Let the Spreadsheeting Begin

Thinking about wedding planning is an awesome way to procrastinate on my schoolwork. Yesterday, instead of a gloriously well-crafted progress paper I produced a venue cost-comparison spreadsheet that is both sufficiently elaborate, and very easy to update as we get more information on the actual expenses at each venue. Behold:

The yellow cells can be changed, the red cells are guesstimates and must be changed.
Other than that, it's all self-updating 

I'm glad we aren't planning this somewhere (like Toronto) with a hundred thousand possible venues. We narrowed the options in Kingston down to five front-runners pretty easily.

Just Gorgeous

Instead of writing a paper, I spent the evening researching calligraphy, pens, and inks. Somewhere along the way I found this video:



It makes me miss scoring music, but mostly makes me happy.

It's Monday (in Two Acts)

Act I

It doesn't feel like Valentines, because it's rainy and cold and I'm sitting in a conference room but no students have come to see me (even though colour vision is a really hard topic and I think they'll need help*). It felt like Valentines yesterday when we spent the afternoon being lazy and talking about guest lists and dresses and venues and nothing. Then we dressed up and went to my favourite Italian anything restaurant (hi Ennio!) with new dear friends and ate until we could barely walk home.

It was kind of like this:



Still, it reminds me of a rainy and cold Valentines-on-a-school-day a lot of years ago when Dave and I were studying for a midterm in Douglas Library, and I was telling him about the chocolates I'd gotten in the mail from a new not-quite-boyfriend-yet and he was happy for me and we went to Subway for lunch.

Act II


The thing that makes Dave laugh at me/tear his hair out the most is how literal I can be, so when this joke popped up on my Google Reader, I sent it to him right away:

A wife asks her software engineer husband: "Could you please go shopping for me and buy one carton of milk, and if they have eggs, get 6!" A short time later the husband comes back with 6 cartons of milk. The wife asks him, "Why the hell did you buy 6 cartons of milk?" He replied, "They had eggs."


At least I haven't done that. Yet. 


* Though, I have plenty of work to do that I'm writing schmoopy** blog posts instead of doing so there's plenty of evidence that we don't always do what's best for us. 
** I've added an "aww" category in its honour, we shall see if it ever gets used again.

Next Food Project: An easy one!

From Colour Me Katie

I think these are the cutest thing I've seen in awhile, and the faces are just painted on with food colouring. Easy beans! I need to have a party so I can serve these. 

Moving to a nudist colony where there are no assignments to grade

When I started undergrad I'd do two loads of laundry every two weeks: lights and darks, with towels and sheets added wherever there was room. This was pretty much my whole wardrobe.

Now, with a little creativity, I can get by without doing laundry for almost a month. When the time comes (as it did this evening) it means SO MUCH LAUNDRY. Considering I am only one person, who is generally not sweaty and gross, and generally does not spill food on herself... it's a lot of laundry.

At the moment, I'm running a light and dark load of "hang to dry", then it's a light and dark load of things that are dryer friendly. Tomorrow morning will be sheets. Thursday was towels. This is ridiculous.

At the moment, I'm also supposed to be finishing grading assignments for that class I TA that was done a month ago, but I just wrote an exam this evening! That's supposed to be a free pass to do nothing for the rest of the night. Incidentally, it was also probably my best exam ever, in part due to the fact that I studied for it to procrastinate on grading.

You'll notice that this post does not contain a photo of my dirty laundry. I'll accept "thank you"s in the comments.

Red-Green 3D glasses are festive, right?

I'm currently in the depths of revising for an exam, trying to get some grading done, and dreaming about baking cookies shaped like Christmas trees instead of doing any of this nonsense. Today's revision project is a chapter on 3D vision - like Avatar or the red-green glasses that used to come in cereal boxes and were way cheaper than going to see Avatar.

My textbook came with red-green glasses, which is awesome.
It was more expensive than seeing Avatar, though.

One of the things I learned along with how 3D vision works, is how to make pictures that look 3D. And so, I present to the world my very-own home-made 3D work of art. red-green glasses required.

And people still think a PhD in Psychology is impractical.

So how does viewing that picture with 3D glasses make your brain think there's a hole in your monitor? And why doesn't it work if you have lazy eye?

Fact #1: Unless you have lazy eye, by virtue of having two eyes, your brain always gets two very slightly different pictures of whatever it is you're looking at. One from your left eye, and one from your right eye. If you do have lazy eye, your brain ignores one of these pictures in favour of the other one.

Fact #2: There is a systematic relationship between the differences in the two pictures and how far (in depth) something is from the thing you're looking at. 

Here's what's really cool - the brain can exploit these relationships at high speeds to give us this extremely vivid perception of depth. Usually, we don't think photos are 'missing' anything, but the difference between a perceived depth and a projection of a 3D scene on to a flat surface is really amazing once you see a 3D photo. 

