Linkstew

I slept for three hours off and on this morning before finishing the term paper. I wasn't particularly thrilled with the final result, because I basically grabbed the first bits of "data" to prove my point that was remotely in the neighborhood -- I didn't have time to find the proper supporting evidence I should have dredged up weeks ago.

I really liked the topic, and I wish I had had more time to work on the paper. And by "more time," I mean I don't mean I wish I'd just had "another week." Rather, I specifically wish that given what I just wrote, I wish I had a week to revise it. But it's not like I'm going to mess with that now.

Anyway, with the completion of that term paper, I just turned in the last assignment of my undergraduate career. All that's left now are two finals. And those are more than a week away, so they're the least of my worries.

Something more interesting later, perhaps. I might be mostly done, but that doesn't mean that I don't have anything I need to do.

I realized today that I can count on one hand the number of things I have left to do before I graduate. Now, first of all it's unprecedented that the number should be so low before Thanksgiving. Second of all, I can count how far I am from graduation. On one hand, baby! Check it out:

1. Finish my CS 160 Project. [1]
2. My last CS 172 homework assignment is due on 12/2.
3. My Metaphor term paper is due on 12/4, and then that class is done.
4. My CS 160 final is on Monday, December 16th.
5. And my CS 172 final is on Wednesday, December 18th.

[1] Okay, admittedly, that CS project has about 5 major chunks left to do (two of which are due in 9 hours), but as a CogSci major, I think I'm justified in applying a fairly high level of abstraction on this point.

This was another idea that came out of my last final, but don't worry, I didn't write it all during the test.

Psychology 126 (Visual Perception)
• Interdisciplinary, Hypotheses, and Heuristics.
• Requirement, Redundant, yet still Interesting.
CS 162 (Operating Systems and System Programming)
• Concurrency, Synchronization, Security and Protection.
• Communication, Frustrating, Practical, and Time consuming.
Astronomy 12 (The Planets)
• Differentiation, Composition, and Satellites.
• Distraction, Easy, for Personal Interest.
Linguistics 105 (Cognitive Linguistics)
• Metaphors, Categories, Head and Side.
• Disorganized, Confusing, Egotistical, and yet amazingly Stimulating.

Heh, the silly things I think of while taking a final:

One Final, Two Final,
Red Final, Blue Final,
But only if you're a Synaesthetic.

Sheesh, last semeser I came up with a jokeless punchline, and this semester I come up with Dr. Suess does Cognitive Science. I suppose it's worth noting that Synaesthesia had nothing to do with my final as evidence of how ridiculous I am.

By the way, of particular interest on that linked Synaesthesia page is the use of stroop effects to prove the existance of synasthesia. That's so neat. I love CogSci. I want to do this sort of thing when I grow up.

On the bright side, I'm done with finals.

The latest TMBG announce email had some new tour dates for their summer tour to promote No!. Notably, there are some west coast dates:

• 7/19 Portland, OR - Crystal Ballroom
• 7/20 Seattle, WA - Paramount Theater
• 7/26 Los Angeles CA - John Anson Ford Theater
• 7/27 Anaheim CA - House of Blues
• 7/28 SPECIAL KIDS SHOW Los Angeles CA Storyopolis

They better announce an SF show or two in that gap between Seattle and LA, because I already planned two other trips in July, and as much as I want to, I don't really have time to take a third trip to socal to go to a couple of TMBG concerts.

Hm. Though if I didn't go to AX, I'd have the time and the money to go to those socal concerts... And I'd be going to AX more to hang out with my Bakersfield friends than for the anime content... But if I went to the TMBG concerts, I don't know if I'd have anyone to go with me. Blah, I suppose I should figure this out soon.

Blahhh...

Basically, my final didn't go very well at all, and I'm looking for things besides the final to worry about. Let's put it this way: 16/100 points on the final were for being able to recite the details of 2 phase commit, the details of which I did not to commit to memory. It was purely memorization, and didn't test our understanding of it at all! In contrast, last year's final said "Here is how 2 phase commit works. What happens if it fails at this point? This point? This point?" Last year's question actually tested that the students understood the concept, while this year they just tested to see if we could recite the stupid thing from memory. 16 points! And another 4 points were for knowing what caused a particular bug in a particular processor that he only talked about in lecture. And so I'm not a very happy camper. I could have gotten an A in the class if I'd done well on the final, but now I'll be happy if I get a B.

State Dependent Learning is a pretty well studied phenomena. But in addition to the effects of chemical states and moods described on the linked page, evidence has also been found that a person who studies in the same environment in which he or she is tested will perform better.

