New Year - New Gadgets

The Holidays are for several reasons perhaps not the time for spending late hours by the computer, and I have myself these past days been somewhat detached from the online communities I usually frequent. Last night and today I have however been more active, and look what I found on Jill's site! Like she says; snap.com offers an "über-cool see-the-site-before-you-click-the-link effect". Just my kind of toy, and what ever statistical information they can gather by tracking activities on my blog I don't mind. For now, anyway. I have no secrets, you know...

Self Medication

I think I've said on more than one occasion that writing works like therapy for me, but so far it has only been a side effect; I haven't previously forced myself to write to feel better. Never have I considered writing as a foul medicine that could be swallowed in spoonfuls for a quick remedy. Well, tonight I thought I should give it a try, have to get back in to writing mode anyway pretty soon, next semester is approaching faster than an avalanche.

Got back from Sweden yesterday after having spent Christmas there with my family. We had a wonderful time, but I don't believe I'm the only one who suffers from feeling a little bit blue after the holidays, so today I have been doing nothing really, just walking aimlessly around in the apartment. When the evening finally came I resigned and hit the couch like a overcooked vegetable soaked in melted butter.

I don't think a bottle of wine and three sloppy American movies (1, 2, 3) about true love and miracles ever have done anything good to anyone, and tonight wasn't an exception. A TV concert with James Blunt, with him singing even sloppier "Goodbye My Lover, Goodbye My Friend" kind of pushed me over the edge. After that obscene emotional marathon my eyes had the same color as Rudolph's nose, and my head felt both empty and in pain at the same time. (Much like having the flu...) The least thing I thought I'd do was writing, had no inspiration and I felt I had nothing to tell. And then why should I?

I thought of all the nice pictures I took this week, all the fun we had, and all the strange things that had happened, but nothing seemed to be relevant. At least I didn't know whom to address it to. I still don't, and if it helped at all writing this post I don't know, you'll have to ask me tomorrow. Until then you can have a look at a few of my Christmas pics. And yes, those Yellow Foots, were picked on Christmas Eve, which under normal circumstances wouldn't be possible.

Xmas

My daughter is decorating the tree

Statistics & Tendencies

If there is one thing I really would like to further look into it must be the dangers of categorizing, labeling, arranging and ranking. And how important it is to understand any method or mechanics behind such activities if one is to read anything useful out of them. To see the absolute bottom line as a verified truth could be very unfortunate if not even dangerous.

Anyway, why did I think of this now? Well, I wanted to tell you about this year's first Christmas gift. A friend of mine gave me a CD a few days ago, and when I sat down today to rip and transfer the music to my mp3 player I realized that Tom Waits is overrepresented, and therefor might imply that he is my favorite musician. Of course, in some regard he is, but I'm very careful not to range my likes and dislikes. To put it simple, I don't believe in a strict black and white view of the world. There are too many colors and nuances, and mood changes as well.

Another example is also very close, just look at the labels on this blog. Reading them you might think that all I do is ponder about being a human and a student. True to some extent, but other things are so important and natural to me I don't even have to do any elaborate thinking over them. Like music - totally necessary to me, along with air and water, but reading from the labels you wouldn't think so.

You too have probably read articles referring to research showing differences between groups of people depending on their level of education. You know, divorce rates, obesity, domestic violence et.c. But the tabloid versions usually give us very little background, they just present the "hard facts", some of them derived from statistics. Do they say anything about which kind of education? Could there be differences apart from the length of it? Is a well educated engineer as cooperative and willing to solve a conflict as someone with a degree within social studies or the humanities? By all means, I don't say that he (or she) isn't, I'm just curious.

It's getting late again, and I lost my train of thought here, so I just finish it in the middle of nothing. I might pick it up later. Good thing I can edit my posts...

Tomorrow (today, actually, I realize a little panicky) I'm off to Sweden to spend Christmas with my family. Another, hopefully inspiring, train ride is waiting for me, while the kids with the help of their father's bonus points are flying. But I'm not complaining though, I rather enjoy the train...

Diversion At Hyperspeed

How many steps are there from Corpus Linguistics to homemade furniture? I should be reading for my exam tomorrow, and I'm even trying to, but it's ever so easy to do one click too many, and then you're lost in cyberspace.

I started off quite alright with the web-based compendium, and began to read about different ways of presenting and adapting text that are digitalized on a symbolic level.

