New Species of (Itty Bitty!) Frog found in Kerala

The University of Delhi reports that India's smallest land vertebrae, named Nyctibatrachus minimus ("Small NightFrog"), has been found in the Western Ghats in Kerala. S.D. Biju, a Systems Biologist from Delhi University has been working in the Western Ghats to discover new species of frogs. His discoveries also include the Purple frog, and the first Canopy Frog from India (Philautus nerostagona).

Picture of the cute froggy appears below:



Links to articles:
Science Daily
IndianPad
Boing Boing

Alligator Lambda Calculus

Since my Turing Machine coloring book idea has not yet reached fruition, you can only imagine my pleasant surprise when one of my friends sent me this link about using Alligators to teach children about lambda calculus. It's really cute! I really like how the "eating rule" represents beta reduction.

Enjoy!

Kitten Katamari!

Source
Holy Smokes, Batman! A Katamari of Kittens??

This has to be one of the best things ever.

Special thanks to my friend Bill, for sending me the link!

Sunday Nights

Tonight I watched The Music Man, an old movie-adaption of the broadway musical. For reasons that I won't divulge here, I find it very significant that I finally can watch it again (and actually had a desire to), since it's been years since I've been able to. It's one of those musicals I really enjoyed when I was younger, if for nothing else, the love songs. Most notably: "Good Night my Someone", "Til There was You" and "Will I Ever Tell You". All are poignant, simple and sweet. I feel it necessary to share at least one with you... I think I will share the last one; I think the first one (with some minor changes) will be my nighttime away.

"Dream of now, dream of then.
Dream of a love song that might have been.
Do I love you?
Oh, yes, I love you.
And I'll bravely tell you
But only when we dream again.
Sweet and low, sweet and low,
How sweet that mem'ry how long ago
Forever?
Oh, yes forever.
Will I ever tell you?
Ah-- no."

Simply beautiful. I like to say that I've killed the old romantic that I used to be, but such songs still have a way of affecting me.

One thing I hope that never dies within me is my inner child. I like to think, that after all these years, I still have a childlike wonder and curiosity for everything around me; I'm also still very bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when I am not cynical and brooding. Having a childlike nature as I enter adulthood I've always felt was essential (this is, I stress, much different that being immature; that's one childlike way that should be abandoned in childhood).

Sometimes I wonder if this view of things is correct; during one of my darker moments this past week, I was blessed by a link from my friend Theo. He sent me a link to a talk by Randy Pausch called "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams". The poignant thing about this talk, is that it's Dr. Pausch's last lecture; he is terminally ill with cancer, and doctors say that he has only a couple months left to live. I strongly encourage everyone to watch it; it's very good, and very inspirational. So good, in fact, that that I've asked the ACM chair of our chapter to allow us to show it at one of the meetings. Let's see what happens.

Computer Science: One space ahead of pornography

Here's a neat trick:

Type in "hardcore model" into Google. Note results.

Now, type in "hard core model" into Google. Note the top result. Read the top result (only if it isn't porn)

Cool, huh?

K. I'm going to bed now.

... and Exhale

As you can guess, I passed :-) I can't believe it; I'm actually done with my qualifiers! Of course, I still have my research qual that I need to finish before this year, and then I have my candidacy and my defense. But since that's research specific, I think while they will be stressful, I'll have an easier time.

Now to start catching up with all the research and the coursework that I've been putting off this semester. I'm lucky; the second week of classes just ended, and the first homework assignment I have for any of them is due on Friday. So, I have -plenty- of time. I think today will be mostly doing the reading necessary for them and relaxing. I think for once, I deserve all the relaxation I can get.

As a special request from my good friend Ethan, I have created another LoLQualCat. :-) Created using the CheezburgerFactory, courtesy of ICHC.

Hmm.. Maybe LOLPhDCats will be in order? ("I can has PhD?" "Mah Research, Let me Show you It!", "Research Cat is Researching".. oh, the possibilities!)

Enjoy!

-Suzanne

Waiting for results...

So I took the programming languages qualifier this morning. I have no idea how I did. I woke up at 6:45am today, shaking, and then vomited. Talk about nerves! The exam went alright.. I got asked a question that I was definitely comfortable with answering, and it seems like they were satisfied with how I answered, though I stumbled on some of the followups. I don't know how I did. If they're feeling nice, I'll pass. If they're not, they can fail me; I have no idea. And I won't find out until later tonight (around 5 or 6pm). I have class at noon, and then we have a CS mixer at 4 pm.

I just need to try and relax and not think about how I did until then.

