Seattle wrap-up

I'm sure that this is going to be a long post, so here's the executive summary for those of you who have exams and don't have time to read the entire entry. Wait, people with exams need to procrastinate :). Ok, this summary is just for you lazy working folk then. Except those of you who read at work. You know who you are :)

My trip was quite good overall. Interviews went well (I think and hope), wrote and submitted a good paper (I think and hope), snowboarded twice (Stevens Pass and Snoqualmie), played volleyball twice (Pro Club and Kamiakin), GReunion 2.0 (Jonny!), saw most of the people I wanted to see, and had the most amazing dragon boat practice.


Dragon boating with Hot Sake

Being on the water on Saturday was simply amazing.

Bright shining sun. Clear blue skies. Still glass water. Fresh cool air. Magnificent mountain backdrop.

The most fascinating thing was putting my bare hand in the nice, cool lake water and watching the steam come off my warm hand.

I still remembered how to paddle and my technique improved with Charlene coaching me. Dropping my shoulders when the paddle enters the water made it so my arms were way less tired. My endurance and power were way up. My ass got bruised from the hard plastic seat of the boat, but I'm told that's a good thing b/c that means I'm rotating instead of just using my arms.


Chinese restaurant tradition

I've noticed that I've been privy to several Chinese restaurant traditions.

• After dragon boat practice, we always go to Jade Garden in Chinatown for dim sum.


• It's always Jeem's for dim sum with Nebojsa


• UTCCF always goes to Kowloon on Baldwin after fellowship


• I don't even have to ask where we're going for family Saturday dinner when I go back to Winnipeg, b/c the answer is Marigold

Tradition is good, but some variety is good as well.


GReunion 2.0

By freak coincidence, Jon and I were both in Seattle at the same time.... for interviews.... for different companies (MSR and Amazon)! Crazy. I always knew that we'd meet again, but I figured it would be here in Toronto since I'm here for school and his family lives here.

I was meeting up with Dmitry, his wife, and Sarah for dinner, and Mr. Deyo blessed us with his presence. We went to Bluwater Belltown Bistro in Belltown near Sarah's place. Nice place.

Sorry, no pics b/c I forgot my camera in Toronto. I had the battery charger and USB cable, but no camera :(


Snoqualmie

I went to Snoqualmie by myself on Monday. Pretty close, like a 1 hour drive. I wasn't impressed. Only a small portion of the mountain was open and there was only 1 good run. And it was raining / freezing rain. I got my bindings ladder fixed, now all 4 of the straps have been replaced and they don't match - 2 grays (instead of black from Blue Mountain), 1 ugly beige (from Stevens), and 1 shortish bright red (from Snoqualmie). The guy said that he wished he could give them away for free, but he couldn't and asked me if $3 sounded fair and I said 'ya'. I went to go pay, but the cashier was just ignoring me. I was obviously standing in a place to butt in (like you'd do at McDonald's) to just do a quick payment, plus I was next in line anyways, but in the wrong direction. Anyways, I got sick of waiting and just left.

The best part of the trip was when my fuel gauge hit empty on the way there and I took the next exit to get gas, only to find myself driving for a few miles into the town of Snoqualmie. I saw signs for Snoqualmie Falls and decided that I'd go take a look as I had heard about it previously and it was close by. I was impressed. The water flow was quite low when I went, but it was cool to see the huge drop. Again, no camera, no pictures :(


Volleyball

Volleyball at the good 'ol Pro Club was fun. Good to see all the familiar faces. Not as many as I had hoped to see though.

I went with Alex and Stacey to Kamiakin, which was a bust at first b/c there was no open gym, but they didn't change the hotline. We had to wait until the league playoffs finished. I ran into Reiner (Rodney Blanco's older brother) there who was playing in the league, which was pretty random.

Alex and Stacey have definitely improved since I last played with them in March.


Flight entertainment

Flew direct back to Toronto on Air Canada. They had screens on the backs of each seat with on demand entertainment. I was watching My Super Ex-Girlfriend, and it was fine for a while, but then it started to get freeze every few seconds and it was so annoying that I just had to stop (they should really do some buffering or something). Sleeping was a better alternative anyways since I only had 4 hours of sleep the night before.

At least my luggage wasn't overweight - 46 lbs, only 3 lbs heavier than I went, but that's only b/c I moved a stack of papers into my carry-on and stuck my gym shoes and some socks into my snowboarding bag. I went shopping at Redmond Town Center and Bellevue Square on Monday and Tuesday, and dished out like $300, which translates into a couple pounds of clothing...


Clothing rant

Clothing is expensive. My credit card bills were much lower when I didn't like shopping. Recently I've been thinking about the (approximate) amortization cost of clothing. If I buy a (relatively cheap) $30 sweater and wear it once every 2nd week, for 4 months out of the year, for 2 years, then that's ~$2 / wear. If I wear a pair of jeans 80-100 times, then it's about $1 / wear. Shoes are probably the best deal. I've been wearing my new pair of Sketchers (the infamous pair where I was asked if I was under 14) since Aug. pretty much every day, so that's already $1 / wear even if I were to throw them out now. I always thought underwear was cheap, but it's not. I have enough to last me about 2, maybe 2.5 weeks, so that's about 26 wears / underwear / year. Some of the boxer-briefs (yes, that's what I wear, and if you're a girl, you're invited to my bed to check them out for yourself ;)), are like around $26 (after tax, etc.), so that's like a dollar every time I put one on! 50 cents if the pair lasts 2 years, 33 cents if they have holes in them. Socks, I'm not sure about. I have a bunch and I don't know the price and I don't know how long they last, but I'm guessing around a quarter per wear. Coats are very seasonal. $100 coat, 3 months out of the year? If I wear that coat every day for those 3 months (unlikely) for 2 years, then that's still more than $1 / wear. So, given that it's fallish, every time I walk out that door, it's costing me more than $6. Say I'm wearing a few layers, and put on a toque and gloves. It starts adding up! Summer I suppose is cheaper though.

I think this is a good argument for walking around naked. Again, cute girls are encouraged to explore this option in my bedroom. I am able to accommodate multiple visitors simultaneously.

DONE BITCHES!!!

CVPR (Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition) paper is done!!!

It's pretty phenomenal how much work I got done this past week to get the paper up to speed. Very little procrastination! I think it's b/c I had meetings with Nebojsa all the time and there was big pressure because of the hard deadline. I spent a lot of time at MSR, Panera Bread, and the lobby, i.e. places with wifi. Not much sleep these past few days, so I'm pretty tired.

It was hard doing it remotely without a desktop and a good, permanent place to work, but I pulled it off. Nebojsa was key as he helped to write a lot and of course his guidance in the research was very important. It was good to be here in the days prior to the deadline to meet with Nebojsa in person. Too bad he skipped off to Whistler these past few days, but he did a lot of work while he was there.

I forced Nebojsa to get on MSN Messenger to communicate. It was WAY better than how we did it last time. Last time we wrote a paper together, 2 years ago, I was in Toronto, he was here, Brendan was at home. I got like a billion e-mails. They didn't use IM!!!

Same story this time though. Rush, rush, rush, finishing within like an hour from the deadline and doing revisions and resubmitting up until half an hour past the deadline, which was at midnight. Last time was funny in retrospect with Brendan waking up at like 6 am to write the intro when the paper was due at 7 am. Nebojsa stayed up with me to finish the paper.

It's the best paper I've written since last time and the best results I've gotten since as well, i.e. last time I wrote a computer vision paper. I might even have a thesis topic now!!! We found out a few days ago that this paper can actually be considered an extension of my video epitomes work. I might actually be able to graduate at some point afterall :)

I'm not totally out in the clear yet though. I have to create videos and submit them later this week. The videos are very important for my submission. If I get it right, I'm pretty confident that my paper will get accepted. Too bad the conference is in Minneapolis s: (yes, that is a backwards emoticon, tilt your head to the right)

Interviews

Interviews for the fellowship (aka scholarship) thing was today. Not sure if I'm supposed to talk about it or give out these numbers, but here they are (I'll wait for the cease and desist e-mail). There were 190 applications, 60ish chosen for interviews, and 17 awards. That seems to be a large number of interviews. 3.5 : 1 odds...

