Google Sites

This is so cool! Kind of like Sharepoint, in a way. This is a nice option to have available for school clubs, maybe even WICS.

PHD Comics: C-C-Coffee...

They must have all the major conference deadlines and write their comics around them. I am even working on the methodology section right now!!! O_o

Official Google Blog: Searching for the Wisconsin primaries

This is a neat idea, and it's nice that we get to see some concrete examples of how Googlers spend their 20% time. Mash-ups have some really practical applications and if I ever get the time, I'd really like to try making some of my own.

Here's an example from the blog of the map with the queries for Democratic candidates plotted on it:

Yes, Please!

Technology Review: Clothes That Clean Themselves

Not having to get things dry cleaned would be especially handy. Now couple this with an ironing robot and I'd be set.

Back to the Grind

Sunday morning left us with little time for sightseeing. Brittany and I walked around the block near the hotel just to have a look. It was pretty empty and everything was closed. It was also pouring rain, but luckily the hotel has pretty nice loaner umbrellas! I feel a little embarrassed to be a Vancouverite borrowing an umbrella. Anyway, here I am with the hotel in the background:


And finally, to wrap-up the trip that I feel so lucky to have been chosen to go on, I'll just put a picture of us three SFUers:


Thank you Google! :)

Are You Going...to San Francisco...?

Saturday began with a round of PhD talks at our hotel. We had a pretty nice breakfast and then went to hear six women speak about their research. There was even an undergraduate presenter and I have to say I was pretty impressed with her presentation. There were two Googlers on a panel and they also discussed the merits of doing graduate school and the different opportunities that existed in academia and industry. I feel more encouraged as the months go by that perhaps a PhD is not a death knell to a career in industry. Which is exciting! Eventually, I think I would like to pursue that.

At any rate, two hours after our delicious breakfast, we had an equally delicious lunch. Yes, Googlers seem to like their gourmet meals to also be quite frequent. Apart from the time I was asleep, I don't think I ever went for more than two hours without food in my mouth. However, it wasn't a bad thing, as we had quite an active afternoon.

We soon boarded buses bound for San Francisco. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see the Golden Gate Bridge, although we did get a glimpse of the Bay Bridge through the window of the bus (photo thanks to Lauren Cairco):


On the way into San Francisco, we also passed by this eyesore:


The sign on the hill (which is hard to read unless you zoom right in) says:

South
San Francisco
The Industrial City

Who knew? The first thing Brittany and I noticed was the houses. They all look just the same.


When we got to San Francisco (specifically, the red light/Chinatown/Italian Town districts), we were introduced to a pretty neat game, called The Go Game. It's basically a scavenger hunt, but you get clues and missions via cell phones, and you prove you completed each challenge by taking photos and videos with a video camera. All in all, it was pretty cool, even though we got completely water-logged and it was in a pretty small part of San Francisco. I got a feel for the area though, it reminded me a bit of the West End or Davie Street in Vancouver. I'd definitely like to do a return trip, just to check it out and see more of the city.

Comics are Excellent

Sometimes. Like this one:



There is still more to blog about the big trip, but I need to collect more photos (and also, I have a tonne of non-blog, i.e. real, work to be doing right now).

Dinner of Doom

After the day at Google, we were taken to Maggiano's, an Italian restaurant in San Jose. What we didn't realize was just how big of a dinner this would be. We started off with four appetizers, which were followed by four pasta dishes. At this point there was a bit of a lull and I think we expected that dessert would be arriving shortly. To our horror and amazement, four main courses arrived (three meats and one meat-alternative), which we couldn't eat at all. There was a salmon, a sausage and steak dish, and two others that have completely escaped my memory because it wasn't big enough to hold it all. Finally, dessert arrived, which was excellent - spumoni ice cream and tiramisu.

Needless to say, we were stuffed. I have a picture of the cake:

Fawning Over Founders

Today involved another very early start as we had to get to the buses at 7:00am. Yrgh. Anyway, we arrived at the Googleplex for breakfast, a lively and interesting talk by Corrina Cortes, a tour and some assorted technical talks.

The highlight of the day was the networking event at the close of the day at Google, where we spent time talking with the other girls. However, all of a sudden, some Googlers materialized and began to mingle. Brittany kept saying, "get a photo, get a photo". I assumed she meant Meng, the Googler who gets pictures with famous visitors, who had just sat down at our table. However, it soon became clear that Sergey Brin was being introduced to us. At first, only eight of the 175 of us were aware of this, and as he was introduced to our table Brittany and I were two of those eight. He had some interesting things to say, particularly about the problems of decreasing enrollment in CS in general and in particular decreasing enrollment of women in CS. Finally, the girl next to me piped up with a very nice thank you (for the trip, the day, the opportunity, etc) and then tacked on a photo request. Sergey said, "if I start this, I'm going to get a lot of photo requests...ok, let's do it this way. We'll have two photos. Whoever has the best camera can take one, and then we'll take one with that person in the picture." Everyone held up their cameras, and luckily I had the best one (I'm so thankful I brought my D50)! So it was decided I would take the picture:


And here's the one with me in it:



Just before we left, we were introduced to another famous Googler, Thunder Parley, who insisted we Google him. The result is amusing!

