig spines. This C-arm x-ray machine is really cool because it can do a pseudo CT scan by rotating the x-ray source and collector around 180 degrees.

No big plans this weekend. Even thinking about coming into the lab... but I'll try to resist.

Last week was a blast! Adrian and Marcia visited, but I'll have to save the details for another post. I don't want to miss my train!

You never talk, you never write!

2008-02-17T10:14:00.008-08:00

So really, have I done anything over the last month and a half? Sometimes it seems like all I do is work and then get sick and then work some more. At least I'm playing ultimate again... well not really but I'm going to practices and the season will start in the the spring.

But in fact I did some fun stuff, and I took some pictures too! First album I uploaded are the balance of the pictures of me and Heather in the beginning of January after new years. Wow did that ever take me long enough.

In January we got a real mix-bag of weather and one weekend I went snowboarding with a friend from my floor. That day it was really warm, but the night before there was a big dump of snow. Another weekend I went biking. Switzerland can be really pretty when the weather co-operates.

First week of February there was Carnéval or Fasnacht, but in Bern they start celebrating the day everyone else in the world stops. Also, they have to throw in a little Bern twist, so the whole party starts with "releasing the bear". It's a little tough to see in the pictures but basically before all the people in costume and bands disperse into the city, a guy in a bear costume rappels down the side of a building onto a stage and then starts dancing with the jester that released him. Everyone went nuts... in an orderly and Swiss kind of way.

Last weekend I went snowshoing for the first time in my life! Incredible I know, but back in Canada I always had my dog team to get me around! I don't have any pictures from that day yet but when I get copies from Phil... I'll probably sit on them for a month and then think to upload them.

I've been watching a lot of videos

2008-02-06T08:38:00.000-08:00

Hi. I'm going to do this post in the reverse order from last time.

First: the 80's! I saw this video of the fight between prime and megatron from the original Transformers movie, redone using CG. They were always real to me.

Second: After seeing the Obama video I posted on my blog, I watched a few speeches by him and Hilary to see if my first impressions were right. I'll admit I've got a little man-crush for Barack Obama now.

I've never listened to such a motivational speaker before. The samples for that song came from a speech he gave after losing the New Hampsire primary. Then I listened to the Martin Luther King “I have a dream“ speach. The similarities were striking.

In terms of policy, I think Clinton and Obama are about the same. Which one will follow through on their promises? I dunno. The old joke about knowing when politicians are lying comes to mind. (Same joke as car sales-men and lawyers.) But the ability to speak to a crowd of people and inspire, is one thing that I think makes Barack Obama stand out.

We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks to come. We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people.

Yes we can.

A couple of videos

2008-02-04T00:56:00.000-08:00

So it's not like I can vote or anything, so my views on the American primaries are pretty irrelevant. My opinions probably biased my response to this when I saw it, but really, even if you don't like Obama, you gotta admit it's pretty good:

This next link isn't as inspiring but I am a sucker for nostalgia. I guess I can't claim to remember this since, I was 1 year old when this was live, and I really wasn't much of an MTV kid growing up, but so much of this is so familiar. Yes that's right, it's 3 uninterrupted hours of MTV, with glorious commercials and all.

So there you go. Evidence that I am still alive, and apparently not getting out much.

That new Macbook

2008-01-17T01:27:00.000-08:00

Okay it is thin and pretty but what really got my attention was the wireless peripherals that apple presented with it to make it useful. Once again apple hasn't done anything new (there have been ultra-portables before) but they packaged it in such a way that it is much more useful to less technically inclined users.

Selling the Macbook Air with easy to use software to slave the optical drive of any other computer (PC or Mac) with a wireless network card was genius. But I don't think it goes far enough. What someone needs to do is write some software that will completely slave a desktop computer to a laptop wirelessly.

This software, once installed, should let the desktop (Mac or PC) talk wirelessly (and securely) to the laptop (PC or Mac) via wifi. With a minimum of input from the user to authenticate, the desktop's keyboard, mouse, screen, optical drives, network (and internet) connection and ports (USB, serial, whatever) should all act as if they were connected directly to the laptop. The desktop's hard drive should act as if it were an external hard drive as if it were connected via USB.

This wouldn't just be useful for these ultra-portable laptops. This would be the best virtual "docking station" possible for any laptop. The most annoying thing about using my laptop is setting it down on my desk at home and plugging in all the extra stuff sitting there. Has anyone heard of such software already? Maybe it already exists!

Powder. Blue skies. 10 Degrees.