So here I am studying for this final and thinking about State Dependent Learning (which has nothing to do with network protocols, I assure you). I'm wired on caffeine right now, but that's not a problem, because I'll be equally wired on caffeine while I'm taking the test. Hell, I'll probably be consuming caffeine while taking the test. I figure I'm not going to be able to take the test in my bedroom, so I'm not going to be able to do anything about the location factor.

But what I'm really pondering is Music. Of course I've been listening to music while studying, but I certainly won't be able to listen to music while taking my final. Instead, when I'm taking tests, I always have some song or another that I hum to myself. Obviously, to be maximally effective, it should be a song I listened to a lot while studying.

So let's see what I've been listening to today:

• Amon Tobin - Bricolage
• Amon Tobin - Permutation
• Amon Tobin - Supermodified
• Lamb - Lamb
• Moby - Play
• Moby - Play: The B-Sides
• Moby - 18
• Radiohead - OK Computer
• Radiohead - The Bends
• Radiohead - Kid A
• Radiohead - Amnesiac

Most of these are conducive to my studying because they either have no lyrics or I can easily ignore the lyrics. In contrast, I cannot study to TMBG no matter how much I love them, simply because I get distracted by unignorable lyrics.

Heck, the song I had stuck in my head during Monday's final was Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box off of Amnesiac, so I should be in good shape to focus on a song I've been studying to during the final tomorrow.

Assuming, of course, I actually study instead of writing about studying.

I know there have been studies of the effect of music on learning, but I don't have time to look them up right now and see if they thought to investigate state dependent learning effects as part of those experiments. Did they test the performance of the subjects with and without music? Did they poll the subjects to see if they were thought about the music they studied to while they were being tested? These would all be interesting questions to know the answers to, and seem extremely important to any study of the effects of music on learning.

I'm such a horrible student. I've got a final in 23 hours, and I haven't even looked to see if there are any practice finals available on the course website. Instead, I'm sitting here thinking about what I'd rather be doing:

1. Go snowboarding. Of course, this is only reinforced by my friend emailing me this morning to let me know that 2002-2003 Kirkwood season passes are already available. Gah, it's so far away!
2. Read more of the book I started last night.
3. Go jetskiing. On the bright side, I'll get to go jetskiing in July and I don't even have to pay for it.
4. Finish up Jedi Outcast, which I've been playing for almost two months now.
5. Figure out what's wrong with Linkstew.

::sigh:: I suppose I'll start studying now. Well, after I go to three hours of meetings this afternoon. And as much as I want to watch the Enterprise season finale tonight, I'll be a good boy and leave it on my TiVo until tomorrow.

Because what better time to start reading a random book because I want to than 36 hours before a final that I have not yet begun to study for?

One of my coping strategies is to remind myself that "Wet socks are worse" whenever something is getting me down. Because, well, they are.

Unprepared for your final today? Don't worry, because no matter how bad it is, wet socks are worse.

Sleep deprived? Wet socks are worse.

Didn't have a chance to eat breakfast? Wet socks are worse.

Of course, this whole strategy fails when your socks get wet while walking to a final you're absurdly unprepared for, because it turns out that taking a final with wet socks is a lot worse than wet socks.

Ugh, and I thought my last CS project was bad... Well, at least now I can say that I've implemented a network transport layer.

"That last submission passed 19/24 tests, and since that submission we've fixed these 3 problems. At this point, I'm so sick of this project that passing 22/24 tests sounds pretty fantastic to me." I said. "Let's submit this and go home."

And with that, I parted ways with the CS group that I spent an immeasurable amount of time with this semester. There were no pats on the back. There was no celebration. There were just four cranky students, each going their separate ways.

And now that I've finally got NACHOS out of my hair, I can actually start studying for my finals. Well, maybe tomorrow...

It just occurred to me that when I say out FFX as "Eff Eff Ecks," it sounds like I'm saying SSX with a lisp. I guess I'm going to have to find some other way to refer to the game.

I called FFVIII "fate," and FFIX "fix," so... Fecks? Feck?

Eh. Anyway, the game is in my hand, and it actually was a nice surprise when I got back to the office and found it waiting for me, because that final put me absolutely out of my mind, and I'd completely forgetten it was coming.

Yaroze, my copy of Final Fantasy X is in FedEx's sometimes capable hands! I'll be getting it tomorrow, with superb timing, after my final final, and with only a few other commitments, I'll be able to go home and immerse myself.

To Zanarkand!

(On a related note, here is IGN PS2's review of the game. It's long and kind of poorly edited (in my opinion), but it's very informative without spoiling anything important.)

(This post brought to you by the letters, F, X, and the number 10.)