J . M A I L

The Last Blogger Standing

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:38:00 -0400

Hi friends, where are all your blog posts? What is up in your lives? I miss reading about everyone and facebook just doesn’t cut it. Share share share :)

About me: My recent trip to Toronto was amazing. Felt longer than 8 days which is just what I wanted. I did so many different things and got a lot of relaxing time in. I saw so many people I wanted to see, some people I didn’t expect I would get to see, and maybe even made a new friend or two. Thanks to everyone that make my trip awesome. A special shout out to Marlow and Joe who provided much needed crash space. Also thanks to Mrs. Varden for an awesome final Ontario meal and airplane food :)

Now that I am back in Calgary things should be getting hectic although I am not too worried. I am doing two courses this fall: Design Studio I and Information Visualization. I will also be TAing. In October I go to Salt Lake City for Visweek, but before then I have to finish my poster. At the end of Sept is the CHI deadline which might also be a bit nutty.

After all the comments I got about being fat back home I have decided to cut a bit of weight. I weighed in at 180 pounds a couple of days ago and am gonna try to get down to around 165 before bulking again through the winter.

I am super excited about a condo that I am seeing today in Kensington. I hope it all works out and that I soon have a new place to live. Then I can worry about what to fill the place with. I want to go minimal with a lot of empty space. If anyone has good suggestions for unique furniture let me know. I am thinking an interesting coffee table will be key. If the condo is a go I will make another post with the layout to hopefully get feedback about interior design.

As for other stuff… I am hoping to get back into yoga, maybe play some hack while the weather is still good, and hopefully get into a more normal schedule where wake up early and don’t end up going to bed at 3-4 am everyday. As lame as it is I am also really excited about fall TV i.e., It’s Always Sunny, Dexter, Breaking Bad, Californication, 30 Rock, South Park, The Big Bang Theory.

The only new interest for me lately is architecture after watching a documentary about the ROM crystal and one about Frank Gehry. The advice given that if one meets an architect at a party one should punch them in the face is interesting. Does 99 % of architecture really suck?

// end post

Lisa Simpson is Getting Married Sunday

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 21:36:00 -0400

Lisa Simpson is Getting Married Sunday

Art Interactivity

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:24:36 -0400

I have been thinking about an exhibit lately focusing on touch interactivity, audio prompts, and visual reveals.

The idea is pretty simple, a show case of different interaction metaphors which each reveal a visual piece of art or info-graphic. Leveraging iPads as the interaction canvases different interaction methods would reveal related work.

For example…

A pair of headphones is attached to one of the screen mounted on the gallery wall. When a person places the head phones on they hear the beating of a human heart. At first all that would be seen on the display would be the icon of a heart and a red circle. When a person taps inside the circle in time to the heard beat on the audio track the circle would slowly turn green indicating progress of the interaction (red - green traffic light progression). After a set number of correct taps in the right rhythm an info-graphic would be revealed above the interaction space of the canvas.

This sort of piece would invite the audience to play with the piece, discover the interaction naturally through visual feed back and transition an audio cue, to a touch interaction, and ultimately to visual reveal/reward. Such a piece would also invite other on lookers to observe the participant using the piece and study the interaction required to “unlock” the work.

Other such interactions could include having one hand of the participant move one touch point up and down and one touch point left to right using the other hand of the participant to reveal the work.

E.G.

I envision maybe 5 - 6 different interaction metaphors making up the exhibit, each interaction inviting trial and error, playfulness, observation, and discovery.

Let me know what you guys/girls think of this and if you might like to be involved. If you think this is just crazy let me know that to. :)

This was supposed to be the future ...

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:35:00 -0400

I have been obsessed with laptops lately. Every time I think I have found the new best thing I soon discover some fault and find something better. This chain of compulsion and discovery has resulted in some ideas regarding almost every computer company out there.

__________

I have specifically been obsessed with sub-notebooks and thin laptops. I compare everything I see to my current setup:

Gateway 11.6 ” / Intel SU3500 single core 1.4 cpu / 3 gigs ram / 80 gig intel ssd / 3 pounds / less than 1 inch thick / 5:30 battery life

__________

I think at this point I have explored many options leaving me with some constraints.

Constraint # 1 - Screen less than 13 ” in size. Past 13” I feel the the base size of the laptop is too large. 11 ” - 12.1” is preferred.

