1 Month to Go

In one month I will be going off to Montreal. I just bought my plane ticket to Quebec for the Canadian University Rowing Championships. I fly from YVR to YUL on the 28th of October where I will have two days to practice in the olympic basin. On Hallowe’en day I have my Time Trials and then on the fridged day of November 1st I will be racing in the finals (hopefully the A final) in the Canadian University Rowing Championships.

The following day I will have to bounce to London as I will be racing there on the 3rd of November for the National Rowing Championships with the 4th being the finals of that regatta. I am going to try and re-do my 2km and 6km erg tests this week so I can make Provincial Development and thus get more funding to go.

I also found out that the military has an option where I can go to grad school right after I graduate. This would mean I would get two more years at university and two more years of rowing. I would not be limited to SFU so I could go to a school with a full rowing team. I would have to decide if I want to stay in BC or go outside. If I went out it would be a school such as McMaster, UWO, Queens, UofT or Brock.

If I say in BC my three choices would be UBC, UVic and SFU.

UBC would allow me to stay in Vancouver, with a great rowing team, amazing academics but I would really have to pull up my socks this school year and study to get in.

UVic would require me to move with average academics but an amazing rowing team that would allow me to move farther in rowing in my future with the potential of the national team for 2012 and the London Olympics.

SFU would be the easiest to get into, with the best CS of the three schools but still rowing would all be self motivated and more importantly, self funded.

So while I think about that I am going to go work on my CMPT-412 assignment on computer vision.

Random Updates

Let’s see, there has been a bunch of stuff I have wanted to post for a bit but basically was too busy to make individual posts on each one so I will post them all here.

Firstly I had a race today, the head of the river that I mentioned a few posts back. It was pretty solid and I think I placed 3rd in my category but I haven’t seen the official results yet. There were some hard 90 degree or greater turns in the race which really kills your momentum. There was also open water which is rarely fun in a single. I drove my boat out to White Rock on top of Emelia’s car. Just to give you an idea of how long they are, take a look:

For some reason a flag lady got mad at me for my boat. I was at an intersection when it was red and she decided to ream me out because of the hang. I had to sit there for two minutes while she was yelling out random stuff like, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!! WHAT IS THIS THING!! PEOPLE LIKE YOU SHOULD NOT BE ON THE ROAD!! LEARN SOME LAWS!!”. All I could do, while not necessarily the most mature response was flip her off as I drove by.

But it was not the only time people were being ridiculous today. After the race I was in Burnaby Lake Rowing Club parking lot, taking off my boat, derigging it and trying to put the racks away. Of course there happened to be a wedding being set up. The people setting up obviously did not want me being there as every five minutes they kept asking me when I was leaving, despite not being in there way. Now I still have the single rack on top of the roof rack and I cannot get it off without a pair of vice grips.

In other news, I got a new colour scheme for this blogs layout, and I have a twitter account, so you will now find me sending in twats.

I use last.fm a lot and I have found some really cool sites that use it’s API. I think I have mentioned it before but I will re-post the links again. There’s bandsintown which uses your last.fm feed to tell you local concerts coming up you might be interested in. As well there is also the last.fm tumblr which generates an rss feed with yahoo pipes from your last.fm account showing the top artists of the week you have listened to. Of course I link my last.fm feeds on this blog so you can see my recent plays if you were actually interested in that.

At school classes have started and most of them are good though I haven’t been to all of them yet. I should make a post on that soon, and I must say now that CMPT-412 is an amazing class so far. Novice recruitment is really good and we haven’t officially started it, and we also seem to have about 10 walk-ons onto the team, a number I have never seen before. Froshweek is also over, that went fairly well in my opinion, specially with a small budget, but now I need to be reimbursed.

Useless

So Froshweek starts tomorrow!!

Unfortunately half my froshleaders who volunteered to help with this week are either (a) too lazy to come to school or (b) too busy to help.

How useless.

But in the news, gay scientists isolate the christian gene:

Summer Semester in Review

I think it is time to review my classes that I did this summer semester. I haven’t posted in a while but that’s because all I have been doing is rowing. I hurt my back a week ago so for the last week I haven’t been doing much. I can cycle and that is about it.

Last sunday was my 21st birthday. I climbed Mt. Seymour, Mt. Baker and I took part in Critical Mass. I have been working on my project website and I have been planning the Novice Recruitment and Froshweek for the rowing crew and the CSSS respectively.

So let’s review my classes shall we.

English 101 – Introduction to Fiction
I took this class with a professor named Chariandy and it was really easy. We had to read five books of which four were really interesting. It is a typical 101 arts class where the professor walks you through the material and the TA holds your hand in tutorial. If you show up to all the tutorials, say at least something a class you will get an easy B. The final was also easy, some word definitions (which we were told ahead), pointing out which books passages came from and a short essay.