But what I -do- know is that I was incredibly nervous, and I probably was looking like this during the qual:

Introducing LoLQualCat! Or, "Suzanne During the Prog Lang qual". Enjoy!

-Suzanne

Take a Deep Breath...

That's it. I'm done with work for the night. I agonize, because I stop, and it's only 9:30pm. Forget the fact that I've been working all day. Forget the fact that I know I'm dangerously close to my limit.

It's only 9:30pm. And I'm stopping?

I have to though. I'm getting tired. My programming languages qualifier is in two days. This isn't last minute crunch; I've studied around 200 hours over the last three months for the exam, and a lot of the material is finally starting to click. Things I accomplished today:
-read and take notes on compilers e-book
-read and take notes on interpreted languages
-read and take notes on different programming classes( functional,
logical, imperative, object oriented, generic programming language)
over regular functions
-read and take notes about symbol tables
-read and take notes about garbage collection
-read about parse trees
-Figure out nuances of problem 13

Things I'm (unwillingly) leaving for tomorrow:
-read and take notes about exception handling
-read and take notes on inline functions, and advantages/disadvantages
-read about attribute grammars
-go over notes on object oriented languages
-polish example for question 5
-go over questions 17-23
-final run through the questions

My exam is on Friday at 8:30am. I am going cold turkey on the studying at 10pm tomorrow. What I have left for tomorrow is very doable... I just didn't want to have to do that much on the day before. I've been fretting over the prog lang exam again lately, which took me a long time to stop doing. The exam is unfair, but I've studied hard for it anyway. Now all that's left is to pray and see what happens.

Oh. And for those who are curious and didn't hear from me about it already: I passed the C+C qual. That's four out of five passed. Now to see if I can pass the last one.

IneedtorelaxIneedtorelaxIneedtorelax mustnotpassbreakingpointmustnotpassbreakingpoint relaxrelaxrelaxplaymario?sleep...
sleepsleepsleepsleep

sleep.

Quals and Outings

So my friend Chris just got back from CA (where he interned at Apple for the summer -- and now has a job offer from!) today, and he told me about this ice cream place in Troy called Moxie's. He heard about it on another blog, Dish and Dirt, and asked me if I wanted to go. Tonight was especially important, since it was the last day that it was open for the summer, and it was only going to be open till 9:30pm. It was close to 8:30 pm. He picked me up at around 8:45, and we headed over to Moxie's, which was out in the middle of nowhere a little ways from Troy. It was so far out, that our surroundings ceased to look like Troy; the roads became more twisty and turny, hillier, and ever darker. As we were nearing our destination, Chris had to use his Brights just so that we could see a little distance away (and it was a clear night). Finally, we found it, and got there at 9pm. Chris got Blue Moon and Indonesian Vanilla. I got Sweet Cream and Indonesian vanilla. Moxie's is apparently famous among Vanilla lovers, because they apparently have five kinds of vanilla ice cream: one named from each place that their vanilla beans was imported from.

Best. Ice cream. Ever.

I am feeling so lazy and full right now, and am probably going to head to bed after I post this. I shouldn't feel lazy though; over the last three days, I have gone over all 29 questions of the C+C qual, 10 questions per day. Tomorrow, I'm going to do a final run through all 29. I think I should be good to go on my qual for Wednesday.

Of course, being my usual graceful self, and considering how accident and illness prone I have been over the last few weeks, I managed to go and twist my foot on some gravel the other day. Since I'm still limping, I'm probably going to head over to the health center tomorrow morning, and get things all set up. Hopefully things should be ok.

Okies.. bed time for me! Good night everyone.

ENTJ!

So I recently took the Jung Typology test, based on the Myers-Briggs personality test, and scored as an ENTJ. What type are you?

According to the description of my type:
ENTJ 1 12 12 44
- slightly expressed extravert
- slightly expressed intuitive personality
- slightly expressed thinking personality
- moderately expressed judging personality

ENTJs take charge quickly and deal directly with problems, especially in situations that involve confusion and inefficiency. They provide structure to the organizations to which they belong and design strategies to accomplish their personal and organizational goals. They are 'take charge' people who organise their own and others' external environments. They use their resources to find a way to meet the challenge. They are at their best in using their analytical and strategic thinking.

This page has more info about my personality type.

So, in summary, I am a leader! (apparently)

A leader who loves kitties. And sleep.

Speaking of sleep... bed time!

Night.

Late night misfortune

Tonight Kevin came over, and we decided to watch a movie. I had fallen sick a couple days back, so the visit served as a way to check up on me, and for us to have some of the chili we made the day before but never had a chance to eat. The chili was very good; it was really thick, and we mixed it with cheddar cheese and mozzarella cheese and ate it. We watched our movie, spent a little time together, and then went our separate ways (him, to home.. me, to bed). That was 12 am.