I think my interviews went quite well. None of the interviewers were really drilling me. More like a friendly discussion of my research, prodding me into how I think, my view on things, etc.

I felt quite comfortable in the interviews. It helped that I had met all of them before (except one, but I had stared at his picture so much that I feel that I know him) and generally knew about their work.

The stressful thing was getting hold of people. It snowed a few days ago and it has been cold enough here that it didn't melt. Some small streets and parking lots are pretty icy, but the main thoroughfares are fine. Regardless, people here freak out with the sight of snow and stayed home. This is the second day in a row that schools were closed. Microsoft is open, but with limited services, i.e. not all building lobbies have a receptionist and the cafeterias are closed.

The recruiter that I was originally supposed to meet didn't come to work, so I had a replacement, but she didn't show up either, and I had a 3rd as a fill-in. One of my interviewers didn't come into work either, and I'm not sure what's going to happen there. I am here for the next week, so I can come back to do the interviews if necessary.

Now time to focus on CVPR. Deadline is this Sunday...

I work at Panera Bread

I'm no longer at school and now I work at Panera Bread.

Yesterday was funny. I drove into Redmond from Seattle at 8 am b/c stupid parking meters aren't free after 8 am. Anyways, I was at Panera Bread for 11 hours yesterday. 8:30 am - 7:30 pm. Apparently they closed at 6! Cozy little place. Nice booths and tables and free wifi :D. I had Nebojsa meet me there to meet b/c I needed to remotely access my computer back in Toronto to run stuff for my paper and I don't have Internet access at MS. Not sure what the Panera people thought b/c I was there all day. I wish Sean was working there, then I could've gotten free food and delivery to my table :D

I was told that it doesn't snow here

First snow sighting this season and it's in Seattle of all places. I was told that it doesn't snow here. It snowed quite a bit esp. in Redmond and it was just a mess. People here freak out with snow. There was some hail today as well. Weird weather. Still skies, and then all of a sudden downpour of snow, and then it stops. Then it hails, then it flurries, and then it stops.

It was good for snowboarding Sunday though. Went to Stevens Pass with Alex, Stacey, and Deepak. Funny thing was the last time I went snowboarding was at Stevens Pass with Alex and Stacey back in March. That was their last time too. The chains on the car tires was fun, esp. when the chains starting ripping off. Snowboarding was pretty good. Tons of snow. Lots of powder. A bit on the cold side though. I was being pretty careful b/c I was a little concerned about my knee, so no moguls for me this time. I might get a knee brace to go snowboarding as a preventative measure. I'm not a huge Stevens fan b/c it gets very moguly. I don't like moguls. I fall in moguls and I'm pretty sure that repeated falling for 6 hours of snowboarding last time at Stevens is what caused me knee pains for like 6 months, though volleyball didn't help.

Oh, I got my luggage just before 1 am the night I landed. I also forgot some key things: camera, maps, and snowboard lock (though we didn't really stop b/c we got there late, like noon, and so we just kept going until it closed at 4).

Oh, another thing. I broke another adjustment strap on my stupid cheap bindings. This time it was the lower one on my back foot. I rode down the hill without it and it was ok. I went to the repair shop and got it fixed ($3ish) and got a hot wax while I was at it. OMG, the wax made a HUGE difference. All of a sudden my board could slide on the snow much better. Went faster, had more confidence, and other good stuff. Then, when I was putting my board away in the car, the other lower strap broke off!!! I didn't even see where it went! Stupid cheap bindings with brittle plastic straps. Grrr...

Gonna go to Microsoft Research again tomorrow to work on my paper. Have to leave by 8 to move stupid car. Sarah loves that I was at MS longer than she was today.

In Seattle!

I'm so tired. It's 12:17 am, meaning that it's 3:17 am Toronto time.

Connected through Denver to get to Seattle, which if your geography is bad, is a pretty odd connection b/c it's way too far South. Flight to Denver was ~4 hours, flight from Denver to Seattle was ~3 hours, so in total ~7 hours, and a direct flight is like 4.5 hours. But at least I got here. My luggage didn't though....

I only had an hour to get to my connection flight in Denver. I made it and had McDonald's lunch to boot. My luggage didn't make the connection.

So, I'm sitting here in Sarah's apartment waiting for my luggage to be delivered. It's supposed to get here before 1 am.

It wouldn't be too bad except for the fact that one of the pieces is my snowboard and I'm going snowboarding tomorrow!!! Oh, and all my winter clothing is in my suitcase.

It better come soon b/c I'm getting really tired. I'm super glad that I had my cell phone unlocked down in Cali and got an extra sim card b/c I was able to get a local number under a prepaid plan so I have a cell to use here. Sarah just got her new apartment and doesn't have a phone :s. At least there's a friendly "linksys" wireless network to get Internet access :D

The question of existence, stalking, and reverse stalking

You don't exist to me unless you fall into at least one of these categories and the more of them you fall under, the more you exist:

• You're on my MSN Messenger or GTalk list


• You blog (and it has an rss feed that I read)


• You comment on my blog


• You're on my Facebook and appear in my news feed

The following constitutes life, but you're under the knife in Seattle Grace's OR and Dr. Burke's tremor is back:

• Friendster / Hi5 / MySpace / Orkut / LinkedIn


• I have your e-mail address


• You're on ICQ or AIM (damn Americans)


• I have your phone number


• I sometimes run into you in person

Existence requires you to actively push your presence upon me and constantly remind me of your existence and your doings and provides me with an easy and non-intrusive way to contact you. Maybe you cause a little pop-up on my screen when you come online in IM and you say something about what's going on in your name or status message, or your new blog post shows up in my Google Reader, or I get an e-mail saying that someone commented on my blog, or I see that you have had activity in Facebook.

On a related note, stalking people is very important. Everyone spies and stalks people online. No need to hide it. Everybody does it. And I don't mean "Googling" people and checking out their "homepages". That's so 2003. No. The epitome of stalking in 2006 is finding someone on Facebook when all you have to go off of is their first name, and you can't even spell it properly. Once you found them on Facebook, you have an immense amount of info at your disposal - contact info, life ambitions, interests, baby pictures, drunken pictures to bribe them with, and their popularity factor (how many "friends" they have :p). You can also try and find their blog (no one has a homepage anymore) or look for them on other social networking sites. Apparently Winnipeggers love Hi5. If a Winnipegger is on just 1 social networking site, it's Hi5 for some reason, despite the fact that it's garbage. This is all "innocent" stalking.... people just wanna know more about other people.

I had like 50 people at fellowship today comment about things on my Facebook and blog: "I didn't know you were doing a PhD!", "I read your post about 'Bible Study'", "Oh right, you were the guy with the flower in your hair", "You worked at Google and Microsoft?". I don't mind people spying / stalking me. I wouldn't put that info out there otherwise. Go ahead, stalk me!

Just know that I reverse stalk you. You stalk me, I stalk you back. Rostecki, you can stop with the silly "the-cloak.com", it doesn't work, and upgrade to Firefox 2.0 already.

Random money talk

Had a conversation with a friend about money, b/c my credit card bill was $980 this month, and that's without having a girlfriend to pay for! Not sure what my typical bill is, but it's probably closer to $200ish, but the inflated amount is due to my recent discovery of shopping as well as buying concert tickets. Oh, and then my other credit card was like $750, but Mommy and Daddy pay for that one (groceries and other necessities as well as my flight back to Winnipeg for the holidays). They want to pay for it, so who am I to say no? They also pay my tuition and housing. My parents figure that they continue to pay for my older sister's housing, since she still lives at home, so then they pay for mine. I guess they want to provide for me as long as I'm still in school, despite the fact that I can support myself.

