Posts Tagged weird
Who pays for the Internet?
This was the question presented by the professor of my undergraduate networking class. As far as I can tell, the answer is: you do. And you’ll pay increasingly more for it if some people have their way.
Unless you live in an area with subsidized broadband and/or wifi, you’ve got to pay an access fee to an ISP. At this point, dial-up is more or less useless, so you’ve got to fork over $40 every month just to get online. Like most people, your ISP is probably a large telecom, like Verizon, Comcast, or AT&T, so the true cost is probably a lot more than that since it’s almost impossible to buy internet access by itself. You’re forced into signing up for a “bundle” which is some combination of land line phone, cell phone, TV, and internet all provided by the same company. A lot of the junk (and added cost) that comes along with the bundle is probably unwanted, like bizarre foreign language TV channels, call waiting, and hardware rental fees since the option isn’t often given to buy your own modem or cable boxes. By purchasing a bundle from an ISP, you’re subsidizing the weirdos who actually watch some of those high-numbered TV stations, listen music on their TV, or enjoy being nagged by call waiting that can’t be turned off. Since the number of providers available for a given location are usually pretty limited, you’re forced into paying monopolistic prices as well as paying for services that you don’t even want.
It’s bad enough that you’ve got to fork over the dough for services that you don’t even want in order to get internet access, but in truth, it’s a lot worse. Access is merely a base cost for using the internet. In nearly all cases, there’s also a cost for accessing content. Somebody has to pay for hosting and generation of that website you frequent or the videos you watch, and again, it’s going to be you. Advertising is one commonly used method to shift the cost onto consumers. Nearly every website has it. Until around five years ago with the advent of pop-up blockers, Javascript removal tools, and ad-blocking tools, every website I visited spammed me with a torrent of flashing banner ads, pop-ups, and keyword advertising. Somehow, the notion goes, enough people would actually click on that crap and buy whatever it was that was being advertised. The advertising revenue would keep the servers running and provide the blog/newspaper authors with a small paycheck.
Personally, I can’t stand advertising in general. It gets in the way of whatever it is I’m trying to do, whether it be searching or browsing the internet, reading a print newspaper, or watching TV. Reading the paper or watching TV probably adds about fifteen minutes of sifting through all the ads or waiting through commercials to get to the rest of the TV show I want to watch or the newspaper article I want to read. I’ve never clicked on a banner ad, much less even bought something that was advertised in this manner. On the internet, it’s hard to manually filter out all the crap to get to what you want. Fortunately, current ad-blocking tools do a pretty good job. I’ve even forgotten how good a job they really do, for when I sit down in front of a computer without any ad-blocking software, the harassment of flashing banners and keyword ads drive me up the wall.
Though internet advertising revenue has increased in the last year, it is predicted to fall in 2009. Everyone is finally getting sick of all the junk constantly being pushed at them as advertising approaches levels seen in “Idiocracy” and methods used in “Minority Report.” A great argument against internet advertising states that it is “not trusted, not wanted, and not needed.” While print newspapers are folding due to declining subscriptions, content providers on the internet are worried about a similar fate due to declining ad revenue. Ironically, the print newspapers mainly blame their plight on the shift to electronic media. To that end, content providers are considering increasing their usage of a second tool to provide revenue: yet another access cost.
Most online newspaper websites and online offerings of network TV shows do so with fairly low restrictions on who accesses their content. The front page stories for nearly every newspaper are available online as well as last night’s Lost episode. This freedom of access is what makes the internet so great: once you get in, there are few barriers to access anything. However, the same people that brought you bundled internet access want to change that. One media executive says, “We want to change consumer behavior somewhat, so the expectation that everything online is free has to change.” If this expectation changes, the internet as we know it is finished. It is the freedom and openness of the internet that makes it as valuable as it is. You can find anything or anyone and learn about nearly any topic available. On the internet, you can collaborate with people half a world away. The introduction of a second access cost for some internet content will most likely remove that openness. The effort to preserve network neutrality has been in place for several years, but now it may be coming to an end. Several ISPs are currently proposing pay access for channels and TV shows online. The movement of this business model may force providers of other media to do the same. Original sources will become locked down, leaving open and collaborative efforts to rot without them, such as Wikipedia, or IMDB. Someone may want you to look at a video posted to YouTube, but you can’t look at it because you don’t have the money to pay the access fee.