CRIM 413 – Terrorism
This is supposed to be the “hardest” Criminology class and I can see why they would say that. There is definitely a lot of stuff that you have to read and remember but honestly it is not hard. The only reason these art students claim it is hard is because the names are mainly from the Middle East.

CMPT 383 – Functional Programming
This class started off really easy and interesting… until we hit the midterm. Then I was screaming for the lube. Burton is no longer teaching this class so I dunno what it will be like in the future.

CMPT 475 – Software Engineering II
Unlike CMPT 275 this class is really ridiculously easy. Dan Ridinger is a good professor as well as gives out easy assignments worth 15% of the year each. There’s no midterm and I would really suggest taking this class if you want an easy upper level CS class.

If I haven’t mentioned it before I will be doing the following classes this fall:

• CMPT 470 – Web Info Systems
• CMPT 412 – Computational Vision
• CMPT 354 – Databases I
• CRIM 315 – Restorative Justice
• CRIM 357 – Forensic Anatomy

CRIM-413 BS

I took CRIM-413 by terrorism this semester and so far the Tutor Marker (TM) has been … an idiot for lack of a better word. A couple weeks before the final she wrote a post explaining us what to expect and she said the following:

You will not be required to memorize dates, but will need to know the order of key historical events.

Ok fair enough… except look at what was staring at me on the first question on the test:

What year was the Lebanese Civil War?
a. 1800-1815
b. 1900 – 1915
c. 1975 – 1990
d. 2000 – 2009

Now I am not retarded, but these are dates and we were told we did not need to memorize dates. So I try and protest this to the TM but her response:

The message I sent out did specify that you will need to be aware of the order of key dates and the dates that were provided to you as responses in that questions were so far from one another, that if you knew the order that events took place historically, you would have no difficulty deducing the answer. It is important to be aware of the period in which events took place to be able to contextualize them and this question was designed to test whether students were able to do this. The question will not be removed from the exam.

Bullshit. That is the only word to describe this situation. I know I really shouldn’t care because that one question is only worth 0.35% of the year. I am not trying to figure out whom I bring it up to next because obviously arguing with the TM is going to get me no where. While arguing with anyone else still probably won’t be me anywhere, it’s the matter of the fact.

Fall Registration Complete

I am now done registering as of this morning:

Back from Alberta

So, I am back from racing in Alberta, I will tell about that, with pictures and results later. Now that I am back I am back to school work, and now I get to write a 10-12 page paper on Anti-State Terrorism and the Jihadist Movement in the United States. On top of that I need to start my CMPT-383 assignment and finish off my CMPT-475 assignment.

Once again I changed my mind on the topic of my classes for the fall. Now my five choices are: CMPT 470 (Web-based Systems), 456 (Web Search + Information Retrieval) and 412 (Computational Vision). CRIM 357 (Forensic Anatomy) and 315 (Restorative Justice). I opted to drop HSCI-120 (Intro to Human Sexuality) but I plan to sit in on lectures. CRIM-416 (Death Scene Investigations) does not seem to be offered anymore and CRIM 451 (Advanced Techniques in Forensics) is at the same time as CMPT 412. CRIM 315 is distance ed and seems pretty easy, just write one paper and do a journal and I decided to take another CMPT 4xx class to finish off the number of CMPT 4xx classes I need and that Brian Funt who is teach CMPT 412, his reviews make him seem not too bad.

I am also looking at getting hosting, I know most of you have hosting (I am just using a free wordpress host) but I woud like to get my own. Who would you recommend (besides Dreamhost) if you have hosting?

But now I am back to homework.

Fall Enrollment

So I got my enrollment date for the fall (July 8 @ 9:30 am) so I decided to quickly take a look at the classes I want to take that would fit in with my schedule. So far I have:

• CMPT-431 Distributed System (with Vaughan, he’s a good prof).
• CMPT-354 – Databases (Will be easy, but I don’t want to do it).
• CMPT 456 – Web Based Retrieval (I think it’s like a search engine class)
• CMPT-470 – Web Based Information System (Websites with PHP basically)
• HSCI-120 – Intro to Human Sexuality (Apparently it’s a really good course)
• PSYC-X99 – Mind, Brains and Society (I need it for CRIM, and part of the grading has a debate portion )
• CRIM-312 – Criminological Perspectives on Sociological Problems.
• CRIM-357 – Forensic Anatomy
• CRIM-384 – Crime and Literature (It’s a W course and at the same time as CMPT 470 )
• CRIM-416 – Death Scene Investigation
• CRIM-451 – Advanced Topics in Forensic Sciences

I will probably find more that I will want to take. Currently my top 4/5/6 choices, I think, will be from CMPT 431/456/470, HSCI 120/PSYC X99, CRIM 357/416/451.