My friend said that that was great and that she'd want to do that for her kids as long as they know the value of money and don't take advantage of it. I save like 90% of the money I make and have done so since I was probably 13 (when I started working at my parents' store). So, I would say that I'm pretty financially responsible. I don't make any conscious effort to restrict my spending, it just happens naturally b/c I don't want/need to buy stuff or I don't think it's worth it. I'm frugal. That's the Chinese in me. But, I sometimes splurge :p

This brings me to a conversation I had with a different friend, asking me what to do with extra money that he had. I obviously don't just keep my savings in a bank account. That would be dumb. Most of my money is in GICs (guaranteed investment certificates, called a certificate of deposit, or CD, in the US) and mutual funds. A GIC is like giving a loan to a bank. They take your money for a specified period of time and they give you interest (4, maybe 5%), higher than what a savings account would give you. The interest rate is fixed before hand and is "guaranteed". That's the safest investment. If you need the money before the time is up, you can often get it, but pay a penalty, eg. no interest, or very low interest. There's this strategy called laddering, where you split your money up and invest it in spaced out GICs so that one of the GICs matures each year and then you reinvest for a long time period for the best interest rate, but still get the advantage that some money matures each year if you want, but more importantly, it mitigates fluctuations in interest rates (they change). It doesn't take much to get a GIC, some places, like PC, I don't think there's a minimum amount, and others it would be like $500 or $1000. It's a good idea that if you know you have a bit of money that you don't need for a year, to at least put it in a GIC.

Mutual funds have risk, but can lead to much greater returns. These are more for long investments b/c over the long term, they are better than GICs and saving accounts (so far I've been getting ~10%/year). I'm no expert at this. I just started with mutual funds about 3 years ago. There are many different mutual funds and some work different in terms of the charges. The one thing I know is that diversity is important. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. In one sector tanks, eg. technology, then having money also in say, natural resources, helps to mitigate the damage. One strategy I use is dollar cost averaging, where I automatically have my bank account transfer some money into my mutual fund every week. The idea here is that if you were to make a single large investment, you are not guaranteed that you will buy at a good rate. It is better to spread it out, and even if the market goes down, you will be investing, meaning that you will "buy low", with the eventual hope that it goes back up :)

Bonds are also talked about a lot, but I don't do much of this directly. Most of my investment in bonds is indirectly through mutual funds, though I have one Canada Savings Bond.

Stocks I don't do. I can't be bothered to figure out which companies to directly invest it. I let the mutual funds do that. Though I should've bought Google stock...

So, they say that for someone around my age, that I should have something like 60% in mutual funds and then the rest in bonds, GICs, and saving accounts. I don't have this ratio yet, but with my constant investment in mutual funds, it is slowly getting there.

One other class of investment that I've been looking into recently and is really interesting from a social and economic perspective and has the potential to flip the whole banking industry on its head is person-to-person loans. Banks make money by taking your money and lending it out to others. They charge others interest for the loan, and they pay you a little bit of interest for your savings account. The rest they keep for profit and to make up for loans that are not paid off. This person-to-person loan thing is a means to directly loan money to people, cutting out the bank as a middle man. The idea is that borrowers get a better rate than from the bank, and lenders get more interest than from the bank.

Prosper is a site that does just this. It's like Ebay for loans. Borrowers post that they want to borrow money. Lenders then auction to supply money to the borrower. It's a pretty sophisticated site and it's legit (they gave a talk at Google when I was there). They do the same credit checks that a bank does and if you default on a loan, it pays the same penalty as if you default on a bank loan. It's cool to read the stories people have for the reason they need money, their current financial situation, etc. The strategy here is like with anything else. Diversify. Don't give all your money to one person b/c if he/she defaults on the loan, you are screwed. The site has an automated system where you can tell it to spread you money out across people that have a certain credit level, a minimum interest rate, and several other factors. There are risks. People will default on their loans. The site has stats to tell you how often people of certain credit level default, etc. And you adjust your interest rate accordingly, eg. if you assume that 1% of people with a B credit level default, and you want an interest rate of 12%, then you only lend out if you can get 13% interest. I take it from a completely objective view. I use the automated system to determine where my money goes and I give just the minimum amount to each person ($50). I do like to read the stories of the loans that I am investing in. I lend money to a girl who works for a photo production company in Miami and wants to consolidate her credit card debt. I'm also helping a guy buy an engagement ring (good luck! <-- not said in a sarcastic tone). Sure beats looking at numbers and watching if the ticker goes up or down.

I think it's a fascinating idea and I'm just trying it out with a bit of money right now to see how it goes. It's only for the States though. I managed to get an account b/c of my US bank accounts. One motivating factor for me is that I don't have any mutual funds for my US savings. I'm just starting to get some CDs, but it's not that easy, at least with the banks I'm with. Unlike in Canada, where you can do it online very easily at most banks without any physical paper work. I looked into getting mutual funds, but it was a bit of a headache to get it started and I didn't like how they charged you for it. Next time I find myself in the States, I will open up an ING account and get their mutual funds, as they seem to work the same way as the ones for the Canadian version of ING. Ya, so without any investments with risk, I decided to look into this person-to-person investing. My aim with this is to get at least 12% interest, which is way better than GICs (5% at best). So far I'm +$0.85!!! But it's only been maybe 2 weeks.

The whole microcredit thing that's been in the news recently is really cool as well, where instead of just giving money to people to buy food and necessities, you give them a small loan of money to buy tools to make bread baskets to sell. If they pay off the loan, that's bonus, b/c then you have that money to lend to others. If not, then oh well, that's no worse than just giving the money away for free. It's pretty cool b/c you can help to kick start the economy in impoverished areas and help them out for relatively cheap b/c you get some of the money back. And if they are successful, you can even make a profit, but that's not the point :p. You should then use that profit to help more people! (By the way, microcredit is like a new form of donation, that has up to this point, mostly been done by countries and very wealthy individuals)

Anyways, save as much as you can and make it "work for you". Start small and work your way up as you become more knowledgeable in investments. Diversify. Max out your RRSP contributions (or 401K in the US). Pay off your credit cards fully each month (the interest on cards are retarded). Get a card that gives you rewards (mine from Citibank gives me 1% back in cash).

Ya, so that's my money rant. Do not take any of this as investment advice. Consult your financial advisor before making any financial decisions.

Blog Wall 2.0

Blog Wall.
Leave your mark. Vandalize my blog. Create chaos!

The old blog wall was broken b/c the site that was hosting the code for it was down. It did the job, but I wasn't totally happy with it. The new version looks nicer, has an undo/refresh button, and shows you the last time the wall was updated.

Searching around, I couldn't find anything else on the Internet that was a suitable replacement. So, I coded it up myself!

It took me a few hours and it was pretty straight forward. I even managed to create a Google Gadget and put it on my personalized homepage :), though I didn't make it public. I'm hosting it on my school's web server and all I used was a form and some PHP code. It's not every day that you can say that you learnt a new language! PHP is actually a really easy language and had very few surprises/quirks. Add in some html forms, a bit of css, some xml (for the gadget), and there you have it!

Don't be fooled by the "2.0" in its name, it's not Web 2.0 (yet). Ok, well, parts of it are in that it's collaborative and it brings about interaction with the visitors and between visitors, but the underlying technology is very Web 1.0. The old version saved it as you typed, but now you have to hit the "Save" button. I think the existence of the save button is good in that it will prevent accidental modifications by people just curious with it and decide to say, delete everything. This would be a good chance for me to play around with AJAX if you guys want the "auto-save" / "save as you type" feature. Might have some issues though if multiple people are editing it at the same time, though there are issues with the current implementation as well (the last person to save overrides even if it was based on an older version of the wall).

The blog is still anonymous and is just as chaotic as before. I was pleased with the use of the wall so far and I hope that it will continue. I love the randomness of it and the interaction on it. There are no guidelines as to what you can write on it. The messages don't even have to be for me. The only thing is that I won't tolerate advertisements. If I see something I don't like, I remove it. Well, anyone can do it for that matter. Everyone can change the wall however they please, so don't blame me if your message gets changed or removed :). I don't know who did it and everyone will feign innocent :) *cough* Rob *cough*

So, write on the wall. Write whatever you want...

