S P Hannifin

I saw I Am Legend not long ago, which was fun. I’d give it a 5 out of 10. I think the film makers did an excellent job of making it engaging, especially since there’s only one character for much of the film. They also did a great job of making the first zombie scenes quite suspenseful. I didn’t really like the ending though. The story writers broke one of my “good story” commandments. I thought the alternate ending better, but still not good enough…

I hope my dog doesn’t become a zombie dog!

(I know they weren’t really “zombies” as they weren’t undead, but they fit the “monster” role in the story, so the word “zombie” fits, in my opinion.)

Anyway, today was the last day of classes, now I’ve got exams to study for… and then hopefully a life. Maybe.

I’ll probably be up late tonight working on my final homework assignment! And then… final exams. Blagh.

The homework basically involves programming a ray tracer. The professor actually provided a good chunk of the code, but we have to edit it and add on to it by programming it to antialias the final image with adaptive ray tracing. Allow me to explain:

You see, ray tracing involves creating an image by sending off “rays” of light. Each ray sent represents a pixel on the screen, so basically all you have to determine is a pixel’s color. When you send off a ray, you basically have to trace its path to where it intersects with something, if anything. Then, if you want some reflections, you trace where that ray bounces to and what it intersects with next. In the real world, rays can bounce off objects countless times, but in the computer world, since the computer has to compute it all, you’ll have to set a limit.

Just plain ray tracing pixel by pixel will give very jagged edges on objects because the process is very quantized. That is, you’re only sending off rays at discrete distances from one another. But jagged edges look artificial to us, so adaptive ray tracing solves this by firing off more than one ray for certain pixels. If the final colors between two rays are very different, you fire off some more arrays between them and basically change the shade of the pixel. This smooths the edges.

This is of course hardly anything new. While computers have gotten faster, most ray tracing graphics still must be prerendered, no realtime graphics here! These ray tracing ideas have been in practice since before I was born… some principles in computer science don’t vanish quickly…

Sorry, I had little else to blog about… I’ll post screen shots of my wonderful work tomorrow. Maybe.

One of the things I hate most about the method of formal education is, of course, the giving of assignments. I think if I had ever studied music formally I would have loathed having to write a piece in a certain style, or figure out harmonies for a given melody, or, what seems to be a favorite, “write a piece using only this given motif, because that’s what Beethoven did a lot.”

Control

Though I would have loathed such assignments, I’m sure I would have learned quite a lot from them, and could probably put that knowledge to good use afterwards. So the question then becomes: is the suffering through the assignment worth the practice gained? In my opinion… no! Otherwise I would have of course pursued a formal study of music.

I think what would have made me hate such assignments so much is not only my disinterest, but the psychological suffering of feeling I’m not in control, that I’m not doing the assignment for me. If the assignment was optional or ungraded, I feel in much greater control… but then I’m probably less likely to do the assignment in the first place, especially if I’m not interested.

Why does a teacher give them?

I honestly believe many assignments are just busy work. Students get them for so long, and when they become teachers they easily get into the habit of giving it (even if they hated it themselves). In this sense, some teachers really don’t put a whole lot of thought into the assignment giving, they just do it because it’s what they’re used to, it’s what everyone else is doing.

They might even do it because on some subconscious level they like the power they have. That might sound absurd, but imagine for a second what it would be like if you were giving assignments. When I was really young, I wasted my poor brother’s time by making him go to my school, in which I was the teacher. I have no idea what I taught, I don’t think I really knew much (my how things have changed!) but it was just plain fun to be in charge and to make worksheets and plan out what someone has to do (perhaps that joy remains in my attraction to game designing, and writing, and composing… I’m dictating in a way what someone else is going to experience for at least a few minutes in their life… in a small way it is a bit of power).

Anyway, at that age, teaching seemed a very attractive job, one of power. You basically get to tell everyone what to do without having to pay them! And you’re in a higher position. You’re not just everyone’s friend sharing with them knowledge and experience on a common interest; in the teacher-student relationship, the teacher is the one with the higher status. And I do believe some people are really attracted to getting that status and set themselves up as teachers not so much because of their interests in a certain subject, but because of that psychological attraction to that higher status and that power… though, of course, this is something that no teacher would admit (just like I won’t admit why I blog… oh no, just kidding); teachers often have very romantic reasons for why they teach, about how much they care about education and inspiration and other people and the future and stuff, and I’m sure that’s true for plenty of teachers. But no teacher says “I got out of college and couldn’t really think of anything else to do, but I knew how schools worked…”

Conclusion

Obviously I like power too; as I said, feeling I’m in control over what I’m doing is one of the reasons I hate assigments so much. My ideal way of learning (besides books and the Internet) is talking to someone with similar interests non-formally. We both have equal status and the only assignments I do are the ones I give and choose to do myself. That said, I think there are certainly some excellent “mentors” … by which I mean more “non-professional teachers” who are somewhere between the teacher-student and friend-friend relationship. They might give assignments, but they won’t grade you, and you’ll have a say in the nature of the assignment… but they are unfortunately most rare.

