terriko

Tidbits

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 05:19:22 GMT

- My defence is on Friday.

- Slides got sent off today. I am more happy with them than I was yesterday, and think I will do a good presentation despite having to reign in my usual style to appear "more academic" for the one committee member who cared about such appearances. I think I made even my wordier slides reasonably useful, and there's still lots of visual descriptions.

- Amusingly, I now have a student card that is valid through 2015. (Mine had expired 'cause I took more than 4 years to complete my degree, and new ones are also valid for 4 years.)

- I kinda dislike most of what the Canadian Federation of Students does with my money, but they *are* lobbying against our stupid copyright legislation, which may be the most awesome campaign I've ever seen them run.

- I'm worried my movers are going to cancel on me, as they have just changed my moving date again. Ugh.

- My pseudonymous artist persona gained a bunch of followers/fans/friends overnight, and I've been tickled pink about all the nice comments people left. Yeay!

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Dear university... are you threatening your students?

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 18:55:19 GMT

Dear Members of the Carleton Community,

We all care deeply about our students and their academic progress and success. I am writing to reassure everyone, especially students, that negotiations are still continuing with all bargaining units. The administration is bargaining in good faith and I remain hopeful that settlements will be reached.

At the Senate meeting on Friday, there was a request for amnesty for students in the event of labor disruption. While the Senate has a committee charged with emergency responses and procedures, we all sincerely hope that we will not have to test them.

In the meantime, I would hope that we all continue our inspired and inspiring teaching and learning, research and service.

Sincerely yours,

Roseann O'Reilly Runte

President and Vice-Chancellor

"While the Senate has a committee charged with emergency responses and procedures, we all sincerely hope that we will not have to test them." Was that meant to be a threat? It sounds like a veiled threat, but my university sends us so many seriously awkward emails that I can't be sure. It could just be another failure in communication.

Honestly, so many of their emails leave us all scratching our heads that I'm going to charitably assume that they just don't know how to write email. Supporting this theory: they also didn't answer the question about whether amnesty would be granted. All it would have taken was a "we regret to inform you that amnesty cannot be granted" or "amnesty is covered only in our emergency responses which take effect $in_this_circumstance, not under normal strike conditions" or "while the university policy is not to grant amnesty, you can ask the professor of each course and a decision can be made at his/her discretion" or whatever. Or maybe amnesty is ok and they just don't want us to know that? Why be evasive when you could use this email to communicate useful information?

It's embarrassing that one of better-known programs at this university is a journalism one.

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CompSci Woman: How I Quit Computer Science (And What Drew Me Back)

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 18:00:54 GMT

I know, I know, I don't really need to be writing for another blog; I need to be writing my thesis. But my friend Cate and her friend Maggie started this cool project trying to make it easier for women to find real women in computer science when they hit up google trying to get a sense for what things are like. Their subject for Sept/Oct is "how I got into computer science" and I joined the group by sending in my story.

I suspect many readers of this blog have heard this story (some of you lived through it with me!) but here's a teaser anyhow:

How I Quit Computer Science (And What Drew Me Back)

To explain how I ended up in computer science, you have to understand the story of how I quit.

(…)

First year computer science was geared towards students who had little to no experience with computers, and I realised that I’d be wasting several years of my life waiting for my peers to catch up. On top of that, it was boom times and CS was being viewed a shorter path to a 6-figure salary than the more education-intensive med school or law school. The people who were there weren’t really in love with the discipline; many were just in love with the idea of being rich. I wasn’t interested in paying thousands of dollars per term to waste my time with peers I didn’t respect in a program that was boring me to tears.

I was disappointed, disillusioned, and wanted a challenge that was clearly going to be a long time coming in CS. So I dropped out.

Read the rest here.

(Those of you who are women in computer science are also welcome to join! the bottom of this page has more details.)

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HotSec & LinuxCon or How I wound up speaking in 2 cities in 3 days (totally different topics too!)

