Been reading and solving simple probability problems.

I have been reading in systems sciences and solving simple probability problems this weekend. I have been reading about controlling IT costs this evening. Yesterday I read a little about Bruce Lee's body building. This evening I read a little more Churchman. I read a little more of The Dilbert Principle By Scott Adams on Friday and Saturday.

A quote for guiding my thesis by Anatol Rapoport.

If one author has written that we need to find the right hypothesis. (Churchman, C. West. The Systems Approach and Its Enemies (New York, Basic Books, 1979) at 11)). Anatol Rapoport has written about finding the right system. Here is the quote

"The question now is, how far can this recognition be stretched? What else besides biological organisms can we get to recogize as "systems"? And how do we go about recognizing "theoretically fruitful" analogies in the structure, behavior, and history of portions of the world--material or ideational -- that deserve to be called "systems"?
Rapoport, Anatol. The Search for Simplicity in Laszlo, Ervin. Ed. The Relevance of General Systems Theory: Papers Presented to Ludwig von Bertalanffy on His Seventieth Birthday (New York, George Braziller, 1972) at 25 .

I solved a third problem this morning in my 2nd assignment.

I solved a third problem in my assigment. I type set it. I also read some more about general systems theory.

I did solve and type set the first two problems in the 2nd assignment.

I am hoping to solve as many of the present nine problems as possible this morning. I have just type set and solved two problems. I have read all nine problems and can solve them all. The third and fourth problems may give me some difficulty, but the remaining problems are fairly simple substitution problems like the first problem I just type set. The topic of this assignment is conditional probabilities and Bayes theorem.

The first assignment has been handed in and the second assignment has been started.

I was able to hand in the first assignment two days early. If I want to hand in the second assignment two days early it needs to be completed by Monday. This means I need to complete about four problems a day from now until Monday.

I borrowed about 8 books on general systems theory from the university of Ottawa library. I also borrowed a book called The Dilbert Principle.

I just solved the second last problem on the first school work assignment.

I just printed my solution to the second last problem for the school work due this week. I will proof read it in the next hour. I now have one problem to solve which I will do later today. Then I have invited friends over and we will watch TV or play a cyberpunk role playing game. After proof reading I will update blogs a bit and do some other reading before attempting the last problem in assignment #1.

I finished chapter 2 now in Churchman, C. West. The Systems Approach and Its Enemies

I was thinking about probability theory after class today but more even after work. I read some journal book reviews after work and searched out the books reviewed. This was from the International Journal of General Systems Volume 31 Issue #1. I completed C West Churchman's chapter on the tradition of the systems approach this morning.

I made it through class this morning,

I made it on time to my class this morning. We covered permutations and combinations today but the professor said that we would not be tested extensively on this. So other than the three remaining problems on the first assignment there will be one question on the mid-term and one question on the final from this subject area known as combinatorics.

I attended all classes this week.

I have attended two French classes this week. I have also attended my Tuesday probability lecture and will attend my Thursday lecture today. I have not worked on the assignment since Monday morning.

I got a receipt for my Canadian Mathematics Society dues and also received 4 copies of the student problems journal for this year. This journal is called Crux Mathematica and is a student problems journal.

Problems with pronounciation.

I attended my first French class this morning. I have problems with pronounciation of French and this is what this course will help with. Today we learned about the mouth and the lips. We also reviewed the international pronounciation alphabet for English. I had never seen this alphabet before.

I have completed more than half of the first assignment now.

I solved some interval problems for uniform random variables. I was going crazy trying to draw on the computer a semi circle in the cartesian plane. Instead I described the problem with words. I now have 5 Q's done and 3 Q's to still complete. I may try to do two more this morning. Right now I am going to shave for work today.

Learning more French

I am starting a French course this week coming up. It is a government sponsored course. It will be 7.5 hours one week and 5 hours the next week for about nine weeks.

Homework progress.

The first two Q' are done now. I will now try to complete the other 6 Q's this morning.

Other government work applied for.

I have been working now for more than a month in the government. I have applied since then to work with federal parolees in a downtown Ottawa office.

Graduate school orientation four days later.

I did attend the graduate school orientation. It was in an ultra modern computer science building. I met the director Tet Yeap and the other students. Many students are from China. There are two other mathematics students in our program. Which reminds me I paid my dues to the Canadian Mathematics Society again this year 2006. Wow, only 9 months late.

The new school library.

I had a tour of the new library and used the Sun Computer, Sun Ray machines to search the libray catalogue for books by Churchman whom my mother reminded me was a systems theorist. I borrowed two of his books. The only other time I have used this library was to borrow a book on our reading list for my drug law course in fall 2004. That was two years ago. I read one of his books about the enemies of systems theory while walking around my neighbourhood like a true scholar, walk and read at the same time.

I completed another problem in my first assignment just now in LaTeX.

I just typeset another problem from my first assignment in MAT2371 in LaTeX. This involved complements and intersections and unions of two sets and the associated formula for probability of union and intersection. I have taught this formula before to engineers. The assignment is due on September 21st. But I want to submit it next week. I have six problems left to complete. I know I can solve each one.

I have completed one problem of 8 for my first assignment.

Earlier this morning I completed a problem using LaTeX to typeset my answer. The problem is the first in my basic probability course. It was very simple. I have to have this problem set done by September 21st at 8:30 AM.

The next three days.

I will be attending graduate school orientation this morning. I was just reviewing the schedule of events. I was comparing it with the schedule for a conference I am going to attend parts of these next three days. The conference is the International Association for Official Statistics (IAOS) Conference – Ottawa 2006. The Chief statistican of Canada will speak there. With my present schedule I may be able to hear him close the conference on Friday but will not hear him speak this morning.

