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[02 Jul 2009|11:27pm] |
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I'm 21 now, and as my automatic Internet self-censor reared up to remind not to mention alcohol on my blog, it took less than a second to realize that I'M 21 NOW! I could go out on the street right now carrying a bottle of... stuff that would have made me more nervous to carry two days ago than a pocketful of big knives.
To be brutally honest, not enough has changed. I don't just mean from turning 21 - that would be silly to expect to change anything. What I mean is that for all of the awesome that accrued to me while I was self-destructing, I'm still sitting around for too much crap. It dawned on me that I'm surrounded by beautiful women and yet remain uninitiated. I sit and think about this and then I blog about it. It's silly. All of the alternatives are of course also silly. Damnit.
I want power. I don't necessarily need it now but hate the uncertainty. I perceive time weirdly so death seems just around the corner. I feel like a failure in half the things I do and worry constantly that I am not a genius but a crackpot. I need to be a genius, because I need power. And just going to Swarthmore isn't nearly enough.
I put quite a bit of pressure on myself. Partially it's an instinct that my father gave me, but not every gift is a blessing. I can't deal with external pressure. I freak out but not as much as I used to. I have hope now and it is quite intoxicating.
Blues dancing has power. Kinaesthetic connection = power. The power of connection and empathy, the telepathic bond. It's also full of sex, but that's beside the point. I don't bother to watch pornography, but I'm completely obsessed with dancing.
I'm afraid that I will short out the photodiodes or kick someone in the balls or stab out my own eye. The demon part of me really wants to start a fire right now, and I want that freedom. For the same reason I find it hard to spar, enter the lab or ask a girl out. I'm afraid that once I open the valve, the jet of water will cut me in half.
I'm strangely no longer afraid to eat dinner alone in the open. I guess I have nothing to lose - a crap social scene that I'm walking away from in 2 months anyway.
Unlike the past, I'm actually doing stuff now. This is good. This is hope.
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[26 Jun 2009|12:46am] |
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music |
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Modest Mouse - The Ocean Breathes Salty |
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Mind oscillates between satisfaction and fear, but more on the satisfaction side today. Strange how I'm not that much less busy than I was before, and I still don't sleep quite as much as I probably should. The difference is what I spend my time on, be it blues dancing or computer programming. I enjoy what I do. I look forward to work for once. Maybe even enough to get me to go further in physics, but probably not enough for grad school. I sort of like writing code but could imagine happiness in its absence. The physicists tell me I could be one of them if I want. It's good to have the option.
I still have tons of nervous episodes and "nightmare world" trips, but I can see them happening now. Sometimes it's like shooting fish in a barrel; others it's an acknowledgement that the demons will be here for a while, but I can fight them. Junior year seems to have ended just in time not to kill me, and I am noticeably stronger than before it. I don't know how much smarter than I am, but I can tell that I'm more aggressive, meaner, tougher. More charismatic too, more courageous, more willing toward insanity, and most of all having the self-assurance to go forward and take the opportunity when it's sitting in front of me.
Yesterday, I danced blues and discovered a whole new, beautiful section of Philly. I'm really starting to love this city.
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| Awesome ++ |
[20 Jun 2009|11:25pm] |
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music |
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Basement Jaxx - Rendez Vu |
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The coolest shit ever:
Video in a webpage that isn't even embedded:
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/06/connecting-html5-video/
Do it yourself biology:
http://www.openwetware.org/wiki/Blogs
Pirate television stations taking over the abandoned analogue spectrum:
http://omgimon.tv/drupal/faq
I appear to have received a travel grant to attend a conference in computational biophysics this summer. Swarthmore college intellectual property policy appears to let me keep all the code I write this summer in physics research. We are going to take apart an old printer and hack it to print lipids onto microscope slide covers. I found an old computer that turned out to be a quad-core Phenom - not so old after all.
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[08 Jun 2009|10:57pm] |
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music |
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Basement Jaxx - Rendez Vu |
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A bag of grapes sits atop my computer. I know that it's safe, even if it doesn't sound that way.
What have I been doing?