Constraint #2 - Good keyboard. Preferably 100 % of full size. Typically any laptop 11.6” or bigger will have a full sized screen.

Constraint #3 - Thinner than my current machine.

Constraint #4 - Equal or better battery life than my current machine.

Constraint #5 - The lighter the better. (current machine is 3 pounds)

__________

That said, here are the options from the various pc makers out there.

Asus

Asus EEE laptop line (atom cpus)
Asus U20A

3 pounds - The problem here is that none of the computers they make are really smaller than my current machine. Same size / same weight = Taking a pass

(side note: the 13” inch asus with a reported 12 hours of battery life is a very nice and interesting machine)

====================================

Acer

Aspire One
Timeline X (1830T)

Again none of these units are smaller or lighter than my current unit which is not surprising as my current laptop is pretty much an 1810t. The new timeline x is really fast with a low voltage i3 cpu but for what I do (web/office) not worth the price of $650.

====================================

Dell

Adamo XPS

3 pounds - Too pricey! Funky design, that I think would be awkward to use while laying on a couch with the laptop actually on my lap. The extreme thinness (the worlds thinnest) is offset by the larger base size produced by making a longer and thinner laptop (they basically stretched out this machine). Battery life is also pretty poor. No vga out is a bummer.

====================================

Apple

The mac book air is meh.

====================================

Toshiba

Portégé A600

2.4 pounds ! Fast 9400 intel dual core low voltage cpu.

Sadly, with a price tag of $1600 its hard to justify over my current machine just to save 1 pound.

====================================

Sony

Vaio X

Then there is the vaio x. The world’s second thinnest machine. Just taller than the vga port as you can see above. The world’s lightest laptop at 1.5 pounds.

Sadly this comes at a price… $1300 and an Atom cpu. Now, this is the fastest atom cpu ever released at 2.0 ghz but it is still an atom.

The keyboard is also only 90 % of full size. The larger battery for it gives this unit 10 plus hours but then makes the laptop almost 2.5 pounds and makes it thicker. A smaller battery is available that makes this unit only 2 pounds but gives it 5/6 hours of battery time. This laptop also has the smallest screen at 11.1”

__________

I left out a bunch of cheaper atom machines from different companies but they are all pretty much the same.

I feel that my current machine has just enough cpu power for what I do and going lower seems risky (ala atom cpu). Also, most laptops also don’t provide much better battery life than I current have. It is proving really hard to justify replacing my year old $450 dollar gateway laptop.

As it stands now, I am watching ebay for a deal on the vaio x but a $1000 dollar netbook is still just a netbook even if it is the lighest and one of the thinnest laptops ever created. If anything the vaio x is more of a status symbol then anything.

Hopefully this info was interesting and useful to some other people out there. Thoughts and comments are welcome as always.

Acer 1830T First Benchmarks

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 02:48:00 -0400

Battery life via windows (everything at default)…

Internals of the 1830t.

My old computer benches at (Core2 Solo U35000 @ 1.40 ghz / 3 gigs of ram / mobile intel 4 series express):

But check out the 1830t:

Check out how the ssd in the old computer crushes the new one.

The cpu score with the i3 is over double that of an su3500.

Faster memory. Better graphics. Am I sold? I don’t know yet.

SSD for Me

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:37:00 -0400

Yesterday I bit the bullet and went out and got myself an Intel SSD hard drive. I was able to get an 80 gig drive for around $20 under cost and even still it wasn’t cheap, costing almost half the price of my current laptop (Gateway EC1803h).

I posted my windows experience index above and as you can see the score for the hard disk is incredibly high. As for real work noticeable differences, faster boot times, slightly faster hibernate times, faster app loading (eg. word loads almost instantly). However, after I get Word, Firefox, Tweetdeck, and Digsby loaded up the laptop runs about the same as it would with a regular hard drive.

The SD drive itself was noticeably lighter than the old hard drive it was replacing. My current laptop is a bit over 3 pounds so at this weight every gram counts.

I hope to get marginal improvements in battery life as well.

I bought the drive because I figured if I do get a new system in the near future I can just move the HD over and if I don’t get a new system at least my current setup will be a bit faster and hopefully more usable due to the speed increase.