I will try to attend two afternoon sessions later today at the conference. But more important today is attending the full orientation session at the U of O. I will attend an address by the director of the school, a library tour, and some introduction session to the computing facilities at the University of Ottawa SITE location. I may stay for lunch too and then simply attend the conference later in the day after the orientation. Tomorrow I have my first class and then I can attend a session at the conference after class and then go to work. I can then try to wake up for 6 or 7 am Friday and attend the whole last day of the conference and then work in the evening Friday.

I have my first class this Thursday.

I have my first class this Thursday. I need to buy a binder which I plan to buy later today. I have paper for the binder. I wonder if I will bring a computer to the class and keep notes on a computer? I could prepare some LaTeX files from a lecture notes template. I could do this for every class in graduate school. Or could I? May be this morning I will design a basic lecture note template. I will look odd but the embarassment of being the only student with a laptop will not affect me much. So far laptops in class have not improved my marks but instead made my marks in those classes where I used a computer or brought a laptop every day to be lower marks.

I am still waiting for my textbook to be delivered. I don't have any other school books on order right now. I have though been buying entertainment items which I contend are different from school books. I don't consider school books to be entertainment items in a budget.

I have ordered a used copy of the textbook for MAT2371.

I used Amazon.ca to order a used copy of the textbook for MAT2371. It has been shipped now from my own province so should be here in days. I plan to start reading it soon. I did not work through the first two chapters of problems in the two probability books I have. I did read the first chapter of each book though. I still need to read the second chapters and also do all the exercises in these first two chapters in these two books. I had hoped to be done the exercises in the first three chapters in both books by next weekend.

Gail Ivanoff professor of mathematics university of Ottawa

The professor for my fall course is Gail Ivanoff who teaches mathematics at the university of Ottawa. She emailed all the students in the class and I replied this morning. After doing this I set up my email signature for my university of Ottawa email address.

Course outline and solutions to last years course assignments.

I checked out the professors web pages for the course I am studying this fall. I was able to understand the solutions to the assignments from last year. I am set to buy the course textbook in the next few days.

I got into an interesting email discussion about social navigation with AOIR people on the email list.

I responded to a basic question about social networks by rephrasing as social navigation and spinning it with a questioning of capitalism and it worked a brief discussion ensued on the AOIR email list. It was very interesting and brilliant to read some replies.

I listened to podcast #1 from the Centre For Internet And Society

I have copied and pasted from iTunes for the first time a podcast decription. The description of this podcast is below and I have formated it for blogspot. I am listening to this Podcast as I type this post. I wonder if this is lazy scholarship or just me and my technological tools being used for study.

Sony's latest Digital Rights Management (DRM)-endeavour earned a charge of “fraud, false advertising, trespass and the violation of state and federal statutes prohibiting malware, and unauthorized computer tampering”. The technology installs, unnoticed by the user, a piece of software that prevents consumers from unauthorised copying, is able to monitor and report user behaviour back to the firm and, accidentally, holds the door wide open for Trojans. Under other circumstances one would be tempted to describe such a strategy a hostile “spy at-tack”. In case of Sony BMG, this seems to be part of a business model to sell digital music to consumers. The talk will have a closer look at the charges of the EFF and a Californian lawyer against Sony BMG‚s latest DRM strategy. The Sony BMG case adds a number of interesting new dimensions to the ‘DRM and Consumer' debate. The talk will explain why the case is so important, also against the background of similar recent case law in Europe, and why it points into an entirely new direction of talking about DRM.

About the Speaker: Natali Helberger is Associate Professor at the Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam. Dr. Helberger is managing legal partner to the INDICARE project. INDICARE (Informed Dialogue about Consumer Acceptability of Rights Management Solutions in Europe) is a project co-funded by the European Commission. The objective of INDICARE is to address issues regarding consumer acceptability of digital rights management solutions; identify obstacles and suggest solutions. At the moment, she is a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.

I have been officially a graduate student for about half a day now.

About twelve hours including one work day ago I registered for graduate school and received my student card. I will focus a fair amount of time now over night studying. I will read about getting a computer account and sign up for one. I will also be reading graduate school info documents on the U of O web site. I will also spend some time advancing my probability studies and will write some probability problems into LaTeX and their solutions. I still hope to work through the basics by Sunday. I still have a goal of completing the second chapters of two textbooks by Sunday. I may not be able to solve all the problems but that is also the goal.

I narrowed my reading fields in the past four weeks.

I need to focus more on reading statistics. In the past two mornings I have read basic probability in two school textbooks reviewing what I have studied since 1981. I will be studying an advanced basic probability course this fall term. I also focused on social naviagtion studies some more and was impressed when I read some studies but I was a bit manic and tired and wired when I was impressed. I have lost a lot of study time in my new work schedule and will continue to loose this time. I have also read some recovery and self care literature. I have also heard some original folk and world music in the past weekend. I have also taken up reading Bruce Lee the martial artist. I am also reading about communication, command, and control systems engineering and design. Most of my studies are graduate school preparation now. But I must also expand my career devlopment activities at Statistics Canada and may be studying French this fall at work. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays will be French studies and Tuesdays and Thursdays will be probability studies.

I used Bluefish a little on the Linux laptop.

I started up Bluefish on the Linux laptop. It is the programming editor that came with the Debian Gnome desktop. I started an R code file and just wrote some header info comments and really did not solve any problems. I will now read some probability books before sleeping.

Still studying the information age. I want to study some C++ programming on a Linux machine now.

I was just reading the beginning of a US military book on the information age. But was inspired to start up my Linux laptop and study some C++ programming from a book I have been reading on C++ programming. Whether I actually follow through on that is very improbable.

Studies on the job involve quality v quantity.

I am working with other graduates. Many have studied at Carleton too. We need to maintain quality but manage to produce quantity. This is really a new work philosophy for me coming from security work and teaching where quantity and quality are not so obvious. It is an old topic and quantity v. quality in academics is more like quantitative v qualitative research methods.

I learned some equation numbering on LaTeX this evening/morning.