2008-01-14T05:48:00.001-08:00

Okay I know it's dumping in Whistler right now (over a metre in the last week) but we finally had some new snow here in Switzerland too. The title sums up my day yesterday about as succinctly as I can. Really it was one of the best days of riding I've ever had. There will eventually be pictures to back that up.

Also cool, is Schmap.com liked a picture I took and included it in the new edition of their online travel guide. They saw it on Flickr, asked if they could use it, I said yeah and now their review of the Bastille Opera includes my picture! You can check it out here.

1000000 Photographs

2008-01-01T03:53:00.000-08:00

Well, not really but it sure seemed like a lot. I wouldn't go so far as to call this a new year's resolution but it's not a bad way to start of 2008. I've uploaded pictures from August when I was in London, from my trip to San Francisco in the end of November, snowboarding in December, and from my Christmas holidays with my sister! Some of the pics from new year's eve were priceless!

A lot of this work was something to keep me awake last night while I sobered up. After all that red wine and sparkling wine (still too poor for Champagne) I'm amazed I don't have a hangover. I hope everyone had a fun, and safe time last night. I'm looking forward to seeing lots of pictures.

Christmas Cookies

2007-12-09T08:48:00.000-08:00

So last night I was missing the sounds and smells of home during Christmas time so I made some gingerbread cookies. I use the term "I" loosely as really it was mostly 3 girls from my floor and Vero doing the work while I decorated and then ate the cookies before they had sufficent time to cool.

But it was my mom's recipe. I couldn't find any molasses so I substituted with maple syrup (oddly enough I could find real Canadian maple syrup in the store!) and I doubled the ginger.

Mix together :
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup molasses
1 egg
Stir in :
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp table salt
1 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 ¾ cup all purpose flour

place dough between two sheets of waxed or parchment paper
roll out ¼ inch thick
chill for 1 hour or longer
cut out desired shapes
place 1 inch apart on lightly greased baking sheet
decorate with dried fruit, nuts, candies…
bake at 375’F for 10 minutes or when lightly touched no imprint remains
cool on wire rack

A Child of the 80's Goes to San Francisco

2007-12-09T08:17:00.001-08:00

So I'm still working through my pictures. I took a lot! Once I've deleted all the lousy shots I'll upload them to Facebook.

In the mean time here are a pair of pictures that betray exactly when I grew up.

In my first free day after the conference I went searching for the Full House-house. I thought I found it too until I watched the intro again in more detail. What I did find were the "painted ladies" also known as post-card row since it's a nice view of the city behind the row of 6 Victorian houses. Damn you Stamos!

My last day, I was drawn into a store near Haight and Ashbury when I saw this shirt! I clearly had no choice but to buy it. I don't remember how letting us play Oregon Trail for an hour qualified as computer science. But I really don't care.

Hilarity

2007-12-09T08:09:00.000-08:00

In my scouring of the interwebs about the Facebook Beacon debacle, I came across this video.

By the way, did anyone catch the obscure Simpsons reference in the title of my last post? No? I didn't think so.

Can't sleep, jet lag'll eat me

2007-12-06T16:05:00.000-08:00

This is my own fault really. There was no way I could go to work this morning but I should have forced myself to go this afternoon, or at least not been so lazy. Now it's 1am, feels like 4pm and I'm wide awake. I was even tired a few hours ago! (probably that "after-lunch" sleepiness) I should have gone to bed then!

At least I've been productively reading up on this Facebook Beacon "service". So here's the deal:
-Facebook made a deal with a bunch of websites they call Affiliate's. When you go to one of these affiliate sites and do some thing where you log in, they send that data to facebook.
-Very recently Facebook changed what they do with that data. They used to directly publish that data to your and your friends' news-feed
-Now Facebook waits until you log in and asks you what you want to do with that data
-You can a) publish it b) remove it or c) ignore it
-If you ignore it, then that info gets queued and when Facebook asks you about your next beacon news post, you will actually be choosing to post both stories together.
-If you are already logged in, this choice pops up right away
-You can preselect your choices on a per-website basis in the "External Websites" section of your Privacy page

I got this information by reading the Facebook press release and the Beacon FAQ's

In my opinion this is better since now at least we have to proactively choose to let anything be published. But my question is why are these affiliate sites sending this data to Facebook? Isn't that a violation of THEIR privacy policies? Guess not, guess they're happy to screw us until we complain about it too. My other problem with this setup is even if we opt out of Beacon entirely, facebook is STILL getting all our personal data from these affiliate sites behind the scenes.

Below I've copied a comment posted on Robert Scobble's blog. I think it's a pretty funny and apt summary of the whole situation. It is a "translation" of the actual apology posted by Mark Zuckerberg about this whole mess.