So far I can’t say if the SSD was worth the price. The reviews of SSD drives on the web are crazy positive but I am gonna hold off on deciding how worthwhile they are a bit longer. So far so good though…

Tablets, Netbooks, Nooks, Galore

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:06:42 -0400

I am trying to decide if I should pick up a new laptop or tablet. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Here is some internal dialogue:

1. Do I need a new tablet, netbook, or ereader

Answer: No.

2. Should I get an ereader for reading papers?

Answer: No, I can’t annotate them with any kind of stylus. I also like physical paper and books.

3: Should I get a tablet?

Answer: For what I do, word, firefox, and digsby ~ maybe.

4. Should I get an iPad?

Answer: Not when things like this are coming out.

5. What about a laptop?

I am thinking about this one:

Thin, light (3 pounds), 8 + hours of battery, i3 culv processor and then I would add an 80 gig intel ssd hd (specs/link)

Price would come out to about $850 cad

…

To be honest I shouldn’t really buy any of these but that hasn’t stopped me from thinking about all the new toys out there. My current laptop is fine cpu wise, the only thing that might be nice is better battery and an ssd drive.

I could buy an ssd drive and add it to the current laptop to see how I like it.

Another thought I have had is that if I am gonna upgrade then maybe I should get a 13” model but feel that 11.6” might be the perfect size.

Now the things about the toys is that none of them would break the bank. If I didn’t already have an 11.6” laptop I would get either a table or new laptop for sure. The question is whether to upgrade to a whole new machine when I don’t really need to, wait and then upgrade, get a new ssd drive and stick with the current machine, or buy nothing and save the cash.

What do you think blog-o-sphere?

Boxee Fail Review

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:32:00 -0400

I have been thinking lately about media center software for pcs. After thinking a bit about options from Apple their hardware choices were rejected as possibilities for me due to their price. That left me with a few other choices to explore: Windows Media Center, XMBC, and Boxee. This post is about my failed experiment with Boxee. (note: I did not really consider the PS3 which is an option)

I wanted to build a very easy to use media center for my parents’ living room. Nothing too fancy, no PRV capabilities, just the ability to play downloaded media like TV shows and movies up to 1080p quality. I thought about the media solutions out there and decided Boxee might work for my parents new media center computer.

What I liked about boxee was the limited number of buttons and choices on most screens. I really liked how it got the art work and show synopsises from the internet and displayed them in what I thought was a simple but nice design. I liked that I didn’t need to rename the files to make them appear correctly in boxee. I also really liked that hitting the back button enough times would return me to a root menu. I feel for most systems an easily accessible “emergency exit” is vital to help novice users to feel comfortable.

All of this was for naught; my parents did not get comfortable using boxee. Boxee was just too buggy. My big complaint is that Boxee would not stay on top of other windows. It was not usual to turn the TV on to find a pop screen (skype, windows updates, mostly just the windows taskbar) on top of Boxee running in the background which confused the heck out of my parents.

Another big complaint I had was the accidental pressing of the green windows mce button on the media center remote I bought my parents. This of course caused windows mce to launch on top of boxee. I know I could disable that button on the remote using third party software but that is extra work and the software I did try didn’t work. Ideally, the green mce button should launch boxee and there should be an option in boxee to take over the use of that button on media center remotes. That green button is like the ultimate “emergency exit” button it is very important for novice users.

So I am going to try Windows Media Center on my parents media center computer. I will report back with an update of how that works out.

Letters, Condos, Grades, and other such Jon related events

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 20:17:00 -0400

Hi blog,

First off, about the letters, my bad. I have yet to write or send a single one. I got caught up in wasting time and just didn’t get to it. I will make an effort this week to get writing. Then again whats more fun… getting a letter in the mail or the anticipation of getting a letter in the mail?

I went to Vancouver last week to see my niece Maya on her first birthday. It was really nice to get away, feel some humidity again, and see my sister and her family. Maya is awesome!

Here she is enjoying the swing with Julia. :D

While there, I spent way too much money at the Lulu Lemon outlet. I now probably own more stuff from there than any guy I know (and most girls).

I got back to Calgary with two term assignments due. Both are now done and submitted.

