Re-Entry

Um, I'm back in school. Just FYI.

As it turns out, it hasn't been altogether a bad week. Robotics is gonna be awesome and Shakespeare is gonna be awesome. Clinic has carried over from last semester (still on the critical path of you screw up the project fails).

So, the real question is what to do about my 3 Hums. One hasn't met yet since the professor is at a conference for this week. However, I know the professor, and it's gonna be on the Philosophy of Science. The second one is about Asian history, specifically the recent modernization and post-colonialism. After all, that's all we Westerners really know since most of the ancient stuff is still being translated/dug up/hidden by the government. Decisions decisions.

Now, the bad stuff. Mostly clinic. I'm currently figuring out a few new tricks to make testing easier in the future. Unfortunately this is a pain to learn and puts me behind on other stuff. Basically, I've managed to overwork myself again. I stayed up very late Friday morning (sun didn't come up while I was awake, so it's not an all-nighter!) finishing some tests. As par for course, I was the only one to get those tests done, mostly because it's the easiest piece to test and I've been ahead of the rest of the team for some time now. I also have to debug a nasty problem that was mucking up everyone's simulations, so that didn't help everyone else progress either. As I said, I'm on critical path, and just barely making my deadlines means the whole team falls behind.

Also, I can't just mess around anyone. That means stuff like Mass Effect and Fallout3 and learning Japanese are back on hold. =[

In other random news, apparently Nvidia has managed to give us 3D vision from our monitors. Basically it uses the same technology that is used in 3D movies today, but created on the fly from your graphics card. The downside is it requires 1) a 120Hz monitor, 2) a GeForce 8 series or better graphics card, and 3) that you wear glasses. Now, the glasses are apparently not the yellow abominations you return after watching other 3D cinema and are apparently pretty stylish. Plus, the Nvidia team apparently to be doing a good job of letting you know what does and doesn't work. Plus there's the disorientation that you're in 3D now. Especially in First-Person-Shooters where we've been trained to think we're looking at a 3D world already with perspective and enemies behind cover 20 yards away. But, it's supposed a pretty sweet gig. Not gonna change your world or make or break new games, but a nice feature that if you have disposable income to spend on, is kinda cool. I don't have that disposable income handy. =]

Here's to an exciting semester! Cheers!

Speaking to the Void

 

This is quick snapshot of the lovely little doohicky I have on this Blog called Google Analytics. It shows that every day this blog sees about 5-10 viewers. Most don't stay for long, and the majority (over 50%) come from a referring site. I surprisingly am also getting quite a bit of traffic now from search engines. This blog is in fact NOT the top result from searching my name, Trevin Murakami. So, obviously people aren't searching for me. BTW, the HMC page that details and links to this blog are the top hit, just in case you were wondering and didn't want to Google me.

So, anyways, it just goes to prove people (besides you) actually read this thing. And by read I mean not really since only on a few days does the average time on the page creep above 30 seconds.

Um, I head back to school this weekend. Back to more deadlines and such. I think the Verilog I built for the chip is solid, but I haven't gotten a full-on test going yet so I wouldn't want to publish it. I'm now in the midst of building a bunch of supporting schematics so I can start wiring pieces together. The toughest part is getting things straight in my head. There's certain subtitles about the design and some things like ordering can actually matter. For example, a schematic that places objects to the right or left of each other will more likely than not produce a layout design in the same shape. This can be a good thing (good schematics make layout easy) or a bad thing (bad schematics make layouts a living hell). Plus, I have to make decisions about how we're actually building everything, and there's stuff like fixing mistakes others have made.

Overall, though, I haven't been doing that much work. Every night I play games. I still haven't finished off my giant pile of games to play, although I did beat Portal: Prelude which was sufficiently awesome. Also, around 10pm a lot of people regularly are showing up to play DotA online, which has been fun. It's good to learn from peers instead of just playing a random set of players and feeling very angry about stuff. If you play with and without friends, you'll understand what I mean. So, with any random housework excluded, I typically am getting around 5 hours of work done each day. Which isn't too bad, considering technically I'm still on break and stuff is about on the schedule I set. There's always the chance something goes horribly wrong next week and I have to suffer, but oh well. I don't think anyone else is doing work over break, except for grad applications and thank you cards.

Speaking of grad apps, people have been asking me what ever am I going to do once I graduate. First of all, yes I will graduate this semester (unless Prof. Harris holds me over to fix stuff on Clinic). As for what I'm going to do, it kinda depends. I eventually will need a Masters. How I get it is a good question. There's the straight to more school. Short, sweet, about 1 year to do. Then there's work and school, much more economical (work typically pays) but there goes your evenings and it'll take more like 4 years. Or work, then school. Except then you run into the situation 1) will your employers let you go (and pay if you're extra lucky) for a year and 2) you go from positive income to negative income (the usual route, employers typically don't like you leaving for a year). With other responsibilities (family if you're at that point) that can be hard to swallow.

