This is a live blog of the Dalhousie CS seminar by Dr. Colin Cherry of Microsoft Research, Natural Language Processing Group entitles “Syntactic Movement in Statistical Translation”
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I am yet to see a publishing platform that is simpler than posterous. With a single email message containing normal text you create your personal blog and make your first post. No signup, no email commands, no hassles. It’s that unbelievably simple. I didn’t believe it when I heard, so I had to give it a try. Check out my posterous blog.
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Today I became a happier WordPress user because I managed to upgrade to WordPress 2.5.1 with a surprisingly easy process, as well as migrating to the latest K2 release. The short story: install the WordPress Automatic upgrade plugin, run it, correct failed actions, upgrade the K2, migrate footer from the previous K2, et voilà! I am very impressed with the new admin interface of WordPress. It took a few minutes to understand where is what, but WOW! Neat, organized, and pleasant.
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This week I reached a new milestone in my coffee-to-thesis conversion project. As you can see in the picture of my Perks Coffee Gold Card, I have completed stamped every cell on it. Mind you, the number of stamps doesn’t correspond exactly to the number of coffees I had: it was a mix of coffee, tea, double stamping on Fridays, multiple stamping from the pretty girl at the counter, and coffee for friends.
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During my first real off-campus consulting job, my client asked me a simple questions, “are you enjoying working on this project?” My answer was less simple:
I wouldn’t do for money what I wouldn’t do for free.
Ever before and ever since, this principle has been my guiding principle in all that I do for money. I wouldn’t take on a project if it wasn’t interesting enough that I wouldn’t mind doing it for free. I follow this principle in my consulting work, in my employment, and in my volunteering work. But only in the latest that I actually do it for free.
This principle is about loving what you do and enjoying it beyond the material reward. It is about contributing to the project and wanting it to succeed because it is interesting and valuable, not because there is a pay cheque waiting for you. And it is about selecting projects that provide you with additional benefits and rejecting projects of limited personal and professional value.
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