There's a facebook group website for that

In case you've ever had a hard time remembering the name of a band that never actually existed, Rocklopedia Fakebandica is exactly what you need.

As an added bonus, I checked, and, despite what the 10 or more facebook groups entitled "There's a facebook group for that" [1] would have you believe, there isn't actually a facebook group for that. And before you suggest it, I'm not going to be the one to create it. The privilege is all yours. Have at it! (how did I manage to make the side-note longer than the note?)

[1] Or some crude variant thereof.

Caveat Emptor

Today I went to the store to buy a pen. A black pen. You see, I'm filling out some forms which ask me to please use a black pen. I suspect a blue one is fine, but I hate filling out forms [1], and buying a new black pen now is preferable being told later that I have to fill out the forms again that time being sure to use a black pen that I must buy, even if this latter possibility is remote. It's possible that I have a black pen somewhere, but looking for it is only slightly less unpleasant than looking for information on the minute details of my life [2] that the forms require.

While I was there, I saw the pencil that I bought a few months ago. Not specifically the one that I bought, since that one was in my desk, but the same make and model. I haven't used it in a while. It's a mechanical pencil and the lead ran out a while ago. When I went to replace it, I noticed that the lead size is 0.3mm. What a strange beast. Most mechanical pencils use 0.5mm leads. Bic's disposable ones use 0.7, and I've seen a few more non-disposables that use that size in the last couple years.

I had never seen a 0.3mm. I suppose I should have looked a little more carefully when I bought it, instead of being taken in by the colour of the pencil [2]. Though one doesn't tend to go out of their way to make sure that a thing doesn't have an attribute they would never expect the thing to have. In any case, I decided that I would pick up some 0.3mm leads while I was there. Except there weren't any. There was a sign up saying that 0.3mm leads were $2.25 per package, compared with $1.25 per package for 0.5,0.7, and 0.9 (all of which they did have, in differing quantities). I also took a look to remind myself how much I had paid for the pencil. The price was also about twice as much as that of the other mechanical pencils.

I'm not sure what use anyone would have for such a pencil. The lead kept breaking on me while I was writing. I thought the pencil was broken, as was the case with an older pencil when the lead broke more often than I thought it should. One would need a gentle hand in order for this not to happen, but even with 0.5 lead, I would often get complaints from people who had to read my work that my writing was too light. If I wrote any lighter with a 0.3mm, you'd barely be able to see what I wrote.

So, next time you buy a mechanical pencil, be sure to check the lead size. Otherwise you may end buying a pencil which costs more to buy leads that the store might not even sell, costs more to use, if you can even find the replacement parts, and must be used in such a way that you may as well not be using it at all. All in all, it's a rather expensive way to communicate poorly. You can mumble for free to achieve the same end.

You've been warned.

[1] Is it just me or is there always some entry in the form that you're just not sure how to fill out? Sometimes there are two entries which seem to be asking for the same thing. Or one entry where there are two rather different things that you could fill in. In the case of one of the forms that I'm filling out now, there is a box within a box. The larger box is for my Full given name, but there is no explanation for the smaller box. There are instructions to underline or circle the name used, so maybe that's what this smaller box is for. But then why ask me to underline or circle if I'm supposed to put the name used inside the box? Topologically, a box and a circle are homeomorphic, but I imagine that even most topologists would probably care to maintain the distinction on a form that they have to fill out. And underlining or circling is certainly different from putting in a box. Even for a topologist. I hate filling out forms.

[2] Tip: If you ever plan on working for the Department of National Defence, be sure not to move to many times in the five year period before you plan to work for them. Record all address and contact info if you do.

[3] Red.

For a variety of open wounds?

I just got back from a short trip to A&P. The A&P in downtown Kingston. I was buying some cheese. Mozzarella. When I looked up from the cheese display, I saw a number of crystalline formations in jars and small plastic containers. They were salt. Many varieties of salt. Sea salt to be precise. In big lumps. A salt grinder will probably be needed for most applications. I'm both fascinated and annoyed. Fascinated because I wonder about the different flavours that the salt could have (and wonder if they actually are all that different from each other). I'm similarly fascinated by anything that comes many varieties, such as tea, but perhaps excluding breakfast cereals. I'm annoyed because, while they have ten different types of sea salt, they only have one brand of peanut butter, besides store brand. It's not brand that I prefer. They have Kraft. I like Skippy. It used to be the one with the peanut on top. Now it's not. I still like it better, though [1].

I left the store and started walking home when I spotted a car that looked just like mine. A second's reflection revealed that it was mine. I'm glad to have noticed this, since I don't think this particular A&P takes kindly to people who leave their cars there [2]. There isn't much of a time savings to driving there, if any, so normally I walk. Tonight (or rather yesterday night, as it has taken me so long to write this post that it is now very early this morning), however I was driving an injured friend around, and stopped at A&P on my way home. Familiarity being a natural habitat of contempt, however, the memory that I had driven there had almost been replaced by routine. Thankfully I parked my car where I would see it. I'm not always so lucky.

[1] One time I bought a jar of Kraft, because it came in a big jar. A bigger jar than the biggest jar of Skippy. When I got home, I looked at the jar and realized that in my excitement to enjoy the benefits of cost of scale, I neglected to look even remotely carefully at the label. I still have it. It's yours free if you want it.

