waaaaaaant

Facebook Poll's Closing / What's Uppening

the should-i-should-i-not-get-Facebook poll is drawing to a close, with one day left to vote. as of this writing, Yes has a commanding 7-1 lead over No. nay-sayers should get on their horses and fight the good, but pointless fight. otherwise, y'all can just look forward to stalking me by the end of the week.

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and for those that are oddly interested in this sort of thing:

i started my internship this week at the elementary school i volunteered at last May, working with a grade 6 class, primarily to help them prepare for the upcoming EQAO testing.

today, i spent most of the day in the library coding an Excel spreadsheet to analyze the marks from a standardized reading test that was done earlier in the school year for the grade 7/8 class. it took a long time because a) i'm not a programmer; b) i've forgotten most of Excel; c) i'm way too ambitious about spreadsheets sometimes.

the analysis called for counting the number of students in each level per question by gender. i thought a handy COUNTIF function would suffice as i use it all the time for counting things in columns that fit a certain criteria. unfortunately, the AND function does not work in conjunction with COUNTIFs. after devising a crude workaround (sorting by gender and COUNTIFfing for those specific ranges) i happened upon a new function: SUMPRODUCT.

this function operates with arrays, which allows me to basically do a count with multiple criteria. here's the tutorial i found just after i printed out the poorly coded version. so i spent about half an hour editing everything with SUMPRODUCT formulas instead of COUNTIFs.

ex. =SUMPRODUCT((B2:B50="M")*(C2:C50=3))

to count the number of male students who scored a Level 3 on the first part of the first question.

my other accomplishments today: the teacher i am working with discovered that her sunglasses had fallen apart while sitting in the staff room during recess. one of the 'legs' fell off. after about 2 minutes of staring at the ground looking for the screw, we gave up and conceded defeat. i looked on the table and found the screw. while she went back to class to corral the students, i set about screwing the 'leg' back on with limited tools. i checked the knife drawer for something to turn the flathead screw with -- too unwieldly. i checked my wallet for a thin card -- nothing thin and strong enough. on a whim, i went to the photocopy room and rooted around the little container of miscellaneous items (staples, clips, scrap paper) and found a box-cutting razor -- success. i am king of random problem solving.

last year, i defeated the industrial stapler which had been jammed for months and neglected. prior to grade 8 graduation, i was called upon to add a student's grad photo to the framed copy in which he had been mistakenly exempted from. this required me to emulate the name font, scan a copy of the photo, crop and adjust it to the right size, learn how to disassemble a fairly complex frame and glue it down with elementary school supplies. it's still on the wall today.

tomorrow, i will try to solve the busted three-hole puncher.

i still haven't visited my babies yet, but i've seen half a dozen of them at various times in the halls. they still recognize me =D

TDSB Interview: 9 AM

tomorrow, i have my first teaching-employment-related interview with the Toronto District School Board.

what should i wear?

EDIT 17:12:
it is now well after the interview, which went as well as it could have. it was not nervewracking at all. then i went to a career fair at the civic centre. it was meh. then i went to visit the company i worked for two summers ago and after another interview, i now has a summer job. it was pretty much a 5 red car day.

yesterday, i woke up to find a message: Opera 9.5 Beta 2 was released!

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In Europe and North America, tally marks are most commonly written as groups of five lines. The first four lines are vertical, and every fifth line runs diagonally or horizontally across the previous four vertical lines, in either of the two possible directions (the popular direction may vary from region to region). The resulting mark is known as a five-bar gate, from its similarity to the same. [...]

Chinese, Korean and Japanese tally marks use the five strokes of 正 which is the character meaning "correct" "proper" and "honesty."

from Wikipedia

this is the proper time to close the gate. and maybe get a different perspective.

By the Numbers: Compatibility

ever wonder how those matchmaking sites find people to make matches?

i always thought it'd be something like this:

Matchmaker 1: okay, it's your turn to throw the darts.

Matchmaker 2: so we're putting the green ones together?

