Today I had one of those moments where I thought I might be losing my mind. Why -- you should ask? I got to school with roughly 10 minutes to spare before class... and then realized my class doesn't start until 10. This realization of course coming after sitting around wondering where everyone is for about 5 minutes... So here I am at just after 9, in a computer lab, postponing the stats reading that I still haven't managed to finish and wondering if I go down to the cave that is my office to take a nap - if I'll actually manage to wake up for class in an hour.
Later today I have to go take a final exam for a history & systems of psychology class. I've already taken the class in a graduate program, I even got an A. But in order for the class to "count" here, I must prove my knowledge of random facts regarding Galileo, Wundt, and other classic thinkers. Wish me luck and all that!
[UPDATE] I took the final in the form of a one question verbal exam and passed. Woohoo.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Got teeth?
The tooth brush was actually invented in Kentucky. Apparently anywhere else and it would have been correctly named the "teeth brush". At this point, the national trends show that West Virginia is #1 in the nation for tooth loss/decay and Kentucky is #2. Sort of strange from the state that invented it.
I saw this sign while walking around one day. It's moments like this that I'm glad my cell phone has a camera on it. Most other days when I think about the phone/camera mix, I think it's one of the most over-hyped inventions. I would much rather have a phone that was also a laser pointer or something out of a James Bond movie. Nevertheless, thanks to the phone - I have this great photo from a random store in some mall that specializes in Gold Teeth. If memory serves me correctly, it was also a tattoo parlor.
The semester just started, so it's not that I'm behind on reading that's been assigned (although I have about 250 more pages of reading to do), it's that in order to understand a lot of the assigned reading - I end up reading 20-40 pages of extra material to really get the foundation which the new reading builds on. At the moment I'm studying for neuroanatomy - which shouldn't be that tough of a class. But I keep getting sucked into the function of different brain structures as I read about them. The class itself doesn't have a book - and lectures give us a 2 minute description of brain function in a particular area - but not much beyond that. So tonight I spent a good 40 minutes reading (and getting distracted) by the role of the Pulvinar in moderating circadian rhythms and such.
This coming weekend is Darius' wedding reception. Should be good times - I'll try to take lots of pictures. I fly in the day of and leave mid-day the day after. So it'll be a short trip! Darius, for those of you who don't know the story had a MacDonald's ball pit in his room in college. That's right, complete with nets, the big plastic balls, and cushioning. The one thing I always hoped he'd add was a slide. But no dice -- maybe when he buys a house (after the wedding) he'll install either a slide or a fireman's poll.
I saw this sign while walking around one day. It's moments like this that I'm glad my cell phone has a camera on it. Most other days when I think about the phone/camera mix, I think it's one of the most over-hyped inventions. I would much rather have a phone that was also a laser pointer or something out of a James Bond movie. Nevertheless, thanks to the phone - I have this great photo from a random store in some mall that specializes in Gold Teeth. If memory serves me correctly, it was also a tattoo parlor. The semester just started, so it's not that I'm behind on reading that's been assigned (although I have about 250 more pages of reading to do), it's that in order to understand a lot of the assigned reading - I end up reading 20-40 pages of extra material to really get the foundation which the new reading builds on. At the moment I'm studying for neuroanatomy - which shouldn't be that tough of a class. But I keep getting sucked into the function of different brain structures as I read about them. The class itself doesn't have a book - and lectures give us a 2 minute description of brain function in a particular area - but not much beyond that. So tonight I spent a good 40 minutes reading (and getting distracted) by the role of the Pulvinar in moderating circadian rhythms and such.
This coming weekend is Darius' wedding reception. Should be good times - I'll try to take lots of pictures. I fly in the day of and leave mid-day the day after. So it'll be a short trip! Darius, for those of you who don't know the story had a MacDonald's ball pit in his room in college. That's right, complete with nets, the big plastic balls, and cushioning. The one thing I always hoped he'd add was a slide. But no dice -- maybe when he buys a house (after the wedding) he'll install either a slide or a fireman's poll.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
it don't mean a thing... if it ain't got that swing
It's been a long time since I've gone dancing (swing in particular). I'm pretty sure that the last time was in July! But tonight, with the encouragement of some other people in the program, I went dancing at a place that's literally just a couple blocks away. It took a while for some of the moves to come back. And then, of course, I realized that I don't actually use a lot of moves anymore so I had to remember how to improvise! The biggest thing that struck me was how much I missed dancing. A quick survey of how much I used to go dancing turned up a pair of pinstripe pants, suspenders, a really crazy big tie, and Bleyer Wingtips. My hat is still missing in the move -- so I might have to go buy another one of those. I also found a VHS copy of an old swing tape of dancing at DePauw. Fortunately I don't have a VCR, so I won't have to be too tempted to watch the likely painful memories of me dancing in spring 2000.
