/me casts resurrection

It’s been pointed out to me, ahem, that I’ve not posted since September. The biggest reason for that is the growth of Google+ and my preference for using that as an outlet. It makes the difference between about 20 views and 6,000. That said, this blog has a distinctly different theme. Namely things relating to Chinese, linguistics, returning to university and so on. Therefore I’ll use the last day of 2011 to blast out some mini catch up posts because there’s a lot that’s happened…

First of all, I’ve now completed two years of my undergraduate degree in linguistics. I’ve completed the normal Chinese language instruction stream, or at least as far as I’m willing to take it at UniMelb. Now it’s literature based subjects which I’m actually good at and is much much better taught, so I’ll be feeling a lot better about Chinese in the coming year.

As I’ve said before, my direction has solidified towards the field of computational linguistics although I find myself in niche area that’s quite hard to pilot. I’m more interested in using computational linguistics as a tool within linguistics proper, rather than as a sort of vocationally-focused computer science dominated field of computational linguistics. Just after semester I attended another academic conference and I came away feeling much better about the prospects of finding a good path ahead.

Another major aspect I haven’t spoken about a lot on this blog is my revived interest in all things to do with ‘making’ or ‘hacking’. I have for some time felt pretty strongly that the consumer electronics boom has a lot to answer for in the atrophy of skills and the generally lesser inclination of your average man to get down to the shed and do something for himself. This comes from something of a perfect storm of events, mostly documented on this blog. Starting from the introduction to Python I had with the first computer subject I took as breadth. It might seem absurd, but I had forgotten how … capable (willing more than ability?) I am at just knocking things up out of the whole technical chain from web browser through to little things soldered onto a board. 2011 was the year of awakening of Mat as a Maker.

So at the very end of 2011, where am I at and what am I doing? It’s another couple of months until uni starts again so I’m firmly in the time-rich portion of the year where I get into projects. Some of my projects:

• The Inf0cube – A sort of kitchen-based explosion of old and new visualisation. Heavy electronics and coding project, probably the most impressive single thing I’ve ever built.
• Higgins – The Android-powered telepresence robot. Chassis works, Android hookup works, now crafting some genuinely innovative ways to use a dirty cheap and powerful smartphone as an all purpose robot brain.
•  Home Brew – I have brewed beer for years, on and off, but only as a ‘kit and kilo’ operator. Eg, you buy cans of stuff and just chuck it in a drum. Since I’m so poor now, I began brewing again just so I could remember the taste of beer. As my obsessive personality dictates, this wasn’t enough and I’ve progressed to ‘all grain’ brewing. I think this is a keeper, it’s easy, fun, lots of geek-out potential and everyone appreciates the results.
• Melbourne Mini Maker Faire and new Melbourne Hackerspace. I’m helping to organise this first maker faire event in Melbourne. It’s on something of a tight schedule. I’m doing things to do with writing about makers, bit of PR and marketing, and offering unwarranted opinions. The event is in January.

So that’s where I’m at. Now I should follow up by drilling into those subjects…