Strength of the Written Word

Upon replying to a blog post on a friend’s private blog, I questioned why I did it, and then I questioned why I blog. The answer seems to be simple, but also a little complicated. The simple of it is that if I were to verbally reply to that friend’s post, what I said may be forgotten, or I may forget to say something, as things sometimes happen in conversation. I have been doing too much reading about STM, LTM and VLTM (Short, Long, Very Long Term Memory) lately to allow things to be only seen by such a delicate system, especially when there are so many things that can hinder it in the first place. I like for things to be recallable later. It is part of what is the basis for our collective global history. The written word survives in ways that nothing else can.

The complicated of why I write replies and why I write blog entries is so that they may be part of the human record. Anything that is known about anyone who is deceased is usually from their notes and diaries or from such articles of the people closest to them. Additionally, I like blogging because it is a written record for myself. I have already discovered the joy of needing to look something up that I had done previously, and then happily ran across a blog entry for it, although, it is rather odd to do a Google search and run across something you wrote yourself to answer your own question.

In short, conversations can be lost, but the written word is forever. 

Academic Encouragement

This morning I was asked how I deal with the stress of academics and how I manage to keep things together. The answer I initially had was “I don’t know, I just do it”, but being somewhat distracted from my Cognitive Psychology reading (for the 2nd time in 2 days), I have taken some time to reevaluate the situation.

When my due dates are falling upon me and I feel like there are 5 things due at the same time, therefore they are all the same priority, I take time to analyze which ones are really most important and run with them. If I find that I am lacking the motivation for that, then I will pick the one that is the most fun and start there. In the past I have taken that approach and fully expected it to be to the detriment of another assignment, but it ends up being that doing the fun assignment that I want to do helps get me in “academic mode” for the assignments that need to be done. Another thing I do is I will treat my assignment list as a mission (as it presently is), and I will dedicate a full day (or night, as needed) to doing course work and I will get everything done, as well as go back and do anything I may have missed (the occasional small assignment, like a discussion board post, that falls through the cracks).

Instructors do not expect perfection, except in the math department. All instructors, except mathematicians, know that students are human and that it may not always be possible to do everything on time. If you do quality work consistently and you are on time, or ahead for most of the semester, instructors are willing to forgive a little slack, especially around the time of spring break, or towards the end of the semester. The key is to get everything done, and to do your best.

If you have feelings like “I don’t like being a student” (personally occurs to me as thoughts of needing to drop a course), then that is the time to figure out why you are a student and also the time to spend some personal time with your course.

Students who take online courses have to be self-motivated if they want to survive, especially in courses that are true asynchronous (no due dates, except end of the semester). This is especially true for freshmen who have not yet gotten down the pattern of things. I personally had 3 stages of preparation for college. First were the AP courses in which I had to learn college level work in a high school setting, as well as the AP exam, which is basically prep for the worse final exam you will ever have. Second was a set of two dry runs in the form of Early College and Dual-Enrollment in which I made the transition to college with 6 credit hours per semester for 2 semesters. I also had the “joy” of getting to experience the pain of a boring college course during a light semester. ANT 210 (General Anthropology) was a very boring and dry course, and I hated it, but I managed to make it through because of the light load. Those three experiences prepared me for diving into college. For those who have not had those experiences, the best thing to do is be very patient with the course material and take as much time as the material needs, not the perceived amount of time that you have.

I think the general idea that the nervous student should take away from this is that you should stop worrying and just do, and don’t let yourself get stressed, it is counterproductive. During the freshman year a university class will shrink by as much as 20%, but for the next three years, there will usually be less than a 5% additional shrink in class size. Not all students will graduate with their “class”, actually, most won’t. Graduating in 4 years is not something many students do. Some students take courses during the summers and are ready to leave in 3 years, and some take things slower and will graduate in 4.5 years (4 years + 1 semester +/- summer sessions). Either way, shrinkage happens more in the freshman year than any other year, so it is especially important for first-time freshmen (FYI… “transfer freshman” = “transfer student screwed on transfer credit” in most cases) to find their own route to making their education work for them and fit their life. Undeclared students have things the hardest during the first year. In the 20% shrinkage group, between one-quarter and one-half of them are usually undeclared. Retention rates for undeclared students absolutely suck, that’s the reason for so many efforts by universities to reach their undeclareds and get them engaged. If you survive your freshman year, it is very likely you will graduate (unless there is some intervening emotional crisis, or you decide to take a scenic route to education).

