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Weekly update
Sep. 28th, 2008 03:58 pmWow. The weeks seem to go so fast nowadays.
Still no laptop. However, at some point during the past week, I suddenly found a computer in my cubicle. Running windows, but with enough programs available that I can open a VNC session to one of the departmental Linux machines and do work that way. It's suboptimal - especially with the Java development work I do, where I write, compile, source control the code on my wardrobe server in Sweden, then copy it to one of the machines at Stanford, and finally test it by running Matlab in a VNC window to a different machine here at Stanford.
A week ago, the state of play was that everyone important (almost) had decided that the best way to get a laptop for me was to go via some middleman in Europe. Then, on Monday, the departmental chief administrator got involved, heard about the plans made, and immediately put a stop to all plans and workarounds. Middlemen simply wasn't The Way It Was Done. Instead, though, she put fire under the seats of the people responsible at Stanford Purchasing, so it seems something is about to happen soonish.
I also still haven't got a computer at home either. However, it seems as if our computer admin at the math department will donate his church's old Dell box to me - they just bought a new one since getting someone to fix it up (year-old Windows installation, maybe - maybe dodgy memory, main indication of problem being "it runs slooooooooooow") would cost comparatively almost the same as just getting a new one from Dell directly.
I'll get to see in the coming week whether this computer deal actually will come through or not.
This past week was First Week Of Classes here on campus. Thus, my Algebraic Geometry Reading Group (me and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
complexzeta and 4 other grad students try to understand sheaves, schemes and sheaf cohomology from Hartshorne), and the Infinity Categories Reading Group (reading some book on Higher Topos Theory - it sounds rather scary ;-), and also the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) all got started.
The first two are rather "ordinary" high-level mathematics study groups. The SLOrk, however, does deserve some deeper detail.
When I first saw videos of The Blue Man Group, I became an instant fan. As a part of this process, I started discussing ideas for a homage group among other members of the Stockholm Academic Computing Club - Stacken. We ended up a small crowd - me,luminalflux and a few others, who started brainstorming rather explicitly on how to do Coool Music with New and Weird instruments. While tinkering, we ran across ChucK - a music programming platform developed by the then Princeton-based researcher Ge Wang.
Ge, it turns out, has since then gotten a professorship at CCRMA (pronounced /karma/) at Stanford, and started running a mainly computer-based ensemble, called SLOrk, for credit (for the students that need it). When he heard that I was headed for Stanford, he invited me rather enthusiastically to join the ensemble - so I did.
The SLOrk will - as it turns out - spend two quarters brainstorming and testing ideas and generally preparing, and then one quarter essentially running into a crunch when the spring concerts season hits full speed. Last spring, they had a 9-week quarter in which they ended up playing at 8 different concerts - most of them within the same week.
I'll keep everyone updated on what happens as we go along.
I have two lines running right now - I have my collaboration project with Vin, which just now got VERY ambitious plans for producing results. We decided the other day to try and get a paper written by the SOCG deadline, so that I (and he) can go to Aarhus for the conference in June. No idea whether we'll have anything decent to show by that deadline, but we can always try. For the research with him, I'll need to go and dig through the old algorithms used by the Plex library, and rewrite them to remember a bit more than they do right now. Connected to the programming and the tinkering is a bit of theoretical work we need to do too - mainly verifying that the "plug-n-play" connections we try to do are warranted and well founded in theory.
I also picked up one idea David Green was throwing around during the end of my time in Jena - and it turns out to work just as well as he suggested it might. So one of the crowning results from my thesis now has a "natural expansion", which has good uses in computation. Only - doing this ran me straight into slight problems with the code I wrote in Sydney. So I have a goodly bunch of debugging before me before I can start cranking through the examples I want to motivate my work with. Right now, something somewhere crashes in ways it's not supposed to do. And I really don't like debugging. :-/
... and keep your old ones. The mantra of globetrotters. Naturally, once I got here, meeting new friends got upgraded to a rather high priority (and still stays there). I met a bunch of cool geeks by going to programmer and tech talks in Silicon Valley (I've seen Google Campus *squeeee*).
This process continued this week:
* Grad students and mathematicians in general - you got it! We had the departmental Welcome Back Party on Friday, and everyone got together, ate nice food and all the new faces got introduced.
* Stanford Gamers: The Stanford Gaming Society is still trying to get their gear together for the coming year, and seemingly haven't quite gotten started yet. However, a few CS undergrads spontaneously organized a board game nightsimultaneously with just after the presidential debates. So I got to meet a bunch of cool people - and play BANG! - there. After BANG! came Scrabble, and then midnight hit us, so I went home.
* Scandinavians: Yesterday was the Annual Crayfish Party - and I had been planning on going, and preparing, reprinting the snapsvise-printouts I had for midsummer's in Jena, hunting a decent snaps and generally stocking up for the event. And then, it turns out, I was incapable of finding the right place. It was announced for Escondido Village: the lawn between Studios 5 and 6. I spent the first 45 minutes standing just by Escondido Village: the lawn between Houses 5 and 6, and didn't discover the difference until I got back to my office and quadruple-checked all relevant maps. By that time, over an hour had passed, and I was annoyed and cranky. So I went home instead. So no Scandinavians for me.
