ThePanda

So I did start writing this entry earlier today, and I realized I was going to pass judgment on Park City without actually seeing or walking around, and that would have been bad, I guess, not that much has changed. Hmm well OK I did go for a longish walk (rather long, I was initially looking for food, then for other things, and I kept getting lost, seems to be a familiar situation :)), and in someways it is still too early to make comments, I know no one here, yet, or perhaps this is how it’s going to be for the rest of the three weeks, though that seems unlikely, I did get some hellos across, met my roommate, seems I have problems melding with roommates, current one is asleep, has been half asleep since he came in, which while completely understandable is sorta sad, and umm I don’t know, I guess we got off to a rocky start, or I believe we did, hmm that is to be seen, still trying to figure out where exactly Rider college is. I wish I bump into the Harvard/Yale people soon, pretentious as this may sound, at least past experiences with people from their have been positive, to say the least. Hmm well at least in someways Park City is exactly as Providence was, it doesn’t get dark until late, something I have at various times found strange, wonderful, irritating and annoying, it really isn’t that bad, just that I am not used to it. Hmm, OK in terms of just being there, Park City is gorgeous, it is all these mountains, some of them still capped with what looks like remnants of snow, beautiful trees, and really cool skies, it however suffers from problems because of these same characters, that doesn’t sound right I know, so let me exemplify what I mean. Providence, and every other American city/place I have been to has been characterized by an automatic inclination of people to walk, a presence of cars, but still a large mass of pedestrians, closely spaced things, and somewhat of a safe illusion. Park City, I guess bearing some similarities to other mid-western towns is spread out to an extent where it takes like a mile of walking to see some form of civilization outside of where you are living, it is characterized by huge gorgeous avenues, broad streets, beautiful cars, and what looks like an apparent absence of any kind of pedestrians, which is good in some ways, on my way over I was thinking about how the landscape resembles the beautiful landscape many racing simulators seem to copy, but when you don’t have a car it makes things weird to say the least. I really like the outside, and would love to walk around, and every now and then a few pedestrians do suddenly emerge from nowhere (there however are lots and lots of cyclists, something about this being cycling time in Park City), but it is by and large a city characterized by people driving big, fast/loud/gas guzzling cars, and cruising around, and walking, except probably for whatever hiking is done in the trails is conspicuously absent. Oh as for the mormons, much like the rest of the people, I am still to run into any of them, the southern drawl however seems less conspicuous here than it did in Atlanta, kind of interesting.

In some ways I guess being here isn’t as bad nor as exciting as I was imagining it to be, for one it’s kind of nice, it’s a new place away from Providence, and a nice way to see the world I guess, and well as a friend put it on her LJ, it really won’t do to dwell on a place, the world has to be saved (hmm though I distinctly remember disliking the thought of doing anything with the specific intention of saving the world, the world being saved would in most cases be nothing more than another one of the consequences for whatever action was taken), and well in a way I guess I want to explore more of the world, and I guess hat is exactly what I am doing here, sitting here in a hotel room, typing this out on a desk, with a half read copy of an article titled “Invariance and Selectivity in the Ventral Visual Pathway” sitting next to me is perhaps not what I envisioned when I was thinking about this entire exploration thing, and wearing badges proclaiming in loud, uninspiring/fear inducing letters my name, is perhaps one of those things I wasn’t planning on taking along on any such trips of adventure, but I guess it makes an OK replacement to my conspicuously absent utility knife.

Current question on my mind (some of which would perhaps be answered before this goes online, the “computer room” and the wireless router seem to be dead until tomorrow at 8 AM, so this will probably go up sometime later tomorrow night, once I am done with things, and have free time), include questions about what this entire “biological math” thingamajig is, why there are more grad students here than undergrads, where the rest of the undergrads are, how humans segment images (OK that is from back in Providence :P), why has my roommate been sleeping for the past four or more hours, what does that mean to rest in the night, and most importantly when will I manage to convince a few people to walk down to the hiking trail with me, really don’t want to go there alone, though given a few days, and if faced with a suitable lack of interest from people, I might just do it myself.

MD-88’s are good, I am impressed by them, even though I have always believed that as aircrafts which are hardly found outside of the US they might be worse than Boeings or Airbuses, and I am surprised to say that I rather liked the way MD-88s are configures, especially in the extreme aft section (which is where I was sitting, near the tail end exit), and even though it usually goes against my instincts to pick a seat that far back in an aircraft (leg room, though I picked this one because there was a gallery right in front of the seat, thus giving me space, though the MD-88 was mostly empty, I shifted back a row, and had one of the three seat clusters to myself), and it seemed to be a great plane, I was sitting right next to the twin tail engines, like I was practically looking at them, and yet there was hardly any vibration coming through, hmm I like that plane. Airports experienced today are a different matter though, hmph, airports seem to have an innate ability to disappoint.

