Christopher Thomas' Journal

Was at York just long enough to pick up the latest batch of marking. I'll try to address this on Wednesday, so that it isn't hanging over my head while marking the midterm (which I assume I'll be doing).

Basically, until I change my schedule (which I've been in theory trying to do for years now), Tuesdays at York are a write-off. I'll have to find an alternate way to make up the time, or otherwise improve my work efficiency, as this comprehensive needs to get *done* (along with the rest of my degree material).

Having marking not eat my life would also be nice, but that's mostly a question of avoiding procrastination or procrastinating with other useful work.
Assisted at the dojo without incident, for a change. Also got a little bit of time to go through my self-defense sequences for the upcoming demo (albeit not with a partner). As long as I make the Saturday practice sessions, I should be ok.
Dojo seminar happened. Dojo seminar was nifty. Most of the session was spent showing us interesting "bunkai" (applications of movements) for pieces of katas in our standard curriculum. The remainder of the session was spent showing a "foreign kata" (one that isn't part of the standard curriculum; usually these are from other styles of karate, as well). This one was short, but still nifty.
RPG day has been moved to the 20th, so Saturday is clear for VP-slack while still getting me home early enough to get to the demo practice session on Sunday. We'll see how this goes. I may also finally schedule a haircut (fallback plan is for the 27th).
Another neighbourhood cat has gone missing. I should probably dust off the Cat Detector plans/parts some time soon, to see if I can help (I don't even know if this cat is chipped). Downside: I'm busy and it's cold enough that I don't want to trudge around the neighbourhood trying to detect cats. Plus side: Might save a cat. We'll see.

Now, slacking, maybe coding, and bed.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: Final Fantasy 6 soundtrack

Marginal Writing, Incremental Knitting, and Office Hours

Spent a moderate amount of time at York. Didn't get much writing done (though I did start the next section of the comprehensive). Did, however, hold office hours for the course I'm TA-ing. This proved to be more popular than I'd expected, to the point where hours allocated to it may be a problem. We'll see how this plays out.
Finished knitting Bryan's hat, and got about a third of the sewing done. The rest of the sewing, plus pom-pom, should be finished tomorrow. I'll have to dust off the list of projects to determine what'll happen after that.
Plan for Tuesday is brief York (for assignment pickup and maybe writing), followed by a lot of dojo. Plan for Wednesday/Thursday is York, with emphasis on marking. Midterm invigilation is also scheduled for Thursday (which will probably drop a much larger pile of marking on me). Plan for Friday is York and Mekton (should be the last two arena battles). Plan for Saturday is RPG/VP-flyby again, and Sunday is dojo/lunch again (tea is undetermined). This schedule will continue for the next few weeks, which may mean sleep deprivation will become an issue (Sunday dojo sessions are too early to be fully compatible with Saturday VP-slack, but I'm not dropping the slacking). Stay tuned.

Now, puttering and bed.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: Boss Battle music (Guardian Legend)

Missed Dojo, Pleasant Tea, Late Lunch, and Mekton Plotting

Got up roughly on time, but vastly underestimated the number of things I had to do before leaving the house. Missed the dojo practice session as a result. Flack for this is TBD.
Tea trip happened. Tea tip was pleasant. I'll have to remember that cafe in the future ("The Red Tea Box" on Queen). Too pricey for me to visit it frequently, but definitely worth visiting once in a while.
Lunch happened. Was late, due to not budgeting sufficient time for travel, but still made it. Got a chance to catch up with Beverly (her work schedule usually isn't compatible with lunches).
Wrote up and emailed off the "Gorynych" guard-dog numbers for Mekton. This completes the product line for these critters. I'm going to have to draw up a spoof-brochure for them at some point, but this will be a long-term backburner project.
Forgot to take lactose before one pastry earlier today. Regretted it all afternoon. That plus missed sleep means tonight would be a good night to go to bed early. We'll see.

