Blessed by the Potato

Well, my outreach event went fairly well for the morning half. The first class went almost exactly to plan: I went through my prepared material, the kids seemed interested, had a few good questions but were fairly quiet. The second class had a bunch of questions and we kept going off on tangents, so I only got through about 75% of my prepared material, but that was fine because the point was to get them interested in science and learning and engaged, and I think that objective was achieved.

Then in the afternoon, I was just getting going in my presentation when things fell apart. I got to the point where I was talking about feedback mechanisms between the brain and the body, and how if you hear a loud noise and are startled or scared, your heart rate will increase. And just as I finished that sentence, the fire alarm went off.

The teacher was reminding the kids to just get up and go, to leave their stuff. I grabbed by laptop and my backpack, but left the rest of my gear behind, figuring it was probably just a drill.

It wasn’t. There was unfortunately a real fire there, so I didn’t get to do the other two classes. We all had to wait around outside for a really long time — on a fairly cool May day with most people not having their jackets — with no news of what was happening inside. Finally, they let us into the cafeteria and the portables, after the last period had started. It was clear that there was an actual fire, and that the kids weren’t going back to class, but I guess since this is a school district with a lot of buses, they didn’t just release them.

So there we are, cooped up in the cafeteria with basically no news, nobody has their stuff with them to study or do anything productive, so the kids are basically just chatting, playing with their cell phones, etc. Some kids have some paper and start making paper airplanes to throw, and I go “hey, let’s take advantage of this opportunity.” So I start making a different paper airplane and throwing it around, trying to get them interested in perhaps doing something that keeps them interested in learning (that was the whole reason I’m there). I throw it down the length of a cafeteria table (an impressive distance), and a teacher at the other end picks it up, crumples it, throws it in the trash, and gives us the dirtiest look. Another teacher comes up to me and was like “I can’t believe it was a teacher throwing airplanes!” in this disgusted tone.

And I’m like “what?” It’s not like they’re throwing airplanes in the caf at lunch on a normal day. The fire drill has been going on for over an hour at this point. The police arrived to start an investigation, and no one was going back into the school proper. Some leniency in discipline should be allowed in the circumstances. Many schools have paper airplane competitions because they can be fun educational opportunities. Nobody seemed to want to do anything with the time — not tell stories on the stage, not find their class and try to continue a quasi-lesson in the field, it was just a matter of keeping the kids in-line until the buses got there at the normal end of the day.

I think that’s why, despite the fact that I like to teach, I never really wanted to become a high school teacher. Too much baby-sitting, not enough teaching. I have to temper that remark: not all teachers are more interested in getting through their day without trouble than they are in shaping young minds, kids can of course be damned draining on a person’s energy, and if you give them an inch, they will often take the yard.

Anyway, I had to wait over two hours before I could get back in the school (with an escort) to get the rest of my stuff and leave. What a day.

Brandon Sanderson fantasy epic. For some of you out there, that may be all you need to hear to go pick up the Way of Kings now that it’s out in paperback.

Once again he’s crafted a whole new world with its own set of magical rules, only this time the people themselves are only just re-discovering how the magic works, so we don’t get a clear picture of it ourselves. This can be a little frustrating at times, but that’s perhaps just the curious child in me wanting to know what the answer is, because I know he almost certainly does have one, and isn’t making this stuff up on the fly. The main characters are noble and engaging, with just enough of a flaw to their personalities to keep them interesting and relevant.

It’s extremely difficult to criticize the Way of Kings, but I don’t want to spoil too much by gushing. Fortunately, I’m very good at criticizing: first up, it’s looong. Most of it seemed very justified and engaging though, but be warned that WoK, book 1 of this Stormlight Archives trilogy, comes in at about the length of lesser trilogies. There were only one or two chapters I’d have cut, in particular the one with the fisher-people didn’t seem to have a point in this story, and wasn’t revisited in this book. I’m sure he’ll bring it up again in the next book, but it really stuck out for me as being out of place. Often, I wanted to follow one character’s story arc for longer than the chapters were laid out, so at a few points I found myself skipping ahead to the next Kaladin chapter, then going back and reading a few Dalinar chapters, etc. But that’s really stretching to find things to critique.

One final issue is that I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the book in its own right. It was definitely an enjoyable read, and I’m eager for the sequel to come out, but a lot of plot threads seemed to be left open for the following books, so I would find it a little hard to read this one as a stand-alone work. That’s somewhat troubling because according to his blog, Brandon won’t have the next book out until 2013-ish. But the writing load he’s laid out is just incredible. What would be an extremely prolific lifetime career for nearly any writer, and he seems to imply it’ll just be the next decade or so.