As for where, I don't know. I am applying to USC, UCD, UCSD, UCLA, and University of Texas at Arlington. For jobs, I've been 2nd round interviewed at JPL, but that's about it. A few groups called to make sure I was still in the market, but we haven't had any formal chats yet. And then there's the economy so hires are gonna be slim and late in the year. However, some companies are still hiring fresh grads since it gives them new blood, especially the aerospace industry since all their guys are gonna retire soon and they haven't been hiring new grads for a while.

So, that's where I am right now. As if the anonymous internet cared.

Community Comparisons

Still on break. HMC returns on Jan 19th. So that means one more week to fix all that Clinic stuff I still have to do. Gr....

Anyways, on to the topic of the day: communities. While a loose term, I'm going to reference it in regards to the supportive (or lack thereof) nature of people doing similar things.

Let's start with the DotA community. If you're unfamiliar, DotA stand for 'Defense of the Ancients' and is a WarCraft 3 Frozen Throne custom map. It is also perhaps the single most played WarCraft 3 map, with a huge community, patches, it shows up in competitive leagues, and basically tends to be a big deal. It is based around teams of players each controlling a hero. The goal is to push into the enemy base and kill their super structure, a tree or a throne. As the game progresses, the heroes level up, gain cool powers, and you can buy items to further augment your heroes. The core gameplay though is very micro dependent (fine control of your hero and its actions) as well as team coordination (acting as a team when fighting, allocating who does what, etc.). Team coordination in some ways trumps the micro aspect since 4 heroes attacking 1 hero should win, unless that 1 hero is ridiculously overpowered due to levels or items.

So, here's the crux of the matter. The DotA community is not very supportive of new players. In fact, there are times when people have actually told other players to leave because they were so bad at the game. There's also what are known as griefers, or people who intentionally do things to annoy others. Some of these actions might be intentionally dying to the other team to give them an advantage, or leaving a game in progress (no one new can join and now the team is down a hero). Why? Because people want to win, and DotA is very team dependent, so if you have a bad team people get frustrated. However, in the long run, there seems to be a problem. If you chastise all the new players and get rid of them, what happens? There is no influx of new players, old better players might eventually leave, and now you're stuck with no players. Of course, there's a few really stubborn players who keep playing, and there's definitely some helpful players out there, but in general the community is pretty hostile. Most new players only get better because they are trained by experienced players, usually friends who introduce them to the game. I actually started playing because we have a DotA game night each week at Mudd. I'm still pretty bad.

Now, the HMC community. I tend to cite this as the reason I decided on Harvey Mudd College, and it didn't disappoint. The very concept that it's a high performance school, but everyone lives on campus and the professors are there to teach make an uber combo. Plus there's other perks like the hands-on work and such. At the core, though, I'm a big fan of how supportive the community is. It's a place where if you have questions, someone is bound to know the answer and is willing to explain it to you. I managed to debug and learn about boot failures when my computer went bonkers right before finals week. I've had people explain crazy algorithms to me. I was just interviewing at JPL and explaining what I knew about a CS class that I hadn't taken, and the interviewer thought I had taken the class. I eventually told him that this was just from learning from the CS majors complaining about chunky string and that I didn't know how to fix the problem itself in detail. I've also spent many hours walking others through problems of their own, sometimes in sacrifice of meeting my own deadlines.

Now, it's not all flowers and rainbows. I've mentioned in others posts about the downsides of such a tight community such as if you do something stupid everyone finds out, or that if you're the jerk people end up not liking you can't be anonymous. But, overall, I enjoy the community of Harvey Mudd College. Plus, we have professors who participate in some of the randomest stuff, like dressing up as Santa so we can take pictures with him. Go Prof. Yong!

And now, for no good reason, a video.

The Intelligent Person's Folly

In Dungeons and Dragons, abbreviated D&D, there are six primary attributes. Strength, a measurement of physical power, Dexterity, a measurement of nimble actions and fingers, Constitution, a measure of endurance to pain and body, Intelligence, a measurement of knowledge, Wisdom, a measurement of perception and application, and Charisma, a measurement of physical beauty and nimbleness of the tongue.

D&D explains the difference between Intelligence (Int) and Wisdom (Wis) as the former being book smarts while the latter is street smarts. Also, having a lot of one doesn't necessarily include the other. The example would be an absent-minded professor for high Int and low Wis, or a perceptive idiot for low Int and high Wis. Intelligence is numbers, calculations, lore, and held knowledge in the character's mind. Wisdom is the application of faculties to perceive the world around you by hearing or sight or general insight. Of course, a synergy occurs if you have both since you can take in the situation and then apply your dazzling archives of knowledge to take advantage of it.

