Accidentally in Code

Tag: week in brief

  • Week in Brief

    For this week:

    • Find out what’s going on with knee, really hope I can ski and kickbox again (will be tears if I can’t!). – things OK, got a “conservative” treatment plan, and I’m allowed to go kickboxing again (yay!)
    • Gym 5 times. – four! PT nearly ended me on Tuesday, oooh the pain!
    • CA Project report. – see it here.
    • Make Applets work. – nope, didn’t even try to get this done. Thought about it… but too fried!
    • Finish reading 7 Habits. – I love this book. Gives me great perspective.
    • Submit marks – end of TA-ing (yay!). Words cannot describe how pleased I am that this is over!
    • Buy iPhone (v excited about this)

    I also:

    • Spent time with my friends in London.
    • Saw my Leicester friend, caught up – this was great, can’t wait for her to get an internet connection!
    • Read 3 novels – I hardly ever make time to read novels lately, so this was really nice.
    • Spent time with my parents.

    It’s been really nice to take some time for me, to choose to read a book instead of to do what’s “productive”. I’m still a little jet-lagged and haven’t been sleeping that well, but I’m going back to Ottawa more chilled out, I think, with some ideas of what I want to spend time and energy on over the winter break before the craziness starts again.

    For this week:

    • Holiday Science Lecture – revise slides, either no text or needs to be translated
    • Practice, Practice, Practice!
    • Go skiing
    • Spend minimal xmas with boyf and his parents – no tree, not many presents, as little fuss as possible.
    • Make Twitter landing page and turn off follower notifications.
    • Delete all Twitter follower notifications from email, and process the rest of it.
    • Unsubscribe from things.

    My Holiday Science Lecture is next Monday (December 28th), entitled “Art, Life and Programming”. You can see what I plan to talk about here and no doubt I’ll be blogging about it as I revise it and practice. If you’re in Ottawa, it’s free and you’re welcome to join. It’s aimed at children age 7-10, but I hope it’ll be interesting to anyone with an interest in technology. I’m really nervous about this, especially the French one – in the morning! So wish me luck.

  • Week in Brief

    Last week:

    • Recreate conversational graphs from re-factored code
    • Implement clique finding algorithm for Twitter Conversation Graphs
    • Visualize results of clique finding
    • Create presentation for class on Cliques/Conversation Graphs – see it here.
    • Marking
    • Re-marking previous assignment – couldn’t do this, have to investigate further for fairness.
    • Girl Geek Dinner – Awesome, I blogged about it here.
    • Gym 4 times – made it three times – completely underestimated how bad jetlag would be.
    • Keep it together – I expected last week to be really stressful, but actually it was pretty great! Getting to focus on the stuff that I think matters made working 12 hours a day seem pretty easy (until Friday, when I totally crashed!), and I was really pleased with how much I got done.

    I’m back in the UK now, getting my knee checked out and catching up with my family. I’ll be heading back to Canada early next week. So this week I’ll be kicking back a little, catching up on some reading, seeing some friends and eating tasty food from M&S! So:

    • Find out what’s going on with knee, really hope I can ski and kickbox again (will be tears if I can’t!).
    • Gym 5 times.
    • CA Project report.
    • Make Applets work.
    • Finish reading 7 Habits.
    • Submit marks – end of TA-ing (yay!).
    • Buy iPhone (v excited about this)

    Have a great week!

  • Week in Brief

    Last week was a bit of a disaster:

    For this week:

    • Minor website edits
    • Read 8 papers – was never going to happen
    • Clear email… it’s got completely out of hand (worse than ever before) – made a lot of progress on this, but still lots left
    • Social Capital, Trust Agents and the New Tribe event
    • Students and Startups
    • An Introduction to Processing – make slide-deck.
    • Marking (again)
    • Gym 4 times
    • Recreate conversational graphs from re-factored code – Nearly done
    • Implement clique-finding algorithm for Twitter Conversation Graphs
    • Re-read 7 Habits – Got started, part way through
    • Get started on giant pile of papers.

    For next week, I fly back to the UK on Sunday so I’m going to have to focus on the stuff that must be done by then and not crowd my task list with things that are important, but can wait until I’m there/get back.

    • Recreate conversational graphs from re-factored code
    • Implement clique finding algorithm for Twitter Conversation Graphs
    • Visualize results of clique finding
    • Create presentation for class on Cliques/Conversation Graphs
    • Marking
    • Re-marking previous assignment
    • Girl Geek Dinner
    • Gym 4 times
    • Keep it together

  • Week in Brief

    I didn’t get anywhere near what I wanted to done this week. Things took longer than expected, nothing went to plan and generally I’ve got to the point where I need a break.

