Life, the University, and Everything

Yesterday I heard an astronomer talk at Google about genetic algorithms to process satellite image data to detect planets around other stars. Whadda workplace.

Then I played classic Settlers of Catan with Kat and Bateman. It was very casual, we all got ports early on, the game moved quickly, and everyone was close to winning at the end. (I was farthest.) I hope for more Bateman and more Settlers in the coming months.

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Lawrence Krauss, from the Q&A (YouTube) at this year's Aurora Forum at Stanford (with Richard Dawkins):

The thing is, at some basic level, what always amazes me is, no matter what people say, they ultimately realize that science is the way to go when it comes to [our concerns?].

For example, President Bush said, "We should teach both intelligent design and evolution, because we should teach students what the debate is all about." Now, that is not an intrinsically stupid statement, surprisingly. (Laughter.) It's actually quite rational. What it represents is ignorance. And not ignorance in a pejorative sense; ignorance to the fact that there is no debate.

But the interesting thing is, when it comes -- when the avian flu became a big issue in this country, what you heard was the President say, "We have to quickly determine how fast it's mutating from birds to humans." You never heard one person in his administration say, "You know, it's been designed to kill us. You know, just, forget about it." (Laughter.)

So, at some point, people understand that when really it comes to the crises, no matter what they say to pollsters, it's amazing to me, that we're so bimodal or whatever, that we can just sort of say, okay, we really need the science, because it's the only thing that's going to save us.

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I just lost my earthquake virginity!

I was in the bathroom (heh). Eric was downstairs. Some shaking and rattling ensued. He yelled "what was that?" and I said "I think it was an earthquake." We waited a few more seconds, looked around at the lack of property damage, and then said, "awesome!" (Also, Eric started shaking the banister, which is metallic and quite rattling, to try to make me think there were aftershocks, but I wasn't fooled.)

(I'd heard of two earthquakes that I would have been able to feel at Stanford since September 2007, but both occurred during holidays.)

Apparently the US Geological Survey is awesome, because within minutes they had auto-generated information on the quake online. Within 12 minutes it had been "reviewed by a seismologist."

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Ah, my reliable Sunday night sleeplessness. ("Insomnia" is too strong.) Once I'm 9-5ing for real I'll have to stop sleeping so late on the weekends -- all that stuff sleep experts say about routine seems accurate.

My latest thought keeping me up was marveling at how much better I've got at talking to people about life and career decisions. I've done an A+ job at this at Microsoft this summer. It's so easy. People love to talk about themselves and to explain what they did to get where they are. (At least, people who feel that they have been successful.) And it's so informative. All the excitements and anxieties I'm experiencing on the cusp of the college years -- other people have had it. And I can learn from them. Fish for knowledge. Soak it all in like a sponge. (Ew, stinky mixed metaphors.)

I've always tried to do this, but for some reason I've never been so active about it. I talked to people during my internships at IBM and APL too, but fewer, and less frequently, and in less depth. Maybe there's something about the environment at Microsoft conducive to naive inquiry -- their intern program is a huge deal, and that probably predispose the employees to chat with the interns like it's on their job description.

But I can't just credit external factors. I bet I didn't ask as many questions when I was 19 and 20 because I was afraid of admitting how much I didn't know. With a bit of experience under my belt, a bit more perspective, and a solid grasp on what it is I like to do, I have no problem admitting to a work acquaintance that I'm not sure how to choose a job or a life after college.

Maybe I give self-growth too much credit. After all, these future planning things just didn't matter as much back then because they were off in the distance. I was more worried about sophomoric friendships. (I tried to make a pun about freshman-year friends and the adjective sophomoric, but it's very late and my cleverness is -- well, not defunct, but inefficient.)

Oh, and a fulfilling romantic relationship has been pretty good for the ego, too. :-)

But I can't ask good questions through unstiflable yawns. I'll try sleep again.

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This is an easy one from intro C++ class, but I hit it a few days ago and again today. Good habits take time, I guess.

3. When a method returns a nested type, remember the namespace/parent class name.



Say you have in your .h:
class MyShapeCollection {
public:
   enum ShapeType { Circle, Square, Line };
   ShapeType getRoundestShape();
};

And in your .cpp:

ShapeType MyShapeCollection::getRoundestShape() {
   return Circle;
}

You'll get a compiler error like "missing type specifier -- int assumed. Note: C++ does not support default-int." You need MyShapeCollection::ShapeType in the .cpp.