I got in from work and booted up my Macbook laptop computer. I was testing at first if iWeb could be used in my new web master project. The new web site I am publisher of is here. www.wellness-project.org. I am designing some templates for this web site project and did this on my Linux laptop a couple of hours after getting home.

I did some LaTeX learning and typesetting after I figured iWeb would not be good enough for the web site project. On the eMac I copied and pasted into TeXShop an old Open Office file made on my old Thinkpad and presently stored on my eMac. I then opened it using the local network between my machines in TeXShop on my Macbook. The file is a list of all the exercises and solutions I have done from the textbook for my introduction to probability course I studied in 1999. I created this file in 2003 to really learn probability and possibly help me repeat the course with better marks. As I have set the goal of having worked through and read the second chapter of two probability books by Sunday next weekend, I thought I should get working on this study as I have done nothing other than pull the books out of their shelves to date. After opening the file as a tex file I began to write proper LaTeX code for the content. I did figure out an elegant solution to equation numbering using the exercise numbering for the answers as equation numbering. I did not really do any solutions though I just converted what I had done in 2003 to laTeX.

I got my last marking assignment done now.

I had to quit my TA work abruptly this summer term. But they had me do some more work and I finally got it done. I now need to rest and go to work later today at my new Statistics Canada job.

Goals and landmarks set for probability studies/review.

I am being required to study basic probability again. I have two probability textbooks. My goals will be to have worked through all the exercises in the first two chapters of both books in the next two weeks and the third chapters by the first week of classes four weeks from now. I will also buy the textbook for my actual course in about three weeks. I will try to stay a week ahead in the textbook and do as many problems as I can. The course is coded or labeled as MAT2371 in the University of Ottawa course code system. The course is given this fall term on Tuesdays from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM and on Thursdays from 8:30 AM to 10:00 AM. This will mean I need to be awake at 8:00 AM Tuesdays and 6:00 AM Thursdays. On these days, and the days before I will be working from 3:00 PM to 11:00 PM at my new job.

I read about positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia today.

I read about the difference between chronic and acute schizophrenia and the misuse of these labels. I read that perhaps using the terms type 1 and type 2 is a better typology. Type 1 is where positive symptoms dominate and type 2 is where negative symptoms dominate instead of associating the label acute schizophrenia with positive symptoms and the label chronic schizophrenia with negative symptoms. This was in chapter 2 of this book,

Howe, Gwen. Working With Schizophrenia: A Needs Based Approach (London, U.K. Jessica Kingsley, 1995).

This chapter describes positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Positive symptoms are symptoms added to the normal personality and negative symptoms meaning symptoms that take away from the normal personality. Normal here can simply mean what one was like before one's episode.

The three basic types of positive symptoms are

Altered Perceptions

This is where hearing voices fits in and seeing things and also the distorted perceptions like weird faces and smells and tastes that are may be over sensitive to certain characteristics of the environment.

Delusional Ideas

This is where people feel they are being watched or are at the centre of attention. This can also constructed with ideas of reference. In my own experience this happens when one is tired after an abnormally long day. Thus this symptom could be connected with either stress or physical health. This symptom can also results in sexual confusion or lack of clearly defined sexual boundaries. Also here perceptions of illness and health can be distorted.

Abnormal Thought Structure

This is a symptom where ones thoughts jump all around or some detail like a license plate on a car in front can be meaningful when, in fact, there is really no real meaning to it. This can also result in having one's attention taken by an object where one appears to be staring into empty space or at a table or object on a table. This would be greater I believe if one was high on marijuana. This is also the symptom where the ideas of intrusive thoughts can effect someone. Also beliefs that one is a very bad person can effect someone with these symptoms when the person is actually not a bad person or has no intention of acting on these thoughts. This can be quite distressful and cause an anxiety in my experience.

Negative symptoms can be more debilitating. The negative symptoms tend to be around lack on enjoyment of life or amotivation. This lethargy can be also confused with withdrawal and lethargy of marijuana smoking.

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Still reading about social navigation.

I started reading the third chapter of the book on social navigation. I am about half way through this chapter. I cannot read as much these days because I have started a full time job. The bibliographic cite for this book using Canadian legal studies style for the cite is

The bibliographic cite for this reading is

Dieberger, Andreas. Social Connotation of Space in the Design for Virtual Communities and Social Navigation in Munro, Alan J. & Höök, Kristina. & Benyon, David. eds. Social Navigation of Information Space (London, UK: Springer, 1999) at 35-54.

I am impressed with the understanding this author expresses about Usenet and its characteristics. Also this author is very aware of the privacy issues involved in the ideas of social navigation expressed so far in this book. Do we want others to know how we have used the web or say what we are buying at Amazon.com?

Continuing to study social navigation of information space.

But back to the effect on the direction of my studies. I learned to critique science after reading Cooper. This lead me to really understanding some topics in the sociology of science and technology early on in my studies and after becoming credentialed in statistics allowed me to pick up the pace with reading and critiquing science. I have also picked up more sociology and technology readings and lectures. I read many books in the 76.9 range where computers and society are studied. This lead me to blogs, which are a personal micro history, or as Cooper puts it, blogs are histographs not history or herstory.

So the questions that rage through my mind when writing on a blog have to do with appropriateness as suggested by the team of psychiatric rehabilitation actors I have used. Also privacy and things like libel effect my writing. But as I read about social navigation I am becoming aware that appropriateness is socially defined by people and is appropriate in places where people go and do things. So necessary for the definition of appropriateness are people just as laws are created by people and set out appropriate behaviours.

I am also combining my reading of social navigation with reading Cooper. I started reading this new field last week. I suspect the recent social networking web site engineers have studied this field.

The bibliographic cite for this reading is

Dourish, Paul. Where the Footprints Lead: Tracking Down Other Roles for Social Navigation in Munro, Alan J. & Höök, Kristina. & Benyon, David. Eds. Social Navigation of Information Space (London, UK: Springer, 1999) at 15-34.

