Not looking good this year and it’s only January.
Either as a product of my poor memory, a recency bias, or because the first half of the year actually was truly uneventful, the most memorable parts of the year mingle together in the latter half. However, it would be remiss of me, and unlikely of me, to neglect the biggest accomplishment from the first half of the year–hitting my gym goals.
Trying to be better than last year.
It must have been early 2020 or 2019. I would blame COVID for warping my awareness of time, but truth be told, time and I were fickle acquaintances pre pandemic. At any rate, it was in the Lupine house. We were chatting about hair styles, which prompted my roommate to say to me, “You look like a noob”. Not maliciously and not jokingly. Just simply and honestly.
Trying to keep this up.
And it wasn’t. Arlen, boasting about 5000 residents, was certainly no Morgan, which had fewer than 500, and could probably comfortably sustain either Ray’s Convenience or Pete’s Corner Mart; but it was clear to both that it would not sustain two grocery stores. Arlen had been shrinking for years, slowly at first, but every year brought about more departures than arrivals as jobs increasingly urbanized and the ever dreaded rural brain drain pulled college graduates away from their hometown. The residents that remained were buying fewer goods as well, choosing instead to make the bulk of their purchases at the new corporate chain grocery store in Corpus Christi.
Novelty is a word game where the player picks letters and then, using the tiles they picked, tries to spell the highest scoring word.
Early in the afternoon, on the rare day when the morning fog lifts, you can look west from Cahill Ridge and see Half Moon Bay. There’s a valley that cuts across the peninsula and opens up to the sea. On the good days, when the air is serene, I think that you would have liked this place. On other days, when the wind blusters and blows and it is impossible to light incense, I think you would have questioned it.
Is this the year we finally finish Lolita?
Dear Future Self, if our poor memory now is any indication, we will have a hard time remembering 2020, as unbelievable as that sounds now. The year that disease, COVID-19 and cancer, controlled. We stopped going to work, climbing, and going outside. But with all that changed, so much remained the same. And in no way is that more evident in what we consumed. I wonder whether our taste has changed much since.
I have always been terrible with numbers and trivia. But I have noticed that this year, I have found myself reaching back to one number in particular as a reference. 300 million or a third of a billion. That number is roughly the population of the United States.
I was pretty good about keeping up reading last year. Let’s see if we can keep it up this year.
I investigated a memory bug in Hack’s code that brought me back to school and fiddling with pointers. But interestingly, more than just being a bug where we get tripped up by pointer arithmetic, this bug also only caused us major problems on weekends.
At the 2012 debate tournament in Indianapolis, I began to realize that something was wrong. We were winning debate rounds that we should have lost - easily. The topic was
I wanted to write something Kafkaesque, inspired by the flash fiction in Kafkaesque: Fourteen Stories. I would call it a rough draft though I may never come back to it. It is incredible that Kafka could do so much more in so few words.
The Hack team receives frequent feature requests. Many features do not make their way into the language for many reasons. Perhaps the utility of the feature is too niche or perhaps the feature cannot be implemented without drastic architecture changes. The bar any new language feature must pass is not low. One of the forces that keeps the bar high is language complexity. There are many desirable reasons to keep the complexity of a language low, and each new feature of a programming language can pose the risk of adding significant language complexity.
You have to be in a certain state of mind for Salinger to hit you. Otherwise, the blows bounce off and you end thinking that he’s “Positive Thinking for the upper middle classes, as Double Your Energy and Live Without Fatigue for Sarah Lawrence girls.”
One of my goals for 2019 is to keep better track of what I do with my time. Because I like curating my anime list so much, I figure I could do the same with books.
I recently read C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters on the recommendation of many friends from different periods of my life. Amazingly, it genuinely changed my perspective on religion. Whether this effect was a unique consequence of the book itself or whether any book about religion would have done it is a more difficult question to answer. But in thinking about the book, I was struck by a couple of various elements of the book that make it stand out in my mind. In particular, the epistolary nature of the book and the “flipped” perspective (of the demons’ point of view) strike me as particularly unique. The more I thought about it, the more I think that these choices, whether they were made deliberately or whimsically, contribute in a meaningful way to the book and the author’s purpose.