    For this week:

    • Finish website. With help from my kind neighbor whose cat I’ve took care of a couple of times – happens to be a pro web designer! Need to make some minor edits after feedback.
    • Finish CA Assignment 3.
    • An Introduction to Processing – make slide-deck.
    • Marking.
    • Read 5 papers – Managed 2.
    • Keep track of everything I eat/drink for trainer.
    • Go to the gym 4 times – not going to happen. Physio demonstrated that I still need more by forcing my hurt knee to hyper-extend multiple times. So now I’m back to being in pain and unstable :'(
    • #GenYOtt.
    • Recreate conversational graphs from re-factored code.
    • Get started on giant pile of papers.

    Also:

    • Great event on personal branding for WISE
    • Meeting with the girls from WISE, have a plan for our January and February talks and some other stuff too.
    • Ordered business cards.
    • Movement on thing-I-can’t-blog-about (wish I could write about it, will share when I can)
    • Had lunch with guy working on open source Java curriculum and my supervisor. Hoping I can contribute! Have some ideas.
    • Took the weekend off! Spent quality time with my boyfriend. Will be extra stressed Monday, but need the break.

    For next week:

    • Minor website edits
    • Read 8 papers
    • Clear email… it’s got completely out of hand (worse than ever before)
    • Social Capital, Trust Agents and the New Tribe event
    • Students and Startups
    • An Introduction to Processing – make slide-deck.
    • Marking (again)
    • Gym 4 times
    • Recreate conversational graphs from re-factored code.
    • Implement clique-finding algorithm for Twitter Conversation Graphs
    • Re-read 7 Habits.
    • Get started on giant pile of papers.

    Urgh… this can all wait until Monday, right?

  • Week in Brief

    For this week:

    • Finish CA Assignment 3 – nearly done, just need to make minor bug fixes and write up.
    • Recreate conversational graphs from re-factored code
    • Create slide deck for introductory Java workshop
    • Read 5 papers
    • Go to the gym 3 times
    • Rename blog (taking suggestions!)
    • WISE coffee social
    • WECS meeting (Women in Engineering and Computer Science)
    • Work on website

    I also:

    • Got a blog-post featured on Brazen Careerist! See here!
    • Spent a lot of time debugging other people’s code.
    • Went to my first Teamcamp.
    • Moved my blog to a new domain – www.cate.blog

    For this week:

    • Finish website.
    • Finish CA Assignment 3.
    • An Introduction to Processing – make slide-deck.
    • Marking.
    • Read 5 papers.
    • Keep track of everything I eat/drink for trainer.
    • Go to the gym 4 times.
    • #GenYOtt.
    • Recreate conversational graphs from re-factored code.
    • Get started on giant pile of papers.

  • Week in Brief: a Celebration

    Goals for this week were:

    • Finish putting together presentation, record and upload it. See it here.
    • Put together loop exercises for extra session with my DGD group.
    • Start CA Assignment 3 (this one will apparently be shorter) – aim for half done.
    • Marking.
    • Read 5 papers.
    • Join gym (physio says yoga and body pump allowed – finally!!) attended a body pump class, and it hurts… in a good way though, which is a nice change after weeks of injury pain!
    • Clear new email mountain.
    • Code new viz idea. Read about it here.
    • Ignite! Read about it here.

    Crikey! I checked off everything. This never happens! I also:

    • Spent time with the people behind Betidings, working on their color-scheme (hopefully you’ll see some improvement to that soon).
    • Planned an introductory online Java/Processing workshop – you can read about it here and let me know if you want to participate.

    Thanks to everyone who made this week so awesome / productive!

    For next week:

    • Finish CA Assignment 3
    • Recreate conversational graphs from re-factored code
    • Create slide deck for introductory Java workshop
    • Read 5 papers
    • Go to the gym 3 times
    • Rename blog (taking suggestions!)
    • WISE coffee social
    • WECS meeting (Women in Engineering and Computer Science)
    • Work on website

  • Week in Brief

    For last week:

    • Finish CA Assignment 2
    • Read 5 papers
    • Code more on Viz
    • Write more on Thesis
    • Get SVN working fully
    • More on website
    • Clear giant e-mail mountain
    • Start tracking morning mood and exercise on Mycrocosm
    • Go to my first hockey game!

    Also:

    • Cleaned out fridge
    • Swam butterfly again for the first time since I injured my knee (super happy about this!)
    • Spent a lot of time debugging other people’s code!
    • Met with the girls from WISE, hopefully we can get some stuff moving.