Christmas lists in the Internet age

My Christmas List 2006 Edition

I never know what to put on my "wish" list. I don't usually wish for much. If you have any suggestions for my list, let me know...

My family always asks me and my sisters to make Christmas/Birthday lists to make gift shopping easier. Traditionally, we write on pieces of paper, maybe taping on clippings from flyers, and then put it on the fridge. Additions and modifications would be made as necessary. Sometimes the list would go missing when it was taken to go shopping and never returned to the fridge for the benefit of others and rarely returned to the owner for his/her record.

This year, I've moved my list onto the digital domain of the Internet! Flyer clippings have now been replaced by hyperlinks (I'm too lazy to get images). I can modify it and it is instantly reflected on the list for my family a couple thousand kilometres away.

You are probably asking yourself why I don't use a more web 2.0 thing like ThisNext. I think that's a great idea, but it has two problems for wish lists. First, somethings I don't know what exact product I want. For example, maybe I want a new pair of sunglasses, but I don't know exactly which pair, but ThisNext requires an exact product, or at least an example. Second, I would want to use ThisNext for all my shopping stuff, not just a seasonal thing. Plus, it would be a mix of things that could be gifts and things that I would want to get myself (so I get the right one). I would also have to remove things once I get them (like if I buy it myself), otherwise I could end up with duplicates. ThisNext is more of something that I would have for myself and I would know what I have and don't have and also what I don't like/want anymore.

Bible study

The hardest part about bible study is when you're told to flip to a particular passage in the bible. "Turn to Psalm 36, verse 6". Ok, first, what's a "Psalm" and second, where is it in the bible? "Second Corinthian, chapter 11, verse 9". I don't even know how to spell "Corinthian" to find it in the table of contents!!!

I started reading the New Testament. It's actually very interesting to read. Things I've heard about previously make more sense now. I'm almost done the book of Mathew, which I'm told by the cheat notes in the edition of the bible I'm reading that it has been called "the most important book of Christendom-the most important book that has ever been written" by the French skeptic Renan. Too bad it's so poorly written! All the stories are disconnected, Matthew's thoughts are just all over the place, things are repeated like 50 times, and he's not particularly articulate. I was expecting more of a flowing story or something, but it's more like fragmented thoughts scribbled on a napkin.

I have seen the portrayal of the birth of Jesus in various forms and media with the whole manger, stars in the night sky, wise men, gifts, etc. But in the book of Matthew, Jesus's birth is described in 1 tiny paragraph and it's just to the point:

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

I was shocked!!! This supposedly huge event in the history of Christianity, with all these Christmas carols about the event, the point in time which our whole calendar system is based, and the biggest holiday of the year, relegated to a measly, undescriptive paragraph!!! C'mon people!!! Show me some emotion!!! Give me some feeling!!! Sigh.... I am however, willing to give Matthew the benefit of the doubt that something was lost in translation...

Fort Tablo

Who's up for going to Fort Tablo during Christmas break?

Free trip to Seattle!

For those who haven't already seen my MSN Messenger or Gtalk status messages...

Step 1:  Free trip to Seattle!!!
???
Step 3:  Profit!!!

I gotta go to Seattle, well, Redmond, to do interviews at Microsoft Research for the MSR Fellowship. Not sure when I'm going yet, but it has to be before mid-December. Scheduling is a bit of a pain with the CVPR deadline in there, plus volleyball playoffs, Nebojsa's skiing vacation, and NIPS.

Not sure if I'm supposed to talk about this, let alone blog about it... Worse over, searching for "MSR Fellowship" is probably going to lead to my blog soon.... Umm... Hello fellowship committee *waves*


Correction:  I'm already like #4 on Google.

Steak and potatoes

Dinner

Made myself a rather tasty dinner tonight :). Red wine marinated steak (as suggested from this site telling me that everything I know about grilling is wrong) and fries made from scratch!

I marinated the steak in Robert Mondavi red wine (it was on sale at the LCBO) and the Keg steak spice. It was the first time I marinated meat. It was definitely more tender, though it had a bit too much wine taste. Maybe I just marinated it too much (overnight). Next time I'll try something else, maybe a little sweeter as it was a little bitter this time from the wine. I actually felt my face getting a little red from the wine :s. I guess I did a good job of sealing the juices in :).

For the fries, I cut up two potatoes, mixed in some chopped onions, oil, steak spice, olive oil, parsley flakes, red chili flakes, cajan spice, and probably some other random spices. Then, I laid it out on parchment paper, which is non-sticky, but absorbs and keeps too much moisture, and put it in the oven for like 30-40 min. I should probably use aluminum foil to make the fries crispier, but I get annoyed when it sticks, esp. with little bits of the foil sticks to the fries.

Keeping an open mind

I was inspired by this page about exercising an open mind about a year ago. Since then I have been making an attempt to keep an open mind - do things I don't normally do, work outside my comfort zone, break the regular cycle of things. It's fun to add diversity to your life and in doing so you also meet new people. I'm making it a point to not outright discredit things that I know nothing about, and rather, learn more about it.

Britton told us engineers way back in first year to expand our minds and not just do "engineering" things. He told us to visit art galleries, see the ballet, watch plays, go to the opera, etc. I have taken his advice. Davidson told us way back in AP English to read the bible. Not to try and convert us or anything, but to at least consider it as a literary work. There are so many biblical references in literature and popular culture, and I just don't get any of it. Plus, there are always Jeopardy categories related to the bible and I can't get any of those.

Today, I made progress in religion, specifically Christianity. Elsa invited me to go to the University of Toronto Chinese Christian Fellowship (UTCCF) meeting. I had no idea what to expect. I have never gone to church for a sermon or whatever. The only times I have been inside a church have been for elementary choir, weddings/wedding receptions, high school convocation, and to play basketball. I've also been in a synagog for Kives's Bar Mitzvah. That's all the religious exposure I have had. My family is not religious, so I never went to church as a kid.

I decided to go to see what it was about and keep an open mind about it. There was a lot of mingling beforehand with over 100 people in attendance. I got introduced to seemingly everyone and don't remember anyone's name. I don't think I've ever seen that many bananas before (yellow on the outside, white on the inside), with the whole meeting in English and I didn't hear anyone speaking Chinese before or after, which was strange. Two things always throw people off when they meet me. First, I'm in "8th" year. People were always asking if I was 4th year (probably b/c I was getting introduced by Elsa), and technically I am 4th year, just not 4th year of undergrad. I can also be considered 3rd or even 2nd year, depending on how you count things :). Second, I'm from Winnipeg. Who wouldda thunk that there were Chinese people from Winnipeg? People here assume that since I'm not fob that I'm either from Toronto or Vancouver. Oh, and another popular question was how I know Elsa. We... umm.... met "at" the beach...

So, today's meeting was mostly "worship". Worship of God through song (they had a band with people singing, a choir, and an acoustic set), dance, art (a guy from OCAD brought his thesis consisting of all the pages of the bible used as a painting canvas - it was pretty cool). There was also testimony and prayer. I was mostly observing today and seeing what it was all about. It kind of reminded me of this video where a guy went to Dearborn, Michigan (a mostly Muslim town) to be a Muslim for 30 days (a show created by the guy that did Supersize Me). It's a good watch. Initially, when he went into the Mosque with his host family, he was confused. The actions that the people were doing had significance to them and they were praying to their God, but without knowledge of Islam, he didn't understand it, was taken back by it, and could not bring himself to do it in fear of what the implications were with respect to his Christianity. Over the 30 days he learns more and becomes more accepting of the Islamic religion.