All in all, the things I whine about are normalizing. That should mean that my life, too, is normalizing. Right? Right?
The Computer Story
Still no laptop. However, at some point during the past week, I suddenly found a computer in my cubicle. Running windows, but with enough programs available that I can open a VNC session to one of the departmental Linux machines and do work that way. It's suboptimal - especially with the Java development work I do, where I write, compile, source control the code on my wardrobe server in Sweden, then copy it to one of the machines at Stanford, and finally test it by running Matlab in a VNC window to a different machine here at Stanford.
A week ago, the state of play was that everyone important (almost) had decided that the best way to get a laptop for me was to go via some middleman in Europe. Then, on Monday, the departmental chief administrator got involved, heard about the plans made, and immediately put a stop to all plans and workarounds. Middlemen simply wasn't The Way It Was Done. Instead, though, she put fire under the seats of the people responsible at Stanford Purchasing, so it seems something is about to happen soonish.
I also still haven't got a computer at home either. However, it seems as if our computer admin at the math department will donate his church's old Dell box to me - they just bought a new one since getting someone to fix it up (year-old Windows installation, maybe - maybe dodgy memory, main indication of problem being "it runs slooooooooooow") would cost comparatively almost the same as just getting a new one from Dell directly.
I'll get to see in the coming week whether this computer deal actually will come through or not.
Courses
This past week was First Week Of Classes here on campus. Thus, my Algebraic Geometry Reading Group (me and
complexzeta and 4 other grad students try to understand sheaves, schemes and sheaf cohomology from Hartshorne), and the Infinity Categories Reading Group (reading some book on Higher Topos Theory - it sounds rather scary ;-), and also the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) all got started.The first two are rather "ordinary" high-level mathematics study groups. The SLOrk, however, does deserve some deeper detail.
When I first saw videos of The Blue Man Group, I became an instant fan. As a part of this process, I started discussing ideas for a homage group among other members of the Stockholm Academic Computing Club - Stacken. We ended up a small crowd - me,
luminalflux and a few others, who started brainstorming rather explicitly on how to do Coool Music with New and Weird instruments. While tinkering, we ran across ChucK - a music programming platform developed by the then Princeton-based researcher Ge Wang.Ge, it turns out, has since then gotten a professorship at CCRMA (pronounced /karma/) at Stanford, and started running a mainly computer-based ensemble, called SLOrk, for credit (for the students that need it). When he heard that I was headed for Stanford, he invited me rather enthusiastically to join the ensemble - so I did.
The SLOrk will - as it turns out - spend two quarters brainstorming and testing ideas and generally preparing, and then one quarter essentially running into a crunch when the spring concerts season hits full speed. Last spring, they had a 9-week quarter in which they ended up playing at 8 different concerts - most of them within the same week.
I'll keep everyone updated on what happens as we go along.
Research
I have two lines running right now - I have my collaboration project with Vin, which just now got VERY ambitious plans for producing results. We decided the other day to try and get a paper written by the SOCG deadline, so that I (and he) can go to Aarhus for the conference in June. No idea whether we'll have anything decent to show by that deadline, but we can always try. For the research with him, I'll need to go and dig through the old algorithms used by the Plex library, and rewrite them to remember a bit more than they do right now. Connected to the programming and the tinkering is a bit of theoretical work we need to do too - mainly verifying that the "plug-n-play" connections we try to do are warranted and well founded in theory.
I also picked up one idea David Green was throwing around during the end of my time in Jena - and it turns out to work just as well as he suggested it might. So one of the crowning results from my thesis now has a "natural expansion", which has good uses in computation. Only - doing this ran me straight into slight problems with the code I wrote in Sydney. So I have a goodly bunch of debugging before me before I can start cranking through the examples I want to motivate my work with. Right now, something somewhere crashes in ways it's not supposed to do. And I really don't like debugging. :-/
Make new friends ...
... and keep your old ones. The mantra of globetrotters. Naturally, once I got here, meeting new friends got upgraded to a rather high priority (and still stays there). I met a bunch of cool geeks by going to programmer and tech talks in Silicon Valley (I've seen Google Campus *squeeee*).
This process continued this week:
* Grad students and mathematicians in general - you got it! We had the departmental Welcome Back Party on Friday, and everyone got together, ate nice food and all the new faces got introduced.
* Stanford Gamers: The Stanford Gaming Society is still trying to get their gear together for the coming year, and seemingly haven't quite gotten started yet. However, a few CS undergrads spontaneously organized a board game night
* Scandinavians: Yesterday was the Annual Crayfish Party - and I had been planning on going, and preparing, reprinting the snapsvise-printouts I had for midsummer's in Jena, hunting a decent snaps and generally stocking up for the event. And then, it turns out, I was incapable of finding the right place. It was announced for Escondido Village: the lawn between Studios 5 and 6. I spent the first 45 minutes standing just by Escondido Village: the lawn between Houses 5 and 6, and didn't discover the difference until I got back to my office and quadruple-checked all relevant maps. By that time, over an hour had passed, and I was annoyed and cranky. So I went home instead. So no Scandinavians for me.
All in all, the things I whine about are normalizing. That should mean that my life, too, is normalizing. Right? Right?
