John C. Champaign's Homepage

My currently preferred sites
On-line Documents
Programming & other web sites I've written
Search Engines

Howdy, I'm John Champaign a former Biochemistry/Computer Science student at Queen's University, in Kingston, Ontario, and Dot.com refugee from San Francisco. I really have no love whatsoever for Biochemistry any more but I really miss the amazed "REALLY?" and raised eyebrows I would get whenever I told anyone thats what I was studying. Now when I tell people I study computer science its more of a "oh yeah..." response. :-( The price we pay for following our hearts!

I consider my politics to lean towards libertarian (sometimes known as objectivism, read about the differences here). I am an INTP.

I was a masters student in Computer Science at the University of Waterloo (started May 2002, finished January 2004). I applied to Waterloo, Toronto, Queen's, McGill and Victoria (from some sources those are the top schools in Canada), I was accepted to Queen's, Victoria, McGill and Waterloo (those rat bastards at Toronto! ). At Waterloo I worked with Dr. Andrew J. Malton whose specialization is "reengineering" (a sub-discipline of Software Engineering). I have thrown together a few tips based on my experiences that may or may not help someone else applying to grad school.

I have an Erdos number of 3: Paul Erdos -> Jeff Shallit -> Andrew Malton -> John Champaign

After completing my masters and doctorate, I was accepted to be a participant on English Teachers: Taiwan, a Life channel reality TV series about Canadians going to Taiwan and their experiences there.

After returning from Taiwan, I have been devoting myself, full time, to creating educational software for children with special needs, focusing on autism. If you know of anyone with autistic children please suggest they have a look at my website at: http://champaign.no-ip.org.

My educational software company has been shelved, and I'm now back at Waterloo, happily working towards a PhD under the supervisor of Dr. Robin Cohen.

I've archived my older adventures in a biography, feel free to read it if you want...

Chagheill!

John

BTW - I'm always getting asked what Chagheill! Means... It is a part of Queen's University's school song and is taken from a Gaelic war cry meaning "Never Yield". The correct pronunciation is similar to Cha' gheill (try your best!), but the student pronounce it "Kay-ya!"... What can I say, we're a wacky bunch!!!

This is myself (left) and my ex-housemate and very good friend Chris Smith (right). This picture was taken on his fathers digital camera which uses floppy disks as film!!! Pretty cool!

Some of my currently preferred sites are:

MovieLens - A collaborative filtering movie recommender. Very neat technology.

kuro5hin - Interesting self-moderated news site.

Slashdot \. - News for nerds. Stuff that matters. INCREDIBLE techie news site.

Canada411 - If you want to find someone without paying Ma Bell.

Dictionary.com - Since Merriam-Webster decided to start charging for basic look-ups, this is my new disctionary/thesaurus site of choice.

CopyKat Creations - Has recipes to mimic dishes you get from restaurants.

eBay - The ULTIMATE for buying & selling used junk.

Lonely Planet Online - Good if you need a travel fix.

Urban Legends Reference Pages - I get a kick out of urban legends, if you do too this is the site for you!

The Sea-Monkey Worship Site. - This is great for those who are interested in our brine shrimp friends.

The Comic Strip. - A place you can log onto and read the funnies! This is where I read Dilbert and For Better or For Worse every day.

ONTARIO CENTRE FOR RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE Information on a variety of religious beliefs.

CNN CNN Homepage.

ShortURL.com Free domain forwarding.

Vernor Vinge's Singularity paper - A somewhat disturbing article for some predictions of how society may change in the near future if you believe in the possibility of super-intelligence. A novel based on these concepts (and available on-line) is here. Bill Joy (ex-bigwig at Sun Microsystems) mused along similar lines in a Wired article.

Links to On-line documents:

Project Gutenberg - Aims to make electronics versions of books available as their copyrights expire.

THE PRINCE by Niccolo Machiavelli. - Whether you are planning on taking over a small country, or just running for ASUS, this classic guide to acquiring and maintaining political power is indespensible.

Magick in Theory and Practice. - Help for turning friends and enemies into toads.

Sun Tzu on the Art of War - Limitless applications for modern living.

Programming & other web sites I've written

Stocks A simple game of buying and selling stocks. How much money can you make?
Gems A puzzle-style game that might remind you of something else you've played ;-). I tried duplicating the game play, mainly just to see how its put together. I'm thinking about some ways to extend it now.
TicTacToe A little applet I threw together. Should be unbeatable, so please send me the details if you somehow win. Actually, this is a lie. It is beatable. I was going to fix it, then thought it might be interesting to leave it with a chance to be beaten. Good luck! :-)
AWT TicTacToe Another version of the above program. If it doesn't work for you, try this one (for those technically minded folks out there, this is implemented using Java's Abstract Window Toolkit, while the former version uses the new and improved Swing.
Atari-Go An applet that I extended to add a stronger player to. Plays a variant of Go.
Teo's Educational software (Webstart Version) This is a program that I work on for an Autistic boy who lives in the San Francisco Bay area. The goal of the project is to create custom software that can be used to help him meet some of his educational goals.
Phone CardsMy experience with phone cards (those little card board things that offer cut rate long distance calls)
Academic A collection of work I've done while completing my Masters.
Grad School Tip Some suggestions on the best way to apply for graduate studies.
Quotes An ever growing collection of quotes I've come across and appreciated.
Audio Recording Overview A quick overview of the steps I follow to record sound files.
Autism Press News about Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Search Engines:

Of the below engines, I have found Google and Google to be the most useful. You might also want to try out Google.

By now you must think I'm a terribly cool fellow, why not send me a e-mail note and tell me just how cool?

Click here to add me to your address book automatically. ICQ #7584719

Feel free to e-mail me broken links, but I don't promise to do anything about it ;-)

Created: Sun Jan 21 19:15:58 EST 1996