Happy Ada Lovelace Day everyone :)
For the second year, I have taken the Ada Lovelace Day pledge to blog about women in technology. Last year, I didn't really have a woman role model - or a particular Ada in mind - so I mostly blabbed in my post.
After that, I got to learn, in the Advanced Machine Learning course (a.k.a. the horror :P) we took last year, about a smart woman called Isabelle Guyon. Now, I don't know Isabelle personally, but I have discovered that she is a very smart woman-in-technology. She was one of the organizers of a past Feature Extraction challenge that we were assigned to (try to) implement feature extraction methods for. That was the toughest coursework we had to do and her being the organizer of such an event is just remarkable :) She even made it to role model status before I learned anything else about her ;)
So, she specializes in statistical data analysis, pattern recognition and machine learning techniques with experience in biometrics, bioinformatics, and handwriting recognition. Also, she is vice-president of the Unipen foundation, action editor of the Journal of Machine Learning Research, area chair at the NIPS conference and competition chair of the IJCNN conference.
To be honest, ever since I learned about her, I thought she was my Ada and I wanted to blog about her on Ada Lovelace Day 2010 :) .
Although this is a very short post, I just wanted to spread the word about a very remarkable woman.
I hope there are many more women like Isabelle out there :)
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
More Pictorial Updates
I am starting to like pictorial updates more than textual updates, maybe because they require much less description from me (ya ya, I know that a picture is worth a thousand words :P)
So, here goes:
1. The hall management hung a notice on the door of the building saying that there will be disruptions on service of hot water and heating because they are changing the boilers. The picture below doesn't show it, but on the same day a student wrote on the notice: "SHAME ON YOU!!". The notice was replaced with a new copy the following day.
2. Fail #1: The TV at the Unilink interchange (the one place that is in the university and that all unilink buses stop at) is no longer displaying real time information about how long buses will take to get to the interchange. FAIL!
3. Remember how last year my toilet failed the room check because I hadn't descaled it? This year, I knew the secret to passing the check with flying colors so I descaled it well and ... I got a thank you note stating that my room met the stardards :) LOL (P.S.: the room was not perfect, I mean of course it was clean, but it was messy too, I had clothes on the floor & my bed was not made & my laptop was on it ...). Maybe I should mention that none of my flatmates passed the check and they were all told they had to descale their toilets and another check will be made later.
3. I lost my ID card *cry. I was having lunch with Fleur on Tuesday and I walked back to the lab and my ID was not on me! I completely panicked because I usually put my debit card and Internet banking user ID with it! I walked back to the cafeteria and asked all the helpers and cashiers but no one had seen it, so I asked the security officers in the student union building and the staff in the student services building but no one had dropped it off either. So, I walked to the bank, reported my debit card as lost, and changed my Internet banking details. I thought I'd wait a couple of days before asking for a new card, just in case someone found it and returned it. On Thursday, I decided I had had enough and went to get a new card. The Student Services lady asked me to pay for the replacement. I did that then I showed her the receipt but then she said that the ID cards machine is broken. I was like (WTF!) now you're telling me. Anyways, I went there a few times before I got sick of going and coming back and asked them to email me when the machine was fixed. It took till Monday before I was issued a new one. Finally!
Below is a picture of a bus pass I had to buy because my ID (which has my annual bus pass activated on the smart chip) was lost. The ticket still has the dolphin logo, the university's old logo that was changed during the last academic year. We rarely see any dolphins anymore :(
5. Happy Birthday to ME!!! Ok, so it's early but my lovely friends got me early birthday gifts because I won't be here for my birthday. So, on Sunday Tas, Colin, and I had Sunday lunch and they had my gifts and gave them to me. The greatest thing was that they bought things that were on my amazon wish list - woohoo :) I guess this means that if you want something you can either work for it, or add it on your amazon wishlist and your lovely friends will buy it for you :)
Tas got me The Ultimate Student Cookbook
Colin got me this watch AND a Ty Beanie bear. I was so impressed that both the bear and the watch were pink, I even said "and they're pink, good job!". Then he told me that they were on my wishlist lol (these were added over a year ago so I had completely forgotten about them lol)
6. Fail #2: Can you see anything wrong with this picture that I took at the pub where we had our Sunday lunch??? Hint: privacy fail. This was the only toilet cubicle that had a working lock on the door LOL