OK more outdoor time, I guess, I am bored, I need the internet or the outdoors to blow off this excess energy, which I shouldn’t have seeing as I haven’t eaten much, hmph.

Next morning: OK so I have definitely met two professors, two grad students, and two teachers, still haven’t run into any undergrads, but that I guess is to be expected, seeing as the first undergrad summer school thing starts up at like 9:40, there really is little reason for most people to show up. After all if Brown has taught me one thing, it is that undergrads sleep :).

Hmm, more exploring needs to be done sometime soon :P.

Ze Panda
PS: Answers on the entire biological math thing are stilla waited, if evidence from today is to be believed I probably won’t ever.
PPS: Times for me, until whenever I leave this place are -2 whatever it shows on the post.

So I realize I haven’t written in a while, really it’s because I am busy, doing “research”. The quotes are up there because what I am doing now feels nothing like my “idealized” image of research, but is pretty fun nevertheless, and most people go ooh when I try and explain what I am doing, even though most don’t care to go into too much depth, and hence never realize some of the utter oldness of what I am doing. But then in someways I am trying to build on this guys work (more about said guy later, I have been trying to read one of his books, and hence have comments about him), and so far a lot of my work simply involves better implementing what he has or has tried to implement. Currently, as I write this, I am mildly entertained by thoughts of learning algorithms, and highly irritated by the fact that I have absolutely no idea why this isn’t working the way it’s supposed to work. Wait correction, it does work like it’s supposed to work, just in an extremely exact way, and in a world of inexactness, we need it to work more inexactly. To put that into context I want it to work with data which umm is imperfect, and I wish it did that more correctly than it does now. Research however is nice in other ways, for one I really don’t have fixed hours (umm I am not being paid, that might be a contributing factor), so it’s nice, I get to think or do whatever, whenever I want, and ya, that is sort of nice, though post the Newport trip I took like 2 weeks ago, I really haven’t used this too much, and umm seeing as I have ended up in front of a computer, in the CIT for extended period of times on both Saturday and Sunday, I guess it doesn’t really make that much of a difference. But then again this place is air conditioned, unlike my apartment and the outside in general, and while it doesn’t matter today, it was 90 (fahrenheit, that is 32 for all the saner metric using folks out there :)), and umm that really is quite hot without an air conditioner or a fan (says me, and yes I do come from Delhi).

So yes about Newport, I went to Newport, the weekend before the last one, and that was kind of fun, I got to take the cliff walk (being improperly dressed for the beach, I didn’t quite go to the beach, though it is open), and stare, or rather gawk at all the 100 million dollar mansions, which I realized I could not enter due to a lack of sufficient funds, well it’s like 15 bucks to enter one of those darn houses, but it was nice, I got to see the houses which featured in my architecture class (the buildings of the American Gilded age), got to walk upwards of 5 miles in the heat, almost dehydrating myself (didn’t quite carry water with me, was stupid, didn’t realize big mansions don’t necessarily have grocery stores around the corner), got to see the starting point of the America’s Cup races, some really cool boats (hmm me thinks me needs to get one of ‘em boats), and umm generally take a whirlwind tour of Newport, while feeling very conscious of the fact that I was probably the only person playing tourist at Newport without a group of any sort. Hmm well it was Brown’s fault in someways…

I am sure thanks to extensive Slashdot coverage, most people have read about IBM’s project for growing artificial neocortical columns, and seeing as that is somehow related to what I am doing (umm no wait, not related, it’s like 10000000000x more complex, and perhaps more impressive, I just like to think it’s somewhat similar), and umm because it’s IBM, and Apple just dumped them, and I am not happy about Apple dumping them, I say it sounds kind of cool. Oh yeah I also realize I never mentioned anything about Apple going Intel, well I am over it, but I still don’t like it, I like my G4s, and I like G5s, and I am not quite sure what’s the entire deal with going back to 32 bits, like I know 64 bits don’t mean much for most people, but like even in terms of bragging power, the darn Athlon 64 lying next to me and the Powermac G5 behind, seems to have more that umm the proposed Mactels, or perhaps they’ll use x86-64, or perhaps this is just a joke.

