My work related research is actually good.

My boss has liked what I have found so far on our research topic. Yesterday, I went down a blind alley but will continue today to search for more material for our topic. I will become in my bosses' words "an aggressive researcher".

I am resting on my work research and progressing slowly but begrudgingly on my course study today.

In fact, this winter course in systems integration will not have assignments. There will be three or four quizzes for our regular work. The first will be in the third lecture. To obtain a great mark in these quizzes requires conceptual understanding of the course material, in particular, understanding a certain model of the process of a system's design and integration. The recommended books turn out to be very prescribed methods or processes from the military and telecommunications industries. That is this seems to be a do it "our way or the highway" type of study. The statistics used by the authors of these books to justify adoption of these approaches are unreferenced claims in effect resembling marketing and promotions literature. So begrudgingly I move forward and read these references with the professor's promise that those who read these books have a better over all understanding of the course material.

I do need to cut down my study load to more manageable levels so the best thing to do at the moment is focus on doing the base line study for this course. I have put in close to three hours now for the first week. I need to do about twelve more hours reading before the next week's class. I have a busy week of training at work, political meetings and a new voluntary computer group is holding a meeting I would like to attend to help integrate and apply my studies on social computing.

A topic I am now researching at work concerns human resources.

I am coming back to knowledge management again but less as an IT topic and more as a topic of human resource planning. This is for my job and could be joined to my school work. In fact after last night's lecture introducing systems integration and then this early mornings library searches I am finding repeated concurrences of concepts from the course lecture and the articles I have found for work. In effect this is an integration of my studies with work. Then again I am nearing the end of a day here so my mental activity will be pointing hopefully toward positives which in the morning light may just fade into awkward despair of having one again made a waste of time and large mistake. To battle this in the past I have used the technique of focusing back on my early studies in computing.

I scanned the titles of papers in a conference proceedings in computer science and chose three papers to look at more closely

I was searching out some background reading or really anything on the topic of continuity management. I have ordered a book with this title through Amazon.ca's used and new book sellers network as the book was recommended to me. The book cost 14.14$. It should be here in two to three weeks. That will be just when, I start to turn my attention to school assignment work probably having to complete my first or second assignment around then.

I searched books again on Friday for systems related books for my course. At the library on Friday I picked up some recommended readings for my course. This amounted to three books available and I also borrowed one book in that shelf by who appeared to be a women scholar, that looked shorter and well read. The other authors appear to be all male. As I said earlier, I borrowed about seven working papers written in part by a potential supervisor. These generally are about computer and statistics topics and I am not sure of the depth of these. They are detailed but show a more consumer of technology approach or assessment. I should not be critical and I am only comparing working papers to the conference proceedings I browsed today. This is probably not a fair comparison. I live more in the geographic context and social context of the supervisor than the conference writers.

The book I browsed this morning, after reading Jensen and Draffan on surveillance and government corruption was about Mathematical Knowledge Management. I was deep into the leftist and environmentalist writings of these radical authors and also reading a little of Petra Kelly's writings on the Catholic Church. She published a letter she wrote to the Pope. The letter was three things really all as complaints. One was not taking up the poverty cause in South America and with other aboriginals. Another theme she took up was women's positions in the Church. She also took up the anti-nuclear torch and urged the Pope to do more. And speaking of that Church I was also reading the good Catholic poetry scholar of media and electronic media Marshal McLuhan this morning in his coauthored book with Quentin Fiore. I read this book when I was a young college student and loved it at the time.

I will leave this now after a night of study and computer chores. The post for the cite to the three papers I decided would be worth closer look in this Mathematical Knowledge management conference proceedings book should wait to another day. I borrowed this book as a result of searching for knowledge management and picked this one out as much of my work and study are in mathematics. I borrowed nine books in total. Four conference proceeding, four systems books and one book on social simulation theory. This last book inspired me a little last night around the game Second Life and my own avatars blog for that game.

I am reading working papers by John C. Nash a potential supervisor

I am reading these papers that a potential supervisor for my M.Sc. has written.


Nash, John C., 1947-
Title Approaches to extending or customizing statistical software using web techonology / John C. Nash and Sudan Wang.
Publisher Ottawa : Faculty of Administration, University of Ottawa, 2003.

Nash, John C., 1947-
Title Audit and change analysis of spreadsheets / John C. Nash, Neil Smith and Andy Adler.
Publisher Ottawa : Faculty of Administration, University of Ottawa, 2003


Nash, John C., 1947-
Title Issues in teaching statistical thinking with spreadsheets / John C. Nash and Tony K. Quon.
Publisher Ottawa : Faculty of Administration, University of Ottawa, 1996.

Nash, John C., 1947-
Title Limiting errors in day-to-day calculation.
Publisher Ottawa : University of Ottawa, Faculty of Administration, 1985.

Nash, John C., 1947-
Title R : a statistical tool.
Publisher Ottawa : Faculty of Administration, University of Ottawa, 2003.

Author Nash, John C., 1947-
Title Statistical process improvement, open-source software, and E-Commerce / John C. Nash, Jonathan Calof and Mary M. Nash.
Publisher Ottawa : Faculty of Administration, University of Ottawa, 2003.

Nash, John C., 1947-
Title Issues in finding and managing duplicate or equivalent files / John C. Nash and Mary M. Nash.
Publisher Ottawa : School of Management, University of Ottawa, 2006.

Open source software references search

I must have searched for some other term yesterday because today the Keyword Search for "Open Source Software" produced some 200 references.

RefWorks practice happened last night.

I did a search for my thesis topic and then exported this list from the University of Ottawa library to a Refworks file. I then tried out the bibliography functions of RefWorks further. I used a Science Editor style (I have never heard of this style before) to format this bibliography. The oldest work on this list was from the 1960's. The list was short and included two terms. There is much searching to still be done and one missing search now is of journals and this practice was a Keyword search only of the University catalog. I searched for the terms "Open Source Software" and Software Documentation". The formated bibliography was four pages long. One author on this list was in fact, my future supervisor. So while searching can be done I would be right to actually read these references and especially my supervisor's work. Other catalog searches can still be done of other libraries in Canada and around the world hopefully with RefWorks friendly exports.

I am tired now and feeling easily up and excited and easily pleased with my self, but I also thought the topic of software documentation could be continued by me to the Ph.D level. I could really live with this topic, as I have practical experience working with the subject these days and may be some ideas about it and how to do good documentation. Can I turn this into a field for my studies though? The reason I like this topic also is because it is a slightly literary topic in the field of technical writing which was something the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig did for work after he went on his voyage of recovery and exploration of quality. This book was influential with me in my early college years late high school studies. I also had roommates and later band mates who also read this book and whom I admired. I later learned to rethink this admiration but kept the Robert M. Pirsig story and concepts he wrote about in the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance alive in my thoughts. When younger I wanted to have a career in technical writing. That direction I gave up. May be now is the time for a return to this field as a student and theory writer rather than an actual technical writer. Of course his book is considered philosophy. See this Wikepedia entry for this book. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance. I also trust that my boss has said software documentation is a very important topic thus agreeing with my supervisor.