This article starts by suggesting navigation to be possible as spatial navigation, semantic navigation and social navigation. The author explores social navigation, as more than book recommender web sites in fact examines ways that social navigation could use a wider possible group of social interactions. He briefly touches on architecture and distinguishes between space and place. Spaces being physical and the root human understanding of the world and places being more socially defined and having meaning for people, He depends here on urban and architecture studies that are much older than computer software design. He also briefly looks at perceptual awareness of others as an example of a social interaction to be added to social networking of information space. That is information about the activities of others gained on the periphery. He sees social informatics as both a way to help others find information and at the same time a way to exploit for financial gain the information others have left in their use of the same information. He does mention that privacy is an issue with using information about people. He stubbles when discussing generalized information and presenting trends and aggregate data which I think needs more understanding from a paranoia of identity theft and also the natural hiding many do on the Internet. But all in all this was a good two-day read.

I read some of Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry this morning.

I have read this fellow Dr. Cooper when young and idealistic. Also I only began to read him when some other roles were being played by me. One I was newly diagnosed as schizophrenic. Two I was a new holder of a bookstore credit card that someone else paid for in the end. Three I was looking for studies that would motivate me. This last point had the greatest effect. I do though still buy books on credit and have done this for years and years. It is one of my main activities that I get pleasure from. I also continue to play the role of schizophrenic but these days I hide this role for large periods of time when I am acting other roles where being schizophrenic does not really need to be played. But back to motivating studies.

I sought after reading this doctor to read more about knowledge and epistemology. That is what is knowledge and how do we organize it. The general attack that Doctor Cooper makes is on scientific knowledge being appropriate for human relations.

Cooper makes a point in the introduction that I read tonight that bears repeating decades later on this blog. Human actions are not repeatable. It is fine for the scientist my father to repeat a few times or many times the experiments he does on things. And true human life and human micro-actions seem to be routine like washing the dishes. Thus yes we repeat washing the dishes. But do we? When in fact it is those of us with deviance that stop washing our dishes.

So this leads the doctor to saying there are two types of rationality. Human relations cannot use analytical reason( scientific/numerical/metric), but must use dialectical reason. Plato or Socrates as Plato recounts him developed the dialectic I finally learned in 2001, as a fact I could remember. It is really the same as seeing humans and human issues from many angles but also simply put it is talking about human reality, human behaviour. It is not really that simple because a good dialectic will be like a court case where both sides or even more than two sides will be talked about. Thus weighting the pros and cons is a simplified mostly non-artistic way of being dialectical. This is like I have learned to do in executive meetings when making decisions in a group.

I am continuing to read the book on social navigation of information space.

I started the second chapter in the book I borrowed on social navigation. The bibliographic cite for this chapter is

Dourish, Paul. Where the Footprints Lead: Tracking Down Other Roles for Social Navigation in Munro, Alan J. & Höök, Kristina. & Benyon, David. eds. Social Navigation of Information Space (London, UK: Springer, 1999).

This chapter gets me really thinking about social interaction and the possibility of other interactions that could occur, both as the authors are trying to suggest inside information spaces, but also thinking about social interaction in general. I am also reflecting on my work helping other consumer/survivors of mental health services, use computers and the Internet.

I completed reading the introductory chapter of a book on social navigation.

I picked up a book last week in the 76.9 range. I read the first chapter on the way home from school but didn't finish reading this chapter until this morning.

Here is the bibliographic cite for the whole book:

Munro, Alan J. & Höök, Kristina. & Benyon, David. eds. Social Navigation of Information Space (London, UK: Springer, 1999).

This book is incredibly inspiring and after playing Second Life it left quite an impression on me. Also within Second Life my avatar is researching the concepts on social networking at a virtual cyber research centre in world. This first chapter also related quite well to the use of Amazon.com and also this year's business topics on the Internet such as social networking.

I reviewed the first chapter of a school textbook on Java programming for beginning programmers.

I had read this book, or at least the first two chapters in May 2002. I was trying out a first year course in Java programming that spring. I withdrew from the course and did not complete the course. Instead in the summer term that year I studied wrongful convictions in an advanced sociology course in criminology. I withdrew because I was failing to complete the first programming assignment properly.

Tonight, I read quickly the first chapter by scanning for keywords and reviewing. In fact, the first three chapters of this book are basic programming that I have known from the middle 1970's.

There is even some connecting in the book of objects and methods with variables and functions; in other words, there are connections made between the procedural programming I was taught in the 1970's and 1980's, with the object oriented programming students are taught these days and in this book.

Mostly I reviewed in chapter 1 the JAVA specific learning that I have not really used yet. But some of this applies to programming in SAS or XML, as well as it applies in Java. In particular, the naming rules for variables or name space concepts are almost the same in all three languages.

Here is the bibliographic cite for this first year JAVA programming book:

Savitch, Walter. Java: An Introduction to Computer Science & Programming (Upper Saddle River: N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1999).

This book covers basic programming with JAVA. I reviewed the first chapter tonight and will review chapter two soon. Then I have ten more chapters to read. I will practice writing JAVA with the Code Warrior software. I found out tonight there is also a copy of Code Warrior for the Mac on the book's CD but none of my present Macs have an older copy of Mac OS to run this no doubt.

The gendered digital divide really hits home.

From being told I was smart when a kid to the present day the gendered digital divide is so real I cannot ignore this. I have been reading a book about this and here is the bibliographical cite:

Cooper, Joel, & Weaver, Kimberlee D. Gender and Computers: Understanding the Digital Divide (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003).

This book through a great number of studies of students in classroom experiments to test gendered differences in computing use as these fit various psychological factors, studies the gendered divide in computing use. While may be success with computers is too simplified in this book and certainly this divide is lessening these days, it is certainly a key feature of my own experience with computing.

The Debian install worked better this time.

