Battleing it out in email lists. Down with racism and violence.

I commented about the departing UNESCO's Director of Statistics cultural insensitivity on the radstats email list just now. I also posed a question about the use of torture in developed countries like Canada related to the rise of IT on the aoir email list and was refered to Castells and looking at violence on balance with human rights activism and how that is more effective with the rise of IT.

Still trying to get through lecture 4 in public law

I am still trying to completely watch lecture 4 in my public law course. I have about an hour and a half to go in the lecture. I did manage to read a few Judicial Committee decisions in the source book. I did not read any Hogg or Plato yet.

Studying public law today

I am slowly studying lecture 4 of the Jaekl's public law course today on video tape. I might also read some of professor Hogg today, may be some Plato and defintely the source book for public law LAWS2005. I might also study some data mining or other computer topics.

Studies continue

I talked to professor Jaekl for about an hour today or rather listened to him talk. He told me about Plato's republic book 1. He said I should become a judge after listening to me comment on a Supreme court case.

Further in my own studies I read more about ecommerce just now. I also contacted Andrew Patrick an information security researcher at the National Research Council(www.nrc.ca). His personal home page is here at http://www.andrewpatrick.ca.

I spent three hours working in teaching on Friday night. I gave two basic intro minitab labs and one tutorial in probability to engineering and science students. I also gave a few other Math and Statistics TA's a union introduction session.

I am up late working on a web site and studying public law.

I just finished reading some critical studies of Internet economics where the author looked at drone economics or the free labour on the web or gift economy contributing to the ever more greedy business world and the capitialist web. The free stuff on the web keeps us surfing and eventually we buy something or at least pay for our Internet access.

I am just up earning a little above minimum wage doing some web linking to mapquest for our self help network. For each group in the network's web page I am making a link to mapquest based on the groups street address.

I am on call right now for my volunteer duties but it has been quiet for 6 hours now. I plan to sleep in about 3 hours. I might help with the newspapers a little.

I am working tomorrow from about 2 PM to 10 PM then I am going to stay up over night help a little with Saturday's papers if they are early then I will be going to another job for only four hours than I might check out a neighbourhood garage sale then come home and sleep at about 4 PM. So after the next 42 hours I will have worked at 4 jobs worked about 12 hours and earned about 130 dollars.

I have about an hour left to watch in my public law lecture which was recorded on Wednesday. I did not read any public law today. I did study Grass today and also computer ethics studies. I contacted Andrew Patrick at the National Research Council to see if he can help me research computer crime.

I studied Grass Open Source GIS and installed it

I succeeded to get Grass working on both my Macintosh and on my Windows computer but do not know how to use Grass yet. I have gotten it to launch the sample Speafish data on both computers now. I also was able to borrow a book from the library on how to use Grass and read the first chapter now.

Spent the day studying the origins of Canadian law and also computers.

The books I borrowed yesterday concern community computing and cyberculture and I started to read these books last night and more today.

I also got through chapter 2 of Peter Hogg's book today. I am just having my social night tonight.

I worked out three problems for Friday's STAT3502 tutorial and have about four more problems to solve. I have a plan for one problems to get myself lost and then show the ease of using the Venn Diagram method to solve the problem. This is a probability of outcomes problem.

The change is good.

I like the new background and will keep it. Now you can click on my profile.

I am changing the back ground now.

I decided to change the back ground template. I will see how this goes. I might ruin things.

I changed this blog so I can add titles to posts like this one.

I opened a new blog last week about music. It is at this web location http://our-musical-experience.blogspot.com/. Enjoy.

me thinking at the computer a few years ago. 

Me thinking at the computer 

Inspired by reading about GIS I downloaded the Grass open source GIS for the Mac and got it to work as per the spearfish tutorial. I stopped when I had an error. I then tried to install it under cygwin on the WinXP laptop I have. Cygwin setup could not install it so I made an ISO of cygwin grass and will attempt to install it now late in the day. I also borrowed a book from the school library that uses the spearfish tutorial.

I also borrowed a book on Silcon Valley North where I live. I searched at the library for books on development and computers but found nothing but documents that I can not borrow. I borrowed about three other books about cybercultures including one book on anarchy and computers.

I used the course reserves but did not read them for long. I had gotten excited when I borrowed them by a student from my data mining course and we explained our approches to the german credit card classifcation assignment. We both had done well with the course. I explained to him how spatial patterns show up in diagnostic techniques for linear models. I also read more about general linear models today.

I returned books on the feminist Supreme court judge, psychiatry and evidence based practices, XML and databases, and one other book.

I read more of Hogg today. I read Plato's the Republlic book 1, I read 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 in Reesor's book on constitutional law.

I prepared to study first aid and also CPR. I found out today's health and safety training has been canceled.