From the apology:

About a month ago, we released a new feature called Beacon to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web.

TRANSLATION: About a month ago, we released a new feature in the telephone network called Eavesdropping to try to help the police find bad people.

We were excited about Beacon because we believe a lot of information people want to share isn’t on Facebook, and if we found the right balance, Beacon would give people an easy and controlled way to share more of that information with their friends.

TRANSLATION: As a side effect, it would also put BILLIONS of dollars into our pockets, but really, all we care about is helping people share information with their friends.

But we missed the right balance.

TRANSLATION: It turns out that some people don’t want us listening to their private phone conversations.

It took us too long after people started contacting us to change the product so that users had to explicitly approve what they wanted to share.

TRANSLATION: After we finished the last bottle of champagne and turned down the music, we noticed some of you were complaining.

Instead of acting quickly, we took too long to decide on the right solution.

TRANSLATION: We weren’t even going to acknowledge that there WAS a problem. And we would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids….

People need to be able to explicitly choose what they share, and they need to be able to turn Beacon off completely if they don’t want to use it.

TRANSLATION: Some people would say that the default setting should be “no eavesdropping.” To them, I say: What are you trying to hide?

If you select that you don’t want to share some Beacon actions or if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won’t store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook.

TRANSLATION: We will still listen to your phone conversations. But we promise to NEVER EVER make recordings of them. Honest.

About Privacy

2007-12-06T05:57:00.000-08:00

I just read this article and while it's a pretty satirical site, in it's humour, it makes a pretty good point. Basically, Facebook was publishing information about what websites you visited (and what you did there) among your friends. Now I know you're thinking, "What's the big deal? I don't buy my dildos online." (Aside: my spell checker doesn't recognize dildo.)

But the point of privacy isn't that you've got something hide. It's not that you have anything to be ashamed of or that you should be. It's a precedent that protects you from people who might want to abuse you with that information. It doesn't have to be anything as extreme as identity theft. It could be something as simple as people finding out that you're a 14 year old girl and you bought some birth control pills. I think the abuse that a girl could receive due to that information becoming public is both obvious and monstrously unjust.

Facebook is compiling an unprecedented amount of personal information that is not anonymous. I contrast this to Google where most of their data is not tied to specific individuals and therefor can only be reported over a population. This Beacon application shows just how irresponsible Facebook is with our information and if you haven't already checked out what your privacy settings are, I hope you do soon. As convenient and useful as facebook is, it's crap like this that makes me consider deleting my account.

-Edit-

Seems I'm not the only one upset about this. Lots of different responses are cropping up online. But I think Forbes may be right on the money when it comes to what is really going through Mark Zuckerberg's head. Especially when they say "Typically Web users tend to be like sheep"!

...and boy are my arms tired!

2007-12-05T01:24:00.000-08:00

I know I know, old joke, but I'm jet lagged as hell. Happy to report that I'm safely back in Bern. No complications travelling and I even managed to get some sleep on the plane. (Probably has a lot to do with closing two bars and not going to bed my last night in San Fran.)

I'm about ready to pass out, so I think I will. But I will set my alarm so I don't end up sleeping all day. Pictures and words from San Francisco soon.

getting up at 8am never felt so lazy

2007-11-28T10:11:00.000-08:00

I had no problem sleeping until 8 this morning (sleeping until 5pm in Bern). Maybe I'm over the jet lag? Or maybe my body thinks I've just slept all day. Not that I've ever done that before.

Slept remarkably well considering a religious couple next door decided to move their furniture around 1am last night. I can only assume they were religious since they kept asking God if they should put it right there? Funny that they kept at it since they were loudly agreeing with each other much for the time. Inexplicable no?

After some sleep I realize it's a bit silly that I was so excited last night about the free coffee and wine service downstairs. (No I wasn't talking about the mini-bar in the room.) My expenses are covered while I'm here (within reason) and I think I'll be at the conference each day during the wine service.

I'm still amused by the leopard print robes though.

Does it feel like 6am to anyone else out there?

2007-11-27T20:48:00.000-08:00

After just a little shy of 24 hours of travelling, I am finally in my hotel room in San Francisco. It's really nice and they have free internet and coffee, and wine! The wine was a bit of surprise. I think I'll like this place. And now I should sleep.

-Edit-
There's also a pair of leopard print robes in the closet!

From Onions To San Francisco

2007-11-26T06:27:00.000-08:00

What a month! I'm sorry about disappearing from the face of the internet. I have a pile of flagged emails and facebook messages that I need to reply to. If I've shunned you this month, I still love you and I plan on getting to those emails on the flight and tarmac time on my way to San Francisco.

