March unto Death

Never fear, our hero is off.
To defend today the masterpiece of his work.
A riveting essay that will surely put the most tentative audience to sleep;
nonetheless, this rite of passage must be achieved
Or else the hero fades in the dark

In search of the internship

Probably the thing I hate the most about my school year is finding summer funding. Sure I could do things like work as a technician for the CS IT department, but honestly how does that help my career at all? There are lots of different possibilities for the summer such as Google, gaming companies, DOE Lab, and what not, but alas I have to get off my butt and go look for them.

At the suggestion of my advisor I decided to look into an international banking firm, for an internship opportunity. I gave them my resume and they invited me to dinner ... with lots of other MBA students. Now I have nothing wrong with MBA students but I really have nothing in common with them either. But stepping into the restaurant, I was hit with a large dose of culture shock that made me thank the good Lord that I wasn't lead down that path.

As I walk in it appears to be just a huge gaggle of people drinking and "talking". I say talking what I really mean is selling themselves to the representatives of the company. One look at my long hair and beard and the lady at the name tag table states, "You must be a PhD" in a tone of voice that is either jealous or awe struck. For the rest of the night all I had to say was I was a PhD candidate and people instantly acted as if I was Einstein come to solve all their problems. It was just a bit weird.

As I went to get a beer, one of the MBA students was kind enough to explain the rules of engagement for such events. I think I would have gotten similar advice from Sun Tzu himself. So we finally get to the dinner part and I get to sit next to Steve (not his real name). Steve was extremely well dressed, I shrunk in my JC Penney suit. The more I get him to talk about his job the more I realize he knows very little about computer software, much less about the financial models he builds with that software, and really only likes to hear the sound of his own voice. Okay so he apparently makes money for his company, which by the way is his definition of merit.

It is just amazing to me. Google comes to entice people to join their ranks, they wear t-shirts, sport beards and talk shop well. This banking firm dresses in fine fashionable clothing, buy expensive food and drinks that no one eats because they want to talk about themselves so much, and seem to only touch very briefly on how they do things. Moral of the story -- Bankers, much like politicians, scare me.

Beauty in Simplicity

So after writing a few labs for my class on generating fractals, I went searching online for some pictures that other people came up with. I found the great video on Google Video. To tell you the truth, I think that the complexity of the Mandelbrot set (which is produced by a very simple iteration process) is just amazing and speaks volumes to what is beautiful in the sciences.

I am always at a loss when students will say they think some subject (such as Mathematics) is beautiful but have no ability to reason why. Maybe it takes a philosopher, in the rough sense, to tell why something is beautiful and only a casual observer to say it is beautiful. I really don't like this reasoning though because it lends to the fact that beauty is only in the eye of the beholder (ie relativism) and not a virtue to attain. But if I ever had to explain what beauty is in Mathematics, I think will most definitely point to the Mandelbrot set.

Anyone can generate parts of the Madelbrot set, its really easy to do. It takes a really bright person to fully comprehend all the reasons for its complexity, I mean its just about connecting all possible Julia sets which represent chaotic pattern studies in dynamics .... =D I guess to me there are few things that can be simple stated and represent so much.

Trees, Fractals, and Fellowships! Oh my!

It's been a long week. Having a tree fall on my car, every bill come in with a late fee, and the city raising my property tax, has made me believe that money really hates me. But I did make what I thought to be a neat lab for my students, making fractals like the ones in the pictures. And I really hope I get this travel fellowship or else that's just more money down the drain. Goo I'm tired but I wanted to say hello to the world.

Big step for Microsoft, Giant leap for open source

I am frequently annoyed whenever I get a Microsoft Office document in my mailbox. Most of my computers are running some flavor of Linux and it is rather difficult to get all the features to come out right, but I guess I have become even more annoyed at my new job. Not only do the HR people give me MS Office stuff, they want the same format back, and while I can usually go through the pain of reading the document writing to it in the same format is much harder. The arrogance is stifling, the sender is demanding that I buy some software to communicate with them while my free software is not good enough for them.

Then I read this article on Microsoft adopting a plugin to OpenDocument Format. Now you can pay too much for software and play with us freeloaders as well. But the reasoning for switching is because some governments and Massachusetts have adopted the OpenDocument format. This is a real plus especially for developing countries that may not want to spend the hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy all the right licenses for their computers. While I would love to believe this will help put the money towards the right causes, I'm not holding my breath.

Anywho this news made me really excited and I just wanted to share.

Coffee or Beer

So when I was a young undergraduate and hung around lots of physics and math people, I drank lots of beer. I was even encouraged by my departments to drink beer. To the point where I shared my homebrew with a one and went out drinking with another. In fact when I was in charge of the department banquet, I wanted to hold it in one of those science museums for kids but was told by at least four professors that they would boycott a dry banquet on principle.

