alex, the british lad

After deciding to visit my blog after a long hiatus, I was greeted with 9000 comments of “awaiting moderation spam” and a further 5000 that managed to get approved. After running countless utilities and doing some manual database work, I’ve managed to clear most of the rubbish out. Lost some actual comments on the way, but ’twas in the name of efficiency!

Anyway, all I would like to post tonight is this link. I’m going to post more on the environment in coming days/week/months. So check back!

Went to the Vancouver Aquarium today on the sea Otter tour, which was rather interesting. For example if you were to walk up to an otter and put one finger on him/her, the number of hairs under that one finger would be more than all the hairs on your body. There’s a ton of other interesting facts which you can find here (thanks wikipedia). Got some good food as well at Tropika. We only ordered two items off the menu - the satays and some malay bread, but I was stuffed.

I’ve started reading Value Investing which has been quite interesting so far. If I actually find the concepts useful, I’m thinking about starting a Value Investing blog, but we’ll see how that goes. I also read The Victorian Internet, which was interesting because it compared the days of the telegraph to the days of the Internet. Relatively, the Internet seems like such a major jump from 10 years ago, but compared to the jump from pre-telegraph times, the past 10 years have been nothing (or so the book argues and I agree!) Not bad for a 2 hour read.

Heading home on Sunday, but it’s been a relaxing trip and I’m somwhat energized to get back to school.

And eh! I’ve recently become a compulsive reader of:
Slashdot - don’t remember how I found this site
Digg - stumbled across their (video) podcast on iTunes

Keeps the mind alert and perhaps all the random information will be useful if I start investing!

’tis my final reading week and I’m in Vancouver. ICFP is done, thank god, and graduation is just around the corner. I’m not quite ready to reflect on university, it seems like a blur, but that may be because of the lack of sleep I’ve had over the last two months (damn overload/ICFP!) Despite everything, though, it was a fun semester and working with the other three characters on my ICFP time proved to be quite a good time.

I wanted to sit in on a course next semester called Value Investing, but the prof absolutely refuses to let me…what a bum. I plan to read the books anyway and try and figure some stuff out on my own. I figure even if I’m not in his class I can still go bug him if I have any questions and maybe that’ll convince him that I’m serious.

The rest of the week should be fun, just want to relax and read and maybe do some skiing/shopping. I shall post any pictures if there’s some worthwhile…!

Interesting places visited over Christmas:
Belize City - quaint city, friendly people
Jamaica, particularly Ocho Rios, particularly Dunn’s Falls - walking up a waterfall is fun
Cayman Islands - epitome of capitalism

Anyway, good times over Christmas. Hanging out with my brother for an extended period of time was nice too, reminds you what brotherly love is…and brotherly dislike (considering I have reason to believe he killed my laptop).

School is back in full swing. I decided that I’d take a .75 overload despite the fact that the workload this semester is already going to be killer. But, instead of pouring all my efforts into ICFP (for you lucky non-Ivey’s, it stands for Ivey Client Field Project - basically pro bono consulting), I figure I’d try and learn about things I find interesting instead of things I’m being forced to learn about.

My reading over Christmas, which included:

• The Google Story
• iCon Steve Jobs : The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business
• The Five People You Meet in Heaven
• On Intelligence
• Good to Great

has offered quite a bit of inspiration in my classes and that’s only in the first week. My (only) resolution for the new year was to try and read a lot more and watch much less TV. I’m trying, but we’ll see how it goes. Having to read 60 pages a night in cases and business studies is making it slightly difficult though.

I’m starting work at Accenture in late July, so I contemplating what I want to do this summer. Part of me wants to go back to Taiwan, but I also really want to go back to Europe or the UK. I guess it’ll depend on other things like being able to find a place to live in Toronto, financing and planning.

