Life in General

What's Goin' On

2013-09-08T22:53:00.001-04:00

Biggest news to report is that I submitted my thesis about a week ago. I defend on September 26th (if you are in Toronto, you are more than welcome to attend ;)), but getting the document in the hands of my committee was a huge step.

For Kristie and I, the rest of the month will be spent tying up loose ends here in town and packing for our next adventure in Australia. If you'd like to follow along, visually, then be sure to keep an eye on our flickr feed. We're starting to ramp up our photo frequency, and so most documented memories should start appearing there.

Oh, and one last thing that's worth mentioning -- K and I finally put together a full collaborative web project (we've always mostly focused on our individual things). Check out our moving sale site that was built to showcase the stuff we're trying to sell off before moving on. If you'd like to buy something feel free to request it on the site, and if you'd like to run your own sale just let us know and we'll hook you up. It was actually quite fun adding new items to the sale (a part of the site most don't get to see).

Bound for South Australia

2013-06-23T11:15:00.000-04:00

A lot has happened in the last five and a half months or so. I've managed to get two papers published (sending me to Rome and Beijing), squeak in for a top spot at the Google Places API contest (sending Kristie and I to San Francisco for Google I/O), and even make great strides towards finishing my PhD (much of the dissertation is in first draft form by now). But probably the biggest piece of news is the contract I signed just a few days back: we're headed for south Australia!

To be more specific, I will be taking up a post-doc at the University of Melbourne working on human-agent collaboration. It's going to be extremely fun research, and if all goes well, I'll be starting in October. It's a little daunting thinking of all the loose ends we need to tie up before heading over seas, but we're both extremely excited for the adventure we're about to embark on. If you have any suggestions on what we might want to check out while there, be sure to let us know.

Resolutions of 2012

2013-01-01T22:45:00.000-05:00

I'm not entirely sure what this year's resolution(s) will be, but I thought I would give an update on last year's. The idea was to take on a new challenge every month, and perform that task daily. It was inspired by this talk by Matt Cutts of Google.

I managed to carry it on every month aside from July (I was out of the country most of the month and things were a little too hectic). It was interesting to see which things worked, and which didn't. For example, choosing something that requires a particular setting is problematic: if you haven't played your musical instrument by midnight, sneaking out to the studio to pluck softly is a royal pain in the arse. On the other hand, doing some things just have very little lasting impact: that month of flossing? Ya, it didn't last...

So here's what I wound up doing on a daily basis last year:

(Jan) Technical Writing: This one was fairly easy -- I had a lot of stuff to write that month, but at least it helped as a forcing function to do some writing at least once every day. I ended up writing a paper from scratch, although we never did submit it.
(Feb) Reading Fiction: I rarely read books, so it was good to get through a few. I'm slow at it, but managed to read Sirens of Titan, The Golden Compass, and a little bit of Dante's Inferno.
(Mar) Mandolin: Learned to do a proper chop chord this month ;). On the nights I didn't practice before it got late, I would end up just fingering the chords silently.
(Apr) Reading Non-Fiction: This month let me catch up on some books / references I'd meant to get to. I read Visualizing Data from cover to cover, went through a few chapters of some academic text books I had laying around, and read a number of chapters in a Django tutorial. I finished the month by getting a start on Cartographies of Time, but still haven't managed to get all the way through it.
(May) Hacking Side Projects: This month I spent at least half an hour every day working on some side project that I never got around to doing. The majority of the month was dedicated to some private research I've got going on, but the other evenings managed to produce some cool stuff: a Buzz Data library for python and a voter correspondence investigation into Toronto city council.
(Jun) Reading Papers: I read a paper every day. Some days, this was simple, but others made it a bit rough (e.g., those days where you aren't really at the office or have much spare time to toss around). All of the papers were academic and most were related to my research, although there were some interesting visualization or music-as-math ones thrown in there.
(Jul) Break
(Aug) French, Floss, and Flexibility: Due to the break, I figured I better double-down on August. I did at least 30 minutes of learning French every day (if you ever want to learn a language, Duolingo is spectacular). I flossed nightly (have only done so again once or twice since August :S). Finally, I made a point of stretching nightly as well (typical soccer stretches doable from a seated position).
(Sep) Singing: This was a significant one. Daily, I ventured into our basement studio, strapped on a headset, and repeatedly sang a chosen song for at least half an hour. It was pointed practice, as I wanted to improve, and so I would analyze and criticize every take and try to fix my mistakes. Every day was a new song, and the last week was dedicated to Shanty's and other instrument-less songs (on the other days I had either the banjo or mando in hand). I worked hard on this month, even practising my breathing technique, and by the end of the month it did show. The final two days were spent re-singing every song from the month (14 each day).
(Oct) Video Lectures: There was an ever-growing list of video lectures I wanted to watch. October is when I flushed out that list. Everything from Android development to a mini-statistics course was watched during this month.
(Nov) Meditation: This was an interesting one. I practised a mix of mindfulness and and focused meditation (more on the latter). At the start of the month I found no more than 3-5 seconds without distracting thoughts could be achieved. It felt like progress was at a crawl until about 3 weeks in where I observed a significant jump in ability to clear my mind. By the end I had ramped up to a 25min session with roughly 4-5 minutes without a distracting thought.
(Dec) Banjo: I plucked away for at least 30min a day. It was a little challenging since the banjo had to come along for the xmas holiday in Barrie, but it worked out well in the end. Sipping egg nog and learning irish reels is a wonderful way to spend the holidays.