Now, puttering, slacking, and bed.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: "Mink's Anger" (Dragon Half battle music)

RPG Double-Feature and VP Flyby

Slept poorly. This does not bode well for Sunday, especially since I'll get less than 8 hours tonight too. Should survive, but won't be very alert. Fortunately, Sunday post-lunch is booked for downtime.
RPG Day happened. RPG Day was fun. Our party joined with two other groups to harass the army attacking our city-state, and succeeded in taking about about 1% to 1.5% of its strength over a couple of days of skirmishing. The downside is that the last battle cost us significantly, and would have cost us much more if one of our allies hadn't sent a deus-ex-arborea-o-gram to save our tails (arguably "-ex-silva" would be a better translation, but both are accurate for plot-related reasons). Somewhere between "half" and "most" of the army is now skeletal remains as a result of this. We've now been sent to rendezvous with the remaining components of it.
Visited with the VP Crew. This was low-key, but decent. Was persuaded to play Carcassonne, which I'm still at best luke-warm about, but which was sufficiently entertaining. Between game day today and dojo on Sunday, this was a short visit, and next week will be similar. Dojo Sundays will wind down by the end of the month, thankfully.

Now, bed.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: Soviet anthem (The Hunt for Red October)

Minimal York and Incremental Mekton

Went to York, but didn't get much done. Did hand off the marked assignments from yesterday, and also brainstormed with co-workers about what to spend the office equipment budget on (we have a windfall, apparently). Suggestions were filed by email.
Mekton happened. Mekton was decent. We got through one more arena battle, with a very creative opposing mech (giant spider that fired huge pods filled with hundreds of mini-spider-missiles). Showed the hardcopy of the "Hidden Dragon" security-critter around to those who hadn't seen it already. The DM's comment sums up its practical behavior: "It's a *missile* that *bites* people!". Ludicrous flight speed for the win.
Still making incremental progress on Bryan's hat. It's about 60% done now. I won't have any subway time on Saturday, so it almost certainly won't be finished for Sunday's lunch (I'll be on the last stretch of knitting before starting the sewing, most likely). Still faster than I'd expected. I'll have to consult my notes to see what the next knitting project will be.
Plan for Saturday is game day, then brief VP-slack. Plan for Sunday is dojo, then tea, then lunch, then slack. Getting enough sleep remains the challenge, but in theory I can do it. We'll see.

Now, puttering and bed.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: "Rocket Riot" title music

Marking Milestone, Birthday Flyby, and Knitting Progress

Finished marking the second assignment. The backlog is now empty. I have two days to work on the comprehensive before the next assignment comes in (Tuesday). Among other things, this means that Friday will be less rushed than usual, which is nice.
Did a flyby of Flan's birthday. He's getting by, though business is still slow due to the economy. Gift was handed off without incident, and he was enjoying his party (went to a local pub with friends).
Still working on Bryan's hat. It's now about 40% complete. We'll see how things go. Best case would be handing it off on Sunday, expected case is finishing it early next week and handing it off a week Friday.
Plan for Friday is York and Mekton. Plan for Saturday is game day (still not confirmed), followed by brief VP-slack, followed by getting to bed at an almost-sane hour. Sunday is a dojo practice session, then meeting an acquaintance for tea, then the usual lunch trip, then un-allocated time. Monday starts another standard work-week, with a couple of extra curve balls thrown in re. TAship and dojo (nothing major). The main challenge will be getting enough sleep to properly enjoy this weekend.

Now, bed.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: "Tech Gain" jingle (Master of Orion 1)

Incremental Knitting and Marking Milestone

Started Bryan's replacement hat. It's now about 20% done (so, not going to be ready at any point this weekend, but almost certainly ready by next weekend).
Got the first of the two backlogged assignments marked, behind schedule (I'd wanted to drop off the marked assignments today, but finished after the office with the key closed). Four pairs of students provably cheated, and a couple of other pairs probably did (didn't flag them, due to lack of an ironclad case). This is still about half the rate I'd have expected for the other CS-for-non-CS-students course, which either means the word "programming" in the course title is scaring off people who'd be likely to cheat, or that there are many cases of cheating that I'm not catching (possible, due to the way the assignment is set up). This time around, though, I'm with a prof who aggressively pursues cheating. I'm more aggressive than most TAs about _looking_ for cheating, so it'll be interesting to see how this works out.