I read a little about GIS origins and defintions of GIScience and GISystems. I also started chapter 2 in Peter Hogg's Constitutional Law of Canada student edition 2003. I am up early for a day off work but I will study today.

I spent three hours today studying constitutional law so I have 15 hours out of class time to 5 hours lectures or 3:1.

My data mining grade is good enough for graduate school.

My grade in the fourth year data mining course is available and I scored well enough to go to grad school with this mark. This also means my plan to study more third and fourth year honours statistics courses next year might be a good plan. I feel good about this mark too and was more motivated to study law over night and this morning. I was reading about the Canadian constitution and watching my second lecture. I also transfered the professor's power point slides to my palm hand held computer. I had to install power point 97 to do this transfer.

I read more about the decision of the Judical Committee regards section 92 of the Constitution Act 1867. This was formerly called the British North America Act 1867. I am still on the readings for lecture 6 of the course.

I recorded Friday's lecture which was lecture #2. I have watched half of this lecture now. I will complete watching it this morning and check the course web site for details on our essay assignment.

From the first half of the lecture the important dates are the defeat of the French in 1759 with the battle for Quebec occuring on September 13th, 1759. But the date we must know is the date of the Treaty of Paris 1763. We also should know the date of the Royal Proclamation 1763. This act protected the Aboriginals from the greed of the Europeans and still matters in land claims law. Then the next date to know is the date of the Quebec Act 1774 which gave civil law or Roman law back to Quebec private law courts.

So all of this is 200 years old. The author Ressor covers this in his book in advanced high school level English. I scanned his book last week. I would like to read it still. I borrowed Hogg and will read him this morning.

The lecture so far have been a slightly more in depth version of LAWS1000 with perhaps meantion of different legal scholars and new cases meantioned that figure in public law.

I also read some of the Palmpilot book by David Pouge. I also started another paper in the Feminist Science Studies reader. I also read the school calendar and picked out possible undergaduate course to take in law, math and computer science.

On Friday I met new TA's and welcomed them to the union and informed them of some of their rights.

I am in from the Montreal anarchist book fair. I staffed a book sales table. I was interviewed about our union on CKOT. Everything went well because I had money to spend. I bought some kids something and my wife things. I got a book by Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the City (New York: Continuum, 1993). I also got another book which will be secret because of its intelligence content. I got a DVD, some patches, a YoYo, a T-shirt for my wife, a tea towel, and a political tract on poverty and students from the students at the University of Stausburg. I got an anarchist green magazine.

I just reported items from our Joint and Health and Safety Committee workers caucus meeting to the other health and safety representitive from our union local. Our local's web site is down right now.

I am up early. We are going to the Montreal anarchist bookfair today. This is an activity of my union the Industrial Workers of the World. I will bring our book inventory on my palm in an Excel spreadsheet. My wife suggested some places to eat lunch in Montreal.

I recorded the first two lectures of my public law course. The professor is going quite slowly and covering definitions of law and public law.

My course is a 24 lecture course. Each lecture in this summer TV course is about 2.5 hours so the total lecture time for the course is about 60 hours. This is a second year course so really I would only have to spend double the amount of lecture time on the work. So I would need to spend 120 hours on the course besides watching the lectures. But I want to make sure I score an A- or better so I need about three times out of class time to class time ratio or 180/60 = 3. Given that I have done all the readings for the first five lectures I would guess I have put in about 10 hours at least so far. But this week I continued with more than required readings and started the recommended readings. I spent almost 2 hours on this this week mostly at the library. So I am at about 12 hours thus the ratio right now is 12/60 or .2 total. Leaving some 168 hours still to do. But since only one lecture has happened I am at a 12/2.5 = 4.8 ratio currently or good enough

I started watching the lectures in Canadian public law. Our government just survived a confidence vote and hopefully there will be a new social budget approved before long. The socialists are keeping this government in power.

Getting ready for first day of Spring/Summer term teaching assistant work.

I did not help with the newspapers this morning. I will do two hours of web mastering this morning. I also have to pick up my duties form at the mathematics and statistics school office then meet with my new supervisors this evening. They will assign hours then I wil submit the form tomorrow. Also tomorrow morning I have a workers causus meeting of our Joint Health and Safety Committee for the teaching assistant union and the university. So I will be going to campus later today and also tomorrow morning.

I had a union meeting yesterday to plan our union branches' attendance at the Montreal Anarchist bookfair next Saturday. This was the first meeting we have really had in half a year. I have some catching up on union paper work to do now.

One of our members who was in charge of our literature sales has made an excel spreadsheet of our inventory and I got it onto my palm with the idea that we would have the palm at the bookfair next weekend to do our inventory on the fly. We are all fairly technologically advanced anarachists although the one fellow worker works at very advanced levels with excel.

I have been reading about feminist science studies.

