changes: some big, some small

Recently, I did the unthinkable: I switched text editors. I've been a longtime user of vim, but I'm  pretty curious and its hard to ignore the power emacs has, even out of the box, so I decided to give emacs a shot. Stock emacs comes with a lot of power. Namely, a built in web browser, IRC client, email client, and a package manager to install countless plugins. Plugins were always kind of patchy with vim, and it's refreshing to use a built-in package manager

However, I am well aware of the RSI risks associated with using emacs, and I'm already well-versed in vim commands, so evil mode was one of the first plugins I installed. I have to say, vim is nice, but you can get everything that vim offers inside emacs, plus so much more.

Also, you'll notice that the URL for my blog has changed. I recently created a personal site, so I thought I might as well make use of the custom domain name. My website contains a selection of some of my personal projects, a photography sample, as well as contact information and links to various social media sites. I haven't decided if I'm going to merge my blog and my website stylistically, but for now, I'm keeping the two separate.

Lastly, I'm facing a more important change in my life right now. I am an independent student, which means I don't receive any financial support from my parents for college and I don't submit their financial information when filling out my FAFSA. I depend on a lot of merit as well as need-based scholarships to be able to go to school. Last summer, I interned at RelateIQ, a Salesforce Company. This was one of the most educational and rewarding experiences of my life, but it had some unintended consequences that I was not initially aware of. This year, my FAFSA took into account the money I was paid over last summer and I went from getting nearly a full-ride, to nearly nothing at all. I would have to pay for my senior year of college completely out of pocket. I'm nowhere near prepared to do that, so I've decided to take some time off to work full time while paying off my current student loans and saving up enough cash to finish my degree at another time.

Fortunately, I am not at all disheartened at the prospect of dropping out. I look at this as an opportunity and a chance to grow. Plus, after going to college, I got to experience first-hand how much of a racket it really is. Because American society has the absurdly unsustainable belief that everyone needs a bachelor's degree to survive, universities have been bursting at the seams, and University of Illinois in particular has been buckling under the burden. I've had a horrible educational experience at UIUC, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I feel no pride in having gone there, and I would not recommend it to anyone in its current state.

For example, in Computer Science and other engineering majors, it's nearly impossible to sign up for required core curricula. All of the core CS classes have absurdly long waitlists, and U of I has only recently hired another academic advisor for CS, bringing the grand total number of CS advisors to a paltry and inadequate two. Apart from UIUC's issues with scaling, the quality of courses has been outright pathetic in my experience. In class, I've had international TA's speaking to Chinese students in Mandarin, exclusively, leaving those of us who can't speak Mandarin wondering what we're missing out on learning. I've even had professors who refuse to give lectures, telling students, "I'm tenured, which means I can do whatever I want." UIUC truly is a pathetic excuse for an educational institution.

I won't say my time at U of I was completely worthless, just that after my own cost-benefit analysis, and given the university's current state, it's not worth it for me to attend anymore. I've made some awesome friends, as well as professional contacts. That's the true value of a college education: the people you meet. Without meeting the right people, there's no way to put your skills to good use.

However, I will say that I learned more outside of class, particularly in internships, then I could have ever learned while sitting in a lecture hall. I intend to finish my degree someday, but for now, I'm going to use this time to grow professionally as well as personally, while I sit back and wait for this whole student loan bubble to blow over. Maybe when I return, society will have matured and realized that it's not the degree that matters; it's the skills behind it.

use AppleScript and Automator to retrieve homework assignments

When I receive my Linear Algebra homework assignments, it's on a simple HTML web page that looks like this:

For the longest time, I have written the assignments down in my planner by hand, but I recently figured out a much better way to do this. Using a combination of Automator and some AppleScript, I was able to create an application to pull data from this web page, format it with appropriate due dates, and create reminders on Apple's stock 'Reminders' app. When the scripts run, I end up with a nice, segmented list of Reminders for my homework that ends up looking like this: 

To make things a bit more generalizable, I have it set up so that you pull up the assignment page in Safari and then run the service. It is dependent on having the assignment page in the current tab in Safari. If it is not currently open, it won't work at all.