I am not sure how one course went, I am assuming it was pretty good. The other course I got 100 % on my term project and presentation giving me a 90.44% overall in the course and thus an A :) Calgary gives out letter grades here which is weird so I am very happy to have that 0.44 % because it means the difference between an A- and an A. I hope it helps with scholarship applications this fall.

I am now into researchish mode. I have some brain storming to do this week. I am gonna start playing around with Processing (a cool language that works on top of Java) and try to make something for an InfoVis poster submission. I got some sweet new notebooks to keep my ideas and rando research stuff in (non-moleskine too).

This afternoon I saw a condo that is in an awesome area for me in relation to school (ie less than a 5 minute walk, actually its across the street, I can see from the window of my lab). It has a washer and dryer and dish washer! Most importantly, my parents really liked the building.

*note I just saw a red ferrari outside the window of this tea house, btw I am writing this from Oolong tea house which I am now also the mayor of on 4square*

However, my parents want to wait for a unit in the building to come available that is not on the ground floor. That said it could be a few months before I have a new place to live. More time in the parents basement means less money for rent though so I guess it’s a good / ok thing.

I have been on an online buying spree lately.

This past week I ordered:

a new laptop battery (hoping it gives me 9 hours of battery life)
two yerba mate gourds and bombillas
a rearview monitor mirror

I think I official love dealextreme.com. They have lots of awesome things (where I ordered the mirror from, a head scratcher, and a ton of other electronic toys/accessories).

This week I also went to my first hot yoga class ever. It was interesting. I had fun. It was weird but I think I drank less water than I normally do when I practice. Every sip would make my mouth feel like I had just stepped into a sauna. If I ever go back I will have to get some booty shorts to wear :p

I also started watching a documentary called Yoga Unveiled today. So far so good, its pretty detailed in explaining the roots of yoga. I also am still looking for an attractive & knowledge lululemon wearing instructor that also doesn’t believe the position of the third moon of Jupiter affects our energy level or other such sillyness.

For now I think I will stick with regular non-heated practice. Maybe something that stresses the more technical asanas while also leaving more time for non asana based work.

In other news, I will be going to Vancouver soonish to pick up the old volvo station wagon that my parents used to own and now my sister has. It will be my new set of wheels! soccer moms watch out. Anyone wanna hang out in Vancouver for a day or two while I am there?

Till the next time I get the urge to write… warm happy fuzzy thoughts for all.

HCI / UX People .... Click Here

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:16:53 -0400

I am looking for 3-4 good people to start a new business with. I am seeking motivated, ambitious, and entrepreneurial persons in the field of usability and HCI (human computer interaction) that can claim to be UX professionals and/or have academic credentials to back up the claim of being a usability/hci professionals/experts.

What I propose, is starting a usability review panel. The purpose of this group would be to consult with online businesses to review and provide a rating of their sites / services. What this really boils down to is the ability to give a stamp of approval to those seeking a usability professionals endorsement for their particular site/program/service.

This idea could be explained a bit better with an example of a group that already does the a similar thing for a different market. I.E. I was watching TV this weekend and an ad came on TV for a product. During the course of this ad they mentioned that the product had received approval from a group of professionals, a group name you would might recognize if I were to state it but for the sake of anonymity I will omit. After to talking to some people in the room I learned that this review panel was actually made up a select few group of individuals who had formed the group themselves.

This got me thinking, why couldn’t I employ the skills I have to do the same thing. What I want now is to get a few more people on board and we will be off to the races.

If you have interest in participating please email me and let me know your credentials / send me your CV and we can proceed from there.

This is a great opportunity to get on board with something that could be very exciting, educational, and profitable. The group will be limited to at most 5 members so if you have interest in learning more get back to me ASAP.

Thanks,

Jonathan

Computer Nerds

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:20:01 -0400

You know that feeling you get about a person in the first 30 seconds after you meet them for the first time?

Haven’t we all had that experience where we learn so much about someone just by the way they speak and how calm they appear in social situations? There is a wealth of secondary information that comes across in those first few moments of meeting a new person that tell us so much about them.

This post is about those moments when you meet someone new and you just know they are, without a shadow of a doubt, a computer science nerd.

Let me frame this discussion… I was thinking of joining a group on campus in an executive role. I decided to attend a social meeting of the group to get a feeling for it’s members. I admit I was on guard. My experience with computer groups is mixed, some very positive experiences but some interaction has been less than impressive.