So far one of my New Years resolutions - cooking more - has been going quite well. On Friday I made pizza dough, tomato sauce, and made a pizza. It turned out surprisingly well! I might try to mix it up with the dough next time and I've honestly always wanted to try strawberries on a pizza. Plus what other excuse does one have to buy a pineapple? Swordfish on Saturday turned out very well. The Citrus pesto was a bit different - I think I like it without all of the basil. Which really means just a lemon and orange "zested" and squeezed into the mix with some olive oil. I'll have to peruse my new cookbook for other things I really want to try in the near future.
This semester will likely be crazy - but I think I'll survive. I've got a lot of goals for the semester, and a great group of people here in Houston who keep me sane in light of the fact that it's been raining for nearly a week now. It amazes me the things I've already learned in the classes here. And this semester the classes are even further beyond the scope of courses I've already taken - so I should learn even more! Hmm - I also realize that means the classes might be even more tricky... minor detail.
Quick movie reviews:
1. Children of Men - was a little bit strange. Interesting concept - well made. But a bit bloody - so if you're not into that kind of movie - you might avoid this one. There's lots of graphic violence, etc.
2. The Illusionist - very excellent. I love movies where I can't figure out the ending until they explain it. The Prestige was another one of those great mind twister movies. As a comparison - I thought the prestige was a better movie.
3. Superman Returns - excellent. But makes much more sense if you've seen the original series of movies!
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Deeper Thoughts...
Does anyone else remember those deep thought calendars? The two that I always remember are:
1. If you're ever falling off the top of the Empire State Building, fall real limp. Someone might think you're a mannequin and try to catch you. I mean, hey, free dummy!
2. If you ever drop your keys into hot lava, let em go. Cause man, they're gone.
It finally feels like winter here in Houston. A couple days ago, it actually dropped below 32 outside. Houstonians aren't used to seeing ice at all, unless it's in the ice maker - which has lead to some interesting traffic accidents and school closures. Today has continued the trend of rain, cold rain, and wind. The cold weather has of course convinced me to stay inside more than I normally would and work on various papers, readings, projects, etc. My only refuge from those has been the urge to clean or more often "tidy" things.
I've now had all of my lecture courses for the semester. My neuroanatomy class shouldn't be too bad -- some memorization and clapping to the beat. Last night, I sat mesmerized in my Child Assessment class as the professor recited (from memory) a history of the field of learning disabilities. Occasionally I would realize that I had stopped taking notes and attempted to catch up using what's left of my short term memory. When the short-term memory failed me I'd glance over at the notes of someone next to me, which oddly made me feel like I was cheating! By the end of the semester I might need to have both a tape recorder and a computer to keep up with the pace that the class goes at. It's like having information inserted through an IV!
The rest of today is going to be writing the discussion section of my thesis. And trying to hammer it into a cleaner paper than it is currently. My results have changed drastically - I either found a new paradigm or more likely - I have a mixture of two other ones. Either way, it should make for a really great discussion section and will probably require me to rewrite a decent amount of my intro to include things like language processing in the cerebellum. It would be nice if the sun came out at some point. I'm starting to forget what color the sky is.
1. If you're ever falling off the top of the Empire State Building, fall real limp. Someone might think you're a mannequin and try to catch you. I mean, hey, free dummy!
2. If you ever drop your keys into hot lava, let em go. Cause man, they're gone.
It finally feels like winter here in Houston. A couple days ago, it actually dropped below 32 outside. Houstonians aren't used to seeing ice at all, unless it's in the ice maker - which has lead to some interesting traffic accidents and school closures. Today has continued the trend of rain, cold rain, and wind. The cold weather has of course convinced me to stay inside more than I normally would and work on various papers, readings, projects, etc. My only refuge from those has been the urge to clean or more often "tidy" things.
I've now had all of my lecture courses for the semester. My neuroanatomy class shouldn't be too bad -- some memorization and clapping to the beat. Last night, I sat mesmerized in my Child Assessment class as the professor recited (from memory) a history of the field of learning disabilities. Occasionally I would realize that I had stopped taking notes and attempted to catch up using what's left of my short term memory. When the short-term memory failed me I'd glance over at the notes of someone next to me, which oddly made me feel like I was cheating! By the end of the semester I might need to have both a tape recorder and a computer to keep up with the pace that the class goes at. It's like having information inserted through an IV!