I've found certain things "stick" -- I haven't played the mandolin consistently since last March, but I know my skill is higher now than it was at the start of that month (i.e., not everything I've learned has gone to waste). I imagine that holds for all of the music work I did. Other things, like the aforementioned floss, was "a good idea at the time" but just haven't stuck.

In general, I chose "things that I never found the time to do" rather than just focusing on challenges. The consistency I had for doing something every day was likely due in large part to the fact that these are all things I wanted to do anyways (well, aside from flossing ;)).

If you're planning on doing a challenge-month, I would recommend picking something that you want to do on a regular basis, rather than picking some arbitrary goal. Don't get me wrong, goals are good to have, but saying "I want to learn how to play this song by the end of December on the banjo" isn't nearly as effective as "I want to play the banjo at least 30 minutes every day in December".

So, any suggestions on where I should go with 2013?

TTC Pass

2012-12-28T01:34:00.002-05:00

Note: This is a cross-post from my tech blog.

I've entered another contest. Chances of getting anywhere near a prize are slim-to-nil, but the project is fun and hopefully useful if you're living in Toronto:

Essentially, TTC Pass is a service that allows Torontonians to find where they can purchase various types of transit passes, and additionally collaborate on when / where certain passes are sold out (as monthly passes are apt to do). Check out the video and site if you'd like to learn more, and if you'd like to support my entry (and have a Google account), the voting page can be found [here].

The City 4 Me

2012-04-10T16:16:00.000-04:00

Just a quick plug to a post over on my tech blog here. I entered a contest to determine what the most liveable city in the world is, and managed to make the short-list for voting. Check out my post for more info on the contest, my entry, and how to vote.

(apologies to those who have seen this posted many times today)

Step Softly

2010-03-11T09:26:00.002-05:00

[ audio ]

Some of the samples we've recorded have made it to the site freesound. Doing this has been a wonderful experience -- our snippets of sound have been used in countless songs, films, soundscapes, etc. The comments that roll in are generally positive as well...generally...

This weeks sample can be found here. It's a recording of Kristie walking on the beach out in Vancouver, BC. Some of the better comments:

"good sample---you know what you're doing" - Audiobuzzer

"Thanks will be used in my school project! Better than the other junk out there :)" - lugio

"ZORA LOVER LOVES THIS SHIT BOIIIII lovin zoras <3" - ZoraLover416

But a comment this week ended up being the first negative we've received:

"Very misleading description, no way is that sand." - misogenisnt

Well if you've ever been to an ocean beach in Canada, you may recall the mix of boulder, pebble, sand, and seaweed that lines most of the coast. Not a tropical sort of beach, but for me it sounds like home ;). Cheers.

Beach that was recorded in the sample.

Cybernetic Broadband

2010-02-24T09:00:00.002-05:00

[ audio ]

In audio engineering there's a problem called the Cocktail Party Problem. Imagine you're at a cocktail party and there are dozens of conversations going on around you -- how do you focus on a single one and hear what they're saying? Scientists have struggled with this for a while, and here you can struggle with it yourself ;).

This is one of my favourite "overheard conversation" clips that I've got. It was taken in a pub in the middle of Cork, Ireland that's not listed / marked anywhere (friend of a friend knew it's location and informed us on how to get there). The clientele were obviously regulars, and all quite surprised to see a crowd of 8 or so foreigners come in for beer. Nevertheless, they eventually went back to their respective discussions and one fella with a thick accent was talking about AI taking over the world (in a drunken string of thoughts from what I can tell). As for me, I welcome the new robot overlords that reside in the ubiquitous "cybernetic broadband".

Ice Ice Baby

2010-02-22T09:00:00.002-05:00

[ audio ]

I'll let you in on a secret. Growing up, I listened to a fair bit of ol' school rap. It may not have been so old school during the time, but it certainly is now. A few weeks back I had the opportunity to see my first Raptors game ($11 tickets for the win), and low and behold the half-time show happened to be Vanilla Ice. He performed two songs, and one happened to be 'Ice Ice Baby'. Some may scoff at the concept, but this threw me back into my high school days -- cruisin' Guysborough in head's car with the rap blaring*. The sound was gloriously loud at the game, and the few seconds here are about all of the recording that didn't cap out (I left the end in to give a feel of the rest of the audio clip).

*: Guysborough is the small village I grew up in. Population about 500 (people) last I checked. 'Head' is the nick of a friend who happened to be the one with the most access to using a car.