I also practiced with a search for a rare health topic that produced 994 records. This list I formated in APA style both with and without abstracts. I then started to copy these to note cards in Second Life. I am not done that but it was fun to push the length limits of note cards in Second Life and I broke up the bibliography into different letter sets. I mostly had to go one note card per letter of the alphabet with the long APA list with abstracts. This later transfer is not complete yet in Second Life.

I will start to use RefWorks to start my thesis reading list.

The paper I read the other day really begins my thesis with one topic I have so far chosen. Thus I need to start recording citations. I can not use this blog alone thus should be using RefWorks again for only the second time now.

I read a paper on open source software in computer science education.

I read a brief paper that covered Open Source licenses. It also covered the benefits of open source software for teaching students of computer science.

Reading and doing hands on learning in R.

I was able to get R up and running with a basic linear models book for R. The book is

Faraway, Julian J. Linear Models with R (Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall/ CRC, 2005).

I read the first chapter finally. Then I installed the author's R package faraway then applied this command library(faraway). I then started the first problem in chapter 1 and produced some summary statistics and linear model graphs with the data set teengamb about teen age gambling. I talked to some coworkers about R at our Christmas lunch. I continue to work mostly in SAS at my day job.

I have been reading some pretty kooky American book on surveillance.

The book I am reading on the bus these days is

Jensen, Derrick, and Draffon, George. Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control (White River Junction, VT.: Chelsea Green, 2004).

These guys are Kooks. They are also not against guns because they fear the FBI will still have guns if they give them up. Thus America and even its scholars it seems are stuck in cycle of violence. The questions brought up by this book are valid though. They briefly cover Foucault, Weber, Marx and claim an ecological moral higher ground. The paragraph on 104-105 is a well written paragraph on vivisection; shocking in its poetry. But still this book is Kooky conspiracy theory stuff although a good critical view of science and the inhumanity of geeks and science fictions generally.

Ethics and law.

I am reading a piece that divides Deontological ethics out as European and Consequential as American. That seems too simple but the writer then examines intellectual property and also privacy with these views. This was an article sent to me by Charles Ess after I asked him about research ethics and the differences between world privacy laws and their effects on research ethics. I am wondering if a better paper is possible with less of a simplistic view. I have just started to read it and found it on the Internet using google scholar. I am also reading a piece published by my employer Statistics Canada on the social impact of information and communications technologies.

I did do well with my final exam.

The marks are in and I did well with my exam. I am also getting a second chance with a workplace decision. I must prepare for this Monday and have some notes others at work have given me for this. It mainly concerns managing my own time and I have been studying on Friday evening the topic of procrastination.

My exam is done. I thought I did well.

I usually know how I did on an exam. I think I did very well on this one. I had answers for all questions. I was not too stumped by anything. A few problems I came back to and did not solve until later in the exam as final problems. I should have studied a little more. I answered the multiple choice questions all on the first pass except for one question. I read all the long problems before answering those. Then most of my time was spent answering the long questions. It took me only two hours to write the three hour exam. It officially ended fifteen minutes ago but I was done an hour and a quarter ago.

I have now completed reviewing chapters 4 and scanned chapters 5-7.

Really these are the significant chapters for our final exam. I understand the recourse methods of chapter 5 and stochastic programming but should review the approach and the expected value approach as these are important in statistics. I also understand the topics of chapters 6 and 7 and need to review these fully. I am reviewing at the last minute because this will keep this fresh in my mind.

I intend to go to the professor's pre-exam office hours just before the exam and also register for the next term. I also want to return a book to the library this afternoon after the exam. Then I will place a hold on the book. It is The R Book by Michael Crawley. It is 1000 pages long almost and I only managed to read about 20 pages of it so far. But someone else has recalled it so it is due back at the library this week. I also want to pick up some posters from a student group so I can poster for them.

Progress update. Chapter 3 now read. Chapter 4 started.

Well I did not read all the notes today but I have at least one more day to study and that is Tuesday. I did complete reading chapter 3 and got most of the way through chapter 4. I read the MatLab code for creating neural networks in the MatLab software even though we will not be tested on that at all. I wish I could list what topics I studied today but I am tired and still need to buy my wife some coke before sleeping. I have a very busy day at work tomorrow and then a relaxing community Christmas dinner right after work. I will be ready and rested for a good day of study Tuesday. I also read more statistics research today and more basic statistics problem solving and continue to read a book on statistical literacy, that is the product of years of research into the Australian school system.

I also sent one helpful, I hope academic email to a professor at MSU who is preparing a masters of arts course on organizations and technology. I also sent an email to my old boss, the normal instructor of the survey sampling course at Carleton updating her on my progress at work.

Review progresses for exam study.

My exam is on Wednesday at 2:00 PM. I have spent some time this morning reviewing the course notes. I read the first two chapters so far today. I will report my progress here. I have my wish that the exam cover all topics. The Professor has promised that there will be questions covering each topic on the exam. I have five chapters to still review. I want to do one complete review of the notes today before I sleep for the day. I have a big day of work on Monday. I want to work early and late and earn some time off later on in the month. We also are reaching the end of a project this week. I also have Tuesday and Wednesday off work. Then I am back for Thursday and Friday. I do have charity dinner to attend this week, in fact, checking the web calendar now, I find the dinner is Monday at 5:00 PM. This means I will miss a Second Life event. It also means I can not work too late on Monday only about one hour.

Our project is nearly completed.

Our programmer reported that the software is now working but there are still some build errors. These used to be called compile errors in the old days. At any rate, I am working on the final write up. Actually another student did the write up and I am only proof reading and rewriting it now. We are meeting again Tuesday evening to finalize our work. Our project is due Wednesday and I think we will do fine. So after this there is the final exam in under two weeks then another graduate school course is completed.

We have more of our C# code completed now.

We worked for three hours on Tuesday evening. We are working again on Saturday to get this project done by Wednesday December 5th. Our course exam is on the 12th. I began to study for the exam last night after class. Last night's class was our last class for new material and we discussed the exam a little bit. We will not have an exam review beyond last night.

Fourier Motzkin program in C#.

On Saturday we started our Fourier Motzkin algorithm in C#. We searched google code but found no math algorithms and also no GSL routines for Fourier Motzkin. I may write the algorithm and then submit it to the GSL as a byproduct of this term project. We did fine someone's Matlab code but we do not need all the efficiency of his method in our application. I opened his code on Matlab and we studied it a bit. We are meeting again Tuesday to try to complete the function for the method. Our programmer has done most of the GUI now and we are just trying to complete the back end code.

Fourth and last assignment done now!

We had four assignments in our systems optimization and management course. I have done all four. I got the fourth completed on Sunday after an all nighter. I just need to proof read it now. It is due Wednesday. I am happy and proud it is now done early.

