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...
Saturday, July 22, 2017
A Sentimental Reflection on How I Love My Computer
I remember coming to MIT with an HP computer that was falling apart at the hinge and restarted every couple hours for Windows 10 updates. I bought my HP computer for a little over $600 in 2014. Back then, I didn't know anything about computers so I picked my computer based on its beats speakers and the light up keyboard (lol!). For a $600 computer, the HP computer was a rip off.
One of my first decisions made at MIT was to buy a new laptop and switch to Linux. There were three computers I was seriously considering: a Dell XPS 13, a MacBook Pro,...
Tuesday, July 4, 2017
June 2017 Updates
I've recently started working at Dell. My official title is "Systems Engineering Intern", but I am basically doing benchmarking on server setups with machine learning algorithms. The pace of working at a large company is much slower than it is at MIT, and the work is easier. Therefore, I've been spending a lot of my free time reading about anything remotely cs related, and as a result I've improved my knowledge of the field.
So what have I been...
Saturday, May 6, 2017
Google's Secret Recruitment Portal, SIPB, Hyades: A Network Load Balancer, and more...
I haven't written a blog post in a while so I figured I would take a moment to document my life during this period.
A couple days ago, I stumbled upon a mysterious popup when I was googling terms related Google's computing infrastructure. "You're speaking our language. Up for a challenge?" it said. I was both spooked and excited. It turns out I had entered the world of Foobar, Google's secret hiring portal.
Foobar posts a series of coding challenges....
Friday, March 24, 2017
My First Google Chrome Extension! And Asynchronous Functions in Javascript
A while ago I published my first Google chrome extension, which you can find here. Basically the extension is an assignment tracker that turns your new tab page into a notepad. It also allows you to highlight text in the browser and right-click to add it to the assignment tracker clipboard.
Although the new tab notepad idea has already been implemented before, I wanted a notepad that would allow me to add text I see in my browser to the notepad...
Friday, March 17, 2017
The End of Midterms and UROPing
This week was a stressful week because I had two midterms that each counted for around 16% of my grade. Although my classes this semester are definitely more interesting, I miss PNR and not having to care about my grades. I read online that it is relatively easier to get Bs at MIT, but much harder to get As. Because I want to qualify for MEng, I will need to get at least one-third As.
Outside of my classes, I spent around 6 hours working on a...
Thursday, February 2, 2017
SICP: Lisp and the Y Combinator
Today was the last lecture of 6.037: Structures and Interpretations of Computer Programs (SICP) which is the condensed version of the legendary 6.001 previously taught at MIT by famous professors Hal Abelson and Gerry Sussman, and more recently, Eric Grimson. SICP is taught in scheme (a dialect of Lisp). However, the course is more about teaching you how to think about designing computer programs than the language in itself.
SICP was an amazing...