Swing dancing. I wish now that I had taken up this quest to become a blues master before I'd even gone to college, because I would have been the paces dance champion by default. Even if I never bothered to go there. Because I believe the dance form that people do here to be a poor excuse for what is meant to be blues - if only they knew. Maybe I should tell them? But maybe they will see it differently. Funny how as a kid I never appreciated blues or jazz. Even now, some of its primary rythms depress my inconceivably - but not when I'm dancing. Beats once boringly random now seem intricate, more complexly patterned than the mainstream subcultures with which I started.
Creative writing club. I write sci-fi. Weird stuff mostly. I'm co-president of the club now and just organized our first online summer meeting. My writing varies now. Sometimes I can typographically shit the page. Other days I pull something good from nowhere. It's vastly better than a year ago. Usually.
One thing I love about now is that I can finally organize something and have it actually happen. Gives me new hope.
Work still slow. Thinking that there's a great market for metaresearch - a term I shamelessly made up for the process of optimizing the functioning of actual research. Of the two labs I have worked for, both would seemingly benefit from the software and hardware automation I have planned. Now to see if I can not only build it but keep it.
Apps for America is going well. I now have a Google map with randomly placed flags. Soon it will be clear why I'm doing this, but I shan't ruin the suspense yet.
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[07 Jun 2009|02:02am] |
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music |
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Basement Jaxx - Raindrops |
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A cold can make anything worse. Strangely, its affects become more pronounced during sedentary periods. We were supposed to hack a printer, but EVS seems to have locked me out of storage and with it my old salvaged crap. Work moves slow. Seeing quantum dots under a microscope in the dark, plus the darkened telescope room of astro's open house reminded me of the old coolness of science. More confusion.
Philadelphia hackerspace on Saturday. Twas an adventure. Kinda cool - they have a 3D printer and lots of Arduino boards. Sucked to have a cold in that building - the crumminess of the building exascerbated the sickness. Probably going to 8static on July 11th.
Memory returning. Sickness worrying but 6 months overdue. Laundry and room cleaning remain unaccomplished, but I now have a wireless keyboard and the big monitor set up. The old digital camera works too.
I'm slowly establishing that I am 1) brilliant 2) batshit. I'm also just weird.
Rage + lust. Thinking it's time to cut some more chains and question a few inhibitions, since I'm starting to like my theoretical evil self better than the me of the now.
Learning from mistakes. Adjusting and adapting. It's all easier now after what happened before. Seeing why other people win more than I. Assimilating.
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| This Year in Recap |
[30 May 2009|04:16pm] |
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music |
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Sufjan Stevens - Chicago |
] |
Regrets:
-fencing tournaments (all but West Coast)
-taking too much physics
-assuming that I could tell peoples' personalities
-studying academic stuff I will never use
-not making social life a priority
-blocking for ML
-not bringing up the big problem until 2 days before the person left Swat
-not studying abroad as a junior
-taking real analysis I instead of modern II
-worrying all the frickin time
-those times I drank caffeinated soda before bed
-attempting to repress/ignore my sexuality
-not knowing enough sexually active, single women
-trying to be meaner by being less social
-doing physics research twice instead of working in industry
-letting capoeira slide
-not taking enough martial arts
-trying to be the Free Culture club instead of leading it
-missing Genderfuck
-not missing the Halloween party
-dropping Night Cafe
-being nervous during auditions
-not seeing my brooklyn friends in a year
-telling myself I could do it alone, then succeeding at great pain
-living in an academic, liberal-arts environment for too long
-burning out
-getting straight As for 3 semesters in a row and trying for the 4th
-not giving a shit about half the things I'm good at
Non-regrets:
-testing myself and passing
-never letting my current situation blind me to my real goal
-taking theatre
-my solo performance
-turning one of the smallest roles in Pericles into one of its greatest moments
-stand-up comedy
-writing for Spike
-creative writing club
-thinking full-brained about electrodynamics
-information theory
-the GPU-accelerated Ising model at the end of statmech
-getting more practical fast-code skills
-trying to win the ACM (despite miserable failure)
-coming close to success in the Putnam (despite not making it)
-finally getting my dad to realize that I'm not going to grad school
-finally realizing myself that I'm not going to grad school
-that I do have friends, still
-talking to the person about the big problem BEFORE we both went home for summer
-having enough GPA that if I change my mind about grad school, I'll get in
-applying for coding jobs
-convincing Carl that I should do computational biophysics instead of plain biophysics
-all-nighters being a last resort rather than a standard tactic
-no caffeine addiction
-not getting sick
-auditioning for everything
-good physical condition still
-finding a way to make glasses look good on me
-desert boots
-swing dance, tango and every single contra or cielidh
-last-minute study abroad
-keeping Free Culture Swat alive enough to almost rise again
-knowing entrepreneurs left and right
-surviving
-health food
-quicker reflexes (due to fencing)
-having the balls to quit physics for now
-listening to new bands
-running Linux
-the polytope model
-seeing Avenue Q on broadyway
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| Apps for America Progress Report |
[25 May 2009|12:57am] |
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music |
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Crowfoot - Chosen |
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2 days after starting, the apps for America project I've been working on is finally starting to firm up into a concrete task list, with large portions of the feature list and design created.