[2] It's probably the largest free parking lot in the downtown area. But it's only free to its customers. They've usually got a security guard on patrol to make sure that the people who use it also enter the store.

Permanent Gas Tax Vacation

Were it not for a certain friend, I'm not sure this blog would still be funct. While I do get feedback from various people here and there, she is the only one who actively encourages me to write. A few nights ago, I had some spare time that I should have been spending washing dishes, but didn't want to. I thought about writing something to this blog, but nothing came to mind. I mentioned this to my friend, who suggested I write on the gas tax holiday. I had seen this phrase bandied about on the internet, but I didn't know what it was despite a small effort to figure out what was meant. She filled me in. The idea is that taxes on gas would be lowered during the summer months when demand for gasoline is at its peak. I assume the purpose of lowering taxes would be to make summer vacations more affordable, because you can only enjoy vacation if you've driven your car really far away from home (just ask the people who come to your hometown for holidays). But having learned about this policy only at the moment at which it was suggested I blog about it, I didn't think I'd have anything more to offer than what had already been written by those who were following it more closely, so I asked her what she wanted me to write. She suggested I write a Canadian perspective on the issue. I still didn't think that I had much to offer, other than the fact that I am a Canadian offering my perspective. Here is what I concluded: it doesn't seem like a good idea. I can't say precisely why. Or even approximately. Of course, everyone likes to pay less for anything, and lowering taxes is one way to acheive that, though I'm not sure that it effective it would be in the long run. Our Prime Minister doesn't think it would be (and that, my friends, is what makes it a Canadian perspective. The Canadian government told us so). It just doesn't strike me as good policy. My opinion on the matter seems to agree with that of actual economists (I guess that includes the Prime Minister, since he has a master's degree in economics), so I'll leave it up to them to justify my mine.

Besides, if you actually convert gallons to litres, and American currency to Canadian currency (or vice versa), and then dig deeper [1] to see why the prices are so different, you would see that the greatest source of the discrepancy is the amount of taxes that Canadians pay on gasoline. So compared to Canada, every day is a gas tax holiday in the US.

Meanwhile, as American presidential candidates discuss lowering gas taxes, one provincial government and at least one Canadian prime-ministerial hopeful is proposing just the opposite. Starting July 1, British Columbians will be paying 2.4 cents extra per litre on a myriad of fossil fuels, which will gradually increase to 7.2 cents in 2012. Stephane Dion says he's going to propose the same type of policy federally. Dion says a lot of things though. The gas tax is supposed to be revenue neutral in both jurisdictions, so that as taxes on gas are increasing, income taxes will decrease and, on average, the governments collect the same amount of taxes per person, but with a heavier burden being paid by heavier carbon consumers. While the Liberals of BC and of Canada want to tax consumers directly, the federal New Democrat and Conservative Parties are proposing to tax corporations instead. It doesn't surprise me to hear this from the NDP. They (or perhaps it's their supporters) have hardly been shy about their anti-corporate sentiment in the past. I'm not sure why the Conservative Party would go this route, though. I guess they can't copy their competitors, even though a revenue neutral gas tax seems more consistent with their rhetoric of free-market solutions to carbon emissions. Not only that, but it would be inconsistent with their 2% lowering of the GST (why reduce one kind of sales [2] tax only to hit us with another?).

Presumably, paying more tax on gas would lead consumers to use less of it. Or want to. We really don't like to pay taxes, and despite the convenience offered to us by automobiles and home heating and cooling, we don't like paying for gas. Paying taxes on gas just multiplies the unpleasantness. The desire to pay less for gasoline would then lead to a demand for products that use less gas, which would ultimately lead to the evil corporations producing such products. At least that's how I understand it. Of course, it is possible that taxing corporations would have the same net effect, except that it's easier for corporations to get around such measures (a little tidbit I picked up from an econ grad student earlier today). There are probably many factors at play here, and I can think of a few other things that might be relevant, but I'm an armchair economist at best [3] so I'll keep my analysis short. There may be some resulting unintended consequence to higher taxes on fossil fuel in exchange for lower income taxes, but based on the expert opinions I've heard over the last few years on taxation in general, the Liberal policy makes more sense [4].

Perhaps I'm just being selfish, however. I own a car, but I don't drive it much, and now that I'm not a student anymore, I'm no longer protected by the government from paying income tax. Under Dion's plan, I could stand to gain.

[1] These days, a breakdown of the price per litre is given on the receipt or displayed on the gas pump at many gas stations, so you don't need to dig that deep.

[2] Technically speaking either the GST or the gas tax, or both, might not be sales taxes, but rather a value added tax and a Pigovian tax respectively. Taxes are complicated.

[3] Really. I'm sitting in an armchair as I write this.

[4] First I endorse an NDP MP's plan to abolish the penny. Now I endorse a Liberal tax policy. Have I changed my political persuasions? Doubtful that it's me who has changed.

