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Here is where you can read about the life of a graduate student. All content should be read with a sense of wit and with a grain of salt.
engineer and scientist
Here is where you can read about the life of a graduate student. All content should be read with a sense of wit and with a grain of salt.
After two full years, since March, 2020, I returned to the office. I am glad that the sensible people and leaders in the city of Austin have continued to take steps to keep us moving on during the pandemic. It was especially music to my ears that our office would have measures in place such as increased sanitation frequency, availability of soap and sanitizer for additional recommended hand-cleaning and surface cleaning, required vaccination, packaged food, and an outdoor area to eat unmasked. There was an election today too which I would encourage all eligible voters to get informed on and vote in, as well as in the upcoming runoff and general elections later this year.
The coronavirus pandemic is still getting many items to be out of stock because demand is exceeding supply. Some of those items are: bicycles, high-end processors, the PS5, furniture pads, and compost bags. One solution that may be helpful for those who cannot find the biodegradable compost bags for food waste in stores is to use paper grocery bags instead. Even if you have to pay for paper grocery bags at the grocery store, it may be worth it in any case.
This Thanksgiving, many of us are in isolation due to the pandemic. I wanted to share several illustrations to cheer you up, wherever you may be, and remind us that in isolation we are caring even more so for one another.
The instructions at the Nodesource Github page encourage you to blindly run their commands as your local superuser. This is an awful practice, and as such I have a proposed alternative.
If you visit the and scroll down to the "Installation instructions," you will find the link to the script they want you to foolishly run as your superuser. Here, we assume the example is https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_14.x. Please open that URL.
Now, pay close attention to the variables set in the beginning and the lines close to the end, and make sure that you run just those in your shell!
NODENAME="Node.js 14.x"
NODEREPO="node_14.x"
NODEPKG="nodejs"
DISTRO=$(lsb_release -c -s)
echo "echo 'deb https://deb.nodesource.com/${NODEREPO} ${DISTRO} main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nodesource.list" | sudo bash
echo "echo 'deb-src https://deb.nodesource.com/${NODEREPO} ${DISTRO} main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nodesource.list" | sudo bash
Once you have run the above commands, run "sudo apt-get install -y nodejs" and then Node.js will be installed on your machine. Note that this includes Node.js and its dependencies including the "npm" package manager. Now you can use the "nodejs" command to run a server script you write, and you can use the "npm" package manager to install more useful libraries for your scripts.
This is a public service announcement about avoiding apps that share your location and personal content with undesired organizations. A major recent suspect is TikTok, a Chinese company that has no choice but to comply with any request from the Chinese government. I would strongly recommend people who need to keep their name, location, and views out of those undesired organizations to use alternative apps and websites. This is especially importantant for any government-employed people, and we can thank Sen. Tom Cotton and Sen. Chuck Schumer for making official rules for this in the US government. It may be worthwhile to petition the app stores to ban the app since data is used inappropriately. Here are some excellent alternative apps:
To aid voters in the elections of 2020, I created a page about voting issues and how to vote in places like Texas. Please visit it here!
From conferences to interviews to vacations, my travel plans for 2017 know no boundaries. One would think that I would take the time to write all about my experiences, but I would rather just talk to you about them in a social setting. To tease your interest, you can see a list of all the states and the Canadian province in which I have been a visitor in 2017 before starting my job:
Today was a beautiful day in Boston and Cambridge. Life was also beautiful today. There are some beautiful depictions of life in these recent movies I saw: Man of the Year, V for Vendetta, El secreto de sus ojos, and Tyler Perry's House of Good Deeds. On this beautiful day, naturally many bicyclists have come out to enjoy the weather and exercise.
The sunny, clear skies inspired me to repair my bicycle to make it ready for longer runs. In fact, I made a repair I was hoping to make back when I had my previous bicycle back in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. When I was a sophomore at UIUC, I went to Meijer on North Prospect Ave. and bought a bicycle chain. I took it back to campus only to realize that I needed a chain tool to replace my rusty bicycle chain with the new one. Almost five years later, I checked out the bike chain tool from my dorm's front desk at MIT. With a little creativity, I yanked out my old rusty chain and properly installed my new chain. Then I enjoyed a nice bicycle ride on Storrow Drive and Memorial Drive, followed by a nice subway ride, followed by a nice drive, all in the same day.