Since my bike ride, work really took over my life and I've finally got some results! The first half of my thesis is hardly done, but it's encouraging to make a concrete step in the right direction. It's also good since that's what my poster for the conference in San Francisco is about!

Today is the Onion Market in Bern. I'm not kidding, this is a big event here. Everyone gets the day off from school and work. They go downtown and fill the streets at 5am. The streets are lined with open-air vendor's booths selling crafts, hot glühwein (like hot sangria with spices) and of course onions. In fact most of the crafts are onion based too. There were braids, wreaths, little dolls ranging from Santa to teddy bears to Harry Potter. All the while kids are throwing confetti and hitting people from behind with plastic hammers. It's really surreal.

Tomorrow I fly to San Francisco to present a poster at the Cervical Spine Research Society Annual Meeting. (Scroll down to poster 42, that's me!) I'm going to spend a week there and the last two days are free time where I can go explore San Fran. I'll be sure to post at least once with an update of my adventures. :-)

And then I rode my bike to Lausanne

2007-11-04T13:05:00.000-08:00

After a series of (uninteresting) events, that began with a flat tire and resulted in leaving my bike at the repair shop for about a month, I finally got my bike back on Friday. I was so happy that I decided to take my bike out for a little spin yesterday. I live on the west side of Bern so I started going west to get out of the city and into the countryside as quickly as possible. After about an hour or so I came across a sign that said, Lausanne: 79 km. So I did a quick estimate in my head and figured that should only be another 4 hours of riding. I say to myself: “I can do that!” and I keep peddling.

I have to be honest. I didn’t quite make it yesterday. I stopped for dinner in an Italian place about 12 km outside of Lausanne and asked if there was a hotel nearby. I was totally exhausted. Luckily, there was one about 2 km away so I got back on my bike and seeing the bed and breakfast 10 minutes later (I was going a lot slower by then) was like finding an oasis in the desert.

This morning I rode the last few km and had a great time touring around Lausanne. It’s so beautiful and I made good use of my free admission to Swiss museums. It also felt weird being back. Kind of like how I felt when I visited Davos in September. (Wow how did that become almost two months ago!?) Everything was the same but now it wasn’t summer, and Robin wasn’t there. I said goodbye to these places and never expected to see them again. It’s just surreal to be here again. All my memories from two years ago feel so close and at the same time so long ago.

I just got another cup of tea and I was telling my friend in the kitchen about my adventure, when this all started sinking in. What the hell was I thinking!? I mean I wasn’t totally unprepared, I had a first aid kit including an emergency blanket, a spare tire and a pump, some food and water and my cell phone and I told one person where I was going… but still! I must be crazy.

Amazingly, this is probably not even the most consequential piece of news I have so I’m going to overload this post since I’ve been so bad about writing recently. (My appologies.)

One, I am dating a wonderful girl. She’s from Spain, half way through her PhD in micro-biology, and lives two floors up in my building. I think I qualify as smitten. :-)

Two, I got un-rejected from that conference in San Francisco! This conference has been a bit ridiculous. First I got an acceptance letter in September, then two days later I got rejected. Then they confirmed I was rejected, but a few weeks later, I got another acceptance letter. Then I confirmed I really was accepted and registered. So this time I called base and I should be safe. :-P

My original plan was to come home after the conference and work on my masters in Vancouver for a month while spending Christmas with my family. (And attending any new year’s parties that might be happening.) After I was rejected, I talked with my family and instead of me coming back to Van, my sister would come to stay with me in Bern for Christmas! Before I got un-rejected (re-accepted?) my sister had booked her flight.

Since the “stay and work in Vancouver for a month” plan was off the table, I thought about asking my supervisor about staying in Vancouver for a week, but I just couldn’t bring myself to ask for MORE vacation. I already got a month off in August, plus I’m getting about two weeks for Christmas, and I’m getting two free days after the conference to explore San Fran, on top of the fact I’m living in Switzerland! Plus I’m going to be right in the middle of testing in the beginning of December... I figured I should just be happy with what I already have and not push it, you know?

Okay that’s pretty epic. I’ll stop here and try to post a little more frequently from now on.

Still Alive

2007-10-21T08:45:00.000-07:00

And in fact well! Since getting over that flu, life has really been busy. I should have my first specimens by the end of the month and I'm trying really hard to be ready to start testing as soon as they arrive. My German language course started last week and I'll do my homework right after dinner... really!

