Transfer of Power

Call me slightly romantic, but I feel that leaving a mark tends to be a good thing. Assuming it's the good kind of mark and not the emotionally scarring mark.

Back in High School, I did quite a bit. I was active in band, did well in academics, and messed around in very very fun circles. I of course am barely a memory now, mostly in the teachers' minds. I don't expect people to remember the kid who did stuff in band four years ago. When I joined, I didn't know any stories about some long graduated person.

Oddly, in college, there seem to be more insane people, or just better story telling. So, I heard stories about Cal and how he managed to break one of the walls in the basement. I tell people about the crazy antics of Camilo. People still talk about the epic pranks that happened on HMC such as making a piece of public art rust.

It's not surprising then that we try to be remembered somehow, or at least hope that our accomplishments can continue to help others. For example, if you founded this awesome club, you'd hope it continued to thrive and let others experience its awesome. I recently gave over control of Crack in the AC to a sophomore Ben. Not only did I give him a crash course on how to do things, but I'm also making sure he doesn't do anything crazy. I'm also setting up the GameSHMC to get passed on if David ever gets around to calling the elections.

As for what's next, today was the Spring Career Fair. It was actually very disappointing. Not only did it start at 12 noon and I have a 1:15pm class but there were so few people attending. The economic decline is hitting everyone pretty hard and so there's still quite a few internships floating around but not that many entry-level jobs. I guess it's my turn to be much more proactive.

In case you didn't know, I'm focusing on digital engineering. Think of it as a subset of Electrical Engineering that deals with the digital components. This usually translates in the real world to programming FPGA chips to do data processing from communications. Communication is a big industry, and everyone want to be wireless. However, there's a few people who would use my extra training in actual chip design, but Intel and the likes are mostly interested in Masters level or higher for full-time jobs.

So, I'm still waiting on the graduate schools. It's weird, most of the other people I know in the other majors have been accepted into at least one school already. The physicists are extra thrilled because they all want to get PhDs and do the awesome crazy physics work that won't be commercially feasible or useful for several decades. You know, like quantum computing. They've got these really cool algorithms that speed things up a lot, but the problem is they don't have any hardware that can actually do the computation. Ah how that real world clashes with the theory.

BTW, there's some interesting plans in the works. I won't spoil it, but it should be sufficiently awesome.

How to be Geeky

Weird Al's White and Nerdy

This of course is in no way designed to be the end-all, just a humorous romp through some very.... nerdy... things.

First, the background.

You see, to be geeky, you have to know geeky things. I'm not necessarily talking about quarks and quantum physics. I'm also talking about the sub-culture of internet memes and crazy things that are fun and get referenced quite a bit. That way, you can pull from the same database of weird and wonky things and know what we mean by them. So, if someone fakes an accent saying "H'OK, so. Here's the Eaaarth" you know it's from The End of the World.

Next, you gotta play the part.

This is doing stuff like making awkward gestures, being unsettled in non-nerd social groups, and wearing coke bottle glasses. No, wait, that's the stereotype. Actually it's more about what you do when you find out the person you're talking to is a nerd. The vast majority of nerds can in fact blend in very well with their environment. The trick is to find other nerds and then nerd out together. For example, talking about games is OK since even jocks play games (otherwise EA wouldn't exist). The trick is if the other person says stuff like that they play World of WarCraft (or WoW, get with the lingo dude), then you might be on to something. Except for me, I don't play WoW. The real trick is if they play other stuff or are known to be extremely awesome on their server. Even better if they are into game design, as in have ideas about how to make games better, but aren't actually in the field. OK, they can be in the game industry, but that just makes them professional geeks that make money.

Then, now that you have revealed their geekiness, reveal yours. Often, geeks get extremely emotional about stuff they like. Thus, the whole Star Wars versus Star Trek feud we make fun of so much. So, get into it, start throwing around more geeky language (LOL pronounced 'lawl' is a quality and popular one), even if you don't know anything about what they're talking about. Just appear interested. Sometimes you can trick us if you just probe us and keep us talking. I'm serious. I've goaded many people into 30 minute rants while I sat and ate dinner.

And Finally, get street cred.

The thing about the nerd community is it can be very tightly networked. So, as your nerdiness spreads, other nerds will pop out and recognize you as a nerd. Unless you're one of those sneaky people who never post pictures of themselves that can be traced back to their forum screen names and so will only reveal themselves by telling you their screen name and then you realize you've been talking with that forum moderator that you keep having flame wars with on that one forum. That was a joke in case you were wondering.

Something to help you along is to surf YouTube. It is incredibly geeky. I'm not talking about those emo kids talking into their webcams, I'm talking about viral videos of crazy. Like this one:



See? They can also be AWESOME.

Well, have fun. Geeks can be fun to be. Just don't go too far, I'd rather not know you as that person I have to have a ban hammer ready for every time people start to talk about Mac versus PC and you complain that everything isn't Linux. Not that I have anything against Linux, it's just that there are some very, very whiny Linux people. =]

Laterz

My Professor Knows Magic

I kid you not.

Just this last weekend, I was bashing my head against a certain bug. It's called an iteration loop error. In Verilog, parts of the chip don't have any delay in them. Since this is a rough simulation, that's usually OK and in the real world (or better simulations) we'll see delays and all is well. Iteration loops occur when there is a signal loop (i.e. a signal is dependent on itself) and keeps changing indefinitely. In the real world, this never happens. But, due to the zero delay in Verilog, it can in simulation.

So, I spend most of Friday, Saturday and Sunday chasing around this bug not only in simulation but in my mind. It appeared to come from the flip flops, a certain digital structure that can capture a value on its input on the rising edge of a clock signal, and hold it as its output until it samples another. Very handy. To hold these values, there's certain loops that, in theory, should open and close and not create a feedback loop. However, I finally gave up and worked on other parts of Clinic and asked Prof. Harris to help me. He suggested adding in delays everywhere, setup the wave, and then bring him over to check them out.

So, on Wednesday, I setup the simulation with delays everywhere, and it appears to have fixed the problem. While this is all well and good, we want to isolate what caused the problem in the first place. Magic fixes don't actually fix the problem. So, with Prof. Harris watching, I start to remove the delays in the Verilog code. Eventually, we get back to code with no delay. Puzzled, I then try to re-create the iteration loop bug. It doesn't show up. I then turn to Julien Massas and ask him to try to re-create the bug, since his code was the first to show the error. It also doesn't exist in his code.

Now, I know we didn't change all that much from Sunday to Wednesday, and I'm very very sure it was still broken on Sunday. So, my only explanation is that the presence of Prof. Harris fixed it. Or, it somehow managed to hide itself in fear of his awesome l337 skillz and will resurface sometime next week, right before our deadlines.

In other news, I'm still searching for what I'll be doing after graduation. Grad apps are in (well, 3 out of 5, the other 2 are due next month) and under review, my resume is floating in databases around the globe, and JPL has declined to offer me a position. One of my physics friends already got into one of his Grad schools, so he's very very happy and much more relaxed. I blame it on his Indian heritage (Asiatic India mind you). Plus, as an engineer I can find work without a grad degree. He can't. So, extra kudos for him being so awesome and way smarter than me.

To close, I'll drop a screenshot of my resume. Just in case you were curious.