About three weeks ago, I hiked Stoos and wrote a Redbook post. Unfortunately, the post was only visible to me, apparently violating community guidelines.

I spent most of that day trying to identify the problematic content, repeatedly editing and reposting. Later, I learned this behavior is discouraged on Redbook, e.g., I am not really authorized to edit my own content.

Frustrated, I abandoned my efforts, leaving my Redbook homepage cluttered with articles like “10 Behaviors That Harm Your Redbook Account” and “100 Forbidden Words on Redbook”.

Though brief, this experience instilled in me a tendency towards self-censorship, a feeling I deeply resent. I also noticed the lack of competitive alternatives to this centralized platform where users share authentic life experiences through multimedia.

Well played, Redbook!

Anyway, given that I invested considerable effort in creating post figures, I will post them here instead.

Two months ago, I started to use the current blog to keep track of my study and personal notes.

This blog uses bastibe/org-static-blog, which is a convenient Emacs package to publish a static blog from Org-mode files.

When I first started, this blog had no styling at all. With the help of Claude, I gradually decorated it with the theme and fonts of my choice.

During this process, my husband made a feature request: a blog search function.

Most default search tools provided by popular static website frameworks do not return complete search results and their context.

For instance, I am learning database design. Assume I cannot remember what a “slotted page” is but I know I have noted it before. If I enter “slotted” in the search box of a Jekyll-based blog, it will provide me with 2 post links implying these posts contain this keyword. In the best case, it also highlights the first occurrence of “slotted” in each post with its context.

This does not really meet my needs. I would like to see all notes I have made for “slotted” to better refresh my memory, but the current results force me to click each post and perform a local search myself to achieve this goal.

I understand that modern search tools consider scalability and intelligence. However, for a personal blog, we can achieve greater breadth.

The current search function searches for all occurrences of the given search input and highlights each occurrence in an item surrounded by its context, e.g., 50 characters before and after the input. If multiple occurrences are close to each other, they are displayed once in the same item. Clicking each item opens a new tab and jumps to the closest header before the input.

In this way, I can immediately see all results and their context on one page, and I only click an item when the short context is not sufficient.

I implemented the search function along with all styling with the help of Cursor. The full logic can be found in search.js.

In short, every time I build the blog, a list of all post links is stored in post-list.json. When the page is loaded, for each post link, the blog caches the full post content and all header indices. When a search input is detected, the search function iterates through each post to find each occurrence and the closest header. It then wraps the occurrence with certain context and prepares the link by appending the header tag to the post link.

The current search function is simple and sub-optimal. It always re-stores all posts when the page is reloaded and is not lazy at all. The search is also neither fuzzy nor the most efficient.

It just works well so far for a personal blog with about 30 posts.

In addition, after I finished the implementation, my husband made another feature request: can you also highlight all occurrences in the opened link?

Over the past years, I’ve been involved in organizing and monitoring four exams. Yesterday marked my fourth and likely final exam monitoring session for the foreseeable future. Now seems like an opportune moment to reflect on my exam organization journey.

My first exam experience was relatively straightforward. As I was unfamiliar with the exam content, my primary responsibility was taking students to the restrooms. I recall accompanying nearly 10 students during the session. For the remainder of the time, I sat at the back of the room, occupying myself with some drawing.

This exam was identical to the first, but I was tasked with designing a significant portion of the questions. Initially, formulating questions seemed straightforward, but I later realized my inability to create effective ones. My first draft incorporated connections between various questions. During the review process, I was advised to maximize information density in questions, as stressed students prefer concise text. Additional challenges emerged when I began grading the exams. For example, open-ended questions consistently yielded unexpected answers, requiring me to modify the grading scheme while maintaining consistency with previous assessments.

The exam monitoring this time was more demanding as I began responding to student inquiries. My limited knowledge of the entire exam often required me to seek assistance from colleagues, and occasionally I struggled to comprehend the questions.

Grading the exam proved to be the most challenging aspect of the process. Evaluating over 100 exams, deciphering handwriting, determining fair point allocations, and recording scores was an incredibly tedious task. Unlike traditional mathematics exams that focus primarily on calculations, our exam encouraged creative thinking. Each answer contained implicit assumptions about the question, requiring careful interpretation to avoid excessive point deductions. The process was extremely time-consuming and offered minimal personal benefit or satisfaction.

This was a different exam, where I again designed one part and monitored its administration. Fortunately, due to its advanced nature, few students registered for this exam. This time, I had the privilege of collaborating with exceptional colleagues. Despite these advantages, the design process still demanded considerable effort on my part.

A unique aspect of this exam was that I also developed the course material, as it was a newly introduced subject. The topic proved challenging, and the exercises were demanding. Students expressed concerns about the complexity of the material. Consequently, we faced the task of devising ways to simplify the exam questions without compromising their effectiveness.

Now comes the most recent exam, where I took on the role of a coordinator. This position entailed not only designing my portion of the tasks but also finding colleagues to design other tasks, managing the timeline, reviewing drafts, printing exams, coordinating exam monitoring, and overseeing the grading process. Fortunately, I had the support of proactive and helpful colleagues, which allowed everything to proceed smoothly.

