Weblog Ryan Chen-Wing

April's site at school

April told me that her website wasn't on google though she had submitted it. Maybe linking to it will help.
April Blaylock Homepage

She is doing some pretty cool stuff:

My thesis is on the realization and implementation of an autonomous cell manipulating robot.

Clark at Poynter's 50 writing tools

Roy Peter Clark at Poynter writes Fifty Writing Tools where starting last April he started writing a series of tips on writing every week for fifty weeks.

My friend Tom French, who won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, told me he liked my tool list because it covered writing from the "sub-atomic to the metaphysical level." By sub-atomic, he meant the ways words, phrases, and sentences work. By metaphysical, he meant the ways writers live, dream, and work.

1st MBET class 6months after grad

In his post "Postscript, Ethan describes what his MBET classmates are up to now.

In terms of venture creation it seems that Prem is doing the best with his company Tangam Gaming Technology Inc..

He accounts for about 22 people, which I guess is about the whole class.

Saturday 29 Jan

Saturday 29 January 2005 11:05 — 38 people
Saturday 29 January 2005 11:20 — 29 people

The first week of the term they switched from using paper towels to using reusable rags. This morning the clean rag bin was empty so I told the attendant at the front desk. When I said that there were no cloths in the clean cloth bin she thought I meant the towel dispenser.

Armoury Thurs 27 Jan

Thursday 27 January 2005 20:06 — 46 people

Armoury Sun 16 January 2005

Suzuki's Nature Challenge

When David Suzuki was here he talked a bit about his Nature Challenge, which are ten simple things that people can do to make a difference on the environment. Tell your friends.

1. Reduce home energy use by 10%
2. Choose an energy-efficient home & appliances
3. Don't use pesticides
4. Eat meat-free meals one day a week
5. Buy locally grown and produced food
6. Choose a fuel-efficient vehicle
7. Walk, bike, carpool or take transit
8. Choose a home close to work or school
9. Support alternative transportation
10. Learn more and share with others

DSuzuki drew crowds at UW

David Suzuki spoke in the Great Hall this afternoon. The place was packed. I estimate that there were 1,600 people there.

My group presented first in telecom

My group presented first in teleecom management class. It went well. I am pretty happy with my group, Ibi, Kathlyn, Travis and me. They are smart, hard-working, and we have fun. We presented a paper on behavioural vs optimised negotiation agents.

Harry spoke at ASEC event

Harry Rosen spoke in RCH as part of an ASEC event. One of the organizers JamieS actually flew back from VanCity, where he is on work term, for the event. The ASEC reps posed for a picture with Harry at the beginning. There were nin eof them, three were guys and all of them appeared to be east and south asian.

There were about 75 people there. There was hot chocolate and small dessert squares and mini eclairs.

Harry told the story about how he got into tailoring by working in a suit shop. Later he borrowed $500 form his father and opened a store on parliament street. He had to tailor-make suits because he couldn't get credit and had to sell the cloth on consignment.

Transdepartmental retreat

We had a transdepartmental retreat Tuesday monring. I was excited about it because the two of the agenda were ones I had suggested. They were a discussion of how each of us interact, relate, and portray ourselves to our various clients and the other was discussion of opportunities for collaboration.

Gladwell coming for book event

Malcolm Gladwell is coming to Waterloo to promote his new book, BLINK: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. He will be highlighted at an alumni event at CIGI.

Attempt at large aerobics record

The DofA&RS is making a second attempt at the record largest aerobics class. I particpated in that earlier attempt last term. I was the only guy there and there were only about sixty or so participants. I hope to participate again.

FITNESS EXPLOSION!
Help UW beat the record of 187 participants in having the most participants in one aerobics class! Great prizes to be won, great motivational instructors, plus it’s FREE! More details on our website.
Date: Wed. Feb. 16
Time: 5:30 pm - 6:45 pm
CIF Gym

Garbage in the SLiCe Great Hall

I think that people tend to leave garbage lying around the SLiCe Great Hall to readily. I want to try to do something about it. I am trying to initiate and organize an effort to change the norm of users of the GH to deposit their garbage in the proper place. The people to whom I have spoken so far have suggested a wide range of measures.

Boston city hall and MC at UW

When watching a bomb movie set in Bostn, Blown Away, I noticed in the establishing shot before a scene with police training the similarity of a building to the Match and Computer Centre at UW. Now thanks to DougS he has confirmed its identity of the building as city hall in his post about a QI conference he attended.

Also in Boston we saw Boston City Hall, at right, which bears a remarkable resemblance to a certain math and computer building here at the University of Waterloo in which I am sitting right now.