3 am I bolted upright in bed. My stomach felt like it was going to burst. I had thrown up a little in my throat, and it was really acidic. I cursed myself silently. While I'm a huge fan of chili, it's one of those things that I'm not supposed to eat, because it is tomato-based, and very acidic. Usually a few tablets of antacid and a little bit of stomach uncomfort is the worst of it. This time, however, I'd pay for my disregard for my body's dislikes.

I frantically searched for anatacid. No tums, no rolaids... nothing in sight. Among the pile of medicines, I was able to fish out a bottle of Pepto Bismol. I took a swig of it (I lost the dosage cap), and waited. In a few minutes, I began to feel a change... my stomach started to feel a lot worse. The pain was becoming unbearable. I frantically grabbed my laptop and started searching for ways I could neutralize the stomach acid. Sleep was a top priority, especially since I was trying to get better. Every time I coughed, it pushed down on my stomach, which felt like a nerve-ridden water balloon, precariously stretched.

Then I felt a difference. A rushing, boiling, churning difference. I pushed aside my laptop, and projectile vomited (I shit you not -- projectile vomited) all over my clothes, my bed, and my rug. I run to the bathroom and vomited again. I felt much better, but I returned to my room with anxiety replacing the acid that was there in my stomach.

I had paid almost $200 for my rug. It was a really nice rug. A beautiful rug -- black and creme colored, nice and thick, and felt really good when I walked on it barefoot. Miserably, I rolled my sheets into a ball and threw them into a corner of my room. The sheets were easily fixable as well as my clothes. I procured an extra set of sheets, and extra pants and an extra shirt, and threw them on the bed. Those can wait. What I needed to was get rid of that vomit on the rug.

I blotted the entire area with paper towels. This took a long time, since i didn't want to push the vomit into the rug any more than it was already. After I was satisfied, I got a wet, soapy sponge and tackled the stains on the cream part of the rug. I think I managed to get it all out; I got some more paper towels and removed all the moisture I could. There was nothing left that I could do, but consign myself to the next part... head towards bed, and wait till morning, when the rug dries. Then I can vacuum up the rest of the stain. If the instructions I found online work, it should come right out.

I remade my bed, changed my clothes (which I scrunched up and threw in the pile containing my dirty sheets) and sat there contemplating what had happened. Sometimes, I learned, it's not good to test your body's limits. My stomach still doesn't feel that great, but I'm getting tired again, so it's time for sleep. Will update after I vacuum.

Good night (or good morning), world.

UPDATE:
11:20 - Tuesday, August 21 2007
My rug is pretty much completely clean, and I am getting better... I still get exhausted very easily, but I think by tomorrow, I can fit in a full day's worth of work. Even though I was Master TAing on Monday, I couldn't bring myself to start working afterwards, and Sunday I was pretty much forced to stay in bed. Today, I worked very little on quals (it was astonishing how quickly it was exhausting me), and then concentrated on doing research. The research I'm doing right now is relatively light.. some touching up with CGI-perl on three sites that I'm transferring to a new server. It was slow, time-consuming work, but in a way somewhat relaxing. When I went home close to 8 pm, one of the sites had their transition completely finished, and the other two are partially there. A little more poking, and little more prodding here and there, should complete it.

Being sick sucks. On a positive side, this happened (and is ending) now, a full week before I have my first qual, and a good two and half to three weeks before my second (and last) qual, which is the one that I'm worried about. It's also a wake-up call from my body: I haven't been paying enough attention to it as much as I should have. Especially since I'm on RAship this coming year, I should try and work on taking more breaks, eating a bit better, and incorporating exercise into my weekly routine. I think with a little planning, this can all happen. I am starting to worry about my health somewhat, since I don't think I'm usually this sickly. Hopefully, things will get better.

Hopefully tonight will be better.

Good night.

Wireless Adventure - Part IV (Wireless in Linux)

As I write this, I'm logged into my Ubuntu partition on my laptop. We have total and complete success!

This is great. Not only can I scan for wireless networks now, I can also connect! I'm so excited.

Lessons learned:
network-manager: friend
orinoco: friend
hostap: THE DEVIL

Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn: Completely f-ing awesome.

Now, to sit back and enjoy my intrawebs on my linux partition! How shall I celebrate?

I know. Watch as many Flight of the Conchords episodes as I can!

Then some Planet Earth! ^-^

I am completely pleased with myself.


Wireless Adventure: Success!

