Category Archives: General

Class Impressions: Fall09

Posted on 2009-08-27 by pappp

I’m taking two (rumored to be extremely time consuming, hence only two) courses this semester, and in keeping with the before and after impressions from last semester, I’m going to state my impressions and expectations after the first meeting of each, so I have it stored for comparison at the end of the semester. It is interesting to think that I have taken the undergraduate versions of these courses (EE480 and CS450 respectively), so it should be interesting to see how much the graduate versions are enriched (or not).

EE685: Digital Computer Structure/Heath
This is rumored to be the most time consuming class offered by the ECE department at UK, and 1/3 of the grade is derived from a single project. I’ve only had one class with the instructor, and didn’t have a terribly positive experience with him. The biggest day-to-day issue is he has a number of mannerisms that drive me slowly insane (”favorite” example: “In this case” is NOT a flavoring particle). There are few enough English-speaking instructors in this field it would be really wonderful if the native English speakers actually did so. I also find some of his grading policies grating, I once had a concrete example where more points were awarded for syntactically correct, algorithmically incorrect solutions than algorithmically correct syntactically flawed solutions on an exam. This is what highlighting editors are for. The other snag is that the tools we will be using for the big project (Xilinx’s ISE and MentorGraphic’s ModelSim) are both big, hateful pieces of software, which are incredibly ponderous to use, and will do all manner of unpredictable things with your input, sometimes changing behavior after simply restarting the program. I am not looking forward to spending more time with them. Gripes aside, it IS a topic I really, really love, and the opportunity to play with it in depth is highly desirable, and further instruction on the underlying theory should be useful for my research.

CS655: Programming Languages/ Finkel
I took CS450 (same basic course) from the same instructor (who is a VERY interesting person and a fairly notable figure in computing) a few years ago. It was quite a bit of work(program in a new language every 2 weeks on top of the theory!), but it was the CS prefixed class I feel I gained the most from as an undergraduate, so I have very high hopes that this will prove invaluable as well. It appears to be structured the same way: language theory supplanted by rudimentary forays into various examples, which should be fascinating, I just hope the theory is a little more in depth and implementation-focused for the graduate version.

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Birthday Music

Posted on 2009-08-18 by pappp

The world coincidently provided me with a couple of musical birthday presents: Third Eye Blind’s new effort, Ursa Major came out for my birthday (a day earlier than was announced…), and Electric Valentine’s first full length Automatic the next day.

On first listen Ursa Major is… kind of disappointing. It’s not BAD; understand I’ve loved 3eb as long as I’ve been listening to music; the first album I bought when I got my first portable CD player in middle school was Blue, and they have been a standby for me ever since. All of their albums have had something that really moved me: The selftitle was cut with crystallized adolescent angst, Blue was the sound of a burgeoning broadening and discovery of the world, Out of the Vein was pure passion… and in comparison Ursa Major just sounds kind of douchey and self involved. The music itself also seems a little less sophisticated, or at least less polished (they called it “more acoustic” but it’s more than that), especially in the meter of the lyrics. Judged against rock albums in general it really is a good album, but it doesn’t seem quite up to their previous efforts. Maybe it’ll grow on me.

As for Automatic… real bands don’t only release on iTunes. I don’t want AACs, I can’t install iTunes on my (Linux) machine, and I wouldn’t install Apple’s memory-eating crapware even if it were an option. Their previous releases are all on Amazon, this should be too. That said, I ordered a physical copy, and already have a digital copy (I’m not 100% sure the tracks on said copy are the album versions, some of it sounds a little lo-fi). Purchasing complaints aside, its wildly catchy electropop, with rich instrumentation, dark lyrics and adorable delivery. The album sounds a little less energetic than their earlier EP, but it still has that infectious quality that makes me keep catching myself dancing to it. I found their previous project (A Kiss Could Be Deadly) more compelling than Electric Valentine, but it really is great stuff and deserves all the attention it can get, and I’ll be listening to it for some time to come.

Yay music.

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22!

Posted on 2009-08-17 by pappp

I turn 22 years old today, and it occurs to me that if I follow the obvious path of least resistance, or anything like it, I may never have to do anything I don’t feel like again. Obviously not on the day-to-day scale, but on the macro scale of career and lifestyle and the like, it has passed conceivable and headed off toward likely that I can continue to learn about and play with things that interest me (which certainly includes education itself, and, based on conversations with faculty that have done this sort of thing, can also include deciding I’d really like to do other quasi-related things that interest me like HCI or demographic-scale computational sociology), and make a comfortably self-supporting life in the kind of environment I enjoy out of it.
I think this means I’m doing it right. I feel very lucky.