There's a fun story from when I was at the Starbucks near Porter Square today. My friend and I went in and ordered drinks before sitting down. The problem with me is that I didn't know what to order because coffee shops are not in my routine at all. One server was quite kind and offered to ask me what I was thinking of having. I wanted a cold tea without milk or caffeine. Surely enough, she recommended to me a drink that I had back when I was at a Starbucks in Texas on my way to the Guadelupe River with AMD friends. I had the Passion Tea, and although it was on the menu back in Texas, it certainly wasn't on the menu in Massachusetts. The whole event brought back a good memory and encouraged me to keep in touch with the coffee shop culture that prevailed outside the central MIT campus.
Today I had a harsh but timely realization about the ever-changing nature of our world. I grew up an American, with respect for our forefathers that fought for our liberties, and with knowledge of the stories that surround my own. Today I wanted to watch several movies, and because I am a working individual I sought to buy or rent the movies. Times have changed, it seems, because it was much harder to do than in the 1990s.
A common way to rent movies was to go to your local store and borrow them for one night for a couple dollars. This worked well with Redbox, and I had the chance to use my awesome blu-ray drive to watch the latest and greatest movies on disc from them. However, the movies I had in mind to watch today were classics, which you would find in stores like Blockbuster. The nearest Blockbuster to me is in Malden, and since I had time I decided to go there, by T. When I arrived at 6:15 PM, I met with shock and awe a sign that said "Store Closing" and a handwritten note that said store closes at 6:00 PM today and liquidation tomorrow. I still made use of my trip by doing some other shopping, but over time I thought and realized that the delivery of entertainment has changed. I wanted to support a dying business but I was met with a dead business that changing customers have already consecrated. My worry is that customers now either pay more to buy a stream that they never truly own or pay nothing. In the end I know I should not worry though, because another profitable business will fill that retail space, perhaps a business that has an online and brick-and-mortar storefront.
As for history considerations, the stories of people will capture the presence of businesses that once existed. Furthermore, I discovered the Internet Archive, a website that lets you see any one of 245 billion web pages at any point in their history. While the present is changing now at a faster rate in the information age, I am much reassured by the Internet Archive and similar efforts that even this fickle history will be captured, and that we may still learn lessons from history as a means to become a better human race.
To all my stalkers out there, I have a clue for you. One of my favorite locations on the MIT campus is the Barker Engineering Library. Yes, Barker is a library, not a person in this context. No other place in the world provides the tranquility, solitude, world-class grandeur, and intellectual stimulus like the Barker Library. Every one of the many times I've come to Barker has been out of my own volition, a testament to propel me in my other self-motivated endeavors. Barker is the place I get closest to intellectual meditation, and am most productive in my current situation. Nevertheless, I am still connected with the outside world in Barker, and I welcome your solicitations.
If you have many PDF files accessed through Linux, you can still search through those files to find some text. Rather than simply using "grep search_for_this x.txt" as you would for a text file, you use "pdftotext x.pdf - | grep search_for_this" instead. Below is a nifty shell command to search through all your PDF files in a directory. Be sure to replace "search_for_this" with what you want to search for!
for i in `find | grep \.pdf$`; do echo "*** Found in $i:"; pdftotext $i - | grep search_for_this; done
Many people around the world have awaited the release of Windows 8, the operating system that is expected to satisfy mobile and desktop users in exceptional ways. I will personally try this OS on my awesome AMD A10-powered computer, since I know all my Windows 7 applications should run on Windows 8. My PC's idle power consumption will drop even more beyond the 24 W idle APU power, because Windows 8 is more power-efficient. Imagine, at a time when Google and Apple are kicking everyone's asses, Microsoft and AMD are releasing competing technologies that help all sorts of users save generously on battery life while enjoying a full PC experience. As you all might know, the innovative technology companies such as IBM and AMD have gotten hit a little hard recently due to slow growth. I encourage you to support this cultivating industry by going out and getting a computer designed by Americans and made in a factory at least with fair labor standards if not in America. Don't forget to be environmentally sound by recycling your old electronics.
