Tag Archives: assignments

Where Did Everyone Go?

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Day 6 since handing my last assignment. 4 days to my only and last exam. Already I am wondering where did all my friends disappear to. Half of them probably sank into their textbooks, and wouldn’t come out until the end of April. The other half, already finished decided to leave the city, and possibly even the country. This effectively makes me alone. And I don’t study for exams. Ever.

So basically I get to bum around the house all day, cleaning, gardening and helping renovate the house. My portfolio(s) have to wait until, I finish everything around the house. I doubt it that I will touch any of my work-related work until after next weekend’s the trip to Montreal. Bother. With some chance, I will post a real open source gaming article this next week.

Freedom From Assignments!

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After a weeks hiatus I can finally blog again. The last few weeks tried my patience and sanity, since the majority of courses consisted of assignments. Leading up to last week Wednesday, my entire life revolved around writing assignments. Then the weekend ended up as one long last minute writing session for my professional writing course. Now with the exception of two articles that my writing professor wants me to edit, I am unofficially done my undergraduate studies. One exam from my easiest course this semester awaits. And then sometime in June, I officially pick up my diploma.

Unfortunately, freedom from assignments (mostly) does not translate into freedom from work. With guests coming from Poland, my folks want to fix up the house. And that translates into long days of housekeeping chores for me. Once the house is done, I still need to work on an outstanding contract, and work on my work portfolios. Portfolios, since I want to gather my programming, writing and graphics work in separate portfolios. Then the ominous job hunt commences. Lucky me.

With all this work ahead for me, I wonder about three issues. First, when (or if) I can take an extended vacation before I start a real job? Second, who will pay for my increasing debt? Third, when will I find the time and energy to do everything? I feel a 12 Task of Hercules moment coming on. So much for freedom from “assignments”.

Hell Week In Progress

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Sorry about the lack of updates. My hell week of assignments on top of assignments just began this week. Started off tame too.

Anyways, I am going into “silent running” mode until I get a handle or break from the onslaught of work. Today by itself has 2 assignments due. The cryptography assignment is proving a worthy adversary. At least the writing is done, and I learned LaTeX. The hard part of proofs is now what I must face.

Dorian, over and out.

The Plague (Part 1): Enemy at the Gates

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Today I am blogging close to ground zero of a plague in progress. My younger brother become ill yesterday with a fever. While unfortunate, worse is the knowledge is that he rarely gets sick. When he does, the whole family usually falls ill too. A cause of concern for me, since this might turn out a busy one for me. So I fell an extra incentive to finish my work early on this week, before I too succumb.

On the note of rushed, a Saturday of intense gaming did not help achieve any considerable work. Whoa is me but doing the whole Half-Life canonical story from beginning to end proved to0 tempting. I finished up to the Lambda Core chapter in Half-Life, and skipped ahead to the last two chapters that I never beat. Well I finished it, cheated at the Nilinath final fight, but finished. Half-Life 2 proves much smoother and hence more fun. Up to the Nova Prospekt level, one of my absolute favourites.

Now, if only someone could convince Valve to port Half-Life 2 to Linux. Then I would be totally happy. While id and Epic Megagames both port their game to Linux, I never liked id’s games all that much. Unreal Tournament is different, and I enjoy the hyperactive action. But I am waiting for the 2007 instalment. If Bungie ported to Linux, I would buy Halo. But since Bungie is a part of Microsoft now, I can forget about that.

But all this gaming, I need to put on hold. It takes too long, I lack the funds to spend frivolously, and my procrastination may prove my undoing for this semester. A number of assignments are due this or next week, and need my attention. Instead I plan on resurrecting my old hobby, computer graphics. If I manage my day wisely, I will upload some of my “art”.

Now I must depart. Work awaits, and the “plague” looms. I go hither!

Like a Sitcom

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Yawn. Nothing is worse than a bad sitcom ending. Everything gets resolved into nice tidy way, and life proceeds as normal for the characters. Friday and today, many of my “issues” resolved themselves. Unlike a sitcom, this is not ending thankfully.

I finally got my schedule in order. Everything from classes to study periods all works out nicely. Not that I like the amount of bus based commuting I do. That hopefully will diminish after I look for carpooling rides. Now, if I can just follow my own schedule and due dates.

On the note of schedules, I finally made peace between my Palm and my desktop. Everything works at least in the Kontact-Palm interacti0ns. It took some time to bring back my emails, but everything now is in its proper place. My desktop neatly setup with few distractions (except the entire Internet and Half-Life 2) works for me now. Now I need to do work on it.

Most of projects are started and well on their way. The power of an enthusiastic group is awe inspiring. Things get done and quickly. Now if I need to do work.

The only things still in need of resolution are actual school work, my old work and minor things like exercising. Oh and I am still waiting for a coffee date.

Tea & Biscuits

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Sunday evening I finally managed to meet up with Dmitri. After 2 weeks of an unsuccessful trip to the mall, I convinced Dima to scrap the whole mall trip. Malls are better for shopping and not meeting up for coffee.

I went over to Dima’s house and at Sarah’s insistence, we all had some tea and biscuits. I would of preferred coffee, but Sarah hates the taste of it so tea it was. Sounds old fashioned but I enjoy a talk with friends more than the most “exciting” game or movie. Dima attempted to get me to watch a preview of Jackass 2 and Dexter. As promised, I will watch the first episode of Dexter, but Jackass proved too crazy and silly for me. Sorry Dima, I know you tried.

