Freedom!... for a few months

Final exams for winter semester have come and gone, and I'm happy and proud to say that I survived first year engineering. Phew. I'm not gonna lie - the last semester was the hardest one I've ever had. With up to 10 hours of labs a week - which is practically a part-time job - I felt like I barely had time to absorb anything. My MO was to get shit done, which was easier once I found some people to work with... which leads to my next point, which is that the importance of teamwork in engineering coursework cannot be overly emphasized. A word of advice for anyone reading this going into engineering: find reliable people that you can compare/share homework with. If you're not confident that what you're handing in is already correct, by the time you get it back and find out it's wrong, you don't have time to relearn it.
Another word of advice: locate and use all possible resources. By this I mean solution manuals, teachers' solution manuals, a cramster account, former students' homework and assignments, etc. Trust me - when you know you have something reliable to double check your work with, life is much less stressful.
A run-down of my courses:

• Math 101 (Calc 2) - The lectures were terrible and I gave up on them after the first 2 weeks. I basically taught myself out of the textbook. But that was actually not too painful except for the last few sections on expressing functions as power series and the Taylor series. Like most math courses, if you do enough practice problems, you're good. 
• Physics 101 - This course covered a ton of material and it was pretty tough, by my standards, anyway. We covered gravitation, pressure, fluids (Bernoulli, buoyancy, etc.), thermodynamics, heat engines, wave functions, standing waves, doppler effect, beats, electric fields, gauss' law, point charges, dipoles... the list goes on. I'm sure half of it has already fallen out of my brain. The labs were totally unrelated to the lecture material - mostly about electricity - and were actually easier than the labs in Physics 100. Or maybe I just managed to follow their marking system. Sometimes, things are marked in a dumb way, but as long as it's consistent, you can give them what they want. That's all I will say about that. Also, they have this 24-hour due date policy with physics labs. It made a lot of people unhappy, but it didn't bother me that much. I wanted to get it off my plate as quickly as possible anyway, so I always just handed it in the same day.
• Chem 101 - Pretty much followed the same format and style as Chem 100. Same professor (Dr. Whitcombe). We did a lot of acid/base/solubility ICE tables. He makes it pretty straightforward.
• Chem 121 - This 1-credit lab course was the bane of my existence. The marking scheme was punitive and I found it discouraging, much like last semester. 
• Ensc 150 (Environmental Engineering) - By far the most interesting course of the whole year. Dr. Helle is a great instructor - good lecturer, approachable, and helpful. We covered interesting topics like how everything is toxic, figuring out how much chemical is in or moving through soils/air/water, risk levels, mass balances, etc. I found this course challenging, but some of the 2nd years in the class said it was easy. Maybe some of the courses they had already taken gave them a big advantage.
• Ensc 151 (Engineering tools) - Another 1-credit lab course. This one was not bad though since we learned how to use some presumably useful and important software: Excel, Visio, ArcMaps, and AutoCAD. I thought this class was interesting.

On a whiny note, I don't like that lab courses are only worth 1 credit when they are 3 hours a week just like lectures, and we end up spending the same amount or more time on them (particularly for chemistry). 

And now, back to my summer...

Canadian Wildlife: Dr. Geist lecture

On a whim, I attended a lecture given by Dr. Valerius Geist about the future of Canadian wildlife, which was extremely interesting. Dr. Geist is very engaging and approachable.  So much that I even started taking notes on a topic on which I know basically nothing.
A few points:

• The need to keep wildlife as a public resource, so it does not turn into a private plaything for the elite (as it has been in other places).  This 2009 article, The Peasant Wars, has some great quotes:
  
  
  
  “The miracle of North American conservation is that it is basically a blue-collar system, grounded in the political and financial support and the active participation of large numbers of middle-class citizens who bring their basic honesty and decency to bear on important issues. This is just the opposite of the elitist system that has existed throughout Europe for centuries and is spreading like cancer around the world today, even right here at home.
  “Because of the democratic nature of American hunting and wildlife management, and the demands for accountability it implies, our system has worked miracles in returning wildlife to a continent that, just a hundred years ago, saw the near-extinction of most big game animals and other wildlife. In my mind, this represents the world’s greatest environmental achievement of the last century.”
  “Take away wildlife or make it irrelevant to the citizen, and wildlife winds up as private property, jealously defended. There is good reason for this as wildlife is a creator of wealth and privilege and thus very valuable.
  Currently, simple-minded efforts to spread and multiply wolves lead to a depletion of wildlife – severe enough to lose the hunting public and with that the passion for wildlife. And with that it moves very surely into private ownership.
  “And when wolves, grizzly bears and cougars are private property, the public has no say over their fate. I need not emphasize that even in North America the de facto grasp for wildlife by large land owners has led to the defense of that wildlife against the public with force of arms."
• 
  
  Game farming is another step in the wrong direction.
  
