date: 1105560501
mood: running to class.
listening to:
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts…
Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad
almost 50% of people watching a basketball game and counting ball basses would NOT notice a human in a gorrila suit passing through the game. our attention span is *that* narrow.
i have 30 emails in my inbox that i gotta reply to. latest one is from november.
if i spend 2 minutes per email that’s still an hour.
i have no time: second week of school and i am *swamped* with classes, readings, meetings with profs and other students, things to read, to do, to think. it is insane, how great this is. my brain is getting quite the stretch, but i am also very happy. so much intellectual stimulation!
tracking of new year’s goals:
i was 10 minutes late to today’s class. otherwise i wasn’t late anywhere this year (not that i can remember, but i’m pretty sure that no… or almost no, but it wasn’t bad, i’m improving).
my goal of leading a healthier lifestyle is working out famously. i even packed salad and wholewheatrye bread with me, and oranges/nuts for snack. superb.
goal of spending time with my dog is semi working out. i’m walking her more often, especially when i have time, such as weekend, and days when i return earlier. however this week, for the past 2 days i came back at 10, and today and tomorrow looks to be the same… which means i am *exhauhsted* and just want to relax, sleep.
sleep: i’m stupid! despite my efforts of falling asleep earlier and waking up earlier i falter. the “another 5 minutes” is the bane of my existence, i cannot beat it no matter ho hard i try. argh.
since everyone are writing about their classes, i’ll go over mine:
http://www.olya.org/schedule.html schedule and descriptions
my summary/thoughts:
neural networks: most difficult of them all, also most current/interseting in a certain aspect. i might drop this, depending on how well i do in it. the professor is very good, i must sit closer to strain to hear him less. he has a fantastic british accent, and is generally a great explainer. office hours were fun, good, helpful. subject is neural networks, and all about them,
principles of programming languages: a grad student is teaching this, however he is also pretty damn good. the class looks to be like a lot of fun, we’ll be learning 3 languages which are purely theoretical, with little real life applications (except in AI). however, theoretically, they should give me a nice base off which to study other languages further, and generally this course should provide a better insight into programming.
data structures and analysis: shortened to data structures and anal. in the u of t calendar. pretty fair too – this is going to be a hard, logic heavy class, requiring a lot of rigourous proofs, math, logic (as i said), almost no programming beyond psuedo code, and generally will be fairly difficult. thanks to last year’s precursor to this class (i took an advanced version with a more difficlt prof), this is going to be not as hard, as i’m well prepared.
cognitive linguistics: the class which i have in 10 minutes! uhm, this class is fantastic. the only drawback is that we still didn’t get any readings or h/w assigned – i am too freaking eager to get started. this seems to be like a class about all my favourite parts of programming, intellegence, cognition, linguistics, psychology, with some philosophy mixed in. the prof is great, funny, i love him. <3 superb class.
higher cognitive processes: aka the class with that prof that i wanted to study with for the past 3 years. yes, indeed, the same prof who i was going to get in my first year but unix axed him (idiots), is teaching this. i have no words, except that the prof is god. i want to listen to him forever. he explains in the most brilliant way, in a way that is both funny AND educational. this class competes with cognitive linguistics for my favourite time of the week - i cannot wait to sit in on this prof's lecture tonight, as he is *amazing*.
alright, i am late to cog lin. now you know!
(family guy: the more you know!)
oh, cool links:
http://www.apple.com/macmini
http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle
http://www.wireless….toronto.ca/maps.html