I managed to install Debian 3.1 revision 2 and am now making more CD's from that revision so I can install anything from the archive by CD. I still do not have a PCMCIA working socket so cannot ethernet on this laptop. I do have X windows, a Gnome desktop and the Debian drop down menu. Last time I installed Debian 3.1 on this laptop I did not have the Debian drop down menu and that made it difficult to access a number of useful programs. This laptop is very slow. I now must consider buying a battery for this laptop which would cost about 100$ or spending about 500$ to get a used Thinkpad from IBM for a Debian laptop. The first option costs a lot less.

Computer tasks today.

The installing process for Linux is working ok. I may have made one mistake on the video RAM memory selection. I should be able to test it out later today. I also successfully installed the Code Warrior Lite software on the PC side of the Macbook and programs to use with the Java textbook. I may start reading this textbook and working the programs also later today.

I got a free copy of a Marita Moll edited book: Tech High

At our union meeting I browsed some free books at the labour council offices. I grabbed a lot of teacher's books and also this book:

Moll, Marita. Ed. Tech High: Globalization and the Future of Canadian Education (Halifax, N.S.: Fernwood, 1997).

Maria is also a National Capital Freenet (NCF) member, or was in the middle 1990's when I was a frequent NCF user.

I also got this book back from a retired army radio engineer I had loaned it to:

Flickenger, Rob, et al. Wireless Networking in the Developing World: A practical guide to planning and building low-cost telecommunications infrastructure (London, U.K.: Limehouse Book Sprint Team, 2006) <http://wndw.net>.

This book is available free at the web site http://wndw.net . I bought a copy to support their project but also because sometimes I prefer hard copy books.

I am installing Linux on a computer to use R and various other open source softwares.

I have an old Pentium 1 computer. I was given this for free last winter. I tried it to install Debian 3.0 and had it working. But the command line on that version of Debian did not by default have an edit menu. I need to be able to copy and paste into the command line so need an edit menu on the command line. So I am trying to install the next version of Debian 3.1 and by now that is at 3.1 revision 2. I am having some trouble with installing this from CD. I was not able to keep the PCMCIA system working after the base install. I may use this as a non-networked machine. So that is one study project I am doing today.

I may also try to install some Java tools on my Macbook on the windows side. These tools would be from a first year university Java programming course textbook. I would be expected to know this textbook in my systems science program this coming year. I would hope to work through this book by the end of August.

Studying more about the doctoral dissertation.

I am reading about topic selection and now have some advise on measurement error statistics and might buy a book on this topic. One of my professors knew a book on this topic and sent me the bibliographic cite for the book. I am not able to afford it right away, but should buy it in the next month.

I am reading a book on Linux.

I am reading one of those large, easy to read books on computers. This one is written on the Linux operating system. I also borrowed a book on information security from a business strategy perspective. I am going to have to leave this library soon although I will have my alumni card to use still. I will also loose my school email and school web page(s).

I was offered a job at Statistics Canada today.

I have been offered a job at Statistics Canada and will be taking it. I am not sure how this will affect my school plans. I will start working and do not need to decide on the graduate school plans until August 21st. I will keep studying for this graduate school though. I will have to quit my teaching assistant work right away. In fact, I just sent an email giving notice to the director of the mathematics and statistics school. I also let my immediate supervisors know that I am quitting in two weeks. I also let one of my supervisors at another job know that I am quitting.

Reading more on managing the doctoral dissertation.

This book on managing the writing of a doctoral dissertation can be applied to a master thesis as well. This is what I am using this book for. I read another chapter, this one about selecting an adviser and a committee. I then a few hours later read the list of potential advisers in systems science and circled on this list all the research areas of the advisers that corresponded to topics I am either interested in pursuing such as computer crime or web applications, or topics that I have a background such as statistical inference, numerical methods, and ecology.

A possible topic I chose tonight was general statistics of experiments with error bound measurements. Apparently most statistical models assume error free measurement or perfect measurement. But many science studies and use of instrumentation uses a possible error based on an assumption of errors in measurement. Also apparently error such as measurement error can simply be included in the error term in a statistical model. But perhaps there is a whole other set of models and theories where error bound measurements are the basis rather than perfect measure. I could explore this from a systems approach and develop a whole other system of statistical inference models if such models exist.

I am continuing to grade statistics homework over night.

I have an assignment due back to the professor on Wednesday. I have been marking overnight again. Last night I did not manage to stay up and do this, so I have more to do now. But the pace is coming along, and it is actually not all that much work.

I must be fair and consistent in my marking, which means sometimes I have to go back over everything I have marked and check that I have given or taken off the same marks for everyone. This consistency principle helps me mark when some students have done a very good, thorough job and some students have done just the minimum work required.

I continue to prepare for graduate school and mark statistics assignments.

I have been staying up late these past five days. I reason that staying up late gives me quiet time without distractions to do my scholarly work. But often I spend this time wastefully doing on-line shopping. This morning I read more of the book on writing the doctoral dissertation. I got to some help on writing, software tools and formatting tips in this book and then downloaded a LaTeX template from a University of Ottawa web page. I then experimented with this template a little, merely writing my name as author and a supposed title for my thesis. This would be my M.Sc. thesis, which actually won't start until at least 2007, if not more probably in 2008.

I did less expensive on-line gaming this morning. I am still sitting at a social simulations researcher's research centre in the game. This morning I spent about half an hour studying the scripting language for this on-line simulation game. I practiced an example, "Hello Avatar" script, but it did not work when applied to an in-world object. I am still a little awkward with the tools for creating objects, but can walk and chat alright in world. I can also teleport. I have trouble also with views, but am working on this, as I explore more of the drop down menus. I do plan this morning to attend a lecture or other on-line in world event. I should just search for some events now after doing this post.

So I am up all night and have been steadily marking statistics assignments. I set small target completion times and have almost stuck to these times. This setting of mini deadlines keeps me going. I have marked two Q's now out of 9 and started a third Q.

I did some more reading of Kling, Rosenbaum, and Sawyer's Understanding and Communicating Social Informatics this morning.

