Advice for Waterloo SE/CS/CE students about grad school
23 Oct 2020
I wrote this in an email to a Waterloo Software Engineering student, but it’s worthwhile to put on the Internet more broadly.
Let’s take a step back and talk about graduate school vs undergrad. For a PhD essentially all of the action is in your thesis and very little is your courses. Of course you’re not signing up for a PhD at the moment but instead a Master’s, so it’s not quite the same.
Weird LaTeX error: File l3backend-pdfmode.def not found
23 Oct 2020
For the past few months, LaTeX had been completely broken on my computer. I’d been hoping it was something systemwide and that upgrading LaTeX would fix it. Nope. I’d tried mitigating using different engines. Turns out, xelatex produces different line breaks (!!) and lualatex was somehow incompatible with acmart 1.73 on my computer (metric data for lmroman10-regular not found). Computers are great.
Here’s the pdflatex error message:
! LaTeX Error: File `l3backend-pdfmode.def’ not found.
New-to-me bicycle
15 Oct 2020Back in January I had spotted a garage sale in Paraparaumu. There were two bicycles. I got up early at the airbnb and walked to the sale at the Kāpiti Collective early Saturday morning and saw that there was a $20 bicycle and a $200 bicycle. [… Some months later,] I bought a new bike in Plimmerton and rode it back home. While walking to the seller’s place I noticed that his neighbour had a bunch of bicycles and a motorcycle, so I figured (correctly) that he would have a bike pump. […]
New Zealand Restaurants
3 Oct 2020I consolidated the list of restaurants we liked in New Zealand from my monthly summaries so far. Considering how few days we spent in Christchurch there are a surprisingly large number of restaurants from there. In general we’ve been doing a lot of cooking at home.
Wellington
Upesh Kitchen: Our favourite Kelburn take-out place, Malaysian and South Indian
Harbourside Market: Sunday market with food trucks
Best Ugly Bagels: Montreal-style bagels
September: Canterbury and Level 1
2 Oct 2020Spring in New Zealand
Once again, spent two-thirds of this month in Wellington. The other 10 days were around Christchurch and Kaikoura. Currently no trips planned until November 27, although perhaps Auckland for not-Nationals judo tournament in early November.
We are moving 700m down the street tomorrow though. The lease on our current place ended and so we looked around for alternatives (although a fun fact is that, like in Ontario, a fixed-term lease automatically becomes periodic upon completion in NZ and needs to be explicitly non-renewed 21 days before the end date). The new place should be nicer in many ways although the view might not be as good.
Long-Delayed Trip Report: Queen's Birthday Weekend in Charleston
10 Sep 2020The plan, then, was to get in some climbing on granite in Charleston for the Queen’s Birthday long weekend. Side note: In Canada [except Quebec], Victoria Day is the Queen’s Birthday (unofficial start to summer), scheduled for the last Monday preceding May 25, while in NZ, it’s the first Monday in June. Close but not quite, and the weather is different. Kind of like many things in NZ. It’s a different country.
Our First Great Walk: the Heaphy Track
5 Sep 2020Finally, part 1. Part 2: Pohatu Penguins. Part 3: Arthur’s Pass and the TranzAlpine. Part 3b: BreakFree on Cashel.
All the pictures: gallery
Introduction
As soon as the Great Walks bookings opened after lockdown, we thought we would sign up for at least one, to see what they were like. At this point I can’t remember why, but we chose the Heaphy Track as our first Great Walk. This is the longest great walk at 82km, and we would be doing it in the middle of the “winter”, sharing the track with mountain bikes.
Munging Global COVID stats
4 Sep 2020Previously (NZ stats); banner image from US CDC: https://phil.cdc.gov/Details.aspx?pid=23354.
It hasn’t been discussed in either the Canadian or NZ news from what I can see, but I’m vaguely aware that some countries are having a legit resurgence. I understand that people who are more closely connected to European countries have been talking about it more. Quebec is worrying about one but the Canada-wide numbers are still better than many European countries. Of course we should worry about what is going to happen when schools are back.
August: Back from a trip and into Level 2
31 Aug 2020In Wellington. Previous trip: Stewart Island; returned to Wellington August 11 (a day before New Zealand went back up to level 2 and Auckland to level 3 following discovery of a new cluster). Next trip: Christchurch, September 11, originally for the South Islands judo championships, now cancelled (oops).
Aside from that, it’s been a fairly quiet month. I hope to at least get all of the Heaphy trip posted and maybe some of the Rakiura trip before going to Christchurch in two weeks. Booked Kepler, Milford, and Routeburn tracks for later this year.
The TranzAlpine and a day at Arthur's Pass
22 Aug 2020Here’s the third part of this South Island trip. Part 1: Heaphy Track. Part 2: penguins, Mount Sunday, and Christchurch. Part 3b: BreakFree on Cashel.
On my list of “things to check for re-opening” was New Zealand railway trips. So when I saw that the TranzAlpine was re-opening for $75 winter fares, I talked MP into a trip from Christchurch. Like the Heaphy, this trip leaves you far away from where you started, and on the wrong side of the Southern Alps. The train is logistically easier because at least you’re in a town, Greymouth. But that town is still remote enough that one can buy a starter home for $95k. The solution here is easier than for the Heaphy though: you just take the train back.