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Woodland Arts Fair Peoplewatching

Posted on 2009-08-16 by pappp

The Woodland Arts Fair has been running this weekend, about a block from my house, and I’ve been wandering down to peoplewatch (I really want to know the etymology for that term) whenever I get bored. The art itself was…the same honestly pretty awful crap as every year. Lots of trinket-y crap, some classic caught-in-the-moment scams (”Buy a little square of this painting” seems cool until you get home with an expensive 1×1” paint-splattered canvas square to …throw in a drawer or something). There were of course some genuine artisan pieces out, which were naturally out of the price range of any normal human being. That said I did spot Lee Todd and some other people who really might buy that kind of thing wandering around, so I suppose it isn’t a waste.
Art festivals are excellent places for peoplewatching, they have everything from sugar-wired little kids (best: alpha-child caused every kid in one of the playgrounds to start screaming) to crazy old people trundling around with walkers (best: I missed it, but I am told there was an old woman best described as “Shoe leather in a bikini top” browsing around), and every sort of weirdo in between. Another fun phenomena is that my Hawaiian shirt habit is in no way out of place there, although I’m about 20 years to young to fit in with the expected demographic for it. One worrying detail is that I’m totally losing my ability to guess ages; I’m not sure if it’s that I’m getting older, or that I’m out of practice or what, but I was reliably taking first impressions that were grossly incorrect: the “16-year-old” that set off a mental jailbait alarm…who on second inspection holding a beer. The “Probably about a college freshman”… who’s mate is pushing a stroller with a relatively old child in it. I’m sort of curious if there is some way to recalibrate that.

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Thinking~>Writing

Posted on 2009-08-12 by pappp

Some reading and writing that started as thoughts from going shooting a few times with some firearm enthusiast friends has evolved into something of a Writing Project about various exploratory examples looking at human competency, polarization in politics, statistics and sampling in human populations, and other things healthy normal people like myself like think about in our spare time. I’m enjoying writing it, I’m enjoying researching it, I’m really enjoying thinking about it; I’m going to put up at least three parts of it as I finish and polish them (which might be a while, y’all know how back burner projects go). Hopefully someone will enjoy reading it. I even have clever titles for some parts, like “Dangerous Hobbies, Competent Humans”, and “(Gun) Politics: Loud Liars From the Fringes.” …Yeah, I’m such an academic that when I get intrigued by something I go off and write what is effectively a research paper about it… for fun. I figure other people might find it interesting, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll manage to start some fun arguments.

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LLVM FTW

Posted on 2009-08-05 by pappp

I’ve settled the direction for the next step in my master’s project this summer: I will be using the LLVM Compiler Infrastructure as the backbone of my LARs compiler.
The decision to work with an existing compiler rather than going off and writing tools from scratch carries some pretty significant advantages. The biggest is that some of the dark corners of the C specification make writing a complete, useful C fronted a very, very daunting task, so in order to not be compiling a “toy” language (or cheating with CIL or something) it is nearly the only choice(C, or C-like, is the obvious and preferred choice for input language, but pretty much all languages have similar concerns). Using an existing compiler also saves writing a whole bunch of ancillary code: in addition to the fronted, features for manipulating DAGs and performing optimizations and such are all there to be used and modified. Unfortunately, using LLVM also binds me to some design decisions made by other LLVM developers, and potentially exposes me to upstream weirdness. Thus far, I have found no serious cases of either, but suspect later in the process some interesting thorns will appear in my side as I more fully understand LLVM’s innards.
LLVM is a compiler infrastructure, rather than merely a complier because of it’s modular design. This modular design is also what makes it most attractive (among existing free, open source compilers) for my purposes, for a huge variety of reasons. The three big ones are:
First, the modular codebase helps with accessability. In many traditional full-scale compilers, the learning curve is nearly unsurmountable. In particular, the dominant free open source compiler suite, GCC, has a learning period measured in months or years before one can make substantial modifications, and requires mathematical concepts like the delta function to accurately express the learning curve.
Secondly, modularity allows me to, in a relatively straightforward way, drop in a new back end that emits code suitable for (but not complete, it’s going to take one HELL of a fancy assembler to be useful) for the proposed LARs design.
Third, the modularity extends unusually high into the structure of LLVM, which allows me to simply turn off, replace, or modify optimizations and features which are inappropriate for an architecture with LARs’ peculiar features.
My start on applying the (fairly thorough) manual for porting LLVM to a new architecture has already shaken out some new ambiguities, concerns, and omissions (some intentional) in the LARs design. This has lead to several sessions on one of the more exciting (in my twisted mind) parts of working with compilers and architectures: making and studying high-level decisions that affect both the hardware and software in a system, in potentially complex ways. Onward to more exciting adventures in computing and academia!