Update de la semaine.

Well today had two interesting set of races, the World Rowing Cup and the NCAA finals. Canada did decently, taking 2nd and 3rd in a number of races, the Lightweight Women and Men’s double, the Men’s Quad and the Men’s Pair. Great Britain wiped the floor winning every race. While in the NCAA’s Stanford won in their Varsity 8 which allowed them to win NCAA’s.

Which leads to the SFU Rowing Club, some interesting stuff happening there. First of all, because SFU is *trying* to get into the NCAA (which I don’t support for many reasons) they need to balance out what they spend on the football team as a result of Title IX. This means they want the Women to become a varsity sport. This is pretty cool as it will mean we will get more money, better equipment and dedicated coaches. While the men are not going to go varsity, this is not a big deal since men’s rowing isn’t in the NCAA. That is why there are the IRA’s and the ACRA which is something I would like to see the men in eventually.

Other than that, we have been doing some fund raising recently and so we have some money, there has been some discussion on what to do with it. It has been decided that we are going to buy a brand new Hudson Middleweight Coxed Four with Pair Riggers. This will set us back about $20,000 but with the money we have earned last few months and the fund raisers we will be doing we should be able to pay it off in a few months. We get to paint it however we want and I am pushing to have flames painted on. We did a liquor store this weekend, basically all we do is sit in front of a liquor store, smile at people and say hi, they feel bad and give us their change. We are able to make a lot of money out of it. We only spent a few hours on Friday and Saturday and made about $500.

I also got a job (that’s non-military). A local rowing club, the Inlet Rowing Club has hired me on to work for them, as well as another rower on my crew. It’s a pretty easy job, basically all I do is odd jobs around the boat house and coach. Last few weeks we have been cleaning and fixing boats, sandpaper-ing an old rusted boat rack, repainted it and put padding on it. Now we are supposed to recruit high school students to start rowing so we have to go to a bunch of schools in the Tri-cities area. Throughout the summer I will also be coaching learn-to-rows so I am going to try and earn my National Coaching Certificate Level I.

In terms of rowing personally for me, it is has been great. I row at Burnaby lake still five or six times a week (I should be in bed now as I row in seven and a half hours). I told the coach there that I want to do U23’s so he has been giving me more attention this last few weeks which is great. It has been really warm lately so I have been practicing in my uni-suit and soon I will have a really awkward tan-line. With summer comes summer racing and in four weeks we will be going to Calgary for the Alberta Open regatta. That will be a fun trip, plus I am going to do a side trip down to Drumheller. My last race I did really bad because of the weather, only being able to get a time that is 75% of the olympic standard. I am hoping the weather will be nicer so I can get a much better time and podium.

On top of my rowing, running and weights I bought myself a bike.

It is a Kona Shred with the large frame. I was originally going to go with the Kona Blast but it was not able to handle any abuse and knowing me I am going to want to drop off of stuff. Now I got to start getting some bike stuff, like gloves, tools, and a playing card in the back wheel. I plan to try and ride everywhere I can instead of driving.

Froshweek is going pretty sweet, I am done all the major stuff for now, just got to start doing the little stuff and wait for money from the Sponsors.

Speaking of the CSSS, on their forum there was a thread where all the older members were complaining that there are no pictures of events from the last semester on the website. After their going back and forth one member writes this line:

If you’ve been to the common room, you’d know why.

You’d find either a load of nerds who stare at laptops, or jocks that make conversations annoying.

This statement is quite funny for a number of reasons. First of all the person who wrote this is a huge nerd himself, and whenever I have seen him in the common room, he has been on his laptop. So basically we have an example of the tea kettle calling the kettle black. Secondly, there are not jocks that hang out in the common room, let alone in the department of CS.

But school is going pretty well, English has some interesting books, CMPT-383 has really effed up programming language, CMPT-475 is boring and Terrorism has a lot of reading that is not too interesting. But I keep busy with rowing.

I also plan to try and get in a few trips this summer when I have time. VIA rail is giving out free passes to all military members so I am going to try and go to the Rockies. I have trips to Victoria and Calgary for racing. I want to go to Kettle Valley or other places for biking and then I would like to go to Baker and hike the crater. Of course there are many local places I want to hit up too: Grouse, Seymour, Lynn Valley, etc.

But now it is time to go to sleep for rowing.

Till next time, Keep on Keeping on.

Interview With a Scientologist

So back in January I interviewed a Scientology at the Church of Scientology for my Intro to Religious Studies Class.

Here is the paper I wrote up post-interview on what went down.