Math on Wheels

On the way to school this morning I saw a car that was very solidly pink. It stood out because it's not the sort of thing one sees every day - certainly not a common colour for a car. Its license plate also had the word "PINK" in it, so I guess the driver must really like pink.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Grinding for Fun and Profit

I spent much of my weekend grinding in some fashion - mostly either marking assignments or by staining a fence. Neither was particularly "fun" nor "profitable" (though I suppose I do get paid for marking, though not enough) and I didn't even go up a level. Oh well. Fence staining was slightly more fun than marking since it at least got me outside on a pleasant day and did involve some interaction with friends, so it wasn't all bad.

I'm TAing one of the first year CS courses again this term which mostly involves marking assignments. I've TA'd this course before and it's about as boring as I remember. Somehow, marks seem to be worse than the last time I TA'd this course, though it could be that the online system we're using for marking makes it easier to be pickier about things over all. Meh, whatever.

Today, I'm actually doing some research related work, mostly some planning and reviewing before I dive into coding something. Part of this involved digging out some manga and skimming through it. I think it's pretty awesome that I can read comics and justify it as "work".

Freak Out,
-TFitC

In The Works

Over a year ago, in my comic-based post (which I really should do again some time), I mentioned my QRT project and implied that I would write more about it in the "near" future. Well, it's been a while and the post has not yet appeared. And before anyone gets their hopes up, this isn't that post either.

However, I have been making progress on the project and recently got to the point where I can now script talking to NPCs - sort of. I haven't implemented the conversation system that I plan to do eventually, so for now it's really just displaying simple text boxes but hey, it's something! This also means that QRT can almost do everything that FR could back in highschool, and is much better implemented and far more flexible to boot. So, yay!

I shall no doubt talk more about this "soon" (possibly more than anyone really wants to hear about) and hopefully "soon" will actually mean soon, this time, and not a year or more.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

This Just In!

Hey! Today is the last day of September.

Just thought I'd let everyone know.

Freak Out,
-TFitC
(This message brought to you by the committee for inflating post counts.)

The Road Goes Ever On

I recently completed my "20th anniversary" read through of The Lord of the Rings (save for the appendices which won't take long) that I began back on the 20th anniversary of receiving The Fellowship of the Ring and The Hobbit for Christmas (commemorated in this post).

I do not recall when I finished my very first read through of The Lord of the Rings as I don't remember whether or not I received The Return of the King for Easter or my birthday. If it was for my birthday (as seems most likely since I do recall that I got The Two Towers for Easter) then I probably wasn't too far off my original finishing date either, but that's just guesswork on my part.

Obviously, I took my time reading, but I've had other distractions along the way such as course projects and also read Tolkien's take on a couple of old Norse legends (in "The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun") somewhere in there.

Still, I enjoyed The Lord of the Rings as much as I always do. Certain things always seem to affect me in some way - like the Ride of the Rohirrim, Eowyn facing down the lord of the Nazgul and Frodo slowly having his mind eaten away by the ring as they approach Mount Doom, just to name a few.

I often also seem to pick up on something new each time I read the book. This time, it was from the final chapter "The Grey Havens" when Sam is agonizing over what to name his first child (a daughter), Frodo suggests naming her Elanor, after the flowers in Lothlorien, meaning "sun-star" as he says. That made me go "Huh! That is actually what that means..." If my readers will allow some linguistics, in Tolkien's elvish, "el" is "star", found in such names as "Elbereth" (star queen) or "Elrond" (star dome - if memory serves) and "anor" is "sun" as in "Minas Anor" (tower of the sun), the original name of Minas Tirith.

Anywho, as always I have enjoyed my latest journey through Middle-Earth, one which I shall no doubt undertake again in the future.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Cape-Freak Vs. The Internets

Hmm. Well, ok, so I'm not actually going up against the internets or anything. The title of today's post is simple a clever, clever play on the Scott Pilgrim movie title. *shifty eyes* What? I am to clever. *pout*

But anywho, the main point here is to say that I saw "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" last week and quite enjoyed it. I'm not going to get into too many specifics at the moment since you really should go out and see it - if you like comics and/or games you'll probably enjoy it - I'm just going to limit my comments to one or two things that I particularly liked.

Visually, I really liked the comic book style sound effects that they used and think they really worked well. In a way, it's kind of like the old 60s Batman show (at least I think it was from the 60s, that was before my time) but obviously much better integrated to the point where it just seemed natural.