Do You Know the Way to San Jose?

Thursday morning got off to a bit of a rough start when we arrived at YVR only to find out that our flight to Seattle was cancelled. We called the travel agent, who told us the next flight was at 3:00! We didn't want to wait that long, and he luckily suggested another flight leaving at 11:30. After an hour of waiting in line, Angelica got us to the 'ticket change' counter, and even though we weren't supposed to be there, a really nice lady at the counter arranged to get us on the 11:30 flight.

Amazingly, we had a beautiful trip to Portland. On the way, we flew by Mt. Ranier:


And Mt. Saint Helens:


After a stopover in Portland and a surprisingly decent/healthy Mexican lunch there, we finally arrived at the San Jose airport and caught the shuttle to the hotel just in time to make it to the reception at the hotel.

The reception was fabulous - peking duck, dim sum, pasta, you name it. There was an entire table of desserts, which was fine with us! Although most of the day was spent sitting, it was completely exhausting at it all ended around 9, with the three of us sharing Angelica's internet and exploring the wonders of Google Earth.

PHD Comics: Lather, rinse, repeat

hee hee!

New Year's Resolutions Finally Kick In

Started running again; I went for the first time yesterday and again today. And! I saw the eclipse. Very nice! There was about a minute right at 7:00pm where it was really nice and red, and then completely disappeared. We wondered what happened until we realized that a cloud had covered it all up. That's Vancouver for you! But I was very glad to get a quick peek.

Here's an image of the eclipse that someone posted on Flickr:



This picture shows the moon quite a bit redder than what we saw - it looked much more orangey and the colour was nowhere near as saturated either. Still, it was neat!

NASA predicts red or orange lunar eclipse for Wednesday

I'm hoping to get a glimpse of this tonight! Here's hoping Vancouver's famous rain let's up for a bit.

Official Gmail Blog: Updates from Google Docs and Google Calendar

This is a really nice update, but I still wish I could just sync my iPhone's iCal with google calendar a little easier. With colours. It is a pain to use the web when I am not at home.

PHD Comics: A quiet evening at home

This comic is so accurate, it's scary.

Blog Fix

So I've been trying to find a way not to use iframes, or at least to find a way to adjust the height of the iframe automatically so there wouldn't be a scroll bar in the page (or two scroll bars - yuck). However, it appears that this isn't possible unless you host both the blog and the site on the same domain. At the time, this isn't really an option, so I ended up changing the blogger template to match my site exactly, and then sticking the blog in the main section. It seems to have worked pretty nicely, and apart from the different link for the news page, looks pretty seamless to me.

More Site Updgrades

I'm still looking for a solution for better blog embedding. Right now I'm using an iframe, which I know is definitely not a preferred option. I've been looking into some adjustable CSS divs but no luck yet. The iframe I'm using isn't adjustable either, which makes for some annoying scroll bars (and horror of horrors, double scroll bars at times).

Game Night

Last night I took a well-deserved break (after a week of marking marathons, paper writing, tutorial creating, assignment scrambling, and cupcake baking) and went to our Graduate Students Computing Science Association Game Night. Although it was pretty fun and I learned how to play poker properly for the first time (I even won a round!), I have to say that the game selection was a little lacking. The available games were Poker, Taboo, Scrabble, and Clue. Scrabble is a little too slow, and no one wanted to play Taboo. I haven't played Clue since I was about eight years old!

This has given me some ideas. I'd like to see a rousing game of Settlers of Catan, for instance! Maybe some unusual card games, like Fluxx or even Munchkins (we are computing scientists afterall, surely there are a significant many of us who if not having played D&D, can at least make fun of it)...

At any rate, perhaps this is a small and easy-to-organize event for WICS. Which would be cool, because for most of the event last night, there were only two of us girls there. :(

Some Fun This Week

This week WICS held its first event of the semester, the Valentine's Tea and Sweets event. I was so happy to see a good turnout, and we got more members on our Facebook group as well!


WICS has been a little defunct over the past year and I hope this is a sign of good things to come for this semester and for the rest of the coming year.

The night before the event we made these little guys:


Yes, meet One and Zero, our resident (temporary, of course) Binary Cupcakes. Because everyone needs a *bit* of love on Valentine's Day, right?!

Robotting News

Finally, the story about our robot team and our win at the Richard Tapia robotics competition makes it onto the CS website! :)

Find the story here.

A Great Way to Start the New Year!

Today I got word that I am among 150 students in North America selected to attend the 2008 Google Workshop for Women Engineers. It includes an all expenses paid three day trip to San Jose to visit Google and attend the event. We also get a free day to explore San Jose.

More information can be found here.

Right now, I am quite excited!!!