This weekend I went for a bit of a wander around the centre of Bern. I found a coffee shop and read a paper (co-authored by my supervisor) over a cappuccino and croissant. Then I ended up at the Bern historical museum and found out that I get free admission thanks to my bank account. They still have the Einstein exhibit that I visited the last time I was in Bern, and the cool mirror staircase is still there too.

I made good use of the strong wireless connection I have right now and uploaded some more pictures from my travels in August. Only the pics from London to go! It's been really frustrating how inconsistent my internet at home has been lately. Sometimes it's fine and sometimes, seemingly randomly, I can't even connect. How am I ever going to finish downloading the first three seasons of Entourage?! :-P

I gots the sickness

2007-10-11T03:36:00.000-07:00

I woke up feeling terrible today, so I called in sick. It had to happen eventually, and the flu has been going around lately. The morning has been pretty lazy and some tea and toast and Dr Who (with Christopher Eccleston) has gone a long way to helping me feel better.

Last weekend an old friend from high school (Shiu-ming) visited. He's backpacking around Europe and on his way south from Paris he stopped in to see Switzerland. We ended up walking around Bern the day of the riots but avoided all the crowds. We went to Lucern that night and met with some more of Shiu's friends. It was his birthday and we got Shiu good and drunk. Sunday we walked around Lucern. It was so beautiful and very reminiscent of Stanley park. That night we went out for an authentic Swiss fondue.

So I guess I might as well try to do something productive today and get some more pictures up on facebook eh? We'll see how far I get before I go back to bed.

Burma

2007-10-05T00:06:00.001-07:00

I know this is a little behind the times but if you haven't already heard about the uprising (or Saffron Revolution") in Burma, I encourage you to check out these sites or just google it.

I found out by signing up to the avaaz mailing list and signing their petition. They asked me to forward the petition by email and while I didn't want to spam all you guys, I wanted to spread the word somehow.

Such a Junky

2007-10-04T06:53:00.001-07:00

Slumped forward, head in my left hand, pecking at a key every minute or so with my right, I thought I was going to fall asleep at my desk 15 minutes ago. The room was so warm I couldn't bear drinking a coffee so I got a coke.

Now I just stopped working for a minute because I realized how quickly I regained my concentration after just that first sip. Suddenly, my code from 2 hours ago made sense and I figured out what I want to do with this program.

This can't be a good sign.

I want to ride my bicylce, I want to ride my bike!

2007-09-30T12:17:00.001-07:00

That old Queen song has been my personal anthem for the last week. First because last weekend I finally got a bike (another old road bike), but then because the forces of nature itself seemed to try to stop me from riding it. First, the weather turned but undaunted, I went out riding anyway but then on the way home from work, I got a flat tire! Turns out I have tubular (glued-on tires) and it's a complicated procedure to change them. My current idea is to buy some normal rims and swap them myself. We'll see how much more complicated this is compared to truing the wheels. I think it'd get a lot of use out of my own spoke wrench and they're not that big to pack.

So in other news I didn't go to Oktoberfest. It's a bit of a long (and uninteresting) story of plans falling thru and then waiting for confirmation on a place to stay. In the end I went on a lab social instead and had a really good time. It was originally going to be a hike but due to poor weather, we followed the indoor program instead: tour of the Omega watch museum, catered lunch and then apero at a vineyard. With all the free food and booze that day, it practically would've been against my religion not to go.

To be honest I'm not all that upset because I missed Oktoberfest because after going to Munich last month, I feel like I've sampled the best of Munich already. I've tried the beer and wurst and it'll be there anytime I want to go back. The thing I liked the least was the loud, crowded, hot environment at the hofbrauhaus. So why would I want to go to a tent where it'll just be louder and less comfortable?

Okay this is plenty long so I'll cut it off here and just upload some pics before bed.

This post has nothing to do with photographs

2007-09-25T00:27:00.001-07:00

I wrote this post a week ago but then waited to upload it. Now that everything is confirmed I've got some fairly major news:

Last June I applied to a spine biomechanics conference in San Fransisco, at the end of November. I got word back now that I was not accepted. Bit of a bummer, I thought it was a strong abstract.

I've also been talking with my family, and I decided that I'm not coming home for Christmas. Instead, my sister is coming to Switzerland to have Christmas with me here!

It was a really tough decision because I was looking forward to seeing everyone back home. A lot of things factored into this decision. Had I been accepted to the conference, staying in Van for Christmas would have been a no-brainer, since all I would need to buy is a one-way ticket from San Fransisco, instead of a round-trip Zurich-Vancouver. Heather and I have been talking about her coming to visit me and Christmas is the best time for her. For me, Christmas has always been about spending time with family, so while I may not be with my parents this year, at least I get to spend Christmas with my sister. Finally, as I'm getting my life and research going over here, it's already becoming obvious that being gone for a month would really screw up a lot of plans.

