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So, I’ve come to a decision. It wasn’t a very hard one either. I’m sure most of you can guess which one it is, but I’m going to divulge some details before announcing my final decision.

Price

SD1100 - $150 after a $50 discount

m1033 - $150 after a $30 dollar discount

Verdict - Canon is the winner here, since the discount is bigger

Screen

SD1100 - 2.5″ screen, nice and bright, 230k pixels

m1033 - 3″ screen, 230k pixels

Verdict - Surprisingly, Canon wins this as well. I figured I would like the screen of the Kodak better since it has a bigger screen, but when taking both of the cameras outside into the light, I could hardly see the Kodak in bright natural light, while the Canon was clear as day.

Speed

Verdict: Canon. It had a faster startup time, and it saved pictures to the camera much faster, so I don’t have to wait very long to capture the next moment.

Build Quality

SD1100 - Silver, thin, basic look. Feels very sturdy

Kodak - Black, think, and also feels very sturdy

Verdict: Kodak. They were very similar in terms of how the felt, but the Kodak edged out the Canon in terms of looks. The Canon does have a viewfinder though, which could be a deciding factor for some, but on a basic point and shoot, I know I will almost never use it.

Picture Quality

SD1100 - Canon image stabilization, 2.8 Aperture, up to 1600 ISO

m1033 - 3.1 Aperture, up to 3200 ISO (6400 with 3.1 MP selected)

Verdict: Canon. The pictures were simply better. Here are some comparisons.

Left: Canon, Right: Kodak

Video Quality

SD1100 - Up to 640 x 480

m1033 - Up to 1280 x 720

Verdict: Canon, another big surprise here. The big appeal for me was the ability to record in HD with the Kodak, but the video quality wasn’t very good, it just seemed like it was a lower resolution that was scaled up to HD. The Canon looked much nicer, while the quality of the Kodak disappointed.

Final Verdict: Canon! In my 1 day of testing, I found it to be a much better camera overall. I thought the usability was better, the quality, the images, almost everything. The Kodak was nicer, but whatever, its not a fashion show.

So, today I went to staples to print my last project of the semester, and while waiting, I was looking at cameras. I’ve been wanting to buy a camera for Europe, and I have been having some trouble when it comes to choosing what to buy. I want to buy a small camera, but something of decent quality. There were two cameras on sale that both fit my requirements better then others, and I couldn’t decide on what to get. When the Staples employee told me that you had 30 days to try cameras out, incase you don’t like them, I jumped at the idea and bought both. But, I am going to return one eventually, the question is, which one?

Canon Review

Canon Pros - Better aperture, faster startup time, and well, its a Canon

Kodak Review

Kodak Pros: Bigger Screen (3″ as opposed to 2.5″), HD video recording

Looking at both the reviews, they have both gotten solid reviews, so really, its going to come down which one I like better, usability wise. They are both about the same size, size was a big factor for choosing my next camera, but it doesn’t help my decision between these two.

My next post will go into detail, and have some side by side comparisons of the two cameras.

I will do this one day.

So, my semester is finally over (all the hard stuff anyways). It was ridiculous. Remember my post about doing too much at once? I was definitely right, I did way too much, but I’ll save that topic for another blog post.

One semester is over, and a new one is finally about to start. We registered for our courses in Charles, and they are the following:

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Literature: Czech Short Stories

wed 10.00–13.00

Description:
This short course will familiarize students with a broad range of Czech 19th and 20th Century short stories by both male and female authors. All classes will be conducted in English.

Psychology of Partnership in the Time of Transition

thu 09.00–12.00

Description:
The aim of the course will be focused on rules which govern partnership interactions in two ways a) in general and b) with regards to specifics of Central Europe from more points of view.
Typology of partner interactions. Unspoken rules of mutual manipulations.
Development of partnership with a problematic partner (from courtship to break up or death). Various sort of asymmetry in partnership. (dominance – submission, guilt distribution, dependency, etc.)
Gender differences in approach to the same subjects, e.g. jealousy. Conflicting partner as an ambivalent object and defensive reaction against him/her.
Mental representation of a partner in mind and intrapsychical al interaction with this representation (introject, imaginal others). Intrapersonal vs. dyadic (interpersonal) homeostasis in partnership. Some approaches to marital therapy and diagnosis of partnership interactions. Nomotetic and idiographic methods in research of partnership.
Specifics of partnership in Czech republic and communistic population politics – divorse rate and its relation to religion and other moral values Approach to marriage, dating, sexual life before marriage. Typical roles of a man and a woman – interference of old and new ideas in our cultural space. Influence of communist ideology on family morale and values.
Adoption and foster care in Czech republic in last 50 years.