Beer Notes

A while ago, I was at the Kingston Brewing Company with a few friends. It's actually a restaurant, and, as the name of the place suggests, they themselves brew most of the beer they sell. So it's actually a brewpub, and since it's the only brewpub in town, it's The Brewpub. Normally I opt for one of their regular self-brewed offerings. If I'm there long enough to order a second pint or pitcher, I might try one of the "brewer's whims". They aren't as whimsical as the label might suggest, since most of them seem to be seasonal offerings, connected with some local event, like Queen's Homecoming, Kingston Blues Fest, First Capital Day, or Winter. Whimsical or not, though, they're usually tasty. Not everything they sell is their own. You can get Guinness, and a number of lesser-made brews, mostly from Ontario and Quebec breweries that haven't yet been bought by Molsons or Labatts. If I'm in the mood for variety, but none of their whims are sufficiently appealing (or sufficiently existing), I might go for one of these non-brewpub brews. This was the case the last time I was there. One of the beers that they had was a Coffee Porter from Toronto's Mill Street Brewery. The owner (or co-owner) of the Neustadt Springs Brewery had suggested this one to me a couple years ago when they were still selling their beer on site. So I was curious and I finally had an opportunity to try it without making too much of a financial commitment. I was also cautious. While I enjoy both beer and coffee, I wasn't sure that I would enjoy both together. So I only ordered a half pint. I'm not enough of a beer connoisseur to know when a beer is malty, hoppy, or has overtones of anything, so I don't have anything to offer in that regard. All I can say is that I should have asked, "Does it come in quarter pints?" After my first mouthful, I wondered whether I was going to be able to finish the remaining 221.8ml.

A couple years ago, Creemore Springs, one of Ontario's bigger micro-breweries was bought out by Molson. I thought to myself, and probably said to a few people, that I should drink as much of their flagship lager as possible before Molson ruins it. It was a cynical comment, and perhaps premature. When the takeover took place, customers were assured that Creemore Springs would still operate independently, and so there did remain some hope, albeit guarded, that the quality of the beer wouldn't change. A few weeks ago, I had some again, probably the first time since last August. Now it may be all in my mind, but this time it tasted like I was right to drink as much as I could immediately after the buyout. There may be other factors at play. Perhaps they were at the tail end of a keg, so I wasn't drinking their product in its best form. Maybe the onion rings I was eating just before changed the way that beer tasted. It's still not bad, mind you. It just seems that it's not quite as good as it used to be.

This past Tuesday, I went out to the Iron Duke, a new bar in an old location, with a friend for drinks. He was pretty excited for something he called Beau's organic. (Searching for "Beau's organic" on google, however, won't get you very far. The actual name of the beer is Beau's Lug-Tread.) He arrived before I did and had already ordered the beer by the time I got there. The beers that I like tend to be hard to see through. When the pint was poured, I saw that this one wasn't, so I was sceptical that I would like it. I was pleasantly surprised, however, by how good it tasted (again, I lack the expertise to accurately describe what made it taste so good to me). I was also surprised by the spelling of the name, and the size of the bottle that it came in. Only having heard the name, I thought it would be spelt Bows, or perhaps Bose. And the container? It's a behemoth 3.78 L [1] brown bottle with a $4.00 deposit, certainly a sight to behold. Though, at least at this pub, it was not a bottle to be held and taken home. My friend offered the waiter the $4.00 deposit to keep the jug, and then $10. The bribe was not enough, and he went home jugless. You can get it at the liquor store (Though possibly not at the beer store. Ontario liquor laws, you are awesome!), but only in 1.89 L [2] bottles. Questions of spelling and containment aside, though, I would recommend trying this before it gets bought by Molson.

The Iron Duke also deep fries a mean sweet potato fry. Normally I don't like sweet potato fries, but I couldn't stop eating these.

[1] Or 1 American gallon. Canada's conversion to metric has gone swimmingly, don't you think?

[2] Or 0.5 American gallon. Or 2 pints. Once again. Way to go metric conversion.

Penny Problems

Last weekend, I went home. While there, my sister told me that, unlike me, she likes the penny. I didn't think to ask her why. While this disappoints me, it does provide me with a solution to two problems. First, I know what to get her for her birthday. Second, I know what to do with all of my pennies.

Since my most recent post on the matter, I've read a few more things here and there about the potential discontinuation of the penny. I don't feel like looking them up, so there will be many links. There may be no facts as well. In any case, here we go. CTV did one of their online polls, and there was a majority in favour getting rid of it. Some bank type group thinks we should have gotten rid of it long time ago. They suggest we get consider ditching the nickel too (though, according to them, that would mean ditching the quarter and adding a 20 cent coin (a quinter?)). Colby Cosh seems to advocate getting doing away with it, but thinks the reverse of the coin is a fine piece of art (though not botanically correct). I visited Pat Martin's website just now to see what progress the legislation has made. Here's the latest on the topic. It says nothing about the progress, and little about the details.

It's seems pretty clear that, based on the information available, the penny is not all that useful. There are only a couple of reasons for keeping, aside from tradition, which shouldn't have much currency when making decisions about something whose only purpose is to serve as a tangible symbol for how much money you have. Firstly, I agree with Cosh that it would be a shame to throw the artwork out with the coin. Not only that, but the penny does do the most to add some colour to a pile of change. The yellowish colour of loonie and the centre of the toonie just doesn't cut through the silvery colour of the more common coins like the copper of the penny. Now it's unlikely that we'll do away with the nickel just yet, even though that is advocated by the banky types. But let's face it. The beaver's not all it's cracked up to be. Supposedly the beaver is a national symbol in Canada because of it's industriousness, or some such thing. I think if you dig deeper, you'll find that's a crock (it might be the case the the beaver is particularly industrious, but the reason it became a national symbol is not quite so noble if Will Ferguson can be trusted). In truth it's just a rather large smelly buck toothed rodent with only one marketable skill. The beaver's right behind the pig in the make-up line, and ugly or not, at least we can eat the pig. When's the last time you needed a dam built at the level of sophistication that a beaver can provide? Never. That's when. So I propose that we stop embarrassing ourselves by lionizing the glorified rat, ditch the penny, make the nickel out of copper, and replace the beaver with the maple leaf that currently adorns the penny. Problem solved.

