BIG Update

So, sorry I haven't been updating. It's been very, very busy.

First of all, looking ahead. I have accepted a position at Intrinsity, a chip company in Austin, Texas. This means I am currently in serious crunch time as I try to find a place to live in and a car so I can get around. Intrinsity is actually sponsoring a Clinic at Mudd next year, so my job is to set up the stuff for the Clinic. They were hoping that the person they hired would also stick around and actually do the Clinic, but I guess they decided I was good enough. Or they think I'm just that stellar so I overpower that fault. I don't really know.

After the summer I will be attending UC Davis for my Masters. I will be working with Professor Bevan Baas and working on some really cool stuff in chip design. He's been working on a really interesting architecture where the chip is composed of several miniature cores that each do a specific thing. Then, you can string these together to create a processing pipeline. It makes it really fast and low power, especially for pipelined processes like digital signal processing.

Currently, I'm trying to save Clinic. We found out that there's this tool we MUST use to lay the chip out and connect it to the pads. MOSIS, the fabrication group we're working with, claims no one every gets it right by hand routing. So, I get to learn the new tool. I'm getting pretty close, but it's been really hard and I'm still unsure if I can pull this off. Plus, we have to get our Final Report all sorted out and approved, prepare for presentations, and finish wiring up everything for the chip. We don't have a few critical parts, so I'm getting very nervous about this.

We're also really deep into the Shakespeare production. Ironically, this year the class is putting on a play by John Webster, someone who was in Shakespeare's troupe, but isn't Shakespeare. It's a lovely tragedy where every major character dies by the end. Except for the male protagonist's friend. I'm a minor character, so I don't die. I forgot to bring my camera to the coffin building session AND the dress rehearsal. Gr.... Oh, in case you missed it, I helped build a coffin. It's a bit large, but very coffin shaped. It's 1.5 feet high, 6 feet long, and 2.2 feet wide at the widest point. We joke that we could store the Duchess, the kids, and Antonio all in the same coffin.

Robotics has been going... oddly. Due to time issues I haven't logged as many hours as I'd like into the project, and unfortunately have forced one of my team members to pick up my slack. We're trying to get the robot to know where it is using Monte Carlo Localization. I'm implementing the motion and sensor models into the system. We'll be using the IR Range finders to do estimations of how close it is to a wall. Should be really cool once we get it working.

Other than that, it's been fairly OK. I managed to score a 1TB external harddrive for $100 off of Newegg, so I now have somewhere to store stuff before I leave campus. I've been filling it with Anime mostly.

Anyways, that's it for now. I'll leave you with a video that pretty much sums up the stupidity of the Internet comments.

From the Grave

OK, technically I haven't died yet (that's when I graduate) but just wanted to let people know I'm not completely gone from the face of the Earth.

But, I don't really have time for a full post, so here's some links to some of my better ones in the archives.

End of the World
An Epic Photo Blog
A bit of Mudd Nomenclature

Real post will appear sometime in future.

Fading into the Background

Greetings denizens who may or may not really care about what I write.

Apologies for the late(r) post.

In case you haven't been reading the other blogs, Kyle Marsh noted that we have about 4 weeks left in our existence here at Mudd. Which is barely meager enough to elk out the rest of Clinic and all those other fun happy times. Also, Kyle decided to be awesome and make a senior page for the yearbook. I am lame and didn't make one. I was thinking I should send in a semi-joke page due to my limited number of pictures of me, but as usual was too lazy to do even that.

Life is currently slowing down. Or, perhaps it's speeding up. Clinic has finally, at least in my mind, come under a semblance of control. We might actually pull this off. Granted, we're still behind our original schedule, but hopefully the last few risk areas will work out gracefully. I'd explain what they are, but I'd probably bore you since they're a little technical and weird.

On the other hand, I have a deadline on Monday to respond to a summer internship offer at Intrinsity, a chip company in Austin, Texas. The major reason I haven't jumped at this chance is to figure out all the other issues that come with it. Namely thinking about housing and food and transportation. I don't think they'd look kindly on me bringing a sleeping bag and camping out in the office. I also would lack proper nutrition. Plus, it's in Austin Texas which means dry and hot in the summer, at least relative to our temperate SoCal weather. I've been advised an air conditioned car would be appropriate, if not a necessity. And, at the end of the day I'd rather not go into debt due to this internship. In fact, it would be nice if I made a bit on the side so I can pay for grad school.

Speaking of which, I still haven't decided where to go. If you have any cool insights, please let me know.

I've picked back up some of my musical hobbies. I'm prepping for a performance during my church's Good Friday service, except there's no sheet music so I transcribed all the solos and will improv the rest probably. Also, Matthew Lawson, my former room mate, has press ganged me into helping to do music for the Shakespeare play, so I'm still learning to master the recorder in a few weeks. I'm actually not too bad now, but not good enough in my opinion.

Other than that, there's not too much happening. Cya around.