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:47:08 GMT

My paper was accepted to HotSec! This is the web visual security policy research I've been working on for a while in various forms, but this is my first proper paper on the subject (although some of the related issues were touched upon in my W2SP paper). Getting in to HotSec is rather a big deal, as it's among the top publishing venues available to me. I was one of 11 papers chosen (out of 57). Go me! So I'll be heading down to DC on August 10th to present it. If you're curious, we should have the final camera-ready copy done in a few days.

My HotSec acceptance causes a bit of a logistical problem, though, since I've also been accepted to speak at LinuxCon on August 12th. It's a bit of a long story as to how I ended up applying at all, but the short and relevant part is just that I wasn't originally planning on submitting to HotSec and didn't realise I'd have such a conflict. (There's a longer story involving speaker diversity issues and good folk willing to go out of their way to work on solving them.)

Anyhow, I really *should* send my regrets to LinuxCon as, academically speaking, it makes a lot more sense for me to go to USENIX Security immediately following HotSec. Especially this year, as I'm hoping to graduate soonish (more ish than soon; don't get too excited) and should be networking as much as possible. But I chatted with my supervisor, and he agreed that it's a bit of a toss-up as to which is more valuable to me: it's nearly as likely that the person I need to meet will be at LinuxCon and that I'll wind up finding a job through open source connections. Raising my open source speaking profile may be just as useful.

What's clear is that Mailman benefits more if I go to LinuxCon, since I'm going to be talking about upcoming awesomeness in version 3.0. The other day, I had someone comment that they didn't even realise Mailman was in active development... ouch. I think getting people interested now, while we're in alpha, is probably absolutely perfect timing. Plus I'm hoping to have some nice stuff to show off from my excellent GSoC students, if they're willing to let me talk about what they've been doing with the archives, and maybe some of the other projects as well.

If you're interested in coming out to LinuxCon, they helpfully gave me a 20% discount code to share. Drop me a note and I'll pass it along (they asked we not just post the code publicly, but I can pop it in a private post later). If you can offer me a job then I'll be able to tell my supervisor I made the right choice. Heh. No, seriously, it's just nice to see people.

Anyhow, I'll make my final decision when I see if the travel arrangements are ridiculous, but it *should* be relatively easy to go from DC to Boston after HotSec, so let's hope this all works out!

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Note to self: try following the instructions

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:32:26 GMT

You know what's annoying? Trying to fix include paths in my build when what I really needed to be doing was following the instructions.

I was feeling really foolish when I saw that, but now that I've followed said instructions, it still doesn't work... Oh, coding. When you sometimes don't know if you've just typed the wrong character somewhere or if the whole thing is horribly broken. I'm sure this will be very obvious when I look at it later, but I've got a rehearsal to get to.

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Fatally flawed

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 04:28:06 GMT

I was browsing around, and found this article where someone is asking the author if she'll be putting her thesis online. She replied that she'd be using the ideas and reworking them to make them easier to read. "The writing style is pretty academic and not terribly accessible, which is a big criticism I make of feminist scholarship."

And here I had to laugh. Because you know one of the comments I got in my proposal defence? I got told that my thesis proposal was too much like a novel and basically too readable for a scholarly endeavour.

If you ever wondered why academics are so boring, now you know. ;)

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These Proposal Defense Date

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:30:21 GMT

My dream: finishing my PhD
by Terriko.

I now have a proposal defense date: March 3rd.

I believe the paperwork is still going through, so I won't assume the date is set in stone 'till I get the official call confirming that that works for all involved. But the upshot of this is that I need to get the final draft of the proposal to my committee by Feb 10th. (Oh, did I mention I have a committee? They're awesome.)

Anyhow. Me. Proposal. Less than a week from now.

It's almost there, so while there may be some terror and hysteria happening, it's mostly relief. Promise! But there is still work to do, so if I'm scarce for a bit, don't be too surprised.

