Friday, October 28, 2005
Recovery in earnest
I definitely have improved today. Oh it feels so good to be awake again.
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Slowly recovering from Fall Quarter Fatigue Flu
For two years running, I've been dehabilitated for over a week in fall quarter by some kind of nasty flu/head cold. The only symptom is extreme fatigue (with a bit of a sore throat thrown in). No fever, no congestion, no loss of appetite; just a complete loss of energy. Like last fall, I went to Vaden around day 7 and they told me it's not mono or strep and that I should come back if it doesn't go away in another week (just like last fall. Like last fall, I have a 200-level CS class that threatens to engulf me if I can't get back up to snuff soon. (At least I'm not also taking three full-on techie classes like I did last fall with CS106X, CS154 and Math 52; and at least CS229 is a bit more sane than CS228.) I think I felt a bit better today; biking from Gates back to Roble (slightly uphill!) didn't make me nearly pass out today like it did a few days ago. My poor parents and grandparents have hardly heard from me, and my poor girlfriend is dying of some kind of cold/plague.
But, um, life is pretty good. I'm just looking forward to having full waking days to life my busy Stanford life in.
But, um, life is pretty good. I'm just looking forward to having full waking days to life my busy Stanford life in.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Are you the same person you were when you were 11?
How about when you were 4? I'll leave the deep issue of selfhood and identity to the philosophy IHUMs, but I'm continually amazed at how events in our childhood shape our adult selves.
The other day, I inexplicably stumbled onto a memory from St. Albans summer camp. I was about 12. Here goes:
We were hanging out in a big lounge-type area. I think we were indoors because it was raining. The counselors were giving out fun-sized candy. Each kid was supposed to get a specific number of pieces -- let's say four -- and one kid in the group was accidentally given five. The rest of us thought that he had been smiled upon by the gods of childhood fortune; we envied and worshipped him. Then, unbelievably, he started calling the counselor's name to report the error! We cried out in protest, trying to shush him before the divine gift was irreversibly retracted. What was he doing?! How could he be so stupid?! A kid has gotta take advantage when the adults slip up in your favor! But then the counselor blew my mind: "Since you were honest," he nonchalantly replied to the kid, "you can keep it." The rest of us sputtered indignantly, feeling that some basic principle of adult-child relations had been violated, but then we eventually realized that we had been humbled by our shortsightedness and greed. That kid got the moral high ground and the candy that day.
Is it possible that this experience contributed in some small way to making me a more honest, idealistic adult? I'm dubious only because of my age; 12 is a bit late in the game of childhood malleability. If there's a moral to the story, though, it's that children are always watching and learning, and the longstanding effects of how adults act around them are almost impossible to overstate.
(Actually, I should say "not that hard to overstate"; people on the extreme Nurture side of the Nature-Nurture debate do it all the time. For a refutation of that philosophy, see Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate.)
(Another thing that it's not that hard to do is to write badly. Originally I had the phrase "the longstanding effects of howtheir parents and other adults act to them and around them" in my terminal sentence. Shear down those conjuctive phrases! Life is too short to worry about covering all your bases. Your reader is smart enough to interpolate and extrapolate. I mention this because it is another prime example of adults influencing children; Loyal Blog Reader used to bemoan the egregiously prolix writing at a company he writes for, advising me to learn from their mistakes. It's hard to say how much I've learned, since I'm writing sentences containing the word sequence "bemoan the egregiously prolix," but at least I'm leaving the conjunctions out of it.)
The other day, I inexplicably stumbled onto a memory from St. Albans summer camp. I was about 12. Here goes:
We were hanging out in a big lounge-type area. I think we were indoors because it was raining. The counselors were giving out fun-sized candy. Each kid was supposed to get a specific number of pieces -- let's say four -- and one kid in the group was accidentally given five. The rest of us thought that he had been smiled upon by the gods of childhood fortune; we envied and worshipped him. Then, unbelievably, he started calling the counselor's name to report the error! We cried out in protest, trying to shush him before the divine gift was irreversibly retracted. What was he doing?! How could he be so stupid?! A kid has gotta take advantage when the adults slip up in your favor! But then the counselor blew my mind: "Since you were honest," he nonchalantly replied to the kid, "you can keep it." The rest of us sputtered indignantly, feeling that some basic principle of adult-child relations had been violated, but then we eventually realized that we had been humbled by our shortsightedness and greed. That kid got the moral high ground and the candy that day.