Only, I now realize how vast this project is. The data could very well span hundreds of thousands of points, and I have no idea how long it will take to process or what kind of memory requirements this will end up having. I suppose there is some kind of tradeoff between usefulness/awesomeness and actual ability of my computer to handle this task.
Currently, I'm looking at building several databases to use effectively as postings lists, even though this is not a search engine. The idea is that database queries are the one thing that will not take lots of ram to hold around and can execute reasonably quickly (faster than the network transfer at least).
Development progress is ahead of schedule, but timeline is creeping forward as reality of the situation becomes more apparent.
If this works... awesome will ensue.
Originally posted from Dreamwidth.
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| This Thing |
[24 May 2009|01:33am] |
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music |
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The New Pornographers - Streets of Fire |
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I don't plan to use this like a LiveJournal. LJ was a site of teenage and post-teen angst, notes on realizations about how my mind works and things to try. For that I still have LiveJournal, in all its add-ridden, corporate glory. But when I read the statement of intent for Dreamwidth, it seemed brilliant and new. A site for creators to talk amongst ourselves. A collaboration tool to improve my writing and my coding. Now this may just be a silly ideal, but I'm going to see if it can work. For now, this is the journal for projects and the epically cool.
As for my first move, it is to move. I have spent too long working here and there on little distractionary codes while the world obsoleted them. Starting yesterday, I shall enter in the Apps for America contest, and I will make sure this one gets at the least a friggin good shot.
For those who remember (probably none of you), I'm applying the old visualizer design I developed at the WTC Memorial to some periodic government reports. I plan to use AJAX and prototype through Google Web Toolkit. The backend will probably involve Python scripts to process the reports and JSON to transfer them to the webapp.
Cross-posted from Dreamwidth.
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[22 May 2009|01:38am] |
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music |
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Arctic Monkeys - I bet you look good on the dance floor. |
] |
First, I am back in New York City. Until end of May/beginning of June. Free to hang out.
Second, after this return and probably a short one in August, I will not be back to the United States for quite some time. I currently plan on studying abroad at the University of Edinburgh next semester. I will study some business, probably a little computer science and hopefully Scottish literature. It's annoying that they don't want you taking courses out of your major - makes it hard to take that lit. No physics as of yet.
This summer I will be at Swarthmore, doing research in (hopefully computational) biophysics. I may also be at a conference about computational biophysics. Yes, I wanted an internship at Google or Facebook. I didn't get one. But this might work out ok. At least I have time to meditate now.
Sunday night was my last all-nighter of the semester. Advanced lab + moving to undisclosed location (moving's a lot harder when you don't know where you're moving to). It hurt. A lot. I felt like shit. I still feel a little like shit. My grades so far are good, and it doesn't make the feelings any less shitty.
It dawned on me lately that modern bump-and-grind club dance is probably a bastardization of blues. I remember learning in high school freshman music that most of our modern, American music is built on "African retentions", which came through blues. Makes sense that the first people dancing to it were blues dancers, and then the kids watching them, and the kids watching those... until it became what it is today.