Farewell and Good Riddance

In what seems to be turning into something of a hobby, I moved again about a week ago today [1]. An essential part of this hobby is that I underestimate both the time and number of boxes it will take to pack. (It would be quite brilliant, really, if I did this on purpose, since what happens is that the helpers end up doing most of the heavy lifting while I scurry around frantically trying to cram as much random stuff into a shortage of boxes. I'm not so cunning, however.) One of my friends who helped me move had borrowed a pick-up truck from a relative which was returned before I was completely packed. This didn't matter much since I couldn't move the last three boxes worth of stuff without the last three boxes to put the stuff in. Not only that, but I didn't have time to clean up the place either.

So I planned on going back the next day. I managed to injure my foot the next morning on something that was hard, sharp, and not properly unpacked [2]. It wasn't a life threatening injury, but it was severe enough that I thought it in my best interests to head down to the emergency room. (The last time I went to the emergency room was when I was 8. I fell down a waterfall and needed stitches on my knee.) Plus it was on my toe. Which is on my foot. Feet are gross, in my opinion, no matter how much you clean them, and experts agree that gross is a leading cause of infection. For all the waiting, the only thing the doctor told me that I might not have done otherwise was change my socks twice a day instead of the usual once.

It was quite the chore getting home that night, and, needless to say, I wasn't about to go to my old place and finish up packing and cleaning. It took five before I was feeling pain free enough to do the work, and so I spent this past Sunday afternoon completing my move.

For the most part, I was eager to move out of the place. That's not to say it was horrible. The landlord was really nice, and responded very quickly to any problems I brought to him, which is definitely a plus. The place was renovated during the summer before I moved in, so the apartment was in better condition than lots of other student housing (I know I'm not a student anymore, but some habits are hard to break), and the appliances were new, including (free) washer and dryer. It's really not a bad place, and I would recommend it to a friend with little hesitation. There were disadvantages, though, and for me, they were starting to outweigh the benefits. Among the worst things was that the neighbourhood lived up to its reputation. The main East-West street in downtown Kingston is Princess St. I lived north of it. Most students understand this part of Kingston to be rather sketchy, and with some exceptions, it's a place you avoid if you can. This wasn't my first time living in the dreaded territory, but this year seemed to be particularly bad. One morning not long after I had moved there, I walked past my car to see that most of the contents of my glove compartment had been emptied onto the seat. I didn't remember doing that myself, but I wasn't certain that I hadn't until I saw that the ashtray had also been taken out and left on the floor. Someone had entered my car while I was sleeping. A week or so later, the same thing happened. I don't think whoever it was made off with anything other than spare change. They even looked in the trunk where there was some stereo equipment that they could have stolen very easily if they wanted to, but didn't, so they probably didn't want anything more than spare change [3]. Within a week of moving out, I was awoken at about 2:00 in the morning to the sound of a door shutting and footsteps walking past my window (it was a basement apartment). Being in bed, I wasn't quite ready enough to run out and shout obscenities at the perpetrator, so I convinced myself that the noises I heard were that of one of my neighbours, and that I had nothing to worry about. The next morning, however, I checked my car, and sure enough, the ashtray was lying on the floor again. I can't find my cell phone charger, so they probably stole that too. Jokes on them, though, since it's broken. Some might say that it's my fault this happened so many times, since each time it happened, it was because I left my door unlocked. Though I'm pretty sure that leaving your door unlocked doesn't count as an invitation to hop on in and take spare change.

I thought that I had seen the last of that when I moved out. On the Sunday that I returned, the crime spree continued. This time, though, the criminals were bolder, committing their crime in broad daylight. After I had packed everything up and finished cleaning, I went out to move my car into the driveway. As I approached the car, I noticed that the stylized H that adorns the hood of most Hondas was no longer adorning the hood on mine. I had to pause for a moment to consider whether it had really gone missing while I was cleaning, or whether it had actually been gone for a long time and my mind was playing tricks on me. I wasn't sure. Later on, though, I went grocery shopping. When I came back to my car after buying groceries, the outline of the H was glaring at me, as if I was noticing it for the first time again. If the missing H seemed that out of place the second time I saw it that afternoon, then I'm pretty sure I would have noticed its absence if it had gone missing any sooner. In particular, I probably would have noticed it when I walked toward my car not long after arriving early that afternoon. It hadn't been a week since I was left that place, and already I'm glad to be gone.

I'm planning on buying a new car this weekend. Desired features include power door locks and hood ornaments that are not easy to remove. If you know of any, let me know.

[1] Which explains in part why it's been more than a fortnight since you've heard from me.

[2] I was hoping that I'd be able to blame my friends for leaving that hard metal thing where they did, but unfortunately, I was the one who put it there after they all left, so the only one I can blame is myself.

