Bryan Crosby Dot Ca » grad school

SURP 2008 – 2010

Bryan — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 01:06:01 +0000

In September 2008 I wrote my first SURP-related blog entry. I was hoping to have some more inspired thoughts for my last entry in an attempt to jive with the first, yet my head remains firmly incapacitated from a very long night of liver abuse. So I don’t. I’ve just got this photo.

Two years. Sometime in 2007 I decided I wanted to go to planning school. I can’t even remember what first pushed me toward that profession, but I do remember exactly where I was when I got into Queen’s – February 2008 in some dodgy net bar in Phnom Penh Cambodia. I wasn’t expecting to get into any grad program and was putting out feelers for the Canadian military (enlisted), so it was quite a surprise. I’m a pretty awful student, not too down with academia, and would rather eat glass then do research…not exactly prime grad student material. Given that, it has been an immense privilege to have been given the opportunity to get that chunk paper and check out some built forms with a bunch of great people.

All the best to the 2010 Supers

Technorati Tags: 2010, grad school, Kingston, queens university, surp

2010

Bryan — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 21:34:12 +0000

Seven years of website fun! I suppose I could have waited until a 10 year operational anniversary, but…I needed a good topic for the first post of the year.

Connected with descendents of my Great Uncle’s Typhoon squadron

Was provided information regarding a memorial cairn created for my Great-Uncle in France.
Acquired a long-term internet stalker.
Acquired several good friends through the website.
Routinely receive hits from individuals interested in the Nanjing sex industry…probably because of this post .
Became a whiz with WordPress and other blog related software.
410 posts – over 600 pages @ 12pt. font of scribbling (as of 2008 given that WordPress no longer exports in .txt format so I can’t read as a word document) – 921 comments – about 24,000 hits – 3343 individual photos.

I spent this weekend cleaning up my gallery. I had noticed some time ago that numerous albums were missing from the gallery, including most of my Southeast Asia, Nanjing, Slovenia, Croatia, some from Tibet and a couple of other random images. I’ve addressed that issue and added photos from this summers escapades in Shanghai and Nanjing. I might even add some more Canadian content (although the ole’ Pentax is still down and out…a resolution is to fix that bad-boy). Most of those have already been posted on the main page at some point over the past six months, but they are now archived back in the gallery. The India stuff will be in there eventually, although the trend is that I’m usually a year tagging and documenting my photos.

I’m writing this from a nice perch on the 4th floor of Stauffer Library over looking Queen’s. I’ve vowed to spend less time in my office at SURP this year in a bid for more productivity (as much as I love the socializing, I would like to get this Master’s report done somewhat on time). Stauffer is kind of a undergrad hang out, but the 4th floor has nice views and could be a choice location (but I’ll steer clear during the craziness of exams).

Crappy mobile phone image (Queen’s from Stauffer Library)

I’m clear headed and ready to dive into my final semester (hopefully) as a student. I’ve got a bike that tears up the snow, a new backpack that eats mud for breakfast and a thermos full of coffee. Just need some new sunglasses.

Technorati Tags: 2010, blog, grad school, Kingston, life, new years, pentax, photography, surp

Gallery Down

Bryan — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:10:22 +0000

I have just noticed some serious errors in my gallery page. Thus, that part of the site might be down for awhile as I figure it out. Sorry to disappoint as I know that that particular page is one of the most popular hits on internet and you are just dying to get back in there to see what is new :-p

My report/thesis proposal continues at a snails pace, as does my “3rd term requirement project”. For lack of a better term, I am completely finished with school. I really don’t want to go back for another year of abstraction, theory and useless papers. I want to work more than anything. I am seriously the worst grad student – I don’t like research and I definetly don’t like writing papers, and have coldly realized (maybe I’ve know this for awhile) that I don’t belong in the academic world at all.

Oddly enough, I love urban planning, reading about it and I can’t wait to start to practice it.

So how am I solving this? The only way I know how. Run off to the Indian Himalayas…and totally forget about it. To use a cliche…there is so much more out there than school and I have never before felt like I’m missing out on the world like I do now.

I’m relegated myself to the fact that I probably wont’ graduate for another 3 years anyways. Master’s smasters….

This weekend I made a trip down to Decathalon (a very, very good French outdoor company) and outfitted myself with all the necessities that augment my additional gear for a month in the Kashmir.

I should open my own trekking company.

*the gallery is now working, with photos from Sarajevo and Mostar (Bosnia) added. Images from Belgrade and Kotor are still not functioning for some reason.