I'm sure as Christmas comes around I'll start missing everyone more acutely but this really does make a lot more sense. Besides, this is all the more reason for you to come visit me here! As if the Swiss alps weren't enough already!

My Pics

2007-09-16T02:07:00.001-07:00

For the last couple of weeks I've had the above picture as my facebook picture. I think that wasn't the best venue to show what I think is a very thought provoking design, by Jonathan Barnbrook. When it's not so small, it's easier to see the details of the halo behind the picture of Jesus and the nature of the vertical stripes on the American flag.

Last night I uploaded some pics from Berlin, I've now uploaded half of the pictures from my trip! Today I'm going to go take some new ones of Bern. I need to go take advantage of this gorgeous weather while it lasts. I still haven't found a bike but I can go rent one for the day for FREE! It's been far too long since I've combined those two favourite hobbies of mine.

More Pics

2007-09-11T14:43:00.001-07:00

I uploaded my pics from Wales to facebook this evening but I didn't put them up on Flickr (see previous post for frustration). I actually don't think this is a problem since everyone I can think of is on facebook now... altho maybe that's a problem in of itself?

Pics

2007-09-09T15:49:00.001-07:00

I had a very lazy weekend mainly consisting of sleeping in, shopping for a bike, and watching a lot of Battlestar Galactica. And I finally uploaded some pics! I put them up on my flickr site and on facebook but I think I might stop using flickr. The photos end up out of order and it takes a lot of extra work to add titles and descriptions to them compared to doing it in facebook. As I was uploading I was getting tired and frustrated with Flickr so I only added descriptions to the facebook pics.

The pictures are from two separate days from the first 5 days of my travels. One when I was punting with Adrian, Erin and Kat. And the second when Kat and I went on a day-trip to London.

A Good Day for the Interwebs

2007-09-06T13:40:00.003-07:00

I can now log into my computer at work and I have internet at home now! To celebrate I downloaded Skype. I can't believe it took me so long to try it out. So far I have two contacts. Anyone else out there use Skype?

I had originally planned to upload some photos tonight but I started looking thru them and realized I took 290 pictures last month. I'm going to have to do some sorting/deleting first.

In Bern

2007-09-05T02:37:00.000-07:00

I've arrived and am starting on the massive amounts of paperwork it takes to live/work in Switzerland. Can't write too much since I'm at work but I should have internet at home in a day or two.

almost like coming home

2007-09-03T07:19:00.001-07:00

As much as I didn't want to leave London, coming back to Oxford was really special last night. As soon as Adrian opened the door I felt this huge relief at knowing my travelling was over... sort of. I still have to take the bus to Heathrow, fly to Zurich, then take the train to Bern, which will be another full day of travelling tomorrow, but right now I can relax.

It's so nice to be able to get up from bed at night and not have to wear sandles and make sure I have my key. There is soap and towels already at every sink. Adrian lent me one of his bath towels and I wanted to sing as I dried off from a particularly long and hot shower. I'm writing on my own laptop again!!! I can almost feel the wireless internet washing over me and I am cleansed.

I should go repack my stuff for my flight tomorrow and then I'm off to wander Oxford for a while. Tonight Adrian and I are heading to the pubs.

Oh and sorry about the lack of pictures or post cards thus far. I had no way to upload the photos while travelling and I left all my addresses in my laptop here in Oxford this month. But now that Alice and I are reunited I'll start on that after I get settled in Switzerland... of course since everyone moves so often and I'm missing a lot of postal codes, it's probably safest if you just email me your current address. I will write you eventually.

Got me some Culture

2007-09-02T04:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a day of culture and after St Paul's Cathedral, I took the millennium bridge to go visit the new Globe Theatre and the Tate Modern with Kav. I'll restrain myself from going on a rant about modern art. But the highlight of the day was last night.

I decided to break the bank and go see Les Miserables. Maybe I can't afford to go to the theatre in London, but I told myself I can't afford not to. I got a half price ticket but just sat in an unoccupied seat near the front of the first balcony. It was absolutely incredible! The set was very complex with transforming pieces and a rotating stage. The music was beautiful and all the performances were moving. Jean Valjean's performance as he died almost brought a tear to my eye.

Today's my last day in London and I'm going back to Adrian's place tonight. Time's almost up on this computer so I better go make the most of my last day.

What another update?!

2007-08-31T14:30:00.000-07:00

Coin operated internet is really annoying but since I have 12 min left over, I thought I'd write a quick post.

