A Whirlwind Christmas

The holidays have left me entirely too busy. It's near impossible to get any work done for university when I'm trying to do things like baking cookies, buying gifts, and introducing my boyfriend to the Seattle area. We spent an epic weekend in Vancouver visiting friends, who I miss dearly. Then, a week getting accustomed to being back home (or being in a new country, for my boyfriend), preparing for Christmas, and getting small amounts of project work done. Now that Christmas is over, I have a couple more days with my mom before she flies home, and then a week to do more touristy things and still try to get some work done. I think it will pass far too quickly.

The power went out on Christmas Day, just as we were about to start making German Apple Pancake for breakfast. With bacon and coffee. It was due to a wind storm, and it was just a local outage, so it was barely covered in the news. I'm sad about missing that breakfast, but thankfully that's the only thing we missed due to the power outage. We were still able to go to my relatives' place for dinner that evening, since most of Seattle had power, and we had already baked our traditional Pepparkakor cookies and bought presents for the kids (my second cousins).

My boyfriend's impressions of America? There's a lot to say. The major difference he's noticed is that everything is bigger. I thought that was just an exaggeration that people threw around, but apparently it's true. The cars, the sizes of food and drinks, the roads, the houses, the stores. There seem to be slightly different driving rules, apart from the obvious different side of the road; overtaking a car in the lane to your left is seen as legal here, yet it's illegal in the UK. Tipping waitresses is expected of you here. And, most importantly: sushi is much cheaper.

I might manage another blog amid the chaos in the coming week. Until then... Happy Holidays!

Snow

Last night was our first snowfall of the season. It's continued today, just enough to make the roads slushy and dust the grass and rooftops with white. In the next couple days we might have a few more flurries, but not anything substantial. Nevertheless, it's made me finally embrace the fact that winter is here.

I can never quite explain the excitement I feel when snow falls. It makes me want to go out and play in it, dance in it, touch it. It covers everything in a silent, sparkling white blanket. There's something magical about it, something more than just white and cold. I know its distinct smell, how it feels to step in an unbroken patch, the crunching sound it makes. There's something mesmerizing about how it falls from the sky.

It's also a sign that the holidays are near. Time with family and friends, time for warm kitchens, full bellies, trees bedecked with twinkling lights. Coming in from the cold outside, taking off heavy layers, and enjoying a hot cup of coffee or hot chocolate. The excitement of opening a colorfully wrapped present or thoughtfully chosen and sealed card--or watching someone open something you've chosen for them. Even as the years pass and fewer presents under the tree have our name, we remember what it's like as a child. It becomes equally as exciting to watch the younger generation open their presents. I think snow stirs these memories. Even if I have to wait a few weeks for these things, the anticipation makes the happiness stick with me.

So if you see me watching snow fall with a grin, this is likely what I'm thinking about.

Holiday Plans

The end of my work this term is in sight. I've only got one more report to write, due Thursday, and a few odds and ends to finish. Stress has been intense this term, and I'm not one to easily shrug it off. I still managed to have a good 21st birthday celebration last week, in the middle of everything (I won't really feel older until I got to America and realize I can go into--and drink in--bars). I've been eagerly awaiting Christmas break this term, as I have a lot to look forward to. It's finally (almost) here.

After I hand in my last assignment, I'll buy and play Skyrim, which I mentioned in my last post. I'll be reading The Wise Man's Fear and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest. I'll also be working on my writing a little; I've been thinking about moving all of my novel editing to my computer (which involves copying all my already written edits), so I don't have to carry around the entire printed version. It was a nice idea while it lasted.

And, in two weeks, I'll be going to Seattle for three weeks with my boyfriend. It'll be great fun to be a tourist again, and show him America for the first time. I'll probably end up posting about our adventures in the next month or two. I'm looking forward to baking cookies, going shopping, being with family... of course, working on my yearlong Computing Science project at the same time, and studying a little, but at least it'll be more leisurely.

I'm enjoying the cold blustery weather as winter sets in, and I'm still waiting for snow! Perhaps it's almost time for another blog background change, to suit the season change...

November Thoughts

A chill has settled in the air. It's not quite winter here in Scotland, but it's certainly getting closer. After the time change recently, it's dark by the time I walk home at night. I haven't yet broken out my pea coat. Once it's predicted to be very cold for a few consecutive days, I'll consider it.

It's also November. To me, that means NaNoWriMo (which I am honestly way too busy to participate in this year if I want to stay sane... maybe next year), Thanksgiving, my birthday, and impatiently waiting for the first snowfall. This year my birthday is on the same day as Thanksgiving, but since I'm in the UK I won't get the day off. I have two projects due the day after. I hope to get work done beforehand, so I can be free to have fun on my birthday. My 21st is one I should make sure and celebrate! Despite already being able to drink in the UK.