I'm currently between hacking away at my CUDA-accelerated Ising model, writing, dancing, and reading about information theory. The last one is for a project of sorts. If these are my last days in academia, there's one last math problem I'd like to try before I'm gone.
Tomorrow, there will hopefully be dancing. But even if there isn't, I'll see a movie or something.
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[08 May 2009|01:26pm] |
I got accepted to the University of Edinburgh (for fall semester study abroad). Oddly enough, I was accepted to the college of humanities and social sciences, even though I applied to the college of natural sciences. I guess they looked closely at my course selections and made that decision... nice to know I can go outside of my major for once. I was worried for a while.
Now the only questions: can I go? Do I even want to go? What if I do?
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| Rebuilding (Part 2) |
[07 May 2009|11:40pm] |
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mood |
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 hopeful |
] |
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music |
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Olde Blub |
] |
At swing this Tuesday, an old man said "it's a different universe," and I can't remember the rest.
I can't work these days. My brain refuses to have the discipline anymore to do that thing that hurt so very much. Instead it wanders and writes and composes and creates beautiful computational simulations (one of which I shall post soon) and muses on and on about all those wondrous things. My body is starting to sleep again, and I take this as a good sign. Hopefully soon I can statmech my way to completion, and write that God-forsaken lab report I've put off too long.
At least I achieved one thing. I code physics simulations for relaxation and think quantitatively where I had never even imagined before. The maths are part of my soul now. Nothing can easily take them away.
I am co-president of writing club, whenever I return to Swat. At first it will be this summer.
I hold the belief that anyone who wishes to become a great scientist (not that I will) and not just a competent professor would benefit from training in a creative art for at least a year. It's just a hypothesis.
Is it possible that I have changed so much that this universe, to the degree to which I can subjectively measure, is not the same one I fell from a year ago? I think my stats are way higher, but I have neither the knowledge nor energy to use them. That will change, hopefully.
A lot is going to change. I have hope, it seems. Let's see what can possibly happen.
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| Rebuilding (Part 1) |
[06 May 2009|10:04pm] |
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music |
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Kaskade - Step One Two |
] |
I recently, finally made the jump to using Internet radio instead of randomly picking songs from my collection (which is epically repetitive) or using Pandora/LastFM (which always settle on some mediocre, generically indie, semi-electronic station).
I enjoy swing dancing almost as much as contra, and I think I'm one step closer to understanding why. In both cases, the dance is extremely tactile/physical. Having been semi-athletic for over four years, I get this game. Even as an inexperienced, clumsy dancer, I still understand the fundamental notion of kinesthesis. It's naturally fun. Compare to more conventional social interactions: 1) conversation, where I'm either on a roll (1% of the time) or fizzle out instantly 2) conventional parties, which I don't understand at all.
For what might be a similar reason, I do much better at parties with actual DJing or concerts than at the standard drink-grind-hookup paces affair.
Otherwise, life involves lots of code (primarily for enjoyment for the first time in a year), some physics (because I need to finish freaking statmech), and writing (Am I secretly a writer with the major of a scientist? We'll find out in a later episode.).
I hope to become president of the writing club. I was always a terrible politician in high school - we'll see how this election goes.
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| Round 1 is Complete |
[02 May 2009|02:22am] |
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music |
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Ok Go - Here it Goes Again |
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So last year, when I had a project that I thought would be cool/interesting, I'd start researching the methodology and different ways of doing it, then I'd start writing some outline or proof-of-concept code, then probably redesign and look at that annoying piece I wasn't sure how to make work...
Flash forward to today: I think that an Ising model would be a great thing to simulate with the new GPGPU, so I'll make it my final statmech project. Only problem? It's 2 days before my final project is due, and I haven't started it. Can I do this in 2 days. I'll be damned if I don't!
2 days and not much sleep later: it works. Not well, not prettily, and this code is certainly not fast, but it works.
So yeah, I think I leveled like 20 times. In everything. Remember how I'd like tense up and watch everything I said and wonder what I could possibly do when near a pretty girl? Not anymore. Remember that time I ran for earth club president in high school and I was literally shaking nervous? I've been on stage quite a number of times now. I still lose at wrestling, but sometimes I win at fencing. Electrodynamics? Peach of cake. And my programming timescale has gone from months upon months to days at worst.
