My journey towards the second paper began at the very end of the Fall semester, when I severely doubted some conclusions made in the first paper. I shouldn’t have doubted myself; I meticulously reviewed every detail of that paper. Nonetheless, something struck me as not quite right. This was confirmed when I tried to simulate some of the theoretic results from Paper 1. After hours of trying, I simply couldn’t make them match up. Was my simulation wrong? Did I make a typo somewhere?

I brought all of these concerns to my adviser, who was much more logical than I about the situation. Instead of fussing with simulation results for hours, he suggested I try to rebuild the model I took for granted at the start of the paper. After finals and the first round of grad school apps were due, I began to scrap everything and really think the problem through. The first round was pretty rough and consisted of notes scratched on various papers, and half-finished paragraphs in a nameless MS Word document.

However, the act of laying out all these notes was very cathartic. I got a chance to put my thoughts on paper. I wrote everything from possible loose-ends to something that others might call research. When I realized the latter existed, I decided to collect my notes into the document which is (to this day) entitled “2 Draft.” I was on my way! After many, many re-reads and changes in notation, I was finally able to re-create the model that many (<10) people have created before me. Anticlimactic, right?

Despite being disappointed that all I’d done was re-create work, I felt accomplished and able to take on the world. This is where Google Scholar came in. All of those scratched notes with concerns were now validated by reputable academics. I downloaded en-masse tens of papers concerning interdependent security - everything from Nature articles to conference proceedings. I learned a lot from reading these papers and got numerous good ideas from them, which have now been incorporated into “2 Draft.”

It’s funny though; those first few pages were easy to write. The last few were a bit harder, but not much. The introduction, though, is killing me. Re-tooling everything was painful due to Word’s idiosyncrasies (I can’t change the font for equations!). This whole process has been fun, and I can’t wait to submit to a conference (and suggestions?).

I’ve taken away many things: 1) Use LaTex if I was control over my documen, 2) Just start writing and the rest will come, and 3) Always keep a pad handy for random ideas.

(If you want a peek at either paper, email me.)

Thanks

Saying “hi” to the local barista every morning as you grab your coffee, bumping into someone on the subway and apologizing, and dealing when your boss comes angrily over to you desk to scold you for a failure are all very normal things. Or they were ten years ago.

Ten years ago, the first iPod was in development, 9/11 had not yet happened, and the world had a very different view of America. Well, maybe not too different, but you get the point. While the latter two points are important, I’m going to focus on the first one.

I heard the first iPod was a bit box-shaped...

Before iPods existed, people used mp3 players with a whopping 128mb of storage! That means you could only take 32 of your favorite songs along with you. While some today consider this tragic, I take the opposite view. When you only had 2-3 CDs worth of music under your belt (or on it), you were not constantly listening to music. And your cell phone didn’t provided nearly the same level of entertainment that it does today. All this means that people had fewer distractions.

I don’t think anyone noticed. If someone stole your iPhone/iPod/Android/etc. today, you’d be heartbroken and very bored. You’d have no one to talk to on the bus, nothing to listen to on the way to work, and would have very little social interaction. Ten years ago, people talked to each other on the bus, or if they didn’t do that, they mused about their lives.

And everyone was John Lennon.

I’d like to argue that things were better then. On my bus to work today, every single person was wearing headphones or absorbed in their handheld device. No one was talking. Remember those “meaningless” interactions I discussed before? They’ve become diminished as people look for quick and easy entertainment. Who needs to talk to the barista when your employer gives you five different types of coffee from machines? If the guy who I barge into on the subway and I are both wearing headphones, is a simple nod as good as saying sorry? If my boss can ping me on Skype to yell at me for blogging at work, will I really get the message with the same importance that he intended to convey?

I wish I knew more about this subject in order to discuss it further. There are numerous books and articles that inspired this post, and more directly served as catalysts for this train of thought. Feel free to find your own answers. I’m not looking for zealots about my ideas, but those who try to find real truths for themselves rather than simply tuning out the world.

It’s been a little while, so let’s see if I can still do this. Here’s the tl;dr, in case you came here just to read one sentence.

tl;dr Work hard, relax harder.

I’m nearing the end of my internship. While I’ve been working hard the entire time, I especially want to work harder now. The first few weeks set the precedent for how much work I could do during the rest of the internship. My work during the last few weeks, however, is what will be remembered. Did I finish everything I was assigned? Did I step up when asked to fix a production bug at 5 on a Friday? Did I work late on Monday night so I could get ahead for the week?

The answer to all of these is yes. And they all happened this past week. Hell yeah, I enjoyed it. I always do. The problem is, I’m super tired because of it.

Did I not mention I'm a rabbit?

So, my Friday night didn’t consist of ridiculous shenanigans like it usually does. There is no way to work a crazy week and party every night (okay, well sometimes, but not for 3 months straight). My Friday night consisted of hanging out in the office with my co-workers, playing Settlers of Catan for my first time and eating wings and cheesy bread.

Like this, but with less girls.

So, it was a rough night as you can guess (first world problems, anybody?), and I needed my recovery time. Nothing says relaxing like sleeping late, streaming How I Met Your Mother, and drinking coffee in bed all day.

What can we learn from this? Well, life is tough. We all try our hardest and burn out. But it’s important to remember to watch How I Met Your Mother and lounge in bed every once in a while. Spending a Friday night playing board games or a Saturday night alone watching TV is as fun as you make it. I have a good friend who has a few canned responses to things, and one fits extremely well here:

Me: Man, this lab is so tough! I’m never going to be able to write a custom memory allocator in the next 2 days.

Him: Not with an attitude like that!

We can all take a lesson from this wise super-senior (you know I love you). It’s all about attitude and balance. But more on that later.

And being a bad-ass kid.

Here’s the motivation for this post:

So, over the course of my internship with Zynga I’ve started to work out more. They give us a free membership to the World Gym right down the road, which can’t be beaten.

The gym, like any other, has a snack bar, a workout floor with machines and free weights, benches, and even a tanning area. None of those are what I’m talking about here though. Here, I’m going to look at one of the most important parts of any gym – the locker room.

For some reason, this doesn't seem right.

If you’re like me (and some terrible accident caused you to be this way), then you go into the locker room to change, and pick one of the more remote spots of the locker room, where you know that you can have to privacy while changing. Everything works out fine, right until you come back to change out of your sweaty workout clothes. That’s when chaos ensues.

Consider this your warning. If you go no further, I understand.

That perfect locker you carefully chose before is now the site of 5 half-naked men (or, I could assume, women). What happened? Maybe it was a coincidence. That’s what I thought. But, each day without fail, the same process repeated itself over and over again, just like someone who finally found a good move or two in an early Mortal Kombat game (crouching uppercut, anybody?).

Or, you know. This.

As an analytical guy, I decided to take a crack at why this could be happening. Disclaimer: if I don’t cite a number, it’s an estimate and could be wrong. Also, I have very little working knowledge of psychology, and if anyone could shed some psychological insights, I’d be grateful. Anyway, here goes.

.

.

.

.

.

*Edit: So I think I just hit a bad week. Never-mind about this whole thing. Sorry all.

Hey everyone (or more likely, no one). Welcome. This will be a place that I’ll put thoughts on random topics from computer science to keeping fit to trying to discuss topics out of your understanding. Let me know what you think!