Hang in there, it isn’t as hard as it seems. There are rewards at the end of all of this, potentially even the reward of discovering who you are.

 

*Statistics from this post are approximate and are from my memory of reading the statistics on the subject some time ago (last year). For up-to-date information from the most recent retention studies, please see National Survey of Student Engagement.

Update on GITI.Cookbook

I finally got the base code written so now it is possible to:

  • Add recipes
  • Search by title
  • List categories
  • See recipes by category
  • View recipes

I still have to do the following:

  • Add “Edit Recipe” functionality
  • Add “Ingredient search”
  • Refine interface
  • Create side toolbar

It is still very basic, but it does work 🙂 The biggest thing is going to be to make the interface not look ugly. That will take many hours to get right.

RT: Thoughts on Cloud Computing

No matter how robust the server clusters are that operate “the cloud”, things will eventually fail. Even if the cloud itself does not fail, something will, especially those fragile little fiber optic lines that construction workers love to chop in half (btw, even in a cloud world, you still need real buildings, built by strong, sweaty, and somewhat ape-like construction workers).

Take the present failure of Google’s services. I wanted to send a text message to a friend, while I can do so from my phone, or my home mail server, those things aren’t in the cloud, and I only have his full SMS address stored on my GMail account (sorry Oscar, I’ll try again in a little bit).

Lack of Men in Fitness

I have been browsing DVDs on Amazon as well as in the Columbia House club, looking at various categories. One of the categories I decided to browse was fitness. I notice something quite disturbing to me when looking at them, most of the covers featured women. Why are there no men in fitness? The only exceptions I found were Billy Blanks (he’s aging), Richard Simmons (hardly a man) and Jake (he’s aging too).

Even searching for military workout DVDs on Amazon returned a majority of women on the results. What gives?

Can men not properly instruct workouts?

Lack of Things “Server Oriented”

I am beginning to feel that the number of “server apps” that are being actively maintained is way too small. There are so many tasks I wish I could defer to my server systems without having to connect to the server system through a graphical method to do. One such task is Flickr uploads. My laptop does not really love doing uploads, the primary reason is the wireless connection, it isn’t as fast as my wired network. In general, anything that takes “time” (CPU, network, or other “machine active waits”) I would love to throw to one of my server machines that is 1. optimized for such tasks and 2. I am not directly relying on the interface for. Otherwise, apps that have to process, upload or anything of the sort, gets in my way. A lot of the tasks I would like to defer are related to image manipulation I believe. Those are the tasks that are the most time-consuming.

Am I crazy for wanting to be able to right click a list of files on my server, then select “Upload to Flickr via Server”? Maybe I should pull out Visual Studio and see what I can do with the Flickr APIs for that one.

RT: Hypermasculinity

Random Wiki Article of the day: Hypermasculinity

I saw this term in a person’s profile earlier and decided to look it up. It is an interesting concept and I find that I myself am interested in some aspects of hyper masculine art. Psychologically it is a very thought provoking idea, perhaps one that might be worthy of study if I were to decide to pursue undergrad research.