Is it possible that this experience contributed in some small way to making me a more honest, idealistic adult? I'm dubious only because of my age; 12 is a bit late in the game of childhood malleability. If there's a moral to the story, though, it's that children are always watching and learning, and the longstanding effects of how adults act around them are almost impossible to overstate.
(Actually, I should say "not that hard to overstate"; people on the extreme Nurture side of the Nature-Nurture debate do it all the time. For a refutation of that philosophy, see Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate.)
(Another thing that it's not that hard to do is to write badly. Originally I had the phrase "the longstanding effects of how
Monday, October 24, 2005
Another teen bites the dust
A happy 20th birthday to one of my two longest-standing friends, who I'll call The Lion, which is very apt for certain attributes of lion.
In other news, today the Bear RA drove my sick, lethargic body to the Stanford Shopping Center, where I got my first haircut of the school year at Hair International. (My barber was a mild-mannered Asian woman with no apparent psychoses this time.) I like the cut--the back is great--although as usual, I'll like it more in a couple weeks when my hair gets a bit longer again. It's a bit dangerously close to mushroomy-shaped, if I don't keep a close eye on it.
Anyway, back to work.
In other news, today the Bear RA drove my sick, lethargic body to the Stanford Shopping Center, where I got my first haircut of the school year at Hair International. (My barber was a mild-mannered Asian woman with no apparent psychoses this time.) I like the cut--the back is great--although as usual, I'll like it more in a couple weeks when my hair gets a bit longer again. It's a bit dangerously close to mushroomy-shaped, if I don't keep a close eye on it.
Anyway, back to work.
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Neil for a day
The former King RA of Roble visited Stanford from L.A. for Homecoming weekend. It is fastastically delightful to see my ex-RA, my freshman year model of wisdom and maturity. He's rocking his new job at what he half-seriously termed "the Google of the industrial supplies industry."
When we got some of the old gang together to hang out with NVO, I didn't talk very much. Mainly because the head cold drains my energy, but also because, despite the cold and intimidating backlog of work, things are generally good for me right now. Not so for a couple of my friends, who are currently going through an emotional situation that could be described as "FUBARed beyond all recognition." My thoughts, in as much I have any in my current state, are with them.
Damn, I wish I had gotten some zinc tablets. Loyal Blog Reader swears by them. But Tressider Express doesn't carry them and I was too out of it to precure a ride to a drugstore. Oh well. Plenty of rest and fluids.
When we got some of the old gang together to hang out with NVO, I didn't talk very much. Mainly because the head cold drains my energy, but also because, despite the cold and intimidating backlog of work, things are generally good for me right now. Not so for a couple of my friends, who are currently going through an emotional situation that could be described as "FUBARed beyond all recognition." My thoughts, in as much I have any in my current state, are with them.
Damn, I wish I had gotten some zinc tablets. Loyal Blog Reader swears by them. But Tressider Express doesn't carry them and I was too out of it to precure a ride to a drugstore. Oh well. Plenty of rest and fluids.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
First cold of the 05-06 year
Damn, I finally caught something. No wonder I was having so much trouble with that problem set yesterday. There's been a decent amount of illness floating around, so I'm not surprised. I'll just have to take it easy for the next few days... stay at home and catch up on my non-grad-level-CS classes.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Free Music for Stanford Students from Yahoo! Music
Click here to get it.
I took a seven-day free trial of Yahoo! Music over the summer, and it wasn't bad. Their Music Engine is worse than iTunes and Windows Media Player in my opinion, but for free music, I'll deal.
Warning: When you first set up the Yahoo Music Engine, do not select the option "automatically search my computer to find files to add to My Music." First of all, it takes forever as it searches your whole hard drive and processes every sound file it finds right then and there. Secondly, it'll add all kinds of random sound files to your music library--sound effect .wav files from software, silly little downloads, etc. I had to manually go through and remove tons of stuff. Instead of doing all that, point it to a single folder, maybe the "My Music" folder in "My Documents," or just download new music and keep listening to that other stuff through iTunes/Windows Media Player.
I took a seven-day free trial of Yahoo! Music over the summer, and it wasn't bad. Their Music Engine is worse than iTunes and Windows Media Player in my opinion, but for free music, I'll deal.