This brings us to a common folly about smart people. Being a student of Harvey Mudd would imply that one would have a high Int score. However, not all of them would have a high Wis score right? They should be bumbling morons that only have book smarts and no other smarts. That is where you'd be wrong. Harvey Mudd prides itself on trying to find and admitting "well-rounded" students. I know it's a trite buzz word, but bear with me. They look for smart students, but they need something else. For me, it was a mish mash of music (band), a bit of athletics (tennis and frisbee) and random other things. But in the end, the students aren't complete book junkies. Granted, I'm sure one of my friends being a data miner (especially about politics) doesn't strike people as being less geeky.

Now, for another folly. The folly that smart people have. It's the concept that you're smarter than others. While, this belief isn't necessarily bad, the implications aren't so nice. For one thing, this tends to make smart people think they're better than the not so smart people, which is not true. The biggest problem is that they think they can outsmart everyone. Some, if they were teased or slighted at younger ages for their intelligence, may even feel entitled to the ability to outsmart everyone else. Of course, this doesn't necessarily hold. For one thing, there is always someone smarter. Secondly, which smart are you measuring? Someone might simply be more clever, or accidentally come upon a better alternative.

I personally have had this folly, a kind of hubris that I should win. I recently bought two copies of Blokus, one for my family and one for the gaming club at HMC. It's a game where you try to place as many of your pieces on the board while preventing your opponents from placing their pieces. It's so simple that anyone can play, but a bit of strategy so there's depth. However, it's not so complex as say chess. Thus, there have been a few games where I think I have the winning solution, and if I played it right I would have won. Unfortunately, I screwed around, messed up, and ended up losing.

So, something to think about. What's your folly?

Christmas Aftermath

Hello all. It's the post-Christmas fallout.

Well, I've been busy. Not with work, mostly with gatherings and special events and trying to grab a few hours of play time here and there. Mostly playing Blokus with my family, which is an AWESOME game by the way. Simple enough everyone can play, deep enough for some strategic skill (my specialty), but not so deep that I can always win (unlike chess).

Back on topic.

Christmas started a bit early with the family opening our family gifts on Christmas Eve. This is because we hosted the Christmas Day luncheon, so not much time to do all the other stuff and entertain guests. Then it was clean-up the house time for the afternoon. Then we performed in the Christmas Eve Candlelight Service for our church. My dad ran the sound system (he's the best of the church, and I swear that's not just family bias), my mom and older sister sang in the choir, my brother played the drums, and I played the flute. Turned out very well.

Christmas Day was the luncheon which lasted until nightfall. Not surprising. We tend to like to hang around, play games, talk about random stuff. My mom also made us sing carols, but being musical my brother and I played on the piano and my dad played the guitar. We're not all that great on the piano, so I had to take the left hand while my brother took the right. Plus, those old hymnals are not meant to be played on the piano, they're meant to be sung. Normal hands can't reach that wide and that dexterously.

Of course, we also had smaller Christmas meetups with family friends on Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday. Monday's was a funeral, though. However, we got to see all of my second cousins from Utah.

Friday was cleaning again. My mom is big on keeping the house clean. We still have the same carpet in our house from our remodeling, which was when I was really young. In case you don't know, that's apparently a really long time. Being Asian and taking off our shoes indoors probably helps. This time, it was putting the house back together and moving furniture. Then we sorted out what we needed to return (wrong sized clothing) and took a little trip to do it. Today it's a catch up and prepare for our trip to Sac/Davis day. That means last of the chores and start pulling out clothes. Apparently it's around 40 degrees up there, so I'm going to have to pack layers.

At least I've been getting over 10 hours of sleep each night.

Plans for Break

Man, I am failing at the prep blog early game.

Anyways, today it's time to detail plans for Break. This is akin to New Years Resolutions where you make a list, feel good about it, try to follow it for about 1-2 days, then lapse back to your old habits. Unless you're still young and in that malleable age where your parents can smack you around and make you shape up.

So, here goes. (in no particular order)

1) Relax. Probably the easiest to pull off. Make sure I'm not sleep deprived.

2) Work on Clinic. Mind you this is rare. Most people forget about Clinic and spend a week when they get back in the Spring remembering everything. Unfortunately, my Clinic, in my personal opinion, needs a jump start and some serious catch up. To make sure stuff goes smoothly next semester, I'm catching up on stuff I need to do. This mainly means getting my processing element completely built, fixing up the code to describe the entire chip (i.e. stable architecture good. See VLSI gripes from last semester about what unstable architecture does), and maybe even getting to know the layout tools early.

3) Games. I've been doing such a good job repressing my gamer side this semester. I still haven't gone through the massive number of games released this year, even the ones during the summer. So, I need to do a bit of catch up. I even have a copy of Fallout 3 sitting in my room, ready to be installed.