  
  
  • Destroys wildlife as the first step is domestication. Animals are bred to be placid and lose fear; domestication is not a conditioned response - it is genetic.
• Large handlers create a trophy market. However, large antlers are only seen on bulls in the wild who don't breed... so from a farming perspective, this doesn't make a lot of sense. This is also seen in bison farming, where they are bred for trophies and to resemble large cows for the choice cuts of meat.
• Quickly become centres of disease and pathogens, which soon become bridges of transmission to other animals and humans. Elk farming resulted in predicted epidemics of bovine tuberculosis and chronic wasting disease in the 1990s. CWD is particularly worrisome as it is transmitted via fluids and can jump species.
• Dr. Geist is quoted in an article from 2000 in The Atlantic, Money Game, which discusses game farming from a more financial perspective, but also addresses the same biological and health concerns.
• Wolves
• Traditionally considered vermin and actively hunted and killed, but became protected and idolized by conservation groups. Populations are increasing rapidly to the point where there are scarcely any deer left.
• Have no natural predators, like cougars.
• Will interbreed with any canine, like coyotes and domesticated dogs.
• Geist suggests a need to curb this population as soon as possible. Because they breed so quickly, killing 80% of the population would be required just to maintain status quo.
• Wolves/coyotes/canines carry and spread hydatid disease, also known as echinococcosis. This is one nasty parasite for which there is no treatment other than surgical removal of cysts and chemotherapy. (Geist reported a 90% infection rate for the wolf population - I didn't get the details on which one.) The eggs are in their feces and are easily transmitted through the air or liquids to dogs and humans.  This parasite is no joke. I didn't need to see some of the pictures that I happened to run across. Ugh.
• Dr. Geist knows of no case where humans and wolves co-existed.
• Are becoming a danger to livestock and humans, as their natural prey are running out. In light of the death of a student attacked and killed by wolves, his article: Where Wolves Have Become Common, sums up these issues nicely.
• The January 2010 issue of The Outdoorsman also provides quite a lot of information about the concern of hydatid disease. It's quite disconcerting.

Very interesting. Also, a little unsettling.

Degree 1/9th complete

I don't know whether to be inspired or depressed by that. The journey has begun, and it's good to be, well, not at the very beginning anymore, but it seems like a very long way to go.
Notes from last semester:

• Math 100 turned out to be not so bad. The prof never actually asked us to regurgitate math definitions and theorems, only apply them. All that agony for nothing.
• Chem 120 (lab) was a pretty bad experience. More on that in a later post.
• I studied for the physics final like I've never studied for anything. And it turned out okay. Not amazing, but all right. Now that we're onto waves and pressure and other stuff, I can push all that kinematics to the remote regions of my brain.

Starting again this semester was difficult, for a number of reasons. For one, the break didn't feel long enough and I wasn't ready to start again. However, here I am, into week 2, and it's not so bad after all. On the schedule this semester is the following:

• Math 101 - Calculus 2
• Physics 111 - Waves and Electricity
• Chem 101 - General Chemistry 2
• Chem 120 (Lab)
• Ensc 150 - Fundamentals of Environmental Engineering
• Ensc 151 - Engineering Tools

Ensc 150 is quite interesting and has a lot of practical application, like converting between science-y and industry units for concentrations, and figuring out things like how much of a toxic spill will evaporate and how fast, etc, etc. It's meant to be a first year course, but there are a lot of second year students in it. It's probably incredibly easy for them, since most of them have already done organic/biochemistry and physical chemistry, material and energy balance and hydrology. (Read: I feel and probably look like an idiot asking questions.) The prof is good, but his notes are sometimes hard to follow because he skips steps. All you teachers out there: please write down everything.