Matchmaker 1: and the blues. try to get them in the nostrils.

Matchmaker 2: don't we have to send these photos back?

alas, this is not the case (because matchmakers cannot throw darts). in actuality, they use the power of maths to hook you up with someone compatible.

they don't even know me; how can they possibly find someone that matches? you might ask.

when you sign up with a matchmaking service, you undergo rigorous psychological testing to determine your personality in finite, objective terms; it's a questionnaire. the results of your test are plotted into a vector generator. a vector is like a coordinate (x, y), but has an anchor at (0, 0), thus forming a line. the vector of your personality, lets call it [y1, y2, y3, ... yn], is then dropped into a databank of other desperate lonely folk's personality vectors and a computer runs them through a stiff algorithm: the dot product.

finding the dot product between two vectors is quite fun. you take the number in the first dimension from one vector and multiply it with the number in the first dimension of the other vector and add it to the product of the numbers in the second dimenion and the third and so on:

x dot y = x1y1 + x2y2 + ... xnyn.

this is equivalent to the product of the two vector's magnitudes (lengths) and the cosine of the angle between the two:

x dot y = |x||y|cos(theta).

the computer solves for the angle and uses it to determine the strength of compatibility. really small angles between two vectors mean that they are very similar, and therefore compatible. angles of around 180 degrees are also considered compatible since opposites attract. the computer then compiles a list of candidates for each person based on the data.

decisions, decisions

lots of people i likely will not see again after june. facebook? vote.

Edit: there is a poll in the sidebar. i haven't figured out how to put a poll in a post yet.

i have finally decided...

on a favourite animal: the breathtakingly gorgeous snow leopard.

from BBC's Planet Earth:


WANT.

Porcelain Philosophy 10: Resonance

according to kinetic molecular theory, everything that has even a smidgen of energy in it -- i.e. has a temperature greater than absolute zero -- is vibrating. by and large, macroscopic objects vibrate very slowly, so you're unlikely to notice them doing so. this vibration is usually referred to as natural frequency: the number of times an object oscillates (moves back and forth) in one second, measured in units of Hz.

physically speaking, everything in the universe has a natural frequency -- even you and me. metaphysically speaking, i would like to posit that everything also has a natural frequency on a spiritual, emotional, psychological, moral, philosophical level. in people, this is manifested as our personalities, codes of ethics and interests. it dictates what we are attracted to or what we are repulsed by, who we get along with and who we really can't stand, why candy tasted so awesome as a kid but has since lost its appeal 10 years later. it's all in the resonance.

have you seen the physics demonstration of two equivalent tuning forks affixed to sound chambers? ringing one fork results in the other ringing apparently on its own accord, without any visible connection (wires, etc) between the two. click here to watch.

this happens because tuning forks of equivalent frequencies resonate with each other (and anything else with a similar natural frequency). when a tuning fork is struck, the tines vibrate at their natural frequency, compressing the air in regular intervals, thus generating a sound at that frequency. when an equivalent tuning fork is held near, the air compressions (sound waves) push against this new fork's tines in regular intervals -- the same intervals, or frequency, as that of their origin.

if you impart a force, even a very small one, at the same frequency as an object's natural frequency, it will move, regardless of how big it is relative to the force. think of it like this: a big kid is sitting on a swing and wants his little sister, who is 1/3 his size, to push him really high. since it is physically impossible for her to do so with one push, she does the smart thing and gives little pushes every time her brother reaches the apex of the swing, just as gravity begins to pull him forward again. eventually, the swing will have accrued enough energy to make the boy happy. same thing with the tuning forks. little bursts of air pressure at the natural frequency of a metal tuning fork can set it in motion. even on something as large as a bridge, resonance can move the entire structure.

frequency can also be understood as wavelength; since everything has a frequency, everything has a wavelength, and is thus a wave. when waves meet, they combine together (superposition principle) by adding together. crests adding to crests makes bigger crests; troughs adding to troughs make deeper troughs, etc. this is called interference. resonance is an example of constructive interference, when everything lines up to make the wave amplitude greater. conversely, there is destructive interference, in which the waves add up to reduce the amplitude.

