Greetings. I am Trevin Murakami.
Who am I? I'm an Engineering Major class of 2009, Male, Christian, Gamer, Eastie, Anime Watcher, Server Operator, Event Organizer, Ultimate Frisbee Player, Musician, Fun Friendly Dude, Observer, Martial Artist noob, Video Editor, the list goes on and on. And while I'm not doing homework, well, there's lots of options out there.
But I mostly do homework...
Some closing up stuff that has gone down. We had awesome performances for the end of the Shakespeare class. Unfortunately I didn't get to take pictures of the performance, but I did get a decent number of behind-the-scenes stuff. Hopefully the college professional photographer got good shots. Also, we got recorded, so maybe I'll get a copy and be able to watch it from not on the stage. Or behind the stage. I mean, I didn't have all that many lines anyways.
^This is indeed Matthew Lawson posing as the Old Lady over Kevin Oelze. In case you're new to this blog, Matthew was my roommate Frosh and Soph years and ended up as Proctor of East, President of Gonzo Unicycle, all-around cool guy, director of the LAC... basically became awesome. Oh, and he brought his trusty staff to graduation.
^Here's Prof. Dodds, who also was the prof for Robotics. We got 4 professors (including the one running Shakespeare) to play the madmen in the play. So awesome. They got the loudest applause besides the main actors.
^Liz Flannery did AWESOME costumes for us. She had help, especially from Glennis here on the right. That's Michael Braly. He was the scheming Cardinal.
Clinic is Done. We've turned in pretty much all our work and it's sealed up in a box. The only thing left was a lovely jaunt up to Oregon on Monday to present at Intel on Tuesday. I was a little nervous because we're showing our work to some of the best digital engineers in the nation. Luckily we got really far. Unfortunately we couldn't send the chip to fabrication due to complications. But, we have pretty pictures of a core of the chip. Also, a young up-and-coming frosh William Koven has volunteered to work over the summer to fix everything up and get it to fabrication. This means fixing up the research group's designs that they wanted to get on the chip as well. Oof. Overall I'm simply relieved it's over even if I am a little bugged out we didn't make it across the finish line. I don't like settling for "close enough."
Robotics went very well. We got the robot to run around and localize where it is in a map. Maybe not the craziest thing to ever come out of a lab, but pretty cool nonetheless. Other fun projects were things like an outfitted Barbie truck that followed directions using a webcam or Roombas using the Wiimotes to follow one another and be controlled. Overall, lots of cool stuff.
Graduation was... nice. Very cool message from the speaker, even if he does have public speaking problems. He did warn us at the beginning of the speech. It was a nice little "the world's a mess, but people are looking for solutions and you guys are now equipped to go out there and kick ass helping fix the world." Not in those exact words of course. Tahir was our student speaker and he had a nice little speech about the 3 tenants of success. Humility, Moderation, and Cooperation. We were actually all pleasantly surprised at his speech skills. In fact, no one noticed that those three tenets spell out HMC until the very end. Very suave. We also had an awesome rendition of the Star Spangled Banner featuring Elaine Shaver on the lead and Matthew, Marissa, Scott, Michael, and Sarah filling in as backups. It was in the style of a barbershop quartet, and was expertly done.
A whole bunch of people came out that I didn't expect for my graduation. Besides the obvious family members there were a few like my Great Uncle and Aunt or some Church friends who surprised us a bit. I'll be writing thank you cards very soon.
Now, I get to prep for the rest of the real world. For example, I have a nice internship in Austin, Texas with a company called Intrinsity. I'll be doing some work in preparation for a Clinic at HMC this next year. We'll be flying out on Sunday to get moved into the apartment. Gotta figure out a good way to pack my computer. After that I'm off to UC Davis for a Masters. I'll be working with Prof. Bevan Baas on some really cool expandable architectures. I'll be living with Michael Braly up there in a nice little house that his parents own. Michael's job this summer is to remodel the place from an office building to a two bedroom house. His dad will be watching out for him. His dad's pretty neat too; he watched one guy remodel their house once and then Mr. Braly did the next two remodelings himself. Sounds a lot like my dad who just picks stuff up so that he doesn't have to pay other people to do it.
Anyways, that's all for now. I'm not sure how much I'll post on this now that I'm out of HMC. But, there's plenty of fun archived stuff if you're interested. Peace out, and Have Fun.
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.
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.
I got to visit USC on Friday as a potential Masters student. It was kinda cool, a lot different than when I visited as a potential applying undergrad.
As readers of the backlog may know, I have no car. In case you're interested, I'd estimate about 1/3 of the students on campus have a car. So, I had to take the train. Luckily, we have a Metrolink station a few blocks away. And by a few blocks, 20 minute walking distance 5 minute bike ride (downhill). What's really neat is that it only took about 1 hour to get to LA Union station, and the round trip cost me $14. That's cheaper than the gas it would have taken. Plus, I didn't have to worry about traffic or driving myself, I just read my Philosophy of Science book instead. A pretty sweet deal if you ask me. USC also provides a nice tram to get to and from Union station, an extra perk.
The ride itself was also very interesting. In a row behind me a black gentleman was trying to figure out when he would arrive at one of the train stops so that a friend could pick him up. Suddenly, everyone around him was giving him maps and advice and even specific instructions on how his friend will have to drive to get to the stop. As he said, "I'm feelin' the love here." Turns out he's visiting LA to follow up on some job leads. He grew up in Chicago and lives in Florida now. What's interesting is he then started to ask how it's like to live in LA. One of the ladies spoke up and described that there's still quite a big of the gang issues and all that. In fact, she used to take drugs and had been cut up quite a few times. However, she eventually decided to quit and now has kids that have grown up and are starting their own families. There were also talk about the nasty traffic and the smog problem too.
It was weird in a way. I've lived in the suburbs near LA for all my life, yet I know so little about downtown LA. Sure I've heard about the gangs and all that, but it was an eye opener to have someone who had survived through that life talk about it as a personal experience instead of some statistic. Claremont has even less of these gang problems, although we often get all the smog that blows out of LA hanging in our air.
As far as the USC trip itself, it was interesting. I met a person from Boston (MIT) and another who was deciding between USC and Carnegie Mellon. I got to talk with the advisers and the staff there. I even managed to grab a student who gave me some advice. Unfortunately I didn't catch any professors since it was Friday and they were all off-campus.
The campus is the same as you would expect from USC. Really pretty outside, inside is kinda drab for the older buildings (especially where they stick their professors' offices) and there's some really olde stuff. I'm going to do a little more research on the kind of work they're doing and seeing if it's stuff I'd want to do. Apparently about 98% of the Masters students there just do their classes, get their Masters, and head out to a job. It's a 1.5 year, or 3 semester, path.
The other college I'm considering is UC Davis. Professor Bevan Baas is doing some really cool stuff up there. Hopefully I can get into his research group, and he seems willing to let me in. Plus, I can probably rent a room from Michael Braly.
That's all for now. I'm currently trying to slay Clinic as fast as I can, but it's gonna be tough. Not to mention this team is riddled with bad traits. For starters, I'm a lazy bum, tend to over think the problem too much, and yet miss the important detail. Yay! \o/
The Admissions Office decided they want some blogs. Blogs about life, about death, philosophy, art, games, horror, sleep dep, movies, classes, professors, food, stuff.
So, they asked for volunteers. I'm one of them. They said, "Please blog at least once a week about Mudd. Just don't make it your rant page, and don't do personal attacks. Oh, and we could give you a $150 digital camera to take pictures with of your life, keep it if you blog for more than 2 semesters. Other than that, do what you want. We'll even link your blog from the HMC main website."
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