[3] Whoever it was wasn't very thorough. I never did bother to replenish my supply of spare change, but there is still enough for a coffee in one of the little compartments in the dash.

Microsoft Successful

Microsoft Windows is the operating system that everyone loves to hate. I recently bought a new computer. Before I bought it, I had to decide whether to stick with the old and familiar, or to go with something new. There are two common alternatives to Windows. One is to buy a Mac. The other is to install Linux. In the process of researching my decision, and in the aftermath of the purchase, I was exposed to the attitudes of Mac users, and having freed up my old computer for experimentation, I decided to try to see how for I could get with Linux.

The predominating attitude of Mac users suggests that I'm not nearly condescending enough to own one [1]. Meanwhile, my attempt with Linux was one of many in my personal history with computers, and like every attempt in the past, I quickly realized that I need to have an advanced to degree in computer science with about a week of nothing to do but tweaking my system before I can read my email, and another week before I can send.

In the end, I realized that my only option was go back to the old and familiar. My experiences since then have inspired me not only to accept Windows, but to defend it against the other commonly available options. In the first of what may or may not be a series of posts on this theme, I would like to declare that, on at least one of their design goals, Microsoft has been incredibly successful.

[1] This is not to say that all Mac owners are condescending. Two out of three of the friends I have who bought Mac computers are quite the opposite, whatever that is. But that third friend just ruins it for the first two. Mac users who have inherited their computers from their supervisors are excluded from this statistic.

I don't think it's your AQ that's F

From the FAQs at the NeoCitran website:

"Q: I’m going to be drinking alcohol. Is it OK to take NeoCitran?

A: If you consume 3 or more alcoholic drinks every day, ask your doctor whether you should take the NeoCitran products that contain acetaminophen or other pain relievers/ fever reducers. Acetaminophen may cause liver damage."

Now I suppose that NeoCitran is only responsible for responding to any concerns that users might have in relation to their product, but I up until I read the FAQ, I would have thought that any phrase that starts with "If you consume 3 or more alcoholic drinks every day" should probably end with something like "you might want to take a good hard look at your lifestyle" or "your friends and family might be trying to stage an intervention." Acetaminophen may cause liver damage. Oh yes. I'm sure it's acetaminophen that's the culprit when the person who consumes 3 drinks every day and then takes one of NeoCitran's acetaminophen containing products gets liver damage.

NeoCitran's motto is "Good to be Back." Back off the the wagon, it seems.

Out for the Penny, Out by Pounds [Updated]

Further to this post, NDP MP Pat Martin has finally introduced his private member's bill on the elimination of the Canadian 1 cent coin. The man himself appears not to have caught wind of his introduction of the bill in parliament. As of the writing of this post, there is not a mention of it on his website.

Despite my best efforts to spend my pennies, the number in my possession still seems to be increasing. At the very least, they're not decreasing nearly as fast as I would like them to. So get on it folks. Call your local MP and urge them to vote with Mr. Martin, before I can no longer manage my accumulating pounds of pennies.

[Update:03/04/08 11:24am] According to his website, Pat Martin has learned of the bill he has introduced. Good for Pat. Also, the poll of the day at CTV.ca (look at the right, near the top, just below the banner) is on whether or not the penny should be scrapped. As of 11:26, 56% say yes. The rest say no.

-----------------------

hat tip David Koyzis

Going Green

Hey Everyone.

I hope you all had lots of fun last night, celebrating the day that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland or something like that. I'm not exactly sure how that goes. One thing I do know for sure is that he celebrated by putting up tacky green plastic banners with shamrocks on em, wearing green felt hats, confusing himself for a Scot, colouring his beer an unholy green colour, and then drinking said beer until he was drunk off his face even though he didn't really drink much any other time of year. I would be very disappointed to find out that you did anything stupid and broke with any of those traditions.

Fraud for thought

Suppose you were the type to steal a credit card. Or perhaps you just found one somewhere, and, finders keepers being the hard and fast rule that it is, you decide to thieve someone's identity and go on a shopping spree, hoping that whoever lost their card hasn't yet noticed or couldn't be bothered to call it in. What would you buy? I've never seriously considered using someone else's credit card illegally, so I admit, shamefully, to a great deal of ignorance on the ins and outs of the behaviour of identity thieves. I hear warnings about credit card fraud often enough that I've imagined myself committing it at least once and wondered what I'd need to do to get away with it and how long I could. I've never really thought about what I'd buy, though. A stereo system? An iPod? A computer? Expensive clothes (perhaps I'd by these first, so I look the part when I go out to buy other expensive things)? Tap dance lessons? Groceries?

Yes, I said groceries. I'm really not sure what I would buy, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be groceries. I'd be surprised if somebody else would risk prosecution for groceries, unless perhaps they had just bought a fridge with the stolen card and thought it would be fitting to buy food to put in it. A fridge probably wouldn't be the first thing on my list of illegal credit card purchases either. Unless it was a rocket fridge, but that's a completely different story.