Warning: When you first set up the Yahoo Music Engine, do not select the option "automatically search my computer to find files to add to My Music." First of all, it takes forever as it searches your whole hard drive and processes every sound file it finds right then and there. Secondly, it'll add all kinds of random sound files to your music library--sound effect .wav files from software, silly little downloads, etc. I had to manually go through and remove tons of stuff. Instead of doing all that, point it to a single folder, maybe the "My Music" folder in "My Documents," or just download new music and keep listening to that other stuff through iTunes/Windows Media Player.
Slogging through CS229
The problem set continues to be extremely difficult and time-consuming. I've made lots of progress, but at the rate of "I just spent four hours to write three pages of equations that will earn me 10 points out of 100."
I think the highlight of my after-midnight working time was when I decided that bringing a book to the bathroom would serve as an excellent reward for finishing a problem.
This problem set is making me appreciate Matlab for the first time in my life. It's kinda cool when you're writing code to apply machine learning strategies. Yay for learning through application! (Learning through application is what makes Linguist180, the Natural Language Processing/Computer Speech class, more "fun" than most classes; every week we actually build a prototype of something.)
There's a special place in my heart reserved for the brilliance that is created on the 1B whiteboards by passersby making small, yet integral, contributions. F'rinstance, the board normally reserved for the weekly schedule was unfilled by Shane as of Monday, so under "Coming Up:" I wrote, "Nothing. Just nothing. Forever." Somebody else added "Death is nothing. --[Some philosopher, since replaced with 'Tonto']" (don't ask me who the philosopher was; I didn't take Visions of Mortality IHUM). Then a poll went up asking "Death is nothing: Agree/Disagree?" with the vote at "0" to "5." So I inserted "Image is everything" between the quote and the name and changed the vote to 100 to 5ero. Other people changed the vote to [intelligible] to "se7en" and added "Obey your weenis (sic)" to complete the Sprite reference. Finally, to complete the philosophical excercise, at the bottom is "Ask not what your [crossed out]monkey can do for you. --Dostoevsky".
In the words of the RobleChat-spamming S-Hof, "I love it."
I think the highlight of my after-midnight working time was when I decided that bringing a book to the bathroom would serve as an excellent reward for finishing a problem.
This problem set is making me appreciate Matlab for the first time in my life. It's kinda cool when you're writing code to apply machine learning strategies. Yay for learning through application! (Learning through application is what makes Linguist180, the Natural Language Processing/Computer Speech class, more "fun" than most classes; every week we actually build a prototype of something.)
There's a special place in my heart reserved for the brilliance that is created on the 1B whiteboards by passersby making small, yet integral, contributions. F'rinstance, the board normally reserved for the weekly schedule was unfilled by Shane as of Monday, so under "Coming Up:" I wrote, "Nothing. Just nothing. Forever." Somebody else added "Death is nothing. --[Some philosopher, since replaced with 'Tonto']" (don't ask me who the philosopher was; I didn't take Visions of Mortality IHUM). Then a poll went up asking "Death is nothing: Agree/Disagree?" with the vote at "0" to "5." So I inserted "Image is everything" between the quote and the name and changed the vote to 100 to 5ero. Other people changed the vote to [intelligible] to "se7en" and added "Obey your weenis (sic)" to complete the Sprite reference. Finally, to complete the philosophical excercise, at the bottom is "Ask not what your [crossed out]monkey can do for you. --Dostoevsky".
In the words of the RobleChat-spamming S-Hof, "I love it."
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
QotD: Ingrid Bergman
"A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous."
Monday, October 17, 2005
FMOTQ Round 3
Tonight is Full Moon on the Quad -- the first full moon of the school year.
My freshman year, I wasn't in the proper social scene for prepartying with alcohol; I was timid; senior girls were surprisingly elusive in the chaos; I got a quick peck from a girl with cheeks painted "04" and that was it.