I could blather on about the subject, but I won’t because I have an assigment to do…

Whew, I’m tired. Worked on and finished that programming project all morning. Went to class. Came home. Ate dinner. Came here. Hmmmm… the only other thing I can think to blather about is what I think about the future… as in, this weekend. But since it will be here soon, I might as well just wait until then. Bye.

Still haven’t done much in the past day besides homework. Makes this blog a bit boring, no? The assignment is to program a client-server auction application using socket and TCP/IP protocol in a distributed environment. Isn’t that interesting?

I’ve mostly done homework today. I have to program a client-server socket TCP/IP protocol Java thingamabob. I really want to whine about it… but by this time next week, all I’ll have are exams to worry about. I’m not sure if that’s really a relief though. I have another programming project due on Monday, so I’ll be busy all weekend as well. Blagh! Even when you’re running the last lap, you’re running. You don’t get to start walking.

I finally got my package in the mail of eight science fiction short story collection books from the “Writers of the Future” series. A lot of reading to do over the summer! I look forward to checking out what sort of stories have won, and may enter the contest myself if I can ever finish anything.

I was reading stories from the 2007 Nebula Award Showcase book, and… well… wasn’t particularly pleased. The winners seemed a bit “artsy” to me. I did like some of the stories in there, though, and sometimes I’ll really like an author’s style but hate his or her sense of story or characterization (or vice-versa). So… I doubt I’ll ever feel bad if I never win a Nebula… (first I gotta actually write something anyway).

Today was the last Tuesday of classes this semester, the end is near! (Though the semester isn’t over when classes end… there’s always those dreaded exams…)

My parents bought a Wii over the weekend. Hmmmm, not much else to say about that.

I’m continuing to read Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought which is great, very engaging. There are some moments when he is over my head though. In the chapter I just finished, he spent some time arguing against the theories of some other linguist, and left me completely confused. Something about the meanings of words being innate or not. Anyway, I think I might just buy the book in paperback sometime, it’d be worth keeping on the bookshelf I think, worth owning…

Well, I just finished the second-to-last Monday of university education. I’ve got two more programming projects to do for my degree. And then finals. Hope it will all go well. Oops, I should stay away from saying anything about the future… it’s boring for a blog, never looks good in retrospect.

That’s all for now.

I overheard a parent say that he was tired of encouraging his son to do homework. He kept reminding his son over and over to do it, but his son just won’t listen, and he’s tired of it.

Well, duh! No one likes to be nagged about anything. There’s a difference between encouraging and nagging. To simply keep reminding someone to do something is nagging, and it’s extremely annoying. Imagine if the Catholic Church nagged people to go to confession, of if Jesus himself nagged everyone about their sinfulness.

Encouraging means to inspire with courage or confidence. This can rarely be achieved by simply constantly reminding someone of something.

This is probably something that’s too obvious to really need to be said, but there are some dunderheads in the world who don’t realize it… I’ve had teachers who think they encourage creativity by simply repeating “be creative!” before handing out each boring assignment. That’s not the way it works…

So if you really want to encourage students to do their homework, reward them with something (and, no, knowledge is not its own reward).

In other news, I’ve got about a week and a half left of college classes. I’ve got a lot of homework due this Friday and next Monday, so I’ll probably be busy all week. Then I have to study for exams. That won’t be fun.

I was watching 20/20 last night and John Stossel was saying something about government programs meant to help the poverty in America. He mentioned that the nation’s poverty had been declining steadily even before the government programs existed, and that it was like the programs were “jumping in front of the parade and pretending to lead.”

Now I don’t really care to argue about poverty levels and government programs. The phrase “jumping in front of the parade and pretending to lead” just stuck out at me. It seems applicable to… I don’t know… gifted education programs?

Not that I’m against all gifted education programs, of course, but I think one has to be careful in trying to analyze how much good they’re doing. In a way, they might just be “pretending to lead.” I can just imagine some creative children drawing great drawings and writing interesting stories (or whatever creative children do these days), impressing adults, only to have some teachers jump in front of them and say “We’ll be their mentor, their guide!” when they might not really be doing much of anything, maybe even just getting in the way. But an onlooker might say “wow, those teachers have a bunch of creative children; they must be great teachers!” when in fact it’s the students that are great.

In the real world, however, I’m sure there’s much more of a balance. Gifted education programs can certainly provide students with more opportunities, and that’s definitely important. But I think it can be quite telling to look at the requirements to get into these programs. Students are usually tested and analyzed before receiving these opportunities; what would happen if the opportunities were just given to everyone? What if we just called every student “gifted”? Sometimes it seems like some education programs can just pluck out the students with the qualities desired, then pretend to instill those qualities.

Kind of annoying, aren’t they, people who are pretending to lead?