Now, puttering and bed.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Terran theme (Starcraft)

York Flyby, Hat Completion, Mixed Class, and Building Big Things

Did an almost literal flyby at York. Picked up the next assignment to mark, but actually getting anything done will wait until Wednesday (backlog is at 2 assignments, which the prof is displeased about).
Finished Sam's hat. I'll have to remember to pack the supplies for the re-knit of Bryan's hat tomorrow morning.
Dojo happened. Assisted with only minor screwups. Our own class was a mixture of basics, katas, sparring, and grappling. There was also a mini-seminar on martial arts philosophy and the attitude we're trying to encourage, which is unusual (normally that sort of material is presented in extended form in separate seminars). Survived class, though my back reports that full-force grappling with a guy who's slightly bigger/stronger/heavier than me will be something that it'll want a word with me about tomorrow. That part was still fun, however.
Thought experiment from last Friday: working out exactly how big the largest tower of Lego you could build would be. ( It can't reach space, but you'd want to divert airplanes around it. )
Thought experiment from over the last few days: reformatting the moon. ( The result is very large, and in principle buildable. )

Now, bed.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: "Final Fantasy Title Lyrics" filk (Youtube)

Knitting Milestone and Marginal York

Got to York. Didn't get much done at York. Partly this was "making up for lack of sleep" mind-fog, partly this was "allergy medication" mind-fog, and partly this was "I might be fighting off illness" mind-fog. Skimmed one of the magazines I get for relevant research tidbits, but didn't get any actual marking done (couldn't reliably evaluate it in today's state).

Research _was_ interesting, though. It turns out that EUV tools solve part of the mask problem by using a reflective rather than transmissive mask (so no need to fully absorb EUV, just not reflect much of it). The tools under discussion use 13.x nm light (well into "soft x-ray" territory), rather than the 192 nm presently being used (even with feature sizes of 45 and 32 nm, via considerable shennanigans).
Did make considerable knitting progress during transit, though. Sam's hat is now nearing completion (for the second time). With luck, I'll finish it Tuesday (Wednesday at the latest). Next up is a replacement for Bryan's hat, which got misplaced in a taxi and hasn't turned up anywhere that anyone's admitting to.
Wore the "shirt made of win" from a few days back (recycled phoenix). It took co-workers about 3-5 seconds to get it, based on an informal sample. I am amused (though I'm not going to wear it often until the weather warms up).

Now, final chores and bed.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: "Yackety Sax", at about 70% speed

Dojo Practice, Dojo Event, Low-Key Lunch, Plotting, and Knitting

Got to the dojo roughly on time for the practice session. The bad news is that I'm going to have to do this every Sunday (barring a major conflict). This means I'll be short of sleep most Sundays until the demo itself (March 6th).
Dojo event happened without major incident post-practice.
Lunch happened, though it was just myself and Bryan. Still pleasant, and a good opportunity to catch up. Probably shouldn't have had that much cheese, ice cream, and chocolate, though (it's been haunting me, and will continue to do so). Still worth it.
Plotting for the day:

( Mad science snipped. )
Took photos of the first try at Sam's maple-leaf hat. Then undid half of it (the part with the leaf), and started re-knitting with higher-contrast yarn. It looks decent so far, though there are still several ways it could go off the rails. We'll see how this goes.

Now, slacking and bed.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 title music

Slacking, Pancakes, Gaming, and Mekton Plotting

RPG day was called off due to the DM not feeling well and one other player being sick. This worked out for the best, as it let me enjoy VP-slacking without as much schedule pressure from tomorrow's dojo events.
Spent the afternoon slacking. Pancakes may also have been involved. The recipe started out as Joy of Cooking's "French Pancakes", which I'd had as a kid, but I adjusted it a fair bit to make thicker pancakes:

( Recipe snipped. )
Slacked with the VP-crew. This was low-key, but decent. The first game of the evening was a trivia game that had elements of "The Price is Right" in it as well (each player wrote down a guess at the answer, and then bet poker chips on which answer they thought was closest without being over the year/age/value/etc. being asked for). The second game of the evening was Pandemic, where the players cooperated as a team of researchers trying to stop disease outbreaks. It looked interesting, but I wasn't in condition to quickly learn a new set of game rules, so I sat out and watched this time around.