I am still reading about sexual offences in the UK.

I am still reading the critical look at British sex laws. This book covers the Sexual Offences Act 2003. I have just about finished the section on commercial sex now.

Reading about Illicit and Illegal, sex regulation and social control.

I am reading about UK sex laws and have progressed through three chapters now. I have read about the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and also sexual assault and sex with children offences. Now I am starting the chapter on commercial sex. The book Illicit and Illegal, sex regulation and social control is a law and sociology book.

I started to work with two other students on our software project.

I am impressed with the SITE building and and all the students using computers there. They are almost all sitting at tables programming on laptops in the cafeteria. This is a building at the University of Ottawa. It is a new building that does not fail to impress the late 1990's image of subdued high tech art/design form. I worked there yesterday with my project partners on our copy of the software that does the Fourier-Motzkin calculations. We have the GUI built now but must now perfect the GUI and build the underlying code. I have taken two tasks on for my part of the work this week. One task is to document the behaviour of the original program we are copying. The second task that I will also have some help with is to write the solution algorithm for the Fourier-Motzkin method. I won't have to do this task on my own.

Other than that I have a regular assignment on neural networks which I should start this morning.

Writing up school homework this morning.

I started to write up my school work. I have one problem written up now and the beginning the write up done for the three middle problems numbers Q2-Q4. I am doing the write up in LaTeX.

I solved the other four problems now but need to write up the solutions.

For the first problem we needed to use a software the professor provided that was not very good. I did get some printouts done for that problem. I seems to have done it correctly but used some common sense about exhanges and ratios rather than the software. The second through fourth problems are very simple because the constraints are large enough to find a simple solution that can be described in words. But I must also use math. So now that I have these three problems solved, I must write them up in LaTeX. I will do this later this evening. I am just going into work in half an hour early again.

I got my Visual Studio project completed last night.

Before installing Leopard on the Macbook I use for school work I completed a Visual Studio windows software installer. This was something we have to do for our third assignment. It is now done and I can email it to the instructor now. I have two network systems questions to still complete but I have a LaTeX file started and will be staying up late to some some network and systems modeling of these two problems. The second problems is really three questions with slight differences to the system each time. This second system models an agricultural system. The first problem models financial currency exchange rates.

I wrote a public service English language writing test today.

I wrote a public service entrance test today. It is for jobs in the public service. It is a writing test I wrote today.

A quote of a quote to begin my book for computer help

I want to write a non business book that will help people use computers. Here is a good quote I may use in the beginning to motivate a non-business book about computers. Don Tapscott quotes himself in Who Knows from Don Tapscott's On Ramp: Your Guide to the Information Highway "An information infrastructure shaped soley by the marketplace could have ugly consequences. Computers could record whom we telephone, what movies we watch, databases we use, goods we buy, and more. In a unfettered, wired world. the marriage of telecommunications to databases could destroy our privacy".

The books I started reading

So I have to admit even if I borrow some 20 books at a time from the university libraries I don't read them all. Of the books I borrowed this past week I am really reading only three this past week. I did start reading more than three but I continue to read these three below.

Data Structures and Algorithms Using C# (New York: Cambridge University, 2007)

Pritchard, Jacki. The Abuse of Older People: A Training Manual for Detection and Prevention 2e (London, U.K.: Jessica Kingsley, 1995)

Phoenix, Joanna. Illicit and Illegal: Sex, Regulation and Social Control (Devon, U.K.: Willan, 2005)

Most of the books I borrowed last night.

I recorded these borrowings using librarything.com then Visual bookshelf then a directed html list which you see here. I still need to add the dd tags for these books which is why they looked cramped on this page right now.

Books borrowed November 6th, 2007.

McMillan, Michael. Data Structures and Algorithms Using C# (New York: Cambridge University, 2007)

Pritchard, Jacki. The Abuse of Older People: A Training Manual for Detection and Prevention 2e (London, U.K.: Jessica Kingsley, 1995)

Phoenix, Joanna. Illicit and Illegal: Sex, Regulation and Social Control (Devon, U.K.: Willan, 2005)

Pritchard, Jacki. Support Groups for Older People Who Have Been Abused: Beyond Existing (Violence and Abuse) (London, U.K.: Jessica Kingsley, 2003)

Kamir, Orit. Every Breath You Take: Stalking Narratives and the Law (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2001)

Balkin, J. M. Cybercrime: Digital Cops in a Networked Environment (New York, New York University, 2007)

Cavoukian, Ann. Who Knows: Safe Guarding Your Privacy In a Networked World (Toronto, Random House, 1995)

Gottlieb, Benjamin H. Social Networks & Soc Support (Sage Studies in Community Mental Health) (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1981)

Litwin, Howard, ed. The Social Networks of Older People: A Cross-National Analysis (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996)

I borrowed 13 books last night and returned one book.

The book I returned was about building multi-layered enterprise applications. In fact, my brother does this for web applications at large and mid sized companies. He discussed this with me this past weekend. I did borrow books on privacy and also criminal law issues. I also borrowed books on social networks including a book my present boss has a paper in. I also bought this last book used from Amazon.ca. I am just going to use librarything.com to record these new books. I also read about 4 first chapters of these books last night. I will return here to list the books later.

I am working in SAS and this was also a school goal.

I used to think that I would not get work in statistics which is what my first degree was in. I did not believe the claims made by my school about students success after graduation. Well they have proved me wrong because after four years I find my self working in statistics and now using a practical skill I learned in that program. So I program in SAS for work.

I attended Social Network/ing week at the University of Toronto.

I attended a conference this past week. I attended a conference on Social Network(s)/ing. I was interested in Steve Easterbrook's talk on social networks in open source projects. He studied the repositories and email of open source programmers to find their social networks and to see if the program they were creating compared well with the social network the email suggested.

The full conference program can be read about here http://www.bul.utoronto.ca/events/social.htm

The documentation of the adventures of Peter Krogstad is ready go on a new blog.

I started a new blog for accounting the explorations I do through my Second Life avatar Peter Krogstad. This morning I created an edit in a Moving Type(MT) template. I used Moving Type for the new blog and put it in my cybercitizen web site here
http://cyborgcitizen.org/pkrogstad/index.html.


I used the witty name for the blog Just a Second Life Avatar's Blog. I made a table banner with 40 little Second Life screen pictures of my avatar. This was what took the hand coding. It was tough uploading too. I made a goal to completing this before going out today and I am now done. So I achieved this goal. I worked very hard.

I did quite well with my mid-term in systems optimization.

I did excellent on my mid-term. What with more academic work at my paid workplace and more computer use as in basic programming at school I doing well. I am starting to enjoy the fact of being in graduate school. I am also trying to exploit this as a social fact.

I spent the day at work coding in SAS.

I am happy to report I have been paid to code. I have a job and my duties this week became coding in SAS. I spent almost every minute at work today writing a SAS program. I have proven to be very good at assisting my boss with his database work too. I credit this to clear communication as a nagging goal.