Anyways, I was excited to join a new group on campus to get involved and to meet some new people. Within 5 minutes though of the meeting I had decided I wouldn’t be going forward with this plan. I was turned off by the interaction, the awkwardness, the nervousness, the tone of the speech, the quitesenial computerscienceness of it all.

It’s hard to describe really, but I think people will know what I am talking about.

What I don’t entirely understand is what I find so objectionable about it all. Is it a self loathing? Maybe I am afraid that I am seeing a reflection of myself in these people… but that can’t be true can it? I am not “comp sci” in that way…please say it ain’t so!

Friends please weigh in on this issue.

What is it about computer nerds that make them stick out they way they do?
Why do I (and others) objection to them so strongly?
Why are they the way they are?

That said, I miss my non-compsci compsci friends back home. Stay cool people, stay cool.

Unplugged Letters

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:13:00 -0500

This is an open call for anyone interested in receiving a hand written letter from me.

Today while sitting on the C-Train I go to thinking about how I am becoming more disconnected from people I have left behind. I would be happy to write letters to anyone that would like to receive a real letter simply because it’s really nice to get a hand written letter in the mail.

Simply email me or comment to this post with your address and then sometime in future you will come home and find in your mail a piece of mail that isn’t a bill, or a flyer, but instead is a good old fashioned piece of snail mail.

I have also realized that being west of central Canada that I feel disconnected from what I feel is really happening. The time zone differences, being away from Toronto and Ontario, and even to some extent New York state and central USA has a feeling to it. Important things seem to happen in the middle and I am no longer in the blast radius. While I am in the same country I may as well be a million miles away in some respects. Weird.

One more thing, I am gonna take off my blog/facebook integration. If you only find my posts through facebook and you still want to get updated about new posts use the RSS button at the top of the page.

Post-Op Lasik Follow Up 3

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:27:36 -0500

Just got back from another follow up appointment. Apparently these new drops are much better and my eyes are not as dry as they were last week but I guess I kinda lost a week of recovery time so they said it’s still gonna be 3 weeks or so before I get to a more healed/normal state.

They said that right now my left eye is more swollen under the flap, where there is a build up of liquid causing some distorition in my vision.

I have another appointment in 3 weeks so by then I hope my eyes are all healed and I am 20/20 in both eyes.

Looking for a cheap wireless keyboard and win 7 audio card

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:04:00 -0500

I am in the process of gathering some things for my media center pc. I am waiting on buying a TV but when I do I want to have the media center up and running as I will not have cable access.

I am looking for suggestions for:

A cheap wireless keyboard. A diNovo mini would be nice but it’s way too much. So I am looking simply for something cheap and reliable. Some media keys would be nice to have as well.
A cheap audio card with Win 7 drivers. My current audio card doesn’t support windows 7 and I would like to upgrade to win 7 mce on my media center box.

Thanks yall.

Update (1):

Just ordered:

It was on sale and had some media buttons.

Still looking for an audio card and considering:

http://tiny.cc/5iXgA @ $35

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX26324%28ME%29.aspx @ $25

Can’t seem to find our if the cheaper card supports win 7 but I know the pricier one does.

Post-Op Lasik Follow Up 2

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:52:58 -0500

I had my week after follow up appointment this morning. I really wanted to find out when and if I had to go back to get my left eye redone. Turns out they won’t even consider it till 6 months after the first procedure.

I was told again today that my eyes were really dry. With the left eye being even worse than the right. I was told that it looked like the drops they had given me were given me some sort of allergic reaction and thus weren’t working.

So now I have some new drops. I was told that if my eyes stop being so dry that my vision should get much better. I have another follow up appointment next week. I am once again hopefully and am gonna go nuts with these drops in an attempt to make my laser eye work properly.

Post-Op Lasik Follow Up

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 22:06:32 -0500

I thought some people might be interested with my experience with Lasik eye surgery so I thought I would blog about it.

It has been three days since my surgery Tuesday morning. The first few hours after the surgery my eyes were irritated. After a nap of a few hours things slowly felt better and getting in my post-op eye drops was not so much of a challenge.

My vision the first day wasn’t bad but wasn’t great. Better than it was before the Lasik.

The morning following my Lasik I went back for a post-op appointment. My vision was definitely not 20/20 and I was told that my eyes were very dry even though I was putting all the drops that I was supposed to.

