Synthetic Virtuoso

I loved this. Apparently, stop-motion editing > 5 years worth of music lessons. Yess.

From the article, "I cannot play the piano or the drums" says 22-year old Mr. Gjertsen. The drum portion of the video is composed of 40 distinct clips (one clip for each beat, I presume), while the piano melody used 130. The whole project, from planning to filming to editing, took two days to complete.

Preface to Grad School

This is actually the preface to a reference book that I am using (Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X), but if I were to author the book "Grad School: The Book, In General", I think I'd use this as my preface also...

I have all sorts of people come to my class: the bright and the not-so-bright, the motivated and the lazy, the experienced and the novice. Inevitably, the people who get the most from the class share one characteristic: They remain focused on the topic at hand.

The first trick to maintaining focus is to get enough sleep. I suggest 10 hours of sleep each night while you are studying new ideas. Before dismissing this idea, try it. You will wake up refreshed and ready to learn. Caffeine is not a substitue for sleep.

The second trick is to stop thinking about yourself. While learning something new, many students will think, "Damn, this is hard for me. I wonder if I am stupid." Because stupidity is such an unthinkably terrible thing in our culture, the students will then spend hours constructing arguments that explain why they are intelligent yet are having difficulties. The moment you start down this path, you have lost your focus.

Before going any further, assure yourself that you are not stupid and that some things are just hard. Armed with this silly affirmation and a well-rested mind, you are ready to conquer Cocoa.

I felt compelled to share this because, sometimes, grad school seems to exist for the sole purpose of exposing your intellectual weaknesses. In fact, I have a list about 3 ft long giving evidence for (and rebuttals against) my exceptional stupidity; and the list keeps growing everyday. On the rare occasion that you think you've mastered something, you are told "that's very cute, but it has no relation to reality", and get thrown something much harder. I imagine that after n iterations of this, you will start wondering if you will ever be able to leave the batting cage for the playing field.

But ultimately, the guy is right. Does it really matter whether or not you think you are stupid? Not really; if anything, it just decreases efficiency. You still have deadlines to meet, an advisor to please, and unformed research ideas to bring into reality. Nobody cares about the civil bloodbath that is taking place at the forefront of your brain, no matter how gloriously epic it seems to be. So why bother?

I Hate So Much About The Things That You Choose To Be

That, my friend, is a line from The Office.

One fortuitous afternoon, a friend sent me this link. It began with just a couple of episodes per week, during a late lunch or casual dinner. Then, it became a source of procastination ("Hm, what is more interesting than algorithms homework?"). Before I knew it, it became the solution to my every problem:

"I don't know why PCA has a lower error rate than LLE."
Watch The Office.
"I can't figure out this algorithms problem."
Watch The Office.
"My car is leaking weird stuff."
Watch The Office.
"I'm hungry."
Watch The Office.

I think I am addicted to The Office. In case anybody else knows what I'm talking about, I've compiled a brief list of symptoms for your viewing pleasure/horror:

• you have downloaded the score for The Office theme song and can play it on the piano
• you visit officetally.com, northernattack.com, and givememyremote.com multiple times a day
• you have looked up "Scranton, Pennsylvania" on Wikipedia
• you use terms like "Jam" and "Dwangela"
• you signed up for a mySpace account just to add Jenna Fischer as your friend
• you know the correct spelling of "Beesley" (and the controversy that preceded it)
• you think Dwight is adorable
• you have seen Angela laugh-out-loud
• you know Michael Scott's license plate number, and the ringtone on his cell
• you can have whole conversations using quotes from The Office
• you own Dunder-Mifflin stationary
• you know that Hooters is a restaurant, with more than 400 locations world-wide
• you begin noticing eerie similarities between Michael Scott and your dad
• you are well aware that John Krasinski is single
• you secretely wish to be a receptionist

Dare I begin watching the BBC version? Not if you want to stay in grad school, says the little voice in my head.

My Thanksgiving

This pretty much sums up my Thanksgiving break:

The Office, apple products, chinese food, and hidden Markov models (in that order).

Something interesting that you never really think about until you go home for these holiday reunion type thingys: The older kids grow younger and the younger kids grow older. Case in point: the neighbors across the street have two boys, one seven years younger than me, the other seven years older. As you may have guessed, in all the ten years that we have been neighbors, I never once had a non-awkward conversation with either of them. But this weekend, we all hit the arcades and bowling alley and sat around, chatting like ... three normal people (for lack of a better description). Even my 14-year old brother is starting to feel like a real person. Cool, or scary? Maybe both.

Good Things Come In Threes

As evidenced by...

Currently Listening To. These are three composers/pieces that I have discovered in the last couple of months and have been listening to non-stop. All rich in tone and color, and ripe with emotion.