Wireless Adventure - Part III (Blacklisting hostap)

So blacklisting Orinoco had some positive effects. Now, I can scan for wireless networks (whoopee!) As you can imagine, this was very exciting. I thought I had finally got it to work.

Unfortunately no.

I'm now thinking about blacklisting hostap instead of Orinoco:
my etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file should now read like this:

blacklist prism2_pci
blacklist hostap_pci
blacklist hostap

Let's see how this works!

More update goodness soon.

Wireless Adventure - Part II (Blacklisting Orinoco)

More poking around the internets. Lucking I found this.

To quote:
The problem is that the hostap and orinoco kernel modules are competing for control of the card. This is mentioned as a likely problem on NetworkManager site:
(http://live.gnome.org/NetworkManagerHardware)

hostap: "Supports unencrypted, WEP, WPA, and WPA2 networks. Be aware that if you have both this driver and the 'orinoco' driver installed, they may fight for control of the wireless card and render it inoperable to NetworkManager. You should either disable one of these drivers, or ensure that only one driver is able to control the card."

Thank you, Brett!

To summarize the instructions:
1. Check to make sure I'm dealing with the right network card: I entered the following command in bash:

:~ lspci | grep Network
I got:
02:02.0 Network controller: Intersil Corporation Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset (rev 01)

HA! It matched. Yes! Next, for adding some blacklisting marks to
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist:

blacklist orinoco
blacklist orinoco_pci
blacklist hermes
blacklist p80211
blacklist prism2_pci

Last step, reboot!

Completing this process took less than two minutes (even less time than it took me to install WICD), and it was relatively straightforward.

I still don't know if it will work yet. I have to go home and see. But I have my fingers crossed! Results later. Hopefully, this should do it!

Wireless Adventure - Part I (WICD)

I looked for suggestions. The first one was WICD. It looked great. A lot of people seemed to be having the same problem, and WICD seemed to just fix it very quickly. Also, the Digg reviewers were treating it like the second coming of Christ: "GREAT interface! network-manager BLOWS! ALL my wirless problems were FIXED when I started using WICD! AND it improved my sex life! FIVE+++ StArS!" Sheesh.

Installation was breeze. I was liking this already! Now came the fun part: testing it out. The interface was lot larger than network-managers. One thing I didn't like about it right away, is that it didn't automatically connect to my WIRED network, which was annoying. Furthermore it required me to create a profile for each IP (for -wired- connections). I didn't like this at all. Since I connect to the internet all over the place, the last thing I wanted was to have a bunch of "profiles" cluttering up the interface, most of which I will probably never use again. Of course, I won't delete any of them in the off-chance that I -do- use them again(and who wants to enter all that information again?). Too aggravating. The kicker was that it wasn't detecting the wireless network present.

That would have been okay. network-manager wouldn't automatically detect wireless networks. I just had to enter them in manually. But, as it would turn out, in WICD, there is no way for me to manually enter a wireless network it didn't detect (they had a "hidden network" box, which allowed you to enter a ESSID, and no encryption key, which wasn't satisfactory.) Maybe I should have given WICD more time. Maybe I should have poked around more. Maybe I was dumb and wasn't looking at the interface closely enough. Could the solution have still been there?

Whatever. I uninstalled WICD and reinstalled network-manager. Back to square one!

Wireless Adventure - Introduction

So my IBM ThinkPad T30, Phoenix, got a makeover earlier this summer. Due to my general laziness and strange attachment to Ubuntu Breezy, I didn't update to Dapper. When Feisty came out, I found out that I could no longer update my system, period. Shit.

Among other things, this meant that I couldn't do an automatic update to Dapper, and then from there, into Feisty. So, I wiped my partition (after backing up my data) and did a clean install of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04. That, plus giving Phoenix a new fan and an additional 512 MB stick of RAM, she seemed ready to rock the world.

I really like Feisty Fawn. It's sleeker, cleaner, and it got rid of some minor annoyances I had with Breezy. Perfect set up, I thought.

Then it turned out that my wireless card wouldn't work.

I was mystified. In Breezy, my wireless card worked fine. There was a bug that prevented me from scanning for wireless networks, but as long as I knew the SSID and/or password of the network I was trying to connect to, things worked fine.

Did something go horribly wrong? Did I do something wrong? Why is my wireless card not being recognized? I rebooted into Windows. Maybe it's the network that's at fault?

In XP (where I can scan for wireless networks fine), I located the wireless network I wanted to connect to. I entered the WEP key. Everything worked fine. So nope, nothing wrong with the card, nothing wrong with the network.