Many years ago (I don’t remember when, I remember it being generally 2000ish, or before, could be wrong), when the human genome project appeared to be reaching its Celera induced, shot-gunned end, with Time, Nature and everyone else reporting on the painful period of compromises between Venter and Watson, I remember reading all these tales of how Watson could act like this extremely arrogant guy. Then earlier last year, after Crick’s demise, I was trying to hammer together an eulogy to Crick for a friend of my father’s and again I came across all this nice junk about Watson. So as a part of my research, I was asked to read this rather weird book by guy named George Hawkins, famous for founding PalmOne and Handspring, and then going into neuroscience, and surprisingly his book has comments from Watson amongst other people (hmm, I am not quite sure that’s surprising, I know Crick went into something of brain science, don’t quite know about Watson), and so with some trepidation (there were other reasons too), I begin reading this book, and surprise, he sounds exactly like what I imagined (and seemed to inferred from the few Watson authored things I have read) Watson does, and I find that freakish, and umm I am not a big fan of that kind of writing, mostly because it makes me feel uneasy. Umm well more than that makes me uneasy about Hawkins, and well I didn’t really like his student/collaborators code, which is sort of weird. Until earlier this year, I never really commented my code, something about being hardcore, remembering what I am writing, and then I got really used to commenting my code, down to the level that I feel really really bad reading uncommented code. I guess this is a good thing™ in general, but umm ya, sort of weird.

Anyhooo, lunch time…

Ze Panda

Not having a net connection in my room is the least of my current problems, there is the entire issue of having no actual room lights, and instead relying on a lamp. Hmm I guess this is what I get for picking an apartment in a really really nice place for real cheap. Like it isn’t right next to the campus, and is a fair walk, but it looks better than most of my friends apartments, and feels safe (it better, seeing as I am stuck with the one door which has to feel insecure, like it locks, and you need a key to enter, but I am not really sure about the lock holing up to much of an assault).

Hmm the past few days have pretty much been spent outside of my room, until I need to sleep, and then I go back and sleep, on the mattress which is meant to act as a bed, not that that is not comfortable, and seeing as I have my sleeping bag out, and the way it works out, it’s sort of being on a camping trip, whee fun. I was trying to convince someone that we should pitch a tent or something, pull out sleeping bags, and sleep on the main green at some point of time, if only because it’s random, and would be fun, but I guess I could do something similar in Park City, where in general there are camp grounds and “pretty” gorges to do so. Hmm I hope Park City is good, for one I need shoes before I go to Park City, my current, not so old shoes are practically collapsing into themselves, and I regret not having a second pair of shoes, and using this for like everything I ever did. On one hand I can see reasons for their collapse, I have pretty much been wearing them every waking minute of my life since mid-September, I have walked more with them than with any of my previous shoes, they were comfortable shoes, and comfort I am told, generally entails a support structure that’s more prone to collapse, and ya. Also walking through all that snow (winter break after I got back), ankle high water (end of Thanksgiving and every other day when Providence decided flooding up would be nice), and everything else probably took their toll, oh well shoe shopping…

As I sit in the CIT on a Saturday morning, as the lights are off on the main foyer/sitting area, where people would sit and wait for Math 35 classes, Brown doesn’t seem deserted, there are people here, unfortunately not in the dorms, which is bad, dorms are good if only because you have to take care of fewer things, and you never have to worry about telling people that your internet connection has an upper bound on the speed. OK to be quite truthful nearly all connections have upper bounds, but you don’t really care about it as much if you live in a dorm. In general none of my arguments make sense, but quite simply I don’t like living in the apartment I do currenrtly, not as much as I loved living in EmWool. Even though there were few people in EmWool I really ever talked to, no one had an early adopter advantage, everyone had equal amounts of information, and hence it’s easier for everyone to adapt. Here there are people who’ve been living here for years, they know where everything is, and if I never run into people, it’s kind of hard for me to ask them about stuff. There are two kitchens, but inexplicably only one has a refrigerator, it took me upwards of 20 minutes to figure this out, and I am still unsure about whether it was OK to put my stuff where I did. Oh well, I am past caring about it right now, it after all is little more than sandwich stuff, and it doesn’t really occupy that much space. But except for the apartment, living in Providence is quite fun, and is something I would like to try out for an entire summer at some point of time, with actual, non-temporary research and stuff, and perhaps a closer apartment.