My sophomore year, FMOTQ was on Wednesday, Oct 27, 2004. I was taking four techie classes: CS106X, CS154, CS228 (Probabilistic Models for AI--the "hardest class in the CS department," according to one CS student), and Math 52. I had just been sick with the flu for a full week, so was desperately attempting to catch up. I was also planning to spend leave Friday, Oct 29, to campaign for America Coming Together in Las Vegas with Stanford Democrats until Tuesday, Nov 2 (Election Day), after which I would fly back to Stanford and take two make-up midterms on Wednesday. So I spent FMOTQ studying with grad students in Gates on the impossibly hard CS228 problem set. I remember passing the main quad as I walked back to Roble around 1:00am, and sighed dejectedly at the sounds of music and festivities that I was missing.
This year... I have a scary CS229--Machine Learning problem set due this week, many of my friends are contractually-obliged-to-be-mild-mannered RAs, and, of course, my girlfriend changes my perspective on all social activities, e.g., they all seem less interesting if she's not there. So we'll see.
My freshman year, I wasn't in the proper social scene for prepartying with alcohol; I was timid; senior girls were surprisingly elusive in the chaos; I got a quick peck from a girl with cheeks painted "04" and that was it.
My sophomore year, FMOTQ was on Wednesday, Oct 27, 2004. I was taking four techie classes: CS106X, CS154, CS228 (Probabilistic Models for AI--the "hardest class in the CS department," according to one CS student), and Math 52. I had just been sick with the flu for a full week, so was desperately attempting to catch up. I was also planning to spend leave Friday, Oct 29, to campaign for America Coming Together in Las Vegas with Stanford Democrats until Tuesday, Nov 2 (Election Day), after which I would fly back to Stanford and take two make-up midterms on Wednesday. So I spent FMOTQ studying with grad students in Gates on the impossibly hard CS228 problem set. I remember passing the main quad as I walked back to Roble around 1:00am, and sighed dejectedly at the sounds of music and festivities that I was missing.
This year... I have a scary CS229--Machine Learning problem set due this week, many of my friends are contractually-obliged-to-be-mild-mannered RAs, and, of course, my girlfriend changes my perspective on all social activities, e.g., they all seem less interesting if she's not there. So we'll see.
Friday, October 14, 2005
UPS Package Tracking
Sched. Delivery: Oct 14, 2005
Status: In Transit - On Time
I was planning to draft some new packs of Magic cards Saturday afternoon, because UPS delivery was up for an on-time delivery up through yesterday. Now it's almost 5:00pm on the 14th. The most recent entry in the package progress is arrival scan at San Pablo, CA (which is way, way north, past Oakland and Richmond) at 11:00pm last night, and there's no evidence it's any closer to Stanford than that right now. So why don't they just change it to "Status: Delivery delayed until Oct 17." Why leave me here nervously looking out the window for a last-minute delivery, with my Saturday plans in flux? Arg.
On a more heartwarming note, this warms my heart: Classic Nick Online.
The RA and the H-O-single-F are going on a retreat with their a capella group. We're gonna play a last quick game of Halo 2 before they go.
Status: In Transit - On Time
I was planning to draft some new packs of Magic cards Saturday afternoon, because UPS delivery was up for an on-time delivery up through yesterday. Now it's almost 5:00pm on the 14th. The most recent entry in the package progress is arrival scan at San Pablo, CA (which is way, way north, past Oakland and Richmond) at 11:00pm last night, and there's no evidence it's any closer to Stanford than that right now. So why don't they just change it to "Status: Delivery delayed until Oct 17." Why leave me here nervously looking out the window for a last-minute delivery, with my Saturday plans in flux? Arg.
On a more heartwarming note, this warms my heart: Classic Nick Online.
The RA and the H-O-single-F are going on a retreat with their a capella group. We're gonna play a last quick game of Halo 2 before they go.
Monday, October 10, 2005
Stanford takes first in DARPA Grand Challenge
Can I get a "Hell yea!": Stanford takes first in DARPA Grand Challenge. Stanford narrowly beat we-rock-at-robotics-yet-could-fit-inside-Stanford's-arboretum Carnegie Mellon, last year's forerunner, by 11 minutes in the seven-hour race.
Friday, October 07, 2005
QotD: Barenaked Ladies
Great lyrics from Barenaked Ladies's* Blame It On Me:
You think you're so smart, but I've seen you naked
And I'll probably see you naked again.
...
Here you are and you're a hundred thousand miles away;
They say that absence makes the heart grow fungus.