The monitoring process proved particularly demanding this time. As I was now familiar with the entire exam, I was responsible for reading instructions, making announcements, and answering as many questions as possible. I had to arrive at the exam rooms by 8 AM, forgoing breakfast, and remained standing and focused until noon. In retrospect, I may have been overly diligent due to inexperience and could have perhaps allowed myself to relax more. However, I’ll never know for certain, as this marks the conclusion of my exam organization duties.

Well, not quite the end, as I still need to complete the grading and submit the results.

After four instances of exam organization experience, I must admit that I do not recommend it. This opinion is, of course, highly personal, as I am not particularly inclined towards teaching. From my perspective, it is a job that demands significant effort while offering minimal returns. I can confidently say that I invest more time in the exam process than any individual student taking it.

The process of designing and grading exams presents a complex optimization challenge. There’s an inverse relationship between the time spent on design and the time required for grading. The less effort put into crafting the exam, the more time-consuming the grading process becomes. Moreover, it’s disheartening to spend two full days meticulously designing and reviewing a question, only to have it attempted by a mere handful of students.

Ich habe seit diesem Montag einen intensiven Deutschkurs gemacht. Die Kurs fangt von 8:30 Uhr bis 11:45 Uhr jeden Tag an. Weil von mein Wohnung bis zu die Schule ich fast einen Stunden brauche, muss ich vor 7 aufstehen und zur Bushaltstelle runnen. Nach dem Kurs fahre ich mit dem Bus zur Buro und arbeite ich bis zum Abendessen. Danach komme ich nach Haus zuruck und mache ein paar Haushalt. Ich gehe circa 11 Uhr ins Bett.

Wenn ich hier diesen Satzen schreibe, merke ich, dass ich komplexe Satze auf Englisch nicht mehr schreiben kann.

This is interesting, I am still in the starting phase, I cannot speak fluently at all and I have grammar mistakes everywhere. However, now when I try to type something in english, the german translation pops up in my mind first. If I don’t know the german, I have a problem writing it down in english. As a result, my written english falls back to almost the same level as german.

All my classmates come from diverse backgrounds. At least 5 are Ukriainian, and at least 2 from some countries that I have never heard before. English is no longer a universal language, but with my broken german I can barely chat.

Even with english, I have struggled a lot introducing myself. In the past decade, I never had this issue since everyone around me shared the similar experience. I can easily position myself; which education I had, which university I went, what work I am doing, what issue I have, etc. But this coordinate system works no more in this class. I am only confusing others if I mention I am a PhD student. So you are a student, they ask, why would they pay a student?

Once I asked classmate what she does on weekend. She paused, and said: because you are working, so the weekend is different for you, but I don’t work, so there is no difference for me. And before this I have never thought of such a bias in my question.

More and more often recently, I realize how limited my perspective is. I did not know what the life with a social worker is like. I did not know that Afghan can often speak Turkish. I did not know what my lecturer thinks when he works as a security guard at night. I have been too much caught up in my own world, such that I am unable to ask a meaningful question of people I don’t understand. I want to know more about the difference of this world, but I don’t know how.

• We rent a car and drove to Interlaken.
• We visited Aareschlucht and Brienz, and did some short strolls around.

• According to the unpredictable Meteoswiss forecast, this Saturday would have been the only weekend-day with some good weather in limited locations to go hiking since 2? or 3? weeks ago.
• But this was not the case anymore when we arrived the Rothorn Kulm restaurant via the steam train.

1. We first went a tour in Aareschlucht, where we experienced both strong cold wind and gentle warm wind.
2. We then did a half-hour small hiking to go back to our starting point.
3. Then we drove to Brienz, and had a relaxing lunch along the lake, where I ate a piece of watermelon.
4. We took the 1-hour steam train to the Rothorn Kulm, when we arrived it started to be foggy, windy and rainy.
5. We refilled our energy with hot drinks and snacks in the restaurant, and took a short stroll around the restaurant.
6. We went back to the restaurant to escape the cold (yes it is end of June) and waited for the steam train to go down.
7. During the train down the sun came out a bit, and the view was clear and nice again!

This week, I found myself craving a movie with a “Homeland” theme. Then the name of Argo came to me. I saw its name a decade ago (I am too old!) on some movie magazine cover.

It has little thing to do with “Homeland”. Instead, it blends action, comedy and drama based on a true story, although non of any dramatic conflicts really happened in history afak. It is about how a selfless agent, backed by an entire intelligence system which behaved incredibly efficient, and an alliance which also behaved incredibly generous, escaped a group of compatriots, who also behaved incredibly brave, from a dangerous place. My boyfriend said it is quite “Hitchcock”. Every tension resolves safely in the end: the phone will be picked up at the last second, the plane will take off at the last second, even the plane tickets will magically show up at the last second (Swissair yeah!).

I guess? The filming is good, as well as the narration and the performance. There were some moments where I was not fully convinced, but I accept them if that was the history. What really amazed me was when I found the actor of Tony was also the director, and also wrote “Good Will Hunting (1997)”, what a genius! But I guessed I preferred “Civil war (2024)” (my last movie) to this one. The reason? I felt “Argo” could have delved deeper into the absurdities of war rather than solely focusing on a heroic narrative.

This is the first blog with org-static-blog!