Muslim for 30 Days

Worship felt a little like that for me. I was actually rather amazed that people were allowing themselves to be so vulnerable and opening themselves up to "God". I enjoyed the music, I think Christian music generally has catchy tunes and the band was quite good. I remember sometimes tuning into the Christian radio station in Winnipeg for a change and liking the music (I didn't even know it was Christian music for the first little bit), I even downloaded some of the MP3s, though I don't attach religious significance to them. I like Christmas music, but I don't believe in Santa Claus. They had the lyrics on a projector today and I was carefully paying attention to the words, but didn't attribute meaning to them like the people that were literally exposing their souls. I'm so used to making sure that I do not make myself vulnerable and thinking that everything is in my own hands and it is up to no one but myself to make things happen. Prayer is awkward for me because of this. I'm not accustomed to asking for things, rather, I do them myself or make it happen. The only other experience I have in this is in school with The Lord's Prayer and saying grace before meals at John's house.

I do see why people tend to turn to religion in times of turmoil. I can see the appeal of knowing that someone is there for you and looking out for you, and the hope that that gives you. I also see the appeal in the whole fellowship thing. Everyone's friendly and genuinely interested in meeting and knowing each other. It gives people a sense of community and that they belong. I definitely felt that today and it is something I am missing here in Toronto. After the meeting, most of the people went to Kowloon restaurant on Baldwin for food (it's their tradition) and we took over the entire restaurant.

So, where does that leave me now? I don't know. I would like to read the bible and learn more, at minimum from an objective standpoint. Will I keep going to this fellowship thing? Not sure. I like the group setting and it would be nice to be a part of the group, but it feels kinda wrong if I go, but not believe. I still strongly believe in evolution and that is not going to change. Plus, come January, I won't be able to go anyways b/c of snowboarding :), well, unless I go straight from the bus in my snowboarding gear, do you think God would mind?

vince's crafty craft blog

My apartment with newly hung art.
Bonus points if you can tell me what time I took the photo.

The Cliff Etreat by Monet

David by Michelangelo

Finally got around to doing something with the art prints that I had. Framing the prints make them look so much nicer and they serve as nice decoration for the apartment.

The Monet print was a piece of cake as by luck, the included matte for the print fit perfectly into the 11x14 frame. The David print was a bit tougher though as it didn't come with a matte and the included one in the frame didn't fit. I took the cardboard backing from the Monet print (since it fit the frame and was white and had decent thickness) and cut out a matte for the David print using my swiss army knife for lack of a better tool. It looks decent and I was quite pleased given what I had to work with. It would have been nicer had I been at home and had access to my sister's craft stuff b/c she has a paper cutting thing where I could properly cut a bevelled matte.

I want to get a few more art prints now, probably another Monet and then non-impressionist ones to mix it up. I prefer paintings, though I might consider a photographed landscape for diversity. I'll probably stick to small prints, as large replica prints of paintings just look fake, though when I move into a more permanent place, I'd like to get some large canvas art for decoration.

A part of our heritage

Canadians are proud of our country. We are proud of our accomplishments and contributions to the world. We will take great pride in any small feat. Perhaps it's a bit of an inferiority complex as well. We are not however, blindly patriotic, and will freely denounce our own country, but we still take pride in our country. We laugh at our pathetic military, but we never forget that in our only war with the US (the war of 1812), we kicked their ass and burnt down the White House!

In an another example, I laugh hysterically at the joke below and often make fun of Winnipeg, but will proudly tell you that famous Winnipeggers include Terry Fox, Cindy Klassen, The Guess Who, Neil Young, Chantal Kreviazuk, Fred Penner, Anna Paquin, and Winnie-the-Pooh.

I heard this on the radio the other day (comparing American and Canadian versions of things):

American version: What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

Canadian version: What happens in Winnipeg... let me say it again. What happens in Winnipeg?

I found these Canadian Heritage videos online (click on the categories on the left). They are short videos that were (are?) played during commercial breaks depicting an important moment in Canada's history. They used to be on all the time and got drilled into our minds as kids. They're fun to watch (having not seen them for years, but still remember them) and they do give me a sense of pride, so I guess the videos did accomplish what they were supposed to do.

These are the videos I remember the most:

• Superman
  • "No one's going to read a comic strip about a strong man in tights"


• Laura Secord
  • Warning the Canadian and British forces of the American attack


• Nellie McClung
  • "Nice women don't want the vote"


• Underground Railroad
  • "Paul ain't gonna make it!"


• Orphans
  • "We have to keep our Irish name!"


• Les Voltigeurs de Québec
  • O Canada!


• Sir Sandford Fleming
  • My ECE department is named after him, the inventor of time zones


• John McCrae
  • In Flanders fields the poppies blow
    Between the crosses, row on row,
    That mark our place; and in the sky
    The larks, still bravely singing, fly
    Scarce heard amid the guns below.
    We are the Dead.
    Short days ago
    We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
    Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
    In Flanders fields.
    Take up our quarrel with the foe
    To you from failing hands we throw
    The torch, be yours to hold it high
    If ye break faith with us who die.
    
    We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
    In Flanders fields.


• Basketball
  • "It sure slows things down having to climb up here every time"


• Winnie
  • Why Winnie, sir?
    For my hometown, Winnipeg

Log Driver's Waltz

For he goes birling down a-down the white water
That's where the log driver learns to step lightly
It's birling down, a-down white water
A log driver's waltz pleases girls completely.

Everyone that grew up in Canada in the 80's will remember that video above. For some reason, it was on TV all the time. They aired it in seemingly every commercial break. The tune is pretty catchy and the cartoon is pretty funny. Whatever message they were trying to send got ingrained into my subconsciousness after watching it like a billion times. I'm not the only one either. Everyone I show this to remembers the video to the point of remembering most of the words.

It was one of the "Canada Vignettes" produced by the National Film Board of Canada to portray a cultural depiction of Canada. Personally, I think it was funded by the log driver's association to convince girls to marry log drivers and for boys to become log drivers b/c they are the only people that can please a girl completely. Another memorable vignette was one showing faces morphing into other faces, showing the cultural and ethnic diversity of Canada. All the vignettes used to be online, but they have since been taken down. I figure the videos should be free b/c Canada should want people to watch them.

Addicted to the blender

For the past 2 weeks, I have been completely addicted to my blender. I have used it every day. Many times, 2 or 3 times a day. I have gone through over 7 litres of orange juice and 5 kg of fruit. I love making fruit smoothies. It's a slurpee made from fruit. 100% pure fruit, healthy, and amazingly delicious! I don't have to go to Bubble Tease, No Name Cafe, or Jamba Juice anymore!!!

Here's how I make mine. It takes less than 5 min. and they're amazing!

The set-up.
Blender, banana, frozen fruit, ice, orange juice,
and my oversized mug (~750 mL)

Step 1: Banana
It adds a nice flavour and it's healthy!

Step 2: Frozen fruit
Frozen fruit gives the smoothie a nice icy texture. A variety of frozen fruit are usually available in grocery stores. Use whatever you want. Experiment. Use fresh fruit if you don't have frozen fruit.

Step 3: Ice
Makes it a bit more icy. This step is optional. I've been doing this recently to reduce the amount of frozen fruit needed as I'm running low.

Step 4: Juice
I use orange juice. You can substitute for apple, pineapple, mango, cranberry, or whatever your heart desires. I use enough to mostly cover the ingredients. The juice is needed to make it drink-like and also so that it can blend properly.

Step 5: Pulse
There are a lot of solids in the mixture. The pulse (P on the dial) spins the blades quickly for a short period of time to pulverize the solids and then allow them to settle back down onto the blade so that the blades don't run dry. I pulse for maybe a half dozen times until most of the big chunks have been broken down.

Step 6: Blend
I blend for about 10-15 seconds on the highest setting. The mixture should be sloshing around quite freely. If it gets stuck and the blades seem to be spinning without blending anything and the contents aren't moving around well, it's b/c there's an air bubble and you need more liquid.

The (blurry) result
I make the perfect amount every time :)

Yummy!
It disappears very fast.

When I ran out frozen fruit, I used fresh fruit. When I ran out of fresh fruit, I started making Kool-Aid slushees (Ice Blue Kool-Aid + ice). Fortunately when the Kool-Aid ran out, I had gotten more frozen fruit and orange juice :)


On Elsa's suggestion, I tried making a red bean drink with the blender. Ordinarily, you have to boil the red beans for like 2-3 hours (maybe more) until they become soft, so it's not something you can just do on a whim (like if you want red bean at midnight).