Today's date is 11/11/11. Yes, even in Britain. To Americans, this is Veteran's Day. I have a few issues with how some people honor Veteran's Day, and I could probably dedicate an entire post to it, but I'll leave it at this: I'm sure many of them are honorable people, but I personally don't understand why anyone in their right mind would join the military. It's also depressing what happens to these people when they come back from tours in Iraq or Afghanistan. I'd prefer if we focused on keeping people from going to war rather than honoring people who have been to war.

However, today isn't just Veteran's Day. To the UK, it's Remembrance Day, which honors the end of WWI. In Korea, it's Pepero Day, similar to Valentine's Day, when people give their friends and significant others Pepero, a treat similar to the Japanese snack Pocky. To gamers, it's the launch day of Skyrim, the sequel to the massively successful game Oblivion. And to some, it's just a lucky day. Something about a date with the same 6 digits that won't come around for another thousand years just seems like a reason to celebrate.

So go grab a hot chocolate, a mug of coffee, a bottle of Magners, or whatever makes you happy, and await the snow with me.

Honoring A Few Heroic Tales

I've had absolutely no time to write. Despite this, I've been promising people I will write, in a gaming blog and a university-related computer science blog. I'll post the links here when those start.

Otherwise, I've been swamped with coursework. For each of my 5 classes I have a project, and then I have an additional year-long project that isn't associated with a class. They include a "smart" pac-man maze solver, an Android game that has elements in the real world, a visual Facebook-related Android app, and a few more that are both code-based and writing-based. In a lot of cases, the report is worth more than the actual code.

During my free time (or to be honest, my "procrastination time," as I have no free time), I was browsing the web and remembered one of my favorite authors as a kid, Brian Jacques. I hadn't visited his website in a while, so I searched for his name and clicked the first link. The first thing that came to mind was that the website's look had completely changed. The second thing was a link at the top that caught my eye. "Obituaries." He had passed away in February, and I hadn't known. None of the people I know read his books, so I guess that's understandable. But the world has lost a great storyteller. I thought I would blog a little to honor his writing.

If you know nothing about his work, I'll give a little explanation of the style of his writing. After years of odd jobs including being a merchant sailor and a milkman, he began writing. His main work, the Redwall series, was started for the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind. His writing is very descriptive, in order for people without sight to be able to imagine the story as richly as possible. The Redwall series is based around Redwall Abbey and its inhabitants, a collection of small animals that one would expect to find in a forest. Mice, squirrels, moles, rabbits, and birds are just a few of them. Jacques has given a specific accent or way of speaking to every one of these animals, which is written out in the text, and gives them much more personality. Given the descriptive element, the feasts they have at the abbey always sound marvelous. The stories are classic "good versus evil" themes, the villains usually "vermin" like rats, ferrets, foxes, and sometimes even cats. Sometimes the hero is taken away from the abbey by force, sometimes they set out for adventure, but they always end up saving the day valiantly. Don't let the anthropomorphism scare you away; the writing and his world of Mossflower is rich and beautiful. They're brilliant tales.

Jacques has written one novel in this series nearly every single year since 1986, when Redwall was published. He also has other series, including Castaways of the Flying Dutchman, which was also a great read. I've read many of the Redwall books, but not all. I expect they'd still be just as enjoyable as they were when I was a kid, so I want to make a point to read all the ones I've missed. If you're looking for a good old-fashioned heroic story, pick up Redwall, and appreciate the late Jacques' writing.

Radio Shows And The Spoken Word

These days, I don't listen to the radio. I'm not driving, I don't own a physical radio, and I don't bother going to websites of radio stations to listen. It's just too easy to find the exact type of song you want to listen to on the web. But the one thing that I miss out on because of this is spoken radio: news stories, radio shows, the sort of thing my parents would play in the car on long drives.

The best radio station for this in America was (and still is) NPR, National Public Radio. When I was young, I was annoyed at my parents when they put it on. Why would they want to listen to news all the time? It's usually either boring or depressing. But then, I discovered something I didn't expect: radio shows with interesting stories, interviews and in-depth accounts of interesting things that have happened--and some that haven't. I started to ask my parents to turn to NPR, or to stay on listening to it after the 20 minutes of news were over. Sometimes, it was a happy surprise after flipping channels, with no interesting music playing. You'd think that radio shows like this were out of fashion, no one did them anymore, it was for a time without computers and TV. But podcasts still live and there are still people who listen to the radio in their cars. The work of reading is gone, someone is speaking to you in their best storyteller voice, and you still get to picture everything in your imagination. I love it.

I'll give you my three favorite shows, all available online. A Prairie Home Companion has been my favorite. It's hosted by Garrison Keillor, an amazing writer with a unique and captivating voice. I imagine he'll be hosting the show till he passes away, and what a sad day that will be. The show is largely humorous, which I think was what drew me to it in the first place. My favorite segments are ones like "Guy Noir, Private Eye" and "The Lives of the Cowboys," little made-up stories with recurring characters and largely ridiculous shenanigans, with both the characters' voices and the sound effects done by actors. Other segments include different bands, usually small and little-known, and most of them in the genre of country, blues, and bluegrass. The main segments are monologues of Keillor's, such as "The News from Lake Wobegon" which I've never believed were completely true stories, and other interesting tidbits, different in every show. There are recurring made-up ads for "Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie" and "Powdermilk Biscuits" which always make me chuckle. It runs once a week, and I make sure to catch it when I visit America--and sometimes online.

