Lazy summer update
I suppose it's life update time again.
--I was in Montreal for a conference June 9-13th to present some of my research. I did an all-day workshop on deception detection, which was kind of cool. Went to a few talks, of which only one was really all that interesting (it was by Elizabeth Loftus, a pretty famous psychologist who does stuff on false memories). Otherwise, I met up with my soon-to-be supervisor and networked a bit, meeting some of the other researchers in my new area (and got treated to lunch! Score!).
--More notably, when I was in Montreal, I actually got to attend Gare's graduation ceremony from boot camp! It was some weird coincidence where I was in Montreal, only an hour away from where his base was, so I took a bus up there to see him. I met up with his parents there, and got to have dinner with them and Gare afterwords. For everyone's information, Gare passed boot camp wonderfully :D He also won a most improved award, and his platoon was voted the best out of the 3 that graduated. Go Gare!
--Work has been really slow the past week, mostly due to waiting on other people, and generally waiting for my thesis defense on the 6th. Been having a lot more time to contemplate life, and get my priorities straightened out in the meantime, which isn't altogether a bad thing. I've come to the conclusion that to have a balanced life, I really need to exercise more, and need to focus myself a bit more on "spiritual" concerns (for lack of a better word). I get lots of mental stimulation from my work, which keeps me sharp in that domain, but these other areas of my life have kind of been ignored. I went out and bought myself a copy of Wii Fit yesterday, to kind of wean myself onto exercise. I was kind of skeptical at first, but I think that it just might be the perfect thing for me, right about now. Something to keep me mildly active until I start up aikido again in Halifax. As for spiritual things, I don't really mean God and religion, necessarily, but I do need to reorganize my sense of meaning and morality in my life. I'm re-reading "Man's Search for Meaning" right now, and have really been thinking a lot about how to be more environmentally responsible too, though I'm still working it out for myself how exactly I'm going to do that. All in all, good things to be thinking about.
--In gaming news, I'm still playing Culdcept Saga, but I also bought (and beat) Final Fantasy IV: The After Years on WiiWare. It *was* pretty fun, but the whole game lasted like, 4 hours. Naturally, you have to pay more to get the next chapters XD; Stupid SquareEnix and their exorbitant payment plans for their stupid nostalgic games...
--Also: I have re-discovered rss feeds through Google Reader as a more efficient way of checking my webcomics, and various gaming news sites. Now I can just check one page to see if anything updated! It's awesome, and I'm not sure why I waited so long before doing this.
That's about all for now, I suppose.
--I was in Montreal for a conference June 9-13th to present some of my research. I did an all-day workshop on deception detection, which was kind of cool. Went to a few talks, of which only one was really all that interesting (it was by Elizabeth Loftus, a pretty famous psychologist who does stuff on false memories). Otherwise, I met up with my soon-to-be supervisor and networked a bit, meeting some of the other researchers in my new area (and got treated to lunch! Score!).
--More notably, when I was in Montreal, I actually got to attend Gare's graduation ceremony from boot camp! It was some weird coincidence where I was in Montreal, only an hour away from where his base was, so I took a bus up there to see him. I met up with his parents there, and got to have dinner with them and Gare afterwords. For everyone's information, Gare passed boot camp wonderfully :D He also won a most improved award, and his platoon was voted the best out of the 3 that graduated. Go Gare!
--Work has been really slow the past week, mostly due to waiting on other people, and generally waiting for my thesis defense on the 6th. Been having a lot more time to contemplate life, and get my priorities straightened out in the meantime, which isn't altogether a bad thing. I've come to the conclusion that to have a balanced life, I really need to exercise more, and need to focus myself a bit more on "spiritual" concerns (for lack of a better word). I get lots of mental stimulation from my work, which keeps me sharp in that domain, but these other areas of my life have kind of been ignored. I went out and bought myself a copy of Wii Fit yesterday, to kind of wean myself onto exercise. I was kind of skeptical at first, but I think that it just might be the perfect thing for me, right about now. Something to keep me mildly active until I start up aikido again in Halifax. As for spiritual things, I don't really mean God and religion, necessarily, but I do need to reorganize my sense of meaning and morality in my life. I'm re-reading "Man's Search for Meaning" right now, and have really been thinking a lot about how to be more environmentally responsible too, though I'm still working it out for myself how exactly I'm going to do that. All in all, good things to be thinking about.
--In gaming news, I'm still playing Culdcept Saga, but I also bought (and beat) Final Fantasy IV: The After Years on WiiWare. It *was* pretty fun, but the whole game lasted like, 4 hours. Naturally, you have to pay more to get the next chapters XD; Stupid SquareEnix and their exorbitant payment plans for their stupid nostalgic games...
--Also: I have re-discovered rss feeds through Google Reader as a more efficient way of checking my webcomics, and various gaming news sites. Now I can just check one page to see if anything updated! It's awesome, and I'm not sure why I waited so long before doing this.
That's about all for now, I suppose.