Nobody really wants to pay a pile of access fees to get the latest news, or even to watch videos on the internet, especially when an ISP is charging a significant monthly fee just to get online (though some say they are). The problem is that the annoyance and unprofitability of internet advertising is forcing a shift to another solution to prop up content providers. If the shift to selling access to content goes too far, the internet may become segmented into a large number of tiers, causing the digital divide to span both the physical and electronic worlds.
Pandora Radio: Mixed bag
I’ve decided to branch out from my usual Internet Radio fix and experiment with Pandora. There’s been a lot of rave reviews out there, and I recall reading a Slashdot article about the data mining algorithms that go into determining your preferences (or maybe that was Last.fm). I’ll probably mess around with Last.fm to see the differences, since Pandora definitely has its highlights and drawbacks.
The interface is great since I just have to fire up a web browser and cookies automatically log me in. There’s no messing around with a software mp3 player and picking out the correct format so the player can interpret the stream. Sound quality is okay, but it seems that some tracks are better than others.
Nearly all the reviews I read said that Pandora was excellent in picking out songs they liked. I don’t entirely agree with this. In the web-based interface, you name an artist or song you like and Pandora plays music based on particular musical qualities of the artist or song. It seems that for me, when I name an artist or song in my existing mp3 archive, one of three things happens, each with about equal probability:
1. Pandora plays a song I’ve already got in my mp3 collection. Many times it isn’t even the same artist of the initial artist/song I specified, which makes it kind of weird. It would appear as though the preferences/data mining engine is almost too good, but this definitely isn’t always the case.
2. Pandora plays something that seems almost completely orthogonal to what I specified. For example, I put in Bruce Springsteen and it played something from Megadeth with lots of screaming and out of control percussion. I’m not sure how this relationship was determined, but it definitely didn’t give me what I wanted.
3. I actually hear something new that sounds similar to the artist/song I put in. In these cases, there definitely seems to be a relationship between the original song or artist I specified and what Pandora plays. This is the case I would prefer.
Pandora definitely doesn’t live up to all the hype — its preference/similarity determination seems to be either spot on or way off. Most of the time it seems to work, but I would rather hear something new than something I’ve already got in my mp3 collection (of course Pandora doesn’t know this). That’s one of the reasons I’ve been listening to Radio Paradise — they play all kinds of stuff I’ve never heard before and a wide enough variety to keep me coming back. One of the big features of Last.fm is that it can determine your preferences from your existing collection, so I may have to give that a try to see the differences. It seems that like most of these “Web 2.0″ apps, the data mining and social aggregation algorithms sort of work, but not enough to be really cool.
Ubiquitous Computing: The Nag Factor and Bad Design Decisions
Yesterday, the guy from HP came back and delivered a monitor that seems to be in working order. Finally, after ordering the monitor in January I get replacement number three in March that doesn’t have any problems. But everything wasn’t in working order for long. This morning on the bike, my iPod ran out of batteries and shut down after about five minutes. I have a feeling its Nickel-Cadmium battery is about finished. It was a rough hour and it got me thinking.
As I see it, the ultimate goal in the computer science community is to provide systems that improve our lives without us even being aware of it. Stuff should just happen in the background that we don’t even know about to provide drastic improvements in general areas like productivity, entertainment, and communication. All the background noise should be filtered out by these hidden systems so that we only see things that are important to us. For now, it seems, nothing is being filtered out and we are subjected to an increasing amount of information, almost all of which we really don’t care about. For example, this morning I searched Google for “mp3 players” (as in the physical devices) and only got hits for software programs. Problems like this shouldn’t happen, and I shouldn’t have to type in some weird query to specifically exclude certain results from my search. Some serious work has to be done to limit the scope of what we see to only the things that matter, and do it in such a way that isn’t annoying. Basically, operating systems and software should just work and not require any hacks to get solutions we want.
The first issue that comes to mind is with today’s operating systems. Gigabytes of patches and updates are released each month and harass the living daylights out of the end users to install them. This is one of the best examples of the Nag Factor. An operating system should not endlessly nag the user about installing updates and allowing administrative privileges. Ideally, the user shouldn’t even be aware that he or she is using a computer at all. Updates should be automatic and occur in the background without the user even knowing. Nothing is more annoying than to be deep into writing a paper or watching a movie when up comes a nag balloon demanding that some updates be installed and the machine rebooted.
