Many people have eaten my cooking & gone on to lead normal lives.

Lately, I’ve been baking. A lot. It’s quite rewarding and a lot of fun. Baking is a lot like programming, and the two complement each other quite well. I could be waiting for code to compile and start mixing some batter, or waiting for some dough to rise and be coding away at my latest project. Either way, something tasty always results.

Programming and baking are very similar in a lot of other respects too. Programming is like baking a cake: you start with start with some ingredients, mix them together appropriately, let them bake, and enjoy the result. In programming, the ingredients are variables (“nouns”) and functions (“verbs”). You use these to select parts of your computer (like a harvest) and then you mix them together (coding). You “bake” the code into something the computer understands, (even in python or ruby, the interpreter is still translating to machine language).

Finally, the spirit of open source (or, more technically free software) is important to keeping the spirit of both alive – and both cooking and free software are under threat by copyright legislation. Both recipes and code can legally be copywritten, but once copywritten they both lose a large portion of their value – unless they utilize a publisher. Copyright has never been about protecting the creators, it has always been a matter of protecting the financial instruments of the publisher. Artists, chefs and creators can all find financial stability in avenues other than full copyright reservation. The artist may make commissioned works and legally keep their credit via a copyright, but abandon all rights of controlling who may reproduce or improve upon the work. If we imagine this principle applied to food recipes (which it already is de facto) then we wouldn’t need to worry about food copyrights. Alas, recipe publishers are taking down stuff all the time, so I guess it’s up to open-source folk like me (us?) to post up our own recipes.

To bring a bit of flavour to the presentation of these recipes, I’m going to write them out in both plain form and a python pseudoalgorithm:

Well start with a basic one, Bread:

First, our ingredients:

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6 cups of flour
1.5 cups water
1/8 teaspoon lemon juice
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
.75 tablespoon yeast (or one package)

Ok, so we have our “variables”, now let’s go over the most important “function” when coding… err, baking bread: kneading:

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On a well floured surface, take a ball of dough and roll onto the surface. 
Fold the dough in half.
Rotate 90 degrees. 
Repeat for about 8 minutes or until dough can take an impression of a spoon.

If we wanted to get more detailed, the impression of a spoon would also technically be a conditional function, but that’s a bit too geeky for our tastes.

Combining the variables and function (ingredients and baking techniques), the recipe itself becomes a play in which all the actors can speak their roles; it is the factory which will produce our product:

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Dissolve sugar into lukewarm water and mix in yeast. 
  (You can tell if the water is lukewarm by letting it run against your wrist:
      if you can barely feel the temperature of the water then it is lukewarm.)

Allow about a minute for the yeast to start blooming. 

Sift 1 cup of flour and salt together.
  (Sifting is the act of fluffing up the flour to its minimum density. This
      ensures that we don't pack in too much flour).

Add flour/salt mixture to bowl of dissolved water/yeast and mix until clumps
are mostly gone.

Slowly mix in the remaining 5 cups of flour, or until dough is smooth.

Knead (See function 'kneading')

Place in greased pan.

Let dough rise for an hour at room temperature or overnight in fridge (the
longer you keep it in the fridge, the fluffier and more sour the bread will
become. Do not exceed 3 days in fridge).

Here are some images as a teaser for upcoming recipes:

When I was in Grade 12 I had always wanted to start a philosophy club. Although that idea never took off, I was fortunate enough to encounter a book, 101 Philosophy Problems. This book led me to start asking myself more serious questions about my attitudes about life. More importantly, I started asking questions about Truth itself.

Now, after 5 years of studying the only truth-interpretive aspect of ourselves (i.e. the mind), and studying the biology which goes into such an object, I would like to take a moment to purport my own views about Truth versus truth. In particular, let’s dive into the deep vestiges of this amateur philosopher’s mind:

• If you are alive than you will die.

• Humans are alive.

and one important corollary truth:

• If you are reading this you are alive.

If you understand the implications of this, than there is one key Truth which drives your behaviour:

• Life is limited.

A morbid statement, but nonetheless important.

Now allow me to posit one more truth, and you can decide if you would like to capitalize that “t” or not:

• Your limited life is the product of the limited lives of others.

One could posit that this existence we live is simply a shared virtual experience (ala Matrix), but I doubt that.

Instead, I like to worship and respect these Truths. When I fully understand them, they are what make me happy. They are my happy place. For these Truths imply that I, a living being, am obligated by species to improve our world. Regardless of whether my brain is wired up to believe this statement, it brings me great pleasure in all aspects of my social life. For example, when I meet a person now, I cannot help but think of all the experiences they have felt previously, and more morbidly, all of the things they may do before they die.

This is humanity. And in this existence common questions crop up, but they can only be occurring because of the inter-connectedness of our particular species of living creature.

Here’s another truth:

• Without language, there would be no way to allow humans to pass on existences to one another.

and a (sort of) corollary:

• Language can never fully communicate existences.

So, if you were wondering why I left most of these truths uncapitalized, it was merely because I can never be sure if you “got it”. I will leave you with my most joyous truth:

• I’m glad I get to share this slice of life, this existence, with you, mortal reader.☺

Earlier this month, I found out about a car-crash had claimed the life of an SFU student. For two days I sympathized with the loss, wondering who’s life had just been ended. The hill I had repeatedly found refuge in was now tainted with the knowledge that a human life had ended there.

Two days later, in a philosophy class, that key piece of information hit my ears: the victim of that tragedy was my friend. Shock penetrated me to the bone, and even now I have a difficult time recounting this tale. For this victim had always had a special place in my heart; her self-less nihilism had always provided a beacon for others. This life was snatched from the world in the most horrible circumstances, but more dis-heartening is the realization that this life would no longer mould us, speak to us, or love us. Her act on this planet had ended, and no volume of tears would bring her back.