This gave me a chance to continue plotting from yesterday's Mekton game. Tony's character plans to build a guard-critter (with my character helping with the assembly after the design is done). The critter I came up with is a bit more expensive than desired, but should work quite well for its intended tasks.

I'm really hoping my character gets "Mecha Design" skill exposure, as this is the sort of thing he'd have a lot of fun with.
Plan for Sunday is to get up early, go to the dojo for a practice session, then do another dojo event, then have lunch (probably just with Bryan, as nobody else pinged back, though it's possible dojo attendees will join as well). Plan for Monday is finishing last week's marking. Plan for Tuesday is picking up marking, and dojo. Plan for Wendesday is finishing the upcoming week's marking. Thursday and Friday are in theory comprehensive-work, with the usual weekend events Friday through Sunday. We'll see how this goes.

Now, bed.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: "Home Town" music (Final Fantasy V)

Minimal York, Incremental Mekton, and Shirt Made of Win

Made minimal progress at York. Did at least drop off the marked assignments and pick up the new ones. Marking these is now Monday's task, and marking the next one is Tuesday/Wednesday's task (leaving Thursday/Friday for comprehensive work).
Mekton happened. Mekton was nifty. We've started an arena-battle arc, which has been fun so far, and a very large (shipping container sized) plot token has been delivered to my character's front door. We'll find out what's in it a few sessions down the road.
Game day for Saturday is uncertain, due to the DM possibly coming down with something. VP-slack will be happening either way. Sunday I have to go to the dojo even earlier than usual to practice demo material, followed by another dojo event, followed by lunch, followed by slacking if at all possible.

Now, bed.

Update [1:45pm]:

Forgot to mention a highlight of the evening. Received this shirt from the VP Crew. This is made of large amounts of win.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: "Floating Castle" area music (Final Fantasy I, GBA remake)

Sleepcrastination, Journalcrastination, and Marking

Probably shouldn't have looked at tvtropes again. Managed to not stay up quite as late this time.
Got an incremental amount of work done at York. Mostly this is because procrastinating by reading journals that had come in counts as "work". It turns out that quite a lot of interesting things have been done in the (photonics) industry since I last followed the journals in detail, so I arguably _should_ be doing more of this. Just, after marking and comprehensive are done.
Finished marking the first assignment (quite late). Picking up the second assignment tomorrow. Will hopefully start it, and maybe finish it (it shouldn't take long; I just dislike marking enough that it ends up being procrastinated about).

Now, the trip home, puttering, and bed.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: "Red Alert" game soundtrack

FC Con Report, and Settling Back In

Made it to FC with only minor difficulties. Greatly enjoyed FC. Made it back from FC without any problems at all. Full con report below.
Got a slow start today, due to webcrastination yesterday night (caught up on all of the webcomics I follow, among other things). Still made it into York. The next couple of days will be spent catching up on marking, mostly.
Plan for Thursday is York, Friday is York/Mekton, Saturday is RPG day and VP-slack, Sunday is a dojo event and then lunch and then more slacking. We'll see how this goes. Distraction for this week has been Chrono Trigger DS, which is ongoing.
A more detailed expansion of "enjoyed FC":
- ( Wednesday the 20th: Travel on Little Sleep )
- ( Thursday the 21st: Loafing and Taking In Con-Sights )
- ( Friday the 22nd: Panels )
- ( Saturday the 23rd: Panels, Parade, Dominoes, and Physics )
- ( Sunday the 24th: Dominoes, Knitting, Gaming, and Dinner )
- ( Monday the 25th: Loafing in Limbo )

Now, puttering and bed.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: "Doctor Who" theme music