Windows is far and away the worst when it comes to the nag factor. I’m almost completely off Windows at this point, with the exception that I use a partition on my laptop for my USB TV tuner, which unfortunately doesn’t have Linux drivers. It seems every time I start up the machine, about five nag balloons pop up telling me what wireless network I’ve connected to. About once a week another torrent of nag balloons pop up telling me to install software updates. When I finally install the updates, Windows forcefully reboots my machine. Nothing, I mean absolutely nothing, should ever forcefully reboot your machine. It’s a complete disruption of anything resembling the mantra of ubiquitous computing. A professor I had for a software engineering class once told me that it takes about eight minutes for someone to become completely engaged in a task. When some moron at Microsoft thinks it’s a good time to make your machine reboot, that’s about five minutes of lost productivity due to the reboot, and another eight to get back to where you were. Even Bill Gates complains about the forced reboots in Windows. Since I’ve never used Vista, I’ve heard another annoying “feature” is the User Account Control system, which ceaselessly has you type in your administrative password for stuff as simple as connecting to a wireless network.
Next up is OS X. Two years ago, I started the shift away from Windows with a Macbook. My Windows desktop began rusting from disuse almost immediately. Unfortunately, OS X suffers from the update nag almost as badly as Windows. Nearly every update is hundreds of megabytes and requires a reboot. iTunes updates even require reboots — what were they thinking? And when you install the stuff, it takes forever. Sometimes on an OS X update, my machine has rebooted two or three times over about ten minutes before the login screen comes up again. The updates first make their way to you through the extremely aggravating dock icon jumping out at you. While the dock is a good feature, the jumping icons are not. I can’t describe how irritating it is to be doing something and have a dock icon start leaping out into the center of my vision, ceaselessly pushing my buttons until I deal with it. There is probably a way to disable the icon jumping, but I’ve moved on from OS X, so it doesn’t matter at this point. UAC is also present in OS X but the designers did a decent job of only prompting you when changing administrative settings or installing software.
For the past year, I’ve almost exclusively used Ubuntu Linux for all of my computing. Finally, a group of developers has the right idea. It works almost seamlessly. An operating system should do its best to get out of the way and let the user do what he or she wants. Ubuntu is really close to doing this. The package manager is excellent — you can install anything under the sun (for free) and it updates automatically. You can’t even do this with the Mac by default, unless you install something like DarwinPorts, and even that is a real hassle to set up. The downside is that since every program you install is controlled by the package manager, there are frequent updates that require your authorization to install. Nearly every day something has a patch, but the package manager does its best to be minimally invasive. Nag balloons are infrequent, and a small icon appears in the task bar indicating that an update is available. Reboots are almost never required except for things that affect the kernel and nothing is ever forced on you. For now, I’m extremely satisfied with my Linux experience and will probably not switch back to Windows or Mac unless some serious revamping occurs.
The nag factor isn’t present in operating systems alone. The devices that are beginning to make ubiquitous computing a reality are providing irritations of their own. Whenever I miss a call, get a voicemail, or receive a text message, my cell phone beeps and hums to no end until I touch the screen acknowledging its nags. I’ve had two phones, and they both did this. Neither has the option to turn it off. I can check manually to see if anything came in while I was away from my phone and would prefer to do so instead of being constantly annoyed. I’ve also noticed that late model cars now beep at you if you start the engine and have your seatbelt off. Apparently, this is mandated by the federal government, but it’s just another irritating nag. Some cars will nag at you after the mileage counter gets beyond a certain amount since your last service.
It isn’t just the nagging that’s a problem, though. Some poor design decisions really limit the usability of computing systems and ubiquitous computing devices. The worst of this is proprietary software and hardware, with Apple really standing out as the worst culprit. The iPod that’s starting to die on me has a proprietary USB jack to plug it into my computer. What makes me mad is that it didn’t come with a wall plug to charge it — I’ve got to use the proprietary adapter to charge it via USB or for over $40 for a wall adapter. Since I don’t need to sync my iPod every day and would like to be able to travel with it without bringing my computer, a wall plug would be great. Thanks to the wall plug adapter scam, I don’t think I’ll be getting another iPod if I can help it. Apple’s computers also make use of proprietary headphone jacks and video outputs such as mini-DVI and mini-DisplayPort. I had to fork over $20 to get a mini-DVI to DVI adapter so I could use an external monitor with my Macbook. Universal hardware standards would make ubiquitous computing much more of a reality, with devices seamlessly integrating with each other and providing minimal headaches to the end user.