Czech Language for Everyday Use level I

tue 09.00–10.30

thu 14.00–15.30

Description: Not provided, but looking at the name of the course, its obvious.

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Now, if you look at the schedule of each class, you’ll notice something amazing. There are no classes on Monday and Friday. That means four day weekends. That means trips to Berlin, Vienna, Paris, and all those crazy places.

When did it become risky to walk home in North Burnaby?

On November 8th, 2008, at 3:30am.

Well, maybe that’s not the exact moment that it became risky, but it was the exact moment I realized it was. Ever since I can remember, I’ve never had a moments hesitation walking anywhere in Burnaby. Hell, I’ve waited for a bus in the middle of East Hastings and have always felt safe enough. I’m sure that was never a good idea, but I’ve never had a run in with a junkie before, so I figured I was safe. Clearly, I’m too trusting.

Friday night was like any other, we drank and went to go downtown to a club. We danced, talked, laughed, hung out, and had a great time. Then, we decided to go home, and who but the really cheap guy decides that he doesn’t want to take the taxi, he wants to take the 135 down Hastings (hint: he writes this blog). So, along with me is my cousin Peter and my friend Laura, and we take the bus and get off at Kensington Plaza and walk down to Peters house. This is a neighborhood that I’ve never thought twice about, I have always felt safe in it no matter what time it was. I have walked down it in the middle of the night on multiple occasions, but unfortunate this time I was not as fortunate.

We turned left on Parkdale, oblivious as to what was to come next, right up to the moment it happened and not a second before. A red hatchback passes us, and it from what I can recall, seemed like a very old Honda, although my cousin claims it was a Volvo, but in any case it turns back the other way. Even at this point, I thought nothing of it, thinking to myself “he must have just taken the wrong turn”. Even as this car pulled over, I figured he went down the street and turned around because he likes his car facing that particular direction when he gets to his house. I was wrong.

The man jumped out of his car, welding a large machete, and bolted towards our direction. I can still remember his face, his body shape, what he was wearing, even though I saw him for only a split second before I turned around and ran for my life. He was a large man, Caucasian, chunky, with a bandanna across his mouth, who yelled a couple of things that I can’t remember, but I’m sure they were irrelevant. As the man continued our away, all I can remember thinking about was getting as far away as fast as possible, and I regret to say, I wasn’t thinking about anyone else. That is, until I heard a large scream from Laura, and at that point, my brain was struggling between survival mode and the mode that would make me go back in a second. Thankfully, my brain didn’t have to make that decision, because while the man had grabbed Laura, she managed to escape right away, as apparently she had looked him in the eye, and all she saw was a confused and possibly drugged up man who didn’t seem one hundred percent there. When she ran towards us, it was the single greatest feeling of relieve I have ever experienced in my entire life. We grabbed her and kept heading towards my cousins house. They did not continue in pursuit. Finally, we got there, and we called the police.

It gave me a lot to think about; it made me question the level of trust I have for people, it made me wonder what kind of sick individual would do something like that, and I also couldn’t stop thinking about there motives. Laura said that when he caught up to her and grabbed her, there was so much he could have done, but instead, he did nothing. There was also another man in the car, he was a black man, fairly skinny, but he didn’t chase us. I continuously wonder what their intentions were, did they do it to scare us, did they do it to rob us, or were truly have the intention of killing, but because they were too fucked up on drugs, simply couldn’t “pull the trigger”. But if something happened to her, we would have undoubtedly gone to help, and all of our lives could have potentially ended that night.

You always see the terrible things that happen to people in the news, and I’m sure most people figure “Wow, that’s terrible! But I’m sure it will never happen to me”. That night made me realize that I’m not invisible, your life is as fragile is the mosquito that you kill without a seconds hesitation. Anything can happen, and so, I just hope that if anything, I can learn from this, and change in a positive way. In the end, I just hope that this experience doesn’t effect my ability to walk the streets without feeling fear, although I’m sure it will for a period of time. In my opinion, the best thing to do in a situation like this is to come out stronger, with more caution, and a greater appreciation of life. Knowing life could be over in a second makes me appreciate what I have at least a little bit more, but a little could go a long way.