Now the only problem is, there have been no tangible gains. I'm not leading anything new, I don't have a girlfriend or too many new friends, my GPA is probably down, I still suck at fencing tournaments... so the first stage is complete, but this is far from over.
I am tired as hell; I will rest. But I will not stop. The rage in my soul makes the fatigue in my body look tiny.
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| Collapse |
[09 Apr 2009|10:51pm] |
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music |
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NASA - Gifted |
] |
Self-destructive study habits, overcommitment, time-sink extracurriculars, not enough time for myself or my own projects, etc... same old story.
Tonight I finally realized the difference it makes actually having evenings and weekends mostly free. I am so much closer to actually finishing on time, and maybe even catching up on some earlier damage. Don't want to get ahead of myself. It will still be tough for sure. But it almost seems like I might have leveled several times in the fray, and if I have, I should be looking toward good times once I recover from the fatigue.
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| Life Sucks but At Least You Live |
[16 Mar 2009|11:37am] |
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music |
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Mothfight - Hopscotch |
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After horrible, thrashing hours of nightmare and insomnia before my trip back to Swarthmore, I suddenly found my depression cracked wide open. So do I seem to be getting at least some of my abilities back, being able to intuitively comprehend quantum again and remembering a little more than before. My mind feels as though it has just taken a giant crap, getting out all the nastiness in one night of torture.
Bryn Mawr contra on Friday. Don't have time to go, but probably will if it kills me.
Overslept this morning by over an hour. Tomorrow's gonna be bad. Makes me wonder if I should try to take the statmech midterm today instead. Let's see how I feel after lunch.
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[09 Mar 2009|12:30am] |
I want to be like Ozymandias from Watchmen, but I don't believe I'm smart enough. Then again, I'm used to years of being able to figure things out if I put my mind to it, so it's hard for me to give up such notions.
Right now, I could really go for a good, sunny, relaxing day out in someplace like Swarthmore. The kind of time and place that could be good all on its own, but I'd want to have friends there and maybe even a slight sense of purpose to ward off anxiety. Just peace and happiness, companionship, the smell of spring air and the green, blue and yellow of the daylit sky.
For now, I dream. I dream of you and me on such a day, with victory in our pockets and youth in our bodies. A day on which the world need not stand still for tomorrow will be just as beautiful.
But since I can't think of a face to attach to the name of "you", I can only keep on dreaming.
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[01 Mar 2009|01:11am] |
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music |
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The Cure - Lovesong |
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What need we fear?
Our ground’s the lowest, and we are half-way here.
-Cleon, my favorite quote from Pericles
As I left the dance, I noticed that a snow was starting - just to remind me of its continued existence only an hour into the first day of March. I love the snow, just hate the cold. The formal was no better than expected, a mish-mash of the varying levels of drunkenness all pretending that a few shakes of the head and bumps of the shoulders could in any way constitute a dance. I fell to the ground once and spun into my six-step - I didn't stand long enough to see whether I really had a crowd, but by the end I feared no one was watching. My heart pounded in the moments before this as though I were about to begin a murder in which I were the victim. I had organized previously to have a few of my friends there (hooray for initiative), but they left too soon. I shouldn't keep hoping for these nights, but I can't help feeling that something is there. The problem with hunting an invisible key is you can never tell when it's close - only that it's there.
I do say that by reason of my physics midterm, on Tuesday I will be properly screwed. Luckily, it appears that there is no IR lab this week - meaning that I have a ghost of a chance of finishing the physics on time without some epic triage.
February, I bid thee a cruelly happy farewell. I have lived to see your end once again, and I shall live to see the end of this day too.
Maybe my next stop will be Scottland, though it leaves me with a dilemma. To go abroad this fall would mean almost giving up on Swarthmore - my time here, already split by the churning of work and friends, will be diced into tiny chunks. I suppose it's time that I shift my mind toward that inevitable end - as much as I hate this place, it's safer than the approaching alternative.
