Waterloo, Part 4: Keeping Up

A lot of people have asked how it is I keep up with everything going on at UW. My response is that actually I only keep up with less than one percent of what goes on, and doing so actually takes a fair effort.

I get my information several ways. People telling me, looking at posters on campus (sadly, lots of things are only available in this form), and many online sources. Most of these I won’t be reading much longer. My list is of coursed biased towards my interests and my program.

From the web, I get a lot in my newsreader, a few things through my calendar program, a number of things through email newsletters, and an increasing number of things through Facebook groups. In that order,

Sites in my newsreader at the moment (I have added and removed many over the last five years), grouped but not specifically ordered.

general UW news

tech stuff and tech people

waterloo-area stuff

other people, misc

Calendars (note links are directly to icalendar files)

mailing lists

Facebook Groups; some of these are essentially inactive, others send frequent mail

general

tech

science

environment, volunteer, etc

entertainment, misc

April 27 2008, 5:26pm | tags: | 2 comments

YouTube - Waterloo Flash Mob - Pillow Fight Official Video

YouTube - Waterloo Flash Mob - Pillow Fight Official Video - very cool, I forget why I didn’t participate. ah well, next time

November 30 2007, 5:58pm | tags: | comment on this

Greening businesses, one step at a time

Greening businesses, one step at a time - somehow I got dragged into writing an article for my campus paper this week about an event (Environment and Business conference) I was attending.

Anyhow, writing for a newspaper just felt really wierd, almost like going back in time ;-) . I’m much more accustomed to my blogging style (obviously). The article was supposed to be a fixed length, of course, which just feels funny. Writing from a semi-neutral tone was the hardest part, I’m so used to using “I”… it just seems so drab otherwise.

Then I submit the article to the editor. “So, I guess you edit it and send it back to me?” I asked naïvely. Of course not, they just make their changes, then publish it, with my name on it of course. Naturally I’m not hugely in favour of the changes, as what person likes their writing modified? My biggest complaint? They took away one of my exclaimation marks.

Oh, one last point… I wasn’t responsible for the headline, subheading, photograph, or photo caption.

March 30 2007, 8:34am | tags: | 5 comments

UW Priorities

UW Priorities - my schools’ Daily Bulletin from yesterday notes the priorities for the upcoming year:

  • graduate expansion
  • space
  • income diversification
  • international recruiting
  • expanding professional program capacity
  • strengthening industrial partnerships

Now, I complain a lot about the school’s priorities but I won’t go into that whole rant here. But if I were the president my list would look rather different. It might include crazy things like “improve the quality of education,” “improve student life,” “decrease tuition”, and “improve student-university relations.” Feel free to post your own suggestions (yes, I’m talking to the 0-2 people who read this that attend UW).

May 24 2006, 10:20pm | tags: | 6 comments

quadspot � waterloo

quadspot � waterloo - looks like there’s now a craigslist clone for my university. finally, this is basically what I’ve been wanting and hoping someone would do.

the website seems to have a ton of school sites, but it all appears to be new. no about page, and I don’t immediately see other websites mentioning it. interesting. via uw.forsale, presumably posted by someone associated with it

all categories have rss feeds, but not search results

Update June 13: SLC comments on this too. And wonderfully, the creator comments on this post and adds feeds for search results :-)

June 10 2005, 7:46pm | tags: | 2 comments