Hmm oh well, don’t have much more to write at this instant of time, so yup, there you go…

Ze Panda

So yes, I needed to have taken something which dealt with probability, and something which dealt with neuroscience. No wait honestly I don’t, though it might have helped. Hmm I however do realize I haven’t hacked through anything majorly complex in years, probably since I did the entire thing with the ill-fated OS ideas. Hmm it was commencement today, and the last person I knew really well at Providence, left, now all I know is that there are people I know, though I have not the foggiest idea about where they may be. Well I have been told more people are coming back on Tuesday, and again I know some of these people, so this might still work out, hmm I wish this were easier.

It’s fascinating how unpredictable New England’s weather can be, well in most cases, unpredictability itself is fascinating, but oh yes the weather, it affect everyone. Hmm wait, why does the weather matter, or why doesn’t it matter, the days after all go on as usual, a few weeks in New England, and you realize it really isn’t worth giving up on things to do because of the weather. But then there is commencement, and people would be sad if it rained during the Campus Dance, or during commencement itself, well just to provide them with a window of opportunity, we have a day and a half of bright sunshine, followed by more rain, it was exactly a day and a half, we had a thunderstorm (or the closest I have ever seen to one while in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations) at 4 PM, barely hours after commencement ended, and people made their way back home. Fascinating…

Also yesterday, along with meeting one of my father’s friends, seeing upwards of two dozen gowned people, wishing we had the entire graduation thing, and academic regalia for school, and watching it pour cats and dogs, I joined the crowds, gave in to popular culture and watched Episode 3, umm no wait, I actually didn’t need to do any of that, I planned on watching Episode 3 either ways, seeing as I watched episodes 1 and 2, and had already watched the old trilogy, and seeing as I kind of liked the entire Star Wars thing. I shall also join the crowds in not being hyper-critical (as opposed to hypocritical), but criticizing it mildly. I felt it was a good movie, in someways, however parts of it were really overdone, and at least I walked out feeling as if more time should have been spent exploring parts of the Star Wars universe, and less time spent on some of the things that repeatedly popped up throughout the entire movie. Also being in a theater watching this was sort of interesting, I have never really seen as many people at any of the movie theaters at the mall, never been faced with a time when entire rows of seats are not available for the taking, or when people have had to stand at the entrance and try and figure out where they would like to sit, sort of interesting, probably also a result of today being memorial day.

For all those people who were in Providence, and will return to Providence at the end of three months (summer, forced exile, same difference), the friendly neighborhood Cold Stone is now open, and people who told me about Cold Stones were right, it’s awesome, not because it has better ice cream, but because they do things in front of you, and there are so many cool things you can do (replace bananas with more pineapples for instance). I however shall first digress, it has come to my notice that I love ice creams with coconut in them, something I haven’t really seen back home, and I am sort of disappointed, seeing as coconuts, or umm bad, not fresh coconuts anyways, are ubiquitous in their presence across the length and breadth of India, and umm they are cheap and hence can be used in ice cream. Having said that, as informed by my parents, who often talked about how ice creams were in the UK, bananas seem to be a strangely popular constituent of ice creams in the UK. Well the Americans seemed to have adopted similar customs, I am not sure which side of the Atlantic the idea originated in (and I am sure there shall be much controversy if this was ever researched), but, and the fact that most ice creams which contain things I like, also happen to contain a little bit of banana (something about the tropics being associated with the bright yellow fruit), is somewhat disturbing. Now don’t get me wrong, while I may not eat as many bananas as the next person in the dining halls, I do like bananas, they being one of the few fruits I would even consider eating without complaint (don’t even try apples), but I am sorry I am not a big fan of bananas in ice cream, and given the option of having my favorite kinds of ice cream minus the bananas, I would be really happy, but ya ice cream being ice cream, bananas or no bananas, I eat chunky monkey (looking at you Mr. Ben and Mr. Jerry). Cold Stone however does allow me to have stuff other than bananas, leading to a better ice cream in my opinion. For the uninitiated (and I was one :D), Cold Stone is based quite literally around a cold stone, a cooled counter, where they mix dollops of ice cream with stuff like coconut and pineapple, and then give it to you in a cup. Hmm, OK I am not sure which I like better, but Cold Stone was cool, and it was good, and ya, that’s about it.

This has to be published today, for today I shift to Hidden Street, which is not really hidden, and after Meeting Street, doesn’t qualify as much of a street, rather is an alley. Hmm, I shifted almost all my stuff yesterday, so the shift really isn’t a shift, just me giving my key back, and moving on. Well my apartment seems to have bright blue keys, somewhat amusing, and unlike my keys for EmWool, they say nothing about the keys not being duplicable, or anything, and the key itself is clearly something, someone duplicated, so I could have a set, oh well fun times lie ahead, things happen today:).

Ze Panda