Queenstown, Makarora, Wanaka, and not Gillespie

2 Apr 2021

The planned logistics for the Gillespie trip were simple: rent a car, stay at the Wonderland Lodge in Makarora the night before, take a jetboat across the river, walk, and take a jetboat back from Kerin Forks. The jetboat avoids the biggest river crossings. Ironically, the day before we were to go, we got a call saying that there wasn’t enough water to run the jetboat. That’s fine, it should be easy to cross the river in that case.

March: finishing the Tongariro Circuit, climbing trip to Pohara, and hiking Wanaka

1 Apr 2021

Usually by this point we’d be getting close to the end of Winter term (was April 3 in Winter 2020), but we’ve stretched lectures out because of the pandemic (later start, additional scheduled pause, shorter exam period), so we still have 1.5 weeks of class left. I feel like the wheels are starting to fall off at this point, with all sorts of random life things happening to the students in my graduate course. Three trips: back from Tongariro; climbing at Pohara; and hiking around Wanaka.

Book review: The Ethical Algorithm by Kearns and Roth

19 Mar 2021

Again wandering through a Wellington City Library branch, this time I picked up The Ethical Algorithm by Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth, from January 2020. It was an easy read for someone with a PhD in Computer Science and a BSc in Math/CS, and I finished it in about two hours. I didn’t pick up that much that was new to me, but I follow developments in this domain as an interested but technically-educated reader.

WLG-NSN

12 Mar 2021

An excellent opportunity to add to the walked-to-airports list! I’d meant to walk to NSN last July, but we actually only flew into that airport after the Heaphy; our flight to the start of the track was replaced by a van ride. Here’s my chance!

February: mostly work, plus Tongariro Northern Circuit

4 Mar 2021

Remote teaching has definitely been grinding along and keeping me busy this past month. The workload has been different for the fourth-year undergraduate course versus the graduate seminar. Aside from teaching and research, there was also returning from the Tuatapere Hump Ridge Track at the very start of the month, the Tongariro Northern Circuit at the end of the month, and the Jumbo Circuit in the middle. No new areas of NZ visited, but did re-visit old locations.

2020 (not travel)

10 Feb 2021

My non-travel retrospective for 2020: work, life goals, and hobbies.

January: Back to School, and Hump Ridge

7 Feb 2021

Back to school! Classes started on January 11 and that’s been keeping me busy this month. More about that below.

Book review: Overload by Kelly and Moen

14 Jan 2021

I was wandering through a Wellington City Library branch and picked up Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What We Can Do about It by Erin L. Kelly and Phyllis Moen, a book published March 2020. I don’t usually read management books but I am interested in how people work in 2021; work-life balance was cited in Minister Navdeep Bains’s recent resignation, for instance (of course it always is for politicians), and discussed in a Globe and Mail Opinion.

Graduate Seminar Presentation & Discussion Tips

14 Jan 2021

Updated January 3, 2022 for Winter 2022 offering of SASE.

In which I share my opinions about what makes for a good paper presentation for a graduate seminar course, say ECE 750-T5.

Logistics

We’ll aim for talks of about 30 minutes. During the discussion period (Wednesdays), the presenter will kick off the discussion by summarizing their evaluation, and we’ll talk about the strengths and weaknesses of each paper and how it can inspire your future work (whether academic or industrial).

2020 Retrospective part 1: travel

6 Jan 2021

I was writing a 2020 retrospective but it was getting too long so I split it up. Here’s a retrospective on the travel that I’ve been privileged to be able to do. Other parts of the retrospective to come.

I should say up front that I strongly dis-recommend travel anywhere there is a pandemic. The safest thing to do is to limit contact with other people. Travel is not that. Definitely don’t go to St. Barthélemy, whether you are or are not the finance minister of Ontario. (I don’t think anyone reading this can afford that anyway. Let me know if I’m wrong!)