I've been asked to consider, directly or indirectly, the moral aspects of parents stealing food to feed their starving children, but never was it mentioned in these scenarios that the particular crime of necessity they were committing was credit card fraud. A grocery store just doesn't strike me as the typical place to abuse someone else's credit card. Nevertheless, I almost always get asked for some other piece of ID besides my credit card when I'm at Loblaws. The signature on the back of has been worn down and smudged to the point of illegibility, and they can't compare that signature to the one I scribble on the credit card slip, so they need another piece to compare to. When I'm pulling out my credit card to pay, it's now almost automatic for me to pull out my licence. (One time, anticipating the question, I offered my licence before being asked, which seemed to offend the cashier. Now I just wait until I'm asked.) This past week when I was grocery shopping, I said something about this to the cashier. She told me that they're required to do it. No surprises there, since I can't see why a cashier would make the customer do something they weren't required to do.

If possible, I make payments for all of my expenses with my credit card, but I rarely get asked for that second piece of ID anywhere else. Occasionally, the person taking my payment will turn the card over and pretend to compare the signatures, paying nothing but flip service to the policy. Rarely, however, do I get asked for ID at the sight of my smudged signature. So I am puzzled as to why Loblaws of all places would be the one that would be so diligent about it.

All this time, I thought people who committed credit card fraud were greedy and lazy, or perhaps, if I'm feeling generous, just a bit too impatient in satisfying their desires. But if Loblaws' diligence is any indicator, I guess they're just hungry.

And there was much rejoicing

When I took my undergraduate math courses, almost everything was done on the blackboard. When I took my graduate math courses, almost everything was done on the blackboard. Almost every seminar presentation I've seen has been done on the blackboard.

Sometimes overheads were used in my lectures, but their purpose was used to illustrate the main subject matter, and not to present it. There was one exception to this in a second year calculus course. It was a one term course created by merging two other one term courses, so there was a lot of material to be covered. Even then, it wasn't until the end of the course that the professor made use of overheads to present the main subject matter. In that case, though, we were being taught something that was a straightforward generalization of a concept that we had learned in first year, so even though it was impossible follow the details of the argument, it was possible to understand, if not to predict, the overall structure of the argument.

At some point in my undergrad, professors started wheeling laptops with projectors into classrooms, and by the time I was done, most of the larger classrooms had been equipped with their own permanent projectors. There were a number of courses that I took in my first year or second year whose classroom technology consisted entirely of pen, paper, and the human voice. In my third year, a number of my first or second year friends were taking many of these same courses. Every lecture was now accompanied by a set of downloadable PowerPoint slides summarizing the main topics of the day's lecture. These were not math courses, however. The portable projectors did make an appearance every once in a while, but just like for overheads, they were only used to illustrate the concept of the day, and thus were only used for a small portion of the small number of classes they appeared in.

I was sceptical that the PowerPoint slides were of any significant value in any class. I was even more sceptical that they would ever be worth using at all in math class. I never experienced it personally, and being finally finished with school, I likely never will. I have, however, been to a fair number of math seminar talks that used PowerPoint (or some variant thereof). Not many of them have used the technology effectively. After one seminar talk at RMC, one of their math profs was talking about pressure they were getting to use slides in their lectures. Everyone who said anything thought it was a bad idea. I agreed. In fact, most mathers that I talk to feel more or less the same way.

I taught one course in the Winter term of 2007. There were a few instances where I could've used the projector to demonstrate how to use computer software to solve certain problems, but never once did I feel that using slides instead of the blackboard would've been preferable.

This past fall, I started teaching another course. The only thing I inherited from the previous instructor was the topic schedule for the year, which I've tried to stick to as closely as possible. At first, I was using the blackboard exclusively. But according to schedule, before the end of the first chapter, I was already at least a week behind. I knew that the professor who designed the course did all of his lectures using an overhead projector. I don't know exactly how he did this. I assume he had some overheads with stuff already printed on them, and then wrote more on them in class. I didn't consider this an option for me, since my handwriting isn't that great to begin with (occasionally, though, it has garnered compliments, which mystifies me). It would be worse with my arm positioned awkwardly over the projector, while simultaneously trying to maintain visibility to the students. Not only that, but my fine motor skills seem to disappear when faced~ with the not-so-relaxing task of speaking in front 100 or so people.

On the first day of class, I made an attempt to use presentation slides to cover some administrative details of the class, such as office hours, tutorials, test and assignment dates, etc. It didn't work. My computer didn't appear to recognize the projector. So later in the term, when it was becoming clear that using using blackboard was taking too long, I decided put some of the material on overheads, which were nothing but printed out slides. Using overheads made some things worse, and other things better. I still relied heavily on the blackboard, which meant a lot of running back and forth between the overhead projector and the blackboard (the front of the classroom is 6 blackboards wide). There was also no way to adjust the lights (that I could figure out) so that both the blackboard and the screen were clearly visible to the students. On the other hand, since I intended to post my overheads to the course website, they didn't need to write as much down and could focus on what I was saying rather than just trying to write it down. Not only that, but having most computations completed on the overheads meant that I wasn't going to make copy errors. Aside from one student's request to post the completed overheads on the course website before I finish making them, I didn't get any feedback from my students. So perhaps I hadn't made things better, but at least I hadn't made things appreciably worse.

Near the end of the term, the instructor for the class that took place right before mine in the same classroom showed me how to get my laptop to work with the projector. It turns out I had taken a more complicated route than I needed to (which is necessary if I want to use a tv as the display) I decided to make use of my newfound abilities and delivered the last two lectures of the term with slides.

