Tuesday, December 28, 2004

I read two more papers in Brennan, Linda L. & Johnson, Victoria E. Social, Ethical and Policy Implications of Information Technology (Hershey, Pa.: Information Science, 2004). I have not studied other than that in the past few days. I have been busy shopping and taking advantage of boxing day sales.

Saturday, December 25, 2004

I scored a good mark in my numerical analysis course which means I did a good job on the exam. I was not able to answer all the questions so must have done pretty good on the questions I answered.

I was able to write four pages of my mini paper last night and also wrote about one page in the introduction to the main paper, the part about my personal views. I was inspired in writing this introduction by this: McIver, William J. Jr. Global Perspectives on the Information Society in Brennan, Linda L. & Johnson, Victoria E. Social, Ethical and Policy Implications of Information Technology (Hershey, Pa.: Information Science, 2004).

My wife got me Foucault, M. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. by Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1977) as a Christmas present.

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

I spent another four hours researching my computer crime law paper. I used Quick law to search cases. I printed out about six case from the 1990's and 2000's. The other research I did was read Wise, Edward M. United States: Computer Crime and Other Crimes against Information Technology in the United States in Sieber, U. ed. Information Technology Crime (Köln, Germany: Carl Heymanns Verlag KG, 1994). In reading this section on the USA I intended to research the history and development of the US computer crime law for my mini paper. I also found this article Manion, M. & Goodrum Abby. “Terrorism or Civil Disobedience: Toward a Hacktivist Ethic” (2000) Computers and Society, which I just read. The article I printed after finding it through the library was footnoted in Wise and the article's cite is Hollinger, Richard C. "Hackers: Computer Heroes or Electronic Highwaymen?" (1991) 21 Computers and Society. I have not read this article yet. I also need now to consult the journal Criminology at school and photocopy some articles from that journals that Wise cites.

Monday, December 20, 2004

I got an A on my term paper. I got it back from my professor today and she was sure that I have graduate student talent in legal studies. This is good news and fits one of my plans for my future. This also improves my self esteem for writing and command of English. But the professor also warned me that my writing must be perfect in graduate school. She also suggested she might be able to supervise graduate student studies in mental illness and the criminal law.

Sunday, December 19, 2004

I had a look at a projection of the media's future at http://www.letitblog.com/epic/. I have been studying the Internet now for ten years. I had read about Usenet in the late 1980's but it was not until 1994 that I had access to Usenet and email. This is when I began to study the Internet regularly. I have completed two university courses looking at the Internet and law. I have also completed a course in the sociology of science and technology.

Saturday, December 18, 2004

I did an ok job with my exam. Not a great job but I passed the exam too which means I should have a C or better in the course on numerical analysis. I am now more free to read what I want. I have a mini paper to complete but will do that tonight too and on Monday. The mini paper is due the first week of January.

Friday, December 17, 2004

This morning is my last exam for the term. I have been up since 8:30 am yesterday and my exam is at 9 am this morning. I did get about one hour lying down and closing my eyes. I stayed up to learn. I rarely do well with all nighters. But sometimes all nighters work well too. It has to do with budgetting one's time appropriately. It might work out this morning. I will know later at the beginning of January when I get my grade for this course. Oh well I am out the door in a moment for the exam with maybe half an hour more study in the library with a coffee and danish.

My brother suggests I do study Data Warehousing this winter and take my time with the law BA. I did manage to get a seat in the medical issues in criminal law course again. But I am thinking my brother is right that just one law and one statistics course would be the most enjoyable and easy paced for the winter term.

Thursday, December 16, 2004

I did not study enough for my numerical analysis exam. The exam is on Friday and I have saved everything until the end. I will have to find time on Thursday to review.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Now for the statistics books I am reading at present:
Dai, Honghua. Srikant, Ramakrishnan. & Zhang, Chengqi, eds. Advances in Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining: 8th Pacific-Asia Conference, PAKDD 2004, Sydney, Australia, May 2004, proceedings (Berlin, Germany: Springer, 2004).
This book is a slow slog but I am finding I can understand the book at least. I plan to study data mining I next term at Carleton, course code STAT4601.
Delwiche, Lora D. & Slaughter, Susan J. The Little SAS Book: a primer 2nd ed. (Cary, N.C.: SAS Institute, 1998).
I have had this book for a couple of years now. It should be enough to study this book for the BASE SAS programers exam. I might actually take this exam in January. I was teaching SAS this past term to about 40 students.
And now for the Math books I am borrowing:
Press et la. Numerical Recipes: The Art of scientific Computing (London: Cambridge, 1986).
I have the FORTRAN code for this book on a floppy I bought a year or two ago.



