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January 31 Fait accompliI emailed off my first draft of my dissertation proposal this evening, mostly because I promised that I would. Could it be better? Likely, but not by the end of the day. There's probably some sections that are a little disorganized, partially because I used my Kohler essay as a skeleton. I didn't bother proposing a computer model mostly because it's a complete Pandora's Box. I'm going to stop talking shop now though, because describing my dissertation proposal couldn't be too interesting for the rest of you. I think it will be neat though. It might even get me a job.
On to other things...
Crap, I really haven't been doing much else lately. I suck. Stupid proposal. Deanna got a draft of hers in today too. So I guess Effamy is going to move up to a Threat Level Blue.
This weekend will be games night at Michelle's. Really that's what I've been looking forward to for like the last 3 weeks. It should actually be a jam-packed weekend, as Friday is Rebecca's dad's birthday and cards night with Kevin, OJ and I (and maybe Jen C). Saturday is the games night where we will be having some head-to-head Catan action. Rebecca and I would also like to introduce the people to a game called Mafia. It's like an interesting psychological game, but not in a "For 200 points, what are Ericsson's 8 Stages?" lame kind of way. More like in a Vizzini(the character from The Princess Bride) kind of way. Also on Saturday, I may try to put together my new tablesaw. And on Sunday, I will hopefully finish the wall-mounted book rack that I'm making for Pokey's books. January 28 Wheel of FortuneYou may have noted a spike in the frequency with which I was recording my valuable thoughts for posterity. I don't know if that was symptomatic of anything, but I think I will turn it down a notch. Update-wise, I may get that dissertation proposal in to Ken by Wednesday, which was the deadline he gave me. All I have to do for now is spell out the experiments I plan on running (indeed, I would have been running them this year, except life got in the way. And also, rumor has it that a flood of online questionairres from der flakenstudies soaked up a good number of participants for the first semester, leaving anyone that required an actual body to show up at the experiment feeling left out.)
Also, today I got my tablesaw. I am happy with it. It was also much more portable than my dad's 280lb monstrosity. That thing was a bitch to transport. Just my luck though, Rona had a Spin & Win thing going on. Similar idea to the scratch & save coupons from back in November. Basically, you spin a wheel, and the slot that the arrow points at when it stops spinning is your discount. Naturally, most slots were for 5% off, though the wheel did have a single 25% off slot (I'd estimate maybe 60 slots on the wheel). Wouldn't you know it, a father and daughter were going through the checkout in front of me. The daughter spins the wheel, and hits the 25% discount. Good for her! Too bad it was wasted on a $14 purchase. I sure could have used 25% off my $600 saw. As you have likely guessed, I got the modal 5% discount. $30 off my saw was better than a punch in the face, I suppose, but ... crap! Well, at least somebody got it. I don't know if I'd be more or less irritated if the people in front of me got the 5% discount instead, or got the 25% discount off a $25,000 hot tub. As if someone who can drop $25K on a hot tub needs a discount. They'd probably have their minions buying it for them anyways.
I want minions one day. And not stupid grad student minions, either. January 24 La boîte magiqueThose who have studied french in school will doubtlessly be reminded of this indispensable tool for conjugating regular verbs. But that's not what I'm here to talk about today. A few days ago, I predicted that I would end up missing the delivery of my Rogers digital cable box, and that they would require someone to sign for it. Sure enough, I came home today to find a UPS InfoNotice saying that they had tried to deliver the box, and that they would try again tomorrow between 2:00 and 5:00. This is particularly annoying because of all the time slots they could have chosen on their little post-it note, 2-5 is the one slot that is booked by my TA obligation. Hopefully, Rebecca will be good enough to return home by 2:00 tomorrow to sign for the damn thing.
And for those of you who forget the other meaning of boîte magique, you simply remove the -ER ending from the infinitive form of the verb (e.g., PARLER - ER = PARL) and tack on the ending that corresponds to the subject of the verb (e.g., JE --> 'E': je parle). It's a fact that most english speaking Ontarians under the age of 30 wouldn't know a speck of grammar (in any language) if they hadn't had to learn french. January 23 It worked!This afternoon I changed my MSN comment to It worked!, which prompted a number of people to message me while I was over at the in-laws for dinner. "What had worked?" they asked themselves. Was I working on a cure for cancer? An experimental clean renewable alternative fuel source? Teleportation?
Unsurprisingly, no. And why are you people asking such retarded questions? Teleportation. Puh-leez.
