Advice for physics graduate students

keyboard skills (VERY IMPORTANT)

• learn how to touch type (it takes about 3 months or less with 3 hours per week of practice):see http://www.typingweb.com/ which has free & awesome touch typing courses
• learn keyboard shortcut keys
• remember you are not an average joe person in terms of computer using intensity and learning skills, so hunt-and-peck typing, or not using keyboard shortcuts is not good (ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE A STUDENT IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AREA OR IF YOU DO PROGRAMMING FOR LIVING).
  

record and quantify how much you work

• daily, weekly, yearly
• on each course, assignment, chapter,...
• on each research project, and sub projects
• for paperwork, for research proposal,
• using of a time-tracking software is advised (free ones should be enough for personal time-tracking)For example see gnotime
  

working a lot is working less

• one cannot work a lot on a constant basis. It is ok if you do it before submitting your research proposal etc.
• However, in general working for long hours constantly will decrease your motivation and efficiency thus it is not good for you in the long term. The point is not to work a lot but working efficiently.
• Aim to work 40 hours at least and don't go beyond 50 hours weekly.
• Make sure your efficiency (total time assigned to work/total time recorded) is in between 75% to 90%.

Read on personal efficiency: check out

• Eat that Frog by Brian Tracy (google books / amazon)
• Getting Things Done by David Allen ( google book / amazon)

HAVE A REGULAR SLEEP ORDER as you use your brain a lot as a graduate student.

exercise REGULARLY: invest in your body as much as you invest in your head!

• 24h-8h(sleep) = 16h usable time daily
• 7 x 16 = 112h weekly usable time
• 112-40 = 72h available for anything else than work
• 3h x 2 = 6hours of exercising weekly:
• 6h/72h = %8 of non-work time => NO EXCUSE for exercising !!!

meet regularly with you supervisor

• be prepared and organized for this meeting:
• have a list of questions
• have a list of the things to discuss with your supervisor
• have the supporting documents/files with you in an organized fashion

know beforehand how-much time you can take off yearly

• discuss this with your supervisor

know your finances

• know how much money you will have EXACTLY as of September 1st every year
• know when and how-much you will get money, and you are supposed to pay tuition etc

save money

• cook your own food (not always of course)
• plan weekly your lunch (at least)
• buy cold-pack and lunch bag, and bring food to office
• every week check out grocery fliers online to see if your favorite foods are on sale. If so, buy tons of them. This can enable you save up to 50% on grocery bills.
  

socialize for a reasonable amount of time every week

Learn LaTeX

learn how to use citeulike for bibliography purposes

put ALL of your research/grad studies activity in a single LaTex file

• include every individual activity as a separate file*
• turn on and off files, by commenting/uncommenting \includefile command, depending on your daily needs

learn THE VERY BASICs of:

1. a low level language: Fortran/C/C++
2. bash scripting: grep, sed, awk
3. Linux operating system
4. symbolic/numeric math software:

• Wxmaxima
• Mathematica
• Maple
• Octave
• Matlab

5. plotting software:

• xmgrace
• gnuplot

computer skills

• learn how to automate things by writing scripts. for example don't do the followings by hand: compile a code with specific linked libs and options; run the code for input 1, .... input 20; for each output plot a data to GUI, generate .eps files, and move them to a certain folder; put these .eps files in a latex document; compare each output with another output, ...etc.
• don't be afraid of computers/computer problem as you are a graduate student who is expected to able to solve problems and who is expected to have good learning skills. So, learn from every problem that you experience, if someone solves a problem for you, write up a howto document right away as you will not remember the solution even next day and as you don't want to bug that person again.
• Use Google and online forums (a lot) to seek for guides/howtos/solutions for computer tricks/problems.

How to submit I-94 form to border officers at Toronto Pearson Airport

I live in Canada, and once in a while I cross the border. When I do that, I get a form/piece of paper called I-94 which is a record of entry. One can either surrender this thing right away on the way back or can use it until the expiry date. I in general do the latter one, and recently I have realized that one can surrender I-94 to border officials at Toronto Pearson airport as opposed to surrendering it at a land border which might be less convenient from transportation and cost point of view.

Basically, one can surrender the I-94 form to a canadian border officer. So, do the following:

1. Go to Terminal 3, pearson airport
2. Go to "Canada border agency"/customs information office located at level 1. See the image below where the location of this office is indicated with an arrow:


For a full Terminal 3 map, check out: http://www.gtaa.com/en/travellers/airport_information/terminal_info/

Note this should work for any airport which has international flights.

I hope this post will be useful for many people.

Ubuntu 10.10 on Sony Vaio Netbook (VPCM111AX)

I just recently purchased a Sony Vaio netbook (VPCM111AX). Initially, I was hesitant to buy a netbook since I wasn't sure if its computational power would be sufficient for me. It turns out it is not really true that you cannot do more than a few things at a time. I so far haven't experienced any slowness due to opening many applications. To be clear, I am not an average Joe laptop user, thus the apps that I use go way beyond internet browsers.

I think if one doesn't do hard-core gaming or hard-core numerical simulations, netbook is a perfect match for your daily computing needs. Also I find the screen size is really perfect for me. After using this netbook, I consider any laptop bigger than 12" screen as an unmobile piece of product.

Netbook thing is really practical, I don't really think twice if my backpack will be heavy etc. It is substantially lighter than my previous 15" laptop which gave me serious shoulder problems when I go to conferences etc.

Speaking of Ubuntu, I have the 10.10 Maverick Meerkat version installed on my netbook. Everything works out of the box: keyboard, function keys, power management, wireless, mic (int & ext), bluetooth, graphics (vga and associated function key works out of the box), and suspend mode. Though I haven't tested the memory card reader yet. Additionally, battery lasts 4.5 hours with wireless is on half the time.

One reason why I post this is that this netbook is not listed in the ubuntu compatible netbook list. So I took some chances however I knew before the purchasing the netbook that linux works nicely on Sony laptops. I hope some others who want to purchase this netbook and use withubuntu will find this post useful