I have 14 books out right now from the school library. I also have about three books for my public law course. I have read about 5 lectures into the course now and am started on the sixth lecture. I have also been reading one course book on aboriginal rights in Canada. The third course book won't be covered until July.

I have been reading the feminist science studies reader fairly regularly and have finished the first part of that book. I have not been reading about XML, the math literature guide book, health and safety books, feminist law book, or anything about computer crime now for about two weeks.

I am reading about computers, operating systems, and the palm handheld computer. I also got cheap wireless data plan for my palm with the intention of being able to access my school email wirelessly

I have been placed on the preliminary hires list for the summer term. I have been given three sections. I suspect two sections are labs but the third section maybe a tutorial. I will email the professors by the end of Friday and attend their offices next week.

I went to the library today at school. I printed out the reserve readings list for the public law course. I also checked again in the book store for used books for my course and bought a used book on writing from sources. This is scholarly writing guide book I used in my computer ethics course in Fall 2000. I had loaned my copy to a friend who had lost it. But no great cost besides not having for two years it cost me less than 6$ today. This is only the price of a few slices of pizza.

I also bought another course pack on SAS for STAT3503 a regression course I took in 1999. I also bought the course pack for law course in medical issues in criminal law which I may take next winter and considered taking this past winter.

I got some printouts into a new notebook to use for my public law course. I don't really need a notebook with this computer and the fact that the lectures are on TV. But tradition dies later. I also read more of the textbook for the course and am on the sixth lecture in the textbook. I need to go to the library this week and read some of the courses recommended extra readings for the second lecture and other future lectures.

I am waiting for my grades for my data mining course. I renewed school library books over the web. I have to give a union web mastering training session for union staff on Tuesday. I will find out if I have been hired again as a summer TA soon.

Yes I study business and economics. I learned at the age of 20 that the year is divided into quarters in business. I am only saying this to report that I back up this blog up into four folders on my computer per year one for each quarter. I am preparing a binder or notebook for my public law course. I am including a hard copy of this blog in this binder. I am including all the blog entries from the year 2005. In other words a Year-To-Date printout. While I did this printout I spell checked each entry. I so far spell checked all of the first quarter of this year and corrected spelling errors for the first quarters entries.

I just spent some time checking requirments needed to upgrade my B.Math degree. In particular going into applied analysis would both interest me and be in line with my talents, and would be doable in a few years. I may study up to a credit in statistics next year namely the introductory course in stochastics and perhaps multivariant analysis or perhaps statistical computing.

I also checked out law courses and after this summer's public law course will only need half a credit to complete my BA honours and perhaps if I changed over to the business law course I would only need 2.5 more credits for that BA.

I read some more of the public law source books for the summer term course last night. I also took it easy and read for Dummies books on on-line health care, bioinformatics and Red Hat Fedora Linux.

I registered at noon today for the LAWS2005 public law course this summer.

I am taking a slight break in studies to read For Dummies books. I also am reading a novel titled The Girl Who Played Go by Shan Sa translated from French by Adriana Hunter.

Solidarity greetings to all workers on May day.

There is a computer book store closing on one of our main streets here. This past week they were offering three books for five dollars. I bought these three books:

LeVitus, Bob. Mac OS X Panther for Dummies (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2004).

I am running panther right now on my eMac

Hall, Jon 'maddog', & Sery, Paul G. Red Hat Linux Fedora for Dummies (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2004).

I am running Fedora Core 3 on my IBM PC sever right now.

Pouge, David. Palm Pilot: the Ultimate Guide: Mastering the Palm Organizers from Pilot 1000 to Palm VII (Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 1999).

I have owned a Palm IIIxe, a Palm Vx and now a Palm Tungsten W.

Yesterday the same store offered fifteen books for five dollars and the clerk threw in an extra book AOL for Dummies. These are six of the sixteen books I bought:

Pouge, David. Palm Pilot: the Ultimate Guide: Mastering the Palm Organizers from Pilot 1000 to Palm VII (Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 1999).

The copy I bought earlier in the week was missing the CD so I bought another copy with the CD this time

Pouge, David.The iBook for Dummies (Foster City, CA: IDG, 2000).

I have wanted an early model iBook. I have used someone else's iBook for surfing while on holidays.

Claverie, Jean-Michel, & Notredame, Cedric. Bioinformatics for Dummies (New York, NY, Wiley, 2003).

I have a passing interest in Bioinformatics and Biostatistics

Tejkowski, Erick. Cocoa Programming for Dummies (New York, NY: Wiley, 2003).

I have not programmed Macs much.

Kaufeld, John. AOL for Dummies (New York, NY: Wiley, 2003).

Wolinsky, Howard, & Wolinsky, Judi. Healthcare Online for Dummies (New York, NY: Hungry Minds, 2001).