each person is a bundle of personality, experience, morals, emotions, and thus has a complex set of natural frequencies. things in the world also have frequencies that bombard us daily. some of these things resonate with us; we interpret them usually as, "i like that" or "that was pleasant" or "OMG i'm in love." strong negative feelings are also examples of resonance. the resultant amplitude of the wave interference indicates the intensity of these feelings, be it love or hate. of course there are also things and people that just seem to have no effect whatsoever on us; they are things that are so uninteresting to us that we are essentially blind to them. destructive interference is happening there.

as you grow and accumulate experience, your natural frequencies will inevitably change; the frequencies that hit you everyday will mold you into something different. think back to the tuning fork demonstration; one could prevent resonance by simply adding a mass to one of the tines of one of the forks (like a lump of plasticine). this happens to us too: see enough hypocrisy and you'll grow cynical; watch your mother get hacked up with a chainsaw when you're 3 years old and you'll turn into a serial killer devoid of emotion; spend a lot of time with someone and you'll pick up the same mannerisms, habits, preferences. by the same token, these 'masses' can be shed if you know where to look, restoring your original frequencies, for better or worse.

The Plan: revisited

looks like i'm not the only one thinking MBs and MBPs are due for a redesign by this year's Q3. if you recall, back in February, i said that a redesign was most likely.

of course, one should take everything written by AppleInsider with a grain (or boulder) of salt; they are not the most reliable. in this case, however, they're simply stating the obvious. the Montevina chipset necessitates a change in the way computer makers interface with the hardware, so its inception this June is a logical time to push a redesigned chassis.

along those lines, it is also time for the various Mac product lines to become more uniform. the latest iMacs, Mac Pros, iPods and iPhones have established a new trend for Apple, leaning away from the hallmark white plastic that was so prevalent during the company's meteoric rise out of Microsoft's shadow. almost everything is now aluminum alloy with splashes of black and glass, save for the Mac Mini, Airport/Time Capsule, Mighty Mouse, Apple TV and Macbooks.

what i'm hoping for is an unholy menage a trois between a Macbook Pro, Black Macbook and Macbook Air, producing a 13" matte black aluminum alloy notebook that is 0.75" thin all around (without that silly cheese slice tapering), with the same keyboard, screen and touchpad as a Macbook Air.

Battlestar Galactica

Last Friday marked the premiere of Battlestar Galactica's final season. In Canada, it is on the Space Channel, Fridays at 10 pm.

For the uninitiated, the premise of the re-imagined version of BSG follows that of the original 1970 version (which was really campy and obviously trying to play off the popularity of Star Wars, Star Trek and Bonanza). Somewhere in the galaxy are 12 planets, colonized by humans originating from the planet Kobol. The human race developed an artificial intelligence and manufactured machines to do their work called Cylons (a la Terminator, The Matrix, Blade Runner and a host of other science fiction plotlines). Realizing their lot in life was a bit of a raw deal, the Cylons rebelled, and a great war was fought. During the course of this war, the humans and Cylons reached an armistice (peace agreement); for 40 years they lived apart, the humans with their 12 colonies and the Cylons finding their own region of space. The truce is broken suddenly when the Cylons launch a surprise, all-out offensive that decimates the 12 Colonies in a flourish of nuclear strikes. Battlestar Galactica is the story about the survivors, a rag-tag fleet of ships being led in a glactic convoy to safe harbour and possibly a new home by the Battlestar Galactica, the sole remnant of a once vast military force.

What sets this show apart from the original (and the 1980s reboot) and other space exploration shows? Firstly, they nuked the campiness that drove the original to an early, merciful demise. Unlike most science fiction shows floating around, the technology and alien themes that litter those lesser shows take a backseat to true storytelling: character drama, political/sociological/moral/philosophical dilemmas and a rich tapestry of moods (primarily post-apocalyptic darkness). This show was developed around the same time Joss Whedon's Firefly was in production. There are similarities between the two, especially the way both shows eschew the clean cut sterility of 20th Century futurism, opting instead for a grittier, dirtier realism (through documentary-style filming) and exploration of current themes and questions against a backdrop of space. Also, the actors are all extremely hot.