I was trying to find my place in this book on social informatics. I did not feel comfortable reading the chapter for teachers but have read the beginning of that chapter. I instead tried reading the beginning of the next chapter about communicating social informatics research and this was going fine but it got me really thinking about getting some web mastering work done which I have now almost done.

I also read some more of the book on simulations, in fact, covering a strict mathematical definition of a random number such that the number is between 0 and 1 and all numbers between 0 and 1 are equally likely to occur as the random number. The authors choose the symbol r bar, which cannot be displayed in html on this web page but can be done in latex math mode with the code \bar{r}.

I spent some time and money playing the on-line social game Second Life. I was investigating a social networking researchers space or virtual land inside the game Second Life. I was using the map a lot tonight and then started to explore land for sale. I looked for a place near the social researcher's land and of course for the cheapest place. I made a mistake though after I bought the game money to buy a place, because in the end, that place was not for sale. I then spent some time searching for land for sale with the on-line search tool. I can now buy 512 sq ft of land and it will not cost a monthly maintenance fee. I would like to have a city lot or suburban lot. But the result is I now have a premium membership until October, and am now some 60 real dollars poorer and can afford some virtual land perhaps. I also now know more of the tools and environment of this on-line game/social world. I also downloaded one of the researcher's papers on social networking. So I learned more about this game well but need to read more of that paper to learn about social networks. The paper is on the topic of data collection for social networking research.

I went back to marking work now and have got it started.

Continuing to prepare for graduate school.

I am reading a book called Writing the Doctoral Dissertation: A Systemic Approach by Gordon B. Davis and Clyde A. Parker. They argue for structuring the research to help with writing a dissertation on time. They have an argument about not taking a job until the final draft is done or even later for instance. I will probably stop being a teaching assistant for the next few terms until I get my feet at the new school and new level of study.

I have almost completed marking about 100 undergraduate statistics tests written by engineering students.

I am nearing the end and have been working for four days now trying to get this marking done. I have worked about 3 to 6 hours a day meaning about 12-18 hours so the last two hours is no big deal. After this grading this test I have only one more assignment to grade for this course for the summer term. This course is an introductory statistics and probability course for undergraduate engineering students at Carleton University. It is my third year being a teaching assistant in this course. It is a more challenging course to teach but I am now fairly comfortable with it.

Preparatory study for grad school.

I am reading this book to prepare for grad school.

Kleijnen, Jack P. C. & van Groenendaal, Willem. Simulation: A Statistical Perspective (Toronto: John Wiley & Sons, 1992).

I just completed reading the first chapter. The authors are business management teachers.

I will continue to post my progress with reading this book.

I worked for another 3 hours and am nearing the end of this marking

I worked for another three hours and am nearing the end of marking this test. At the moment I am too tired to continue to mark. I did manage to start a book on simulations and am just now installing a compiler, X code, for the Mac on my Macbook. But I realize I already have a G++ 4.0 compiler installed and can do the practice code from the C++ how to book using G++ I think. I will do some practice code from that book and try some simulations programming from the other book. But right now I am logging off and sleeping.

Marking is coming along fine.

I am doing my marking quite regularly now and should be done marking this statistics test by Monday.

I am just practicing some French with my partner.

She is asking me for the meaning of pomme terre which is apple of the earth. And then Fruit de la mer which is seafood. Then finally jesus le sieginer.

I got some marking done on time this week.

I did get some 25 assignments marked this week and back to the lecturer on time. But I am dragging my heals on marking the test.

I did not succeed in installing the data mining course lectures pdf's on the Palm.

There is something wrong with the Adobe Reader for the Palm and I was not after quite a few attempts able to install the pdf's from my desktop school folders to the Palm.

I have been starting a book on Neural Networks in C++

I borrowed a book on programming neural networks written in 1993. The book is

Masters Timothy Practical Neural Network Recipes in C++ (Toronto: Academic Press, 1993).

I read the first chapter earlier this morning.

Otherwise, I am marking a statistics test written by engineering students.

I updated my school web info page today.

I updated and made current my school hosted web page about myself in a school context. It is at this address:
http://chat.carleton.ca/~ptimusk/

I printed and read the web page describing the systems science department and program.

I printed the web page from the university of Ottawa that describes the systems science program. I have read this page a few times now. I am particularly interested in the reseach of the professors that extend the study into social impact of computers and other technology.

Loading Portable Document Format school files on my Palm.

I am installing all the lectures from the data mining course I took taught by Dr. Shirley Mills in winter 2005. I am also installing a collection of thesis that were found searchng to the term "Victims" at Carleton's thesis collection. I will read these on the move like when I am on the bus.

I have a copy of the school year's schedule for systems science now.

The administrator sent me a copy of the course schedule for the up coming school year at the university of Ottawa. I am thinking of taking two courses per term in this program. But I am also thinking of taking one course at Carleton in media and technology to start the diploma in sonic design. Speaking of which I bought a few computer accessories just this weekend on-line.

I did some marking this morning

I worked on some marking this morning. I marked a question about what type of probability theory various problems needed for solution. Theories the students could choose included Classical, Subjective, and Relative Frequency. I also marked an eight sided dice problem involving conditional probabilities. This marking is due this Wednesday along with the 100 tests.

I studied the role of Information Systems Security Officer

I read a few chapters of a book describing the role of information systems security officer.

I read three or four entries at wikipedia about systems science

I got a little worried about studying for the fall so spent some study time reading at wikipedia.org the background of systems science and systems theory, another word for this science. I found the International Society for the Systems Sciences organization for professionals in systems science and considered joining this coming week. This is their home page http://www.isss.org. I read about famous systems scientists and their writings at both web sites.

I have been marking tests the past few mornings.

I completed marking about 100 tests for one question concerning a histogram and one question concerning a stem and leaf plot. I still have to mark some calculations for this set of data and also a box plot.

I am not going to be studying in an MA program in legal studies.