With respect to proprietary software, the iPod/iTunes combination also takes the cake. When I first got my iPod, I was using Windows, and installed iTunes on Windows to keep my music and iPod in order. After I got my Mac, I tried plugging the iPod into the Mac and using the Mac to keep everything synced. Did this work? Of course not. iTunes on the Mac whined that my iPod was formatted for Windows and that it couldn’t write anything to it unless it was reformatted. I don’t see why the geniuses at Apple could have written some drivers so that the iPod’s file system could be accessed from any operating system. It all seems to be about control. Downloading songs from iTunes only allows you to have those songs installed on three machines simultaneously and you can only load them onto an iPod in a proprietary format.
Cell phones are another example of this walled garden approach. You not only pay for the access to a cell network, but you have to get a proprietary operating system running on a proprietary phone to go along with it. You can’t just build your own cell phone out of spare parts, install your own operating system, and expect to connect to Verizon’s network even if you’ve paid for it. Google’s Android seems to be a step forward to breaking down this situation by permitting custom applications, but there’s a long way to go. Without all this proprietary junk to get in the way, you could see some seriously interesting applications, such as P2P file sharing on cell networks, refinement of video and text messaging, and the eventual integration of portable gaming, media, and communication into one device (the iPhone still sucks). For now, I’ve got to carry around my laptop for web browsing and programming, my cell phone for telephone calls, my iPod for music, and my PSP for gaming. Oh, and maybe a watch to tell time.
Finally, coming back to my dying iPod, battery technology needs significant improvements in order to further the goals of ubiquitous computing. Reducing I/O and computational complexity on the software side can only help but so much. The typical Ni-Cd battery, regardless of the device, lasts about two to three years and only runs for a few hours under full load. This is crap. Until batteries last for a week under full load and hold a full charge for nearly ten years, we’re just going to be throwing away perfectly good equipment. My iPod, which is perfectly fine with the exception of the battery, could last an indefinite amount of time. It seems really wasteful to toss cell phones and other mobile devices every few years just because a battery died. Reduced reliance on proprietary hardware and software could help this problem as well, for parts could be easily interchanged or upgraded if new features become available.
If the tech industry would focus on reducing the nag factor and increasing the openness of design standards, the shift to ubiquitous computing could be faster and more seamless. Until then, we’ve got to deal with the endless OS nag balloons, proprietary devices, and terrible battery life.
Microfracture: +18 weeks
Posted by Matt in microfracture on December 30, 2008
Today, I saw the doctor for what is hopefully my last appointment. The doctor seems to believe the microfracture has stimulated some cartilage regrowth and is optimistic about me returning to recreational running. As I’ve heard before, he warned me that I will be susceptible to arthritis at an early age due to the procedure. He also suggested I try to find glucosamine in liquid form to help with the cartilage. Currently, I take the pill form, but he says the liquid form absorbs better and I can take it all in one go instead of three times a day with the pill. I don’t know as to whether or not glucosamine really works, but I figure it can’t hurt anything but my wallet. Better to try everything I can to help my knee.
The PT appointments have also come to an end and I am progressing with cycling to continue building leg strength. The weather has been warm on and off over the past few weeks, which really makes me consider going out on the roads instead of the resistance trainer. I’m confident about going out on a longer ride now and am pretty sure my knee could handle it. When I do decide to venture out, I’ll probably go when I’m in Williamsburg since it’s much more bike friendly.
Over the weekend, I was out walking around near the oceanfront for a few hours, which was by far the longest I had been standing/walking since the surgery. I got a lot more tired and the surgery knee seemed to stiffen up some as well. I also noticed my right IT band getting tight, but that might just be from biking. The same thing happened right after the cartilage tear — I was putting most of my weight on the good leg and consequently, my right IT band blew up. Now that I know the warning signs I can take care of it early with stretching and rolling on it.
The other weird thing I’ve been noticing is that the resistance trainer has a difficulty that is correlated with temperature. I had never used the resistance trainer much to really notice anything weird, but now that I’ve been using it almost every day, there seems to be a strong correlation between swings in temperature and difficulty. At first, I thought some days my body was just more tired than others, but I noticed that every day I felt more tired than usual, it was warm out. I used the same gear every time, so it couldn’t be that. With running, I always felt better when it was warmer, so this was definitely strange. The fluid inside must expand with the increased ambient temperature and cause more resistance.