The Modules

Module Status Description
Address Book Stable Converted from its independent state, Address Book is fully functional with no presently pending issues or incomplete features. The module is however, due for an overhaul to bring it into the GITI space more completed as well as to refine its mission.
Bookmarks Dead Module was started a few times in different ways. Module was never completed and is not currently in the list of modules to be created.
Collection* Stable Feature complete module for managing footwear, wear logs and various other attributes. This is Chris’s module to maintain. I am just a happy user.
Cookbook Theoretical This module is in the planning phase, but should become a fully functional module for managing recipes.
Documents Minimal This module is very much functional, but in a minimal state. None of the planned advanced features exist. The module is a very basic document editor for creating fairly plain documents, such as MLA style research papers.
Education Incomplete Education is almost complete, but not quite. There are still many outstanding features as well as some bugs that need to be resolved. The module is quite usable and can easily manage classes for many semesters, including course planning for future semesters.
E-mail Dead Simple send-only email tool, recorded sent mail to the database. Utility is no longer functional and has been removed from GITI.
Health Variable Health is listed in GITI as a module, but it really is not yet, it is an “umbrella”, it contains other modules (or parts of modules). Health contains the very simple, but yet functional masturbation logger, an almost non-existent Nutrition module that does basic meal tracking including calories, fat, protein and carbohydrates. There is also a nice module created by Chris that can track workouts and progress towards fitness goals.
Inventory* Planning Inventory does not really exist. It is prototyped based on Library. Its eventual goal will be to track a bit of everything. The original data that was given to it was a glaze list, which has since become inconsistent. Eventually it should be able to track any physical assets, including things that need to be reordered, or just general stuff that is around that might need to be recorded.
Journal Stable Journal is a bit of a shell module as itself, but it is much more robust as ItemJournal, its inter-modular counterpart which utilizes a lot of the same code. Over time I have lost the need for Journal personally because I tend to blog whatever is going on, especially now that I have a private blog as well. ItemJournal is more useful for associating information with objects in other modules.
KeyChain Minimal Minimalistic utility for storing software keys. It works, that’s about it. 
Library Stable It puts books in, it checks books out. Nothing more complicated than that. It is a nice, clean module.
Notepad Stable Its a hierarchical notepad system, supporting multiple “pads” and “pages”. Another one of the “clean” modules
Schedule Unknown Schedule, the module that gave GITI its internal name, is in a somewhat variable stage at the moment. Its between being sort of working and being ready to be overhauled. The module works ok. It schedules things, including stuff other modules need to add to the schedule, but some of the stuff, like invitations and a working calendar are not yet implemented.
Status Complete There is not much to it. Its hooked up to a web interface. It manages a status put into it. Doesn’t even require its own page, plugs right into the summary system.
Summary* Complete This module takes “summary” information from other modules. This can be anything from contacts with birthdays occurring soon, to assignments coming up soon in Education. It is quite useful, but of course, like anything that is truly working in GITI, I didn’t write it. This is considered part of GITI’s core code.
ToDo Deprecated This version of ToDo has a lot in common with its GITI v1 predecessor, including about 90% of its code. It works, but not very well. I haven’t used in in a long time because it just doesn’t fit in with the rest of GITI v2. This version was actually reverted to the original code after a close call with being rebuilt from the Notepad module. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but after the fact, it wasn’t pretty.
ToDoList Minimal This is a new approach to To Do. It does not look or feel anything like the other attempts at ToDo. So far, it is only a simple list, as featured in a previous blog entry. It will be finished with more detailed management soon, but for now, it stands as it is, quite usable.
Weather* Complete Uses weather channel weather information. Not much to it on the user end, but a pretty nice module. Thanks for yet another module Chris.

* Not my module

I now understand why I have had to rework the menus lately, more modules than there is space, plus there has to be space for the independent constructs.

GITI Cookbook

We’ve all seen a cookbook and there are tons of web-based as well as desktop applications for cookbooks as well. So why would I want to write my own for GITI? First of all, because its GITI, it is MY Personal Information Manager. Second, I like things a little more  custom to the application of things than some of the other apps are. I do not need shopping lists and things generated (at this point anyway, and if I do later, that will probably be coordinated with the Inventory module). The third reason is because there is a lot of integration I can see for this. From just being able to store and retrieve single recipes to being able to assign “tags” to recipes to make them part of a master meal plan, it can all be used across multiple modules. Finally, if I write the code, then I know how the data is assembled and I can more quickly build web apps that use the information or even write an app in C# that can use the information.

The major origin of this entire project is my recent growing collection of recipes I am keeping in a 3-ring binder. Most are from Cooks.com or other similar sources, but some are recipes that I have written. I do not like having my recipes stored in physical form, it limits my access to them as well as makes it more difficult to get another copy if I get something on the physical pages. I will probably still keep my physical copies in a notebook, since I tend to be a little messy when cooking (especially baking).