The rest of today is going to be writing the discussion section of my thesis. And trying to hammer it into a cleaner paper than it is currently. My results have changed drastically - I either found a new paradigm or more likely - I have a mixture of two other ones. Either way, it should make for a really great discussion section and will probably require me to rewrite a decent amount of my intro to include things like language processing in the cerebellum. It would be nice if the sun came out at some point. I'm starting to forget what color the sky is.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Books and other things
"This, this is ice. This is what happens to water when it gets too cold." - Val Kilmer in "Real Genius"
That quote basically sums up the weather in Texas at the moment. Which is fine by me, as I sit curled up in warm clothes with no (compelling) reason to leave my condo all day. I spent most of the weekend attempting to write the "last" bits of my thesis. I've written the majority of it, now I'm in the midst of writing up the analyses and what exactly it all means. Imagine my delight when last night I discovered that I made a couple mistakes in the analyses. In any case, 9 hours after discovering the issue, all is fixed, and I have results...
I'd like to say that after this I'll get to relax a bit, but I just committed to a joint-project with a professor at school and helping out on a book chapter due in April, plus classes start up tomorrow. That's right, starting off a new semester, where every student has several questions on their mind, but perhaps the one shared by all students is: Will the professor be super cool and hand out the syllabus and then let everyone go after questions? Or will they keep us for some time to begin educating us while simultaneously proving the point that they're in charge?
More on that later.
That quote basically sums up the weather in Texas at the moment. Which is fine by me, as I sit curled up in warm clothes with no (compelling) reason to leave my condo all day. I spent most of the weekend attempting to write the "last" bits of my thesis. I've written the majority of it, now I'm in the midst of writing up the analyses and what exactly it all means. Imagine my delight when last night I discovered that I made a couple mistakes in the analyses. In any case, 9 hours after discovering the issue, all is fixed, and I have results...
I'd like to say that after this I'll get to relax a bit, but I just committed to a joint-project with a professor at school and helping out on a book chapter due in April, plus classes start up tomorrow. That's right, starting off a new semester, where every student has several questions on their mind, but perhaps the one shared by all students is: Will the professor be super cool and hand out the syllabus and then let everyone go after questions? Or will they keep us for some time to begin educating us while simultaneously proving the point that they're in charge?
More on that later.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Dangerous Driving
This morning I witnessed an accident as one driver was trying to turn left and another driver was going straight. I'm not entirely sure why neither driver yielded to the other, but the end result were to really beaten up cars that both ended up fairly close to me and my car (stopped at the light perpendicular to the other cars origins). Needless to say, that got my blood pumping in the morning.
Randomly, on my iPod (in shuffle mode - hence the randomly), the song "Today's the day, I'm glad I'm not dead" by Indigo Swing came on. It fit the mood of the day perfectly! And now that I realize I'm home, my fridge is completely empty, and my wireless router just died. I think it's time to fix that... well it'll wait until tomorrow.
Randomly, on my iPod (in shuffle mode - hence the randomly), the song "Today's the day, I'm glad I'm not dead" by Indigo Swing came on. It fit the mood of the day perfectly! And now that I realize I'm home, my fridge is completely empty, and my wireless router just died. I think it's time to fix that... well it'll wait until tomorrow.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Finally upgraded...
So I upgraded my blog to the "new" blogger. So far I can tell that the editing pages looks different, and it's now linked to my gmail account - woohoo. Other than that, I'm not really feeling any life-changing results from the upgrade. The one major bummer is that many of my comments lost their authors names when I made the switch -- so my apologies for that. Now on to some actual updates.
I'm almost done reading Blink , which has been far too addictive. I highly recommend it, it's all about snap judgments that people make. I also downloaded pictures from New Years and Christmas from my cameras. I'll have to track down some other people from New Years to try to get pictures that I'm actually in, since I've not mastered that taking pictures of myself thing yet. In the mail on Friday I received my big Christmas presents -- things to hang on the wall of my condo. My parents took this picture on of their recent road trips to the West.
This week has been a lot of reading and writing. At some point in September I was invited (read: told) that I was contributing to a book chapter on familial risk of dyslexia. That's now out of the way, thanks to most of Friday and several cups of I don't quite remember what at Starbucks. Selling legally addictive substances wasn't enough to get me to stay in Starbucks, but as soon as they added free wifi access I was there! And most of Saturday and Sunday have been spent running analyses on my thesis data. In a lot of ways, doing data analysis is my favorite part of a study. It's like spending months wrapping boxes with secret presents in them for the day when you finally start up SPSS, JMP, Stata, or even SAS. Then it's a free-for-all as you try to find all of the things you said you were looking for, kick yourself for all of the things you find that are unexpected, and wish that it was more ethical to trudge through your data for other effects that will make your methods section a bit longer.
So what did I do? I basically show (as many other people have also shown) that the brain responds distinctly to various forms of reinforcement. To give reinforcement, I used pictures on a computer monitor, mostly because it's what I had, but I would be interested to see what areas of the brain light up when you give participants a puppy, or an ice cream. Maybe next time!