It's time for me to meditate and try to sleep, maybe do a little bit of quantum too.
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| Week 1 |
[26 Feb 2009|06:16pm] |
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mood |
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 exhausted |
] |
I've broken time up into a 4-week schedule of doom. 4 weeks because after that, Pericles is over, and I'll have a lot more time to focus on recovering. Doom because of the various circumstances of time, friendships and relationships (or the lack thereof).
The first week was started off by a recurring lack of heat in ML during the night, which resulted in my developing a sleep debt and being less efficient than was necessary. Monday also involved a 10-hour quantum problem which set both Bevan and myself back about a day in terms of other work finished, and prevented me from either fencing our dancing that night. Tuesday consisted of receiving my lowest quantum hw grade yet, and being assigned the first section of the take-home midterm. Wednesday was an IR lab I didn't finish, and forgetting to handin part of my next quantum hw. To round it out, I showed up 20 minutes late to IR and fell asleep in seminar today. Also, my speakers aren't working, and my toe is infected.
In better news, I learned another little Buddhist tidbit that helps me not get caught up in self-punishing cycles of thought. I have also started to act on things I hadn't consciously remembered to do, so I'm not actually losing my memory, just my willingness to access it. I'm also playing capoeira again, albeit in a much less regular way. But it's still cool.
Given recent dissatisfaction with my social life, a proposition that becomes more satisfying by the minute is that of study abroad, which seems like it would interrupt less and less each day. Technically, I might still get an honors major/minor in physics/math and graduate on time even if I were to completely skip next semester, though it might screw me for thesising and other semi-important stuff, so I should be fine going abroad. According to Prof. Piker, my academic record is such that I have a nearly 100% chance of getting into the programs I'm considering.
I tried to open a Selzter bottle just a minute ago. I forgot how cold those have to be, and I sprayed myself in the chest - it was the right move, though, because I managed to aim it away from the computer.
Only 1.5 hours of rehearsal tonight. I'm too tired to do more physics tonight, but I will do it anyway.
One more week until spring break. After that, 2 weeks, probably harder than this one. Then it's done. There's nothing in the curriculum that will force me through this again.
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[19 Feb 2009|11:10pm] |
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music |
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Los Campesinos! - We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed |
] |
There was a moment when in the middle of the night I jolted out of bed feeling distinctly dissatisfied but with a great sense of direction. I went back to an old email stating that not enough male actors had auditioned for the play Pericles, asking everyone and anyone to show up for callbacks.
There was a moment when, in a fit of whimsicality, realizing that a million years of education in the mathematical sciences would leave me scantly and unsatisfactorily prepared for my own ambitions - that I would melt as soon as I came face-to-face with a true prodigy - I decided to try acting, the craziest thing I could imagine.
There was a moment when I realized that of all my studies, solo performance was by far the most valuable of that semester.
There was a moment when I discovered that I could breakdance. A moment when I six-stepped, a moment when people formed a circle around me and cheered, a moment when I discovered that I could do anything.
There was a moment when I reached the top of 1st semester quantum and realized that I really had nothing to worry about then.
There was a moment when I won my first bout at West Coast.
There was a moment when I meditated myself out of hell. Standing inside a Greyhound terminal after a hacker convention, I looked at the children around me, how even in the most forsaken of places, they could seemingly ignore the meaningless circumstances and create their own reality. Then I did the same.
In the last few days, I have been training more than ever. That's how I've come to understand what I do at Swarthmore - it's training of the mind, body, heart, soul, everything. Despite the protests of my feet and better judgment, I fenced tonight. I lost most of my bouts with fatigue, but... something still happened there. Something related happened on Wednesday, during capoeira practice. And before that at dinner... something weird. Fighting, watching the fight, being the fight, winning, losing, battling... all at once fearful and arousing, addicting in a way. This is a new branch on the path, something that I must find more of.
And could it be that I need to fight to be healthy? I need to spend my wrath or else it will turn inward. Not just in literal fights, but also in how I live. I crave the burn of overload, do best in the hardest times. Maybe I'm flailing because I'm trying to compromise the wrong way. Because while it can drown me with its mass, the burn is what keeps my spirit lit.
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