Labels: computer science

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My first QotD that's a comment on YouTube:

Bret and Jemaine are not a band. They are a machine that turns air into comedy. Please have my babies!!!

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The lions could not carry more than 100 lbs of meat back to the wagon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

Labels: silly

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I wish I blogged about other things, but this show is on fire.

The scene: Larry King interviewed the Vice President, and Jon Stewart is mocking Cheney's seeming optimism...

Dick Cheney, to Larry King: Remember, success for a politician is fifty percent plus one. You don't have to have everybody on board.

Jon Stewart: Oh my god. The White House is taking the United States pass-fail.

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The scene: Jon Stewart is checking in with "Baghdad correspondent" John Oliver to discuss the heartwarming story of a win by the Iraq national soccer team. John Oliver was not impressed, arguing that the 1-0 victory was more due to their opponent's poor play. Jon Stewart counters...

Jon Stewart:

No matter what you thought, the Iraqi people were jubilant -- people celebrating in the streets.

John Oliver:

Oh that's right, they were firing guns in the air. In fact, did you know seven people were killed in the celebration. And, I grant you, that was great news for Iraq. It's very rare for a thing to happen here causing so few deaths.

However, I would point out that in the celebration celebrating the single-digit death toll, eleven more were killed.

That, I think wisely, was marked with a moment of quiet contemplation.

Five were killed.

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My ninth day of work, I have five (yes, five) meetings. I feel like a real employee!

Labels: msft

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I'm not usually much for surrealist art, but at the start of my junior year a certain poster caught my eye and quickly enchanted me. I've had it up in my last two Roble rooms to rave reviews from visitors. After two years of wear and tear, this poor paper needs to be retired. So I'm planning to buy a new copy for next year. It's called "Entre Les Trous de La Memoire" by Dominique Appia, and you can see it here.

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I'll be doing the Stanford senior tradition of the Wacky Walk with S at commencement tomorrow. We'll both be carrying guitars on straps. (Our original idea, dressing like characters from the video game Halo, was nixed due to technical limitations. The rules forbid, among many things, "water toys," and we suspect that something like paintball guns would over-qualify.) The funny thing is that, although we're both members of the class of 2007, neither of us is receiving our bachelors degrees quite yet. (But that's okay. Stanford reports its six-year graduation rate, not four-year.)

I'll have pictures of that, of course, but in the meantime, here's one of us three Roble-four-timers at Roble's end-of-year Uberque:



If I look a bit disheveled, it's because I was thrown into an inflatable pool not long before. :-)

Labels: stanford

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This isn't the most brilliant piece ever, but I'm posting it because no amount of mockery is sufficient for the anti-evolution forces of ignorance.

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Just finished folding laundry. I found that have I eight Roble T-shirts: the black "Robleatles" shirt we got for all residents; the light blue "Robleatles" shirt for staff only; two of the "Roblevation" shirts the staff wore at the May 06 in-house draw; the "sexiling quadmates since 1918" shirt from 05-06; the "Roble Love" shirt from 04-05; and the two long-sleeved snow trip shirts from this year and last year.

That's almost enough to wear a different one for each of my remaining days in Roble. Suddenly every remaining day as an undergraduate seems overly precious.

Actually I think I might find an appropriate end-of-year occasion to wear all eight shirts as an ensemble outfit. It's no exotic erotic costume, but it would be appropriate considering all of my time here.

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Sarah Silverman performed at Stanford on Sunday. It was free for students (or rather, paid for by the Speakers Bureau to which we pay annual fees).

As I wrote here last year, I'm a huge fan of Sarah Silverman: her brilliantly written "taboo" material, her confident, disarming voice and facial expressions (which make you think, "is she innocent or insane?"), her spot-on timing and delivery, and her Jewishness.

So, the live performance? I thought it was pretty good. The problem for me was that I'd already seen a lot of her material online. I'd say only about 6 of the 40 minutes were new to me. I don't blame her for having a routine; I know that's how it works in the stand-up trade. And it was still fun to hear the lines delivered in an auditorium of people (even better, Stanford students) reacting loudly -- definitely more fun than watching them on Youtube alone in my room.