Card Handoff, Adequate Assisting, Self-Defense, and Trip Prep

Finally distributed the last of the Christmas cards. Work cards ended up handed out, with remaining ones on my desk at work and the lab notified by email. Dojo cards ended up handed out, with remaining ones at the front counter. Card supplies can now get filed until next year.
Assisted adequately. Not well, but my main difficulties were timing as opposed to content. Class itself went adequately, though my fitness level has gone downhill a bit (I have trouble making it through a two-hour class). At least I didn't eat close enough to class to feel ill this time. Fitness will be an ongoing problem, as long as I'm at one day per week.
Still don't have coverage for Tuesday the 26th. I do, however, have an updated phone list, so this can get addressed while at FC.
Plan for the evening: Packing for FC. The new baggage rules for flying to the US are annoying as all crap (no carry-on to speak of, and billing for all luggage items past the first one, vs. the usual two free). This does zero to prevent terror; the recent incident was performed with an item that wouldn't have been caught (underwear pouch) and an item that was exempt (medical syringe). But, until the body-scanners show up, they need to do *something* to look like they're improving security, so we get shennanigans like this.

I'll be fine. I'll just have to scale back the amount of extra clothing and whatnot I'm bringing, and prepare to be bored out of my skull at the airport (fewer amusements now that I don't have my backpack). Going to FC in the first place, though, should more than make up for this.
Forgotten item from last week: Pondering the nature of the universe. ( Musings snipped. )

Food for thought, though I'd want to consult an actual expert in the field to see if entropy really does act that way during cosmic inflation.

Now, more packing, too little sleep, and a trip to the airport.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: "Buoy Base" area music (Super Mario Galaxy)

Webcrastination Fail, Minimal York, and Catching Up with Friends

Made the mistake of clicking a tvtropes link last night. As a result, had another night with less-than-desired sleep rather than catching up on sleep. You'd think I'd learn to not visit that site by now, but apparently not. This XKCD comic neatly sums up the difficulty.
Didn't get much done at York. Did, however, do a bit of technical reading not related to my thesis project. Among other things, this led to finding out about cilk, a variant of C with very straightforward support for concurrent execution (parallel programming). If I ever end up writing multiprocessor code, this will be high on my list of ways to do it. The only drawback is that it doesn't look like it handles execution across a network (clustered machines, vs. in-one-box multiprocessor machines).
Met Shireen for the late Christmas shopping trip. She now has three new books. My own trip has been deferred, due to not finding anything I liked in the toy stores and having borrowed a copy of the Floating Vagabond RPG rules from Bryan on long-term loan. A rain check is fine, and will give me time to think about other things I might like.

More importantly, got a chance to catch up with her. This was quite pleasant, and she might be joining us for the group lunches more often (TBD, based on how her schedule ends up changing).

Now, puttering and bed.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: "Still Alive" (Portal)

Solo Lunch, Errands, Mad Science, Boardgaming, Volunteering, and RPG Day

Lunch happened on Saturday. Lunch ended up being a solo trip. This gave me a chance to relax and think, so it wasn't a waste; just sub-optimal.
Thinking for Saturday: Re-checking Friday's numbers for taking apart the moon to build a Dyson Swarm (a halo of sun-orbiting satellites intercepting most of the sun's light). Long story short, the project is feasible. ( Whether it's useful or not depends on the type of processing task you want it to perform. )

Fascinating to think about, though.
Ran errands post-lunch. End result: Finished setting up my mother's computer to the condition she'd wanted it (speakers and scanner are now hooked up again).
Saturday VP-slack happened. Saturday VP-slack was decent. As it was rexxwolfe's birthday, he got to pick the game of the evening, which was Talisman. Many hours later, Tony had level-ground enough to win the game (albeit with a fluke-of-dice challenge by Lex that worked surprisingly well). Much fun was had, even if it did run later than usual.
Got to the dojo volunteering event. Was late, but not enough to get chewed out or to miss massive amounts of time. Left early, per plan, to get to game day.
Game day happened. Game day was decent. We're still doing our best to interfere with about three armies bearing down on our home city. We've reached the point where we can turn a 20-member enemy scouting party into crisped pincushions in under a minute (albeit with help). This definitely signals the transition into the "fine line between things that can squish us and things that are not a challenge" phase of D&D campaigning.
Plan for Monday: Get into York semi-early, leave early, and make a mall trip with Shireen (her late Christmas gift from me, her late Christmas gift to me; just at different stores). Plan for Tuesday: Hopefully wrap up loose ends at York, assist class, hopefully find coverage for the 26th, then frantically pack for FC. I fly out on Wednesday.