    this is what I'll try to study for my MATH3806 exam.
  • chapter 2 is linear algebra
  • chapter 3 is interpolation and extrapolation
  • chapter 4 is Integration
  • chapter 9 is root finding and nonlinear sets of equations
  • chapter 15 is Integration of ODE's
Train, Kenneth E. Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge, 2003).
I learned what open form and closed form integrals are from this book. I also have a good idea or better idea now of modeling of shopping and other markets.
I have another math book out but I haven't really read it so won't put its bibliographic info here.
Now for the criminology books I am reading or still borrowing:
van Leeuwen, Marianne. Confronting Terrorism: European Experiences, Threat Perceptions and Policies (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2003).
So far I have only read the first chapter concerned mostly with introducing the book and defining terrorism.
Pogrebin, Mark. ed. About Criminals: A View of the Offenders World (Thousand Oaks, Cal.: Sage, 2004).
I have read the first article and picked this up to deepen my knowledge of criminology writing generally. This book is divided by type of crime which is a simple way of looking at criminology.
Sieber, Ulrich. Ed. Information Technology Crime: National Legislation,
Jus Informationis European Series on Information Law v 6 (Köln: Carl
Heymanns Verlag, 1994).
I am now reading the USA section of this book but not quickly or not as quickly as I might. I am still borrowing this book now for two or three months.
Sofaer, Abraham D. & Goodman, Seymour E. Eds. The Transnational Dimension of Cyber Crime and Terrorism (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution, 2001).
I am still borrowing this book too for three months now but am not consulting or reading it at present.
These are the books I am reading right now for the post end of term. First the health books:
St. John's Ambulance, First Aid: First On the Scene, Activity Book 1st ed. (Ottawa, Ont.: St. John's Ambulance, 2000).
I read this in school first at an on campus first aid training standard level A session. I have since read it for level C certification and also for three years of being level C plus CPR certified. I have other first aid books including military and northern survival books. I have also read some guerrilla warfare books that include medical practices. I also read self help books concerned with addictions.
Humphreys, Keith. Circles of Recovery: Self Help Organizations for Addictions (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge, 2004).
I have read the first chapter of this book and begun the second chapter now. It has offered me hope in my self help volunteering and paid work as web master. It was also used by me in my drug law paper this past term. I used the index of the book rather than reading the whole book.
.
Petit, Jorge R. Handbook of Emergency Psychiatry (Philadelphia, Penn.: Lippincott, Williams, and Wilkins, 2004).
I learned a little of this book so far. This book is especially important for me as most of day to day associates have some mental health issues or are involved in mental health work.
That's it for health books right now.

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Dawn Moore the professor in my drug law course said I had written a very good term paper so I am happy now. I also did a not bad take home exam and even established my own view on the 'other' and intention in the criminal law. I may publish some of this stuff on my home page under my law studies page. I only have my honours paper and my numerical analysis course to complete work on before January. I also need to study for a SAS exam soon.

I have some grading to do today and tomorrow. I have been doing some volunteer work this week and on Thursday I have a union meeting in the evening and then on Friday maybe another union meeting where I might be hired as a web master for the unions web site.

I have been reading about environmental law and data mining. I have also been reading that study of self help groups for substance addiction. I am also still reading about crime victims and criminology generally. Finally my studies continue on the global internet and computer programmming topics. I am not reading about disabilities right now.

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

I stayed up yesterday for a 27 hour day. We managed to do our appointments together in the cold weather. I then slept at 19:00 until 4 am.

I had worked on my exam until about 7 am yesterday, then completed grading the last assignment in STAT2507. I then took these to school and gave them to the professor. I returned the textbook for STAT2507. I also talked a little with another TA. We might study MATH3806 together next week. I also photocopied the last two chapters of Hacker Culture because these chapters deal directly with the criminality of hackers and cover famous hacker cases. I also have court reports now downloaded for some of these cases and will be looking up more of these cases using Lexis.

I worked on the exam when waking up this morning and have a good start on the second questions at this point at 6:30 am. I have about 10 more hours to complete this exam and am feeling good about my answers now. After getting this done if I can complete it in the morning we can go to the Psychiatric Survivors Christmas party in the afternoon. I can then start to grade the STAT2606 assignments to return to the professor later this week. This will be some intense statistics grading that I need to complete. I also bought some more black ink for my Epson 820 so I can continue to print my exam answers on this printer but have my Epson 440 ready as a backup machine.

Monday, December 06, 2004

I worked basically straight with very few distractions on my honours BA in legal studies this weekend. I did find some time Monday morning to install Debian 3 r2 on an old workstation I have. I wrote about five pages for my take home exam for LAWS4306B the course in drugs, users and the state. It is a criminal law course. I worked on this for about 2 hours today and 4 hours yesterday. I also worked for about 4 hours yesterday and one hour today on my other legal studies course LAWS4908 the honours paper about computer crime. I am feeling good about all these legal studies.

I have about half of the STAT2507B5 assignments still to grade completely. I hope to get this done this morning and then head off to school and return library books and hand in the assignments to my boss. He taught me an introduction to probability course in fall 1999 and is only my boss for this term.