I got a letter from the law department saying I was not admitted to a legal studies MA at Carleton. I am now back to just being happy to be able to study in graduate school anywhere in my city. But wait there is more. I am now possibily going to join the camp that says the U of O is a better school as evidenced by their admitting little ol' me with my strengths to grad school where Carleton would not. I feel the U of O may have treated me with more fairness and assessed my record in a more balanced fashion whereas at Carleton I believe it may have only been my grades that mattered. Perhaps I should have left Carleton 24 years ago when I first started to have trouble there with my marks affecting the decisions and not my abilities and professional experience.

In another way of looking at this, I have always been a keen computer student and user and programmer. I am only now in my middle life finally entering a program of study of the computer. Perhaps this is in fact a further refinement of my looking within myself to see what I truly enjoy and respect.

I have three marking assignments right now.

I have to mark a test of about 100 students. I also have two assignments to mark this week. I need to get working on this but I have also been managing to clean our apartment, do some carpentry and look for work. So I have work to do as a teaching assistant.

Reading about social networks.

I searched out some books on schizophrenia at the school library. I read this chapter of a book last night.

Abrahamson, David. Social Networks and their Development in the Community in France, Jenny, & Muir, Niki. Communication and the Mentally Ill Patient: Developmental and Linguistic Approaches to Schizophrenia (London: Jessica Kingsley, 1997).

The author looks at some housing options and the observations of social networks amongst discharged patients. This was a study based on some housing in England where social networking was encouraged and studied.

I am reminded of Barry Wellman's paper on using SAS to study egocentric networks. I am planning on doing some mapping or writing down of my own networks but will read Wellman's paper again, as I do this and try to set something up in SAS.

I am posting this from the Math tutorial centre.

I am at school connecting to the Net wirelessly. I am giving my office hours. There don't seem to be any of my students here yet. They may in fact not show up today. My next office hours are on Monday at 17:00. I am just about to reboot my Macbook and launch SAS inside WinXP.

I completed marking the two first assignments and am starting the second assignments.

I got my marking done that was due this week. One assignment was about two days late. I now have a second assignmet to mark. I am giving some office hours this afternoon at 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM. Then besides the marking I am not working in this job until Monday when I proctor a test for one course and give more office hours. But next week there are no labs or tutorials scheduled.

I completed marking the question I was working on.

I completed marking the question I was working on. I now have two more questions to mark. I will do this marking this morning.

Marking continues

I just started marking for the evening. I am just completing marking a basic histogram problem and a stem and leaf problem. The problem asks students to construct both of these types of pictoral data description and then compare these description methods.

I got some marking done just now.

I got one courses' first assignment all marked now and the marks recorded. I now need to take a break and then mark the other courses papers. I am then going to a large labour protest today then I have a volunteer board of directors meeting in the late afternoon.

I started to study for my first course in the systems science certificate

I printed the course outline for SYS5130 Systems Optimization and Management. I then used the Carleton university library web journal search and found these ebooks at the Knovel Library and read this book:

Rao, Singiresu S. Engineering Optimization - Theory and Practice (3rd Edition) (John Wiley & Sons, 1996).

I type set equation 1.1 from this book in TeXshop and then stopped studying.

I did some more marking and am half way done one assignment.

I did some marking. I am going to do some more this morning. I am behind on this what with a recent job interview and getting excited about the graduate school admission.

I have also had some family time in the past few weeks and travel. I have been trying out on-line games that involve commerce. I have spent no money on these games yet. My big problem right now is cleaning my living quarters. I am also doing some carpentry at home.

But back to marking now.

I have been admitted to a graduate program in systems science.

My goal of being an interdisciplinary scholar is continuing. In the foot steps of scholars such as Rob Kling I might be treading. I got a letter saying I had been admitted to a graduate school program at the university of Ottawa in systems science. I have studied various studies in systems science all my life. Terms from cybernetics like feedback, systems, components, parts, wholes and sub systems etc., ring in my mind in regards systems. Optimzations, estimation, convergence, bifurcation are other terms from systems. There are financial systems. There are illegal and legal systems. There are banking and other industrial systems and international goveranace systems and there are biological systems and the king of them all, the planetary ecosystem.

Marking begins for the spring/summer term.

I began marking this morning. I marked for about half an hour. I got about a quarter through the assignment for one course. I was marking some very basic questions that would have the answers in the first chapter of the textbook.

I read about bargaining equality.

I started to read about bargaining equality in a binder provided by my national union office. I read this on the train. I am becoming a member of the teaching assistant bargaining team for the next contract. This contract might cover the next two years. At this point we have served notice to bargain.

I was talking about R software with my father.

My dad needs to do graphs on the computer of experiments in optics. I was discussing the use of R software for graphics with him tonight.

Social design of computer systems.

I have been reading about the need for social design of computing systems.

I faithfully completed my TA duties for today.

I had office hours today. I waited for students but none came. I did take the time to study the social design of ICT systems. I also took the time to enter all the lab and tutorial hours into my Palm agenda. I met with a new contract instructor and budgeted my hours, I got the assignment of duties form submitted now. While in the tutoiral room I talked briefly with the TA on duty and told him about monies available to him through his TA work. In other words I did some shop steward work with the other TA. I also had some union email to do today but otherwise it was quiet day. I got my new laptop and installed some statistics software and tried out some of the multimedia features of the new laptop.

I should start to study object oriented programming at least at a basic level for the U of Ottawa next year.

If I am admitted to the university of Ottawa certificate in systems science I will be required to do object oriented programming. I should prepare this summer by learning some more C++ and also learning some Java programming. I have some books to do this with and should start reading them this month, June.

I have been admitted to a diploma in Sonic Design.

I have been admitted and accepted the offer to study towards a diploma in Sonic Design. This program is only five credits about 1 credit per year at Carleton university from the School for Studies in Art and Culture, and there is a web page describing it here at this URL http://www.carleton.ca/artandculture/sonicdesign/index.html.