I noticed that night that my vision in my left eye was worse than my right with my right eye vision being pretty good.

Today, the my vision was about the same as last night. I noticed a bit of haloing of street lights coming home and my vision in the right eye is still much better than my left. I am hoping things even out over the next few days and I know it can take some time.

My big concern right now is that I will have to go back for readjustment but I guess I should be a bit more patient. Hopefully in a weeks time I will be at 20/20.

Mass Construction

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:30:00 -0500

Just a little update about my adventures at the gym and my new bulking cycle. I am now weighing myself every morning to keep myself on track, according to one study those that weigh themselves every morning lose more weigh than those that don’t so I believe it should work the other way, it should keep me focused at the very least.

This morning I weighed in at 164 pounds. I am not a fat nor a lean 164. I am slowly getting a bit bigger over the past two weeks, largely I would guess from water weight and muscle swelling (hypertrophy).

Hypertrophy results from an increase in cell size, while hyperplasia is from an increase in cell number.

I am pretty positive this bulk over the next three months will go well, assuming I actually do my leg workouts. My diet is ramping up and am eating more and more.

I have a weight gainer that I will take right before bed to get more calories in my system. I am taking a multivitamin, omega 369, and vitamin D just for good measure. I have protein, dextrose, maltodextrin, and good old fashioned creatine monohydrate for my during workout and post workout nutrition.

I have everything in place for a good bulk. My workouts are focused, structured well, my form is great these days, and my muscle recruit is better than it has ever been. I do need to keep my ego in check in the gym and find a balance between awesome muscle recruitment in my exercises and loading on the weight to my exercises. If I keep keep to my schedule and shove as much food as I can get into my body I hope to get up to 180 lbs while holding a good shape before my summer cutting cycle begins.

Time will tell.

Yoga Panic

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:00:00 -0500

I like the way the words “Yoga Panic” go together. They juxtapose in a very pleasing way to me and represent an idea I have been thinking about for the past two days.

“The Art of Failure” is article written by Gladwell and is included in his collection What the Dog Saw. I found the dissection of the terms “choke” and “panic” in such detail intriguing and though why not take it a step further and ask when is panic a good thing. I think an example of such a time is during the practice of yoga… let me explain.

Panic … causes what psychologists call perceptual narrowing. In one study, from the early seventies, a group of subjects were asked to perform a visual acuity task while undergoing what they thought was a sixty-foot dive in a pressure chamber. At the same time, they were asked to push a button whenever they saw a small light flash on and off in their peripheral vision. The subjects in the pressure chamber had much higher heart rates than the control group, indicating that they were under stress. That stress didn’t affect their accuracy at the visual-acuity task, but they were only half as good as the control group at picking up the peripheral light. “You tend to focus or obsess on one thing,”

“Panic, in this sense, is the opposite of choking. Choking is about thinking too much. Panic is about thinking too little. Choking is about loss of instinct. Panic is reversion to instinct. They may look the same, but they are worlds apart.”

I find in my own practice that careful and mindful “perceptual narrowing” is what allows me to make the most progress with my technique. When beginning or deepening into a posture it’s the narrowing of focus to minute details and excluding other thoughts that makes the big difference.

EG: Warrior II

Is my back arm in line with my body and are my fingers straight and reaching? Yes? ok next…

Is my bending knee beyond my front toes? If so move the back foot further back… Is my front heel in line with my back foot, does an imaginary line from my heel bisect the middle of my back arch? Yes? ok next ….

and so on…

I don’t rely on subconscious thoughts taking over to perform each pose. I quiet my mind and instead focus on minute details almost as if I were to “choke” in the sports sense of the word.

I panic by thinking too little about what the rest of body is doing. I choke by focusing too much on one small detail. Now this is now how choking and panic usually happen, with a mindful degree of control, yet are there not similarities?

Your body might be screaming from a certain stretch but you turn off that thought and instead focus the find. An important aspect to my practice is to turn off that one thought that is trying to capture the attention of the mind and then focus the mind elsewhere.

Perhaps by cultivating panic we can hope to move further towards controlling it in other areas of our life.

But it's a dry cold.