I also notice that the trainer has some kind of warmup time, also correlated with temperature. When I first start, it seems really easy, and then after about 5 – 8 minutes, the resistance ramps up and stays that way for the rest of the bike. When it’s warm out, the warmup time is closer to five minutes, and when it’s colder, it’s more like seven or eight, and a few times when it’s been in the twenties (I use it in the garage with the door open), it seems like the difficulty increases only slightly in the first ten minutes. Again, this is probably the fluid inside the trainer warming up and reaching some threshold above which things cause a lot more friction.
Every time after I finish, the trainer is really hot to the touch. A lot of energy must go into that thing over the course of 45 minutes and it soaks it all up and tries to dissipate some of it with an attached heat sink. I know that every basic bike computer comes with a wattage computer, but personally I would like to modify the trainer into a dynamo and hook up a bunch of 100w light bulbs. I could see as I go how many I could light up (probably only a couple). Actually seeing the light bulbs come on would be a heck of a lot more motivation than some number on a computer. Of course, if I wanted to light up more bulbs I could just use 60 watt bulbs or even some CFLs. Or, I could see if I could generate enough power to keep a (low power) computer running. I could watch a movie, but it would only stay on as long as I was working hard enough. I could somehow integrate some of my research into this too. Not that I’m averse to suffering without distractions, but it’s just interesting to realize how much work goes in to keeping the lights and computer running.
Microfracture: +15 weeks
Posted by Matt in microfracture on December 9, 2008
It’s been fifteen weeks since the surgery and it looks like one more week until I try running. I’m still a little concerned about starting so soon, but my leg is feeling stronger and the joint moves much more smoothly than even a few weeks ago. I doubt it will be much more than five minutes of walking followed by a minute of running repeated several times. The physical therapist might want me starting off with even less than that. Excluding the knee, I don’t even know if I can take that much.
When I’ve returned to running following my previous soft tissue injuries, doing 5-6 minutes of walking followed by a minute of running was hard. Even though only five minutes out of 36 was running, I still struggled and felt desperately out of shape. This was only being out for a month or two and hammering an hour to two hours on the bike every day. I can see why a lot of people don’t like running — when I haven’t done it in awhile, I feel terrible and it really sucks. But, when I get past the initial suffering, it gets a lot better. Previously, this would take about a week or two if the injury I had didn’t come back. Running becomes enjoyable and becomes nearly as easy as brisk walking or biking. I like the freedom it gives me compared to the bike or indoor machines. I can go anywhere, explore everything, and not have to rely on some machine (bike) to do it.
I’ve been gradually going farther on the bike and have just been sticking to that as of late. I go hard enough to leave a pool of sweat on the floor when I’m done. I get a lot of weird looks from the sorority girls who dominate most of the machines when I’m in the rec center. I don’t really fit in there, I guess. At home, I’ve used the resistance trainer with the road bike, which I prefer to the stationary machine. The weather is supposed to be nice the next few days which got me thinking about going out on the roads for real, but I’m still kind of paranoid about accidents. I’ll get out there eventually, as long as I can hold up with some light running and the FUD subsides.
Of course by this point, getting around is now second nature. I don’t have problems with walking correctly and I don’t think about going up or down stairs much anymore. I can squat down on my knees without much issue, but I do take care in doing that since it isn’t supposed to be that good for you. In all, things are going well, but caution is the watchword.
Annoying Diction and the Decline of Print Media
With most newspapers having a seventh or eighth grade reading level, journalists really seem to love to sneak in five dollar words. Here are a few that seem to be used quite frequently as well as a few other words I find to be just plain annoying:
- crux: Tons of uppity, nasal-voiced government majors loved to throw this one around in my undergrad GER classes.
- heartbreaker: A real favorite of the SI staff at school. Is the losing team going to jump off a bridge? Reading about sports shouldn’t have anything in common with reading a romance novel.
- naive: Another favorite of the nerdy, radical basement dweller. Anyone who disagrees with them is usually labeled as “naive.”
- flummox: Sounds like some kind of digestive problem.
- pernicious: A high school teacher of mine used this one a lot in class and always seemed to squeal when he said it. Plenty of words sound better than this one.