Play as a wordsmith trying to write the next best seller by choosing your letters carefully, flexing your impressive vocabularies, and accounting for the public psyche in Novelty.
During my first work trip to London last year, I decided to spend some of my evenings after work and go bouldering to try and stick to my typical climbing schedule. It turned out to be a good way to spend the evenings, when most tourist attractions were closed, and explore the city more than my usual inclinations. At Vauxhall West, after I signed the usual sign-your-first-born-away terms and conditions sheet, I was given a little keychain card. This was a bit surprising, since I was only there for the day and would likely never be back. But when I was given another one at The Castle Climbing Centre, it became a neat souvenir for me to keep. So this time, when I came back, I decided to try to see what the variety of gyms around London were like.
“It’s the economy, stupid.” Before reading The Two-Income Trap, Elizabeth Warren’s 2003 book about bankruptcy in the United States middle class, I had no understanding of what the “economy” means in the famous campaign slogan. The only economics course I took was in high school, and while it was taught beyond reproach, the course was only designed to convey the basic mechanics of economics - supply / demand curves, the definitions of terms in monetary policy. Not only did Warren’s book help me understand what the economy looks like for others, it gave me invaluable perspective on how little I actually understand the “economy” and how much time it would take to understand it.
At the turn of last year, I made a resolution to read a book a month and write about each one. So, as the year winds down, I wanted to take some time and review my progress. While I did read twelve books over the year, I did not manage to complete the latter half, though that was not for want of trying. I struggled to write notes that I considered coherent enough to stand alone. But, looking back, I have collected some haphazard thoughts that I wanted to gather and put in one place, as a way of wrapping the year up.
When spring turns to summer in Moscow and Anna and Vronsky’s relationship turns frustratingly unbearable, Anna’s behavior becomes increasingly driven by irrational jealousy. I sympathized deeply with Vronsky’s frustration over Anna’s behavior - especially when every action Vronsky does seems to irritate and enflame Anna. Every single story, every letter, every comment sends Anna down a spiral rooted in a reality powered more by emotion than truth. After he agrees to Anna’s demands that he leave the city for the country two days early, Anna’s response is to burst into tears crying:
A friend from college and a beloved source of recommendations who I haven’t talked to in a while alerted me to The Night is Short, Walk on Girl, a film directed by Masaaki Yuasa. Years ago, I had watched Yuasa’s Tatami Galaxy series under the compulsion of an art friend. In an effort to fit in with my expectations of their refined artistic palette, I came to describe Tatami Galaxy as an art student’s senior thesis. I hoped that description would do the anime justice - capturing the wild, frenetic, nauseating experience of watching it as an uncouth viewer while leaving room for the meaningful interpretations and analyses by more sophisticated critics. I would not say that I enjoyed watching Tatami Galaxy, at least not in the same way that I would say I enjoyed watching a standard film like Crazy Rich Asians, but I definitely liked it though I could not say precisely why. So early Saturday afternoon, despite the cold and sore throat I had contracted the previous night, I took the Caltrain up into San Francisco to watch Walk on Girl at the Roxie, the only theater in the greater area showing it.
“… God, yes. I simply told—but you know: made it sound like an agonized confession—simply told her I was a dyke.”
My brother organized a mini Banff film festival screening.
I was recently tasked at work to functorize part of the Hack ecosystem and I ran into a learning opportunity regarding extending and overriding modules in OCaml. Unfortunately, I was unable to find the solution through a google search, perhaps in part because I do not know what to enter as search terms. After a nontrivial amount of time, I found something that, in hindsight, should have been relatively straightforward. Because it was not, I’ve decided just to make a note of the problem and the route I took to find the solution.
I think younger me would have loved Steve Martin’s Shopgirl with its pithy, sharp characterization of interesting, racy relationships.
Richard, a friend of mine, gifted me Paul Kalanithi’s posthumously published memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, for secret santa. As a young neurosurgeon faced with his own mortality in the form of lung cancer, Paul reflects on his life, his experience as a doctor, and confronting mortality. When I was reading his account, I found myself thinking most about Paul’s musings about the relationship between language and humanity.