Laptop bought for graduate school.

I ordered a new Macbook computer on-line and it is now on its way here from Suzhou, China. The intention of this laptop which is meant as a graduation present is that it will be used in graduate school. I am not sure I have a flat surface to work with the laptop. I like to use the coffee table to work on with my laptops. But our living room coffee table is always piled high with papers, books, phone, ashtrays and various remote controls. We have a very nice coffee table with six shelves underneath the table. But these are mostly jammed full with books.

The last books I bought I think were some health and safety reference books I ordered on-line. The ordering was done on a German web page and they just sent the books and invoiced me in Euros. I wasn't even sure I had read the web order page correctly because my German is very weak. I got the books in the mail a few weeks ago and just read some more of one tonight after getting home from work at school. I finally after about two days of trying, a few weeks ago was able to afford to buy a money order in Euros from my bank and mail it to the German publisher. This money really comes from my union who give me money every school term for doing this health and safety representative work at the campus. The latest magazine I bought I bought today and it is about Linux computers.

"SAS" search at library.

I used a keyword search for the term SAS and then copied and pasted all the library entries I found into a word processing file. I also explored some on-line links to SAS data sets.

I am downloading 745 MB of compressed SAS and ASCII files of crime data from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data a US clearing house on mostly US crime data. I am going to use this data in SAS and may be design some statistical learning problems and practices with this data.

Union convention almost over.

We are having a union convention for our TA union and today is the last day. I was only able to attend the first day, Wednesday and yesterday, the third day Friday. I am up over night now and will stay up to attend the last day today. The convention is only a half day today. I am staying up all night and then attending the convention. The convention includes all the union locals from Ontario. I am meeting and talking to many other union members as well as leaders of the union. I am listening to a diverse set of voices from other union members and leaders. I am pressing people on disAbility issues and the rights of workers who happen to have disAbilities.

I am up because I was excited with a friend and of course the union convention and then spent the last hour helping my friend transfer his Internet Explorer Favorites to a new computer I sold him. This was the computer I bought this past January for my SAS work in my experimental design course. I needed a windows computer then to use SAS. I now have SAS running in Win2K on my eMac so do not need a windows computer right now. So I sold him this windows computer. Most of the help was done over the phone with instructions and closed questions. He simply told me what he saw on the screen and I then told him what to select.

I am receiving a laptop from my father as a graduation present and am just about to order it on-line from Apple.ca. It will be a new Macbook computer. I will use this Macbook for my graduate school studies.

I have applied for a certificate in systems science.

I have applied for a certificate study program at the University of Ottawa in systems science. I will also apply to work as a teaching assistant in statistics at the University of Ottawa. This could mean I change schools next year.

I have been admitted to a diploma on Sonic Design.

I have been admitted to the study of Sonic Design. This is a program where one studies music making on computers. It is only a five credit program and I would study it concurrantly with my MA next year. I should hear about the MA admission in June.

Returning books to the library.

I returned the book on digital crime and digital terrorism. I read about a third or a half of this book. I also returned a book about statistical machine learning.

I have not been studying much the past few weeks.

I have been reading the past few weeks but I am not studying a course formally this spring term. The spring term started on Wednesday. My TA work will start this coming Wednesday.

I did some reading into the vulnerable worker.

I read a disccussion report from the Law Commisson of Canada on vulnerable workers. I got quite angry about my poverty after reading this report.

I am no longer studying environmental sciences but I did do some green party official unpaid labour in the last 24 hours.

I attended a green party meeting yesterday and today did some cyber organizing for this part of the green party which is the local part here. Don't mind my obtuse English; it effects no one; mind your own.

The mayoral candidate.

I have been bumping into the Mayoral candidate recently. I just sent him a web based comment. He said feels tax payers should not pay for disAbility benefits. He seems to be dividing the community while he says he is out to unite people. He seems to be a politician who claims he will handle diversity. He is gay so I think he should be a politician of difference(s). I think he speaks out of both sides of his month.

Criminology's Promise conference

I am attending a conference today at my school. It is called Criminology's Promise. One of the presenters is a former professor of mine in drug law. Some of the presenters are graduate course professors so this is a chance to get to know them a bit better.

Where I went on-line this morning concerning health statistics

I used the book from the university library on health statistics to search on-line journals, the WHO and US government health institute for information on health statistics. The US document was here http://www.ncvhs.hhs.gov/21st%20final%20report.pdf, concerning health statistics and health statistics models. I got lead astray at the WHO web site looking for this document on disease classifications http://www.who.int/classifications/icd/en/ which is on-line. I went to something on noise and ended up in Germany at a national occupational health and safety web site here at http://www.baua.de/ which is available in English. So another research adventure over night.

Of course disease classifications included stuff on schizophrenia, so I printed that out from the WHO classification. But to put it in popular language it means we are being put in little shoe boxes by doctors. In academic terms, classifications like the WHO's and the DSM are contested areas and suggest viewpoints that priviledge scientific knowledge above other forms of knowledge. When, in fact, experimental science can not study the whole of life. Even just feelings and emotional reality, or friendships and real human to human relationships, and the effect these have on mental health and mental illness recovery, will be unrecorded as experimental sciences can not record these factors. So these factors will be ignored and left out of a scientific and classifications world view. Thus we need narratives i.e stories from friends, family and professionals a bigger story.

Digging deep into an book introduction.

More and more these days I search out references in things I read. I just completed the first read of an introduction to this book:

Friedman, Daniel J. & Hunter, Edward L. & Parrish II, R. Gibson. Health Statistics: Shaping Policy and Practice to Improve the Population's Health (Oxford: Oxford University, 2005).

Tonight this inspires me about community. The model presented for identifying gaps in data shows the topic of social change as but one of about 40 topics. Social change and law is the theme of the graduate school I hope to enter this fall.

I am now going to look up the references at the end of this introductory chapter on the internet and using the internet at our school's library.