- uptick: This one is often used to massage statistics to favor the author’s viewpoint.
- tussle: This has a real redneck sound to it. Git yerself in a lil tussle?
- woe: What is this, the Middle Ages?
Another one of my peeves is the increasing use of “women” as an adjective. Get it straight: “women” is a noun, “female” is the adjective.
Most of these words I find in reading the Virginian-Pilot, the quality of which has really crashed and burned over the past year or so. I read the print version when I go home since my parents have a subscription. The paper is increasingly packed with ads, even on the front page. Every time I get the print version, it takes forever to throw out all the crap to get to the actual news stories. Furthermore, the Virginian-Pilot has been writing fewer of their own stories. The quality of those stories that remain are terrible, hence the irritating five dollar words. Unbelievably, they went so far as to remove the Business section. The local section is really the only thing that remains that is unique to the paper and it’s been getting a lot thinner as of late. The paper also does a tech section on Mondays which I never read since everything that’s in it was already out on the Internet weeks ago in some AP article.
Google News is great at collecting world and national news and does a solid job at retrieving interesting local stories. I also use Digg, but I find that a lot of the popular stories seem kind of weird or have a definite bias cough:Huffington Post:cough.
School can be more than an education…
…but academics come first.
Another Flat Hat article got my attention, this time about the difficulties of performing well in school while competing in intercollegiate sports. The author, a student-athlete, states that here at William and Mary, a divide exists between athletes and non-athletes. From my experience and the author’s, this divide seems to exist for two reasons.
The first reason is that due to time constraints between school and practice/traveling for competition, athletes self-segregate from other students. Going to class, practice, and doing homework consumed all my (and my teammates’) time and energy, leaving almost no time for any kind of social life. What little free time we had was spent with our roommates, who were also teammates. Living, studying, sleeping, eating, traveling, suffering through workouts, and showering with 40 other guys was enough of a social activity that we didn’t need anyone else. In fact, very few of us had friends or even girlfriends who were not on the team. Anyone who hung out with other non-teammate friends was seen as the odd one out.
Those who wanted to do well in races and in school didn’t do much else except practice and study. If you tried to squeeze in late night parties every week, your performances in school and running suffered. I’ve seen this happen to several teammates, who tried going out on weekends only to bomb tests and races. Anyone who wanted to compete effectively without hurting their grades had to make some sacrifices. Consequently, a lot of non-athletes see us as weird. My sister says my teammates stick out in the already nerdy William and Mary population like a sore thumb: “they’re skinny, don’t drink, have a shaved head…”
Since high school, my coaches have always said that we are students first and athletes second. If school is taking a hit, we should back off on the running. For me, it never came to that, but a few teammates during my five years of eligibility did quit the team citing academics. Nearly everyone on the team set high standards for themselves academically, and few failed to hit these standards. Almost everyone on the team that’s graduated since I’ve been here has gone on to graduate school of some sort, many to law or medical school. There aren’t many student-athletes at William and Mary that I’ve met that haven’t done well academically, but this high level of academic performance seems to be the exception, rather than the norm.
At other schools, student-athletes really do seem to live up to the “dumb jock on scholarship” stereotype. USA Today reported on how nearly all student-athletes on DI football and basketball teams major in the same discipline, usually something like “social sciences,” or “management.” They pick the easy way out to keep their grades high enough to compete and somehow many of them still fail to graduate. This is where NCAA policy should really push towards getting a useful degree not just “majoring in eligibility.” Those that do graduate “have been hesitant to cite their degree on job applications,” since their major was worthless.
The thought of incompetent athletes flunking out of the easiest classes really hits a nerve with the average William and Mary student, who most likely busts his or her butt to get through Organic Chemistry. Odds are that student’s classmates are also members of the basketball, tennis, track, and football teams, among others. William and Mary boasts a nearly 100 percent graduation rate with all of its teams and 36 Academic All-Americans since 1992.
Money is the second reason for the athlete and non-athlete divide. In the comments section of the article, a lot of students believe that the teams at William and Mary get their budgets and athletic scholarships entirely from the $1,259 per year athletic fee tacked on to tuition. They feel cheated that their tuition money is going to pay for others’ athletic scholarships. This is hardly the case. All athletic scholarships are funded from endowments and alumni donations, not from tuition. Without a strong alumni base, the athletic programs would be nonexistent. One commenter mused that he wasn’t able to use the athletic fields or run on the new track because priority went to athletic teams. Again, those fields and the new track were paid entirely by alumni donations, which specified their use for athletics. With respect with complaints about the athletic fee in general, there are plenty of fees that I pay in my tuition that go towards school programs that I never took advantage of. There are also plenty of government programs that I pay for in my taxes that I never use, either.