I also have been able to become an obsessive documenter. I wrote a lot of comments in my code today explaining each and every step in SAS comment lines. Being a blogger of my own daily life and other mundane topics has improved my skills in this regard.

Second Life progress update.

I have been studying inside Second Life with the help of Tracy Kennedy and Joanna Robinson. Tracy is writing her Ph.D. with Barry Wellman at the University of Toronto and Joanna is a research associate at Simon Fraser. I joined them at a virtual campus last fall. I have since joined them at a meeting of the Communications, Information and Technology section of the American Sociology Association and wrote a paper on facebook and privacy for that event. I just posted it Thursday night at www.webpagex.org.

I have now learned more about Second Life by reading books. I read just a little of the Offical Guide to Second Life and with that created another account and avatar and went through orientation island again where I better learned to fly. This has really helped me out. I moved my house or should I say my offices to a PG sim and it is more pleasant to see on screen now. I find I am spending more time on-line there now in this virtual reality world that is like photoshop for 3 dimensional stuff. It has cost me close to 400 dollars now in about 1.5 years of use.

I am going to open a blog now for this virtual world and report my progress there. I will post the new blog address here when it is set up.

Reading a feminist on gay men.

I was cleaning up my office a little bit. I put some old school notes from a geography course or two into a white magazine box. I also put some fiction including my wife's fiction also into two magazine boxes. I came across a book I had gotten from another wobbly and read a chapter in that book. Here is the cite:

Layland, Joyce. "On the conflicts of doing feminist research into masculinity" in Stanley, Liz. Feminist Praxis: Research, Theory and Epistemology in Feminist Sociology (London, U.K.: Routledge, 1990).

This was an interesting read and suggested gay men are also misogynists. I think I had an idea this was true. So basically she concluded in the paper that gay men devalue women's activities. In particular drag Queens use stereotypes of women in their performances.

I wrote the mid-term for systems optimization last night.

I wrote the mid-term alright. So this is it this is really graduate school. I hang out on line these days with a graduate student of network studies and gaming and a research associate in digital media creation. The graduate student of gaming is a feminist researcher of gaming. I also now work editing learned papers. In fact, I have my name as an assistant on a paper going for peer review for a journal at Statistics Canada now. I work at Statistics Canada during the day and use the Internet for studies at home.

Here are the topics I must study for this week.

I have a mid-term exam this week at school. I am making a list here to help me study from. These are the topics I need to cover and know very well.

Setting up a system

1. Stating the objective function,
2. the variables,
3. and the constraints.

Using the Fourier-Motzkin method

Using the branch and bound method with the Fourier-Motzkin method.

Using cuts for a system of inequalities

1. Gomory cuts
2. Geometric cuts

Networks and path optimizations

I handed in assignment #2 and also solved a computer programming problem this evening in our lab at school.

I did get my assignment done now. I used a variety of programs to solve the assignment. I used Word, LaTeX, two programs of the professors and text programs. I got it done. I handed it in at the beginning of our lab this evening. I attended the lab this evening and solved the professor's challenge of putting a license agreement in a program installer build in Visual Studio. I am learning to use Visual Studio to make Window's applications.

I have Q1.1 and Q2 solved now in assignment #2 for my course.

I worked a lot on Thanksgiving and got one problem solved with one technique and that was Q1.1 using Fourier-Motzkin software. I also solved Q1.2 but used geometric cuts rather than Gomory cuts so need to still do some more math work and more Fourier-Motzkin work. The geometric cuts I did with R for drawing and that was a good R workout using the web and open source help files to learn the proper R code to draw a point grid and then draw simple lines over the integer point grid.

I remembered the lecture on the network solution software and was able to solve the network problem and then print it out. I did need to run that software in Windows 2000 but it still did not work as it should have. I did print the solution network diagram. So that seems solved.

I have class tomorrow evening and tomorrow we are working in the computer lab rather than having a lecture.

I will work on assignment #2 this evening.

I will solve assignment #2 this evening. I will use windows 2000 and two softwares the professor has given us to use. One solves networks and the other solves Fourier-Motzkin elimination problems.

I will become a research assistant again this time in the government.

It looks like my work duties are changing. I am set to become a research assistant to a Statistics Canada research economist. I won't be able to blog about this in any detail.

The Fourier-Motzkin elimination problem has now been corrected and typeset.

I am learning some techniques of good "copy and paste then edit" style for repetitive typing from my professor this term. Using these techniques with LaTeX helped me complete my homework problem typesetting. I now have only to typeset one more problem and to complete typesetting the second problem. Of course, I also need the solutions to these two problems as well. But I now feel I have solved three of five problems and there is really only one problem that has not gotten any work yet.

Assignment number 1 home streach

I have now solved three problems including the final Fourier-Motzkin calculations. I can actually check my calculations using some software but I did the solutions by hand without a calculator of course. I now need to write up the steps by step pen and ink calculations with TeXShop and LaTeX code. Then that leaves 2 problems to still complete one of which is started. My solution for this unfinished problem has also been commented on by the professor so I know I am on the right track. I need to complete this work overnight now and I have no work tomorrow to make it easier to score A+ perfect on my homework.

Proofreading volunteer paper work then school homework then work-work.

I just need to proof read my volunteer paperwork then I can look at my school work. I also have some printouts for job applications to organise and read. I then can head off to work for another day at Statistics Canada. I can then do more school work after work and if possible will visit the professor to clarify one of the investment problems. I did take him my facebook and privacy paper last class but forgot to include the figures which I can email him this morning. I also should email my project work to my project partner but I also need to proofread that. So that will wait for later in the day too. So for the rest of this morning I will focus on job applications and preparing for work.

I am just completing some volunteer paperwork and then I will check home work and then it is off to work for another day in the government.

I did some volunteer work this weekend and am just completing some paperwork for that before going to work. I will also print my work so far on the assignment one. I also did some work on our project for this course and should email it to my project partner. I also want to start the Fourier-Motzkin problem this morning.

I started to study facebook development.

I started to study facebook application development because I have an idea for a facebook application. I have downloaded three API's namely: Perl, Java, and PHP 4 & 5. I am not sure what these are. I started to read about Facebook Query Language (FQL) and can understand this based on my use of queries in Arcview. I also understand the way these data structures are referenced or searched based on my knowledge of R data frames. So this is moving along just fine and could look good for a Computer Science position (CS-01) employment application at my workplace, if I can make at least one functioning facebook application.

Speaking of workplace employment applications and my career I have one interview and test to study for this week at my workplace. Later in November I have three government tests to write and one is for my present workplace and the other two would have me working at new workplaces but still would be government jobs. I am going forward with hope.

Working on my first assignment at school this term.