My favourite Brandon Sanderson work though would still have to be the Mistborn Trilogy, which I reviewed the first instalment of earlier, but linked here to the complete boxed set (which has been available for some time). I guess I should briefly mention the other two books: they were quite good, but I fell in love with the world he created most of all. I really don’t want to spoil it, but at the same time, can’t help but mention that this isn’t your typical fantasy epic. The first novel starts off halfway towards a heist movie — except instead of the charmer, computer guy, demolitions expert, and thug, we have different classes of magical allomancers working together. The whole series takes a big twist in the middle, and goes in a new and unexpected direction. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

I do not have time to follow his blog on a daily basis, but he does have some interesting material up there. For example, the deleted scenes offer some insight into the process of revisions a real author goes through. I hope I can find that useful myself: I’m a terrible one-and-done author, and I always struggle whenever revisions are needed.

A final note: some of the links above are affiliate links to Amazon. If you use those links then buy the books, I’ll get a small kickback from Amazon, so if you’re going to buy them, might I suggest doing it that way? That said, I of course don’t allow that fact to influence my reviews.

PS: Have you heard of Claritin eye drops? Magic! I’m thinking of writing a fantasy trilogy of my own, based on the wizardly use of their magical essence.

I’ve blown through multiple thesis timelines now. My last one I printed off I thought I’d actually make: submit my thesis on Friday the 13th of May (a nice, ominous day to submit), defend sometime in late June, spend July and August as a post-doc in my current lab while I went job hunting for September (convenient as many academic jobs line up with the academic terms). But here it is dawning on the 12th and despite my most recent string of all-nighters and a location change, I’m still not done this round of revisions — and there are still more to come after this. Forget June, I’ll be lucky to finish by July at this rate. My dad says to relax, a few more weeks/months isn’t going to hurt, and I need to take a vacation. I do need to take a vacation (that was the plan for after I submitted). And as much as I wanted to be done by June, July isn’t that much worse… but I just can’t keep slipping behind.

So the rest of the world is wide awake now and I’m still not in bed. Overall, not a particularly productive day in an absolute sense, but in a relative sense (vs. the last few weeks), quite productive indeed, even if it did end with a rousing game of chase-the-kitty. Which was hilarious because she ran like 5 steps into the bathroom then realized her mistake, trying to scramble out of there. I could totally see her going “Ahh! Not in there, it’s all dead ends and bathtubs!”

Anyway, I can’t believe how much work there was still to do on this thing. I thought when I finished the draft at the beginning of April I was in the home stretch and it would be all downhill from there.

It’s been another rough few weeks over here. I have revisions to make to my now-complete first draft, and though there aren’t that many, they’re taking me forever. I had hoped to be done these almost two weeks ago. I seem to have serious issues concentrating (also why there haven’t been many blog posts here), and my stress levels are once again through the roof. But it’ll be over soon (just months now!) and then I can worry about what to do with the rest of my life. To try to get my science groove on I’m even going out to give some rah-rah science! outreach talks at high schools soon, which I hope goes well.

Mother’s day seemed pretty hectic here, with dinners and brunches and last-minute shopping. I ended up getting a new pizza cutter for myself while I was at Caynes. I’m impressed enough with it that I had to give it a quick mini-review: it cuts through pizzas way better than my old ones. That might be because it’s new and sharp, but even then it seems to do a better job than they ever did: I’ve always had to go back-and-forth to get a clean cut, but this did the job in one swipe. It has a rather heavy handle (vs. the cheap plastic or wood handles of my other two), and the blade disc is held securely with no play: the other two both had fairly significant wobble in the roll of the cutter.

I was recently interviewed by a reporter from the Globe & Mail, and had a brief mention in an article as a result… but although it was my website and Potato identity that brought me to his attention, the article had no mention of either. So at least my quasi-secret identity remains safe, and I don’t have to write a tedious “welcome, G&M readers” post. However, if my understanding of comic-book lore is correct, this reporter is now in grave danger, as those who possess the information of a person’s secret identity — especially reporters with privileged sources — are abducted with uncanny regularity: whether by targeted schemes or pure evil happenstance. Fortunately, I believe the last time I updated my arch-nemesis page I selected “the geese who block the bike path by the river” and they are not the hostage-taking sort of villains.

Rob Carrick agrees with my earlier post that TD’s e-series funds are great, but hard to buy. I think it’s really weird that the fund you have to trade online requires faxing/mailing in an application to open an account, but weirder still that people like me have to write third-party user guides on how to actually manage the things.

CC weighed in before I got around to publishing this post, saying that he didn’t find the e-series that hard to set up. I don’t find it that hard from the instructions either, and have helped people set them up… but Wayfare did run into issues, mostly with the branch staff being clueless and trying to sell her on higher-MER funds, and with that conversion step not going through right away. Plus some of the other steps (like withdrawing under the HBP) are a little less clear, as Krystal found out. As much as I love the e-series funds for average investors, something’s not right when the best instruction sets and knowledgeable people are outside of TD. Anyway, I’ll repeat my best advice: use TD Waterhouse.

