Book Tag

I was tagged by Alishka so here goes:

Because I'm sitting at work the closest book to me right now is kind of a toss up. Under one monitor there is JCIS 2003 Proceedings, under the other is QwestDex Provo/Orem area phone book, but because those are currently being used to raise my monitors up to eye-level, I'm going to say they don't count. So we'll move over to the stack of books on my right. On top is "Secrets & Lies"
by Bruce Schneier, so I guess it wins. 2nd place goes to "Network Security Essentials" by Stallings, and 3rd place is "Digital Image Processing" by Gonzalez and Wood. Anwyays:

Page 123 sentence 5 reads:

It's a hard problem to solve in a large building--locks on outside doors and inside offices and keys given to specific people, badges worn by everyone and guards to check the badges, and so forth--and it's a hard problem to solve on a computer system.

Here are the rules:

If you've been tagged:
1. Pick up the nearest book (at least 123 pages).
2. Turn to page 123.
3. Find the 5th sentence
4. Post the 5th sentence on your blog.
5. Tag 5 people.

The 5 people I tag are as follows:
1. Olympus
2. Krishna
3. Lavish
4. Uffish Thought
5. Yellow

Foreign Language Grammatical Errors as a Native Language Identifier

Sounds like the title of an impressive paper to be submitted to some Linguistics conference.

Actually it's just the best way to describe an interesting thought I stumbled upon. I'm reading through a number of papers for my research and the authors come from many different cultures. There are a vast number of European researchers in my chosen area of expertise, and many papers come out of Germany, Switzerland, and France. A large number of papers also come from various Asian sources or authors. As I was reading through a paper titled "Content-Based Retrieval of MP3 Music Objects" I was getting the nagging suspicion that the author was Asian and learned English as a second language based solely on the "speech" pattern and the consistent type of grammatical errors being made. I checked, and sure enough, the authors are Chih-Chin Liu and Po-Jun Tsai from Taiwan.

For examples of what I'm talking about, take these sentences:

'This is because in this time interval, the note corresponding to the word "empty" becomes very loudly and its pitch falls into these two subbands.'

'Approximately matching ability is strongly required in a multimedia database system.'

'These structural audio information can be used to support content-based retrieval.'

I'm not picking on anyone here, it's just an observation that I found interesting. Coming from specific native languages will cause a greater likelihood of specific types of mistakes in foreign language. I would hope this interesting phenomenon has been studied before, perhaps Katya can enlighten us further on the matter.

A Night with the Exes

Krishna wanted me write this post, so here it is.

Friday night Krishna and I went to see Alishka perform in Ballet Showcase. She also choreographed one of the pieces so it was fun to go see. We thoroughly enjoyed the performance. Both Krishna's and my favorite piece was "Windchimes". We also liked the piece Alishka choreographed, the dresses in it were very pretty, she said it turned out exactly how she wanted it to, which must have been very satisfying.

After the performance we met up with Alishka and then went to IHOP for a late breakfast-for-dinner. They each had the Stuffed French Toast and I had the three pancakes meal. There isn't really much of an exciting story to tell of the evening, but Krishna wanted to me to write about spending the evening with two ex-girlfriends.

I suppose to some people it must seem very strange to spend an evening with two previous girlfriends. I never understood why it would be a big deal until I had that one relationship end in disaster, apparently that is how many people expect relationships to end. I don't see why that should be the norm. Seems to me that if two people actually cared about each other, but decide to break up there's no reason to not still be friends. Yes, it takes some time to adjust to being friends and not dating, but it's not that huge of a transition. I'm glad that I can still be friends with a girl after our relationship ends. Of the five girls I've had exclusive relationships with it's just the one that I'm not friends with still.

The great thing about being friends with ex-girlfriends is that you can do things together without having the awkward "I wonder if they want to date me or if we're just friends" problems. You both know where you stand. So to all the readers out there, remember, you can be friends after dating, so long as one of you isn't crazy.

Running

By the request of a very important reader I hereby present an in depth narrative of my participation in the Rex Lee Run.

Wake up. Darkness. What time is it? Can't read the clock without my glasses. 7:45, groan. My alarm is set for 8:00, can't sleep. Get out of bed, walk downstairs. Enter the kitchen and grab a Nutri-Grain bar and a banana for breakfast. Chase that down with some V8-Splash Strawberry Banana Smoothie. Now we wait. I wander around the house doing menial tasks until it's time to leave for the race. I put my contacts in, pin my running number to my shirt and attach the timing chip to my shoe. I decide to run in long sleeves because it's going to be cold.