 

The planned functions for GITI Cookbook are:

  • Recipe Storage
  • Search by name
  • Search by ingredient (perhaps even multiple)
  • Servings adjustment for recipe output
  • Nutrition export directly to GITI Health
  • Date/Event Tagging
  • Image of food (when available) via GITI Assets
  • Notes about the recipes (alternate ingredients, etc)

Little More Attention to ‘Quick Key’

One of GITI’s least developed features is called “Quick Key”. Basically, it is a shortcut system for GITI. Type your command in the box (a “key” command, not the fully GITI path) and it takes you where you want to go. Unfortunately, they are very simple, and most rely on module functionality to make them work. The biggest drawback to something like this is that it is not possible to type “add assignment” and have GITI pick up the meaning on that. The most advanced that gets is being able to call a specific assignment by number “assignment 1143” returns the details page for Assignment #1143. The way that works is that GITI only recognizes one word in the string for the key, so if there is more than one, it breaks it up and passes the other part as a parameter to the module.  This eliminates any possibility for “natural language” keys, which sucks. Most keys do not even accept parameters, so that further limits flexibility.

Add, Find and View are some of the functions I would like to add as universals, but I have not quite gotten to writing the core level code that would allow GITI to have its own internal keys that are not module dependant. To do this will also likely require me teaching GITI a list of mappings for each of the special “natural language” commands (ie. “Add Recipe” calls Cookbook’s Add function). Find should be especially interesting, since at this point no modules, except Address Book and Library even support the ability to search for anything. The weirdest possibility for “find” would be writing a universal search tool that would look through specified fields on each module’s entities. I would worry about the database load of such a functionality though. I am not sure how “natural language” typing the phrase “find contact Kularski” actually is.

All of this stuff comes up now because of the creation of a new empty module called “Cookbook”. The module at the moment has no code, only its GITI constructs and things that will expedite my ability to write the module. It is a fairly simple module on the surface, its ingredient lists, directions and cooking times. No big deal at all there. I will likely get into more elaborate concepts such as categories and ingredient searches, but so far, I am just planning to create the data constructs for them and put not much effort into writing those components,focusing on the “important” stuff, like recipe insertion and retrieval. The mere conceptualization of the module causes these other needs to arise in Quick Key because it is a module that can require things to be accessed in a short amount of time, perhaps being pecked out on a keyboard using the end of a wooden spoon.

Quick Key could be a very useful functionality if I spent more time with it and perhaps made it more obvious in the user interface (beyond a small textbox).

Quick Commands
Key Title Address
about  About GITI    root.giti.home.about
assignment  View Assignment    root.giti.education.view
calendar  Calendar    root.giti.schedule.calendar
checkers  Checkers    root.giti.home.games.checkers
class  Class Overview    root.giti.education.classes.view
classes  Class Details    root.giti.education.classes
cook  Recipe Search    root.giti.cookbook.search
cookbook  Cookbook    root.giti.cookbook
courseplan  Planned Courses    root.giti.education.classes.planned
doc  List Documents    root.giti.doc.list
education  Education Home root.giti.education
food  Add Meal Record    root.giti.health.nutrition.new
frog  Frogger    root.giti.home.games.frogger
hangman  Hangman    root.giti.home.games.hangman
help  List Quick Commands    root.giti.home.quick.list
home  Home    root.giti.home
homework  View Current    root.giti.education.list
keychain  KeyChain    root.giti.keychain
mario  Mario    root.giti.home.games.mario
pacman  Pacman    root.giti.home.games.pacman
people  Find Person Record root.giti.addressbook.quickfind
quick  Quick    root.giti.home.quick
schedule3  Schedule3    root.giti.schedule3
schools  Manage Institutions    root.giti.education.manageinst
sneaks  Sneaker Collection    root.giti.collection
tetris  Tetris    root.giti.home.games.tetris
time  Time    root.giti.home.time
wank  Add Masturbation Note    root.giti.health.sex
weather  Weather    root.giti.weather

exhibit 1: Quick Key command list