• The text can be displayed in different fonts and colors.
• Elements of texts can be linked to other texts or parts of texts (hyperlinks).
• Specific parts of the text (e.g. footnotes, hyperlinks) can be either visible or hidden.
• The text can be translated to another language.
• A summary of the text can be made (e.g. "SweSum")
• We can extract keywords etc. and find structures and relations within the text itself and with other texts.
• We can generate a text from a database, previous texts or other information. (e.g. "SciGen", "PoMo")
• We can create statistics over words and other textual characteristics (e.g. "Ord i dag")

Deliberately I chose not to keep the links from the original, otherwise you might get lost too, but the one that set me off was PoMo, a text generator that delivers nonsense academic papers. Quote from the creator: "The essay you have just seen is completely meaningless and was randomly generated by the Postmodernism Generator [...] using a system for generating random text from recursive grammars."

So, what did I find on PoMo, besides the fact that I absolutely love "silly" things like that? (And the fact that it's not silly, considering that actually a few generated papers like these have been accepted as real. That opens up for a series of important questions, I believe.) What I found else was a "Sites I Like" link list on the right, and from there I jumped to MAKE: Blog - hilarious! One of the posts drew my attention, and I clicked again. Then I decided to blog about it myself, after all, that's what's is all about, isn't it? Diversion At Hyperspeed ...

Old Habits

Just as thought I was cured from being narrow-minded, I find that it sneaks up from behind. But at least I recognize and reflect on it, so it can't be all that bad?

This morning I took the bus (what a relief not to drive, I really hate that, actually!), and a few stops after mine a man came on board. I didn't pay much attention, just caught a glimpse from the corner of my eye (I was busy playing on my phone). The man sat down next to me, and I turned off the game, the battery was low anyway. Instead I brought out a book from my bag, and started to read. After a little while the man turned on the light and I smiled to myself, I sort of knew he was doing it for me. He said: "Much better, right?" I agreed, and we started talking. I guess we chatted for 10-15 minutes before we arrived at our destination. Same stop, in fact. He thanked me for a nice morning ride with the bus, and then we left in different directions.

Have you guessed what my prejudices were? I'm really ashamed, but I couldn't help thinking the man must have been on something, or at least not being sober. Not that it were any indications of anything like that; in fact he seemed perfectly normal, quite a good-looking man... But why should he strike up a conversation with me if he weren't intoxicated? No need for answer, during the course of the day the possibility occurred to me that I might come out as quite normal and nice myself.

Countdown

Two more days of cramming and that's it, the exam on Friday is coming, whether I'm ready or not. But today actually felt good, much thanks to the friendly and stimulating environment where I'm sitting. I'm lucky enough to know Toril, a master student here at the university, and if I behave well, she'll let me sit in their room. Nice and quiet, and very inspirational; the lunch breaks are marked by extensive collaborative creative thinking, and lots of giggles.

Today was spent reading Laurillard, and I suddenly realized I knew this stuff after all. Absolutely not all of it, but hopefully enough to pass. If I feel as confident tomorrow after attacking "corpus" and "coding" I might pull this one off.

And then I went crazy. I have this wonderful little boutique I love to shop in, but as they don't have any students discount, I don't shop there too often. And then preferably on sale. I spotted these pants in the window and just went inside to ask for the prize. Wasn't surprised when I found out I could get 2 (and a leg) for the same prize at H&M. Sure, not as nice, but still. While I was in the shop, why not browse a little? (Just as I do on the net, when I'm supposed to study...) And there! A skirt! No, wait - a pair of pants? I still don't know what to call it/them, but I'll ask my family what they think. On Sunday, when I'm with them for Christmas dinner.

And that's not the worst part, it/they costed more than the pants in the window and I need new shoes and a top to match...

Last minute?

Read Or Not Read?

Today I handed in the second written assignment, and I'm only four days away from freedom. There's only one obstacle in the way, and that's a school exam in ICT&Learning. The question is - should I read or not? The answer is not as simple as it may sound. You see, I have a zillion pages to read and that it just not doable in such a short time. So if I start I'll just be nauseous from realizing I don't know squat. I think I rather stay ignorantly blissful from having delivered my papers on time, show up on Friday for the exam, and - HEY!!! - fail? Bad strategy, books it'll be then.

Being a student of Humanistic Informatics I absolutely love well functioning tools such as ebrary, and every time I find a book I need in this electronic form I feel like I've hit the jackpot. And what do you know? Diana Laurillard's Rethinking University Teaching: A conversational framework for the effective use of learning technologies was there too. Very convenient.

Fiction novels on the other hand I wouldn't dream of reading from the screen, and I really look forward to taking the train home to mummy this weekend, sit back and enjoy Donna Tart's The Little Friend or some other of the many novels that are waiting for me on my bookshelf. Reading while sipping hot coffee and take occasional glimpses of the mountains passing by.

I'm Not Lonely

I have a friend here. Golden brown, and smells like a horse. But yet sweet and with a full body. He inspires me and keeps me company while I'm hammering away on the keyboard...