Right now I'm waiting for software to download and feeling slightly annoyed / angsty / frustrated because of a *IS&T doesn't understand Docker* issue[1] that I'm currently waiting to get resolved before getting back access to the server our research is on, how annoying debugging in Android studio is, and how terrible the cheap tablet we bought is (we purchased it a week ago for testing purposes, I left it plugged in on my computer overnight, and now it won't turn on).
Because I haven't written anything in so long, and I'm sitting around...
Sunday, November 19, 2017
Scaling Bitcoin Trip 2017
I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Scaling Bitcoin 2017 conference at Stanford, and thought I would share what I've seen there with friends to enjoy also. I took notes throughout the conference to help me pay more attention to what was being talked about, and have a reference for future purposes. I tried to be impartial and only write down what people were saying. You can check out these notes here.
The conference was interesting to me because I was able to get a closer look at the crypto community, the drama that happens within in,...
Saturday, September 23, 2017
September 2017 Updates
This year, I've developed a "throw shit at a wall and seeing what sticks" kind of mentality, which means that I've decided to try a number of things and hope that a couple will really work out. It has been much easier for me to work on more interesting things this year (versus freshman year) because I am more understanding of the resources that the environment at MIT offers and what I want out of my college experience.
One of my good friends,...
MedHacks 2017
Robert and I applied to a bunch of hackathons, and recently went to MedHacks which is located in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins. I've had a negative impression of Baltimore because of its bad coverage due to riots, therefore I was pleasantly surprised to find that Baltimore is sort-of a historical location, and many places resembling remarkably like Boston. Nonetheless, when we took a quick stroll through Baltimore's streets in the daytime, we saw a...
Friday, August 11, 2017
A Tribute to my Piano Teacher: Ms. Ruo Balko
Today I was listening to the Grieg Holberg Suite during my internship, played by Dr. Hastings, who passed away last year. Dr. Hastings was my piano professor when I went to the FSU piano institute four years ago. Listening to the Holberg Suite made me feel very sentimental, and I suddenly started crying. Dr. Hastings had a reputation for being hard on his students because he pushed them to be the best that they could be. I loved Dr. Hastings; he was the best, and being reminded of Dr. Hastings reminded me of my piano teacher who had pushed me to...
Monday, August 7, 2017
Finding your Utility Function, a Discussion on Existentialism
As a preface, this essay reflects my beliefs and opinions at the moment, which I felt would be interesting to capture for future references. I want to emphasize that my beliefs change over time and that I don't want to impose anything on you; feel free to form your own opinions.
I found this paragraph from Vitalik Buterin's personal website especially interesting:
In late 2011, I participated in a high school programming competition where players program the code for a team of simulated robots that then fight each other. I won third place. Someone...
Saturday, July 29, 2017
July 2017 Updates
This month was exciting in a couple of ways.
hackernews-newsfeed made the front of page of Hacker News and the Github repository has over 300 stars. It was my first project that went viral on the internet and I find the stars to lines of code ratio absolutely hilarious, since my script for the chrome extension barely contains 60 lines of code. I guess creating something that people actually want is important, and it helps that I wrote hackernews-newsfeed...