The idea here is to grind up the red beans so they cook faster. I blended the beans with a bit of water and it was kinda weird. Beans were just flying everywhere inside the jar. Then I boiled it in a pot for maybe 10-15 min. and added sugar. Added ice to cool it down (not supposed to put boiling water in the blender, at least my instruction manual said so) and re-blended to make an icy (I prefer red bean cold).

About to blend

It was kinda frothy after blending and not so icy as most of the ice melted

It was decent, not amazing. I prefer red beans in their whole form as opposed to their blended form. Plus, I think I over cooked the red beans a bit, so it was kinda mushy. My next experiment is to make a pot of red bean and blending just the liquid + ice and then adding the beans to the mix. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Heroes (aka damn you Rob and Mike)

The first time I heard about Heroes was when Rob commented about it. Then, last night, Mike also suggested it. With two credible recommendations, I decided to give it a shot. Damn you guys for getting me addicted!!! Less than 24 hours later, I had all 5 episodes that have aired so far downloaded and watched. The show is amazing.

It's about people that are discovering that they have super human powers. Odd that they are all discovering it simultaneously, but maybe something is triggering it. Then there's the whole evolutionary research take on things and the saving the world part as well. It's definitely caught my interest and it's shot up to one of my most anticipated shows now.

It fills a void left by Dark Angel and Birds of Prey. The whole sci-fi-action-drama-superhero niche. No, Smallville doesn't really fit the bill as it's gone downhill. The show kinda has that X-Men feel because of the whole mutant take on things and the fact that there are so many people with super powers and the whole cybernet thing in trying to find them all, but I'm not a huge X-Men fan. The characters in Heroes seem a bit more "real". The powers that they have are also not the typical ones that are portrayed. None of them have my superpower.

This is a funny quote from the last episode:

Niki (to the cops):  He's one of my customers. I run a website.
Niki (to Ando):  How did you find me?
Ando:  Whois database. You need unlist, maybe.

Well, I found it funny, but maybe b/c I'm into spying online and I have done this. Not the running of a porn website or trying to stalk a cyber porn star, but doing a whois on a website to see what info I can get on the owner, eg. the evil Vincent Cheung who is a minister in Boston, phone number 617-...

My California Summer in a Nut Shell

My summer in California in 73 photos

I've had this post sitting as a draft for a couple months now and I finally got around to posting it. Better late than never!

The collage at the top of this post pretty much summarizes my whole summer. I love how every photo has its own story behind it. Most of these photos were not taken by me. I stole them from many people. Thank you to all the photographers from the summer: Michele, Adam, Janna, Brian, Mike, Mark, Amy, Jenny, Elaine, Liz, Leandro, Jill, Florence, Mimi, Jamie, and The enforcer.

Here are some memorable quotes from the summer:

• Jon:  This is crap!  *Throws brocollini on the ground*


• Mark:  I was so bad that I couldn't submit any more of them to it.


• Vince:  If it's any comfort to you, I have no idea where we are.


• Jon:  The girls in the clubs here are all so slutty.


• Adam:  I don't think she's old enough to buy you a drink.


• Michele:  Mee-keh-lee
  Us:  Michelle?


• Vince:  We're going *in* the parade.


• Various:  Are you cumming?


• Adam:  No, I'm at the gay pride parade (to his mom on the phone)


• Vince:  I love you Adam.


• Mike:  I beat Vince at gay chicken!!!


• Adam:  This close *makes small gap between his thumb and forefinger* (beating Mike at gay chicken)


• Adam:  Vince, I am never playing gay chicken with you.


• Adam:  My friend said she went to the gay pride parade (in Montreal), and I had to do it.  (Ask whether she was *in* the parade or just sitting on the sidelines taking pictures)
  
  Mike:  You mean penetrate?


• Natalia:  You take your shirt off, and I'll take off mine.
  Adam:  Fuck ya!


• Vince:  I don't think we're supposed to be here (first said when playing in Sergey and Larry's barricaded private area and then again while eating lunch on Sergey and Larry's private balcony)


• Vince:  I don't think you're supposed to do that.


• Michele:  Your balls will go up to here *points to neck* (about going into the water)


• Adam:  I want a vibrator with a phone attached to it (leading to the vibrator cellphone).


• Sean:  I have a small penis


• Mike:  Why take 2 400's, when I can take 1 800?
  Me:  Because 1-800 is toll-free


• Vince:  Let's sort the balls!
  Mark:  I donno... Shit, this is fun!


• Vince:  If you saw him/her on the street, you wouldn't think twice


• Natalia:  Just get married, have kids, and die already (on me being old)


• Adam:  Damn it!!!  (after Adam and I ordered the same thing at a restaurant for the nth time)


• Everybody:  What?  You have a girl friend???  (to Mark 1 week before he's about to leave and his gf is coming into town)


• Jenny:  GPosh!


• Leandro:  We're going to fuck a duck!


• Sean:  Vince is 100% muscle.


• Sarah:  Cute lawyer, surfer dude / surgeon, 40-year-old pretending to be 20-something, and ninja parties.


• Mark:  One quarter of Americans are cannibals, no actually cannibals.


• Mark:  Google Orbital Death Ray


• Mark:  9 cameras can see me right now


• Mike:  Turkey flipping


• Mark:  Turkey ramp


• Mark:  The Asian squat


• Mark:  Hornets from hell


• Adam:  Personalized!


• Mike:  So what you're saying is...


• Mike:  That's a rookie mistake.


• Michele:  L-1-VD

I remembered about this post b/c Michele was visiting his fiance, Jenny, back down in the Bay Area. A surprising number of interns have gotten full-time offers: Michele, Mike, Brian, Leandro, Liz, Parisa, and Peter.


Here are all my unlisted Picasa web albums from the summer (some are particularly incriminating for both myself and others). You will need to decrypt the text using the "Friend" key (if you're my friend, I'll give it to you).

Show me the unlisted photo albums

Grey's Anatomy

This is the post where I talk about a TV show that I started watching and finally caught up to the most recent episode. After about 2 weeks and 41 1-hour episodes later, I am caught up with the latest episode in the 3rd season of Grey's Anatomy.

Jamie likes to think that she got me to watch this show, but it was really a build up from multiple sources (sisters, other friends), and really, she was just the last straw (esp. with her whole season premiere costume party). I already had season 1 on my computer and watched the pilot long ago, but wasn't hooked. The timing was right b/c I needed to do some procrastinating and so I thought I'd give it another shot.

The show is entertaining enough. It's about a couple of surgical interns at a hospital. It's a drama about their relationships and how they grow both personally and professionally during their internships. It's like a more serious version of Scrubs. The show has some funny quotes.

Meredith: Spontaneous orgasms, really?
Christina: Any chance they are contagious?
Meredith: Spontaneous orgasms, that would solve *so* many problems.

Christina: McSexy?
Meredith: No.
Izzie: McYummy?
Meredith & Christina: No.
Meredith: McSteamy.
Christina: Ah, there it is.
Izzie: Yup...
George: I'm choking back some McVomit.

Meredith: Denial, it's not just a river in Egypt.

Alex: Syph-boy. It's got a nice ring to it. Kind of like Super-boy, only diseased.

Burke: When we're on duty, I can't be your boyfriend.
Cristina: So, when we're on duty, I can have sex with someone else?

Alex: Izzie, I kissed you, with tongue, and I plan to do it again and again - get used to it. End of discussion.
Izzie: Ok.

Alex: Why are you helping me?
Izzie: 'Cause it's what Jesus would freaking do!

The whole hospital premise turns me off. I don't like all those CSI (complete shit implied) shows either. Too doom and gloom. Everyone on Grey's Anatomy requires serious surgery, most of which are because of brain tumors. Oh, you have a cough, that's because there's a tumor pushing up against the part of your brain that regulates the function of your esophagus. All the talk of peoples' problems just makes me paranoid.