Teens In Ireland

2010-02-19T10:15:00.001-05:00

[ audio ]

Probably one of the most fondest memories of my time in Ireland was the group of teens in the corner of a pub we found one night. Sadly, I didn't get a picture, but luckily they allowed me to throw the iPhone on their table for one of the songs. This group of teens (and young 20-somethings) looked like what you'd expect a garage band to be here in Canada. Only they weren't playing punk, or bad rock, but rather some great celtic tunes. This one's a long one, but well worth the listen. At the start I'm talking about where the bodhran player got his instrument, and for how much. At the end they're talking about the new iPhone OS (3.0 was just out that week ;)). The pic is of a random pub in Cork -- it may have been the same one, but I couldn't tell ya after the amount of stout consumed that eve. Enjoy.

Rowing The Summer Away

2010-02-17T09:17:00.001-05:00

In July we visited Altenburg, and among other things, we took a row boat out around this small lake. There`s some background noise, but the creak and paddle sounds are well worth it. Great way to spend the day...

[ audio ]

Waverly Steam Engine

2010-02-15T17:22:00.001-05:00

[ audio ]

We took a trip on the Waverly Paddle Steamer over to Dunoon on the Clyde river in early August. It was blogged here, but the interesting part for me (audibly) was the sound of the steam engine. Here's a pic of what you're hearing.

Introducing Audio Blogging

2010-02-15T17:09:00.000-05:00

So anyone that follows this may have noticed the lack of posting (almost 4 months to be exact). Now that deadlines have subsided (to some extent), I plan on shuffling things a bit to keep a regular release schedule. Just before K and I headed out on our 3 week trek around Europe, I posted a pic-a-day with a quick note to accompany it. Well that format worked pretty well, and I'm going to do the same now, except a little less frequent, and audio instead of pics. So not exactly the same thing, but close enough ;).

Over the summer (in Scotland / Europe with the iPhone) and over the last few months (with a field mic we own) Kristie and I have been recording bits here and there. Just like a picture, every audio clip has a story associated with it. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then an audio clip would be worth a million to me. If you follow this in Google Reader, or just visit the site from time to time, the audio should be embedded in a media player (assuming you have flash enabled). Enjoy.

Where we're to...

2009-10-26T13:40:00.000-04:00

It's been pointed out before, but I think the (Canadian) reach of the Muise Mob siblings is worthy of visualizing:

View Muise Mob in a larger map

The only thing that remains to be done is to have another sibling and send em to the North-west Yukon. Get on er Mom / Dad.

Mutant Bass

2009-10-07T16:58:00.002-04:00

Love it...

Diego Stocco - Experibass from Diego Stocco on Vimeo.

Pic-a-day (Day 10)

2009-08-27T04:33:00.000-04:00

It's been an amazing summer in Scotland -- there's noone I'd rather have spent the time with. Wish us luck on the last leg of our journey. Ciao.

Pic-a-day (Day 9)

2009-08-26T04:15:00.000-04:00

Costume party...priceless.

Pic-a-day (Day 8)

2009-08-25T10:16:00.000-04:00

Miss my (brief) band major days. These guys were pro.

Pic-a-day (Day 7)

2009-08-24T18:03:00.000-04:00

Love how this image turned out. The Necropolis was gloomy for most of the day, but now during this shot.

Pic-a-day (Day 6)

2009-08-23T09:46:00.000-04:00

We took a trip to a castle with friends Irwin and Lauren. The face looks like shock, but it's likely just a yawn (coffee had yet to be consumed at this point).

Pic-a-day (Day 5)

2009-08-22T17:19:00.000-04:00

We had about 2 hours to blow in Sudkreuz (just south of Berlin) during our Germany trip. It was hot and stuffy, and this beer very well may have been the most refreshing I've had all summer.

Pic-a-day (Day 4)

2009-08-21T16:37:00.000-04:00

Ireland was amazing. This church was no exception.

Pic-a-day (Day 3)

2009-08-20T10:34:00.000-04:00

K and I cruised Stockholm with John and Kate -- good times.

Pic-a-day (Day 2)

2009-08-19T09:40:00.000-04:00

My first ever haggis. I've had it quite a few times since ;).

Pic-a-day (Day 1)

2009-08-18T17:45:00.001-04:00

Lots of silence here, eh? So how's about 1 fav photo from this summer every day for the remaining 10 days I'm in Glasgow. Let's giver a go:

This guy was amazing. Only managed one airborn shot, but it was worth it.

Rainy Glasgow

2009-05-05T19:42:00.000-04:00

We made it safe and sound (and with all our luggage)...albeit a bit tired and drenched. If you care about the Scotland-specific posts, a blog has been created [here]. Tech posts will likely pick up, and ditto with the cooking blog (food will need to be imaginative on this budget). As a result, traffic on this one will be reduced.

If anyone wants to come visit, pints are on me (only thing cheap over here...especially with the strong loonie).

Cheers