swordBeatsPaper

I’ve had absolutely no time to write. Despite this, I’ve been promising people I will write, in a gaming blog and a university-related computer science blog. I’ll post the links here when those start.

Otherwise, I’ve been swamped with coursework. For each of my 5 classes I have a project, and then I have an additional year-long project that isn’t associated with a class. They include a “smart” pac-man maze solver, an Android game that has elements in the real world, a visual Facebook-related Android app, and a few more that are both code-based and writing-based. In a lot of cases, the report is worth more than the actual code.

During my free time (or to be honest, my “procrastination time,” as I have no free time), I was browsing the web and remembered one of my favorite authors as a kid, Brian Jacques. I hadn’t visited his website in a while, so I searched for his name and clicked the first link. The first thing that came to mind was that the website’s look had completely changed. The second thing was a link at the top that caught my eye. “Obituaries.” He had passed away in February, and I hadn’t known. None of the people I know read his books, so I guess that’s understandable. But the world has lost a great storyteller. I thought I would blog a little to honor his writing.

If you know nothing about his work, I’ll give a little explanation of the style of his writing. After years of odd jobs including being a merchant sailor and a milkman, he began writing. His main work, the Redwall series, was started for the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind. His writing is very descriptive, in order for people without sight to be able to imagine the story as richly as possible. The Redwall series is based around Redwall Abbey and its inhabitants, a collection of small animals that one would expect to find in a forest. Mice, squirrels, moles, rabbits, and birds are just a few of them. Jacques has given a specific accent or way of speaking to every one of these animals, which is written out in the text, and gives them much more personality. Given the descriptive element, the feasts they have at the abbey always sound marvelous. The stories are classic “good versus evil” themes, the villains usually “vermin” like rats, ferrets, foxes, and sometimes even cats. Sometimes the hero is taken away from the abbey by force, sometimes they set out for adventure, but they always end up saving the day valiantly. Don’t let the anthropomorphism scare you away; the writing and his world of Mossflower is rich and beautiful. They’re brilliant tales.

Jacques has written one novel in this series nearly every single year since 1986, when Redwall was published. He also has other series, including Castaways of the Flying Dutchman, which was also a great read. I’ve read many of the Redwall books, but not all. I expect they’d still be just as enjoyable as they were when I was a kid, so I want to make a point to read all the ones I’ve missed. If you’re looking for a good old-fashioned heroic story, pick up Redwall, and appreciate the late Jacques’ writing.

These days, I don’t listen to the radio. I’m not driving, I don’t own a physical radio, and I don’t bother going to websites of radio stations to listen. It’s just too easy to find the exact type of song you want to listen to on the web. But the one thing that I miss out on because of this is spoken radio: news stories, radio shows, the sort of thing my parents would play in the car on long drives.

The best radio station for this in America was (and still is) NPR, National Public Radio. When I was young, I was annoyed at my parents when they put it on. Why would they want to listen to news all the time? It’s usually either boring or depressing. But then, I discovered something I didn’t expect: radio shows with interesting stories, interviews and in-depth accounts of interesting things that have happened–and some that haven’t. I started to ask my parents to turn to NPR, or to stay on listening to it after the 20 minutes of news were over. Sometimes, it was a happy surprise after flipping channels, with no interesting music playing. You’d think that radio shows like this were out of fashion, no one did them anymore, it was for a time without computers and TV. But podcasts still live and there are still people who listen to the radio in their cars. The work of reading is gone, someone is speaking to you in their best storyteller voice, and you still get to picture everything in your imagination. I love it.

I’ll give you my three favorite shows, all available online. A Prairie Home Companion has been my favorite. It’s hosted by Garrison Keillor, an amazing writer with a unique and captivating voice. I imagine he’ll be hosting the show till he passes away, and what a sad day that will be. The show is largely humorous, which I think was what drew me to it in the first place. My favorite segments are ones like “Guy Noir, Private Eye” and “The Lives of the Cowboys,” little made-up stories with recurring characters and largely ridiculous shenanigans, with both the characters’ voices and the sound effects done by actors. Other segments include different bands, usually small and little-known, and most of them in the genre of country, blues, and bluegrass. The main segments are monologues of Keillor’s, such as “The News from Lake Wobegon” which I’ve never believed were completely true stories, and other interesting tidbits, different in every show. There are recurring made-up ads for “Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie” and “Powdermilk Biscuits” which always make me chuckle. It runs once a week, and I make sure to catch it when I visit America–and sometimes online.