To start, open Automator and create a new service. Call it whatever you want. I called mine "Get Homework"

First thing you want to do once you have created the service is create a new Text variable as a placeholder for the due date of the assignment. Go to 'Variables' > 'Text & Data' > 'Text'. I called mine 'dueDate'. It doesn't matter what you call it or what the value is. 

Then you'll want to set up Automator so that it pulls the text from the webpage and filters the text to look for dates. This is accomplished by using the actions: "Get Current Webpage from Safari," "Get Text from Webpage," and "Extract dates from Text".  

Note: You'll also want to use the action "Copy Text to Clipboard" right after you use "Get Text from Webpage" and before you use "Extract dates from Text" You'll see why later...

So in the end, your workflow should look like this:

Now here's where AppleScript comes in. I need to clean up the string that was generated by the "Extract dates from Text" action. Right after "Extract dates from Text", create a "Run AppleScript" action that accepts the input from the previous action. This script will take the input from "Extract dates from Text", which in my case is always something like "on Thursday, 03/20/14". Now, Applescript can't typecast that string into a date object without removing the "on Thursday, " characters. Fortunately, in my scenario, my professor stays consisting in displaying the due dates. It's always the standard "XX/XX/XX" after a comma and a space. I use the following script to format the date appropriately so that it can be stored in my 'dueDate' placeholder. 

From there, the generated string should be stored in 'dueDate' via the "Set Value of Variable" action.

Now, this is where the clipboard comes in. After the "Set Value of Variable" action, create a "Get Contents of Clipboard" action that ignores the previous action's input. After that, Create a "Filter Paragraphs" action. For me, I filter paragraphs that begin with "Section". That will give me a list of three text items with values like "Section 5.2: 8, 10, 12, 16, 22". 

Now I also want to pass through the 'dueDate' to my next AppleScript. An interesting thing about Automator is that if you generate a value right after generating a different value, the second item gets tacked onto the end of the list. With this in mind, I place a "Get Value of Variable" action right after the "Filter Paragraphs" action. This will give me a list with all the items in the list above, plus my properly formatted due date.

From there, create another "Run AppleScript" action that accepts input from the "Get Value of Variable" action. In that action, I use the following code to typecast 'dueDate' from a string object to a date object. Then I loop through the remaining list items, creating a reminder for each one with a the due date. After that, I create the general Homework reminder with the same due date which reminds me to rewrite my homework to make it look pretty for grading.

Now save the service. You should be able to open the assignment page and select 'Safari' > 'Services' > 'Get Homework' and your reminders should be generated. 

This concept should be generalizable enough so that you can adapt it for your own purposes. Obviously the implementation will change slightly based on how your professor structures his or her assignment page. 

welcome to the prosumer age

I saw it coming several years ago. We are entering into a day and age where everyone is a simultaneous consumer and producer of media. This video also saw it coming, and in 2007 dubbed it "Prometeus - The Media Revolution" The first step into this new world was most certainly the creation of YouTube, which allows anyone with a decent quality camera to be an influencer on the national, or even global, scene. I mean that quite literally. Looking at the content on YouTube, I think the single most important factor in determining success is the camera quality and video editing skill... also the amount of jump cuts.

The recent decision of the Chicago Sun-Times to lay of it's entire photography staff and to move to an entirely iPhone-based photo source is very telling. I see two things happening here: A. People are respecting professional media less and less, and B. Apple is making damn good cameras. If the Chicago Sun-Times considers the iPhone to be the professional standard, we're all walking around with a ticking time bomb of media influence in our pockets. There's a great deal of empowerment that has come with the mobile revolution, and we are just now seeing its early effects.

