Ceaseless Student

Aight. Big conversations.

I want to address the issue regarding the efficiency of trips to developing nations. I tend to be radically against these. I hate church mission trips to Mexico and feel the same way about habitat trips. These seem like a huge waste of money, time and effort. I know kids who have gone on two-week, thousand dollar trips where they spend a week helping build a house and a week on vacation. Why? Because it would look good for college. Sad. So very sad.

I’ve heard that the theory is that they will be changed by their experience regardless of their original intentions. *sigh. Is that the best we can do? Spend tons of money and then cross our fingers and hope it changes them in the long run?

No. We can do better. Amy Smith does it right. Her kids are already passionate and then they are thrust into a situation that’s truly different. They really see. They try to help. They create deep bonds. They identify; they empathize. And the proof is in the numbers. She said that most of her students end up running with it.

Fantastic investment.

This joke really struck my fancy so I thought I’d share:

God created Adam and everything was great. After a while Adam started to grow bored until one day he goes to talk to God:
- Hey man, I’m getting kinda bored…
- Let me think about it…
The next day God walks excitedly up to Adam:
- Dude. Dude! I figured it out.
- Oh yeah?
- Yup. I can hook you up with the perfect companion. She’s hot, she’s smart, she’ll cater to your every whim; dude, she’s perfect.
- Nice. What’ll it cost me?
- It’ll take an arm and a leg.
- Well shit.
…
What can I get for a rib?

As part of my MetaOlin IS, I’m reading through all of the honor board minutes I can get my hands on. The first step was easy; most of the minutes were easy to find on a network drive. That being said they were all organized at different times by different people and even in different formats.

The different formats were easily the most annoying.

Since word documents are slow to load, mutable and otherwise annoying I decided to make everything a pdf. I started out by using PrimoPDF to print to pdfs; however, Zamzar was a much faster solution. This site lets you upload files and then it converts them to another format; super-chouette! Changing names in batches is much easier with 1-4a Rename.

Also, Foxit Reader is much faster than adobe acrobat reader.

So I’ve had this conversation a number of times. The basic premise is that everyone at Olin has to swear loyalty to someone in the class directly above them. The question is: which senior has the biggest kingdom? Please speculate in the comments.

Alt + Shift

Alt + Shift
Y’know what’s neat? Google Trends is neat. Sure Google TiSP is convenient and Google Paper helps the environment, but do they have the potential to be neat for long enough periods of time that I deem it necessary to have a three key-press shortcut to it? No. That honor is reserved (among others) for gTrends. So what’s so cool about gTrends? This:Sad. The legend isn’t part of the picture and I’m too lazy to do it properly with screenshots. Anyhow. Blue is “GTD,” red is “lifehacker,” and orange is “43 folders.” Basically Google trends gives you an idea of how much each of these terms is searched versus time. We can see that lifehacker seems to have a similar slope to GTD (short for Getting Things Done), but 43 folders, a more hardcore, niche GTD site, seems to be struggling when it comes to generating new awareness. Largely, the people who would use 43 folders tend to know about it and don’t need to Google it whereas lifehacker is a word that’s tossed around and might make people curious. Sweet! Here’s another example I found fascinating:
The red is genocide, the blue is Darfur. This one shows quite a good correlation and shows off another sweet feature of gTrends; it attempts to link relevant news stories to these search trends. For example, the big spike at B is linked to a news story with the headline “Darfur Rebel Group to Sign Peace Deal.” The last bit of data on the graph is the reference news volume. I don’t know what this is so I’ll make it up. I think they probably just search to see how often your search term appears in news. Not surprisingly, current events search spikes will closely correlate to news spikes, but things more independent of news, like GTD and related sites, will correlate badly.
Anyhow-the moral is: gTrends is super-cool. If you have some cool trend searches, put them in the comments.

So this is from a conversation I just had about my posts. I plan on posting once a day. This, of course, is based on my definition of a day. My very pragmatic definition is that a day ends when one goes to sleep for the night or when the sun rises. Similarly a day is considered started when you get up after sleeping for the night or the sun rises. Some of you’ll be all like: “Dude, there’s some time when you’re asleep that’s neither…” Nobody cares. You’re asleep; it doesn’t matter what day it is.

Today we look at a little of what I recently learned about my learning. For those who don’t know, I keep track of all the time I spend productively pretty meticulously in a notebook I keep with me. I have recently been putting the data on my laptop so that I can make charts like this:

Some neat things to note are that circuits actually beat out Meta and that each of those counts as almost two of the less time-consuming classes. And here’s another chart:
This one splits my work by day of the week. Unsurprisingly, Tuesday wins by virtue of being right before Wednesday (read: day everything is due). Sunday was a surprise; I apparently work quite a bit on weekends… who knew?

I got what may well be my favorite compliment ever today. It’s awesome when you get a compliment from someone you really respect and look up to.

Alt + Shift FTW!!

I didn’t post yesterday.

So I’m doing a project for Meta about the Honor Board or Code. I’m currently making my way through all of the HB minutes ever. I went into it expecting to find that the code and board had lost some meaning and importance over time. At this point I’m inclined (Alt + Shift) to believe otherwise. From the minutes in 2001:

“Do something clause: violation of the code does not necessarily come before the honor board

Need some guidelines about what types of cases go before the board (e.g., all academic cases); difference may not always be clear. Basic idea that the honor board is the last resort, not the first? -> do something clause instructs individuals to deal on their own before contacting the board.”

This makes me believe that the code was seen as more applicable and the board as less important. That being said, I expect to find a reaction to that where the board becomes stronger. In particular, I need to find when it expanded to 14 people (I’m running off the assumption that it was not half the school partner year). So many years of minutes to chop through. Well y’all will probably get to hear about it again when I make more sense of things.

Why I have a blog:
I was reading lifehacker and I clicked a link. Then I clicked another link on that site. This brought me to a blog on Yahoo that asked the question: “Why don’t young people appreciate the time and effort I put into this blog.” The dude out in about four hours a day and had a blog that was passable at best. He thought it was because young people could never handle doing something like keeping a blog themselves. So here I am. Proving him wrong in that regard by proving him right in the opinion that I’m sure he holds: young people are contrary.
I’ll post again later tonight to make up for the day I missed. That’ll show him.