1. Antonin Dvorak - Five Bagatelles (2 violins and a cello). The second movement (Molto Vivace) of Op. 105 is my absolute favorite. It's lively and fun and drop-dead gorgeous.
2. Cesar Franck - Prelude, Fugue & Variation, Op. 18. This is truly a jem: hauntingly beautiful, yet serene. Other cool pieces: his Symphony in D minor, and Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra.
3. Edward Elgar - Cello Concerto in E minor. Dark, heavy, powerful. Here is the opening movement, Adagio - Moderato.

Chick Flicks. Which just goes to prove that a scene involving lingerie and bunny ears is an essential ingredient for cooking up a legendary chick flick.

1. Never Been Kissed - Um, Michael Vartan. In pull-over sweaters. I think that's all that needs to be said.
2. Legally Blonde - Elle Woods, showing us how to strive for higher education and staying fashion-forward, at the same time!
3. Mean Girls - The most brilliant masterpeice chick flick of all time ;) Guys, if you always thought women were evil, but couldn't really put your finger on it, this movie will help with the articulation. Plus, this entire movie is quotable. Like "Boo, you whore..." Yeah. Good for all occasions.

Days of Our Lives. Did absolutely no work this weekend which will probably has come back to bite me.

1. Friday - Rounded up a gang of cs people and went for dinner, movie, ice cream, and games. There's nothing like perverting innocent word games with cs jargon.
2. Saturday - Went over to Teresa's place for an afternoon cookout with friends. Watched 10 straight episodes of The Office.
3. Sunday - Had to purchase the last three episodes from iTunes. I am officially addicted to the show now, and watching two women fight over Jim is just killing me. Next next Thursday seems like a lifetime away.

Growing Pains

I started off the quarter enrolled in this statistical learning class, where they actually meant it when they said "strong background in linear algebra and statistics required." It literally killed me; hit me like a big, yellow school bus -- partly because the class was in the ECE department (and they take their math a lot more seriously than we do), and partly because, for some reason, I fail to be proficient at any kind of math learned after the eighth grade. After two painful iterations of problem sets and then handing in a practically blank midterm, my advisor and I agreed that it was probably best to drop the class and spend the time filling in the holes of my not-so-glamorous math career instead: a big relief, but also a huge disappointment at the same time.

However, the class did introduce me to what a deeper understanding of linear algebra should look like. Contrary to what I was taught in undergrad, linear algebra is more than just a nifty way to solve a system of linear equations that you otherwise could have done using techniques learned from middle-school algebra. It's even more than just learning the mechanics of matrix multiplication, eigenvector calculations, or following X number of steps to determine if some matrix is invertible. In fact, it seems as though I completely missed (or forgot?) the whole *point* of linear algebra in the first place, and am lacking a huge chunk of geometric intuition as a result.

I see more clearly now that (one of?) the over-arching purpose of linear algebra is to provide a means for elegantly organizing and operating on numbers in higher dimensions. Throughout undergrad, we were always used to working with scalars: x or y or z, with each variable representing a single number along the 1-dimensional number line. We could intuitively do all sorts of operations on these numbers: add/multiply, solve for unknowns, take derivatives/integrals, etc. But when we begin considering points in higher-dimensions, these methods break down because a point can longer be represented by a single number. Even in our friendly 2-dimensional space, with x and y axes, we now need two numbers, an x and y "coordinate", to identify a particular point in this space.

The use of linear algebra allows us to easily extend our ability to work in 1-dimensional space, all the way to n-dimensional space, even when we are not physically capable of visualizing these structures in high dimensions. It's a pretty simple (and perhaps obvious) idea to grasp, but it was a subtle revelation to me as I have been observing how the tools of linear algebra come into play in the larger framework of machine learning concepts and algorithms for high-dimensionality reduction (which is what my advisor specializes in -- more on that later). It's pretty mind-blowing, and I look forward to the day when I can just "see" these glorious planes and spaces running through what appears to be sets of seemingly unrelated numbers, filed neatly into rows and columns.

Until then, I will be slaving away at these linear algebra lectures, re-learning undergrad-level linear algebra, and trying to figure out why, after all those years of asian-nerdiness-extra-math-homework-rampage, I still pee my pants everytime I see an integral. My bitterness toward the leniency of math requirements in computer science curriculums at american colleges can be saved for another day, but most importantly, the take-home message is this, kids: eat your wheaties and learn your linear algebra, and all will be well in machine learning land.

Grad School *Bling*

My advisor spoils me...