I have solved two problems and started a third problem of five problems on my first assignment due this Wednesday. We are really just setting up systems of equations in the first three problems and I have completed one of these problems. We must define variables and constraints and also find an optimization formula for each of the first three problems. I have done this for one problem and started the second problem. I have also completed the fourth problem that involves showing two systems are the same or not and explaining why they are the same or not. The last problem, Q5 is to work through the Fourier-Motzkin method for a system of inequalities. I will have more time late Tuesday to finish this assignment. Between then and now I will start the other two problems Q3 and Q5.

Harry Potter, British history, and course notes; I continue to read.

I scanned some course notes on network solutions. I did study some it very hard. I might visit our professor today during his office hours after my working day is done. I should take him a copy of my facebook social networking paper from this summer. I am also reading the Harry Potter series. I am trying to read these children's books and not smoke while reading. I am still reading the introduction to The Revolt of the Nobles. I also have to study Canadian social and economic issues and statistical software for a test and interview at work for a job as an economist/sociologist.

I am reading a British history book.

I bought the book

Adamson, John, The Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I ( London, U.K.: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007).

So far I have only looked briefly at the maps of the countries and the plan of Westminster Abbey and the House of Commons, and then of course the family trees that seem to always belong in British history books.

This is my first school book this term.

Langenwalter, Gary A. Enterprise Resources Planning and Beyond: Integrating Your Entire Organization (Boca Raton, Flr: CRC, 2000).

I have now read the preface, the acknowledgments, about the author, about APICS, the testimonials, and up to page 6 in the introduction and about 3 pages of Chapter 9 System Selection.

I read chapter 1 in Chinese for Dummies

I now know that each morpheme has one syllable which has an initial sound and a final sound and a tone. There are four tones in Mandarin. This all according to this ancient book Chinese for Dummies.

I was reading about the film The Matrix a lot this summer.

I kept rereading the Sidney Eve Matrix book this summer, Matrix studied various pop culture references to cyberspace including the film The Matrix if that is not too confusing to read. Did Sidney Eve Matrix change her/his name? Did Matrix really study cyber culture? No instead the study was of film mostly except for the video game Tomb Raider. Otherwise it was TV adds for Apple Computer and films like the Matrix and science fiction. I have now lost my borrowing rights at Carleton for my alumni card so had to return the book. But I did reread the section on the film The Matrix quite a bit. I still have not watched all three films of The Matrix.

Last night I watched Kill Switch again. This is episode 11 in the fifth season of the X-Files and I was reminded of uploading ones consciousness to the net and compared this in my mind to facebook profiles. I saw this episode in 1998 just before becoming involved in legal studies. Even in those days I studied the law and the Internet.

I attended my first class and started reading the recommended books for my systems science's course: Systems Optization and Management

I made it to class with time to spare. The professor also has a very tight schedule so we were given a 20 minute break half way through the class. The professor also has a very heavy teaching load. Many of the other students are from abroad such places as Turkey, Serbia, China, Australia and Taiwan and many have math degrees. The professor has a math doctorate and also masters in systems sciences. There is one other government worker in this course and he is also a math guy.

New University of Ottawa web site/page.

I attended my graduate school fall orientation session and was introduced to some computers and got a new account and opened a new web page here at http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~ptimu005/

I have my application emailed to my mentor now.

I was able to email my application for the A.Stat credential to my mentor this morning. Now I am working on cover letters for job promotions.

I passed the statistician's exam at work.

In what is called the SI exam I passed. I will now be considered for a job as a statistical officer in the government. Speaking of new jobs at work, I need to complete three more job applications and have the resumes ready for these three jobs. I have one cover letter started and it needs editing this morning. The other two cover letters still need to be written.

I also need to complete my A.Stat certification application and I hope to complete the scanning of my transcripts today and then email these transcripts and this application to my mentor for her opinion on this application.

This Wednesday is orientation day in our department.

I booked some time off work on Wednesday to attend our orientation day at school. So this Wednesday afternoon I will be introduced to the computers that are available to me as a systems sciences student.

The Wired Style guide.

I picked up the Wired Style guide from the chaos that is my office. I browsed it and realised that the research I have done into Wired magazine lets me know that this style guide is too opinionated and has too many editorial inserts in what should be a more objective guide to language use. The selection of terms for inclusion in the book too shows bias for the owners and founders of the magazines favorite theories and economic philosophies. Even if I accept that objectivity is impossible I do not agree with the magazine's original team's views on economics so will not be reading much more of this book and it will go on that top shelf in my office where computer books on out of date and useless topics goes.

I am now registered for one course in my masters for the fall term.

I registered for one course called SYS5130 SYSTEMS OPTIMIZATION AND MANAGEMENT for the fall term. It occurs on Wednesday evenings.

I am attending a social networking workshop this fall in Toronto at the University of Toronto.

I have arranged with my family to attend a workshop on social networking given in part by Barry Wellman at the university of Toronto. My family will give my partner and I a place to stay and meet for a family gathering on the weekend after the workshop. I will also meet up with some old high school friends that weekend.

I registered for my one course this term.

This term I will study networks. I will review my network + certification book from a few years back in preparation. I will also research optimization and constraints as they are also themes of this course. I suspect the course is problem base and mathematical.

I just printed out my photos from the summer picnic the students in the program had near the beginning of summer.

The weekend virtual conference was good here is the advert.

Here is the advert from www.citasa.org. I presented my paper but had technical difficulties and did not finish giving it. I will post it to www.webpagex.org in a few weeks.


Welcome to CITASA
Tuesday, August 14 2007 @ 04:37 AM EDT
CITASA MC 3.0

Wednesday, July 25 2007 @ 03:22 AM EDT
Contributed by: netwoman
Views: 29
CITASA NewsWeb 2.0 and Beyond:
The Sociological Significance of Virtual Worlds Supplanting Cyberspace

Event: CITASA 3rd Mini-Conference to be held in the Metaverse – Second Life
Date of Event: Sunday, August 12th, 2007
Time: 5:00-8:30pm EDT / 2:00–5:30 pm PDT /SLT
Location Details: The GNWC Virtual Centre for Digital Media in Second Life
University Project (150, 84, 23)
http://slurl.com/secondlife/University%20Project/150/84/23

For the third year in a row the Communication and Information Technology Section (CITASA) of the American Sociological Association (ASA) will hold a Mini-Conference as part of the ASA’s annual meeting. This year’s ASA meeting will be held in New York City, while the primary venue for CITASA’s MC3.0 will be held in Second Life. (www.secondlife.com). Second Life is a 3d virtual world with nearly 8 million residents, who’s lifelike avatars participate in a wide range of economic, social, educational and recreational activities. The virtual location for MC3.0 will be the Virtual Centre for Digital Media created by the Masters of Digital Media Program at Great Northern Way Campus (Vancouver, BC). The physical location of the conference will be wherever the participants find themselves—in New York and elsewhere—at the time.

