dmg's home page

I am looking for students to do Masters and/or PhDs. And I have money to support them.

Before I get flooded with emails from potential candidates, some facts and rules. If you are interested, keep reading:

Unless I know you, or you are highly recommended by somebody I know, I will not accept you as a PhD.

What am I looking for:

- Excellent programming skills
- Excellent computer science background (think Computer Science GRE)
- Excellent writing skills (English)


For a PhD student:

- Highly desirable: to have done some research
- Required: a recommendation from somebody I know or known by somebody I trust.

Answer the following questions:

1) Why:
a) Why do you want to do a MSc/Phd?
b) Why in Victoria
c) Why with me.

2) What are your grades in standardized tests? GRE, Computer Science GRE, TOEFL (if needed).

3) Are you looking for financial support?

4) It is very likely I know little about your university. Hence, your grades do not mean much to me. The same with what skills you claim to have. What I want you to tell me is what have you done that I can verify. In this context:

a) What awards have you received. How do I know that the award is valuable?
b) Show me code you have done in the past. In this context, I prefer people who have contributed code to open source, and can say: here is an example of my code as hosted by such and such repository (extra points if you are managing an open source software project).
c) Show me writing you have done in the past. Examples of blogs or papers are very useful. They should be written in English.

5) What industrial experience do you have?

6) How do you think you fit in my research program?

7) If you are planning to do a PhD, you must have scientific publications in reputable venues in English. Include your bibliography.

8 ) Tell me something else you think that will make me believe you are the one.

What do I offer?

And environment in which we work together to do science. Yes, we will work together.

My most recent student is now doing a PhD at UBC, another one has just been hired by Amazon Canada, another one is working for Yahoo. A previous MSc went to do a PhD is is now assistant professor at the University of Alberta, my PhD student is now doing PostDoc at McGill.

email me at dmg at uvic dot ca. Your subject should be prefixed with: "Wanted:"


--dmg

The slides for our technical briefing at FSE are here:

Part1
Part2

--dmg

Everybody who has had some time to talk to me knows that I like food: eating it and preparing it. And yes, like many other endeavours in my life I approach it with geek passion. .

It is always interesting to read the rulings of the Supreme Court of the United States, and this time is no exception:

Judge Scalia writes (for the majority 7-2):

In the words of NSERC, the " DAS Program aims to provide substantial and timely additional resources to accelerate progress and maximize the impact of outstanding research programs." Since 2008 these are the recipients in the area of computer science:

NSERC has published the results of the NSERC discovery grant competition in 2011.. NSERC only published the raw data, so with a little bit of initiative one can retrieve it and visualize it.

I had several questions about this data....

My teaching assignments for next year are:

Spring 2011: Research term
Summer 2011: Research term
Fall 2011: CSc 370 Databases and CSc 595: Graduate Seminar
Spring 2012: Seng 410 Media Applications

--dmg

Really?

In Canada 80% of postdocs earn $38,600 or less per year before tax—the average salary of a construction worker.

There are some other interesting facts and numbers in that article.

--dmg

"The Art we look at is made by only a select few. A small group create, promote, purchase, exhibit and decide the success of Art. Only a few hundred people in the world have any real say. When you go to an ARt gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires"


"The time of getting fame for your name on its own is over. Artwork that is only about wanting to be famous will never make you famous. Fame is a by-product of doing something else. You don't go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a shit".


--Banksy

At least if you are in the United States, but I suspect this happens in Canada too: Too many people with too many degrees doing jobs that do not require it.

The full paper here.

--dmg

Think again. This video shows what was needed to take the portraits of the Leafs.

Toronto Maple Leafs Photo Shoot from Finn O'Hara on Vimeo.

And here is a some write-up about it.

--dmg

I like movies, and instantly became interested in subscribing to Netflix after the big announcement today. At 8 dollars a month, it sounds very appealing.

As soon as I got home I started querying its database. It is kind of annoying that I can't see a simple list of movies available, and instead I have to scroll, scroll, and scroll. I realized that most movies I wanted to watch were not available, and frequently even the recommended alternatives were not there either. The movies they had were not exactly stellar.

I use the Internet Movie Database data for my courses, thus I decided to create a simple experiment with it to decide if I should subscribe:

* How many of the top Internet Movie Database top 250 movies of all time are in netflix Canada?

If a good proportion are there, then Netflix will have the movies I want to watch.

After a little bit of scripting magic, here are the results:

I am frequently asked this question, and to answer it I have started a new project: Lunch in Victoria.

--dmg

Living in a country where even pick up games involve cleats and chin pads, I can't but marvel at the ingenuity of children in
Africa.

--dmg

Who would have thought?:

"Researchers say there is an evolutionary rationale for the pressure this barrage puts on the brain. The lower-brain functions alert humans to danger, like a nearby lion, overriding goals like building a hut. In the modern world, the chime of incoming e-mail can override the goal of writing a business plan or playing catch with the children. "

--dmg