I was merely ecstatic that my localizer runs, which had fallen completely out of synch on participants 1 - 6, finally worked out. Sorry, I'll count them as participants 1 - 5 because one participant was completely unusable. As a result, there was no localizer run for the first half of my participants. I'm starting the second half out on the right foot though. For those of you (which is likely most of you) who do not know what a localizer run is all about, here's the lowdown:
When you do an fMRI experiment, the scanner records how much blood is being used by different parts of the brain at any given time. The idea is that the more active that part of the brain is, the more blood it needs. We use this to infer what parts of the brain are used in different situations. In order to make these inferences, we have to do some statistics. The thing about these statistics is that just like it's hard to find Waldo in those damn Where's Waldo pictures, it's also hard to find subtle changes in recorded brain activity when you've got a bunch of extra crap in the picture. Now suppose you already have some idea where Waldo is supposed to be on the page. Maybe you read the book already. Or someone told you. Or you broke down and found the answers on the internet, I don't know. A localizer run is basically like taking a black marker and colouring over the rest of the page. Now you can look for Waldo in the lower right hand corner of the page without your eyes constantly being distracted by other crap. It basically just masks out those parts of the brain that you expect to be interesting to you so that your stats aren't messed up by the irrelevant crap.
And that ends the science class for the day. My smartass friends may now leave comments to correct me. January 21 Seventh time's a charm?Tomorrow morning, I will be scanning OJ's brain. He's under the impression that it will be to advance science. Really, it will be to find out what the heck is going on in there. I'll be sending him a copy of his anatomical scan, but not before I Photoshop it. This should be fun. Perhaps I'll post the resulting artwork up here when I'm done. That reminds me, I really have to get around to running the AFNI scripts (it's a bunch of really arcane command line software that mathematically slices and dices the brain scan data in order to generate the pretty pictures of brains).
I did get around to ordering my Rogers cable box this weekend. They asked where the best place to courier it was. Naturally, I said my home address. But now I'm paranoid that someone will have to be here to sign for the damn thing, which is unlikely because Rebecca is generally out galavanting with her sister during the week. So now I think I have to call them back to find out what happens if nobody is home when they come calling. It's supposed to arrive within 5 business days. Somewhere in there. That's worse than the 3-5 hour time window that companies like Rogers give when they're supposed to send a technician for something. I hate that. It's one of my pet peeves.
Anyhoo, I guess I should get myself off to bed. Have to get up early enough to have time to prepare for the scan. These scans always stress me out. The first six times the localizer run didn't work out right. Hopefully the change I made this evening will fix it. January 19 Dang! It blowed up *real* good!I followed through with my threat to reinstall my OS on this computer. Now I'm in the middle of reinstalling all my old applications, or at least those that I remembered to save to the fileserver computer (which runs Linux, and doesn't generally get used except to store files -- mostly mp3 music). So that should tidy things up a bit. I still have to call Rogers though. I made the first step. The phone is sitting right next to me. Maybe I'll look up their phone number after I publish this entry. Also on my list of things to do is make a modified version of the WinXP install CD with the service packs already installed (this is called slipstreaming apparently, and instructions on how to do this can be found on the interweb). In reality, I won't actually get around to it. But man, would that ever save some time when I do this sort of thing (which happens more often than you might think). Also, I hope Miranda gets some sleep tonight. I think she might be going slowly crazy 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, switch. Oh crap! I almost forgot to mention: well over a year ago, Rebecca ordered an ice cream maker ball off the internet. Basically, you put the cream, sugar and flavouring in the canister part of the ball at one end, and fill the rest of the volume of the ball with salt and ice at the other end. You roll it and shake it around for about 15 - 20 minutes (which seems like a really long time when you're rolling around a ball containing a pint of ice cream), and at the end of it all, you've got yourself a pint of all natural* ice cream. As I said, we've had this thing for well over a year. We used it for the first time tonight. It was pretty tasty. Holy crap did it use up alot of ice though. If you've got a fridge with an ice dispenser, you're all set. Otherwise, make sure you're stocked up ahead of time. It sure is amazing how easy ice cream is to make though, forearm workout aside. *all natural will depend on the particular ingredients used. If you're all crunchy granola, sure, go nuts and use all organic cream, sugar and vanilla. I'm just fascinated by the sparsity of the ingredients list. January 18 Phoning it inI had a case of the Mirandas last night. I was tossing and turning until after 4am. Unlike Miranda, however, I didn't have any birds to feed, so I didn't go into school particularly early. That must really suck. Sorry, Miranda.