My favorite (new) joke of the night was one of Sarah's tests for when she hosts the "MTV Movie Awards" in June:

“You know that movie, 300? Turns out how they got that title was they measured how gay it was. On a scale of 1 to 10.”

The post-performance audience Q&A was very disappointing. Lots of questions like, "So how small is [Sarah's boyfriend and popular late-night show host] Jimmy Kimmel's dick?" Sarah probably thinks Stanford students are all smart-alecky assholes.

However, one question brought out up two very interesting answers from Sarah. The student asked, "You do a lot of material based on topics that are normally considered 'offensive'. My question is, are there any topics that you find offensive?"

The first part of Sarah's answer was that she can't really find any comedy offensive -- she might only think that it's not funny, and therefore bad or not worth it. ("See: Carlos Mencia," I would add.) She went further and suggested a direct relationship between how funny something is and how offensive it can be. I was thrilled to hear her say that, because that exact formulation has been a pet idea/concept/theory of life, the universe, and everything of mine for years. In that vein, Sarah admitted that different people will have different senses of humor, and so will often disagree about what is "offensive".

The second part of Sarah's answer was that she was offended by jokes about women being fat, e.g., making fun of a particular female celebrity for gaining weight. These jokes in particular bother Sarah because, according to her, our society dictates that "fat women don't deserve love." (What a sad idea and a blunt way to put it.) I found that very interesting, not only on a celebrity-trivia level, and also on a thought-provoking social-sciences level.

You can read the Stanford Daily's article on the performance here. Also, a funny writer named Chris Holt had an email interview with Sarah.


In other news... I shaved my goatee. Whee! I had it for about a year. I liked it. I just decided that I wanted some variety this spring/summer. Also, as long ast I don't recognize myself in the mirror, I want to get a haircut now too. (Picture coming.)

Labels: life, stanford

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I tried to go to sleep early, a bit before 1am. (Yes, "early": Stanford sleep guru Dr. Dement says the Stanford students on average go to sleep at 2am.) I have an 11:00am meeting and need to prepare, a Spanish assignment I might get around to doing, and I want to pick up tickets to see Sarah Silverman when she's performing on campus next week. Not long after I lie down, thoughts of robot dialog systems dancing in my all-to-active cranium, some people started hooting and hollering outside (maybe chanting?) for some unclear reason. I got up around 1:30am, did some emailing and reading initially to pass the noisy time, then just getting into the work. Finally at 3:20am I wrap up the note-taking and climb in bed. Then at 3:30am a distant but determined BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! ... BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! ... permeates my earplug-and-fan-producing-whitenoise defense. Is that a fire alarm? Or just my somewhat deaf neighbor directly below me with one of his absurd alarm clocks? (Why do they always go off after midnight, anyway? Is he always trying to pull semi-all-nighters? Does he just fail at setting alarm clocks? He certainly fails at waking up to them.) No, yes, it is a fire alarm blaring in Ujamaa Dorm, just a few yards away from my all-too-permeable window. I watched some people evacuate. It's still going 15 minutes later. Too bad for them. And for me.

Labels: life

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This is random, but I've been thinking about the different snags that hamper a CS students' software development. In particular, after the same problem caused me a week of deadlock last fall and again this winter, I thought it would be good to write some of these perennial problems down. I thought of a second on the way home; I'll add more over the weeks as I come across them.

1. When linking C and C++, remember to use extern.
   



This has to do with how the compiler annotates function names when compiling C and C++. When you try to link C functions in a C++ program, it will fail unless you mark the C library with the extern keyword. (Instructions here). Most linkers (such as g++) give very cryptic error messages if you don't do this, making it a difficult problem to solve unless you think of this.




2. Be careful working on one program with multiple computers. If they have different architectures, make sure to recompile everything.
   



Different operating systems and processors require their own low-level libraries, and your previously-compiled binary executable files probably won't work. This comes up when working on Stanford's file system (AFS), which can be accessed from a wide variety of machines (e.g., i686 Linux, x84_64, Solaris). If I forget which type I was using when I worked before, my program won't run. If you do switch machines, you might need to make clean (i.e., delete all your old compiled object files and recompile them) before compiling the one(s) you actually modified.

Labels: computer science

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I think I'm smitten with The Onion's new fake video news coverage:


Breaking News: Something Happening In Haiti

Labels: silly

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