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FOCUS!

Posted on 2009-06-20 by pappp

This is now the longest consecutive span I’ve not been enrolled in a class since the summer between my sophomore and junior years of highschool (in Kentucky, you can take college courses for keeps after your junior year. I did.) I’ve forgotten how to make myself do anything while living a fully unstructured existance. I can’t focus on anything. I’ve lost my drive to be productive… and oddly, I haven’t lost my reserve, so I’m not partying, I’m just frittering. Mostly on the interwebs. It’s kind of freaking me out. That said, it is rather relaxing, even if I would like to be doing other things, or letting loose for a bit(either would do nicely). The failure to blog is related to the failure to focus; I haven’t been forming or sitting down to articulate the kind of cogent meditation on topics that make for good blog posts.
Projects-wise, In addition to the pile of projects which have been mentioned in the past on here, almost none of which are complete, I’ve picked up an additional physical computing effort. The collexion folks have a bourbon barrel to be gussied up for a charity auction, in the same vein as the various horrible fiberglass animals that have been popular for such things. Being electronics people, we are making it into an electronic, musical bourbon barrel. The hoops will be touch sensors, connected to solenoid strikers with xylophone tiles (keys? I’m not really a music person). Someone else has taken the lead on design, but I’m now getting involved for the “Making it work” and “Making sure it won’t hurt anyone” processes. I’m hoping having one project with some form of external pressure will help me to focus on others. In a related note, I’m half-seriously becoming tempted to start carrying a pocket-sized DMM around with me. Practically every time I’ve been out of the house this week there has been something I wanted to poke with a DMM to figure out. I’m refraining from looking seriously into finding a baby (pocket size) DMM because 1. I already carry too much crap around with me and 2. Even I would fell like a horrible dork doing such a thing.
On the topic of dorkery (dorking?), the great summer reading project continues; I finally have my sought after copy of Joseph Weizenbaum’s Computer Power and Human Reason, and have set to it. I’m a little afraid from the portion that I’ve read that it won’t live up to my expectations; some of the portion I’ve read reads like Weizenbaum covering his ears and chanting “I want there to be a soul, I want there to be a soul”, and a few of the “Can/Should computers do this” questions posed in the book (written in the mid 70s) have long since come to pass, and worked out fine. It is however, as I understand, still the seminal work on human/technology interaction, and is therefore well worth reading simply because it is the framework for discourse.

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Lolita

Posted on 2009-06-08 by pappp

I finally finished Lolita, and it really is fabulous. I haven’t had time to read long pieces of involved fiction in far too long, and this was a real winner. The prose is unbelievably excellent, and the latter chapters perfectly convey the (perhaps disquietingly familiar) sensation of “Oh shit, I think I’m losing it.” For people considering reading, the tight prose means it is not a quick read, so you might want to invest the two hours in watching one of the movie adaptations first, I’ve only seen the newer one, and, while naturally lacking in richness, I thought it conveyed the texture of the story quite well.

I usually hate defacing books, even my own, but while reading I’ve dogeared and margin-marked about half a dozen passages I’m particularly found of in my copy. I’ve actually memorized the opening paragraph, partly for sport and partly as a memory exercise (I’ve always been terrible at rote memorization, I remember things by collapsing their meanings); the prose here is complicated and significant enough that it resists my usual reduction. A few of the other lines that I really, really enjoy (”Nuggets” in the parlance of my peculiar senior English teacher):

“Despite my manly looks , I am horribly timid. My romantic soul gets all clammy and shivery at the thought of running into some awful unpleasantness”

*Waves excitedly at the familiarity* I’m pretty contextually shy, so most people who don’t know me well only see one mode or the other, and assume that’s how I am. It makes for some interesting double-takes.

“…and the red sun of desire and decision (the two things that create a live world) rose higher and higher…”

I just like the phrasing for the process of enacting one’s desires.

“The very attraction immaturity has for me lies not so much in the limpidity of pure young forbidden fairy child beauty as in the security of a situation where infinite perfections fill the gap between the little given and the great promised — the great rosegray never-to-be-had.”

I love the expression of the (again, disquietingly familiar) sensation of almost preferring to remain in the perfect purity of potential instead of plunging oneself into the ambiguities of reality. (The pedophilia isn’t the familiar part, I don’t do that, although some people might snarkily invoke my reproducible taste for the slight and strange in argument.)