So, I found out from my development manager at EA that I was going to be in the Fifa 09 credits (I was suppose to be in NHL 09, which is what I care about more, but apparently there was a mix up and all of the Online team was forgotten…). Anyways, here I am (I’m under Programmers in the EA Online section):

You can click on it to see it in more detail, I’m second from the bottom. Now, this would be fantastic, except for one little problem… The quality of this iPhone picture might be too blurry to see, but try and really look at my name. It says “Shawn Janespar”. My name has been constantly misspelled this way my entire life, but out of all the times for it to happen, this is the worst! But, I’ll admit, its pretty funny =D.

-Shawn J

An interview on the Colbert Report pretty much backed up what I said in my post, I thought it was pretty interesting. Its a short interview with Nicholas Carr about the way the Internet is changing the way we think.

Check it out!

Interview on the Colbert Report

I’ve mentioned in a previous post about a project Hora, Jesse, and I are making, but I haven’t gone into any detail at all, nor will I go into very much detail. I will tell you that its a restaurant application that is going to work with text messaging, the iPhone, and the web. In the last month or so we have been learning some technologies, and on Monday, we will have finalized our design specs, which means we can finally make this thing happen!

Yesterday, we put together a server for all our testing purposes, and its definitely the most ghetto server you will ever see.

Adding massive fat heat sink to server

We wanted to be able to run this in one of our houses, and if we were going to do that we wanted the thing to be as quiet as possible. We went out and bought a big heat sink that wouldn’t require the use of a fan, and we got the quietest power supply we could find. One of the problems was that the power supply sits directly beside the heatsink, and therefor, we modded the case so that the power supply would sit where the DVD rom drive used to sit, since we don’t need that after we’ve installed Ubuntu anyways. Any holes that were left open were covered with ducktape, and viola, we have an extremely quiet server.

Notice the power supply on the front of our server, ghetto or what?

And now, its up and running! Incase anyone is wondering what our plan is for the server, we will be running Ubuntu for the OS, Apache to serve web, Python to code (to be more specific, the Django framework), and MySQL for the database.

Our server room

This server is going to be put into good use in the coming months, hopefully this is the start of something great.

Can’t wait to show everyone what we’ve cooked up when we are all done

I haven’t ever learned anything significant in a lecture theater. There are so many little things about them that make them the worst possible environment to learn in. I for one, have learned next to nothing in a lecture theater, and while almost every class I have taken has had at least one lecture a week, I would say I’ve attended at most thirty-three percent of them, and actually retained useful knowledge from twenty percent of that thirty-three percent. I would say one of the best things they have been used for in my first two years of university is meeting like-minded students who also agree that this time could be better spent studying, or eating, or sleeping, or anything but sitting in a boring lecture pretending I’m learning. Now, maybe I over exaggerated a little bit when I said before that I’ve learning nothing significant in a lecture theater, but in actually its the fact that I’ve learned from a extremely small percentage of them, a percentage that is viewed by some people “too small” for a learning institution.

I’ll admit, this topic spawned from a head turn in one of my recent useless lectures, and was meant to be a rant more then anything. I was sitting in the back of the lecture theatre (which I generally do when the professor is useless, which is *gasp* about 66% of the time, see the mathematical correlation?), and I was minding my own business talking amongst my friends (Jesse and Horatiu), when a student turns his head and tells us to be quiet. Are you fucking kidding me? There is a reason we sit in the back. Its to talk amongst ourselves, and we attend class in case there is a major piece of information being distributed. The back is for us, the people who don’t bother listening to 10 pages of the dreaded power point slides, and instead, we learn on our own time. It has worked the first two years, and as I dip my feet into more specialized courses where it seems the more specialized you get, the worse the english of the professor becomes, lectures become even more useless. I could tell he wasn’t paying much attention anyways, and by the end his neck couldnt keep his head up long enough to withstand the power of numerical analysis. Although to be fair, the professor is particulary good, considering he was a Mathematics professor, which is why I bother to even attend the class, but after you’ve been to a couple of classes with a useless professor, you know its not even worth it.