Deliquencies are rising in Alberta as the housing market there flattens out. I consider it more evidence that delinquencies are a trailing measure, so not very relevant in a discussion on the health of Canada’s housing market, but take it however you want (i.e.: too small to be meaningful at all is also a good way to take it).

A little article on Home Capital Group also points to some more warning signs: “He said the company is being cautious when considering loans that will go toward properties in Vancouver or downtown Toronto, because the markets are showing signs of overheating.”

Canadian Business revamped their website, breaking the RSS feeds and leading to many 404 errors for old links to their articles. The ability to comment also seems to have disappeared. But, I’ve found Larry MacDonald again, and now he seems to be moving towards believing that Vancouver at least, is in a bubble.

I’m a bit late on this, but Freddie Mac actually reported a profit this quarter. The preferreds I own (a very small speculative bet) are actually in the black now by over 30% (given the timeline though, still no better a performance relative than the index). I still don’t expect a final resolution for years yet, and this only suggests that rank insolvency is perhaps not as much of a risk — but political risk still looms large, as it didn’t look like the conservator allowed them to repay any significant portion of the bailout. Despite the recent run-up, they’re still only trading for 10 cents on the dollar, quite a reasonable discount given the return to profitability. Though I was tempted to buy more on the news, I figure I’d hold pat with my thimble-full of exposure. There’s still lots of risk here, and I don’t need to bet any more than I already have.

A short post by Saj Karsan on learning from your history, but not letting randomness influence that. I can’t dig it up now, but Michael James had a similar idea some time ago: a good decision is not necessarily the one that lead to the correct outcome in the way things played out, but one that made the most sense given the information available at the time.

A cute tongue-in-cheek site about the benefits of coal-fired electricity.

In my riding, both this election and last, 58-59% of people voted for either NDP or Liberal (the centre/centre-left parties). Last time it was 40% Liberal, so the libs got it. This time, 34% Liberal, 25% NDP, splitting the vote and letting the cons take it. The same for my parents’ riding: 49% lib, 10% NDP last time; 40% and 18.5% now, splitting the vote just enough for a con to sneak in. As you may already know from previous discussions on electoral reform, I prefer STV to PR, but nonetheless, have a read of the comparison b/w FPTP and PR at Fair Vote Canada.

Anyway, as you may expect I was disappointed by the con majority result. To be fair, I’m a curmudgeonly cynical old spud who’s managed to find fault with every government at every level, but Harper enjoys a special level of asswaditude. I had a list of things I didn’t like about the Harper government as long as my arm going into this but I think my discontent can be best summed up by one thing: a contempt for data.

The day after election day and naturally the papers are full of articles with titles like “what can we expect from a Harper majority” and I can’t help but think “who can possibly know?” It’s been a pretty ad hoc government so far, and the implementation of most of the election promises were explicitly not even going to be attempted for years. Likewise with the “now that the cons have a free hand with their majority…” articles: were they really all that constrained by the minority status of their government before?

Anyhow, as much as I’d like a better system than FPTP, I have to say how impressed I am with Elections Canada. This was the second year I’ve worked the election, and the procedures put into place for our elections seem quite well designed. The paper ballot system is elegant and nearly fool proof: there’s no conspiracy-theory allegations of manipulating the machines, and hardly any opportunity for failure. The votes are hand-counted at the end of the night in full view of candidate’s reps and any members of the public that care to audit the process. We usually have a count within an hour or so, and accurate ones at that: I’m not aware of a recount ever overturning the initial count. A small army of temporary workers are employed so that polling sites are well-distributed for convenience, and generally there are less than 300 electors per poll site so the counting job at the end of the night is not too onerous (I had about 200 yesterday, and it was a busy day with good turnout). There are many features in the process to ensure the sanctity of the vote: that the ballot put in the box is the ballot the elector was given, that only the elector marked the ballot, that it is anonymous, etc. It’s also well-designed to allow said army of temporary workers to carry it out: simple instructions, every document and envelope is numbered for reference, and flowcharts and checklists to follow to make sure everything is done right. After all, a great many workers are doing it for the first (and only) time, and even the experienced ones only do it once every few years, so it’s essentially always training day.

Personally, it was a good experience. Some decent pizza money for a day of moonlighting. It felt good to interact with people and feel confidently competent at a job. One of the downsides of research is that often I’m doing something no one else in the world has ever attempted before, and I’m in competition with the ones who have, so I have few resources to seek help or even confirmation if I’m doing something right — if there even is a right way. There’s a lot of trial-and-error-and-disappointment involved, which makes it hard to ever be sure I’m doing something right. And even though I’m a smart cookie, on the grad student/scientist scale I’m of somewhat average intelligence/competence. So it was a nice pick-me-up to be the one who knew what was going on: even my CPS was turning to me for help with procedures and to help solve problems (and she said I should be a CPS next time around). It’s also a nice motivator to remind me that clerical work and customer relations is not really what I want to do with my life.