One of my favorite features is the author’s retrospective On a Book Titled Lolita appended to later printings, which is almost better than the novel itself: Nabokov, in his perfect prose, provides a humorous, high brow, critique of criticism from publishers received in attempting to get the novel published, which develops naturally into a clever social commentary. In particular, it contains all the jadedness toward classical literary analysis that keeps me away from the literary in any formal capacity.

(I’m partially conscious that I’m trying to emulate Nabokov’s peculiar alliterative prose here, I enjoy doing so too much to try to correct it. At this point it’s probably good for me anyway.)

In a partially related matter, I’ve been listening to Bif Naked (Who is an (adopted) child of a former UK professor. Colorful company.) while I finished Lolita. I got Lucky stuck in my head from my previously mentioned recent fascination with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is really a pretty typical example of Joss Whedon’s excellent taste for integrating pop music into his TV projects. It’s a bit melodramatic and punk-ish for my usual tastes, but suits the reading.

Perhaps my next post will be about one of my various technological projects, I’m finding that I most want to blog about things which are outside the mundane for me, while I know that really at this point in my life the technical endeavors are the novelties, and the novel amusements are comparatively mundane.

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Family Visit

Posted on 2009-05-30 by pappp

I’m up in Madison, WI joining a gathering of my mother’s extended family for the week. My mother’s side of the family is great fun for me; almost the entire family is over-educated, hyperfunctional, and a little bit snarky, just like the people I associate with when left to my own devices.
I’m currently spending the afternoon/evening holding down the fort; keeping the doors open and track of the whereabouts of the family, and setting up for dinner with ingredients as they appear, which means we will be having a boneless leg of lamb, slit and packed with garlic wedges and fresh rosemary (baked), fresh green beans with portabellini, and long grain white rice. I spent alot of yesterday helping with a proper (fussy, tedious) country ham and scalloped potatoes, but there were more cooks yesterday. I don’t often get to do large meal for large group type cooking, so I’m enjoying myself.
I’m also continuing my reading spree; I finished Outliers on the way down (the part of the trip not spent driving through disaster-grade construction+wide object transport). It had a very disappointing ending, the earlier part of the book had interesting observations… the last chapter was dedicated to trite, weak conclusions based on anectdotes. I enjoyed the useful part.
Now I’m on to Lolita. I’m finding it unusually intense to read because I vastly prefer hearing (or at least reading under my breath) Nabakov’s prose. I might consider an audiobook of it, even though I usually find them frusterating, just to save my throat. I tend toward short stories for the tight prose that even most excellent authors can’t maintain over any substantal length; Lolita isn’t quite the same, but it is really excellent stylized writing. I also started the Consciousness Very Short Introduction since it’s a PDF on the n810, and thusalways on hand.
I also found a used copy of GEB (and some other desirables) walking through UW Madison’s bookstore… which is indeed the kind of place I go for fun.

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Relating

Posted on 2009-05-26 by pappp

I’ve been reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, continuing my quest to take advantage of having some time to read and culture myself. Like all of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, it is very nifty, but also frustratingly lacking in rigor. The really, really irritating part of this one (to me) is the shifty metrics he uses for success; he poses that somewhere around an IQ of 130, the competitive advantage flattens out, which I actually am not disinclined to believe. The proposed reason for this cutoff is that somewhere around the quoted 130 IQ, individuals’ increasingly weakened ability to relate to the world catches up to their intellectual advantage; this seems entirely reasonable. The problem is that this conclusion is based almost exclusively financial metrics for success; my observation has always been that the very bright tend to have a pretty strong predisposition for taking positions that are more personally than financially rewarding (he does admit to the problem. He just doesn’t do anything about it). Conversely, the best part of Outliers for me is contemplating the group of gifted kids I grew up with as samples for the described phenomena; we so match.
Sadly, one of the better matching points is the “gifted kids have trouble relating to others” portion. I’ve been feeling it more than usual lately, I blame seeing the dwindling collection of old (GT) friends passing through as the summer begins for starting it. Now it’s mostly exhibiting as frequent bouts of the “alone in a crowd” sensation most times I’ve been out of late (with one surprising exception…hurray cute smart girls, boo deeply ingrained shyness). I’ve actually heard similar remarks from a few of said old friends as well. This probably also relates fairly directly to both my failure to post anything for over a week, and my recent urge to watch through Buffy. Theres nothing quite like watching a show based around metaphors which gratuitously translate personal issues into genuine otherworldly (stabable) daemons to soothe the soul….

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