While in my first semester, I stopped going to my calculus class only because it was too early, and if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t dare skip, I’d rather sit and play games in class, at least I could say I was there. It wasn’t until my second semester that I realized I could skip out on my lectures without feeling a sizable amount of guilt. I find that a lot of people don’t come to this shocking revelation, and that for the rest of their university careers, they continue to attend a lecture no matter how trivial it is to be there. I’m not sure why this is, maybe its because they feel that since they are paying for the class, they might as well attend. I feel that I pay $500 for the three credits, not to listen to a guy/girl who is paid to research and couldn’t give two shits about teaching. Or maybe some people can actually learn with a bad professor. I don’t know how these people do it, they must have dodged the A.D.D. bullet that most students have been hit by at some point in their university careers. I for one, would rather honestly catch up on sleep then pretending like I’m enjoying text projected through a lens running on Microsoft Powerpoint.

Mind you, there are definitely exceptions. Sometimes, professors can be entertaining and useful. My calculus professor was excellent, as were my data structure/algorithms prof, my psychology prof, and a couple of other ones. They were worth listening to, and I’m sure I’ll have a couple more who can prove to me that not all professors are completely useless. But the point I’m trying to make is that students don’t really come to university to get an education from a lecture. In university, the goal to learn how to learn, and one can only truly learn how to do that by realizing that the time spent in a lecture theater could have been put towards something much more productive. Don’t be upset that your professor can’t really speak English, the materials for you to learn are provided to you, take this opportunity to realize that its not his responsibility to teach you, and that if you have enough interest and/or drive to succeed, you should be able to teach yourself just fine. In the end, university is suppose to teach you the bigger picture, that no one is going to be out there to hold our hand, and its no ones responsibility but your own to get us what you want. Its my personal opinion that if you can come to the reality that lectures are useless, and as a result of this, learn how to learn on your own, then you have received the greatest education of all, and have learned a greater lesson then any professor could ever lecture on.

I find that more and more people in this day and age can’t go two minutes without becoming finicky and resorting to pulling out their cell phone. I’d suspect that eighty years ago, it was perfectly acceptable to go hours on end with nothing to do, which would open the mind to new, unique forms of entertainment that I’m sure are very prominent in our culture today. They had the opportunity to let the mind explore endless possibilities.

Now, maybe the internet hasn’t physically given us A.D.D., but it has released the beast from within. What I mean by that is we are no longer in a state where we can possibly pay attention to something that isn’t at least as entertaining as what you can do on, say, your phone. Whenever we are bored, whenever there is nothing to do, our nothing is replaced by something, and of course this is bad because nothing is not only good, its healthy. The white noise of our society is no longer using our mind to explore the possibilities of life and nature. It is making a phone call, sending a text message, or browsing the mobile web. Our nothing is now something, and doing something boring has fallen below the entertainment threshold provided by nothing.

Years ago, listening to a lecture would not be a chore, it would be a valued experience because there would be nothing else while in that room that could be more entertaining. Now, I can resort to a whole whack of different devices that will cure my woes, such as my laptop, my cell phone… even my calculator has games on it! And now, we are subject to such entertainment everywhere we go, I can even watch YouTube on the bus, allowing me to completely block off my natural surroundings. I feel that now, its difficult to pay attention to a lecture even when its a topic that’s interesting to me, because well, I can be doing something even more entertaining, and again, my standard of nothing is more entertaining then doing this certain something.

Now, don’t get me wrong, if I was presented with the choice of a non-internet, stone aged life, or a A.D.D, internet filled life, well all know which one I’d opt for the latter, but non-the-less we all must deal with these side effects. But dealing with them may be much harder then anyone would think. You have to train your mind to block distractions, and the only way to do this is through brute force. When you have to get work done, find a nice quiet place, close the messaging client, block out Facebook, and then hopefully, you can get used to hearing nothing but your own wondering thoughts. Oh, and shut off your phone, its as biggest distraction of all. If anyone can succeed at this, tell me how.

While access to the internet twenty-four seven is definitely a convenience, I really believe that we need to take time out of our day to be disconnected completely. The idea of being tethered to the internet all day can be damaging, especially for businessmen. Hopefully, I can learn to disconnect once and a while, so I can go about my daily life without recieving an email while I should be hiking a mountain, or go on Digg when I’m out with my friends. The internet is an addiction, and I truly believe it has given us all A.D.D.. The real challenge in today’s in our generations daily life is being able to embrace the internet, and at the same time, being able to get shit done.