Archive for the ‘ Life ’ Category

A roundup of some cool things

Okay. We just landed a machine on MARS using a SKYCRANE. How awesome is that?

Also, Bjarne Stroustroup (you may not know who he is, which is a damn shame. You fuckers didn’t know who Dennis Ritchie was, either, did you? Ritchie did more for the modern world than Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Steve Wozniak together—and hardly anyone knows his name. He created C. Stroustroup created C++.) has on his website the coding standards for the Joint Strike Fighter project. This is wildly cool, even if you’re not big on the military. It’s cool because C++ has been lambasted so many times for being absurd, and yet these standards lay out how to write minimal, powerful, safe, and real-time code. Here’s the link.

2012
08/10
CATEGORY
Life
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Music you don’t approve of.

I was reading the Montréal Gazette the other day, when I came across an article about the Sûreté du Québec investigating a Montréal police shooting. Now, the police claimed the man was suicidal, and attacked them with a weapon. As for those details, we’ll read more about them when the SQ are done with their investigation.

That is not the point of this post.

This post is about a fascinating paragraph from the article: Continue reading →

2012
02/19
CATEGORY
Life
Music
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Going solo

Not having a studio to fall back on can make studying an instrument difficult; initially, you don’t have an instructor to give you feedback on your development, but there’s also the lack of a sense of completion: in a studio, every four months or so, the instructor holds a studio recital, in which all of his/her students perform the piece they’ve been studying since the last recital. This provides all the students with an ability to say, Okay, I’ve finished that. I can set it aside and move on to the next one. Continue reading →

2011
06/04
CATEGORY
Life
Music
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NOT « Born This Way » ? Yes, I was.

Queer McGill seems to be doing everything possible to piss me off. Not me, personally, but it sure has that effect. I’m not fabulous, and I never will be — so stop telling me that that’s how I should act. Just because I am gay does not mean that I immediately love prancing around with a scarf and a falsetto voice. My voice stubbornly resists any attempt to avoid a generally low rumble these days, and if I wore a scarf I’d die of heat exhaustion.

So don’t tell me I’m not born this way, or even imply otherwise. Continue reading →

2011
03/28
CATEGORY
Life
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A survey of independent cafés, or maybe not.

I had a brilliant thought; I would survey the independent coffee shops around the Plateau area, see what options there are beyond Café Dépôt and Second Cup … maybe find a nice little place to enjoy a sandwich, or something. However, this may take a little more research first. Continue reading →

2011
03/06
CATEGORY
Life
Montréal
Université
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Alienation in working out

So, I’ve been spending the last semester plus working out, getting fit again. I figured I could improve this use of my time with learning the art of supplementation and altering my workout format, so I started exploring information on the internet. What do I find but all sorts of sources of alienation and homophobia, all bundled into the regular discussion of the community. Gee, thanks, guys. Continue reading →

2011
02/26
CATEGORY
Fitness
Life
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Getting better with age?

When I was younger, I always thought that I would have a better knowledge of what was going on, how to react. Instead, it feels like I’m always playing by ear, always just not quite sure. I expect this is how everyone does it, but it still seems a bit like we’re being lied to throughout the years. Wait, you mean we don’t just learn how to deal with life? What a joke. I still feel like I’m just faking being grown up, like it’s all just a sham, and somebody’s going to call me out on it, on any given day. Maybe that feeling will go away, maybe it won’t. I’ve seen that I can shape my actions given just a little bit of impetus, so maybe all it takes is time. I’ll find out.

2011
02/25
CATEGORY
Life
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Freshman fifteen … what is this?

Okay, so the folk wisdom is that the first year at college results in the so-called « freshman fifteen », the fifteen pounds gained from being able to eat everything you want at the dining halls, the stress, the drinking, the lack of exercise …

Well, so far, I’ve had, depending on how you look at it, either a freshman negative five or freshman negative ten (I don’t think I’m at a freshman negative fifteen yet, but it’s getting close!) See, having the gym right up the hill has caused a minor revolution for me, making it easy for me to go and work out whenever I want, after class, before class, between classes … Going to the gym has become a ritual purification for me, a way to simply not think about school.

So, yeah, I’ve talked about this before, but … honestly, college has been pretty good to me. I’m reflecting on it right now, because I had a Coke today for the first time in … at least a week. Wow. This is compared to the two sodas a day I’d drink at home, as well as the mug after mug of tea/coffee. Having a limited budget makes it really easy to make healthy choices, especially when they’re based around reducing costs!

2011
01/16
CATEGORY
Life
Université
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It’s just a change of variables

So . . . sometimes a problem is very difficult to solve in one manner, so we look at it differently. All it takes is a change of variables, a different way of looking at the problem. Change the appearance, and you change the fundamental nature of solving the problem. It’s the same problem, it’s just gotten a lot easier. A lot of things in life just need the same method, looking at a problem through a different lens. If a particular situation is not susceptible to being broken down by one method of reasoning, change tacks and find a different angle to approach it. If you find you need to reëvaluate the situation later on, do it! Don’t allow your values to be fixed in a single manner, that is the death of creativity. Rigid values analysis breaks down with an application of a change of variables, and suddenly the reason for fluidity in values is apparent: adjusting to a shifting situation is difficult with a rigid values analysis – if you hold one dogmatic belief above all other reason, when something comes along that may require breaking that dogma, someone bound in a rigid value structure may not be able to adapt, while someone who allows adjustment is more capable of finding a solution outside their previous values analysis. This rigid values analysis can be seen especially in those who are strongly religious and gay, in religions which are disapproving of homosexuality (disapproving may be too light a word, in some cases.) They either need to be able to accept that not everything in their lives fits with what they have been told, or they will surely perish, or face what they consider their absolute doom. However, if you accept a little change of variables, suddenly that life-or-death dichotomy breaks down, and a clearer solution is evident.

It’s just a change of variables.

2011
01/14
CATEGORY
Life
Mathematics
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Taking a photo is harder than it looks

— at least, taking a photo one thinks is worth taking . . .

I understand people enjoy simply keeping snapshots of their lives, but I often feel like there’s nothing truly worth capturing on film, or as is the case with a digital camera, as sequences of zeros and ones. There’s just something so . . . vapid, I guess, in taking photographs without meaning. When I’m taking a photo, I try to frame something I find intriguing, something unusual or captivating; often, I want to take a photo but I feel like there’s nothing so special that it needs to be seen. I’ve tried looking for the unusual in the ordinary, I’ve tried seeing the beauty of the most mundane. I don’t. There’s nothing exciting in something so plain you see it everywhere, all the time. That doesn’t need to be captured on film, it’s everywhere already, and often forgettable.

It’s the ephemeral I seek to capture, something we only see for a moment or longer. I want to capture the essence of that strangeness, that bizarre feeling that something magical is happening and it will soon disappear, never to be seen again.

So, I reach for my camera, or my journal.

2011
01/13
CATEGORY
Life
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