MC3.0 will focus on three broad areas:
• Social Networking Sites (Facebook, Flickr, YouTube etc)
• Videogames & Gaming (World Of Warcraft, Console games etc)
• Virtual Worlds (Second Life, Active Worlds etc)

Key Questions that will be addressed
1) What is the sociological significance of the Web2.0 (and beyond) mediated form of social interaction?
2) How can these forms of online interaction serve as bases for sociological research?
3) Specifically, what is the pedagogical value of the virtual world experience?

Individuals interested in presenting or serving as discussants should contact one of the MC organizers listed
below.

1) Anyone interested in participating as a presenter or discussant should contact one of the MC3.0 organizers (listed below) by July 27, 2007.

2) Anyone may attend the MC3.0 SecondLife session that wil be held August 12, 5:00 – 8:30 pm (EDT) during the ASA meetings. There will be no central physical location for MC3.0, but there will be an opportunity for informal, face-to-face discussion during the CITASA joint reception with the section on Teaching and Learning in Sociology on August 13th (6:30-8:30 pm) in the Hilton.

3) To attend MC3.0 you should have an active SecondLife account and be familiar with the basics of SecondLife navigation and communication. Opportunities for discussion in SecondLife will follow each of the three main presentations.

4) CITASA will provide personalized SecondLife orientation assistance and telephone support July 24 through July 27 between 5 and 9 pm (EDT). To arrange a session send email to jwitte@clemson.edu

CITASA MC3.0 organizers
Tracy Kennedy tkennedy@netwomen.ca
Anabel Quan-Haase aquan@uwo.ca
Joanna Robinson joanna@gnwc.ca
Jim Witte jwitte@clemson.edu

Join the CITASA group on Facebook!

I am studying about 500 short pages of web/pdf printout about statistics work at Statistics Canada.

I am writing a test for Statistics Canada's statistical officer job. I am writing my test on Wednesday. I have a study group which will meet on Tuesday and perhaps on Monday after work. So I am switching gears from sociology of facebook studies to statistics studies.

The paper is completed and the final graphics test is done.

I tested the graphics one more time in Second Life on Saturday between 5 PM EST and 7 PM EST. I also met in-world some other presenters as they also tested the room and delivery techniques. I then waited a bit and did some other computer tasks like talking with my father using Skype where I introduced him to chat for the first time in his life which he called his first texting. I then wrote the final draft of the paper and edited it a bit with a little more proof reading.

The remaining task before the conference is to prepare some note cards of the text of my paper that include the proper copy and paste breaks. I learned that I will copy and paste my text into a chat window in Second Life. The best way to do this I found was to have the paper already inside Second Life by putting it into a note card. I still must prepare this note card before sleeping today at say 6 AM. The final draft was sent to the conference organizers at 1 AM EST.

I changed all the graphics I am working on into 4 pt stroke lines.

I tested the slides for my paper in Second Life in the conference room using the slide projector. This slide projector will work for LaTeX if I can design a LaTeX format for Second Life. The LaTeX pdf pages would need to be changed into jpegs. I changed all my Adobe Page Maker files into 4 point lines and larger 18 and 30 point fonts. I will test them today at 5 PM EST.

I am now eight hours behind on the paper.

I am eight hours behind on the paper and wanting to do two more hours today in my plan I have to do ten hours today to catch up. I may drop my speculative other 6 hypotheses and work on the one only which I have graphics for and start to think more about the closer nodes hypothesis.

I have finished reading all the ACM papers now.

The last ACM paper while by the same authors as the first is not gong to be useful for my paper. The second paper will be useful but not directly but it will shows that facebook helps bring nodes together but I need to write something more deep about this hypothesis.

I was successful with Keynote insertion of a pdf graphic file.

So here is what I was able to do yesterday and today. I was able to make graphics of network models using Adobe Page Maker and then turn these into pdf pages using the Adobe Distiller program. Then using Keynote I have been able to add these pdf pages to slides and view them on screen.

The next step with the help of the conference organisors will be to test the power point projector in Second Life. We will test it perhaps tonight.

This evening early on at 7:00 PM I am going to the local community college for a meeting of the local Linux users group. I am going to this meeting tonight because Dr. John C Nash a professor who may be a supervisor for my master's thesis is speaking tonight at the meeting. Then I may stay up late and sleep tomorrow right after work.

I finished one ACM paper and started to read a second.

I read all, of the empirical study into privacy exposure of Carnegie Melon Students who used facebook in 2005, now. I need to read parts of it with more care tomorrow or Wednesday morning. Below is a bit of a summary and some ideas on how I will use their paper. Here is the citation for this paper:

Ralph Gross & Alessandro Acquisti & H. John Heinz, III. Information revelation and privacy in online social networks in Workshop On Privacy In The Electronic Society Proceedings of the 2005 ACM workshop on Privacy in the electronic society (New York, N.Y.: ACM, 2005) at 71–80.

The paper is critical of social networking models. It uses facebook search features to gather data. It assumes the worst crimes such as identity theft and stalking. The authors do realise that they are generating hypotheses as I am in my paper. I think the other side of my paper "closer nodes" might counter balance this fear mongering. But definitely the authors have made a great start of this type of study. They, I think are weak on law and philosophy, so I can add something from those fields. They focus on what's exposed and I think I will use their work to suggest these exposed facts about persons without exploring these aspects deeply. I think the next ACM paper from a year later in 2006 might be more about the "closer nodes" side of my paper.

7 hours done today on the paper.

I am still doing graphics and should may be try to finish those today while using Adobe Page Maker is fresh on my mind. I was wrong about the graphic shapes not being adjustable after writing text. I just need to point at the actual edge of the graphic to select and then adjust it. Right now I am 5.5 hours behind on the paper for my weekend schedule. If I try to do another three hours of graphics and mix in some reading and then half an hour to study survey processes I will also complete today's study goals.

I put in another hour and a half work on the paper, and graphics, as well as, writings are happening.

I have a good bibliography now. This includes all the papers I have consulted so far. I now need to check the bibliography against my legal style guide or better would be to learn the ASA style quickly and apply it to this paper. That would be ideal. I still have to read most of the papers carefully.

I now have seven hypothetical exposures written down. I also have some sketched out graphics for these to show who or what is exposed and the levels of exposure possible or not. Having drawn the graphics with pen and ink I now needed a tool for doing computer drawings. I tried Microsoft Word art about a week ago, and it was not great. Then after having an idea of all the graphics I will need, I looked for software for drawing on my eMac. I tried Illustrator but that did not work well, as I don't know enough about Illustrator. In the end I have my figure 1., a basic network in facebook drawn with Adobe Page Maker and it looks fine and produces a 1 page pdf of the figure. Now my next step will be finding a way of including the figure in the paper or having the graphics separate. I will need seven more graphics at least for the second section for the analysis where I sketch out the networks for each hypothesis. I need to stop here and think about the process of using Adobe Page Maker. Some graphics get hidden behind text boxes and then can no longer be adjusted. So one step to take for the other seven graphics will be to do all the geometric symbols first. Thus draw first, then write labels. I can also copy and paste the legend maybe, but there will also be a graphic symbol for areas of exposure in the seven diagrams, so copying and pasting my first legend would be a mistake. I will think a bit more about the processes and then make some solid sketches before going ahead. Apparently network diagrams were rumoured to have been drawn on napkins or envelopes for the original design of the Internet. I will need seven figures for the seven hypotheses. I am keeping my drawings and models very simple for display reasons. Also the learner will find understanding not elitist.