There is a lot more that can be said, but I don't have the resources or the space to do so. There are professionals who can take you through a tour of the show and provide insightful commentary. I'd ask you all to watch it (because it awesomes like nothing else), but since it is a highly serialized show, you'd be frustratedly at-a-loss from the get-go.

Fortunately, SciFi Channel, the American carrier of the show, has done us all a solid by whipping up an 8-minute recap video. Needless to say, if you haven't seen the show before, spoilers ahead.

Other Links:
Official Site
TWoP Episode Recaps (warning: long winded)
Battlestar Galactica Wiki - a comprehensive compendium of all things BSG
Galactica SITREP - for all the latest news etc.

has u Flickr?

no u how Flickr sez HAI in srsly lots langwiges?

cliksie FTW

LOLSpeak Dictionary: The Definitive Lolcats Glossary
ICanHasCheezburger.com: Lolcat Central
LOLSpeak as a Second Language in 5 Easy Steps
The Lolcat Bible Translation Project

to do, or not to do; that is the question

TES:
[.] Portfolio (HUGE) - Due: Thursday April 10
[.] Problem-Based Unit (Portion) - Due: Thursday April 17

SS:
[.] Research Paper (Large-ish) - Due: Thursday April 17
[.] Presentation (Portion) - Due: Thursday April 10

PHY:
[.] Unit Test (meh) - Due: Friday April 11

ENG:
[.] Article Summary/Discussion (meh) - Due: Tuesday April 8
[.] Read short story + poem (meh) - Due: Tuesday April 8

i am so very slow at intarnet

the best Chuck Norris Fact in recent memory: Chuck Norris swallowed a Rubik's Cube; when he pooped it out, it was solved.

The Mystery of the Lost USB Drives

just in these past two weeks, i have found and returned two misplaced USB drives thanks to nifty detective work. it feels awesome to combine 3 things i love: finding things, returning things and nifty detective work.

during the last week of my practicum, my associate teacher ambled over and told me that a pencil case was left in her mailbox, presumably belonging to one of her students. as it was Literacy Test Day, and she was on duty in some classroom, i was tasked with divining the owner of this pencil case. fortunately, a USB drive was among the items of said pencil case. i dug through a few files and came across a group geography presentation bearing 4 names (first names and initials). at first i did not recognize any of them, so my brain kicked into the next gear and i made some clever inferences, noting that this was a group of boys, in grade 9 Geography, none of whom seemed to be in Visual Art. and then i recognized one of the names after i told someone else that i didn't know any of the names and it was good.

this morning, i arrived to class back at the faculty of Ed. to help fellow students set up for their presentations (word had gotten out that computer wiring did not freak me out like it does everyone else). of course, no one was there, so i chatted with my instructor, who actually remembers teaching my associate teacher from this most recent practicum (that means both of my associates were taught by him!). throughout the course of setting up the computer, we found a tiny little USB drive nestled between the USB mouse cable and the edge of the computer, still jacked into the computer. seeing as how i had arrived for class 40 minutes early, i explored the contents of the drive. mouseovers of the documents yielded a document creator name. i was about to dig through the directory of Teacher Candidates when i noticed this student's resume! well, that was too easy. with name AND email address in hand, i quickly fired off a message relaying the happy news and arranged for the little drive to be stored safely in my instructor's office. it felt good, but i sort of wanted a bit more of a challenge.

these recent events, and the fact that a friend of mine lost her drive at the computer lab earlier this year, inspired me to safeguard my USB drive from being lost because of shoddy detective work, or insufficient clues. malicious intent, i cannot change, but any help i can give to a Good Samaritan will make it easier for him or her to do so. i wrote a little message with my contact information for whoever might find my USB drive and saved it as a text file.