Technorati Tags: gallery, gra school, india, kashmir, life, photos, traveling

April

Bryan — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:52:34 +0000

Inconsequential entry about nothing other than to note that I am aware that I still have a blog and that I haven’t scribble or added content since the 24th…

Hmmm…

good good study study day day up…

Technorati Tags: grad school, nothing, study, surp

Statistical Anomaly

Bryan — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 15:07:00 +0000

I need to place a disclaimer at the top of this entry. I rarely write about my ‘life’ and prefer to avoid the topic as much as possible within the walls of this website. This isn’t to say that such entries are absent…if you scroll around in the archives I’m sure you’ll dig up some whiny and over-dramatized writing….

Despite the best efforts of a former elementary school classmate who sent this very funny image too me…math and essentially most anything involving numbers remains (despite the protein) about as delicious as a bowl of minced cockroaches.

I’m currently engaged in a losing battle with a required statistics course. The funny thing I find about number courses is the marketing strategies employed by their proponents. If I had a dollar for each time I heard a number teacher state “you are going to need this in your future” I would be living in Whistler, hunkered within the walls of my massive custom built log house using a calculator to add up my piles of cash (+ interest) earned from unsuspecting number teachers.

I’ve decided that I only require such knowledge…for the next time someone says I need to take a number course. That is what the statistics tell me! In the 9 years after my first (and assumed to be ‘last’) statistics course I’ve come across such methodologies once…and it was handled quite nicely by my computer.

A secret fact about Bryan is that he was 9% away from not graduating high school. Despite the fact that I didn’t seem to have any problem acquiring scholarships for my first year of university, 9% was the thin buffer that was standing between me and a life of wiping industrial wastes of the side of oil rigs in Fort McMurray, Alberta, a pharmaceutical test subject or a male dancer.

I failed the minimum BC math requirement once and passed (via correspondence – a ‘watered-down’ version of that number course) with 59%.

My ability with numbers has plagued me my whole life.

I had to meet another math requirement for my undergrad geography degree. Having two years of university under my belt and a more mature and dedicated outlook I ran into that course full on with optimism and a ‘can-do’ attitude. I was in the math help office every second day that semester.

I’ve never been shot down so hard in my life. Final mark, 52%.

I am well aware that many people are not number-inclined, but my performance with numbers is dismally far out in left field relative to my other abilities. If I were a statistic, my position is so incredibly skewed I would be dropped from the study.

I don’t know why I can’t seem to perform with numbers. It is very bizarre.

I’m not about to sink low and blame instructors…but I honestly don’t think I’ve ever had a good one who didn’t hold that mathematical arrogance that most seem to carry around in a bag. There have been some instructors I’ve had who I swear want to shove calculators down the throats of their ‘dumb’ students. “What do you mean you don’t get it????” “What are you, stupid or something?”*

*that could probably also be a planner at a town meeting*

Genetics? Nope – my Dad’s a whiz with numbers. Maybe I’m a mutation.

I think it is confidence. Each time I open up my stats textbook I am reminded of my 17 past years of schooling and complete failure with anything involving numbers.

Best I can do is open it up and try not to think about all of the useful things I could be learning as a planner.

Technorati Tags: attitude, grad schoo, math, statistics, surp

Stauffer Library

Sexy Sprawl

Bryan — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:49:15 +0000

Planning at its best!

I picked up a copy of Suburban Nation (Andre Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck, 2000) largely to help fill the reading void this semester created by the impossibly difficult to read Municipal and Planning Law , and nap inducing Land Use Planning Made Plain (literally made plain).

The authors (more famously known as DPZ…excluding Mr. Speck) spearheaded anti-sprawl/suburbia movement known as the New Urbanism which is probably most publically visible in Seaside, Florida (of The Truman Show fame).

It reads a lot like Jane Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities , but with a suburban and more current flavour. It serves up inspiration (god, I didn’t want to use that word – it’s been beaten to death this week) in a similar fashion and offers the alternative of something better than the status quo. This planning generations Death and Life of Great American Cities?

The are piles of critiques against New Urbanism and neo-traditional architecture (I personally don’t find the architecture to be much different than the ‘cookie-cutter’ variety) but I’m enjoying reading the idealized theory of this vision, especially the scathing assaults on the automobile-centric world of suburban areas.

Some quotes of choice from DPZ’s Suburban Nation.