Steps for writing about these hypotheses are, first identify, describe (the network structures/models in figures), explore the ethics that seem involved in each case, and then finally ponder the legal possibilities in each case.

I planned for 18 hours this weekend and have done about 6.5 hours now.

I planned to work 6 hours per day on this long weekend until my paper was done. I have worked about 2 hours per day and 3 hours today. I also planned about 2 hours on Friday which did not happen. So far I have downloaded some pdf articles of professor Wellmans's and read a chapter in a book by him. I have also read parts of another book mentioned before on gift giving and started the three ACM articles and have those printed out.

I am going to develop 7 hypothetical exposures to privacy and have the first and second identified now. I need five more now. I will today find those five and also read the three articles from the ACM and the book chapter on gift giving. Then I will write more and then sleep on everything and work a little in the morning before work. I should also spend half an hour studying survey processes for work.

Researching open source software teams.

I found this article but have not read it yet.

Barcellini, Flore et al. A study of Online Discussions in an Open-Source Software Community: Reconstructing Thematic Coherence and Argumentation from Quotation Practices in van den Besselaar, Peter, et. al. eds. Communities and Technologies 2005 (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer, 2005) at 301-320.

This would help me with working on my masters thesis with management professor John C. Nash who has this as one of his study topics although he focuses more on forecasting in the field of scientific software. I am going to hear him talk tomorrow on his topic, Tuesday evening at the local Linux users group meeting for August.

I search ACM and found three very relevant papers for ideas for my paper.

I found searching ACM's journals that at least three very close articles have already been written on my topic. The first one rejects the use of social networking to study privacy on facebook. This is an empirical study of Carnegie Melon Students who use facebook. I have not finished reading the three papers so will wait to cite them here.

I found a good paper on social networks and gift giving.

Because file sharing is a two way street it may be similar to rights because rights are both given and taken. In my browsing QA76.9 I found QA76.9 C66 C5845 2005 and this paper:

Skågeby, Jörgen & Pargman, Daniel. File-Sharing Relationships - conflicts of interest in online gift-giving in van den Besselaar, Peter, et. al. eds. Communities and Technologies 2005 (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer, 2005)

This paper will be used for the above thought and the model they use for scales between network nodes, namely ego-micro-meso-macro.

I need to check the above citation against my legal studies citation guide before putting the above cite into my bibliography for my paper. At least I have it started here and have the Nordic accents done in html entities for now.

Working on my paper for CITASA Mini conference 3.0

I am writing a paper for the Communications Information and Technology section of the American Sociology Association mini conference for 2007. This will take place in New York and also on-line in Second Life a virtual 3D world.

I requested transcripts today from Carleton University

I just faxed Carleton's registrar's office with a transcript request. These are for applying for the A.Stat credential from the Statistical Society of Canada. Speaking of this society they are having a conference next Spring in Ottawa that I will try to attend.

My abstract for the Communications and Information Technology section of the American Sociology Association 2007 mini-conference in Second Life

Exposed edges and tighter nodes: a suggested social networking hypothesis for web 2.0 as seen through a user of facebook a web 2.0 social networking site.

Author Peter Timusk, B.Math, B.A., graduate student of Systems Science at the University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario Canada.

The author explores previous studies of social networking by pioneers such as Barry Wellman. Using these studies and more recent basic networking models a hypothesis is developed for further empirical study of the networking properties of social networking web sites such as facebook. It seems to the author, who is a new user of facebook in summer 2007 that there is more privacy exposure between persons and at the same time these same persons are brought closer together by networking on facebook. Thus edges between nodes on this social network are exposed revealing these edges to other nodes while nodes themselves potentially learn more about each other as nodes only not just as edges. It is hoped that this hypothesis and other various hypotheses will help either social network analysts, or those who will be data mining web sites, such as, facebook to understand implications of the network’s social structure. Legal and ethical considerations resulting from these hypotheses will also be considered in this paper.

Applying for a professional designation.

I started to complete my A.Stat application with the Statistical Society of Canada application.

Reading books.

I read the beginning of two books today:

Berger, Peter L. & Luckman, Thomas. The Social Construction of Knowledge: A Treatise In The Sociology of Knowledge ( New York, N.Y.: Anchor, 1966)

This is a very inspiring book.

Heiberger, Richard, M. & Holland, Burt. Statistical Analysis and Data Display: An Intermediate Course with Examples on S-Plus, R, and SAS (New York, N.Y.: Springer, 2004).

This book I read more of the second chapter.

I did borrow a book and again I am stupid

I did borrow a book on errors and measurement and again I have made a stupid mistakes about knowledge I could have known. The book I read this in was:

Taylor, John R. An introduction to error analysis : the study of uncertainties in physical measurements (Mill Valley, Calif.: University Science Books, 1982)

I read a book for fun that could be related to Internet research or my business but am deciding it was just fun.

I read this book

Carr, Paul & Pond, Graham The Unofficial Tourists' Guide to Second Life: The Essential Guide to an Amazing Virtual World - with Millions of Users
(New York N.Y.: St. Martin's Griffin, 2007).

I read most of this book now. I read it very quickly as it has a light hearted style. It has many foreign or historical and ancient origin based words for names of virtual tourist destinations. These are the actual names of these locations in the virtual world known as Second Life. I had to pronounce these proper names slowly. I did not search these locations out in Second Life but the authors gave the tourist spots names as a locational reference. So I did not explore Second Life with the book in hand but instead after, starting to read this book, I went on line in Second Life did a little work on making my home in Second Life. I was intending on working on my business in Second Life while on-line today, but after I read more of the book, I am rethinking doing business in Second Life, and thinking more of just enjoying Second Life.
The pages of this book are small and it is the typical paperback length of 200 pages or so. It read more like Canadian narrative sociology than American analytical sociology.

I was also reading analytical sociology last night. I read more of the book Social Networks edited by Barry Wellman because he seems to think his early work covers social networking like studying facebook or other social web network might need covering these days.

We had a BBQ for systems sciences students today.

My partner and I had a good time at the BBQ organised by other students in my master's program.

Library thing dot com

I added more books to Library thing dot com and tried adding a tag to all the books I am currently reading. Five hours of study done now plus yesterday's work and teaching my partner fractions for an all round busy busy day.