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I’ve been reading a book (On Intelligence) which talks about how the brain processes information. A lot of it is theory, but it gives me a different perspective in thinking about life. The core argument is that the brain (primarily the cortex) continually analyzes patterns and draws on your memory (stored as patterns) to make predictions. A simple example is if you see a person half-hidden by a door, your brain will predict that there is an entire person there without you actually having to see the entire person. You can think also about how your mind wanders. Starting with a piece of apple pie may lead to the thought of McDonalds, then to hamburgers, then to cows, etc. With this opinion of the mind, my interpretation of what it is to be human, to be a living thing, changes drastically. Despite being capable of thought, opinion, emotion, etc., being human (to me) becomes less substantial if all thought turns out to be is the constant interpretation of patterns. That idea of a mind, beyond the brain is eliminated, which affects religious thoughts, meditation, fate and so on.

The book focuses on one part of the brain, which is likely making this interpretation bias. Regardless, it’s still an interesting standpoint.

Anyway, Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays!

A random list of things I want to do (in no particular order):
sit on a mountain in scotland and listen to bagpipes
find an uninhabited island somewhere with a sandy beach and just drop anchor and listen to the waves lap up on the shore
go diving in a cave somewhere in Jamaica, where the ocean meets mountains
go on safari somewhere in Africa
trek through a rainforest
become a monk
sit in central africa with nothing in any direction and watch the sun come up
look up the stars somewhere in the world where light pollution doesn’t obstruct the view
get lost in nature somewhere with nothing but the clothes on my back
explore the pyramids of Egypt
learn a martial art
paraglide from a mountain over the ocean
explore the beautiful reefs of the world
find an overlooked treasure in a shipwreck
teach kids in Africa to read and write
find a way to universally stop famine
float down to earth from an airplane

I’ve been around for over 20 years and have been asked countless times what type of music or what bands I listen to. Well, upon actually loading up the 10 thousand songs I had on my computer into iTunes, I’ve actually got an idea of the music I really like. Current favorites:
Coldplay
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Our Lady Peace

Ehehe, so I actually got the Casio camera. I almost hugged the UPS guy when he arrived with it today. :O I stuck in the battery straight away and played with it until I got home (with intermissions to drive and eat). It’s a wicked camera and all the features work great, I’ll post some pictures once I get everything all hooked up! I also bought a 400 GB Seagate drive because it was on sale - half price. Now I’ll atually be able to get my computer to work properly and retire the 5 year old hard drive it’s currently using :S! Aside from my recent shopping spree though…nothing else too exciting has been going on. The next two days are currently reserved for hanging out with my brother, packing and picking up Sandy and then it’s back to school on Friday. In retrospect though, it has been a pretty kick ass summer and I’m beginning to realize how much fun life will/can be once I graduate - it’s all about priorities. Weeeeeeeeeee!

Every time I’m in Dallas I always seem to have a million things to do. Most likely because all computer-related things get crammed into the one to two weeks that I’m down here for. The result is very long days. In fact, they may even be longer than school days! Anyway, with that aside there’s not too much else going on in the 2 hours/day I have to myself. I’m still looking at cameras and have narrowed it down to the Casio Exilim z750 and the Canon PowerShot SD500. I’m leaning a little more towards the Z750 because of the manual features. But I have this irking feeling that I should be more conservative and just buy a 5.0 megapixel one, but then again if I’m going to buy a new camera, I think it’s better to invest in one that won’t be outdated in 6 months. Decisions, decisions…ahhh!

On a completely separate note, Mac OS X has this really cool new feature called Dashboard. I’m heavily impressed by it - go check out the link to see what exactly it is. No doubt it’ll be in the next version of windows though. ;).

And eh, my stay in Vancouver was fun (obviously! just the scenery makes it fun - that scenery includes my beautiful girlfriend ;)). The weather was gorgeous and my favorite day has to be the family (me being the only non-family member) outing to Stanley Park (breathtaking). We rented some bikes and took to the trails. Sandy’s wonderful sister zoomed off with her cousin though and got quite lost, which made for a fun little search and rescue mission carried out by Sandy and myself near the end of the afternoon. I think there are pictures somewhere, if I find any…I shall post them. All in all though, it was a wonderful trip. My flight from Vancouver to Dallas was not so fun with stops in two cities and delays, but it did make for some good reading and sleeping time.

Far too long, if you made it this far…I’m very impressed!