Half year of personal expenditure control

I have been tracking my personal finances since July of last year. It is a big help in terms of planning expenditure and applying resources to priorities.

Besically I track and control expenditure in different categories on a cash basis. I don't use bookkeepping software, just tables in a spreadsheet. My tracking allows me to producs reports like this:

In the coming year I expect savings and d-r to increase to 50%; philanthropy to increase to 3%. Tax and deductions, and, rent and bills will likely go up. I expect capital, clothing groceries and unrestricted to have to be cut and I expect extraordinary income to go up slightly, both to accommodate the increases.

RobE, Google, Eire

Congrats to RobE who is going to Google and in Dubln no less. I heard it from Jesse first.

Poll: People divided on Bush as uniter or divider

From USAToday article through Ping. A question in a poll by the newspaper had this result:

Terracian at the south pole

EricD from Terrace is at the south pole where he is working as a chef for a year.

Schwarz comments on blogs as primary intell

JSchwarz talked interestingly about blogs as the a new intelligence network and compares it to CNN about three quinquennia ago in his post, Network Intelligence.

[...]I remember my father talking about CNN as an 'intelligence asset.' Information traveled fast through CNN, and their signal was global and readily accessible. And the quality of their intelligence rivaled government sources. That was a fascinating thought - CNN was as efficient, for a breadth (not all) of intelligence gathering, as a far more expensive 'private' network.
[...]
So it was doubly amazing for both of us to realize that in the recent tsunami, blogs were beginning to eclipse even CNN as a source of instant primary intelligence.

WLUSU's coat of arms

WLUSU received a grant of arms from the CHA last year.

The blazon reads:

Argent a sprig of three maple leaves Gules, on a chief wavy Purpure a bar wavy Or below a Luther rose (Argent seeded of a heart Gules bearing a Latin cross Argent) and sn antique lamp Argent enflamed Or; And upon a helmet mantled Gules doubled Argent within a wreath of these colours, this Crest; A demi-sun in splendour Or charged with a pair of maple seeds Gules; And for a motto: Necessitatibus Scholasticorum Providere, meaning "Providing for the needs of students"; And for supporters: Two hawks wings elevated and addressed Or each gorged with a collar per fess rayonne' Purpure and Or, standing on a scement beam Purpure; And for a flag: a banner of the Arms; And for a badge: A hwk stooping to the sinister Or;

In some ways it is interesting, but of course it is also a little pompous.

Saw SimonW from Semacode

I saw SimonW of Semacode at LP50k

I don't think I had seen him since the TC opening. He said that he is still working on developing his business.

Mac and Cam and arch window blinds

At the LP50k workshop today I saw Mac and Cam from SSBB. They are working on commercializing their design of blinds for arch-windows.

They have named their product Moon SHade Blinds.

E&CE symposium display many fun projects

I saw the symposium today where E and C Eng students show their senior design projects.

Ali's group had a keyboard with lcd keys to allow for different configurations or symbol encoding. Other kids had a robot that follows a transponder. Other guys made a magnetic induction train. Ibi's group made a voip pda calling system. There were also: a device to use your wireless handheld over landlines; virtual tour of the university where they made the SLiCe into a virtual world in which you could play doom.

There were about 80 groups or so all set up in DC. It was great.

Prof showed up to new classroom

It turns out that my professor who didn't show up last week actually had a room reassignment and the message only got to come of the class. I found out when I e-mailed the prof to ask where the class website was after his apparent first, but actually second, e-mail to the class referred to it.

This weeks class was good. My group presents next week so we have to do early work, but get it over with quickly.

Joy statue won't return to campus

The DB says that joy — the best statue on campus before it was damaged and removed — will not return.

The 18 Jan DB says:

Gone and not returning to its plinth across from the Graduate House is "Joy", a concrete sculpture by Theodore Harlander that had graced the campus since 1971. [...] "the decision was made that it just wasn't worth trying to repair it," [...]

First basketball match for CR

We had our first basketball match tonight. It was the last game of the night. On our team we had Liam, Yu Fang, Kevin, Paul, Geoff, Herbert, Rebecca, and me.

We ended up losing 48-20. Our opponents were clearly a B level team, whereas we are appropriately in C. They had some good shooters who could drain them from the outside and good forwards. We were a bit disorganized. We had a fun time though.

Feds candidates 2005 so far

Nominations don't close until tomorrow, but here is the list of potential candidates so far.