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Photos from the IBM Extreme Blue Case Study Competition

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:16:44 GMT

I've uploaded the photos from the IBM Extreme Blue Case Study Competition on Saturday. I uploaded these on Monday, but I haven't had a chance to caption them yet (and as you'll see from the next post, I may not have time for a little while). You can take a look now anyhow!

IBM Extreme Blue Case Study Competition
by Terriko.

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Dealing with Criticism

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:57:49 GMT

I was going to do all kinds of GHC wrap-up blogging today, but it was not to be, so here's my post about dealing with criticism for the CU-WISE blog instead. I wrote it with academia in mind, but you'll find it applies equally to open source development (which also has a lot of peer review!), or just general life. Enjoy!

Academia can be a really harsh environment. I once got a peer review that claimed the research in our paper was "crappy." Not exactly professional language, that! The review was so bad that we had to laugh, but that doesn't mean we didn't take the criticisms they included seriously: the next version of the paper was accepted to one of the top conferences in the field, in part thanks to that reviewer's highly critical comments.

Criticism can hit people hard: I heard one woman crying in the washroom while her friend consoled her and told her that really, the prof who had told her off was being unprofessional. Sometimes when a TA tells you your assignment was terrible, when a prof makes fun of you in class, when your paper gets rejected... it's hard to know how to deal. Venting to a friend is not a bad idea, but sometimes you can do even more to build on the otherwise "crappy" experience of receiving harsh criticism.

So here's some tips from TinyBuddha.com on dealing with harsh criticism:

10 Ways to Deal with Harsh Criticism

1. Use it. If someone delivers criticism in a nasty or thoughtless way, you may tune out useful information that could help you get closer to your dreams. Put aside your feelings about the tone, and ask yourself, "How can I use this to improve?"

2. Put it in perspective. There are over 6 billion people in the world. Even though only a small percentage has had a chance to see your work, odds are the criticism came from a small percentage of that.

3. Acknowledge it isn't personal. If someone doesn't like what you're doing, it doesn't mean they don't like you. Their interpretation of your work reflects how they see themselves and the world. Everyone sees things differently. No matter what you do, you'll only please some of them.

4. If it is personal, realize that makes the criticism even less relevant. If someone doesn't like you as a person for whatever reason, their thoughts on your project proposal hold no weight. Your job, then, is to let them make their choice--not liking you--and stop giving them power to hurt you.

5. Turn false criticism back on the critic. If someone says something harsh, seemingly without merit, realize it speaks more about them than you. Your work is not the problem--their attitude is.

6. Look for underlying pain. When someone is unnecessarily cruel, they generally want to get a rise out of someone--often as a way to deflect whatever pain they're carrying around. When you see the pain under someone's negativity, it helps turn your anger, frustration, and hurt into compassion and understanding for them.

7. Look at the critic as a child. Most children are honest to a fault, yet adults take their feedback with a grain of salt because there's much they don't understand about the world. The same can be said about your critic; he doesn't understand what you're trying to do, and therefore is missing some of the picture.

8. Define your audience. Whatever you're trying to accomplish, odds are it's meant to help a specific group of people. If you're building a web application for mothers, criticism from a 65-year old man carries a different weight than criticism from a mom.

9. Take the opportunity to develop a thicker skin. If you'd like to help many people, you'll have to listen to a lot of others who think you're doing a bad job. It's the nature of reaching a large audience--a portion will be unimpressed, no matter what you do.

10. Challenge yourself to keep going. One of the hardest parts of fielding criticism is letting go and moving forward. Don't let one person's negativity convince you to stop what you're doing. Whether you change your approach or keep doing the same thing, keep going. No matter what.

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Sharing advice I got as a student

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:27:38 GMT

I was really bored during the TA training last week, and scribbled down a list of useful advice I'd gotten over the years, which I've talked about in 9 good bits of advice I've gotten as a student over on the CUWISE blog. I welcome you all to add your own!

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