California Rocks!

I get to go to Redding, CA this weekend.



It will be lots of fun. See you on the flip side.

Cyclin' Home

Hot day it is, as I strap on the bag and saddle up
Six short miles, my bicycle knows 'em well
But today is a different day with a short story to tell
Gloves, glasses, helmet and all, ridin' my fat ones down that curvy rode home

Round 'bout 2 miles, on top'er the hill
Pumpin' fast as ever, I feel my legs ready to give
But yonder I spy another desperado on a skinny hot love
Red, his jersey screams for blood, I bet this old boy know the road home

Not thinking much as I pass his flowing head of snow
Just another hot day on that curvy road home
But as he mounted up and steamed on my way
Zoom, he goes by with his bronze legs sayin' "Think again"

Pour it on and I'm off, findin' these legs are ready to go again
Right next to him I pull, as he looks back and nods just to be off again
Ready to show who is the boss another burst I give
As fast as I can I could reach out a touch him, no use now he definitely speedin' on

Should I slow down and enjoy that curvy road home
Wait a minute, there I spy'em takin' a drink
My chance has come, his guard let down
Zoom I go by, saying come on we ain't done

Together we arrive, stopped cold by the traffic light
Grinding our tires, neither fool enough to let down the stirrup
Green it goes and a climb we must make
Both tired to the bone but it looks like I've gotten home

On with the wind that old cycler goes
Quite the ride we shared, hope he remembers it well
Only six short miles and we enjoyed them so much
Next time, I'll be ready on that old curvy road home.

Working too much.

Something I am definitely not doing this summer is working too much. It's not like I'm not working hard and all that but the sunny California outdoors keep calling my name. Whether I am off fishing, kayaking, or bicycle (I did all three this last weekend), work is not something keeping me busy.

Today at my internship a post doc gave a job talk to get a permanent position. After the talk I heard the manager saying how it is a problem that the fellow actually works too hard! I couldn't believe it. I don't think this possibility has ever been conceived by most of my professors back at school. In fact a colleague of mine once got a stern lecture for not spending every weekend constantly working (although the consensus is that prof is a jerk). But at least the Lockheed Martin business model understands that a well-rounded individual both increases productivity and loyalty (it also prevents workplace violence -- that training module was loads of fun ;D ) I think I am going to cry when I have to go back to Chicago.

Speaking of well-roundedness, this summer my constant fight with my Buddha belly is paying off. Of course bicycling 12 miles to work every day certainly helps. Who knows maybe I will shave my beard and cut my hair to be somewhat respectable looking ... heh, I knew you would scoff at that idea. Besides I trust respectable looking people far less than the average Joe.

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.

The Internship

Well I know I have said that I would be posting more but I just haven't had much opportunity. After traveling for a week, I finally arrived here in sunny California to start my internship.

The lab I work at is really very corporate and I think all I have done of any value this whole week is training. Although the really scary thing is how much everyone loves their job here. I swear if I hear "Sandia is an awesome place to work" one more time ... well maybe I come from a tradition where complaining about the job is more important. I'm just going to bring my own Kool-Aid to work.

I never realized that California was so purty! And to imagine I am the only hippie I have met, well I think my mentor would be a hippie if he wasn't bald. As one of the other researchers said "So you teach him the ropes and he gives you the hair." Well I am off to something else besides sit infront of a computer.

Goo

My summer internship starts the morning at 7:30 am ...... I'm in grad school to avoid this sort of thing!

Not Dead.

So my blog looks like I am not keeping it at all anymore. Well that's not true. I have just had a combination of school work, research, and nethack take over my life. But all that is almost over... okay school work is almost over. Research will never go away and nethack is like that old flame you can never get over, when you think you have forgotten all about it this little tick in you head goes off and reminds you that you have yet to ascend. I will conquer you, stupid game!!!

At least there is lasagna

I feel like I have had a whole week of Mondays. From my crazy networks project, to my crazy father, to my advisor leaving, to finally hit today. Where I get home and the doorknob is missing, and a cop busts some kid right next to me.

Well I made lasagna for our weekly dinner with some friends from church, and I guess there isn't much more soothing than cooking something slow. But with lasagna there isn't a part of it that doesn't taste good, so while I make the two sauces and the noodles and shred the cheese, I get little bits of goodness for a whole hour.

If you ever want to impress someone with a good spaghetti sauce I have this really good,simple recipe. Basically it's just saute onions and garlic, throw in some celery and carrot, when that is soft throw in a can of crushed tomatoes and a bay leaf. Then let is simmer for an hour. It is really good and pretty low maintenance especially if you have other stuff to get done.

Too Busy To Blog

This week I have been way too busy to blog, but I have had some really great ideas to blog about. I guess I will do something I really hate, advertise what I will blog someday in the future.

• CS Drug = Coffee, Physics/Math Drug = Beer (Dr. Barnard should have warned me!)


• About Web Design (My hacker's guide to looking like you know what your doing - requested by many)


• Being a Well rounded Scientist (response to Lance's commenters and a few ppl in my dept)


• How I really really really loathe Mondays (it seems to be a theme in my blogging)

But anywho, I get to play softball today HOORAY! I might enjoy spring, oh glorious day. I am sure that Carly (who played in college) is going to handle me my lunch ... well life goes on.