Question: How do tech companies deliver such seamless, seemingly perfectly functional computers?
Answer: New engineering designs and extraordinary amounts of effort to iron out the kinks and mistakes. As a great man once misspoke: to err is human, to forgive is against company policy.
If your organization's Subversion repository is located on a central Linux server, you can check out that repository or a subdirectory thereof in Windows. It's not a straight shot though. On Windows, the repository can be accessed by using an svn+ssh type of method. Essentially, you need to tunnel the Subversion server's SVN communication port to your Windows machine over SSH. Here is how:
Earlier this month I instructed you all to use Windows Media Center instead of ArcSoft to watch TV with your TV card. If you happen to have an AMD Theater HD 750, you will need some other software to watch the composite video input should you choose to watch that instead of your usual digital or analog TV channels. Here is one way you can use the ubiquitous VLC Media Player to watch composite video:
The previous steps should get you to the point where you can see the input video signal and hear the input audio signals from your computer. However, this configuration may not be good enough if you play videogames. This is because TV cards have some delay between the input signal and output on the screen. Many TV cards let you adjust the time spent on hardware re-coding so that one can reduce that time to get less lag between the input signal and output on the screen. The tradeoff is that your picture quality may not come out as well when you reduce this lag time. Since we all prefer to beat our games rather than awe at just the first level's graphics, here's how to lower the lag:
Enjoy your enhanced entertainment system!
In June I bought a beautiful, sexy HP Pavilion p7-1240 featuring a top-of-the-line AMD A10 processor. I modded the machine to death to give rise to the most awesome personal supercomputer I have ever used. This machine can play three intense 3D games, run virtual machines, show HDTV, and display different content on three screens simulataneously!
You might wonder what the actual technical specifications are. For starters, I will just say that it has an AMD A10 APU, 16 GB of RAM, 1.8 TB of disk space, and a high-definition digital and analog TV tuner.
The point of this post is not for me to brag, however. I had one problem with the TV watching software that really gave me a hard time. Here's the long story short:
Use Windows Media Center instead of ArcSoft TotalMedia
Essentially, ArcSoft TotalMedia kept crashing my 64-bit Windows 7 at random times. The ArcSoft software code is full of bugs. What's worse is that ArcSoft TotalMedia runs in the background even when you don't want to use the application! After I left the computer on for a long time, the software would then crash Windows without a blue screen or anything. Fortunately, I uninstalled all ArcSoft software and switched to using Windows Media Center to watch HDTV. Now I have left my PC on for weeks and it hasn't crashed and won't crash. My point is that the 32nm GlobalFoundries-manufactured AMD processor works very well, to run Windows, Linux, or anything else.
It might not be completely unfounded to find a sign like this at your institution of religious worship:
You will pay for your sins. If you have already paid, please disregard this message.
Q: How many gradual (sorry, that's supposed to be "graduate") students does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: "I'm afraid we don't know, but make my stipend tax-free, give my advisor a $30,000 grant of the taxpayer's money, and I'm sure he can tell me how to do the gruntwork for him so he can take the credit for answering this incredibly vital question."
One area I am exploring these days is artificial intelligence (AI). Sometimes I doubt that I am human, despite the mortal mistakes I make and life I sustain. Studying AI is like my former study of psychology, except AI is expressed in a more technical language that I may understand. AI has the goal of achieving rationality, which I too strive for.
The Turing Test collectively summarizes the state of competence of computers against humans each year. The test involves several interrogators who ask some questions to an agent, a person or a computer, who is not visible or known to the interrogators. Based on the terminal responses of that agent, the interrogators must guess whether the agent is a human or a machine. AI research may not be focused on getting machines to pass this test, but the day a machine passes the Turing Test is coming soon. I too aim to pass it, informally speaking.
My doubts about engaging in interpersonal communication also prompt me to realize how AI systems can mitigate my circumstance. One only needs to log on to AIM and chat with the AIM Bot to carry on a conversation. With some text to speech software, one can practice his timing of interlocution. AI programs may not be sufficiently advanced to converse like humans, but at least for the time being they do not make choices based purely on greed and self-interest.