The other thing about the show is that while the characters are pretty interesting and the dialog is good, the actors/actresses are not very captivating. Meredith is annoying. Derek Sheppard is not very smooth (he's a bad version of Dr. Jack Shephard, from Lost). George, Izzie, and Alex are kinda annoying as well. I like Burke, Miranda, and Christina though.

The show is entertaining enough and this 3rd season is pretty good. I was suffering a bit of withdrawal after watching so many episodes and suddenly finding myself without anything to watch, so I caught up on Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Desperate Housewives, and Smallville. I didn't need to catch up on How I Met Your Mother b/c that's probably my most anticipated show and I watch it as soon as possible after it airs (I download everything). I also watched the last few episodes of Will & Grace's last season and rewatched Aladdin and the Lion King. Most of that was watched today :s

So, this is the part of the post where I'd post a picture of a particularly alluring female character from the show, but alas, none exists, which is probably the biggest fault of the show. Just none of the female characters really do it for me. Katherine Heigl would be the closest, but she peaked in 1994 with "My Father the Hero". No, I will not post a picture of McDreamy or McSteamy.

Joined the U of T Ski and Snowboard Club again

I caved. I joined the U of T Ski and Snowboard Club again (maybe the link will help them in the search rankings). $300 for a season pass and 8 bus rides up to the mountain. Bus leaves every Friday morning at 8 starting in January, and gets back at 6 pm. Way better than last year when we left at like 1 pm and came back at 11 pm, b/c it means that we get to do day skiing/snowboarding (while all the runs are open) and we get back in time for any Friday night activities (or sit at home alone on a Friday night).

Nick, the pres saw me leave the AC right after I signed up and he was really happy that I did. Not sure why. That might be a bad sign in that maybe not enough people have signed up. Or maybe he just wanted some free advertisement on my blog.

I really want to go snowboarding now.

(Yes, I know it's 3:31 am, and I'm going to bed. I'm done blogging... for now :))

Effectively using Gmail

What I'm saying here isn't new, but it will be to most of my readers. I've been wanting to post about this for a while to educate you guys b/c it's painful to see your inboxes (when I hack into your Gmail accounts to read your e-mail), but I've been too lazy. Here's what I'm talking about:

• Labels


• Archiving


• Filters to automatically label your e-mails


• Dot and plus addressing (eg. fakeaddress@gmail.com, fake.address@gmail.com, fa.kea.ddr.ess@gmail.com, and fakeaddress+shop@gmail.com are all the same)

I've seen how you use Gmail, and you're not using it properly. Gmail is pretty slick and if you set a few settings, you can make it even better.

Ok, so e-mail threading is amazing, as is spam filtering. Gtalk integration is cool and seeing peoples' pictures when you hover over their name in e-mails is nice as well.

Labels

Most people however, don't make use of labels enough. Organizing e-mail is a pain, but you can make your life much easier if you use filters. Here's the Gmail tutorial on labels and filters, if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Labels are useful in certain instances. E-mail is one of them. For example, I get an e-mail from a friend in Winnipeg containing a picture of us at a party. I would logically put it in a folder called "Winnipeg", but I would also want to put it in a folder called "Pictures" for quick reference. But, with folders I can't put it in both, so I have to choose one or the other. With labels, I can label it as both "Winnipeg" and "Pictures"! Another example, I can an e-mail from my family containing a picture of my cats from a recent trip that is funny, so I can label it as "Family", "Trip", "Pictures", and "Funny". Organizing things this way makes it much easier to find things later.

Archiving

So now you have all these e-mails in your inbox nicely labelled. Now what? You "archive" them. Huh? Archive. What this means is that it disappears from your inbox, but it's not deleted. It's still in "All Mail", and you can still search for it. Best of all, it's labelled, so you can just click the label on the left and see the e-mail there. What I do is that once I'm done with that e-mail and I no longer need to respond to it, but want to keep it for reference, I archive it. No need to delete. You never know what you may need in the future, eg. to settle bets. Archiving clears your inbox while keeping your e-mails.

Filters

Ok, so maybe I've convinced you about labels and you'd like to have your e-mail all nicely organized and sorted, but there's no way in hell that you're gonna manually label each e-mail. I feel your pain and you would be dumb to do that.

So, use filters. Filters are rules that you set-up that will do things with e-mails as they arrive in your inbox. For example, if I get an e-mail from someone from my family, it is automatically labelled as "Family". If I get an e-mail from someone from Winnipeg, it is labelled as "Winnipeg"; from Toronto, "Toronto"; from my research group, "PSI" (my research group's abbreviation), etc. If the e-mail contains a picture, it is labelled as "Picture". If the e-mail contains the word volleyball or vball, it is labelled as "Volleyball". E-mails from banks are labelled with "Bank". E-mails from online shopping purchases are labelled as "Shop".

Most of my e-mail has at least 1 label automatically put on it when it arrives. So, my e-mail is basically automatically organized for me. It's amazing. Finding e-mails is really easy. If you don't know how to set-up a filter, check this out.

The simple filters are easy, but it's really the more advanced ones that make the difference for me. Note the use of "|" means "or" (you can also use the word "OR"). The dot and plus addressing is mentioned in the next section.

• Pictures
  • Has the words: .jpg
    Has attachment: *check*


• Volleyball
  • Subject: volleyball | vball | gsu


• Family
  • From: Cheung | Mom's maiden name | Other family names -Vincent -Sonia (exclude my name and friends with the same last name using the minus sign)


• Family
  • To: Cheung | Mom's maiden name | Other family names -Vincent -Sonia (exclude my name and friends with the same last name using the minus sign)


• Winnipeg
  • Has the words: RobEmail@gmail.com | JillAddress@hotmail.com | Nusraat@mailblocks.com | Chris@mts.net | Rob2@soontobetoronto.com | Bb@shampoo.net | Justin@me.ca | etc.


• Toronto
  • Has the words: @utoronto.ca | Sarah@SarahA.ca | Kevin@winnipegtoronto.ca | Mimi@korea.kr | Jamie@GreysAnatomyLover.com | John@mac.com | Josh@ecf.com | Tony@666.com | etc.


• Bay Area
  • Has the words: Janna@windsor.ca | Michele@boston.us | Adam@montreal.ca | Brian@northcarolina.us | Mike@switzerland.ch | Mark@annarbor.us | Ducky@vancouver.ca | Liz@pittsburgh.us | Heidi@vancouver.ca | Natalia@mountainview.us | Jenny@sanjose.us | Amy@paloalto.us | @google.com | etc.


• PSI
  • Has the words: @psi.toronto.edu | @psi.utoronto.ca | mailinglist@comm.toronto.edu | mailinglist@cs.utoronto.ca | etc.


• Blog
  • To: myemail+blog@gmail.com


• Bank
  • To: "myemail+bank@gmail.com" | my.email@gmail.com (need the quotes or Gmail thinks the "+" means "and")


• Shop
  • To: "myemail+shop@gmail.com" | m.yemail@gmail.com


• MailingList
  • To: "myemail+list@gmail.com" | mye.mail@gmail.com
    *Skip inbox*


• PotentialSpam
  • To: "myemail+spam@gmail.com" | myemai.l@gmail.com
    *Skip inbox*

The biggest pain is the ones listing all the e-mail addresses. I did it by typing the names into a new e-mail so I could get the addresses in one place, but I still needed to delete a lot of extra text and format it right (find and replace in notepad or some text editor is handy here). It takes a bit to set-up, but for me it has really been worth it. Half hour of tinkering has saved me hours of organizing e-mails and frustration over finding stuff.

Once you set-up your new filter, you can have it applied to all existing e-mails as well, which is a convenient way to label all your existing, unlabelled e-mails.

Dot and plus addressing

What's with the dots and plus signs in the e-mail addresses in the filters?