There are a ton of beautiful stereo-photos of old japan, taken by Japanese photographer Enami, collected on Flickr by Okinawa Soba. 

From Okinawa Soba's set

If you make them into animated images, the depth appears.

I used photoshop to make this one

Again, from Okinawa Soba

into a 3D image that works with red-green glasses: 

Fun! Unfortunately, I don't think photoshopping 3D images is going to come up on the exam.

Whiteboarded: Lizzie's Masterclass in Phase Scrambling

I love explaining things on white boards.

The incredulous animal has become a staple of the whiteboard discussions. I like this board because it complicated and sciencey.

Bonus: Type the following commands into Matlab for lots of laughs.

> why

and

> load handel
> sound(y, Fs)

Things I am doing that are not grading assignments

1. Hitting refresh on facebook
2. Looking up all the Glee cast members' twitter feeds
3. Looking up Jodie Sweetin on Wikipedia (she just had a baby, guys!)
4. Thinking about making dinner
5. Discussing the characteristics of a good spatula with Tory
6. Looking up cute cookie designs
7. Checking out texts from last night, which resulted in me finding the most incredible 404 page ever. I took a screenshot for posterity:

Smartphones! Horrifically drunk and useless! Signalling that the site is down!
The site where you can read texts people send when they're drunk and useless!

Obviously, procrastinating does not lower my standards for amusement in the slightest.

This Week's Obsession: Starcraft 2

For the past few years, the video games I love, like the TV shows I watch, have been whittled away to a few core favourites. For video games, that meant little puzzle games on the iPhone and the Sims for long train rides (or lazy Saturday mornings). 

Dave, a fan of the original Starcraft ten years ago, bought the long-awaited new version over the summer to check it out. I played the original Starcraft too, and never really liked it because I was more interested in playing the real-time strategy genre like I'd play Sim City (look at how I've arranged my structures! I have this main road, and then the courtyard here for my armies to gather!). Pro tip: you don't win often when you play RTS as if you're playing Sim City. In Sim City you have no challengers (but a "protect the civilians" aspect would be an interesting twist to Starcraft). 

Starcraft 2 (top) compared to Sim City 2000 (bottom).
Perhaps it should have been obvious that the gameplay dynamics
would be different. 

I played Starcraft 2 when I spent a week at Dave's over the summer and decided to buy my own copy shortly thereafter. We've been playing online together quite a bit since then, but I haven't gotten much better. Being bad at something, in my opinion, is more a reflection of whether or not you're practicing correctly than of any innate talent and somewhere along the line I decided I wanted to be passably good at Starcraft. Good enough to not be ashamed to play with random partners over the internet - a major component of the game (playing against the computer is notoriously boring after a few rounds). I just wasn't too sure how I should work to improve.

Jason, Dave and I played a 3v3 against the computer over thanksgiving weekend, and the two of them started talking about something called "Funday Monday" - some famous webcaster guy gives the community of Starcraft 2 players an arbitrary rule, and they submit games showing the hilarious results of following this rule (example: in a 3v3 or 4v4, your team must all announce the single attack unit you will be building to your opponents and teammates).

There is a world out there that I did not even know existed. 

My first observation: the internet and social media change network gaming SO MUCH. Young(er) Liz sucked at Starcraft and was using a crappy strategy and didn't know where to turn. Old(er) Liz can watch example games at high levels with commentary, have access to thousands of opinions on what is a good way/bad way to approach specific tactical problems at various levels of gameplay, and get a sense of what indicates that you're messing up (I like having lots of unspent money in the game, it makes me feel fiscally responsible, but apparently it also means that my army is weaker than it should be...). 

Also, this guy is really funny, and a very good "e-sports caster".

While this week has also been a week of midterm writing, grading, webCT-minding, sadly, it's been Banshee rushes that haunt my dreams.

Making fun of magazines

Ever notice how the shots in catalogs and magazines seem to reflect some sort of parallel universe where everything is like normal, but just a little too perfect, a little too contrived? The authors of Catalog Living and Unhappy Hipsters give voices and stories to the people in magazine-world, satirizing decorating and architecture magazines respectively. Lovely dark, subtle humor to be had.

Here are some of my favourites:

From Catalog Living, a continuing story about Gary and Elaine:

From Unhappy Hipsters, a series of vignettes:

Redesign?

List of things I can commit to, in order of the length of time I can stay committed:

1. My favourite article of clothing (white skirt: five years and counting)
2. My cell phone plan (it's you and me for the next 2.66 years, Telus)
3. The layout of my bedroom (two years ... maybe)
4. The design of my blog (four months? did I make it that long?)

Really, the old moody photograph in the background and dark design didn't suit me. I'm not a gunmetal grey kind of girl, even if the accent colour was my favourite shade of lime.

5. My favourite colour (about 30 seconds)  

So here's a new design, that I think suits me a little better. For the next few months, anyway.