When the winter term started, I tried using the blackboard, but by the third week (Jan 21), I got to a point where I needed to project something onto a screen by some means. I decided I would use slides, and not wanting to deal with the hassles of transitioning between blackboard and projector, I decided to carry out the whole lecture that way. From my perspective, things seemed to go more smoothly. From the students, I heard one positive comment and one negative comment which included another request that I post the completed slides before I've completed them.

One of the most obvious mistakes in using slides is that the presenter tends to plough through the material too quickly. I'm reluctant to say that math is hard to understand (though I'm sure many in my audience don't share that reluctance). But it's certainly hard to understand a slide containing math in the brief amount of time that a careless presenter leaves the slide up. Writing on the blackboard, on the other hand, forces the presenter to pace himself. Leaving the slides up longer would mean talking longer than I need to, or else standing there silently (and feeling awkward) trying to guess the point at which a sufficient number of students have comprehended what I'm going on about.

To guard against the tendency go too fast, I tried to structure the slides, as much as it was possible, to resemble how I would write the same material on the blackboard. For example, if there was a calculation with many steps, each step would get its own line, and the lines would be displayed one at a time (with spoken explanations of how I got from one line to the next, as each line was being displayed). There were times, however, where I was forced to split something up into two slides when it would have been better if all it could have been put on one. This, I think, gets at to one of the other primary disadvantages of using them in math. In almost all classrooms there are at least two blackboards (or whiteboards in some newer classrooms). One could see how the material on the blackboard I'm writing on would relate to blackboard I've just written on. Being able to display only one screen at a time is analogous to having only one blackboard to write on. Since they would be able to download the slides later, though, they could go back and see for themselves how the different slides relate to each other (whether or not they would is an entirely different story). I weighed these and other factors, and decided to stick with slides.

I continued to deliver my lectures using slides for about a month, until I got to a point where I couldn't come up with a sensible way to make slides for a certain topic. I decided, at least for the time being, that I would go back to the blackboard. When the day came (Feb. 27) to present that material, there were still some slides that I didn't get through in the last class, so obviously I presented those first. When I finished with the slides I announced that I would be going back to the blackboard. At this point there was much rejoicing. Well, it wasn't quite rejoicing. It was more like a handful some scattered murmurs, though with a definite tone of approval. This is a math class, though. Aside from cancelling a class altogether, how much rejoicing do you expect?

Security by Ubiquity?

This past November, a couple of old roommates dropped by for a weekend. While they were here, we took a walk around campus, for old time's sake, I guess. One roommate commented on how much things had changed since he was here. For one thing, there was much less blasting going on when he was still here. I bought my first laptop then, about 5 years ago. Hardly anyone had laptops at the time. Queen's ITS was still pushing desktops at the time, though if I recall correctly, they had more laptop offerings that year than desktop, unlike the previous year. Now, my friend observed, almost everyone has a laptop. Back then, nobody would think of leaving their laptop anywhere unattended without locking it. Today, I was walking through Mac-Corry [1], where I saw a laptop, attended by no one, locked to nothing, with only the coat of the owner draped over the seat to accompany it. I guess if everyone has one, there isn't much of a market for a stolen one. As for me, unless I can find a door to lock it behind, my laptop still will not be more than a few feet away from me. But then, I've always been old-fashioned.


[1] One of the main places to buy and eat food on campus, for those of you who don't go to Queen's.

Delicious Irony

Last night I went to a Chinese New Year celebration put on by the Queen's Asian Cooking Club. There were many tasty dishes. One in particular was a dish whose main ingredients were tofu and beef. I think most people I know see tofu as an alternative to meat, especially for vegetarians. Beef on the other hand seems to be the poster child for turning people into vegetarians. It was rather surprising to see them on the same plate. Even more surprising is the fact that, according to one Chinese person at my table, the dish is common in China.

When I went up for seconds, there was a lot more of the tofu-beef dish left than most of the other dishes. I wonder if the the vegetarians were turned off by the beef, while the meat eaters were turned off by the tofu. Perhaps it was just coincidence. Either way, more for me!

Astounding

For years, one of the standard references in graph theory was "Graph Theory with Applications" by J.A. Bondy and U.S.R Murty, first published in 1976. More recently other texts have played that role. On November 30, 2007 a follow up to this book, entitled simply "Graph Theory", was published. When I told my supervisor, he was astounded. Apparently word isn't out yet. So I'm letting you know. My supervisor went to the bookstore this morning to get himself a copy, and they had already exhausted their supply [1], so it seems to be a hot item. Hurry on down to your local campus bookstore and get one for yourself before it sells out.

So far, I haven't been able to find any reviews of this long awaited book. If you see one, let me know.

[1] Their supply consisted of one copy.

Overheard

"I still haven't gone cow tipping. I'm not sure it's even possible, but I'd like to try."

Good luck with that.

When you've tipped your cow, perhaps you'd like to go snipe hunting.

Comma toast

I went out for brunch this past Sunday and ordered a typical breakfast, with eggs, toast, hash browns, and an assortment of pork products.