    Another week where things took longer than they should have (CA Assignment), and plans were derailed (4 hour lab). I’m frustrated at how much I’m getting distracted by this kind of thing, and how it’s cutting into my quiet-focus-time which I need to work on big tasks. I haven’t had a completely clear day since last Monday, and won’t have another until next Monday. This is a problem.

    For this week:

    • Finish putting together presentation, record and upload it.
    • Put together loop exercises for extra session with my DGD group.
    • Start CA Assignment 3 (this one will apparently be shorter) – aim for half done.
    • Marking.
    • Read 5 papers.
    • Join gym (physio says yoga and body pump allowed – finally!!)
    • Clear new email mountain.
    • Code new viz idea.
    • Ignite!

  • Week in Brief

    Goals for this week:

    • Read 8 papers
    • Create diagram in Visio see it here
    • Turn plan into slides for presentation put them up on this post
    • Get started with CA Assignment 2 Would have liked to get more done, but have answer for one question – 2 to go!
    • Deal with final issues from marking fiasco
    • Read 2 chapters of CA book
    • Set up new laptop and get important stuff syncing Nearly there, iDrive is in use, SVN set up, just need to work out how to access it.
    • Code more on my viz stuff – nothing coded but had important epiphany. Really need to get more done on this, this week.
    • Write more on thesis
    • More on website
    • Move to Google Calendar
    • Clear up apartment
    • Finish reading Tribes (Amazon)

    I also:

    • Saw a lot of friends I hadn’t seen in a while
    • Met some new people!
    • Watched The Best Man (IMDb) – I rarely seem to find time to watch movies any more, I found this one pretty funny though. Only thing was, the main character had an Irish accent, and his best friend from childhood had a lousy American-doing-British-accent. Then the guy who lived in New York had a posh British accent and the women who he was marrying (who lived in London) had an American accent. So, that kinda distracted me!
    • Picked up some iKlean at the apple store.
    • Got my project proposal back with some helpful suggestions and positive comments.

    For this week:

    • Finish CA Assignment 2
    • Read 5 papers
    • Code more on Viz
    • Write more on Thesis
    • Get SVN working fully
    • More on website.
    • Clear giant e-mail mountain.
    • Start tracking morning mood and exercise on Mycrocosm
    • Go to my first hockey game!

    For November:

    I’ve noticed that I tend to create my “Week in Brief” early in the week and keep track of what I want to achieve – I’m finding it helpful for my high-level goals, whereas I find my ToDo list more helpful for low level goals. So – I’ve decided to make my progress more public as well and created a new page on my blog called Goals which contains my list for the week and the month and I can cross things off as I go along. I’m hoping that by adding what I want to achieve this month I can stop putting the same tasks on my list each week and then pushing them back when more pressing things occur.

  • Week in Brief

    Last week my goals were:

    • Write more on thesis not as much as I wanted, but some progress
    • Create slides for presentation – made plan, have a good idea of what I want to do
    • CA Project plan (need to find out what this entails)
    • WISE event
    • Write survey for other project – on hold until my supervisor gets back
    • Keep working on Twitter Viz, maybe look for a new viz toolkit.

    Last week was in some ways a write-off. I was miserable and strung out because of my TA job – after all the marking I did the week before (all Sunday afternoon and most of the evening) the Prof had made a mistake with the login he sent me, so that was all for nothing and I had to mark another group. And, as he didn’t mention this mistake when he sent me another username and password, I didn’t realize this had happened – until Wednesday when my marks had to be submitted Thursday morning. There was various other stuff, including a barrage of complaints from students about the marking scheme (I have no power! I have no power!) which meant by Friday I was really upset.

    But then I spent the weekend in Boston, and whilst I’m slightly overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I’ve come back to and still feeling slightly motion sick from the 8 hour car journey, I really needed the break. And, I’ve finished reading Stumbling on Happiness (Amazon) – wonderful, insightful book. I’m not any happier, but at least I know why. And maybe it gives me some tools to make better predictions of what will make me happier in the future.

    So, for this week:

    • Read 8 papers
    • Create diagram in Viseo
    • Turn plan into slides for presentation
    • Get started with CA Assignment 2
    • Deal with final issues from marking fiasco
    • Read 2 chapters of CA book
    • Set up new laptop and get important stuff syncing.
    • Code more on my viz stuff
    • Write more on thesis
    • More on website
    • Move to Google Calendar
    • Clear up apartment
    • Finish reading Tribes (Amazon)