The Akashic Field Chronicle

WordPress 2.7 has arrived and I updated this blog as soon as I can. The process was quick and painless.  I like what they’ve done to the interface, but it does take a little getting used to. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the time to post anything after the upgrade. Just look at the date on my previous one. That’s about 3 months without a single post. The only activity this blog has seen since then, is a couple of Russian comments that got through Akismet.

The Holidays are here, so I think new posts are in order. Besides the free time and the guilt at having to pay my webhost for nothing, I have another motivation for resurrecting this blog. In the next few weeks I want to focus on improving my writing skills. Everybody tells me the best way to do that is to practice. I just don’t see myself writing essays in a diary or something. So I plan to use my blog instead. I’m sure the web is filled with people who have nothing better to do than criticize my writing. If you feel like doing so, or you see an error here and there, just drop me a line. I won’t get mad. I’ll even thank you for it.

Why the sudden interest in writing you might ask? No, I haven’t given up on my M.S. and decided to become a writer instead. On the contrary, I’ve actually decided to go straight to a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering. I have my reasons for doing this and I don’t want to dwell on them on this particular post. Its enough to say that I’m almost done with the application process.

When applying for Grad School in U.S. universities, you have to write a few essays about your qualifications and your plans upon getting your degree. They call it the statement of purpose. It’s hard to make one. Doing my SoP, I realized how much I sucked at writing. A fact that was further reinforced after someone, whose opinions I value very much, told me I need to work on my writing (and speaking) skills. The exact words, if I remember correctly, were: “Your writing skills are not proportionate to your intelligence”. Why thank you! At least I got the intelligent part right.

Seriously though, writing is my weakest link. A flaw that would be all the more crucial once I get into a U.S. university (hopefully next year). I’ve decided to do something about it and I’m going to start with this blog. I have other plans of course, but this is the first and easiest one. So if you read my blog ocassionally, and you think you could have written it better, just say so in the comments section. Hopefully with your help, I’ll start writing better in no time.

I had a little slack time (i.e. I was feeling lazy) and decided to hack me up one of those photo galleries that seem to be standard issue nowadays on most blogs. I’m not much of a photography expert. In fact, all I have is a point-and-shoot camera which isn’t even mine.

Still, I thought it would be great to have a photo gallery that’s integrated into my blog. That way, I could refer to pictures from my posts and also use a particular post to let people know if I’ve uploaded a new album. Kinda like how multiply.com does it, but with so much more control and right here on my blog.

Some guidelines

Here are a few issues I considered when building the gallery for my blog.

• I don’t really have a lot of webspace to host full albums in my own server. Good thing there are loads of services on the web that will do exactly that for you. A lot of people like Flickr, so I chose that and went ahead and created an account.
• I needed to find a plugin for werdpress that will do all the work for me. I’m not much of a web programmer so building one from scratch was definitely out of the question. Besides, with this great Flickr Plugin for WordPress, designing my own gallery was plain dumb.
• I wanted something that would allow me to create a blog post whenever a new album is uploaded to my account.
• It also has to be aesthetically pleasing and should look at home with my current theme.

My First Album

Here’s my very first album for my gallery. These pictures are from the recently held WordCamp Philippines 2008.

WordCamp Philippines 2008

Just go to the Gallery page (menu bar on top) to view my filckr sets (i.e. albums). Or click the picture above to go directly to that album.

Some Issues

The plugin worked great for my needs but of course there are some minor kinks that needed (or still needs) a little tweaking to be workable.

• Your Flickr API key (needed for the installation) won’t work until about 5 mins. after you create it. I was so excited to make it work that I thought something was wrong when Flickr was complaining that my key was invalid. Apparently, you just had to wait a bit.
• The look and feel of the default template was just not working for my theme. The album view was a bit cluttered for my tastes, showing all the pictures as thumbnails. I just wanted a single photo as cover for the album. A few changes in some php and css files ironed it out really well.
• I still think the look is a bit too bare but my web styling know-how is not enough to improve it significantly. So for now, I’ll just have to be satisfied with it.
• When clicking on the cover picture (at the Gallery page), you are directed to the specific page for that picture. It would have been better if it directed you to the album page, since that’s the use of a cover page.
• Uploading big pictures is too slow using my connection (and a bit costly in terms of my free flickr.com bandwidth limit). So I downloaded the jUploadr program (available sourceforge.net) which automatically resizes as well as uploads your pictures to flickr.

Head on over to my gallery section and test drive it. Don’t forget to comment on this post if you encounter any bugs or if you have any suggestions on how I can improve it’s look/usability.

Edit:

Possible show-stopper (thanks scion) – Flickr non-pro only allows 3 photosets, after that, you have to pay 25$ for 1 year. Unfortunately, the plugin I use tracks these photosets to group pictures into albums. Darn. So I guess, I’ll have to be content with a max of 3 albums for now.

Plan of action:

• Just use photosets for the 3 most recent albums
• Tag older albums so that they are still grouped somehow
• Figure out a better way!!! (if you know a solution, please comment. Note that I don’t want to host my own pics due to limited space and I don’t want to manually link every single picture)
• Get lots of MONEY from a kind soul and upgrade to Flickr pro (haha. I seriously doubt this one)

Edit: Edit:

Flickr now allows more than 3 photosets so this isn’t an issue anymore.

