Maëlys McArdle

Blog

  • Halfway Through Second Semester

    Halfway Through Second Semester

    Reading Week is about to start.

    This semester has been a bit of a mixed bag. I ended up dropping my calculus class, putting me at four classes this semester. I did this because I calculated my ass-in-seat-time™ to be at around 45 hours. That was the time I spent at school in lectures and labs, as well as at work. It did not include the time required to do the four assignments per week I had. It was too much.

    This was a great move. While I’m still ultra-busy, I no longer have stretches where I’d sleep for 3 hours a night, three nights in a row. As my calculus class is a prerequesite for most courses next semester, I’ll take it over the summer.

    Apart from that, things have been good. I’ve been getting more involved in campus life. My family welcomed a new member, and I was made privy to some absolutely great news happening to close friends. I was able to be creative, and push out a small project. Things are really on a high.

    I’ll be spending Reading Week at work, but it does mean I’ll have this weekend to myself! With Family Day, that’s three days of freedom (usually I did work-work on Saturdays, homework on Sundays.) I celebrated the start of this break by baking some caramel apple scones.

  • Magical Night

    Magical Night

    I was bussing downtown when these lights caught my eye. I jumped off the bus and started to walk. What a treat that turned out to be. As I found out, it was the opening night for Winterlude.

  • Conceal: Cryptography For Everyone

    Conceal: Cryptography For Everyone

    I’ve put together an application to make encryption accessible to non-technical folk. To use it, you open up the program, drag in the files you want to encrypt and answer a few questions. To decrypt, just drag those encrypted files back in. Simple.

    The program uses the 128-bit Rijndael cipher, with the key being a MD5 hash of a user-specified password. The initialization vector is pseudo-randomized and not stored. I suppose people could just encrypt a zip file almost as easily, but this was something I had wanted to do.

    You can download the source code here:
    https://bitbucket.org/jmcardle/conceal/
    Note: you’ll need libmcrypt-dev and qt4.

  • Second Semester

    Second Semester

    I’m half-way through my first month of this second semester. I thought things would start off slowly, but nope! This semester is proving very busy.

    I have five classes: two math courses, two geology courses, and one physics. That’s 24 hours of class time every week with the lectures, labs, and DGDs. I also spend 20 hours at work every week. Then I have four assignments due each week, and one lab every two weeks. In short: lots of twelve hour days (or more.)

    Still I’m trying to find time to do things outside. Usually it means dropping in to the pride center for an hour, or watching half a documentary with the women’s resource center. I’ve also been able to devote a few hours to some minor creativity (if you consider programming a creative endeavour, which I do.)

    The holidays were great. I got to finish reading a book for pleasure, was recipient to very touching gestures, and got to spend quality time with good people.

    To conclude, here are some pretty pictures I took in one of my classes. Rocks under microscopes.

  • Croissants & Holidays

    Croissants & Holidays

    Making croissants has been on my to-do list for months. Months. But working six days a week and spending the seventh on chores/homework, I just didn’t have the day that’s required to make these.

    These holidays have been so great to me. With a bit of a break from both work and school, I was finally able to explore baking this delicious item. I used a recipe from Fine Cooking and got busy. The end product had over 6,500 folds.

    Unfortunately, they did not turn out well at all. The outsides looked great, but inside it was still dough. They had called for putting the croissants in at 400F for 20 minutes; I had them in for 60 minutes and the insides still hadn’t risen. I’m not sure what I should have done differently to prevent this outcome.

    Eh well. I won’t dwell too much on it now, though I am open to suggestions. Instead, I’ll go do something else I haven’t been able to do since starting school: read for pleasure (a book called Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy.)