For some reason I have been putting off calling Rogers. I have two pieces of business. First, I want to order their digital tv, so I can get my money's worth from our tv. Second, I never use my rogers email account for anything. I used to use it for outgoing email from home before UWO set up authenticated email servers, but that was all. Consequently, I have no idea what the password is for my account. I've tried all the usual suspects, but none seem to work, so that sucks. This wouldn't be a problem, except I'm going to blow up my computer (read: reinstall the OS) sometime in the next few days. I'll need to set up all my email accounts all over again, thus requiring the password. Also, Rogers was making available Norton (or was it McAfee?) Antivirus free of charge. The catch is that you need your password to download it. There really should be a better system. I'm all for biometric authentication, like using fingerprints and stuff. This would segue into a paragraph about my sexy laptop, but I'll skip it on account of it's of very limited interest to all but the dorkiest person (though Jeff, of Michelle and Jeff fame, was really pumped about it, and seemed to know at least as much about it as I did, if not more, and I think should be getting some kind of commission as a ThinkPad evangelist). Also, I'm too tired to continue, because, you know, insomnia. January 16 You got your cayenne in my hot chocolate! You got your hot chocolate in my cayenne!Today, Effamy is at home because (and I'm inferring this all from her blog and MSN comments) her bear-dog cujo bit her son. That surprises me, since I always thought that the dog was the embodiment of sloth, and I thought newfoundlanders (the breed, not the population) were good natured. I suppose the population of Newfoundland & Labrador might be good natured too, but it might just be a facade, and underneath, they are seething about all those newfie jokes. I don't even know WHY there are newfie jokes. That stereotype never seemed particularly salient to me.
So back to the subject. I watched in horror sometime near the end of last year as Bobblehead added cayenne pepper to a chocolate mousse dessert she was preparing. I was all - "eew, gross!" But then I saw both Rachel Ray (tee hee) and Chef at Home add cayenne to their chocolate items. Now I understand that Rachel Ray is actually a bit underqualified as far as culinary expertise goes, but I trust chef Michael Smith, so when he says that a little bit of cayenne added to hot chocolate compliments the flavour, adding extra 'heat', I'll give it a whirl. You know what? It's not bad at all. You just want to add a tiny amount in a mug of hot chocolate -- use the point of a sharp knife rather than a spoon to draw it from your container. Any more, and it'll probably be like you're drinking a mug of sweetened tobasco. Also really good in hot chocolate is cinnamon, and cardamom. January 15 Happy potty timeI was up this morning at 5:45 because Pokey was a bit fussy, and, well, a bit flatulent. I thought he had already pooped, and you don't want that stuff to linger in a diaper. First, it's probably neither healthy nor pleasant for baby, and second, that stuff can leak. So I got up to change Pokey. It turns out his diaper didn't have the expected contents. We got Pokey a little training potty a few weeks ago. He's already pretty good with the pee association, but we're still working on the poops. Fortunately, this morning he was on top of things. I don't know why, but for some reason, Pokey pooping on the potty and doing his coy laughing thing makes 6am a bit better. I had considered siezing the opportunity to get an early start on my day, but it was so bloody dark, so I went back to bed. Hours later, Pokey and I got up.
I am still having my olfactory hallucinations. Miranda and Coco will confirm that I was the only one smelling chai tea in the hallway today. So far so good: I am not smelling anything disgusting yet. I don't have any other super powers yet.
I got a bit more direction today with regard to my dissertation proposal, so that's good. Nobody in the cognition area really knows what the hell goes in these things. Ken and Marc advised me to keep it short, so I'll pass along that tip. That's good for me, because I wanted to keep it short anyways. More writing takes more time. Speaking of which, I think I have written enough. January 12 Olfactory hallucinationsSitting here in my office, I keep thinking I smell rising bread. And then I don't. A few months ago, I kept thinking I could smell patchoulli (that smell that you notice when you walk into those vintage clothing stores that burn incense to cover the bong that they use in the back room). If I have a brain tumor, this may be the first clue. Though as far as olfactory hallucinations go, those two smells aren't all that bad. I've never heard of this kind of hallucination though.
Also, Alan has tagged me (he, in turn was tagged by some french writer dude). I guess the game involves posting 5 pieces of trivia then tagging someone else. I'm up for a game.
And with that, I tag Karen and Corinne. I would tag Amy too, but I don't know where her blog is, so I can't link to it. January 11 So this morning Facebook was brought to my attention. In order to see the profile of a friend I was looking up, I had to first register with facebook. Little did I know...
You know about trap door spiders? They just sit in their burrows, lurking, waiting for something to wander by and BAM! Like lightning they dart out and latch on. It was a little like that. Within about 5 minutes of signing up I was already having messages left for me. I also saw a virtual rogues gallery. Since this morning, I have gotten messages from Marc J, and George C (two people who I would have thought would know better). I'm also now buddies with half the psych department. Not that I mind, but I wouldn't mind if someone could explain how this all happened.
