In Which Intensity Takes On A New Meaning

December 7, 2014

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As a special surprise for our new week, Nadia released a new crypto homework. Implementing the Coppersmith partial information attack using lattices (discrete additive subgroups of $\mathbb{R}^n$ (better not to ask)). While the actual code wasn’t going to be long, taking the time to understand the material would detract from time spent on our projects, and other assignments.

Machine learning lectures had lessened in intensity and increased in interest. However, with the project deadlines looming, every spare waking moment was dedicated to improving our score. The gist of it was given the text of advertisements, predict house prices for a bunch of homes being sold.

To add to the intensity, the algorithms final was two weeks away and we were still learning new material! More than that I had a lot of doctors appointments scheduled that were taking valuable time away.

On the rehearsal side of things, that night was long. First was a few hours of Glee Club and then a few of Choral Society. The intensity was increased due to two upcoming gigs for Glee, an hour long holiday concert at Penn and then a high profile one elsewhere. The Choral Society concert was also that week and so three rehearsals and the show were scheduled. More than that, the Penn Pipers had new repertoire for us to learn for both Glee Gigs and two of our own over the weekend.

After a really long day, and a night of rehearsal, project work took me till about 3AM. After that I couldn’t work anymore and fell asleep at my desk.

 

In Which I Thought Things Were Under Control

October 27, 2014

Sunday was a little more relaxed. Especially not having stayed late the previous night at the party. I finally had the energy to start writing again. Lunch was with Bhavish and Pearl, which was nice, and a good chance to catch up with them post show. Pearl was also enthused by her ability to consume multiple persons worth of food after not having eaten solids in a week (I blame the green smoothies). In the afternoon I read some of my birthday present from Abigail, “The Rosie Effect”. The book was delightful but I was a little disappointed that the setting had moved from Melbourne to New York and I missed home.

In the evening I noted that UberX was free, so Susan and I decided to take a jaunt into centre city for dinner (which was delicious). It was also a great chance to relax a little, get things of my chest and reflect on the start of semester with a good friend.

The next day was classes as per usual. Not much to report other than the fact that I was completely taken by surprise when Sudipto in algorithms announced that the midtern was scheduled for Monday a week later. Later that evening was rehearsal for choral society and then finally bed.

Tuesday/Wednesday – Day 110/111

November 19, 2012

But first a note I missed from Monday! Following the interview I had a rehearsal that slipped my mind, for the University Choral society. Following the end of rehearsal I ran to catch up with a friendly face I remembered from the very first week of semester, a Ms. Stephanie Jane Li of Alberta, Canada! We walked back from choir together and made plans to go out for coffee in the near future as one too many of our interests aligned.

Things just keep ramping up and up and up! Today I found little time to breathe and eat amongst the piles of equations and lines of code littering my life. I was so hard at work today that I didn’t even leave my room for classes, catching up on them through textbooks and friends. Rehearsal from nine to twelve didn’t help much either. However, I did take a little break to eat dinner with a somewhat distraught Molly who’d been having a bit of a rough time. On my return from dinner I was met with a lovely surprise in the Rodin Lobby as, gathered there were a few members of the Philly Orchestra, performing for students and a few staff members. I admit, I did lose a little homework time by sitting down to catch a performance of a Dvorak piece for string quartet. Then it was back to the room to work until my eyes drooped and I fell asleep at my desk.

Wednesday was a little bit of a nightmare, I spent pretty much the entire day working on the kernel. After Glee Club Rehearsal, at 10PM, it was clear we weren’t going to finish in time for the milestone tomorrow. Thus, Charu and I headed down to the engineering quadrangle to work into the wee hours of the morning. After ten hours of straight coding, it finally compiled and ran properly, and I was so surprised I almost didn’t believe it. By this point it was 5AM and I almost collapsed where I was, however, I somehow managed to stumble back to my room and fell asleep almost immediately.

© 2012-2024 Shaanan Cohney