Busy Me

Wow, I suck at keeping up on this. Over two weeks with no post. Admittedly I have been considerably more busy, since the school term has started now and I'm doing a lot of TA work, plus I had a paper deadline last Tuesday, plus I'm playing World of Warcraft again (MAJOR time drain), plus I'm doing tango classes/practice three nights a week. But that's no excuse! Actually, I'm very relieved that I have so much going on, since it's kind of kick-started me back into productive mode. Maybe I can hurry up and finish that PhD now.

The Changing World of Television

I was commenting to someone the other day that I felt like the best TV shows coming out now were better than they've ever been in the past. More specifically, they had better character development and more sophisticated and intelligent plotlines. The person pointed out that a possible reason for this is the current ease of access to television shows. If you miss watching some episode when it airs, you can perhaps watch it online, or maybe you TiVoed it, or you'll buy the DVD, or you could even download a digital copy illegally from some file sharing site (not that I would EVER think of doing that, cough cough). The point is, there's are many ways of seeing missed episodes now, while in the past you would just have to wait for the rerun to come on, perhaps several months later. I think this has enabled producers to make shows that are more strongly interconnected between episodes, which allows better character development and offers the possibility of working with more complex and higher caliber plots. Of course, there are still as many (if not more) crappy shows being made out there as ever before, but it's good to see that at least some of them are pushing for something better.

Excuses

I seem to be coming up with all sorts of reasons these days for not doing serious research work. It's a little easier to do now, as there are many things going on with my Graduate Student Association and because I'm the head teaching assistant for my advisor's course during the semester which is starting next week. And of course writing this post is another means of procrastination of my real work. I do have a conference paper deadline in just over a week though, so I'm really going to have to get my ass in gear in the next couple days. I suspect this weekend will include a fair bit of office time for me.

New Post

Wow, I've done a really crappy job of keeping up on my blog lately. I guess I've been more busy with other stuff (tennis, gym, salsa, tango, poker nights), but that's no excuse! I pledge to do a better job from now on (or at least for the next week or so).

I finally bought a new tennis racquet yesterday, and will try it out for the first time in 40 minutes. I thought I had gotten a great deal, since it was on sale for about $180 down from $350, but I found out after you can buy the same on in the US for only $90! Oh well, as long as it improves my game, I won't complain (too much).

And lastly, if you're looking for a new TV show to watch, Heroes is quite awesome.

Dancing Through Life

I've resolved that I'm going to put a concerted effort into improving my tango skills this term. This resolution was initially inspired several months ago by the film Take the Lead, which is a pretty bad movie, but has some cool dancing scenes. More recently, I've been meeting more and more people who enjoy dancing tango, and watching some of them dance it is pretty impressive. Of course, I will of course continue with salsa as well. I'd love to do swing also, but for some strange reason no one in Switzerland seems to know what it is.

My Rubik's cube solving time is now down to around 5 minutes. Still got a ways to go till 23 seconds though.

Rubik's Cube

My officemate brought in a Rubik's Cube to work today, and I spent essentially the entire day playing with it. I'm pleased to say that after the first four hours or so, I did manage to solve it. I was about halfway through solving it again when I had to leave for tennis. My officemate can apparently solve it in 23 seconds on average, so I have a ways to go before I catch up. What a wonderful use of my time.

On a somewhat orthogonal note, I've decided I ought to make an effort to be more social, since I feel as though my social life over the last month or so has been essentially non-existent. This may mean I'm going to have to interact with people outside of the Computer Science department.

Office Comedy and Magic Engines

Even though it's a couple days late, I feel the need to express how impressed I was with this season's premiere of the The Office. Not only did they resolve last year's cliffhanger in a way that doesn't ruin the situation, the way they did it may even allow for funnier situations. Also, the episode plot was excellent, fully in the style of former episodes. I'm not saying that the show won't lose its touch at some point, but it ain't there yet.

I saw this while browsing Slashdot yesterday. Could certainly be one of the too-good-to-be-true claims, but the description does make some sense. Maybe flying cars are finally going to arrive?