To me, non-athletes complain about athletic scholarships in the same manner that out-of-state students complain about in-state tuition. Out-of-state students had a choice to attend a public school in their own state and pay less money, but they didn’t (they also don’t pay VA state tax). Non-athletes had a choice to work hard in a sport in high school and potentially get an athletic scholarship, but they didn’t. As for athletic slotting, plenty of non-athletes get accepted in the same manner, but due to their socioeconomic status.
At William and Mary, we have our cake and eat it too. We can be successful students while kicking butt as athletes.
The limp is gone!
Posted by Matt in general, microfracture on November 12, 2008
Yesterday, as I went to the laundry room to put my clothes in the dryer, I went down a small staircase. Since I still have issues going down stairs, I made a conscious effort to descend properly and use my left leg. When I got to the bottom I continued towards the laundry room, I noticed something felt weird in my leg. I looked down as I walked and noticed that with each step that it was bending the way it was supposed to. Bam — just like that I went from limping everywhere to walking normally. It was completely involuntary. Before the staircase I was still walking straight-legged and afterwards I was normal.
Since then I’ve been almost completely normal walking everywhere. A few times when I start walking I notice that I’m goosestepping again, but now I know what it feels like to walk normally so I quickly change my gait.
I have a feeling that this process is similar to what Dilbert creator Scott Adams went through with his vocal disorder. Though I would argue losing your voice in certain situations would be much worse than limping, the “remapping” of an area of your brain happened more or less involuntarily. Adams figured out he could get his voice back by rhyming and once he knew what it felt like to talk normally, he could speak much more easily. Now that I know what it feels like to bend my knee when walking, I can do it on a whim instead of trying to force it and look even weirder than with the limp.
SenSys Roundup
Posted by Matt in Uncategorized on November 8, 2008
As with EmNets over the summer, the trip to SenSys this week was an experience.
The sessions went from Wednesday through Friday so my adviser, the other student in our group, and I left Tuesday afternoon and got back late last night. The weather in Williamsburg sucked when I left and it sucked when I got back, but it was nice in Raleigh. I also managed to get in my weight routine and the bike/elliptical every day while I was there, but I had to get up early to do it. The whole thing really wore me out and I was asleep by ten every night. Of course, I got up before seven to start my routine and kept awake with the terrible coffee they had. Hard to believe I drink enough coffee now to have preferences (darker roasts are better).
Overall, the whole thing was kind of weird. Nearly everyone there was foreign — despite most schools being from the U.S., almost all the students and professors were not. I guess this was to be expected — it was like taking a 200 person sample of the world population and putting them in the same room. A plurality were Chinese, a lot were Indian, and there were only a small number of Europeans and Americans. Since my adviser and the other guy in the research group were Chinese, I found myself hanging out with everyone else speaking in Chinese. The group meals we had and conversations during the break were kind of awkward since they would speak some in English and then just suddenly switch to Chinese. For example, the first night we went out (to a Chinese restaurant of course), I was the only one of eight that used a fork and knife. I should probably start learning Chinese so that I can at least pick up some of it. My adviser encouraged me to talk to people during the session breaks, but it’s tough when many aren’t speaking a language you can understand.
Asides from the demographics, the other thing that made it weird was the atmosphere. These are some of the top people in sensor networks and the whole thing seemed so … unprofessional. The attitude of everyone and atmosphere seemed so relaxed and informal – at the end of a few presentations there were a few arguments between the presenters and a questioner. Nearly everyone was in typical student-type clothes and the faculty were typically attired, and it seemed as much a chance to have a good time as it was to show off your work. Some of the UVA guys came in one morning musing about how drunk they got the night before. The closest thing I can compare this to is NCAAs for cross country. With this conference and the NCAA meet, the idea is the same: the best schools come to show off their stuff, but the atmosphere at NCAAs was extremely professional and focused. In both cases we had a banquet with everyone that was attending, but at NCAAs everyone was subdued, had their "game face" on, and kept conversation to those within their team. In contrast, at SenSys, there was wine on the table and everyone was nearly out of control by the end. Somehow, I expected something a little more formal, but I guess that’s the appeal of academia — you’re given a fair amount of leeway as to what you can do in research and in your approach to your work.