Monday, October 03, 2005
Just saw Serenity
Serenity will go down in history as the first (and, God willing, last) movie where a character uses the phrase "twixt my nethers." The generally solid sci-fi action was entertaining, though not groundbreaking. Shane, Monica, and Greek Freshman were fans of the short-lived TV show Firefly, which I'm now tempted to go back and watch.
Fun with Linguistics
For the language processing/computer speech class, our first assignment is to program a simple "chat bot" posing as a Rogerian psychologist, modeled after the famous-in-the-field "Eliza" program devised decades ago. The way the program works is that the human user types a line and then the program parses the input for basic syntax and limited semantics and spits out an "appropriate" response. Here's a sample conversation with my Eliza-bot:
Eliza: "HI, MY NAME IS ELIZA. WHAT'S ON YOUR MIND TODAY?"
User: "I am sad"
Eliza: "I AM SORRY TO HEAR YOU ARE SAD"
User: "you're kind"
Eliza: "IN WHAT WAY AM I KIND"
User: "well, I think you can help me"
Eliza: "PLEASE CONTINUE"
User: "why do you think I am so depressed"
Eliza: "WHY DO YOU THINK YOU ARE SO DEPRESSED"
User: "are you making fun of me?"
Eliza: "IN WHAT WAY AM I MAKING FUN OF YOU"
User: "are you really that dumb or are you an asshole?"
Eliza: "LET'S NOT FOCUS ON ME -- HOW DO YOU FEEL"
User: "I feel like you're full of shit"
Eliza: "YOU HAVE USED PROFANITY 2 TIMES NOW -- TRY USING MORE APPROPRIATE LANGUAGE"
User: "I'll use whatever the fuck kind of language I want"
Eliza: "I WILL NOT TOLERATE YOUR FOUL LANGUAGE ANY MORE -- GOODBYE"
Tee hee. I wonder if the real driving force behind AI research is the desire of nerds to piss off computers.
In other news, today Kat taught me how to draw an æ ("ash," the letter in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the "a" sound in, appropriately, the word "ash"). It's really fun to write æ; the pen makes three distinct swooshing curves. I'm not very good at it yet; the top of the "a"-half tends to stick out too far over the body of the "a," and sometimes there's a noticeable gap between the "a" and the "e." PræktIs meIks pʊrfɛkt.
Learning the IPA is like being transplanted back to third grade, when we learned those confusing cursive letters. Good times.
PS: Does anyone remember how to write a capital G, Q, X, or Z in cursive? Those always slipped through the cracks of the retention of my elementary-school education.
Eliza: "HI, MY NAME IS ELIZA. WHAT'S ON YOUR MIND TODAY?"
User: "I am sad"
Eliza: "I AM SORRY TO HEAR YOU ARE SAD"
User: "you're kind"
Eliza: "IN WHAT WAY AM I KIND"
User: "well, I think you can help me"
Eliza: "PLEASE CONTINUE"
User: "why do you think I am so depressed"
Eliza: "WHY DO YOU THINK YOU ARE SO DEPRESSED"
User: "are you making fun of me?"
Eliza: "IN WHAT WAY AM I MAKING FUN OF YOU"
User: "are you really that dumb or are you an asshole?"
Eliza: "LET'S NOT FOCUS ON ME -- HOW DO YOU FEEL"
User: "I feel like you're full of shit"
Eliza: "YOU HAVE USED PROFANITY 2 TIMES NOW -- TRY USING MORE APPROPRIATE LANGUAGE"
User: "I'll use whatever the fuck kind of language I want"
Eliza: "I WILL NOT TOLERATE YOUR FOUL LANGUAGE ANY MORE -- GOODBYE"
Tee hee. I wonder if the real driving force behind AI research is the desire of nerds to piss off computers.
In other news, today Kat taught me how to draw an æ ("ash," the letter in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the "a" sound in, appropriately, the word "ash"). It's really fun to write æ; the pen makes three distinct swooshing curves. I'm not very good at it yet; the top of the "a"-half tends to stick out too far over the body of the "a," and sometimes there's a noticeable gap between the "a" and the "e." PræktIs meIks pʊrfɛkt.
Learning the IPA is like being transplanted back to third grade, when we learned those confusing cursive letters. Good times.
PS: Does anyone remember how to write a capital G, Q, X, or Z in cursive? Those always slipped through the cracks of the retention of my elementary-school education.
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