Fun music animation

About Blogging

So when I first started blogging on this site, it was merely to give my family and friends some insight to my thoughts. I also decided to have other blogs to put opinions and work related stuff, but that didn't work. So now this blog is a catch all for everything in my life, no matter how silly, boring, opinionated, or interesting it might be. But recently Lance Fortnow, a blogger who I greatly respect, has an entry pointing out the negatives of student blogging (although I think his entry could be more widely applied to any blogger). I also came across this entry by a blog that I think is well done arguing the other side of things. And finally another link that was left in the comments of the Lance's blog, just talking about blogging from a psychological perspective.

So since my blog has been getting more traffic, probably since I had that flaming post the other day about scientist being jerks, I think it is time for me to re-evaluate what blogging is to me.

1. First I see my blog as a medium of expression. Now this is a personal blog so it should reflect me as a person, meaning not only my work but my opinions and insights in the world as well.


2. This form of expression is written down so I should probably be as nice as possible here (something that I usually fail at doing), but not out of fear of losing a job but rather fear of hurting someone. Basically hold to my goal of offending by true content not argumentation style.


3. I should not shy away from the fact that I do have an opinion and my work is only one part of my life. If somebody can't see past my opinion (and it could certainly be false) and see that I am human being underneath, then I probably don't want to impress that person anyways.


4. Finally, as David Amulet pointed out to me, I blog for myself. Whether it be for my personal fear of being transparent in the world or just a way to relax, I'm not going to worry if people read it or not. I want a blog not to make me popular but to make me a better person.

Of course, Lance points out a very important fact: "The internet never forgets." It also makes people more accountable for their actions off of their blog, such as a professor in my department that made a racist remark about Indians, or the high school teacher that had his epitaph of Bush bashing recorded. My response to this is more about how much weight we should give to blogs, basically not much. While it is publicly available media, it is not peer reviewed and usually not official in any respect. And to any readers who have a problem with a blog (mine especially) I encourage them to send a private message and let them know. Bloggers are amateurs, we don't know when we really offend someone so be brave and let us know, politely.

Art in motion

I mostly wanted to see how this works, but I like the video too.

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.

Arrogant Language

Yesterday I had a discussion with several undergraduates about language and I guess I was pretty appalled by their lack of social responsibility around the subject. Let me explain. The conversation starts:

"We were listing off the languages that we speak"

"I would have listed Tex-Mex"

"That's a dialect not a language"

" 'Dialect' is a pejorative word for language. Give me a definition of a language such that dialect would not fit."

"I bet your one of those people who want to list ebonics as a language"

There is this fuzzy social definition around what a language really is, and has proved throughout history to be one of the arbitrary factors that separates cultures. Language can be used as a political tool, for evidence of this I point to Franco's policy on only allowing Castilian being spoke in Spain or the new Dutch policy of requiring immigrants to speak Dutch. The tendency is to turn what could be its own viable natural language into a 'dialect' of another language then marginalize the people who speak said dialect. Ebonics is a bit of a special case of this mostly because it seems to be arbitrary in its composition. But it most certainly fits that if a child grew up in a community where only ebonics is spoken and goes out in the world, Americans will challenge the reasoning power of said child.

Then there is the way a linguist would look at the logical structure of a language to actually study it and compare it to other languages, but this post is intended to point out the arbitrariness of the social construct of language.

Another Monday

You know eventually these things have to go away...right?

Intelligent Walk

So as I was walking to school today, I noticed a magpie chasing a squirrel. It seemed that the magpie was getting a kick out of seeing this squirrel chase around. I can just imagine if they were speaking

"I'm gonna get you"

"What are you doing! Get away from my butt, don't make me throw an acorn at you."

This lead to a contemplation on the intelligence of birds, apparently scientist now think birds are highly intelligent animals. Well I just spent a whole quarter contemplating what it would take to make a machine intelligent but what about birds makes them almost as intelligent as humans? How intelligent are humans anyway?

Just then a car drove by with loud rap music playing, all I could make out "make them big ole breasts bounce."

So the answer is not much. Proof by drive by rap phrase. QED

When tolerance turns into intolerance of the intolerant

Maybe I'm being judgmental, but the Chicago Tribune reports that the Dutch are now requiring an entrance exam, which seems pretty intolerant to me:

The Dutch entrance exam, which became mandatory last month, has been praised by politicians who believe it is a good way of screening out people who are not suited to live in the Netherlands.

But it seems that the Dutch are doing this because they are afraid of the intolerance of Muslim lifestyle and this measure is one of many "symptoms of panic and anxiety." But I guess my question would be, does this really work? While I would agree that there are certain customs of certain Muslims that should be banned, such as honor killings or female circumcision, but it seems that the article portrays a general sense: If you don't embrace our counter-conservative culture, you aren't good enough for us. In the wake of all the immigration marches in our country and around the world, the Dutch government seems to be showing its colors with such an act of patriotic elitism. Tell me again why the progressive European movement is so awesome?

Troops

Funny video, although my wife says it's kinda old: Troops. My only question is why does the storm trooper speak like a Chicagoan?

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.