Doing some poking around the internets revealed that this is a known bug with network-manager, which, of course, made things so much easier for me. But how to fix the bug?

This multipart (hopefully not too long) series of posts in this blog will chronicle my wireless adventures. Will end when either I give up, or my wireless works in Ubuntu. And, I don't want to "rollback" (if that's even possible for me, considering I did a clean install of Feisty) to Dapper Drake. Let's see who wins!

Flaming Hatred

So fellow graduate student Nikhil drew a picture of a dragon attacking a group of hapless villagers on our whiteboard.

I had spent all day working on Programming Languages. Gazing admiringly upon his artwork, I was suddenly inspired to label it in thus manner:


You see, the allegory just popped out at me, and everything just snapped into perspective.

Clearly, I'm the unfortunate chap tripping on the log (right-most grad student).

Working hard! Now to move on to C+C. More updates later.

Enjoy!

-Suzanne

Review of Students

------
June 23, 2007

Dear Suzanne,

The Computer Science faculty regularly reviews the progress of all graduate students . . . on a semiannual basis. The objects of this review process is to evaluate whether students are making progress towards their degree . . .

In the Spring 2007 review, the faculty have determined that you are making satisfactory progress toward the PhD in Computer Science. Your goals for this term were to improve your grades, pass qualifiers, and to get more involved in research projects. You have done all of these. You have contributed to two research projects. You have presented a paper at a local student conference. Congratulations on your appointment as a Master TA. Consider aiming for a career in education. Your colloquium attendance has been good. The goals for the coming term are for you to establish your thesis project, to give a poster at a national or international conference, and to pass your remaining qualifiers. Good job so far.

Sincerely,
*name ommitted here*
Department Chair
--------

I just stared at the letter. They're happy with me... I'm not a failure. "You have done all of these... Congratulations on your appointment as a Master TA... Good job so far" I just continued staring at the letter in shocked and silent gratefulness, as I absentmindedly tried to open my office door with my home key, a mistake that I tend to make most every day. In a daze, I came back and sat by my computer.

After some seriously low points this summer, including much stress associated with my summer research and studying for my last two remaining qualifiers, this letter was really heartening. I've felt like such a failure this summer; After a major error surfaced recently in my research, resulting in me having to throw away a significant portion of my results and my analysis out the window, and having some incredible difficulties with studying for one of my qualifiers, nothing I did was enough. Taking breaks have turned into mild anxiety attacks, since I rarely feel what I've accomplished is deserving of them. Also, this week has seen a huge divergence from my usual productivity, causing me to feel like I'm in the middle of a hazy sea with no rudder, oar or sail.

It's nice when people believe in you, and even nicer hearing about it. "Consider pursuing a career in education..." I've been thinking more and more about becoming a teaching professor, mainly due to the great flexibility it offers. It's nice to hear that my department doesn't think I'm a failure (and I daresay seems happy with me), even when I feel so convinced that I am.

I should be studying for my quals. I'm where I need to be with them right now. Pushing myself hard right now, however, seems very dangerous. I'm thinking about trying to relax as much as possible, and hope that this bad streak passes, and soon. But is that a good idea? Do I deserve it? I did some more review for only one of my quals today, and now I believe there is only one question left on it that remains to be answered. As far as my other qual goes, I've answered almost 60% of the questions; I still need to do some reading up on lazy evaluation and exception handling, and it may be worth it to just to read some more of the text, just so I can gain that casual confidence that is so essential to passing this qualifier.

Do I deserve a break? What have I done to deserve a break? What have I done to deserve anything good? I'm thinking about heading home. The computer is just being a drain on my productivity. But I'll take my programming languages text with me . Yes. I'll exercise, take a nice hot shower, do a little cleaning, and then curl up with my textbook.

I hate not being productive... here's hoping that this bad streak ends soon.

Revival

So, one of my friends, Craig, is the web-developer for this site: Jewcy.

I read a few articles there today, and I have to say, I'm definitely impressed. Not to say a bit curious about Scott Korb.

Check it out, if you have the time.

Also, this is freakin' hilarious.

Going off to see the new Harry Potter movie.

Power Outages and such fun

So Troy has been hit by a supreme power outage. I'm writing this as quickly as I can, because I have no idea how much longer I will have power, before I lose it again.

There have been some powerful storms sweeping the area as of late; people are blaming them for the massive power outage that is taking place, which is affecting areas as far as Latham. While it's only 4 in the afternoon, I'm wondering if it would be wise to prepare dinner now, since I may not be able to in a few hours.

Summer is going well. Lots of work to do! More of an update when I actually have some spare time.

Later.
-Suzanne