This is an extra little office/lab that my advisor has for me and another student of his. In the future, the piano may be useful to our research, but for now, it certainly keeps me entertained while waiting for stuff to run :)

In a nutshell, I've been incredibly blessed with an advisor who is very hands-on, spends a lot of time with me (even on the little stuff) and cares to be a good teacher. I can't begin to express what a difference that has made in the past few weeks as I have been adjusting to my new role as a graduate student. Amidst the chaotic whirlpool of differing opinions regarding courses, research, graduation requirements, fellowships, and how to be a successful grad student in general, it is a god-sent just to have someone be on my side and give me direction.

More importantly, research is fun again. No more having to deal with big, clunky, bug-riddled crystal-recognizing systems (my undergraduate research project). My advisor has me starting small and simple. The slate has been wiped clean; I feel like a freshman again, excited to know what is waiting just around the bend...

The Undisciplined Blogger

Of course, right after I finish preaching about the importance of journaling and reflection, I plunge into the depths of grad-school-busyness and am never to be seen again....

Well, hopefully that's not entirely true. So, now that I have survived my first set of problem sets, here is the mandatory "Settling into San Diego" post -- also known as the "What's Been Happening" post or the "Mundane Details of My Life" post. Hm. Perhaps bullet points will make this seem less forced:

• My new roommates watch Project Runway. Needless to say, we are all getting along fabulously. Two of them work; the other is a fellow CSE grad student from UW.

• To my surprise, I've already found a church here that I am quite fond of and beginning to call home. It is ironic as I was never able to do that for all the years that I was in Seattle (despite my adoration for Pastor Earl Palmer and regular attendance at UPC).

• The ocean meets the sky to create infinite shades of blue. It is beautiful and completely mind-blowing and looks exactly like in the movies, except I have swallowed much more sea water than I would have liked. The weather is always mild, sunny, and breezy, and the palm trees seem to whisper... "quit grad school. go to the beach." It is a sin to wear closed-toe shoes.

• The UCSD campus is home to about 25,000 students, seemingly 90% of which are asian -- and very fashionable AZNs, might I add. The campus is not nearly as beautiful as UW's, but I guess the extra sunshine makes up for it.

• The CSE building is brand new, equipped with all the latest technologies (including the famous biometric vending machine), and looks fairly normal from the outside. But don't be fooled: the interior looks like a case of "the sterile hospital" meets "tween-Disney." I'm talking dirty-white hospital-like tile floors with bright orange and turoquise walls, and purple couches sitting on random patches of dark green carpet. And lots of awkward empty space. Whatever happened to elegance and class? UW South (as UCSD is commonly called in CS lingo) still has a lot to learn from Hank Levy.

• Did I mention that there's a completely hideous, 23-foot, stone BEAR that sits on the lawn in front of the CSE building?

• The boyfriend came to visit this weekend (yes, already! as the model boyfriend should). We went to the beach and ate tortillas, like true San Diegans.

• Though Seattle always gets dogged for its weather, it has much more character than La Jolla. La Jolla is the boring, rich kid who always dresses nicely. Seattle is the kid that your parents don't want you hanging around...

• I miss the Ave dearly -- all of the coffee shops and cheap exotic food places; even the weird eccentric people that roam from day to night. I also miss the quad, the red-brick, gothic-styled buildings... the cherry blossoms, and being able to wake up 15 minutes before class and booking it down to Mary Gates Hall. I'm living in "paradise", but Seattle is still home.

More later...

Road Trip

How much can you cram into a Corolla? (A post dedicated to my 2.5 day journey to sunny Southern California)

By a miraculous feat of tetris-like space manipulation, my dad and I managed to fit everything I would need for the next five years in the back of a four door sedan -- without blocking the rear window view. Among the items shown above are: a bed frame, two bookshelves, a year's worth of summer/spring clothing, all the shoes a girl could possibly need, a floor lamp, cookware, a printer, complete reportoire of hair/make-up/body products, the ever essential purple-color-themed bedding package, and seemingly enough CSE textbooks to last me through another degree (but probably not by a longshot)...

Start address: Richland, WA 99352
End address: San Diego, CA 92122
Distance: 1,302 mi (about 21 hours 44 mins)

Hello World, v2.0

Journaling has always been an important part of my life - from pretty-in-pink princess diaries, to gossip-filled, rage-strewn notebooks, and finally, to claiming a little piece of cyberspace to call my own. I think life is unique and precious, and that the details should be respected - the good and the bad.

I began this blog a couple of months ago with the idea that it would be purely technical and devoted to my research progress in grad school. But then I arrived in San Diego, and was greeted by warm sunshine, open waters, and new friends. I think the next five years will be a very special and exciting time in my life... and if I ever make it out of here alive, I'll want to have a copy of the transcript, detailing more than just the research :)