Some of the video game references were also quite good, some audio as well as visual - some Legend of Zelda music plays briefly during the opening scene. Fun stuff.

The movie also has a lot of Canadian content. It's based on a comic book by a Canadian author, set and filmed in Toronto, has at least some Canadian actors and also has some close-ups of Canadian coinage, among other things.

I am certainly quite interested in getting the original comics now, so that's something I'll have to look into.

It seems I've been babbling on for long enough now so I think I'll take the opportunity to sign out.

Oh, by the way, also google "Scott Pilgrim vs the Animation" - it's not a spoiler for the movie (but is related to it) so it's safe to look up even if you haven't seen the movie yet.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Marking Sucks

So, after not having posted in a while, I return to complain about being a TA! Excitement! Well, there are a few other details, but first with the complaining!

For the course that I'm TAing this term, the people in charge decided that each TA would mark an entire assignment, by themselves. Thus I have found myself, over this long weekend, spending a lot of time marking assignments which really sucks. As I've no doubt mentioned before, marking is generally boring and this assignment has been really painful to mark. First, the course material is not in my area of interest (thus I don't particularly care for it much) and second, most of the questions are actually hard to mark because they're the sort of thing where one has to try and follow the student's train of thought which is not always easy, especially since I do try to figure out what the students are trying to do and give part-marks rather than just put in a big X when something's wrong.

On the plus side, since I only mark one assignment it means I haven't had to do TA work for most of the term (besides the midterm), but I honestly think this is too much for one person to do in any reasonable amount of time and I think I'd prefer having the pain spread out a bit. Having each TA do half the marking for two assignments would, I think, be a better arrangement.

In less complainy news, I discovered a new recipe last night! Its from the (now much abused) cook book that I've had for ages and is a recipe for hamburger-vegetable soup. It turned out quite tastey and is definitely going on my will-make-again list.

I also managed to sneak in a little bit of work on the QRT project this weekend despite the marking (and some FASS work today), which I really must write about in more detail sometime, and not just because I said I would about a year ago and never did.

Well, that's all for the present.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Star Trekking

Last night I went to a concert by the K-W symphony orchestra with a couple of friends, my brother (though he's not a Trek fan) and my sister-in-law. This wasn't what you might call a regular concert as the orchestra was playing the music of Star Trek. This included themes from several (though not all) of the movies and most of the television series. As I first started watching Star Trek with The Next Generation (it was still airing new episodes at the time), that theme was, for me, probably the most iconic.

The concert was hosted by John De Lancie (Q) and Robert Picardo (The Doctor on Voyager). The concert, as a whole, was quite entertaining and I was particularly amused when the hosts referred to the Governor General as "The Queen's Grand Negis." Some of the concert goers were in costume (though not a lot) - most were in Star Fleet uniforms though there were a couple of Klingons in the audience. There were also several orchestra members in costume, which I thought was rather nice for them to be allowed to do that.

Anyway, it was an entertaining evening and also quite nostalgic at times.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Up For Air

So, not much has been happening here lately, it seems, or nothing worth flogging about, at any rate. The course projects for my last two courses were finished up at the end of last month and they were eating up much of my time. Since then I've spent a couple weeks taking it easy and not thinking about projects at all. But now that some time has passed, I've put together a web page for the non-photorealistic rendering project which I alluded to previously.

The images can be viewed at the results page and, for those who are so inclined, some of the technical details are on the main project page.

Now I'm getting back into the swing of things, focusing on research and also continuing my work on the QRT project again, which I still haven't blogged about though I've been meaning to. Well, sooner or later.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Status Update

Over the past few weeks I've been madly at work on my two course projects. Should I ever be in the position again where I need to take any courses I must remember NOT to take more than one project course per term. These things have a way of eating up all available time. Anyway, I'm almost finished - the projects are due by the end of day tomorrow (Wednesday). After that, I think I'm going to declare myself to be on a two week vacation since I've been work at least a little bit most days these past few weeks and I could use a break (not all on projects mind you as I did lose a few days to proctoring and marking - not fun). I'll blog some more about the individual projects once they're officially done, but for now here's a preview:

Also, it seems that the 'S' key on the USB keyboard that I use with my laptop has become terminally non-functional meaning I'll have to get a new keyboard in the near future. Ah well.

Freak Out,
-TFitC