Fallback plan for dojo coverage is to phone through the assistants' list from California. We'll see how this goes.

Now, puttering and bed.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: "Maridia" area music (Super Metroid) (Metroid Metal cover)

Documentation Milestone and Knitting Milestone

Weekend schedule got sorted out. Lunch is (in theory) happening on Saturday, followed by errands, possibly followed by VP-slack. Sunday is a dojo event followed by game day.
Reached the comprehensive documentation milestone that I'd wanted to reach last week. While behind schedule, this is still a positive (better to have reached it than not reached it before FC).
Finally finished almost all of the shawl that was supposed to be my father's Christmas present. I have about two more rows on the top to finish, and then I weave in all of the ends. I'll take a stab at this tonight (shouldn't take more than half an hour).
Unresolved items: Finding coverage for Tuesday the 26th, finding out who (if anyone) is coming to lunch on Saturday, and getting all of the laundry in the house done so that I can pack for FC.

Now, slacking and bed. I'm looking forward to a chance to relax this weekend.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Terran theme (Starcraft)

Brief Meeting, Incremental Documentation, Webcrastination, and Rescheduling

Met briefly with Prof. H., mostly to touch base. The laser supply will probably be handled by a co-worker, if we end up building one at all. It turns out that we don't even know what the system requirements of the project will be, or how well our existing equipment meets those requirements. This is a common issue, and one that I'm not amused by, but it'll get sorted out eventually.

I may end up building a test supply as a procrastination-lark, but I'll probably be too busy. We'll see.
Made incremental progress on the comprehensive document, despite procrastination. One of the subsystems is proving harder to document than I'd expected, but I should be able to look up relevant information to fill in the blanks (part of the specification was mushier than I'd thought).
Mekton on Friday is cancelled due to player illness. Game day has been moved to Sunday, from Saturday, due to DM schedule conflict. I'll be leaving the dojo event early to accomodate this, but will still be at the dojo event, so as to avoid breaking the commitment I made to that (Sensei takes this seriously, and arguably so do I). To accomodate the change in game day, the lunch trip has been moved to Saturday. VP-slack on Saturday evening in theory is happening, but I'm going to wait for a clean bill of health for people over there before confirming that I'm attending. I should also start preparing for FC, as I fly out on Wednesday, and finish looking for an assistant to cover for Tuesday the 26th.

So, much scheduling fun over the next few days, but I should be ok.

Now, loafing and bed.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Soviet anthem (The Hunt for Red October)

Oversleeping, and Lasercrastination

Overslept, probably due to a number of later-than-they-should-be nights previously.
Made it into York. Spent most of my time researching diode lasers and diode laser power supplies instead of working on my comprehensive. The good news is, this is nominally-productive material. I just have to make progress on the comprehensive as well as working on that.
Details re. diode lasers: It turns out that these are very finicky devices. I'd thought that they'd be like LEDs, only needing a current-limited supply. Instead, it turns out that they're operated in a mode where the light output is very nonlinear with respect to current input. A large amount of current is needed to reach the lasing threshold (no light below that current), but a small increase in current beyond that greatly (and nonlinearly, if I'm reading correctly) increases the amount of light emitted. A relatively short distance past the lasing threshold, and you get enough light to damage the cleaved facet of the diode and the laser stops working. The fun part is that where the lasing threshold is varies from device to device, and with temperature, by quite a lot.

The solution to all of these problems is for most diode laser packages (including just about every laser pointer) to have a photodiode behind the laser measuring light intensity (the laser emits light forwards and backwards, even if only the forward part is used in a laser pointer). A nifty and not-very-complicated circuit continually adjusts the current supplied to the laser to keep the desired light level. Hobbyists have built circuits for this, and I've cribbed a few from "Sam's Laser FAQ" (one of the larger laser reference sites) to study. I may or may not end up giving a presentation to other lab-members about this tomorrow (we'll see). The topic came up because a co-worker was looking into doing this sort of thing instead of buying a replacement for a diode laser that stopped working.

Interesting reading, at least!

Now, slacking and bed.

Current Mood: restless
Current Music: "SA-X" battle music (Metroid Fusion)

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