It’s my last semester and I’ve been really busy between finishing projects (and my thesis!), trying to enjoy Charlottesville before I leave, and trying to travel a bit and visit friends from other schools. I’ve taken a job in northern Virginia working with a small software consulting startup. The team seems like a really good group, and I’m excited about the opportunity.  I don’t start working until August, which leaves me some time to do some interesting stuff, notably an epic cross country road trip that I will discuss in future posts..

Foxfield. Those within the UVA community immediately have a preconceived notion of the word.  Foxfield Races are horse races that draw a huge portion of students together for a day of socializing. The event has become a signature of Greek organizations around grounds. The emphasis is on socializing more than horse racing, the running joke has become whether spectators even see horses (the course is large enough it’s possible and in fact often true). Presumably from the association with horse racing, Foxfield has also become well known for people wearing their southern Sunday bests; but this often just results in varying levels of seersucker and crazy pastel color combinations. I went for the first time this year, I figured I should partake in the UVA event once in my four years here.

Anticipation surrounding the races were significantly dampened with the prediction of thunderstorms all day. However, the rain held off for virtually the entire day, with the worst rain before most people even arrived.  Additionally, the weather provided a bit of an advantage over some other years where the temperatures often shoot quite high which combining with sun can be quite uncomfortable (I’m told). I had a good time, it was a unique experience and I happened to run into a surprising number of people I didn’t expect to see.

Keep your eyes peeled for new posts..

I started working on a little project we were talking about in my algorithms class, I dubbed the implementation ImageShrink. I don’t really plan on doing any development towards but it creates a really cool visual effect that you should check out. It’s interesting how much information our eyes have to deal with and what gets indicated in our brain as being not the important. Mostly, your brain notices edges, so if you get rid of space that isn’t an edge you don’t hardly notice.

I’m giving a presentation in my E-Commerce class on some security issues with SSL/TLS in its current state. I made a video demo of some attacks that are relatively easy to perform and users tend to know little about: Sidejacking and Man In The Middle attacks (I use ARP poisoning). I’ve attached my slides (with notes as required..) and videos. Sorry if you wanted to look at the PowerPoint and don’t have the new 2007/2008 it repeatedly crashed when I told it to conver to old style. Never would have guessed
Also, I’ve fixed GAMVL to work with YouTube again, I’ll post at least some code for that soon.

The USA elected Obama. I think this could be a great step for us, as a nation that has struggled so much lately, and I think it could drastically improve our world image as well. I’m also really proud of us as a country for showing up to vote in unprecedented numbers. It’s nice to know that perhaps there still is an American spirit and pride.  My only real concern is that expectations have now been set sky high and that if the US fails to turn into Utopia in the next four years, there will be a lot of name calling. I guess we’ll see.

I’m going to study in Australia next semester at University of Melbourne. I’m very excited. For me, a ray of light in these dark economic times is the Australian Dollar has gone from almost exactly $1 to ~$.65, similar effects with the GBP and Euro, so it’s a (relatively) good time to travel. As I said, I’m really excited for the experience, I’ve never been to Australia (or the southern hemisphere for that matter). It will be weird going during our spring semester, because it will be essentially repeating the fall semester.

My parents came down we went apple picking and went to their first college football game in a long time, it was an exciting overtime win for us, UVA vs UNC — they were ranked 18th at the time, but we had an exciting closing stretch to push us in to overtime and win. I went to a family reunion in central PA, near to where my family lives. However, there were Amish people around with horse and buggy, I was quite surprised having gone near here my whole life and had no idea. Apparently, they’ve kind of lived “over the mountain” and just slightly out of touch with where we normally go.

I saw Jay-Z and T.I. in concert. They were really good – I’m not a huge T.I. fan, but it was still a good set. Jay-Z got to remind us all how long he’s been making hits and how many fantastic songs he’s had through his career. I saw him at HFStival a few years ago, but only really briefly because I wasn’t a big fan at the time.

First, I shall start off with the bathroom situation in our main building — check out the attached pictures. You will notice that there are two women’s bathrooms RIGHT next to each other, literally, and a sign (which is hard to depict) on the wall which says that the mens rooms are downstairs.. Thanks.

Second, is my ECE lab reports. The lab is completed with partners. We received guidelines with what is expected in the lab report, where it is nowhere indicated that the report is done individually and not with your partner who you did the whole lab. A section of the guidelines say
“· Names of group members

· Date on which the experiment was performed

· Signed pledge

/Pledge and Sign: “On our honor, we have neither given nor received unauthorized assistance on this report nor have in any way falsified or plagiarized experimental data.”/”
Which implies to me that WE having not received unauthorized assistance on this REPORT implied in fact that WE had done the report. Luckily, my TA was so gracious as allow me to redo the lab report by the next day, not allowing it to go for the first report, but rather rewriting a new report overnight.

Lastly, in my CS class (this is what Tommy posted about orginally) our assignment for writing a report about an assignment we just did said
“We really think you it will take one one-and-a-half pages at most to do this. If you find yourself writing more than that, try to make explain it more briefly. Also, it’s important for this class that you communicate clearly and concisely, and that padding reports or documents with extra words makes for bad written communication.”
I’m not sure which free translator was used from what language but the irony is quite amusing..

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