Continuing with the opening presents metaphor from before, there are definitely results that are way more fun than other results. For instance, my analyses are able to account for 93.170% of the variance. Other exciting results are finding major group effects or hemisphere differences in the brain. Slightly less fun are electrode differences, because it basically means that two spots on the head had different activity - and requires a bit more work to figure out just where those differences are.
Well that's about all I've got to report. For the rest of the day I'll keep working on writing up these analyses so I'll have something for my advisor next week. What's everyone else up to?
I'm almost done reading Blink , which has been far too addictive. I highly recommend it, it's all about snap judgments that people make. I also downloaded pictures from New Years and Christmas from my cameras. I'll have to track down some other people from New Years to try to get pictures that I'm actually in, since I've not mastered that taking pictures of myself thing yet. In the mail on Friday I received my big Christmas presents -- things to hang on the wall of my condo. My parents took this picture on of their recent road trips to the West.
This week has been a lot of reading and writing. At some point in September I was invited (read: told) that I was contributing to a book chapter on familial risk of dyslexia. That's now out of the way, thanks to most of Friday and several cups of I don't quite remember what at Starbucks. Selling legally addictive substances wasn't enough to get me to stay in Starbucks, but as soon as they added free wifi access I was there! And most of Saturday and Sunday have been spent running analyses on my thesis data. In a lot of ways, doing data analysis is my favorite part of a study. It's like spending months wrapping boxes with secret presents in them for the day when you finally start up SPSS, JMP, Stata, or even SAS. Then it's a free-for-all as you try to find all of the things you said you were looking for, kick yourself for all of the things you find that are unexpected, and wish that it was more ethical to trudge through your data for other effects that will make your methods section a bit longer.
So what did I do? I basically show (as many other people have also shown) that the brain responds distinctly to various forms of reinforcement. To give reinforcement, I used pictures on a computer monitor, mostly because it's what I had, but I would be interested to see what areas of the brain light up when you give participants a puppy, or an ice cream. Maybe next time!
Continuing with the opening presents metaphor from before, there are definitely results that are way more fun than other results. For instance, my analyses are able to account for 93.170% of the variance. Other exciting results are finding major group effects or hemisphere differences in the brain. Slightly less fun are electrode differences, because it basically means that two spots on the head had different activity - and requires a bit more work to figure out just where those differences are.
Well that's about all I've got to report. For the rest of the day I'll keep working on writing up these analyses so I'll have something for my advisor next week. What's everyone else up to?
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
So much to read - so little time!
For the past few days (and all of break really) I've been trying to read more - absorbing all of the "non-assigned" reading I can do before classes start back up on the 16th. Over break I read "Out of Their Minds," a book about several computer scientists and their discoveries. On Monday morning, I read the first 3 people of "the five people you meet in heaven". Monday evening I read the remainder of "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" by Feynman. And today, Tuesday, I read (more of) the beginning of "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell. And I'm completely hooked - it's been giving me some serious ideas for my dissertation.
I've been working on finishing up a number of papers and chapters recently. A couple with people in Louisville, a couple with people at Yale, and then two here in Houston. Fortunately I didn't have much else to do over break besides work on those! First thing on the agenda for this week is switching my parking... Sure, I'll be parking further out because I have to accept that $175 a month is a bit too much for me. Which would have been a big deal last semester when I had classes that met in the middle of the day. But this coming semester my course schedule is much more friendly. Fortunately the kind people in parking seem to understand this and will let me park in the close garage in the evenings (past 6) and on weekends. The rest of the time I'll take the shuttle.
It's good to be back in Houston. Don't get me wrong, I missed people in Louisville and really liked being home. But it's nice to see my friends here again, go eat at those eclectic restaurants and be in weather that's a bit warmer! New Years was really good times, the celebration pics will show up at some point. And wow do I have a lot of Christmas cookies to eat! I'll have to enlist help.
I've been working on finishing up a number of papers and chapters recently. A couple with people in Louisville, a couple with people at Yale, and then two here in Houston. Fortunately I didn't have much else to do over break besides work on those! First thing on the agenda for this week is switching my parking... Sure, I'll be parking further out because I have to accept that $175 a month is a bit too much for me. Which would have been a big deal last semester when I had classes that met in the middle of the day. But this coming semester my course schedule is much more friendly. Fortunately the kind people in parking seem to understand this and will let me park in the close garage in the evenings (past 6) and on weekends. The rest of the time I'll take the shuttle.
It's good to be back in Houston. Don't get me wrong, I missed people in Louisville and really liked being home. But it's nice to see my friends here again, go eat at those eclectic restaurants and be in weather that's a bit warmer! New Years was really good times, the celebration pics will show up at some point. And wow do I have a lot of Christmas cookies to eat! I'll have to enlist help.
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