Another one on NPR that’s worth listening to is This American Life. On their site, they say, “There’s a theme to each episode, and a variety of stories on that theme. It’s mostly true stories of everyday people, though not always.” The stories have always managed to grab my attention, and I can’t stop listening to one once I’ve started. A now-famous radio host Ira Glass hosts it, whose voice I also like listening to. Once I hear it, I know it’s time for a good story. I listened to one today because I heard Neil Gaiman had written a short story for it at the very end of the hour–but the entire hour is worth listening to. The first part is about an American man who ended up in a Chinese prison, and the rest is short stories of adventure, both creepy and whimsical. The theme is “Adventure” and is available here.

Lastly, The Vinyl Cafe. This show isn’t on NPR, but instead on a Canadian radio station. “The stories and misadventures of Dave, the owner of the “Vinyl Cafe”, the world’s smallest record store, where the motto is ‘We may not be big, but we’re small.'” I frequently listened to this show on weekends at home with my mom, eating breakfast and listening, lingering in the dining room and living room longer than I would have otherwise. This is similar to A Prairie Home Companion, except there is more of an emphasis on stories, though there’s music too. They were always fun stories, both entertaining and gripping.

All of these are available on their respective websites for download, and are subscribable via RSS feed or iTunes podcasts. NPR has other interesting programs, so I recommend you check out their site as well. I highly recommend you listen to at least one of these shows, and perhaps leave some time in your day for stories. We all need them.

The new term is now in full swing, and I’m enjoying myself. I finally get to choose (all but one of) my classes this year, and I find them all both engaging and challenging. Here’s as understandable an explanation I can make of all the classes I’m taking:

Artificial Intelligence (AI): Speaks for itself, mostly. I’ll be learning everything from decision-tree algorithms to how we can make robots think, learn and be “intelligent.” I don’t know what our project will be yet, but last year’s was to create the “mind” for a robot like a roomba. Ideally, if attached to a real roomba “body,” it would be able to navigate a room’s floor and vacuum it in the most efficient way possible. I’ve heard from last year’s 4th years that this project–and class–was quite challenging. It interests me enough, though, that I’m just going to put my nose to the grindstone and hope for the best.

Constraint Programming (CP): Consider a Sudoku problem. You have spaces for numbers, some of which are filled in. Then you have “constraints,” where each row, colum, and 3×3 square must all have the numbers 1-9, no repetitions. A solution program to this constraint satisfaction problem, or CSP, would consider the empty spaces, the ones filled in, and the constraints, and using built-in algorithms, would be able to solve any Sudoku problem. These are the sort of problems I’ll be learning about. I won’t have to write the algorithms, but instead will use software called Choco to write these programs and then look “under the hood” at the algorithms themselves so that I understand how Choco works, and can write more efficient programs. We’ll be first writing a Sudoku solver, which is actually small and straightforward, and then be doing something more complex, which I don’t know yet. This is a branch of AI, so a few of the topics overlap with my AI class.

Functional Programming (FP): In this class we will be learning a programming language called Haskell, which is classed as a “functional” language. Languages like C++ and Java are considered “imperative.” It’s too complex to explain what these mean if you don’t know much about programming. Essentially, functional languages are more mathematics-based. Many banks use them for their software, but they can usually be used for anything imperative languages can be used for. The important part is that you have to think differently when programming, which can be quite challenging if you’re not used to it. As a programmer, it’s always good to learn new languages, and I enjoy the challenge.

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI): This class is a bit less technical. We will be learning about different ways of interacting with computers (not just visually, but including touch and hearing/audio) and how to write a user-friendly program. This includes things like, where will the button/menu bar/text field go so that the user instantly knows what that thing does? Sites like Twitter, Facebook, even Google and Apple probably have an HCI expert or team helping their website designers choose how things look. This applies to programs like Word and Excel, games, even Android and iPhone apps. The project in the class is to create any program, just as long as it follows the HCI rules we learn in the class. Next term I’ll be taking MHCI, which focuses on Android programming. Apps are definitely the thing to know about these days.

Those were the classes I’ve chosen for this term… hopefully they were fairly understandable to those of you who aren’t technically-oriented. The class I’m required to take is Professional Skills and Issues, where we learn about ethics in the software world and write essays to learn how to argue and hone our writing skills. I don’t think I need help there, but completion of the course means getting accredited by the BCS (British Computing Society), where otherwise I’d have to take a test, do a presentation, and pay something around £150. I guess it’s worth it.

Fun stuff.

Side note: I’ve started using Tumblr again. So check out my page of pretty books and cute things and fun quotes (link on the left near the top of the page).

Oh, and Happy October! It’s almost All Hallows Read.

This past week, my boyfriend and I went to Spain and Gibraltar. It was beautiful, but I never quite got used to the humidity. Evening was the most tolerable, and so we often slept in. I wish we’d woken up earlier some days, since we only got to the beach twice: once in the evening as the sun was setting and once on the day of our flight, after we realized the beach was worth getting up early for.