• John Andersen
• Nada Basir
• Eli-James Hunt

• Nick Cake
• Gilbert, Yasid
• Matthew Jermyn

• Howard Bender
• Andreea Pop

• Lee Bowman
• Sabrina Bowman
• Lawrence Lam

Here are the potential council candidates for various constituencies:
Pat Borrelli, Kate Daley, Rida Rehmani, Jonathan Fishbein, Matt Strickland, Michelle Zakrison, Ian MacKinnon, Ajaybir Singh Sekhon, Robert Allie, Lily Shang, Randy Besco,

Election organizing guy BrandonS said:

Currently, here are the candidates. I only have info for Exec and Council, [TracyD] will have to give you the senate ones. Bear in mind that the nomination forms are still under review and the final list of approved candidates will be available at the Close of Nominations Meeting. The names of the candidates are public.

Met alumnus, itentrp at armoury

I talked to a guy in the armoury this morning. He was doing exercises to strengthen his injured shoulder.

In the locker room I asked him about his OText liv'link pack and told him about my seeing Tom's talk on Thursday. He said that he used to work at OText, but now he has his own firm.

Bryan is a UW CS grad and his comapny is called PryLynx. I told him about my interests. He told me his important principles in startups were ensuring you have enough money and getting the right people. I mentioned my Bproject and we exchanged bcards.

Chart of ezide data

I put ShandyB's ezide data on listings and average price onto a graph over time. I haven't studied it very closely, but here is the chart showing number of lkistings and average price. The dots are the data and lines are seven day moving averages.

Let me know if you have any input.

Housing information from Ezide

TomJ OText talk from EA series

Jenkins the OText CEO spoke to an audience of about 51 on Thursday 13 January to kickoff the EA speaker series. The advertised title of the talk was "Managing Change in High Growth Situations," but his presentation bore the title "Some Thoughts — Future of IT, Business Conditions, Starting Companies."

Dr. Dave led off the talk and introduced Tom. He said things like "This is a very good university..." and "Reputation lags reality by 5 or 10 years..." (simlar to AMika's comments at the raereview townhall) He said that co-op education's time has come and and referred to the importance of having the most entrepreneurial climate.

Flishy-floshy council

Last week council called a referendum on wat-pubint-resgrp at its suggestion, but then revisited the decision by passing withdrawal of the motion after the question. It makes councillors look like they are misunderstand issues ill-equipped to make decisions and just blow in the wind. While the two questions they considered are not exact opposites, they are so similar that one must question why so many change their votes so quickly.

A councillor who is also on the board of the group brought forward a motion to have a referendum on the group's fee in march. The motion proposed a question that would ask if voters supported the fee and provided a preamble that supporters said explained the group's mission statement.

Councillors amended the motion to hold it during february with elections and to remove the preamble. The councillor that brought the motion expressed that he wanted, then, to withdraw the motion. The chair said that that was not allowed and then there was a recess. During the recess the chair checked and discussed his decision on withdrawal and it is allowed with majority consent of the council.

So knowing that, a councillor moved for reconsideration of the referendum motion, which passed. Then councill discussed and passed a motion for withdrawal.

Armoury Sun 16 January 2005

Sunday 16 January 2005 10:00 — 14 people
Sunday 16 January 2005 10:00 — 14 people

Armoury 12 Jan 2005

Some guy was having trouble lowering the seat on the bfly machine. I told him that he needed to put weight on it.

Some forty type guy was doing some rehab for his shoulder. He worked in on the bench between sets so i asked him if I could work in he said yeah. I talked to him more later he is a W alumnus and has his own venture.

Hyphen's Maclean's departure and media presentation

Helmer posted about Hyphen resigning from a national newsmagazine.

In 2001, Wilson-Smith gave a talk at Imprint's journalism conference that I found interesting, if too expensive, considering the number of people who attended. Choice quote: "moving the national media is like turning an ocean liner."

KelNes said some stuff on the issue.

There is a "common wisdom" theory that in the age of 24/7 news on the Internet, the newsmagazine is a relic of an ancient time when people could wait 'til the weekend to read the week's news and horses and buggies filled the streets. I think that's pretty much bunk -- you could say the same thing about newspapers -- but then again I don't read weekly newsmagazines...

I agree with AnthonyW-S in his choice to move "from having a base philosophy of `reading the news here first' to `trying to tell you a little more than you already knew or trying to tell different off-track things,'" as quoted in Torstar.

UPEI has university blog program

UPEI has setup a weblogging service for members of the unversity. The Weblogs@UPEI site explains:

Weblogs@upei.ca is a service which provides individuals at the University of Prince Edward Island with the ability to create a powerful, yet easy-to-use web presence. It is intended to facilitate new modes of communication, to encourage individual expresssion, and to enhance creativity.

Weblogs@UPEI

The about page says that it was mainly developed by members of the BEAT program (Business, Education, & Applied Technology).