Before the “tea” party, I helped Sarah and Dima work on Sarah’s assignment. Acting like a snobby writer, I commandeered the assignment. I still persist that most writing needs the golden touch of a good journalist, writer or editor. And I managed to finish up my previous blog. The next ones will be shorter.

Also I received confirmation of someone reading my attempt at journalism. Thank you Sarah for reading my work. You made my day.

Adjusting to Easy Schedule

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I am not good at adjustments. The switch from a super-busy, near-hyper-kinetic schedule to a “normal” lighter schedule keeps on throwing me off. Hence the lack of updates since Friday.

Yesterday was the great chill day. Today was the great after-chill day. Meaning, I did not get too much done when it comes to assignments or studying. Anyone who follows the justCheckers project got lucky with the new daily updates (at least on the wiki). Everyone else… kind of lucked out. (At least you lucky denizen of the blogosphere get a neat treat today – 3 make-up posts. Why? Because I love you and enjoy having a regular audience.)

Still, I rejoice at the thought of the “evil” over-busy semester finishing. With the exception of three moderately difficult exams, a wack of writing for my writing portfolio and two assignment-papers, my goal of finishing a B. Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, just got a semester to completion. The very thought of finishing in April-May 2007, makes me euphoric. Now assuming that I pass every course this semester, only 4 more courses await me next semester.

I only worry about what I do after-university. People assure me, there is a life after university. I am not too sure. I guess I will need a job, to pay off my meagre debt. But kind of a job? Where can I work? Sure I do plan to work for myself one day, only I need money to bootstrap any sort of business. I would prefer to entire self-employment on my own terms, rather than “starving” myself into it.

So where should I work? Most jobs want some sort of work experience, something I lack in the professional sense. Take gaming firms like Valve, Apogee, id or EA: everyone wants an artist with a portfolio (but can I build one in less than 6 months?), a project developer (do you know that I never worked in let alone managed developing a commercial game?) or a programmer (does Java AWT count as graphics experience? No I don’t do OpenGL, at least not yet). How about NASA’s JPL? Would love to code rovers to race around on Mars, yet neither engineer nor US citizen I am not.

Realistically, I should contemplate working for IBM or Canonical (makers of Ubuntu). Man too little dreamy options (Valve), and too many risky (Canonical) or dirrery options (IBM, Microsoft *shivers*). So long as all effort does not land me a low paying sys admin or code monkey job.

Chillin’ and Dreamin’

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Elation!!! I finished work for yet another course, Business of Computing, and an assignment for the Foundations of Research course. So all the work for my Computer Science courses out the way, I can concentrate on the assignments for my two other courses. Staying up all night, sure wore me out but nothing a make-up nap did not help.

Right now, I am sit chilling and relaxing. I can finally concentrate on my “other” projects. Well after I finish my assignments and write my exams, but you get the point.

Taking about my side projects, I am pleased to say the justCheckers project is moving along well. I am impressed the amount of attention project received lately. A lot of this attention comes from the increased ranking on SourceForge.net. The ranking seems to increased, thanks to migration to Subversion and the recent updates to the site. I set up a wiki that should speed up development of specifications. Maybe we will see a new release soon too.

In other news, Arnold Rosenbloom – my professor for many past course including this semester’s brand new Informational Security (CSC347) – will post my article on RSA cryptography and its demise thanks to quantum computation. I plan on resurrecting the SiteChunks project. Also as promised last Friday, I will post an update to the Self-Experiment: Fast Personal Context Switching, later on today.

Groogy Weather, Groggy Me

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Greetings again, and sorry about missing two day of updates. Dealing with stress, putting up with administrative nonsense, writing assignments, attempting to dance around illness and living with the sudden wacky cold-wet weather, puts me in a mood where I rather not even poke my nose from under the blanket. On the bright side, everything is falling into place.

The instructors of two of my course, kindly set the hand-in date for my course work until December 20. That gives me some breathing room, and lets me concentrate on the three assignments due on Friday. Next week I get to study for exams and work on the later assignments.

Carmen Hung, the new leader of our CSC454 or Business of Computing, handled getting everyone to work on the last assignment wonderfully. The paper still in the works, weighs in currently at a hefty 41 pages, and 24% of our term work. The business plan is coming along, not as fast as I wanted it. Still no complaints, as yesterday I came home late and crashed. I spent this entire morning getting over my tiredness “hangover”. When I finish blogging this entry, I will stock up on caffeine again.

Katarina Halan, classroom friend and almost my girlfriend, let me work with her on the CSC347 or Information Security assignment. We spent about 16 hrs on Sunday working only on the assignment. After hours of hacking, half-working and actual coding we finished the assignment. Thanks Kat for yesterday’s coffee “date”. Sorry about the Tim Horton’s coffee, next time I will buy some good coffee from Second Cup instead.

My last assignment after the “Business” course, deals with the unfortunate CCT209 Foundations of Research course. I am so behind in that course, it stopped being funny months ago. My group started on Monday, but since my e-mail to them, I saw no work. I guess I have to juggle this assignment and writing the business plan. Bother. Guys, you better get on the ball soon.

As for my open source project and my other blog, One-Time Trash Pad both I place on hold until I meet Friday’s deadline. I have too much at stake to deal with any side projects. If I don’t update this blog anytime before December 20, please do not be surprised. I will try my best, but no promises.

Until then wish me luck. I need all the luck I to overcome the stress, the weather and my own sluggishness.