In a day and age where information is readily available online, anyone can easily learn how to throw together some decent quality media. Are we approaching a peer-to-peer information age where the great media giants no longer stand tall? At what point will anyone with an iPhone be able to produce a studio quality movie that threatens the existence of Time-Warner? At what point does copyright become irrelevant? I'd like to think that day is fast approaching.

it sure is great to be at college

Well, I finally made it to college! HOORAY! Now, I can get started on the task of pursuing my passion, meeting new people, networking, and dealing with the massive amount of sensory overload that accompanies this transition. Here's a summary of my thoughts on college so far:

Arriving at school has been the best thing that has ever happened and I couldn't be happier, however, I'm having a small problem... I don't know if this is just me, but I feel like the main character of Memento. These last few days, it seems that I have been bombarded with so much information that if I do not write down every last bit of if, I will surely forget about it. I'm sure a lot of this... probably most of this... has to do with ADHD, but yeah #firstworldproblems.

I sure have gotten myself into a whole other league by coming to this college. There's a reason U of I is ranked so high in CS. I am flabbergasted at what the other freshmen here have accomplished. Hopefully I will be able to keep up.

Some people say that one of the biggest drawbacks of going to a larger school is being "just another number in the system," however, so far, I have found this to be a plus! As an extremely socially awkward person who loathes personal, face-to-face, one-on-one interaction, I have loved this attribute of my school so far! Although, there will probably be some sort of issue down the road when I run into some sort of obstacle and need personal assistance, but for the most part, I love not having to know or talk to people.

That's all I can think of for now. More thoughts will surely surface as time goes on.

'The Dark Knight Rises' seems to be a magnet for confrontation

So I went to see The Dark Knight Rises last night and got into a bit of a spat with some random guy sitting next to me... Here's what happened:

My brother was meeting my girlfriend, a friend of mine, and I to see The Dark Knight Rises, but he wasn't able to show up until the very second the movie started, so we put my girlfriend's purse in the seat next to me to save the spot. It wasn't a big deal; there were plenty of seats in the theater so I didn't feel too bad about reserving a seat.

Minutes later, a man came in the theater with his wife and sat next to the seat I had reserved. Before long, he asked me if the seat was taken (I had overheard him earlier, speaking to his wife about how he wanted a seat closer to the middle). I said yes, it was, and the person sitting there would be back shortly. I told him he was in the bathroom because people frown upon reserving seats. Five or six minutes later, the man looked over at me very angrily and said, "So where is he?!" I told him I would text my brother and ask him what was taking so long and assured him that the seat would be filled shortly. Regardless, in a few seconds, the man was on his feet saying, "He's not coming, I'm sitting there! Move the purse or I will!" I was completely stunned as to why someone would want a seat one space closer to the middle so badly, but before I could even think about it, he was reaching for the purse.

I quickly grabbed it, holding it on the seat, and said to him, "Excuse me, who do you think you are, reaching for someone's purse like that?!" He yanked the purse from my hands, screaming at this point, "Does it look like I care?!" he shouted, and sat down forcefully (we later found out that he actually broke the chair). Before I knew it, he was shouting "SHUT THE FUCK UP!!" over and over again just as my brother was walking into the theater. I pointed him out to the man, but he just kept screaming.

At this point, the whole theater had taken notice and it was getting pretty awkward. So my brother just sat down at the other end of the row, and I shut up and let the man have his seat. I was worried it was going to be an awkward couple of hours... Fortunately, a man tapped me on the shoulder a couple minutes later. "I called the cops," he said. Thank god.

In the end, the man and his wife were escorted out of the theater by an officer during the previews and we had a great time enjoying the movie. For some reason, this movie has been a huge magnet for confrontation. No bullet wounds for me though; I managed to make it out with a mere couple of extremely awkward minutes.

major redesign of my blog

After randomly stumbling upon my good ol' blog, I realized.... it sucked. So, I erased everything and now I plan to start anew. The Eggman philosophy still exists, I just figured out that it had no universality and was not being adopted by anyone other than myself anytime soon. So, now, this blog will not be based off of that philosophy, instead, it will merely be a place to record my thoughts publicly. 


In place of my old blog, you will find a completely redesigned, modern and clean interface which focuses more on the content, rather than the design. Paradoxically, I find these types of designs to be the best.