Now I hang out with largely computer science people. They drink coffee. Pretty well end of story, go to the bar with a group of cs grads and it's like taking a fish out of water. Even I as I go through the day find myself desiring a good cup of coffee.

What is the deal here. One group wants a drug that helps them pontificate and the other wants the drug that helps them work. Why am I now in the second group? My undergraduate professors did not warn me about this. Although there is hope. The group of us computational math guys like both, well we also like tea. And apparently some of my colleagues like tea way too much, spare yourself an hour and never ask them what kind they like best.

Great Science

So yesterday I heard one of the best research talks I have ever heard by Markus Püschel about his project Spiral. Not that the talks I hear are usually bad, but this one was just that good. Just a outline:

1. He started out by talking about a problem ("Common signal processor transformations such as the DFT seem to have arbitrary decompositions"),


2. then he developed an algebraic theory to pose the transformations,


3. he built the machinery apply his theories (it generates the code that will do the transformation),


4. finally he has made the code generation highly portable (that is he can generate for most environments)
   

So the talk went from some pretty deep math (I read the paper before hand so I knew most of the stuff he skimmed over) to some highly applied/systems areas (he talked a lot about optimization on compiler levels such as hyperthreading). As Dr. Niyogi, my AI professor, said about Turing, "He had a problem and he learn the mechanisms to solve it." He also had excellent presentation skills, as Dr. Dupont pointed out last year, "You not only need to have the great idea, you need to sell it."

Now it seems a lot of people debate over systems and theory, but this is the kind of science I want to do. Find a problem and go with it, doing what it takes to solve it. So that goes against the grain of many mathematicians who really just want to further math, but hey they are developing the theories that guys like Markus, Turing, and (hopefully) me use. With that thought, in answer to Peter's question ("Shouldn't you at some level consider yourself in theory?"): Yes I am at some level in a theoretical part of the world, but I am also at some level in a systems part of the world. I would rather just be called a problem solver, well a problem solver in training.

Why are Scientists Jerks?

For the usual I'm smarter than you stupidity that runs through the rift of theory and experiment in scientist, I point to Computational Complexity. Goo it just makes me mad, why can't they just say that some people are interested in other things rather than assuming that since they are not doing the same thing they are just stupid.

Same thing goes for Democrats and Republicans. Except their bickerings will always affect lives, scientists ... not so much.

I'm definitely between steps 4 and 5

1 A boy begins his wondrous journey.
2 He perseveres.
3 Math cannot become any more difficult than this, can it?
4 Yes.
5 Yet he does not give up!
6 For a brief moment, there is a glimmer of comprehension.
7 Actual midair pedalling.
8 The plummet.

source:
“Falling off the Math Cliff” (Progression of student learning math.)
The New Yorker March 6, 2006 page 57

DONE

I didn't think it would happen but our Architecture project is done. And I think it is a decent result. I feel almost like my group contributed to the greater knowledge of the world. Hehe coming in just under 50 pages, I certainly hope so. And to imagine the original instructions called for only a 15 page paper.

Of course the response I expect from my professor. Click here

Late night programming realization

You know you've had too much caffeine when your fingers move with a "latency".

Two undeniable facts

Writing code has a sweet spot, it happens in the hours between 10pm and 6am.

Writing analysis proofs also has a sweet spot between 10am and 3pm.

Alas I am destined for no sleep.

Levels of busyness

So I have come to the realization that there are really three levels to my busyness here in graduate school.

• Level 1: I have too much to do but it might be possible to get done.
  
• Level 2: I have too much to do, with no end in sight but I am still motivated to work.
  
• Level 3: I have so much to do and there is no end in sight so why even bother doing it at all.
  

Today is a level 3 day. Hence I am posting on my blog.

About Grad School

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one struggling:


UofC Fires

DIE YOU STUPID MACHINE DIE

The more I work with computers, the more I realize that you can't trust them. They don't know beans and they lie about it. In fact if you ask them nicely to do something for you, right away they zip off and do it or so they say. Unless you have Nazi type systems or extra enhanced bugging/error checkers sitting there to make sure what they did was correct, they won't care if it is correct or not. And they are very good at decieving all those other devices that say the computer is working correctly (after all they are part of the computer as well).

In a lot of ways it is like a 5-year old boy. You ask him to go wash his hands; off he heads to the bathroom to return immediately. You say, "I didn't hear any water running." With a surprised look he runs back. As he steps out of the bathroom, you asked if he used soap and back he goes. Finally, he comes out and you are stuck with two options. One go back and watch him wash his hands or two believe that he did it and let him die of e. coli because he really didn't wash his hands. So your only option is clear...or is it?