Another one on NPR that's worth listening to is This American Life. On their site, they say, "There’s a theme to each episode, and a variety of stories on that theme. It’s mostly true stories of everyday people, though not always." The stories have always managed to grab my attention, and I can't stop listening to one once I've started. A now-famous radio host Ira Glass hosts it, whose voice I also like listening to. Once I hear it, I know it's time for a good story. I listened to one today because I heard Neil Gaiman had written a short story for it at the very end of the hour--but the entire hour is worth listening to. The first part is about an American man who ended up in a Chinese prison, and the rest is short stories of adventure, both creepy and whimsical. The theme is "Adventure" and is available here.

Lastly, The Vinyl Cafe. This show isn't on NPR, but instead on a Canadian radio station. "The stories and misadventures of Dave, the owner of the "Vinyl Cafe", the world's smallest record store, where the motto is 'We may not be big, but we're small.'" I frequently listened to this show on weekends at home with my mom, eating breakfast and listening, lingering in the dining room and living room longer than I would have otherwise. This is similar to A Prairie Home Companion, except there is more of an emphasis on stories, though there's music too. They were always fun stories, both entertaining and gripping.

All of these are available on their respective websites for download, and are subscribable via RSS feed or iTunes podcasts. NPR has other interesting programs, so I recommend you check out their site as well. I highly recommend you listen to at least one of these shows, and perhaps leave some time in your day for stories. We all need them.

Fall Term Classes

The new term is now in full swing, and I'm enjoying myself. I finally get to choose (all but one of) my classes this year, and I find them all both engaging and challenging. Here's as understandable an explanation I can make of all the classes I'm taking:

Artificial Intelligence (AI): Speaks for itself, mostly. I'll be learning everything from decision-tree algorithms to how we can make robots think, learn and be "intelligent." I don't know what our project will be yet, but last year's was to create the "mind" for a robot like a roomba. Ideally, if attached to a real roomba "body," it would be able to navigate a room's floor and vacuum it in the most efficient way possible. I've heard from last year's 4th years that this project--and class--was quite challenging. It interests me enough, though, that I'm just going to put my nose to the grindstone and hope for the best.

Constraint Programming (CP): Consider a Sudoku problem. You have spaces for numbers, some of which are filled in. Then you have "constraints," where each row, colum, and 3x3 square must all have the numbers 1-9, no repetitions. A solution program to this constraint satisfaction problem, or CSP, would consider the empty spaces, the ones filled in, and the constraints, and using built-in algorithms, would be able to solve any Sudoku problem. These are the sort of problems I'll be learning about. I won't have to write the algorithms, but instead will use software called Choco to write these programs and then look "under the hood" at the algorithms themselves so that I understand how Choco works, and can write more efficient programs. We'll be first writing a Sudoku solver, which is actually small and straightforward, and then be doing something more complex, which I don't know yet. This is a branch of AI, so a few of the topics overlap with my AI class.

Functional Programming (FP): In this class we will be learning a programming language called Haskell, which is classed as a "functional" language. Languages like C++ and Java are considered "imperative." It's too complex to explain what these mean if you don't know much about programming. Essentially, functional languages are more mathematics-based. Many banks use them for their software, but they can usually be used for anything imperative languages can be used for. The important part is that you have to think differently when programming, which can be quite challenging if you're not used to it. As a programmer, it's always good to learn new languages, and I enjoy the challenge.

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI): This class is a bit less technical. We will be learning about different ways of interacting with computers (not just visually, but including touch and hearing/audio) and how to write a user-friendly program. This includes things like, where will the button/menu bar/text field go so that the user instantly knows what that thing does? Sites like Twitter, Facebook, even Google and Apple probably have an HCI expert or team helping their website designers choose how things look. This applies to programs like Word and Excel, games, even Android and iPhone apps. The project in the class is to create any program, just as long as it follows the HCI rules we learn in the class. Next term I'll be taking MHCI, which focuses on Android programming. Apps are definitely the thing to know about these days.

Those were the classes I've chosen for this term... hopefully they were fairly understandable to those of you who aren't technically-oriented. The class I'm required to take is Professional Skills and Issues, where we learn about ethics in the software world and write essays to learn how to argue and hone our writing skills. I don't think I need help there, but completion of the course means getting accredited by the BCS (British Computing Society), where otherwise I'd have to take a test, do a presentation, and pay something around £150. I guess it's worth it.

Fun stuff.

Side note: I've started using Tumblr again. So check out my page of pretty books and cute things and fun quotes (link on the left near the top of the page).

Oh, and Happy October! It's almost All Hallows Read.