Today I went to Westminster Abbey and the Parliament buildings. Highlight of the Abbey was seeing the grave of Charles Darwin and Issac Newton. I just had to laugh at how plain Darwin's grave. Guess he's not too popular among the Anglican church? I was surprised to see Rudyard Kipling's grave there too. No mention of iron cold iron tho.

The tour of the Parliament buildings was very cool and I got a real thrill standing at the prime minister's podium in the house of commons. Unfortunately no pictures allowed.

Okay only 6 minutes left. gotta go.

more design

2007-08-30T14:32:00.000-07:00

okay so after i finished blogging this afternoon, the museum redeemed itself with the graphic design exhibit by Jonathan Barnbrook. Some thought provoking, some downright hilarious. I encourage you to check out his site.

Then I met up with Kav (who I haven't seen in years) and we caught up on our respective lives. Funny that it took us both being in London before we found time to sit down and have a pint. And Sis, Kav says hi.

In London

2007-08-30T05:57:00.000-07:00

I sit now in the design museum in London and one of the computers that should be locked to only let me see museum stuff has access to the internet! Dunno how long I will be able to sit here but I figured I should make the most of this free internet time.

Gotta say most of this museum is crap. The architecture section is a bunch of nonsense geometric shapes that can't be passed of as art, nor could it ever be built and used as any kind of functional building. Worst is the chairs and tables on display that we can't even sit on. I will admit there are a few cool designs and maybe that's just how it works? 90% crap to get one interesting design? Whatever it takes to avoid the communist lego buildings in Berlin.

This morning I saw the crown jewels and the tower of london. Turns out the biggest cut diamond in the world really is pretty big. I was impressed.

Okay a little more internet and then back to exploring. Got quite some distance to cover to meet up with Kav by 4 this afternoon.

Leaving Munich

2007-08-29T02:55:00.000-07:00

Wow it's been a long time since I posted. I safely made it to Munich on the 25 albeit less my running shoes and my souvenir Oxford shirt. Frustrating but of all the things to loose/get stolen, that really wasn't so bad.

Munich has been fantastic an I think I have tried at least one type of beer from each of the six major breweries. I think my favorite was the dark beer from the Augustiner Brau haus. My first night here I went to the Hofbrauhaus with some brits and a kiwi. It would seem that 3 litres is my limit and I really shouldn't have ordered that forth maß. I kept myself under 2 litres a day for the rest of my stay.

But there is so much more to Munich than just beer. I visited the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial my second day and the Deutsches Museum on my third. I want to go back to both. The Memorial because I visited it as part of a tour. The guide was great and being able to ask questions was invaluable but I would like more time to reflect and let everything I saw and learned sink in. I need to go back to the museum because it was so COOL! The evolution of just about every major form of technology through history! I spent over 5 hours and I still couldn't visit every room let alone read and look at each exhibit long enough.

Today I'm flying to London for the last leg of my travels before I go see Adrian again. In a week I will be in Bern getting settled and resuming my masters. I can't believe how fast this trip has gone by.

in prague

2007-08-23T03:15:00.000-07:00

alive and well in the land of pilsner. Had a great walking tour yesterday, followed by walking around the Jewish quarter, having authentic Czech food for dinner (heavy but delicious) and then out to the strangest night club I've ever seen. It was like partying in club from mad max. Everything was (artistically) made from re-bar, car parts and typically lit up with LEDs and moving.

Okay enough internet. I have a city to keep exploring!

Leaving Berlin

2007-08-21T02:01:00.000-07:00

It´s gone by so fast but today I must leave Berlin. I have about an hour before I need to leave to catch my train to Prague and I thought this would be the perfect chance to post a few of my favorite memories:

Meeting People: Every day held at least one new person that helped make exploring the city or drinking a few pints at the end of the day unforgettable. The most random was meeting Brook at the train station. She´s an engineering undergrad from Michigan, studying bio-sensors. We had a great night of geeking out about bio-medical research. Meeting Jason from Minnesota the first day was the best stroke of luck I had, and I can´t imagine a better final night than staying up until 4am with Iitu, and Laura (couple of Finns) and Jack (the Brit). I cant forget to mention Dawn, the chef from Toronto, who I led around the city the day after my walking tour.

Bavarian Hefeweizen: Candian wheat ale (even the stuff calling it´self Hefeweizen) doesn´t come close to the golden colour, and complex flavour of this German beer. My favourite so far is called weihenstephan.