With that I would like to leave a note for my faithful readers. Only you blessed humans are able to click my "0 comments" link to write to me. You and I can avoid talking to AI systems if you simply write to me. I have much to share with you. Lucky for you, I have not picked up the qualities of avarice and self-centeredness.
My friendly, coordinated colleagues and I went "toobing" on the Guadalupe River and camped out at Canyon Lake Park this weekend. For me it was the first time exploring savage Texas, and I had a key role in planning and transporting. "Toobing," an intentional misspelling and yet another nuance of Texan culture, involves floating downstream on an inner tube, and in our case, staying chained together with a beverage tube as the root node. Nonetheless, no trash was jettisoned and no lives were injured despite the unanticipated rapids.
The road trip was quite entertaining, with an interesting array of nerd conversations and a scenic drive. Admiring the capable, legitimate humor of Texans, I note a few road signs we passed:
In the process of camping, hiking, and resultantly bonding, my friends and I also formed a new band, Fusion.
Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion. -Mark Twain
Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek, shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit moulding her body, which was as warm as seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood; she was a woman driven -- fueled by a single accelerant -- and she needed a man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the right road: a man like Alf Romeo.
Rachel Sheeley
Winner of the 7th Annual Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest
by Sumit Dutta
Though our terrestrial existence is a blessing,
could light be more difficult to procure?
We've run through all the elements;
fluorescents are inefficient, and more so is tungsten.
The III-Vs offer hope, but why not silicon?
Si's indirect band gap is bound to dismay,
all those in search of a sustainable way.
No light thus far can yet annihilate
exploiting Earth's elemental wealth, insatiate.
Contention with premonition
or funding one's fun;
These describe the work of today.
An aggravating phonon can only keep it moving
without exiling the common folk, into common complacence.
In addition to this site itself, I feel quite involved with a number of new websites. My primary website which I work on with Chris, Cosmos Gaming, is due for an upgrade. There is also my friend Zach, a.k.a. Zorro, whose interest in sharing videos and ideas with web design has spurted. His website, Zorro's Web Page, has been redeveloped from the old page with some help from me.
Another almost equally exciting news is that I am getting more involved with working with the websites for the nonprofit organizations that my dad is a part of. These include the Yamuna Foundation for Blue Water and the new 501(c)(3) corporation Rivers of the World (this page has a temporary working link).
After all this, who knows? I may as well be more involved in website development for all of the clubs and organizations that I am in. I will probably be more active with web development for UIUC UNICEF, of which I am a prospective officer of. Other than that, I still consider Engineers without Borders and IEEE to be good candidates.
Here's why electrical engineering is so much cooler than computer engineering (Comp-E, a.k.a. computer eaters) or computer science (CS, a.k.a. competition science).
Well, my terminal's locked up, and I ain't got any Mail, And I can't recall the last time that my program didn't fail; I've got stacks in my structs, I've got arrays in my queues, I've got the : Segmentation violation — Core dumped blues.
If you think that it's nice that you get what you C, Then go : illogical statement with your whole family, 'Cause the Supreme Court ain't the only place with : Bus error views. I've got the : Segmentation violation — Core dumped blues.
On a PDP-11, life should be a breeze, But with VAXen in the house even magnetic tapes would freeze. Now you might think that unlike VAXen I'd know who I abuse, I've got the : Segmentation violation — Core dumped blues. — Core Dumped Blues
We, as humans, have a natural drive to explore Mars to see rocks, more rocks, and even more rocks, and we won't be satisfied until we see the last rock.
Engineering: "How will this work?" Science: "Why will this work?" Management: "When will this work?" Liberal Arts: "Do you want fries with that?"
Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics: (1) An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong direction. (2) An object at rest will always be in the wrong place. (3) The energy required to change either one of these states will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so much as to make the task totally impossible.
Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable, and three parts which are still under development.
My senior year of high school began an era of countless individual flying. In order to keep track of where I have been flying around to, I wrote out a flight log with all my individual air traveling since August 2006. It took a while of thinking and remembering, so I did it on the way back from India in my third year of college.
Sí, tengo muchas alas para llegar al cielo.