7. After Sunday lunch we went grocery shopping. It's kinda weird to see warning signs next to grapes lol.
8. Afterwards, we went for a walk in the common :) (the common is a big park)
Apparently, there is an urban wildlife centre there ... but we got there as they were closing so we couldn't go in. We will definitely go again :)
9. Next to the common, there's an old cemetry, most of the people buried there died around a 100 years ago and there are around 150 graves for soldiers who died in WWI. The picture below is of grave of someone who died in 1907
10. Finally, a mighty wallet :) . M!R pointed it out after I nagged the eff out of her asking her what to get her from the UK. I loved the idea of it & couldn't resist getting one for myself too. It's supposed to be tear-resistant, water-resistant, expandable and recyclable....how cool is that? We'll see how it goes :)
and last but not least, while I was writing this another bloody fire alarm was set off and we had to go outside in the cold for 20 minutes....bloody students can't cook without setting the fire alarm off sheeesh
So, here goes:
1. The hall management hung a notice on the door of the building saying that there will be disruptions on service of hot water and heating because they are changing the boilers. The picture below doesn't show it, but on the same day a student wrote on the notice: "SHAME ON YOU!!". The notice was replaced with a new copy the following day.
2. Fail #1: The TV at the Unilink interchange (the one place that is in the university and that all unilink buses stop at) is no longer displaying real time information about how long buses will take to get to the interchange. FAIL!
3. Remember how last year my toilet failed the room check because I hadn't descaled it? This year, I knew the secret to passing the check with flying colors so I descaled it well and ... I got a thank you note stating that my room met the stardards :) LOL (P.S.: the room was not perfect, I mean of course it was clean, but it was messy too, I had clothes on the floor & my bed was not made & my laptop was on it ...). Maybe I should mention that none of my flatmates passed the check and they were all told they had to descale their toilets and another check will be made later.
3. I lost my ID card *cry. I was having lunch with Fleur on Tuesday and I walked back to the lab and my ID was not on me! I completely panicked because I usually put my debit card and Internet banking user ID with it! I walked back to the cafeteria and asked all the helpers and cashiers but no one had seen it, so I asked the security officers in the student union building and the staff in the student services building but no one had dropped it off either. So, I walked to the bank, reported my debit card as lost, and changed my Internet banking details. I thought I'd wait a couple of days before asking for a new card, just in case someone found it and returned it. On Thursday, I decided I had had enough and went to get a new card. The Student Services lady asked me to pay for the replacement. I did that then I showed her the receipt but then she said that the ID cards machine is broken. I was like (WTF!) now you're telling me. Anyways, I went there a few times before I got sick of going and coming back and asked them to email me when the machine was fixed. It took till Monday before I was issued a new one. Finally!Below is a picture of a bus pass I had to buy because my ID (which has my annual bus pass activated on the smart chip) was lost. The ticket still has the dolphin logo, the university's old logo that was changed during the last academic year. We rarely see any dolphins anymore :(
5. Happy Birthday to ME!!! Ok, so it's early but my lovely friends got me early birthday gifts because I won't be here for my birthday. So, on Sunday Tas, Colin, and I had Sunday lunch and they had my gifts and gave them to me. The greatest thing was that they bought things that were on my amazon wish list - woohoo :) I guess this means that if you want something you can either work for it, or add it on your amazon wishlist and your lovely friends will buy it for you :)Tas got me The Ultimate Student Cookbook
Colin got me this watch AND a Ty Beanie bear. I was so impressed that both the bear and the watch were pink, I even said "and they're pink, good job!". Then he told me that they were on my wishlist lol (these were added over a year ago so I had completely forgotten about them lol)
6. Fail #2: Can you see anything wrong with this picture that I took at the pub where we had our Sunday lunch??? Hint: privacy fail. This was the only toilet cubicle that had a working lock on the door LOL
7. After Sunday lunch we went grocery shopping. It's kinda weird to see warning signs next to grapes lol.
8. Afterwards, we went for a walk in the common :) (the common is a big park)
Apparently, there is an urban wildlife centre there ... but we got there as they were closing so we couldn't go in. We will definitely go again :)
9. Next to the common, there's an old cemetry, most of the people buried there died around a 100 years ago and there are around 150 graves for soldiers who died in WWI. The picture below is of grave of someone who died in 1907
10. Finally, a mighty wallet :) . M!R pointed it out after I nagged the eff out of her asking her what to get her from the UK. I loved the idea of it & couldn't resist getting one for myself too. It's supposed to be tear-resistant, water-resistant, expandable and recyclable....how cool is that? We'll see how it goes :)
and last but not least, while I was writing this another bloody fire alarm was set off and we had to go outside in the cold for 20 minutes....bloody students can't cook without setting the fire alarm off sheeesh
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