In Which Some Things Get Started
October 31, 2014
Thursday was notable in that I had a large amount of work that wasn’t even started and that day I had a chance to make a little progress on a large number of things. New crypto homework (exploiting Bleichenbacher’s RSA signature forgery exploit), new machine learning homework (implementing state vector machines and perceptrons), a research proposal and, study for the every terrifying algorithms midterm on Monday (courtesy of Sudipto Guha).
I left a little time to practice piano and an hour for ‘lattice club’, the latter being a difficult seminar with Nadia and a few of her minions that involved relatively difficult number theory and abstract algebra. Too much of it went over my head.
I went briefly to a graduate engineering happy hour, before heading back to Hillel for dinner. Following dinner I attempted to work a little more, getting distracted, and so I filled some needed tasks. After picking up my mail and a package for Pearl’s birthday, I was off to the Glouse for a game of Settlers. Mostly tech members were present and it was a great chance to get to know them better (Ariana does physics!). A little later in the evening Lainie from Penn Dance popped by, but we were unable to draw any more from the pool of dancers due to many varied commitments on their part.
Home at about midnight, I was just about to go to sleep when a message from Pearl arrived informing me that she was back from her date night and that I could see her briefly to drop off her present and talk for a few minutes. Stayed up later than expected and sleep was welcome when it finally came.
In Which Things Progress As Usual
October 30, 2014
Sadly enough, there is little to report on today. Classes were fine, but not inspiring. Everything was moving in the right direction, no drama there.
Late in the afternoon, I spent around an hour and a half with Nadia and Luke starting to plan the next year ahead in terms of coursework, chatting about conferences, and getting a broad view of the path to PhD.
Glee Club rehearsal was fairly empty. Too many people had fallen ill in the post show period. The baritones were still there in full force but the tenor section was a bit meager. Following rehearsal, I took Mack Finkel and Josh Gutzmann to Hillel for dinner, picking up Kendra from Penn Dance along the way. We had a pleasant ‘newman’ interview and dinner though I had to end it a little early when I realized the package room back at my building was closing and I needed to run to pick up a birthday present for a friend.
That evening I went to bed early, in order to get a head start the next day.
In Which I Enjoy Variations In My Path
October 29, 2014
Today I woke up late again, 9AM, after stupidly staying up too late the night before. I hurried to my lab and got a minor amount done before rushing off to my quantum mechanics lecture. The lecture today was really interesting with a introductory discussion leading into Richard Feynman’s path integral formulation of quantum mechanics.The basic idea behind it is that the location of a particle at an arbitrary time is determined by a summation over all the possibilities of the places it could have been in each small slice of time prior. It’s very fundamental to the structure of the universe and was a very exciting insight as it ties together Newton’s (more technically Lagrange’s) understand of the universe, with modern conceptions of it.
My afternoon was filled with meetings. First the security reading group, followed by a piano lesson, and then finally the dietitian. After that I was a little drained so I took an hours nap.
Following the nap I raced off to a lecture with the esteemed Dr. Emil Pitkin of the Wharton Department of Statistics. He was giving a talk on ‘garbage statistics’; common ways that statistics are misused. It was as expected, a most wonderful lecture and I found myself being held to attention for the entire time.
The rest of the evening was occupied by Glee post mortem and various other discussions related to club business. After that it was back to my room and then a little sleep.