8:40, I walk to my car- it's covered in ice, grrr. I start up the engine and grab the scraper. Scrape, scrape, scrape. I hop in and cruise over to campus. The parking lots on the corner of Canyon Rd and University Ave are not as packed as I expected. I find a spot, leaving everything but my keys in the car. I join the other participants wandering in from all directions to the track. The cannon sounds signaling the beginning of the 10K. I jog around the track to try to warm up my cold muscles. Stretch, stretch, I'm as ready as I'm going to be. I find a place to leave my stuff while I run, and take off my warm-up pants figuring my legs will be alright. My hands are already cold though; should have worn gloves.

They're calling us up to the starting line for the 5K. I make sure my iPod is all set and make my way through the crowds to a position about 1/3 of the way from the front. The cannon sounds off again and the crowd is moving. My iPod is set on repeat to Dragonforce - Through the Fire and Flames. The energy of the music drives me forward.

The race begins with an uphill climb along University Parkway. I try to find my pace amongst the crowd of varying speeds. The ground flattens out as we curve into the parking lot behind the Harman building, the 10K course meets up and some of those runners make it even more crowded. Slightly downhill heading towards the Marriott Center, I'm keeping my pace, and feeling pretty good. We turn onto 1430 N where a confused girl is attempting to drive her car despite the numerous barriers and traffic cones. More downhill as we hit 900 East and head past Heritage halls to the Law building lot. I'm still feeling pretty good, but I know what's coming up: The Hill of Death.

As we round the corner onto East Campus Drive a runner at the front of a cluster makes a crucial error by misunderstanding the course direction and takes an entire group off course until they hear the others yelling for them to turn around. The 10K runners split off to the left as we turn onto 900 N, the start of the Hill of Death. Luckily this year I knew it was there and was ready for it. I cranked up my music a little louder, leaned forward, breathed harder, and took it head on. I fought up and up as I felt a cramp forming on my right side. I needed to get off the hill as quickly as possible before the cramp could destroy me. My breathing probably sounded like I was dying, I needed oxygen so badly.

The Hill of Death was over, I had conquered, but not without a price. The cold air was thin, and taking its toll on my system. I could no longer feel my fingers, and my skill in moving my hands was reduced to that of a 10 month old infant. I had to slow my pace as I reached the flat ground in order to get some air in me. We continued along South Campus Drive and then switching to the pedestrian path down the hill to 800 North. I had hoped reaching the bottom of the hill would allow me to pick my pace back up for the final stretch on flat ground. Sadly, I soon rediscovered that the road along 150 E and Canyon Rd is uphill, not a lot, but you can feel it in your legs. I held my pace up as much as I could, promising myself that as soon as I hit the track I'd put in everything I had left.

I round the corner onto 1430 N and head through the gate to the track. This is it, I'm going to use every drop of Oxygen my lungs can muster. My legs aren't tired, I simply can't get enough air to move with. I speed up to as fast as my poor lungs will allow. My headphones jostle off my ears and I whip them around my neck to keep them off the ground. I follow around the turn at the north end lining up for the final push. I try to get on my toes for that last little speed boost. My left side begins cramping up to join my right side. My breathing is ridiculous and I feel like my lungs will explode. Finally I step across the finish line, making sure to hold my speed until I hear the *beep* sounding my completion. Then I walk, I walk and I breathe. My legs are fine, but I need oxygen and I need it now. I step out of the way to pause for a minute just to breathe. Then I walk to the volunteers who are clipping off the timing chips and I head for the tables with oranges and water. I begin to remember just how cold I actually am. I can't hold the water because I can't move my fingers, and the juices from the orange feel warm on my skin. I find a heater and stick my hands in front.

I wander back towards the track to find my coat, and warm-ups. I stick my hands in my pockets and find my leather driving gloves, my hands go in. To my pleasant surprise I also find a winter beanie and that goes on my now cold head. I check my time and it's over.

Reflection upon a Saturday

Today was quite busy. For some reason all of my weekends in March are scheduled up with events. They all filled up about mid-February. Normally my weekends are pretty relaxed, no strict plans, just sort of whatever comes up. But March, March is packed.