The beach was incredible. The water, since it was so salty and it’s the Mediterranean after all (despite Gibraltar being near the Atlantic), was very warm once you got used to it. You couldn’t just float around in the water, either; the waves were so strong that you had to jump up when they hit the shore, or you’d be engulfed in salt water. It was a bit intense at first, but then I had fun with it and didn’t want to leave. I also did my best to put on enough sunscreen, but alas… I was very burnt. My boyfriend was spared, as he caked on the sunscreen whenever he had a chance. I know now, so next time will hopefully be better.

We did the more touristy thing one day and went to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar. It’s a 426 m (1,398 ft) mountain that’s better described as a sudden sheer cliff, and takes up most of the land space of Gibraltar. Living on the rock are small wild apes. When you take the cable car to the top, you can see them everywhere, and they hang around, very unafraid. You’re not supposed to feed them, and there’s actually a hefty fine if you’re seen doing it. At the cafe at the top, we witnessed one of the apes running inside when someone was holding the door, jumping onto a tall table, grabbing a bag of crisps, and running away again. The girls at the table all shrieked and stepped away. The ape went outside onto some dirt and opened the bag and started eating them, and plenty of people immediately went right over to it and took a picture. It didn’t seem to mind.

This week we had an enrollment lecture, one intro lecture later in the week, and nothing else till next week. I’m not even sure yet what classes I’ll be taking, since the final deadline isn’t until two weeks into teaching. I was expecting classes to have started already, but at least I can catch up on a few things now! Like blogging…

Surprisingly close to my flat is this gorgeous building, the Kelvingrove Art Gallery. It’s free to enter and would take the better part of a day to really appreciate everything. I’ve been in Scotland for almost a year now and hadn’t been inside until a few days ago. It’s almost a crime… though my friends tell me quite a few Glasgwegians haven’t been, either.

Almost everything is in the wings of the building. From ancient Egypt to the history of Glasgow to famous works of art by Van Gogh and Salvador Dali, they’ve got it all. I enjoyed their extensive collection of stuffed life-size animals and skeletons of dinosaurs, ancient fish, and mammals. My favorite was the Giant Irish Deer. It astounds me to think of deer or elk that huge living not too long ago in Scotland. Look at the size of those antlers!

My boyfriend and I spent about two hours there and didn’t get to see everything before it closed. Another trip there soon is likely.

Otherwise I’m trying to think of things to fill the three weeks left of my holiday. There’s a nice cafe right across from the museum, called Beanscene. It’s a chain in the area, but I love the atmosphere and upbeat music. I’ll probably go there occasionally to write and edit my novel. I’ve been reading quite a bit too, and I have two books I’ve finished in the last week that I’m going to review. Expect those reviews on my blog in the next week or so. Since I’ll be hanging out in my flat so much, and even reading and writing won’t fill my time. Perhaps I’ll think about a game to get into for a few weeks…

Edinburgh was beautiful. If I hadn’t lost my camera’s cable and battery charger, I would have taken pictures. I went with my boyfriend, who doesn’t know a lot of Neil Gaiman’s work. We decided he should come along kind of at the last minute, so he didn’t see the talk. We arrived at the festival barely in time for Neil Gaiman’s presentation. Signing afterward took a long time, then we barely made the train home after eating quickly. This all means I will certainly be going back one of these weekends with the boyfriend to see the sights. I did get a glimpse of Edinburgh Castle, from Princes Street. A valley that looks like a sheer cliff face in the middle of a city? Man, that’s impressive.

Seeing Neil Gaiman in person was fantastic. I only got about ten seconds to talk to him, and that’s after an hour and a half of waiting in line to get my book signed, but it was definitely worth it. I told him his work was inspiring, and that I was a writer, and that reading his stuff helps. A bit lame, but he’s not going to remember it anyway. He thanked me and wished me luck with the writing. And kudos to him for signing so many books. The guy in front of me thanked him for that, but Gaiman thanked him back for waiting so long in line, though I think his job is probably more tiring.

His hour-long talk was great as well. He has kind of a big goofy smile, and crazy hair, and is both funny and eloquent. Similes and metaphors (decent ones, mind you) seem to just be inherent in his speech. A guy from the festival did the interviewing, but it was mostly Gaiman going on about his different works, and some of his thought processes behind writing and his different books/comics/scripts. He even gave a sneak peek of some writing he’s working on, and to my delight, said there’s a sequel–or two–of American Gods to be written…

Tomorrow marks the last day of my internship. After that, a full month free to do whatever I want, and then classes start. My last year as an undergraduate, and possibly my last year at university. Gulp.