I met up with the other people I had collaborated with over weekly Skype meetings since last winter. It was interesting to meet them in person and I got some special hardware from the hardware guy we are working with for our current project.
In my opinion, about a third of the sessions were interesting, a third was okay, and another third wasn’t of interest to me. There was some cool stuff on measuring radio link connectivity burstiness, vehicle sensor networks, and integrating posture detection and geolocation data into social network sites. There was stuff on distributed camera image recognition (detection people’s gestures), ensuring privacy when sharing personal sensor data, and a environmental monitoring system using accelerometers to measure flow rate in water pipes. I didn’t care too much for the radio MAC protocol stuff and there were a few high-level programming frameworks that seemed uninteresting.
According to my adviser, SenSys papers are focused on actual deployments and implementations while marginalizing theory in design. Most of the papers had a giant deployment section with lots of pictures and evaluation statistics. While deployments are practical, advancements are slow since so little new theory is developed. One or two of the papers presented had simple data collection and evaluation schemes that were just tested extensively in the real world, such as a road pothole detection system using accelerometers and GPS/cell towers for localization. I would like to work on stuff that can actually be deployed (I am now), but deployment and testing takes a lot of time and isn’t really research. Other conferences are more focused on theory and a simulation-based evaluation is acceptable. The reviewers look more at algorithm design and novel theoretical ideas over real-world deployments and testing. Additionally, the committees for each conference tend to have varying amounts of control over who gets accepted — some are very tightly knit and seem to accept papers only from certain schools while others are more diverse and objective over their selections.
Listening to the paper presentations and going to the poster and demo sessions got me a few new ideas. The poster and demo sessions were especially interesting because you could talk one-on-one with each person about what they had done or were working on. A lot of people out there have a lot of good ideas. Most of the presentations were done by students and a lot of them weren’t much different than me in terms of age and experience. It seems that students are typically listed as first authors and give the paper presentations while their advisers come to watch and ask all the hard questions. That was also what was weird about it — it wasn’t much different than going to class and listening to student presentations, except that the work was exceptional. I took a lot of notes and saw what made a good presentation: abstracting away details and making your main ideas clear. It sounds like going to a conference (maybe not this one) and giving a talk on my paper is in my future. I only have to get accepted first.
So now I come back motivated to get going on my current project. The ideas are (hopefully) new and will actually work when we get the thing implemented. I’ll be able to do an actual test with sensors instead of just simulation. The deadlines are looming and it’s time to get moving.
+5 weeks
Posted by Matt in general, microfracture on September 22, 2008
Today was my first day with the physical therapist. It went really slowly — I was there from 2:30 until after 5. Apparently someone that worked there wasn’t in which caused the holdup, but I can’t just carve out 3 hours of my day to just mostly waiting. Even the receptionist remarked that I had spent seemingly most of the day there. I spent probably 30 minutes total actually doing stuff. They said it should be much faster next time — I hope so because I have to go three times a week.
It really wasn’t anything that I hadn’t seen or done before in the training room, but at least I made some forward progress for the first time. It was mostly leg exercises, but I was put on a range of motion machine and got up to 50 degrees with the brace off. It felt really weird with it bent that much but it didn’t really hurt except a little each time the machine increased the range of motion. They set the brace at 50 degrees so I can now move it more. I also have the go ahead to walk more on one crutch. Like the doctor said, the goal is to try to be off the crutches in two weeks. That will be great.
When the brace was off, I remarked that my left knee seemed swollen compared to the right. Instead, the PT said that it wasn’t, only it just looked that way because I had lost so much muscle in my quad. My left leg above the knee has a circumference 3 cm smaller than my right, and now that he said that, it’s really noticeable. Mostly, the brace is on so I can’t see it except for when I shower.
Like the orthopedist, the PT said he was optimistic about me returning to running, only that I probably would not be able to do any serious training or races. He had several microfracture patients in the past and said that I’ve got to really be careful since one guy had to have several surgeries after running too far and really screwing things up. Again, he remarked that recovery is different from individual to individual.
At least now I have some kind of progression to look forward to, even if I’m only taking small steps towards a target that’s hundreds of miles away.
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