I just wanted to see a profile! Oh well. If you happen to be on facebook, go ahead. Add me as a friend. Unfortunately, I'm so bloody anal about organizing information, that I'll be compelled to fill out whatever information relates us.
You know, this is exactly how I started blogging; I just wanted to read Karen's blog. And now here I am. And here you are. Hey, where the hell is *your* blog?!?! January 10 A psychology experiment for the massesTo anyone who happens to be TAing or teaching an undergrad psych course where students have to conduct an experiment: you will have noticed by now that these young innovators will invariably propose a project that crosses self-esteem with any other variable. If you happen to know of any student that does not yet have a project idea, and hasn't already started to feel the gravitational pull of the Self Esteem black hole, propose to them the following experiment:
Is there a personality measure that predicts whether a person will begin eating a gingerbread man (or easter bunny) starting at the head or the arms/legs? I just think it would be fun. Plus, how would the person handle the methods section? Would they write up the ingredients for their cookies in their materials? I would totally participate in that experiment. January 09 Awesome averageCheck this out. Two posts in one night. Within 10 minutes even! I was just rereading my penultimate post, wherein I mention that I had been intending to write a computer program (but not in Java) and that I had put Good Eats on my cellphone. Well, today I took the bus to and from school. I watched an episode about roasting chickens on the way there, and an episode about salads on the way home. It was as excellent as I expected. This is the coolest thing ever.
As for the computer program, it took me a few days (about 3), but I did, in fact, write the program in Java. For those who may care, I used a neat shareware Java IDE called JCreator LE (LE stands for Limited Edition, which is the full version minus a couple features, like integrated debugger). If my recommendation means anything to you at all, then if you're interested in a free Java programming environment and (like me) can't follow these instructions for using Java with XEmacs on windows, then try this program out.
Hey everyone! Check out my remarkable (35) use of hyperlinks in the above text! If you want to know more about being so awesome, please leave a comment, and I will get back to you at my earliest convenience. OverdueThe astute observer will have noted that I post every 4 days, on average. That's not by design, that's just how it worked out. It's been a week since I last posted anything. Karen posted a big entry today about being old and crotchety. I may have added a trackback to it. I don't know for sure. We'll see after I hit the Publish Entry link. Even my sister Carolyn posted something apparently, thereby upping the ante. Incidentally, I agree with Karen with her gripe about the dentist sanding your gums and then acting all surprised that your gums bleed. I know for a fact my dad flosses every day, and he has the same complaint, so that line they give you about flossing to toughen up your gums is a load of crap. Unless you're supposed to be flossing with piano wire ... heated with a butane torch until it's glowing hot. That might build up enough scar tissue to thwart the hygenist.
Last weekend we played the extended remix of settlers of catan. It was the cities and knights version. With the 5-6 player expansion tacked on. We played with some people I hadn't seen since high school (as far as I remember), so that was good fun. It was the first game I ever saw where John rolled over. Of course, it didn't help that he had to be somewhere, and he was getting his ass kicked because the barbarians pillaged ... wait. I just realized: if you have never played the game, you're reading this thinking I'm on crack with all this talk of barbarians and knights. Trust me, it's fun. No, the Catan game, not crack. Just say no to crack. And stay in school.
And for good measure, I do know that at least one person has been awaiting new Pokey pictures. So I may as well post some here. January 02 False startI cannot read. Or else I'm an idiot. One or t'other. I mistakenly turned "2 hours, Jan 3" into "3 hours, Jan 2" and went in one day early to do an fMRI run. Oh well.
New year's updates: I have made no resolutions, other than to AVOID the gym until all the other resolvers have petered out. I'm going to have to find some other way to work off my gained weight; I noticed my jeans have been fitting a little snug as I approached the end of the holidays. Ken has given me till the end of this month to finish my dissertation proposal. I hope I can recycle a sufficient amount of material from my Kohler paper. I also agreed to take on a programming task for one of the I/O grad students. The actual problem is well-defined; the hard part currently seems to be getting started. I had wanted to write the damn thing in Java because: 1) I'm out of practice with it and wanted to write some Java apps for the phone anyways, and 2) I didn't want to have to install a really old version of Microsoft's programming environment. Unfortunately, I've been stymied. I don't think I have the time to goof about with Java, and so will be writing a simple command line application. It's what Git'rdone is all about.
Over the holidays I figured out how to convert DVD video into DivX files (there's a program called FairUse Wizard, and the free limited version creates files up to 700MB, which is conveniently the size of a CD). I also found some software that converts video files to a format playable on my cellphone (or on an iPod or Sony PSP if you prefer). I converted some episodes of Good Eats so that they fit on my phone, you know, just in case I ever take the bus to school again. That would be a killer way to pass time on the 20 minute bus ride that actually takes 40 minutes. |
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