4) Family. In case you didn't know, Mudd kicks us out of the dorms for Winter Break. They are locked down and you have to turn in your key or be fined lots of money. So, we're all at home. Except for the crazies who find an apartment or something, but I don't know any of them. Thus, I find myself at home with family. And, my family is very hospitable. Thus, we will be having gatherings and parties pretty much every day until somewhere in the first week of January. We're also going to take a trip up North (i.e. Sacramento) to see some of the rest of the family. If I'm lucky, Michael and I might even be able to meet up with a professor at UC Davis for a little jaunt.

5) Grad School Apps. I've got many more to do. That means more 2500 word essays about my motivations to join their programs. Whee! Luckily I don't have to fill out pages of how awesome I am and my club activities, unlike my brother for undergrad applications. It's pure grades, Letters of Rec, and Statement of Purpose.

Well, I'm pretty sure I'm stuck with 4 and 5 being necessary. I'm also pretty sure I can get 1 done. It's a question of 2 and 3. 2 should take precedence if I don't want to look at Prof. D. Money Harris and say, "sorry, I let down the team again."

Have a nice Holiday Season all 3 of my readers.

Level up to Freedom

Well, the worst is over. Or should I say yet to come.

First, fun YouTube stuff.



Now those look like really badass freeform maps. Too bad I still have to wait for the PC version.

Anyways, back to reality.

It's finals week. Ironically, I only have two finals left. MicroPs, 6502 Chip Research, and Clinic all ended last week. OK, so Clinic didn't really end, I still have a few items I need to get done over break so that the project can continue on smoothly, but I don't have deadlines of death hanging over me anymore.

The last two finals I have are a paper for Philosophy, and a 1.5 hour final for Great Works of Western Music. Definitely not in the same class as the Clinic Midyear.

I also have grad school apps to finish. =[ UCLA was Monday, the next is due Jan 2 but I want to get it in at least a week early. Just in case bad stuff happens. It's actually weird that the graduate school applications are so much shorter than the undergraduate applications. It's mostly biographical info, letters of recommendation, and your statement of purpose. No pages upon pages of filling out what activities you did or anything like that. It's not a question of you being a leader or an activist. It's a question of whether or not you're a good enough investment for their research.

Looking back, the Clinic didn't go quite as far as I'd hoped. We barely got Rev0 out for our processing elements. We wanted to get to Rev2, which requires two optimization look overs of the schematics. I blame the processes not getting done on time as well as some other fun dynamics. Here's a few rules for surviving:

Rule #1: Start early and expect to fail. This is big. Do NOT ever start the morning before. Ever. It will not work. And then you'll be crying and having panic attacks at 2 in the morning. Believe me, one team member practically broke down every Monday.

Rule #2: When the going gets tough, the tough call for backup. Chances are, other people know more than you. As a matter of fact, I can guarantee you that in a team, each will have special knowledge that is useful to the team. So, if you're stuck, ask someone else to help. Bonus if it takes that person one glace to know what went wrong. In our case, this is often Prof. Harris. We've actually likened him to an extra super mind that just intersects our plane of existence. Lolly is actually convinced one day he'll just phase out of our plane for a little while. Michael and myself designed two major processes, so chances are we know what the problem is. We had to do a lot of "shoulder camping" this semester to help get stuff going.

Rule #3: Take notes. Seriously. Forgetting what we said yesterday may be the sleep-dep talking, but you can avoid it by taking notes. Notes last way longer than your short-term memory.

Rule #4: Stay Alive. This means sleep and be healthy. This is directed at Lolly who was in a perpetual state of sleep-dep and sickness for the second half of the semester. I blame her uncanny ability to commit to way more than she can handle. She sometimes handles it all, but mostly she ends up overworked. Well, I consider it overworked. In theory, if you followed the above rules, this shouldn't be too big of an issue since you won't be spending 20 hours a week on Clinic. You'll just be spending more like 13 hours.

In the other front, MicroPs final project was a success. Julien Dage and I built a MIDI synthesizer. We take the MIDI signals from a keyboard and synthesize music out. Sounds easy, looks easy, isn't so easy. For one thing, the MIDI protocol has some weird special cases. It also is a current loop signal. We want a voltage signal. Oops. Then, we have the problem of how to make music. Huh. We used an interesting system where you can move through a hardcoded table at varying speeds to get different pitches. It saves you lots of memory, which means you can store higher resolution waves. Unfortunately, it wasn't as awesome as we'd hoped due to speed and variable size issues. But, we did make it work flawlessly for up to five notes. Later when they post our presentation videos I can link it. Not too interesting, but it demonstrates it works.

Well, that's all for now. I'll be on break after this week, so expect sporadic updates on my travels and holiday awesomeness.