Wow, it’s only been a week since my last post but a lot has happened. So since I’ve got about 40 minutes to kill, I may as well write some more. First, the boring academic stuff:
So I went to the CS 245 tutorial last week and asked about the assignment. Even the TA had no idea what the last question was supposed to say. It was quite silly really. As for the other questions I couldn’t get, one of them was supposed to be done exactly like I thought, but it was really counterintuitive. The other one was just ridiculous on the whole; the prof said it could be done in 18 lines or so, but my solution pushed 50, and I’m still pretty sure I did it wrong. It was kind of silly. In class, we’ve spent the last week learning proof by induction. It’s always good to revisit old skills, but this is now the 3rd time I’ve learned how to do this (high school, Math 145, CS 245). It’s kinda silly. At least hopefully this week’s assignment won’t be brutally stupid like last week’s was.
Other than that, most of my classes are doing well. I had my first major Stat 230 test a little while ago. I don’t know who the proctors were; there was an Asian woman and a big guy with a red beard who gave the impression that he was the course coordinator. If he was, I don’t like him much. When he gave us the instructions (e.g. use a pencil, don’t cheat, the usual crap), it sounded like he was barking at us more than talking to us. Bad first impression. The test kind of sucked too…for someone who got 99% in Data Management without studying, I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped (I don’t know what I got yet, but it wasn’t 99%).
CS240 is also getting a bit annoying. Last week’s assignment had a full 5 questions requiring asymptotic analysis. That is, it required Calculus. I hate Calculus, especially after Math 138. I spent a good 3 or 4 hours on those 5 questions, and I’m not even sure if I got them right. I guess we’ll see.
In other news, I recently bought a Macbook. That’s right. A Macbook. I, who swore never to use Mac OS because I used Windows for so long and couldn’t possibly get used to Mac OS, bought a Macbook. Why? Ubuntu wasn’t working for me, and Windows leaks security like a sieve. Also, Mac is built on Unix, so its terminal shell looks and feels a lot like Linux, which I liked. But why didn’t Ubuntu work? A number of reasons, but the last straws were that after I formatted it (yes, I felt the need to format Ubuntu), the Ubuntu PDF reader froze when I tried to print from it (this is problematic when every assignment is required to be downloaded from the web in .pdf format) and the good text editor can’t read Unicode. Why can’t it read Unicode and why do I care? Well, on Tuesday night I spent about 1 1/2 hours on a Japanese assignment that was due for Thursday’s class. I finished it, saved it as “.doc” (because .doc is easier to share than .odt, the default type), opened it on Wednesday night to print, and all my Japanese characters had turned to question marks. Yeah. 1 1/2 hours wasted, and I had no time to redo it. Luckily, Misato-sensei gave me an extension, so I rewrote it and e-mailed it to her when I got my Mac (which doesn’t have the same problem when I use the basic text editor called TextEdit, basically an equivalent to Windows’ Wordpad). It would be easy enough to just not use .doc and do everything in odt, but this will cause a problem in about a month or so when I have to do the final term skit and have to be sending and recieving Japanese .doc files from my group members who probably will all use Mac or Windows. A couple friends of mine didn’t have these problems on Ubuntu, but after having a lot of problems already and then formatting and having more, NEW problems, I can’t be bothered to keep fixing it. All I know is that Misato-sensei uses a Mac, Prof. Trefler uses a Mac, Colin (my TA from CS241 who knows pretty much everything about operating systems) uses a Mac, and I could continue all day, and I’ve never once heard anybody have problems with Mac like I’ve had with Windows or Linux, ever. Not to mention all my programs (Starcraft, Warcraft 3, iTunes, etc.) work natively on Mac, unlike the hacks I need to get them working on Ubuntu.
So far my only complaints with Mac are that it only has 2 USB ports (I’m used to having 4, but I bought a hub to deal with that), it doesn’t have a serial video port (it has something stupid called mini-DVI and I need to buy a $25 adapter to use my Macbook with my monitor, which I’ll do if the Macbook proves to me to be to my liking), some of the moving parts (most notably my CD-ROM drive) is louder than it was on my Dell, and for some reason my “Y” key doesn’t like working properly unless I hit it extra hard from a certain angle. I’m going to go by CampusTech on Monday to try to get the latter 2 problems fixed.
Speaking of Japanese, EASIA250 looks like a pain in the butt. In case I haven’t mentioned it before, I’m going to be doing an international program to Japan in May through UW called EASIA250. It’s worth 1 credit towards the East Asian Studies diploma, which means I don’t have to take any Science courses (yay!). I go to Japan for 3 weeks. The first 2 weeks are intensive language classes 3 hours/day, 5 days/week, which will hopefully be helpful for my speaking ability, and the rest of the time is spent touring. Apparently Misato-sensei says we’ll be visiting Nintendo of Japan HQ in Kyoto while we’re there, which sounds awesome (of course, I’ll have to remember to save my 1-UP shirt for that day 
). It’s a lot of work though; I have to write a presentation before we go and then a 10-15 page paper when I return. It’s a real Arts course. But honestly, I get 1 credit towards the EAS diploma, an opportunity to improve my Japanese, a visit to NoJ, and, hell, a trip to Japan (I’ve never been outside North America, not counting the Carribean), so I’m stoked anyway.
In about 1 hour I have a meeting in the Comfy Lounge where I’m going to be interviewed to be a Frosh Leader next fall. I spent a lot of time on campus during frosh week when I worked at RIM, plus I’ve been on the Frosh Forums as a contributor and I’ve been doing this job, so I think it’ll be pretty cool to be a frosh leader. Anyway, that means it’s time to get dressed. Until next time,
Lyle Waldman
February 2, 2008 at 9:45 pm
That assignment did not require any calculus.
February 3, 2008 at 1:34 am
That STAT230 test was weird. I’m still not sure if I did the questions right.
I used to be one of those people who thought I’d never get a Mac. Now I have one and it’s pretty awesome.
Be sure to check out the app called Quicksilver. I don’t know how I’d ever live without it.
February 5, 2008 at 12:15 am
I think TRON is the other operating system, isn’t it? Just kidding. Apple has quite a following among Japanese academics, but as for me, I can’t forgive them for the junk they made back in the 90s.
I suggest you migrate to Windows XP on Japanese hardware (Sony, NEC, Fujitsu, Sharp) and install the Japanese version of Open Office 2.0–for free. It works well with Google documents (the open document format allows this).
Also, for a great Japanese language word processor, why not get the latest versions of Just System’s Ichitaro?
Not sure if these work on Unix or Linux or Mac, but Open Office is available for Linux. I think it was largely developed for the Linux world.
February 14, 2008 at 1:06 am
I have found Star Office (the pay-for version of Open Office) to be better with opening different types of wp files and in dealing with font issues. The scrambled code of Japanese correspondence and documents is still an everyday aspect of life here because of the different systems, programs, and fonts being used to generate communication. But in my experience, people who use Macs here in Japan create a lot of scrambled code. And since they are in the minority of computer users, it is convenient to blame them.