GarryS visited bio-wall at GuelphH

While I was reading more about the AlanD's bio-wall at Guelph Humber I found this site Mission Green, which is another Garry Sowerby adventure where GM sponsored him to environmental tour across Canada in a hybrid-fuel truck.

The reason I found it is because the tour stopped at environmental-issue related sites and sights across Canada. On a special day Garry stopped at G-H to see the living wall (A Living Wall, University of Guelph-Humber)

I met Garry when I was on the vibe tour two years ago. He is an interesting fellow and holds several long-distance driving world records.

TakebackTues FedH VIP nights

JohnF is trying to liven up FedH on Tuesday nights. It is being built up with three Tuesdays of VIP nights and then on the fourth Tuesday it will open up. Black curtains are being put up to cutoff the cavernous dance floor as well as the overhead the high ceiling.

Last Tuesday was the first one and I went thinking that after ten, things would be getting started, but I was the first one there. Mark, the door guy, told me that they had just opened the doors. I talked to John about his plans, soon after RobA came and LauraM (who was working) talked to me. She told me that she applied for oise, cool.

Later Mike arrived with some friends. Mike is the guy who said hi to me at the airport on ChrEve. Mike and I, it turns out, were in StrucGeo class with Shoufa. He was there with friends Rick, Lauren, and Erin. Lauren and I were in XRCrystal class with Guenther. She is a Don and we talked about my talk during training.

About 35 to 45 people were there. I left around midnight.

Bio-wall talk Alan Naturaire

Alan Darlington spoke to a room of about 30 to 40 people at lunchtime today about using bioogical processes to clean indoor air. He is the president of Air Quality Solutions.

Their solution consists of a "green wall" where plant's grow in a vertical medium where water pumps pour water from the top and ventilation sucks air from the back pulling contaminated air through the plants.

He talked about: Continue reading "Bio-wall talk Alan Naturaire"

Housing information from Ezide

ShandyB sent me some data from Ezide. Once I do some analysis, I will present it somewhere.

Armoury 12 Jan 2005

Wednesday 12 January 2005 12:14 — 34 people

I didn't workout; I was at the facility to play some futsal and stopped in to count. Leigh showed and we played half court with Bobby, Chris(A5), and some other guy.

Prof absent from class 2nd week

The professor for my night class didn't show. This means that we will complete two weeks of school and only have had one hour of instruction. I also didn't receive the class notes from the prof despite putting two e-mail addresses down and I haven't heard back from him about the question I sent him last Thursday. Yet, still I would rate his service better than that of a certain airline. I hope there isn't anything wrong.

He has ten more weeks to redeem himself.

Armoury Mon 10 Jan

Monday 10 January 2005 18:50 — 58 people
Monday 10 January 2005 19:04 — 61 people

I have never seen so many people there. Now instead of using paper towel they have apparently-reusable blue cloths to wipe the machines down.

Indian children learn from computer in wall

Last week on CBCzed I watched a docu-report on an Indian company that put a internet connected computer in the wall of a slum. They let the children use it to see what they would learn.

The shots of children crowding around computer behind a window interested me. I also like what a VP from the company NIIT said about the words that the children used for things. They called the arrow cursor a "needle" and called the hourglass "tamru" which is Shiva's drum and has a similar shape.

NIIT brings joy of Internet to village children
Computer skills development by children using 'hole-in-the-wall' facilities in rural India

Ping and Lakoff's progressive frames

Paul links to Ping's description of a Lakoff-style reframing meeting he attended.

The journey home — 24 Dec 2004

Encountering problems while travelling during the winter holidays should be no surprise and problems travelling on christmas eve the day after a storm should be expected. Here is my adventure on my way back to the homeland. I tried to keep a positive attitude about it.

My hawk photo in the DB

Chris put my hawk photo in the DB on Tuesday, the first day back after the break.

The same or a similar bird was featured in a photo in the same pub about 14 months earlier on 5 November 2003's DB. At that time it was identified as a red-tailed hawk.

Hawk eating in the engineering courtyard Tuesday 22 Dec 2004

Armoury 7 Jan 2005

Friday 07 January 2005 18:14 — 48 people
Friday 07 January 2005 18:24 — 43 people
Friday 07 January 2005 18:24 — 44 people

Armoury 4 Jan 05

Tuesday 4 January 2005 12:15 — 38 people

Armoury 22 Dec 04

Google Suggest and me

I heard from Matt about Google Suggest which suggests possible completions of search phrases you type in and give a figure for the results of that search. As he did I started typing my own name.

What seemed strange was that a subset of of my names ":ryan chen" would have fewer than half the results of my full name (19,700 compared to 40,200). Following each search however reveals different numbers which (830,000 and 56,500).