The free walking tour(s): My first day I went on the free Brewer´s walking tour. Due to a guide being sick, we ended up going on two free tours that lasted about 6 hours in total. It was a great intro to Berlin and I saw all the major sites like the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, and the Reichstag and some more out of the way sights like the memorial for the German women who protested their Jewish husbands being sent to concentration camps.

For most of the tour I talked with Jason, who is training to be a tour guide. After the tour, we had a few pints and discussed politics, religion... all the good stuff. He showed me the best places to get curry-wurst, Hefeweizen, listen to local Berlin bands, and watch the Berlin-Stuttgart football game.

This post only scratches the surface but is already way too long. Time to go catch my train to Prague!

still alive in berlin

2007-08-19T13:13:00.000-07:00

hi world, I wanted to write an interesting post tonight but i´m beat and going to bed. It´s been a packed couple of days and this is my first time back at the hostel before midnight since I arrived. I love Berlin and have way too many stories to tell.

...The one that I will mention was when I saw some filming of this new movie about an assasination attemp on Hitler. It´s starting tom cruise. It was really weird seeing a bunch of nazi officers walking around under a nazi banner flying off of the building that used to be the headquarters for the luftwaffe. In fact everyone in the crowd i was in was noticablly uncomfortble seeing a swastika in Berlin.

In Berlin

2007-08-15T16:07:00.001-07:00

Hi all. Just a quick post to say I am in berlin with onlz minor confusion with the trains and this blasted german kezboard. the y is where the z should be! I've had a long day of travelling so i am off to bed. g'nite.

Ummm I liked the bricks

2007-08-12T12:48:00.000-07:00

Still alive and currently staying with my friend Jo in Blackwood which is just outside of Cardiff, Wales. But I think I'll do this chronologically:

Adrian was a wonderful host to not just me, but also Erin, Jenny, and Kat (Webb). On my first night Adrian and I went on a pub crawl around Oxford. Next day Erin Kat Adrian and I went punting. I actually did pretty well for my first try. Next day Kat and I took a trip to London and I saw Camden Town and Soho. The variety of life was really eye opening. The evenings at Adrian's were typically late and full of laughter and wine. We decided that we were a family where Kat and I were the parents, Erin was our illegitimate daughter, Jenny was bought on Ebay but most of the time was trying to explain how Adrian could be our daughters' "Uncle-brother".

On the 15th I dragged myself away from our happy home to go visit Jo. We've spent a lot of time in the evenings watching british comedy (movies and tv) to properly "educate" me about british culture. We've just finished watching two seasons of Spaced which stars the same guys from Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

Yesterday, Jo and I went to Cardiff Castle and there was a Medieval Festival going on! After touring the castle and watching a combat demonstration, we wondered down the street to Bute Park where there was a Hare Krishna Festival. Jo and I had some delicious samosas, watched traditional indian dancing, music and dramatic performances, and got henna tattoos on our hands. I hope it lasts all month while I'm travelling.

Today we went to Caerphilly Castle. It was a really impressive castle with a moat, numerous walls, and some war machines including a full scale trebuchet! On the way out I participated in an exit survey and when asked what I liked best, I didn't answer any of the above. Nor did I answer how seeing it in person, in 3D, and getting to touch the castle (and all the cool ruins I've seen in different cities like Rome) helps to remove a level of abstraction. It's the same as getting to do a dissection while studying anatomy. It gives the pictures and descriptions I've seen in books more meaning because now I have an idea of what they represent. No. I said... ummmm I liked the bricks.

Sorry about the length, but I've been keeping busy and my next post probably won't be for another week. Few more days here in Wales then next stop, Berlin!

In Oxford

2007-08-06T10:19:00.000-07:00

I now sit in Adrian's backyard patio table eating crackers and cheese and enjoying a nice (and cheep!) bottle of Chardonnay. Flight was uneventful and I actually got a few hours of sleep. We'll probably head out soon as I requested a pint of Guinness. I may not have been very happy to leave Vancouver, but I sure am happy to be here!

Nuremberg is nice but...

2007-08-03T20:19:00.001-07:00

Prague baby! Prague!

I've finally booked some trains so I have a plan:

Aug 6-10: Oxford
Aug 11-15: Cardiff
Aug 16-21: Berlin
Aug 22-24: Prague
Aug 25-28: Munich
Aug 29-Sept 3: London
Sept 4: Bern to resume my masters

I finished all of my work responsibilities today and between now and Sunday night, I need to move all my stuff from Rez back to my parents, book my hostels, and pack! Luckily my mom is planning a thanksgiving turkey dinner for tomorrow night so I'll be able to keep my strength up... unless the turkey puts me to sleep and I miss my flight!