Americans may have the finest private realm in the world, but our public realm is brutal. p. 41
The average American, when placed behind the wheel of a car, ceases to be a citizen and becomes instead a motorist. p. 61
Streets that once served vehicles and people equitably are now designed for the sole purpose of moving vehicles through them as quickly as possible. They have become, in effect, traffic sewers. p. 64
The building pictured here is not (referring to a barrack-like school) a refugee relocation center or a storage depot, although it could be considered a storage depot of sorts; it’s the place where we store our children while earning money to pay for our cars. p. 121

…and and acronym for fun NORC – Naturally Occurring Retirement Community.

Cornell – Ontario – New Urbanist Community

Technorati Tags: architecture, new urbanism, suburban sprawl, urban planning

Thought Police

Bryan — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 15:38:46 +0000

From the Montreal Gazette …also on national radio.

It would be hilarious if it were not so chilling: Queen’s University will hire six “facilitators” who will listen in on student conversations, vigilant against incorrect speech. Officially, says the University’s website, these incognito “intergroup facilitators,” will “respond to, stimulate and invite engagement across difference and tensions that arise among and between groups” in residences. They’ll pay special attention to “incidents of bias, prejudice … harassment and discrimination” and they’ll be good at all this, because they will “receive intensive and specialized training in the areas of social-justice theory.”

…and there goes the credibility of my future degree…

Technorati Tags: gestapo, nazi, politically correct trash, queens, queens university, stasi, thought police

AutoMAD

Bryan — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 17:02:13 +0000

Yeah, I’m still around – but don’t expect any big post in the next few weeks. If you do, it is because I need to bust myself away from the super-duper exciting world of planning school examination/project period.

I swear, I will die at my computer…while using AutoCAD. I’m not kidding when I say my hair is falling out over this software package – it’s all over my keyboard right now :-(

Technorati Tags: autoCAD, grad school, Kingston, queens, queens university, surp

Some websites

Bryan — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:47:16 +0000

A colleague walks into my office yesterday and introduces me to tiny little site called Stuff White People Like – with the proviso that he isn’t going to be responsible for any procrastination or large amounts of time lost as a result of this introduction.

I haven’t laughed that consistently since Tropic Thunder. Probably my favorite is the grad school entry:

Being in graduate school satisfies many white requirements for happiness. They can believe they are helping the world, complain that the government/university doesn’t support them enough, claim they are poor, feel as though are getting smarter, act superior to other people, enjoy perpetual three day weekends, and sleep in every day of the week!

This site also has the most comments/entry I’ve seen in awhile – with some posts clocking thousands of comments and trackbacks.

While I’m at it, I’ll also plug China Smack – it’s translated run-down of the hottest tabloid stories in China. It’s complete news trash (but strangely interesting), however the translated comments provide good a different angle into another aspect of life on the Mainland.

Technorati Tags: china, grad school, humour, procrastination, white people

Weekend Update

Bryan — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:10:22 +0000

I’m currently munching my way through a multiculturalism planning paper so I’m a bit empty headed regarding posting concerns but I think I might post the paper when I’m finished as it is not very long and reads more as a narrative story rather than an essay.

Some interesting things from this week:

The Canadian Army operates a Afghan radio station out of CFB Kingston broadcasting into the Afghanistan.

Anthropocene -from an lecture on security and environmental change. Good lecture although I was surprised at how Robert D. Kaplan (one of my favorite essayists) was ripped to shreds by the presenter. I also didn’t feel that my question regarding the role of the Canadian military in environmental change was adequately answered…I couldnt’ tell if I was being ridiculed or not. Those policy study types are very obscure.

I was in Toronto last Saturday for a field trip. First time to Canada’s premier city although I have to admit I’m not nearly as impressed by Toronto’ apparant built environment. I just felt it to be rather mediocre given the mythical status is seems to hold in the Canadian mindset. I specifically target the skyline and built structures, as I’m sure the social environment is as vibrant as it is reported. I suppose it could be that I cut my ‘urban-teeth’ in Asia where the skylines and built landscapes are…well…massive. I was good to see some of the developments in that area that are often mentioned in class – such items are very abstract unless physically experienced. Visiting the new urbansit community of Cornell was the highlight for me as those design concepts only existed in text for me but I could finally put a space to the words, concepts and theory. New Urbanism is rather controversial, but I liked what I saw.

Technorati Tags: afghanistan, canadian army, cornell, gis, Kingston, new urbanism, surp, toronto, urban planning