Sheet music goldmine

Hey, people! I'm not kidding. This is a legit goldmine. If you're looking for free classical piano music, look no further than the IMSLP / Petrucci Music Library, a public domain sheet music library. It's essentially a music-oriented Wikipedia community. (Wikis - one of the greatest Internet developments ever.)
I printed out my favourite Joplin rags and I'm pleased as punch. Now I need a piano in the apartment. One of those electronic pianos that comes with headphones would be perfect. Just thought I'd throw that out there, in case Santa reads my blog.

Anyways, there is seriously a lot of music here, and not just for piano - lots of other instrumental music is also available, including complete orchestral scores. I'm no orchestra expert, so I don't know if this would actually fulfill anyone's needs, but it seems pretty awesome to me.
On another note, I remember hearing a Mozart piano piece at a recital years ago, and I have no idea what it's called. The classical music naming system doesn't help at all here since everything is named the same. I'm pretty sure it was a "Fantasy" or "Fantasia", and I think it was in a major key, but mostly I remember there being a lot of arpeggios in the left hand, but possibly also in the right. It was definitely allegro-paced. Also, there's a good chance it's in the RCM syllabus - if so, it would have been grade 10 or ARCT level. However, I didn't find it in the Petrucci Library based on these descriptors, so it's possible that the name is not at all what I thought.
If you know what piece I'm talking about, please do me a favour and leave a comment. Please, please, please. Thanks.

The Homestretch

It's hard to believe I'm going to be home in just over a month, by which time all midterms, labs, and final exams will have been announced, agonized over, studied for, and written. (And passed, of course.)
In the meantime, I'm getting homesick. Although I've been very lucky with residence and roommates, I miss my family and friends. And food. I definitely miss good food with good company. Being on a student budget, I don't get to go out much here (and for other reasons explained here).
But it's okay, because I'll be home soon.
As my brother says, "this means you're almost 1/8th done!" I'm not sure whether to feel this is a great accomplishment or if I've just barely started. The latter, I think. 
I can't wait until this semester is over! 
Honestly, though, it's been pretty good. I've never been completely overwhelmed (lots of time for that later, I'm sure), and I've been filling my brain with good new stuff, which on the large scale of things is always fun.
On that note, I better get on that chemistry lab report.

Autumnal treat

Baking is such a soothing activity. There's just something wonderful about eating something warm and tasty right out of the oven.

One cranky morning while getting stuck on homework, I decided to ignore schoolwork for a while and make something sweet and autumnal. Combining apple recipe ideas, I adapted this apple cake/tart recipe from the Traveler's Lunchbox. I believe this vaguely resembles a clafoutis, as it is unleavened batter sitting on top/around fruit, and the whole thing turns out quite thin, and slightly crispy on the edges.

As an aside, pots and pans that can also go into the oven are one of the best things ever. Who needs extra clutter with bakeware when you can just use a pot or pan? 

(I'd have taken a picture to post here, but with only 3 servings and 3 roommates, well, it's gone now.)

With the first bite, my grumpiness melted away and I felt as if I were tasting the essence of all the cozy parts of autumn. 

Makes 3 small, 2 medium, or 1 large serving of Apple Autumn Tastiness.

1 medium-sized apple
(I think it was a Gala but really, all I know is that it was red.)

1/3 cup sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon


1/3 cup melted butter
(mine was salted - if I had unsalted butter I'd add a pinch of salt as well)

2 tbsp plain yogurt

1/2 tsp vanilla extract 

1 egg

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1. Preheat oven to 350F. 
2. Peel, core, and thinly slice the apple and place in a layer to cover the bottom of the pan (mine was probably 8"), and sprinkle with cinnamon.
3. Combine the sugar, butter, yogurt, vanilla, egg, and flour and pour on top of the sliced apples.
4. Bake for 30 min or until slightly brown and crispy on the edges. 

As you can see, it is incredibly simple, and as you will discover, so incredibly tasty. People tend to like coating their apples with lemon juice/sugar/flour, but I don't care and am too lazy about that stuff. My stomach doesn't care if the apples are brown. Besides, they're hiding under a thin cake blanket so you can't see them.

I will totally be making this again. Maybe tomorrow.

Surplus sales

I just found out about Government of Alberta surplus sales which are apparently on every weekday.
I'm going to have to check it out sometime - I think it'll be a great place to go when you need a desk or chair or something utilitarian without having to pay hundreds of dollars.