When the plate arrived, I could see everything but the bacon. Clearly it wasn't underneath the eggs. I checked underneath my toast. It seemed an odd place to hide bacon, but where else could it be? No luck, though. I pushed around my hash browns with my fork to see if perhaps there were bits of bacon amongst the finely chopped vegetables that the hash browns had been cooked with. Still no trace of the missing bacon. Did the menu not say that bacon was included? I was about to ask the waiter about the location of my bacon. I thought about it a little more, and realized what had happened. The menu read
"Bacon, sausage or ham, toast, ..."
which, due to the absence of a comma after "sausage", I had taken to mean that the breakfast included bacon and sausage or ham and toast.... Grammatically speaking, there's nothing wrong with the sentence. It's just ambiguous, and I chose the interpretation that suited me best, reinforced by the fact that there was a comparable menu item that did in fact come with two meats. When given the choice between the three options, I would almost always choose bacon. But satisfied with the illusion that I would be getting bacon, I chose sausage as the second meat, which, the illusion having been nothing but that, turned out to be my only meat.

I guess the comma is insufficiently powerful to fight against such crimes of ambiguity. Perhaps some sort of super-comma is needed. If only one existed.

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Second Lament for the Semi-Colon

I would've had some bacon
If they'd used a semi-colon
But instead they used a comma
Which caused a bit of trauma.

dude, it's been over a _month_!

I haven't written to the blog for a while.

If you're a regular visitor to the blog, I don't even need to tell you that.

If you're a regular visitor to the blog, I'm grateful that you are such despite my not writing.

While I do not feel I owe my readers an explanation for not writing, I'm going to give you one anyway.

When I started actually writing to this blog, it was because I had a fair bit of free time on my hands. I had been given a few compliments on my writing before then, and at least one person suggested that I do some writing outside that which I absolutely must do for school and whatnot. I thought a blog might be a good way to use up that free time, and to put to good use those apparent writing skills.

When I think about it, the free time hasn't been that much since December 2006. Up to and including then, I think I was able to get at least one post a week, if not more, for most weeks. After that, I wasn't so regular. In January, I started teaching at RMC, along with trying to find time to work on my thesis and doing other academic activities, not to mention trying to maintain some semblance of a social life (It's no wonder mathematicians have a reputation for a lack of social skills. The opportunities are rare to develop them. Even maintaining them at their current levels can be a challenge). From the end of the winter term in April pretty much until the end of August, almost all of my efforts were spent on finishing my thesis. The recent fall term was much like the winter term of last year, except that now the time that would have been spent on the thesis is being spent on research.

All this time spent on teaching or research means that my brain doesn't have a whole lot of idle time to think of things to write about. It also means that I spend a lot of time at the keyboard, since my lectures are usually type-written, and I like to type up my research as soon as possible after I have a new idea or get a new result. So at the end of the day, I usually don't feel like thinking about something to write on, and even when I do, I don't have much drive to type it up. Whatever "recreational" typing I do is better spent on things like email or IM, and I haven't even spent as much time on those lately as in the past.

These are the big distractions from blogging. There are other things that get in the way too, though. For example, holidays would be a nice time to catch up, but at those times, I usually return home, where there is no internet. Blogging is pretty low on my list of priorities too. At the moment, I can't think of anything that I'd pass up so that I can blog. Even as a procrastination tool, it's pretty low on the list.

I have started a number of posts, but wasn't able to finish them in the same night that I started them. They got saved as drafts, and I haven't got back to them to finish them. Some of them will likely get deleted, since they were relevant only at the time that they were written. Who knows what will happen to the rest? There are some new recipes that I tried out over the past year that I've intended to post about, I can't remember what most of them are.

I was going to write something about how it feels to be graduated from my PhD. I don't really have much to say about this, though. I probably don't feel any different from how you would after you did one thing for five years in a row and then switched to something else. Well, at the end of it, I got to wear some funky red robes and walk around in front of a whole bunch of people who I mostly don't know, which is something nobody else does after switching occupations. But other than that, I feel mostly the same as I did before. Being an instructor for a class makes me feel somewhat different, though I think this has more to do with the role itself than the hoops I had to jump through to be considered qualified to do fulfil that role [1]. As an instructor, I feel like I have to be a model citizen who pays his bills on time and stuff like that, and that I shouldn't be doing things like drinking beer with my neighbours at 2:00 in the morning the night before I give a lecture [2]. As a person with a PhD, however, I mostly just feel like a person who spent far too much time in school avoiding real life.

There were a few other posts on a random assortment of topics. Perhaps I'll get to these. Perhaps not. I've got a few other things on my mind that might be considered blog worthy. No guarantees whether I'll get to those or not, though. Time will tell.

Anyway. Thanks for dropping by.

[1] Why having a PhD qualifies us to teach in a university, I'm not sure. The primary objective of a PhD is to train researchers. There is no required component devoted to teaching (which is no different from bachelor's degrees or master's degrees, unless those degrees happen to be in education). In math at least, much of our time in the PhD program is spent in solitude, talking little with anyone. Yes, we know the material that we teach quite well. But that doesn't mean that we're qualified to tell other people about it effectively. In fact, as I've learned from various talks given by myself and others, knowing the material well can often make teaching it to others worse.

[2] If any of my students happen to be reading this, that particular scenario only happened once, and is not the reason why my lectures usually leave something to be desired. In fact, while I know it wasn't perfect, I feel like the lecture I gave after that night was better than average.

Season's Greetings!

Happy Statute of Westminster Day!