I’ve always thought Jorge Cham’s PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper) Comics are simply brilliant, ever since someone recommended it to me at the start of my career as a grad student. Here’s one that’s very close to my heart right now:

Okay, I haven’t been in grad school that long and I definitely don’t have a kid yet, but I don’t want it to come to that either. I’ve actually been thinking a lot about this recently and I’ve come to the conclusion that I should finish my Masters as soon as possible. This way I can move on with my career path as early as possible. Whether that is to teach, to work in the industry, or to go straight to a PhD (I’m kinda hoping for this last one).

Full-time Master students in our department are expected to finish in 2 years. However, the sad reality is that I don’t really know of anyone (especially not among those who also teach), who have actually managed this. The course work isn’t really a big issue, since they don’t really fail a lot of people in grad classes. It ultimately boils down to how long it takes for you to finish your thesis. From what I’ve observed, that can be really long time.

The Problem of Focus

Why do people take forever on their thesis? I’m not exactly sure. Since it’s my first semester working on mine, I can’t really be considered as an authority on the matter. It’s safe to say though, that a lot of it’s got to do with maintaining focus.

A graduate level thesis usually involves a lot of open-ended research work. This is in contrast with most undergraduate work which follows a very strict schedule, usually in the form of a syllabus which they give to you at the start of the semester, or maybe a course checklist. Point is, you know exactly what to expect, and if you work hard enough, there really shouldn’t be any reason to spend a long time in college (okay, maybe that’s not exactly true).

In actual research, you constantly find yourself stumped by some new problem, or maybe an unexpected result. There’s also usually so much happening that you find yourself distracted all the time.

My Plan

I want to finish my thesis this semester. I really do. So what am I gonna do about it? Remove all distractions and try to maintain focus. Of course, that’s not exactly a walk in the park. So, what I’ve done, is to lay out a plan which I’ll try to stick to as close as I possibly can until I manage my goal.

That’s actually the main reason I’m writing this post. I love writing down my plans. Plain and simple, clear and concise, listed down on paper (ok, on a blog). Most of it, I’ve actually managed to do in the past month or so. Others, I still have to work on. Some of them might seem really extreme to a lot of people, but then again, extreme cases call for extreme measures.

1. Zero Distractions – The amount of distractions you run into in a single day is staggering. I think, the best way not to be distracted is to not allow for the possibility at all.
   • Email – I only check my email once a day (in the evening).
   • IMs – I have actually turned off my instant messenger by removing it at start-up. If you want to reach me, use email (which again, I only check once a day).
   • Feeds – Same as email. I might not even read them at all in a day.
   • Blogging – Ummm… I’m blogging right now. Haha. Just on the weekends I guess.
   • Stocks – I initially planned to stay “in-cash” (i.e. no stock) and have managed to sell everything at a decent price. However, now that the market seems to be swinging up again, a friend suggested that it might be a better idea to pick some “blue-chips” and then just check on them once in a while. (I chose, ABS-CBN, Metrobank, and First Gen)
   • Web in general – I try to avoid the web if possible since I consider it the #1 reason for being distracted
2. Forming a habit - Plans like these are easier to implement if you make them part of your routine.
   • Office Time – I arrive at school at exactly the same time (8:00 am) every single day. That’s a feat, considering I have almost 2 hours of travel time
   • Break Time – Strictly 1 hour for lunch. That’s it.
   • Work Time – I do teach, so I can’t really neglect my duties. However, I try not to be distracted too much by it. I can always devote more time on this after I graduate if I decide that this is what I really want.
3. Thesis Work – The key part of this plan is really the schedule. I have outlined everything that I have to do in order to finish my thesis and I regularly check if I’m still on schedule.
   • Adviser Updates – Every week, I will email an update to my adviser. No matter how little work I actually managed to do. This way, someone can track my progress, besides me.
   • Publication – I try to motivate myself to work by aiming for a conference. My adviser suggested submitting to this conference in Hungary. This way I have a deadline which is beyond my control.

That’s it. That’s my plan to finish my thesis either this sem or the next. Hopefully, this will allow me to graduate by April 2009. I’ll bookmark this entry so that I’m constantly reminded that I made this plan. If you know me, and you find me slacking about, just tell me that you read this post so I will remember my plan.

Please pray for me. See you in April!

With any luck, (i.e. if I managed to follow this howto properly), all the guys at Multiply should see this post as if it were from Multiply. If by any chance, you are in multiply, and you are reading this. Woohoo!!! Success. Otherwise… Just move along.

Thanks to Scion for suggesting that I cross post to multiply. This way, I get a “wider” audience (at least in the Philippines).

After reading about it in this cool blog, I’ve enabled OpenID on The AFC.

This means that anyone with an OpenID can now comment using their OpenID url. Amazingly, that means anyone from:

• Blogspot – blogname.blogspot.com
• Flickr – www.flickr.com/photos/username
• LiveJournal – username.livejournal.com
• Technorati – technorati.com/people/technorati/username
• and a host of other sites (or even your own site)

I think it’s a great way of improving the inter-operability of different blogging / social networking platforms. It will definitely mean a little more convenience for those who will comment on this blog since they won’t have to type all those info to comment. Just type your OpenID url on the text box with the OpenID logo.

Enable OpenID on your own wordpress site by installing the OpenID WP Plugin just as I did. You can also install the OpenID Delegation Plugin to make your website (i.e. http://urriza.net/blog) your very own OpenID identity. So now I can comment on my LiveJournal and Blogger friends using my own URL. Nice.