I dig deep into past lessons to understand political and business uncertainty

I want to borrow this book

Taylor, John R. An introduction to error analysis : the study of uncertainties in physical measurements (Mill Valley, Calif.: University Science Books, 1982)

I read about alternative terms for free software to learn what FLOSS means

I read wikipedia's article here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOSS (cited July 5, 2007) and a definition at flora.ca here http://www.flora.ca/floss.shtml (cited July 5, 2007).

Computers as art form? May be not.

R.L. Rutsky, High technē: art and technology from the machine aesthetic to the posthuman (Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota, 1999)

I read more of this book lately. I disucssed a little of the points made at the beginning with a coworker and I made sense. Art attracts me and motivates me. I am a computer artist since 1979.

I read a few pieces tonight in the Internet law puzzle.

I decided to revisit my legal studies of the Internet on Monday evening and borrowed one book on this topic from the old library shelf where I found myself during the e-commerce course I took in Winter 2004. I am just finishing reading from this book one piece

Garnham, Nicholas. The Role of the Public Sphere in the Information Society in Marsden, Christopher T. ed. Regulation and the Global Information Society (New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2000)

This was a good review of law and political theory touching on both Kant and Rousseau as well as Habermas. This whole book was published just before the Internet crash but whose to say that the changes brought about by the Internet which this books asserts has changed the world, is really that affected by a loss in the stock market as the over all changes in society seem to have held and grown stronger. Perhaps the Internet is changing capitalism for the better or at least testing the markets and awareness of the stock markets.

I am studying by email with AOIR researchers lately.

I have been following the Internet with other more senior and experienced Internet researchers by email. I have taken to using facebook for staying in touch with coworkers and friends. This site (facebook) is all of a sudden very popular.

Cyber culture summer studies

Here is my summer reading list for cybercultural studies. I may try to develop a course with real programming and culture studies from this summer reading. What follows each bibliographic entry is from our libraries entry for the book:

Sonia E. Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino, Arturo Escobar, eds. Cultures of politics/politics of cultures : re-visioning Latin American social movements (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1998).

Contents The cultural politics of citizenship, democracy, and the state -- The cultural politics of ethnicity, race, and gender -- Globalization, transnationalism, and civil society -- Theoretical and methodological reflections on the cultural and the political in Latin American social movements.

Summary Investigating the complex interrelations between culture & politics in a wide range of social movements in Latin America, this book focuses on the cultural politics enacted by social movements as they struggle for new visions & practices of citizenship, democracy, social relations, & development. The volume explores the potential of these cultural politics for fostering alternative political cultures & social transformations. Theoretical & empirical chapters assess & build upon novel conceptions of culture & politics in a variety of disciplines & fields-particularly anthropology, political science, sociology, feminist theory, & cultural studies.

Sande Cohen, & R.L. Rutsky, eds., Consumption in an age of information (Oxford ; New York : Berg, 2005)

Summary We live in an age when consumption and consuming have come to define us. Consumption, now a global phenomenon, is so dominant it allows little room for alternatives. At the same time, information and digitization have become all-pervasive in our media culture. As ever greater aspects of the world have come to be seen as 'data', information has increasingly become the very currency of consumption.

Consumption in an Age of Information maps this new terrain. Bringing together some of the world's leading theorists and critics, the essays range across high theory and popular culture - from informational flows to science fiction simulations, from pop-cultural consumption to capitalism as religion, from the consumption of time to the role of 'speed' in contemporary culture. Book jacket.

Zillah Eisenstein Global obscenities : patriarchy, capitalism, and the lure of cyberfantasy (New York: New York University, 1998).

Contents Seeing : virtual globes and cyberpublics -- Viewing : media-ted seeing and cultural capitalism -- Talking : cyberfantasies and the relations of power -- Surviving : transnations, global capital, and families -- Wishing/hoping : Transnational capitalist patriachy, Beijing, and virtual sisterhoods.

Summary A noted feminist critic & political scientist investigates the effects of global capitalism & the new media explosion.

Jane Kenway, et al. Haunting the knowledge economy (London; New York: Routledge, 2006).

There is not much written about this book in the library entry only that this book falls in the sociology of knowledge field one field I read in and am learning on my own.

Wendy Harcourt & Arturo Escobar, eds. Women and the politics of place (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian, 2005).

Summary A team of researchers and activists in development, geography, women's rights, and related fields explore how women in place are living their lives at different levels of resistance and creativity in the face of what are often perceived to be overwhelming and largely abstract global forces. Case studies include Pakistan, Columbian black movement struggles, rural Finland, Zapatista women, and Palestine. Annotation :2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Webster, Frank, Theories of the information society (London; New York: Routledge, 2002).

There is really nothing written in the library card entry about this book. But this book does fall in the subjects of communication -- Social aspects; Communication -- Technological innovations; Information society; Information technology; Information policy.

David Morley & Kevin Robins, Spaces of identity : global media, electronic landscapes and cultural boundaries (London ; New York : Routledge, 1995)

Again there is nothing much written in the library about this book but here is the subject info:

Subject:
Intercultural communication

Telecommunication -- Social aspects

Group identity

Computers and civilization

R.L. Rutsky, High technē: art and technology from the machine aesthetic to the posthuman (Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota, 1999)

Summary In an age of high tech, our experience of technology has changed tremendously, yet the definition of technology has remained largely unquestioned. High Techne redresses this gap in thinking about technology, examining the shifting relations of technology, art, and culture from the beginnings of modernity to contemporary technocultures.

Drawing on the Greek root of technology (techne, generally translated as "art, skill, or craft"), R. L. Rutsky challenges both the modernist notion of technology as an instrument or tool and the conventional idea of a noninstrumental aesthetics. Today, technology and aesthetics have again begun to come together: even basketball shoes are said to exhibit a "high-tech style" and the most advanced technology is called "state of the art." Rutsky charts the history and vicissitudes of this new high-tech techne up to our day -- from Fritz Lang to Octavia Butler, Thomas Edison to Japanese Anime, constructivism to cyberspace.

Progressing from the major art movements of modernism to contemporary science fiction and cultural theory, Rutsky provides clear and compelling evidence of a shift in the cultural conceptions of technology and art and demonstrates the centrality of technology to modernism and postmodernism.

I studied the first chapter in Thomas S Ferguson's course on large sample theory

Here is my work in for my notes on the weak law of large numbers. This is just Ferguson's first page and the defintion.

Student: Peter Timusk

From professor Thomas S Ferguson, UCLA

Laws of Large Numbers

converges in law to ,



if as n for all points x at which is continuous

I attended a colloquium at statistics Canada. Hearing talks on biomonitoring

I attended some talks today on biomonitoring

Spending time studying overnight tonight after the hockey game.

I am watching hockey tonight and will do some book reading after the game. The game is starting now with the pre-game show on TV.

A local activist shared this video about the military industrial complex.

View the shift http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3uhcRe60Zo

I started to use Library Thing.

I started to use Library Thing at www.librarything.com.

use of reseach topics.

The more the professional researchers discuss the internet and web 2.0 the more time I spend using web 2.0.