This morning was the Rex Lee Run. So I got up at 7:35 (my alarm was set for 8, but I couldn't sleep), ate a light breakfast and prepped for the run. About 30 minutes before start time I went out to drive over to the course. First I had to scrape ice off my windows, I was not pleased to be needing to scrape ice on a day I needed to run. My lungs don't do well in cold weather. In the winter I run in the indoor track because of this. The cold air hurts, and is too thin; it deprives me of desperately needed oxygen. Considering the fact that part of my left lung is stapled closed, and that my training hasn't been as intense this semester (so my VO2 max was not as high as it could be) I need all the oxygen I can get. Anyways, I went to the race and boy did I feel the lack of oxygen. When I finished my legs weren't even really tired, but I couldn't get enough oxygen. Which is really annoying. I wasn't even pushing the limits of my muscles, instead I was limited simply by the thinness of the air. I didn't do as well as last year, but (as I said) I didn't train as hard. I was able to run in under 26 minutes, not great compared to my ~23 minute run of 2007, but meh.

After the run I had to rush home and get all cleaned up to give a presentation in the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Spring Research Conference. Luckily my request for a time after noon was granted, as I didn't arrive on location until about 11:15. My presentation went well, and my movies worked this year, which was nice. The audience seemed to be engaged and interested, so hopefully the judges liked it too.

After that I bought some good lunch foods, went home, ate a whole bunch of food, watched some X-Files, and slept for a few hours. At which point it was time to begin preparations for the ward activity. We signed up to host some people for dinner for the ward activity, so Papa Funk and I got home from shopping (after he got out of work) around 5:30 and began cleaning up the house and cooking. We were all set at the specified time of 7:00. The ward was meeting at the chapel for appetizers at 6:30 and then was splitting up according to assignments to the host houses for dinner. We waited, and waited, figuring it was normal for people to be late. Finally around 7:40 we got tired of waiting and called the people in charge to find out what was going on. Apparently, since we were home cooking and not eating appetizers at 6:30 they assumed that we were no longer participating (despite the 4-5 phone calls throughout the week in which we confirmed our plans to make dinner). So they didn't send anyone to us. So we had food for about 10 people, and only 2 people to feed.

So Papa Funk and I said, "Screw it." and sat down to an excellent meal (it was very good), while watching an episode of X-Files. And now we have good food to eat for the next week or so....

Now I'm exhausted, and going to sleep.

P.S. to Olympus:
Where have you been all week! We've only talked for like 5 minutes. You need to stop having meetings and start only having one job again. ;-)

Anthology of Nonsense: BYUSA Elections

As no one has responded with questions for a second Anthology of Interest yet, I dub this an Anthology of Nonsense. That is, random stuff that no one really cares about.

BYUSA Elections
This week has been the BYUSA elections. I almost feel like I shouldn't even give it the time necessary to belittle it. These candidates and their underlings get all hyped up about the BYUSA elections, bothering everything with hands that comes within 20 feet of them by shoving fliers at them. Luckily I have been able to avoid almost all of their attacks. I was confronted once while walking to work with, "Have you voted yet?" to which I responded, "Not going to." And kept on walking. Do these people honestly believe that as the President of BYUSA they will be able to bring about some fundamental change about life at BYU? Surely they understand that BYUSA has no power and is simply a little club for these kids to play in and feel like they matter without bothering real people with their nonsense. I've been at BYU for five years now and I have never seen anything different occur from year to year. Every person makes this lame promises about things like getting a BYU student radio station or bringing bands to the Marriott center; which of course they have no power to do because the Board of Trustees controls these decisions and consistently says, "No". So I agree with the random Political Science major who wrote into the Daily Universe when I say the only person I would ever go out of my way to vote for is the candidate that promises to dissolve the BYUSA and refund its budget to the student body. That would be worth it.

In Honor of Spring

I've picked a new template for my blog. It's green in honor of Spring. That's all I really have to say at the moment.

Oh, It has been suggested to me that I take "What If" requests for the second volume of Anthology of Interest. So feel free to add a comment to this post with your "What If" question which may appear in the next volume followed by some at least tangentially related words of my own creation.

And Just so I can use my Taco Bell tag, I had Taco Bell for lunch today. Yum.