Dots don't matter. Gmail doesn't recognize dots, so you can put them anywhere you want and it still goes to your inbox.

myname@gmail.com is my "official" e-mail address, but e-mails sent to any of these e-mail addresses also go to my inbox:

• my.name@gmail.com


• m.yname@gmail.com


• myn.ame@gmail.com


• m.y.n.a.m.e@gmail.com


• myname+shop@gmail.com


• myname+bank@gmail.com


• myname+mailinglist@gmail.com


• myname+porn@gmail.com


• my.n.a.me+anythingyouwant@gmail.com

So, why would anyone want to do this? Simple, for filtering to automatically sort e-mails.

I tell the bank to send me e-mails to myname+bank@gmail.com and set-up a filter to label e-mails sent to this address as "bank". Shopping sites get myname+shop@gmail.com, mailing lists get myname+list@gmail.com, etc. I have Blogger send me a notification every time a comment is made on my blog to myemail+blog@gmail.com, and it is automatically labelled as "blog". That last one combined with archiving, is the best thing ever. Otherwise, I would have a billion short e-mails about blog comments (esp. with the alarm clocks post) in my inbox mixed-in with my real e-mail, but now, I get the notification, I read it, and then I archive it. No need to label it because it was automatically labelled for me!

The problem is that some sites don't accept "+" in e-mail addresses, so I use dots. So depending on where the dot is, I can sort based on that, b/c no one is going to send me e-mail at m.yname@gmail.com, but that's what I give to say, banks, and then I give shopping sites myn.ame@gmail.com.

Further, if you give a spammy site myname+spam@gmail.com and you start getting mail at that address, then you can just set up a filter to automatically delete all mail sent to that address.

Call to action

Go. Organize your e-mails. Clean up your inbox. Make me proud.

You can do similar things with other e-mail clients (filters to sort e-mail, e-mail aliases, etc.). I know I used to use "-" addressing with Mailblocks, which was way better than "+", b/c pretty much all websites accept "-" in e-mail addresses. I use Gmail as an example here b/c that's what I use.

Putting more trust into Gmail

I've been having problems with my school e-mail. It's periodically not letting me get new mail. It's a bit of a problem with Thunderbird and my school server. I used to use Outlook Express, but it didn't do IMAP well, so I switched to Thunderbird, which also lets me check my Hotmail (not that I use that anymore). Anyways. Thunderbird is being dumb now. It tells me I have new mail when I don't. It's also causing some locking problems on my school's server causing me to not get my mail, which was very stressful the deadline of the MSR Fellowship when I was waiting for reference letters through e-mail. This might have been caused from me running Thunderbird on my school desktop, home desktop, and my laptop at the same time. Further, I've been getting a lot of spam (like maybe 10-15 a day, mostly to mailing lists to groups to which I belong; this isn't a lot of spam, but before the summer, I got ZERO), and Thunderbird's not doing a good job of detecting spam. So, I set-up e-mail forwarding on the unix e-mail server to forward mail to my gmail (by creating a ".forward" file on the e-mail server with my gmail address in it). There are some advantages and disadvantages for this:

Advantages:

1. Reliability
   • School e-mail server is flaky sometimes, the worst example was a little more than a year ago when we went a few days without e-mail service. Gmail has been very reliable for me, though some people (*cough* S) have reported having problems, at least before.


2. Spam filtering
   • Gmail's spam filtering is quite good


3. Consolidation of e-mail
   • Everything's in one place and I only need to check one place for all my mail now.


4. Still appear as if I'm sending from my school's address
   • The "From" address in my e-mails can still be from my school address by setting it up in the settings. I like this because I want to maintain the separability between school and personal. Plus, it's more professional to send e-mail from my school account than Gmail.


5. Ubiquitous access
   • I can get access to my mail from anywhere. I had the squirrel mail crap for web access of my school e-mail, and that's pretty flaky and doesn't really work for me. Alternatively, ssh is not convenient when I'm on a stranger's computer.


6. Threading
   • I love Gmail's e-mail threading (putting replies to e-mails in the same place as the original e-mail). It makes it much easier to track conversations and e-mails. You go to one place to see everything that was said about one topic rather than having to go through 20 different e-mails spread across 10 different people and over the course of a week (some people delete the quoted text). Plus you can tag the whole bundle once as opposed to having to move each message as they come into a folder. Thunderbird's message threading doesn't work as well.


7. Integration with Google Calendar
   • I can create events in Gmail, which will add events to my calendar and Gmail will parse the e-mail to figure out when the event, eg. meeting or talk, will be and where it is.


8. Searching
   • Easier and faster to search in Gmail. Plus I can use desktop search.


9. Starred e-mails
   • Starring e-mails is better than leaving e-mails "unread" to highlight them.


10. Saved drafts
    • I can start an e-mail and finish it in a different location.


11. Accurate and instant new mail notifications
    • Gmail notifications from the GTalk client and the OS X Gmail notifier work well and I don't have to have it poll the e-mail server every 5 or 10 min. When I get new mail, I know right away.


12. System admins can stop bitching to me about the size of my inbox
    • I have more than enough space on Gmail, as I'm only using 13% of my space (374 MB), though I get a lot of attachments to my school account, so my free space will be reducing at a much faster pace now. Hopefully I'm not here much longer though :p

Disadvantages:

1. Consolidation of e-mail
   • Everything's in one place and I don't have that separation between personal and school. I have labels set-up, but then my labels get all junked up. Right now I'm using "PSI", "PSI-Talk", "PSI-Vision", "PSI-CompBio", etc., which is kinda messy. I need tag bundles, like in delicious.


2. E-mails in multiple places
   • Some e-mails are on the server, accessible through Thunderbird, and all new e-mails are in Gmail. I didn't import all my old mail, so if I need old mail, I have to switch back and forth. Finding e-mails isn't too much of a problem thanks to desktop search though.


3. Putting all my eggs in one basket
   • Kinda stuck with Gmail now. It would be difficult to just get my school e-mail off of Gmail to back-up for offline access, eg. in case Gmail goes the way of Mailblocks. I can use POP to get it all, but only in one place and it's just a mess then (no labels).


4. Attachments
   • Being able to send using my school's smtp server has advantages when sending attachments b/c I think it has a higher limit than Gmail, though I shouldn't be sending attachments that large through e-mail anyways. For filtering reasons this may be important as well.


5. Ads
   • I don't see them, but they are there.

So, in general things are better with this switch, but not perfect. The big problem is separation. Labels help, but my mail is still all mixed together, so school is a constant presence now (bad). I think there's a Firefox plug-in to color code tags, which could help. I guess I could have my mail sent to a different Gmail account, but it'd be inconvenient to have to check two places as I can't be logged into both simultaneously unless I use two different browsers (though I'm guessing there's a Firefox plugin for that).

Now that that's done, I can actually do work

Went to bed at 1 am, woke up at 4 am. Today was crazy stressful. Deadline for the MSR Fellowship was today and I had to have the grad office submit it on my behalf online. I don't trust the staff in the grad office b/c they typically take 2 hour lunch breaks and leave school early. That may sound like a grad student, but grad students will work at any hour if a deadline is pending; grad office staff do not.

So, 1:00 pm rolls around, and I have finally finished my thesis proposal for the application. Problem is that I was still missing my two most important reference letters. The one from my academic father, and the one from my academic uncle in Seattle who nominated me for the fellowship. Having to call Seattle several times to pester for my letter and hunting down my prof at school for my other letter with the clock ticking was not fun. By some miracle, everything came together in time and I got my application successfully submitted.

I was pretty tired after this and took a nap at 5 pm. Knowing that I have been somehow turning off my alarm clock and falling back asleep without knowing it, I set the alarm on my cell phone as well. It was imperative that I wake up before 9 b/c I had a coed volleyball intramurals game. Good thing I set the back-up alarm. Game was a bust though as the other team defaulted.

With all this crap out of the way, I can actually do some work now! I'm actually looking forward to just being able to sit down and do work. Yes, I (generally) enjoy what I do. If I didn't, then I wouldn't be doing what I do, or if I was, I wouldn't be happy or sane.