Another Harebrained Scheme

I'm not a baker in even the loosest interpretation of the word. I've forgotten to put milk in cake mix and wondered why my batter is the consistency of fudge. That said, I do like a challenge and an opportunity to do something that people say is hard. (This approach didn't seem to apply to my undergraduate math classes. Calculus and algebra were not fun challenges).

One of my favourite blogs is CakeWrecks. I love looking at all the disaster cakes, but also enjoy the showstopping "sunday sweets" cakes that were done right. CakeWrecks has an annual affiliation with Threadless, the user-designed t-shirt store that made buying Christmas gifts for my brothers that much easier. The result: Threadcakes. The mission: render any Threadless t-shirt design in cake.

One of last year's winners.

Obviously, this is the sort of thing I could pull off, right?

I don't know if I'll ever do it, but if I do, this is the design I picked:

Threadless tee "No Repeats"

I'm picturing a square cake carved in half with fondant on top. I can add the darker details with food colouring paint, the highlights with a combination of icing and cane sugar for sparkle. The snowflake could be constructed by piping an icing that hardens on to waxed paper (even with a template underneath to trace) with a few stakes out the side to anchor it into the cake. No clue how I'd make little men though...

Most Fun Ever

Thanks to The Pioneer Woman, I found a cool collaging site a few weeks ago. Oh dear.

I hated collaging in school - poring through magazines (being stuck with Canadian Living rather than Vogue didn't help this step), cutting, arranging, losing your arrangement thanks to a light breeze, arranging again, gluing... ick.

This site is like that, but instead of magazines you have THE ENTIRETY OF THE INTERNET and instead of glue and fickle cutouts you have basic resize, order, and arrange tools. It's addictive. It's helpful. For example, before I found this site, I didn't know that I NEEDED $500 glittery flats from Miu Miu to wear with the dress I bought for my old roomie Sara's wedding in September.

Now I know.  I need those shoes. And the Prada handbag too.

Having figured that out, I can go do my laundry so I have clothes for tomorrow and can pack for the conference I'm going to in fewer than 36 hours. I wonder if collaging can help sort out my priorities?

Stupid Science

This is a graph showing some extremely exciting science I have been working on for the past year. I will be presenting around 10 graphs like this in a single poster at the Vision Science Society conference a week from Saturday. 

The only way I could make it more confusing and horrible is if I did this: 

Adobe Illustrator and I are going to be well acquainted by the time the poster goes to print on Monday.

Things to do on a lazy Friday

1) Drink tea

2) Snuggle someone

3) Keep up-to-the-minute on Twitter and your RSS reader

4) Ignore work email

5) Edit old photos

6) Chat, plan the future

7) Look at photos of luxury hotels online and dream

Divine Inspiration

Today I was visited by the gods of procrastination. There can simply be no other explanation as to why I decided to make a quiche this afternoon. That's right -with home made pastry.

The pastry is in the oven right now, we'll see how it turns out.

The things we do

Latest procrastination tactic:

Organizing my dresser and closet. That's right.

This morning I had loads of laundry on my bed that were waiting to be put away, but I couldn't bear to stuff them into a messy closet or rumpled dresser drawers. Now, my closet is organized with skirts on one side and shirts on the other and each side is an aesthetically pleasing gradient of colour. Underwear: sorted by comfort level. Bras: sorted by colour. Shirts: sorted by sleeve length and material. Papers: woefully incomplete.

33 things I did before getting to my productive week

1) Went back to sleep

2) Emailed Dave about sore post-workout arms keeping me from being productive

3) Started cleaning my room

4) Finished the last chapter of "bright lights, big ass"

5) Finished cleaning my room

6) Fiddled with itunes

7) Checked my email

8) Checked facebook, started a group

9) Checked my RSS feeds

10) Checked my email

11) Started making a bagel for breakfast

12) Cut up cheese to melt on said bagel (mmmm)

13) Looked at nutritional information on cheese for a 1/4" cube, and then at my 2"x"1/2"x1/2" rectangular prism of cheese and decided a heart attack is worth a melty cheese bagel.

14) Resolved never to look at nutritional information of cheese again.

15) Ate cheesy bagel while on facebook and feed reader

16) Decided to print off weekly calendars

17) Decided to dust cat hair off printer first

18) Dusted printer, radiator, and window sill. They are still covered in cat hair.

19) Created calendars

20) Print function doesn't work

21) Reboot

22) Pet Twiggy, try to keep her claws out of my thigh

23) Print function works - but my printer list is gone

24) Realize that my sexy new operating system (Leopard) won't speak with my un-sexy (but very useful) printer.

25) Do a bit of internet research to make sure that's the case

26) It is the case, as far as I can tell.

27) Check my email

28) Go back to my room to draw up a list of things to do without the assistance of my calendar printout.

29) Join online knitting community "Ravelry"

30) Draw up list of things I should be doing

31) Decide to make tea

32) Think about how many things I've done that haven't been productive

33) Start a blog about it

.... am I ever going to graduate?