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:10:12 -0500

I thought I would take a few minutes on a lazy Friday afternoon to update my blog without any real objective or goal. So where do I start… I am settling into my new life here in a new city. My classes are going well, I have submitted assignments in both classes so far. I realized just yesterday that maybe my marks don’t matter so any more. Marks probably will help when I apply for scholarships but to be honest I am unlikely to get low marks in a grad school class, and to be even more blunt, being an opinionated native English speaker in a computer science grad class tends mean I will do well marks wise.

Some thoughts that I have had this week:

Everyone is too uptight when it comes to citations and rewording things from other authors. I was reading Gladwell’s new book and got to to thinking about the topic. I realized how often, when citing other people. I feel that they first author to say something often says it best and changing a sentence just to change it is often pretty silly.
I looked up some people on Facebook today that I hadn’t in a while and I think I feel good that they are doing well. What good would someone else’s unhappiness do me? If anything, other people having a good life gives me/us all hope that everyone can have a good life.
I am down to one pair of jeans and so I will likely go get another pair this weekend. I get the feeling my parents will pay for them and that feels weird. Not that they never give me money but that they seem much more willing now that I am living back at home. I guess I am actually costing them less by living at home than I did while I was living in Guelph.
I am trying to decide what I am looking forward to these days. If I get Lasik eye surgery this month (I have an appointment, just waiting for some government money to come in) then I don’t know what I will set my sights (no pun intended) on next. I think I am generally happier when I am waiting for something in the future to happen. The only other thing I am really looking forward to is getting a window cubicle in my research lab, it’s really pretty when the sun is setting.
I have been thinking about girls, as I often do, and I have mixed feelings. Is there any rush now that I am in the next stage of my life to meet someone? I forget what that that falling in love elation feels like and it much harder to miss something I don’t remember. Maybe life is just simpler on my own.
I want to get bigger again but I find my will power lacking a bit compared to the past. I get a lot of satisfaction from the results of going to the gym but that satisfaction is not producing more motivation for me right now.
I much prefer Calgary weather to Guelph weather. This dry air, while the cause of some problems, makes leaving the house every morning much nicer.

I also want to say, to my friends who have having relationship problems right now (you know who are you), things will get better with time, you guys are all pretty awesome, and I have no doubt at all that things will get better for you before you know it.

e-hug,

iPad - Please Don't Hate

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:08:00 -0500

I was excited to watch the apple release of their new tablet yesterday. This has apparently been a pet project of Steve Job’s for years now and you could tell he was really excited to show it off. The reaction from most other people has been poor and I want to address this a bitty.

1. This is first gen product and those that do buy it will suffer an early adopters tax much like the first ipod/iphone/zune/eeepc ect. but unlike a lot of other first gen releases this one is built upon a much stronger foundation of the existing iPod line and iPhone OS. I expect this to be the most polished launch product apple has had in years.

2. People complain about the lack of media card reader, camera, stylus (I really wanted this one), but that is missing the point. This product is being let down because the expectations placed upon it are far too great by far too many.

Apple is not know for making new revolutionary things (despite what they say) but are know for making existing things better than the competition.

IE. Mp3 players had been around for a long time but the iPod line was just better in a lot of ways than anything else in the market.

Smart phones have been around for years but Apple was the first to really hit the sweet spot and combine technologies for the North American market.

So then what is apple making better this time around? the ebook reader!

If you want this product to replace your laptop you will be disappointed, if you want it to replace your phone you will be disappointed, but if you want to compare it to a Kindle ebook reader you will be amazed.

For $10 dollars more than the top of line Kindle you get a WHOLE lot more, colour screen, better build quality, internet access, iBook store, overall prettier product ect.

3. Yes, the next gen of iPad will have the features people wanted this one to have but for the price of $500 us (way below expectations) can you really complain? If it had everything included in this version and had cost $1000 people would have complained about the price?

4. For novice computer users this will be a great product. For some people file management and folders are confusing, multitasking is confusing, the internet and email are a mystery. For the novice users, the iPad and a wireless router will let them do almost anything they can imagine. They won’t know any better about the quality of the virtual keyboard compared to a physical keyboard. This device will just work for them.

5. This device, I hope, will do for books what the first ipods did for digital music, make a bigger and better industry with easier access for consumers.

Will I be buying the first gen iPod? I will probably pass for now as I am very happy with an iPod touch and my 11.6” windows netbook.