Wedding
17 hours ago
Friday, July 17, 2009
Sheep
Finally, some free time at the end of the week and I have nothing to say. I had so many ideas, interesting ideas, to write last weekend and during the week but they’re all gone now. PFFT! And last night my Streamyx connection was down.
The first week of any semester has one major source of annoyance – students chasing after manual registration. Many of them are already well above the minimum workload while others are struggling to meet the minimum twelve credit hours. As usual, I put a notice outside my office that I am not entertaining requests for manual registration. Of course, it didn’t work. It never worked.
In the interest of students who for various reasons could not register enough courses before the semester begins, I’d suggest that the university limits pre-registration to only the twelve credit hours minimum workload. Then, registration during the first two days of the adjustment period at the beginning of the semester is restricted only to those students before it is opened to everybody from the third day onwards. This way perhaps we can do away completely with the manual registration exercise.
On another matter, I wonder why a student’s identity card/passport number, date of birth and nationality should be on the (partial) transcript when her full name and unique matriculation number should provide more than enough information to establish her identity.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Amazon 23
New books are coming soon, WOOHOO!
By Heresies Distressed is book 3 of David Weber’s Safehold series following Off Armageddon Reef in 2007 and By Schism Rent Asunder in 2008 about a human colony established in a faraway future as a secret refuge from a genocidal alien race. I took a gamble with Off Armageddon Reef two years ago and it paid off handsomely. The technologically superior Gbaba exterminates any species that could present them a threat, and humanity just happens to fit the bill. At Safehold, the human survivors are supposed to rebuild the civilization and prepare for the eventual showdown with the Gbaba. However, leaders of the mission – well, the majority of them, anyway – thinks that the best way to protect humanity’s survival is to keep the civilization forever in the Medieval age through a religion that suppresses technology and innovation.
Julian Comstock will be my third by Robert Charles Wilson book after Spin (Hugo Best Novel for 2006) and its sequel Axis. It is a speculative fiction about the US in the 22nd century with 19th century-level technology. Here’s a review by Cory Doctorow in Boing Boing.
World War Z is a relatively old 2006 book. As the title suggests, it’s about a war with zombies. I’ve never actually read a book about zombies before but it seems to be a growingly popular subject nowadays so I’m really excited about it.
- By Heresies Distressed by David Weber
- Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson
- World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
By Heresies Distressed is book 3 of David Weber’s Safehold series following Off Armageddon Reef in 2007 and By Schism Rent Asunder in 2008 about a human colony established in a faraway future as a secret refuge from a genocidal alien race. I took a gamble with Off Armageddon Reef two years ago and it paid off handsomely. The technologically superior Gbaba exterminates any species that could present them a threat, and humanity just happens to fit the bill. At Safehold, the human survivors are supposed to rebuild the civilization and prepare for the eventual showdown with the Gbaba. However, leaders of the mission – well, the majority of them, anyway – thinks that the best way to protect humanity’s survival is to keep the civilization forever in the Medieval age through a religion that suppresses technology and innovation.
Julian Comstock will be my third by Robert Charles Wilson book after Spin (Hugo Best Novel for 2006) and its sequel Axis. It is a speculative fiction about the US in the 22nd century with 19th century-level technology. Here’s a review by Cory Doctorow in Boing Boing.
World War Z is a relatively old 2006 book. As the title suggests, it’s about a war with zombies. I’ve never actually read a book about zombies before but it seems to be a growingly popular subject nowadays so I’m really excited about it.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
New
A little late, but how can I not post this?
I use Google Reader to keep track of my favorite websites. It’s far more convenient than visiting them one by one. Always, one of the hardest parts of coming back from a holiday is to catch up. There were more than three hundred new items when I logged in on Monday morning. Naturally, I just skimmed through most of them.
New Semester 1 2009/2010 begins Monday. For the first time, I’m not teaching Intro to Econs. I’m teaching Money and Banking instead. Into to Econs is passed over to a part-timer. I think he’s an engineering PhD student. An engineering grad student is teaching economics to human sciences and Islamic revealed knowledge undergrads. Interesting. Good luck to him and to the students. For the first time too, I applied for a seminar room to use PowerPoint for the new course, and end up getting all my classes assigned to seminar rooms. Cool.
I enjoyed taking Money and Banking as an undergraduate partly because we had an excellent professor. I hope that my students will feel the same.
I use Google Reader to keep track of my favorite websites. It’s far more convenient than visiting them one by one. Always, one of the hardest parts of coming back from a holiday is to catch up. There were more than three hundred new items when I logged in on Monday morning. Naturally, I just skimmed through most of them.
New Semester 1 2009/2010 begins Monday. For the first time, I’m not teaching Intro to Econs. I’m teaching Money and Banking instead. Into to Econs is passed over to a part-timer. I think he’s an engineering PhD student. An engineering grad student is teaching economics to human sciences and Islamic revealed knowledge undergrads. Interesting. Good luck to him and to the students. For the first time too, I applied for a seminar room to use PowerPoint for the new course, and end up getting all my classes assigned to seminar rooms. Cool.
I enjoyed taking Money and Banking as an undergraduate partly because we had an excellent professor. I hope that my students will feel the same.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
afk.
I’m off to Langkawi for a departmental retreat. See you all next week!
(Click for full size)
^ I would love to have the poster in my office.
(Click for full size)
^ I would love to have the poster in my office.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
The Breakfast Club
One of my all time favorite movies is The Breakfast Club from 1985. I saw it one afternoon a long time ago. Everybody else in school went to religious school in the afternoon but my parents decided that it wouldn’t do much good. So my afternoons were spent watching the matinee show on TV instead.
Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you’re crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us – in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain...Really cool song too by Simple Minds.
... and an athlete...
... and a basket case...
... a princess...
... and a criminal.
Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.
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