And the funeral’s images (the first funeral I’ve ever attended) still resound in my head: the hopeless sobs of the parents, the sniffling of the crowd at the memorial, and the embarrassed voice of the funeral-director as he tried to say her Persian name. When her parents gathered themselves together and started toward the exit, they could only gasp out, between sobs, “Thank you for coming.” And my heart broke 1000 times – for I wanted to call out to them,

“No, thank you for raising such a wonderful person”

But words do not raise the dead.

I have always dreaded going to my first funeral; other than an autopsy, I had never seen a dead body in my life. When I learned (during the funeral) that her casket would be open for one last time, I thought to myself, “I must say my last words,” but as I approached her casket and stared at her lifeless figure, all I could do was cry. For I knew that words were useless. Her swollen lips, having uttered so many sarcasms, were now sealed shut. Her vivid eyes were sewn closed; never would another mortal be moved by their spark. And the finality of it all overwhelmed me – there was no afterlife I could hope to see her in: just the black, cold, nothing of death.

But now, I write these words with a new paradigm guiding me. For I have learned something: there is life after death. I, who abandoned my Islamic faith and who has renounced the concept of a God, stand before you, dear reader, and pronounce that there is life after death. Not the afterlife of guilt and reward many people trick themselves into believing, but the specious present of now. These emotions: that I can feel them, embrace them, be overwhelmed by them – these are life. This is life after death.

And, although all that’s left of her are fond memories, I still stand as a breathing man able to embrace this life after death.

It will take me many more months before her death doesn’t cross my mind, but now I act with a conscious understanding of her memory. Now I value each precious second of my living being so that I too may someday leave this planet better than I found it. And now I realize that I have not much time on this Earth. I find myself committing random acts of kindness to total strangers. I find myself wondering where the many faces on the bus have been and will be.

Most of all, however, I find myself living life after death.

I’ve also noticed that my fellow students were using any piece of software they can get their hands on. Piracy is rampant in the halls of the dorms. Being more computer savvy than most, I’ve decided to give a tutorial of open-source tools for university students. The page you are presently reading is the third iteration of this pursuit. I’m adding and adjusting things all the time, it just takes a bit of effort to clean up and publish these findings (notwithstanding that my site has been floating around in DNS-limbo for the last few months). I used to have this list separated by operating system, but so many applications now either work across operating systems or are web-based that I just separated them by App vs Web.

So, without further ado, I present my 2011 list of university software tools:

Applications

• Zotero: Zotero is a Firefox plugin designed for managing bibliographic citations from around the web. It integrates quite nicely into the Firefox browser; adding a citation is as easy as clicking on the address-bar.

• Mendeley: A new addition to this list, Mendeley is a research collaboration tool catered to group projects. I’m currently running two different research projects from Mendeley, and it’s ease-of-use has definitely kept my colleagues on the ball. For example, the group page display emulates Facebook’s wall. This allows group-members to do anything from share quick tid-bits to establish their research progress. In addition, Mendeley also acts as a ebook-organizer: an essential feature for keeping track of the many PDFs proffessors send to their students. Mendeley also has easy, distributed note-taking capabilities.

• Calibre: Another new addition to the list, Calibre is an ebook-manager capable of format version and newpaper downloads. This is an essential program for ebook reader (such as the Nook, iPad, or Kindle) owners.

• Open Office: A full office suite capable of most everything that Microsoft Office can do, but free. Some people prefer the new Microsoft Office ribbon, but I prefer the price of Open Office (free).

• Dropbox: Not exactly the newest addition, but definitely the app that’s come the furthest. Dropbox allows one to sync a folder across multiple computers and mobile devices. It also allows you to share a folder to your friends or colleagues for file-collaboration.

Software Suites

Software suites typically contain a host of software packaged in a readily sharable and usable format. The packages listed below contain some of the software listed above.

• Software for Starving Students: A whole suite of various open-source software, for Mac and Windows (all of the Linux versions are available through distribution package management and are not included). This software includes everything from Inkscape (a vector image program) to clamwin antivir (free antivirus).

• Portable Apps: My favourite software suite of all time, portable apps lets you run a wide variety of open-source applications from your thumbdrive. This is great for circumventing outdated school software installations and maintaining privacy.

Websites

• Google Docs: An online office suite by Google. Google Docs is great for any remote collaboration on research papers. A technique I’ve discovered is sharing folders with your colleagues and setting up a page to be used as the index of the project, then link all “ToDo”s to their own documents.

• Google Scholar: To stand on the shoulders of giants is to peer at the frontiers of progress. With Google Scholar, one is able to do very fast academic research on almost any criteria. If you have a proxy set up, downloading articles becomes a breeze.

This list is by no means comprehensive, and I expect that I’ll be adding more and more programs as time goes on. The ones listed, however, should be a solid start for your next academic endeavour.

Happy 08/08/08 everyone!

You see, one of the greatest problems of artificial intelligence is that we probably won’t know we have it when we do. The problem of cognitive definition isn’t new either; one of the greatest issue s in ethics is abortion, and this stems mostly from when a fetus becomes a “child.” I’m not going to make a political statement on this issue, but only use it a s an example.The reason this is such an issue stems from our current computing capabilities. That is to say, we may have stumbled upon a road to artificial intelligence; an indefinite singularity – and not even know it! I was speaking to some Google employees, and a discussion came up on whether or not datamining is one of the “senses” of the artificial intelligence. They told me (and I’m not going to name names here) that there is a running rumour that the google servers may reach its own singularity in the next 15 years. Just stuff I’ve been thinking about.

Editor’s note In retrospect, this sounds the vague musings of a very foolish undergraduate. The Google employee was probably just nutters…

Let me know your thoughts.