As the year comes to an end, so too does Facebook’s PSC (Performance Summary Cycle), a biannual review process where you evaluate yourself and others at the company for their impact on the company. Unfortunately for me, all signs point to my project being a resounding failure. While the formal self-review I will submit will discuss the details, I just wanted to dwell for a moment on my failure a bit more abstractly-a bit more emotionally.
If I had known at the end of my internship that, were I to return Facebook, that I would be working on the same project as I had during my internship, I would be working at Microsoft.
I just finished a ten week gameplay programming internship at Infinity Ward working on IW8 (which I am very excited about). As I am leaving, I am left with some still-coalescing thoughts about that experience.
An essay (my last college essay) written for Shakespeare, The Later Plays about the role of disguises in The Winter’s Tale.
My friend Caroline finished her final project for her Animating Science class. This being that final screening of the year, it featured all of the final projects of the three different animation classes.
I’ve always told myself that one month I’d sit down and make the grind to legend in Hearthstone. This month marked the release of Journey to Un’Goro and I ended up playing a bunch of Hearthstone, to the expense of homework, and ended up hitting legend. I’ve really enjoyed the post-release meta this month, from the experimental phase to the meta finally stabilizing a little. The meta’s diverse and that gives the game a feeling of additional complexity, even if none of the core mechanics have changed very much.
There was no animation screening this week, as people are working on their final projects. Instead, I wanted to take a note of two animation related items. The first is a behind the scenes DVD extra about the making of Community’s stop motion Christmas episode, “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas”.
Today Derek Hoffman, a sound designer and associate professor came to give a short talk on sound design in lieu of an animation screening. Part of his talk concerned the classification of sound.
A short essay written for Saints, Heretics, and Atheists: An Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. The essay discusses the age old problem of evil and examines one response to it.
A selection of animations from today’s animation screening about Telling Stories.
Today’s animation screening program about animation and commercials with a presentation about his experience in the commercial industry by Paul Bush
A short essay written for Saints, Heretics, and Atheists: An Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. The essay discusses the age old question of whether the existence of objective morality is dependent on the existance of God (in a classical sense).
A selection of animations from today’s animation screening about altered states and inner space.
An online multiplayer version of No Thanks!, the award winning card/board game invented by Thorsten Gimmler and published by Amigo Spiele. Written in javascript. Powered by Node.js, Socket.io, and Phaser.io. Hosted on Heroku.
A single player Mission I created for Hearthstone based on the Advisor Melandrus encounter from World of Warcraft.
A short essay written for Saints, Heretics, and Atheists: An Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. The essay summarizes the first of three points made by Spinoza in the appendix to Chapter 1 of the Ethics.
Today’s animation screening program about film techniques that can be used in animation.
An essay written for Shakespeare, The Later Plays about the structure of Iago’s lies and fictions in Othello. I compare the structure of Iago’s fictions to proofs by contradiction, and muse about possible takeaways that would apply to fiction more broadly.
Pixilation Animation Screening Program
Today’s animation screening program about conveying Information and Persuading.
Today’s animation screening program about animation and its place in the art genre. All such screenings were organized by Ruth Lingford and Paul Bush for classes they taught at Harvard that I sat in on.
A short essay written for Saints, Heretics, and Atheists: An Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. The essay that attempts to explain Augustine’s reconciliation of God’s Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will.
The final essay for Dilemmas of Equity and Excellence in American K-12 Education. At the end of 2016, the federal government changed its data collection policy on teacher preparation programs. The essay concerns the best practices states should use to ensure the success of the program.
The final project I did for PS10: Quantum and Statistical Foundations of Chemistry where I attempt to simulate quantum wells in semiconductors and compare the results to experimental results.
One of three essays written for the final for Asian American Literature where I compare Hagedorn’s Dogeaters and Phan’s We Should Never Meet.
One of three essays written for the final for Asian American Literature where I draw some connection between poems in Ali’s collection, A Nostalgia’s Map of America.
One of three essays written for the final for Asian American Literature where I write about how the editor’s of Aiiieeeee might view the comments a characters makes in Le’s short story Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice.
A fictitious memo written for The Road to the White House, a class about the 2016 election and the general American presidential elections. I wrote the memo to John Kasich on methods to encourage Asian American youth to turn out.
An essay I wrote for Asian American Literature where I compare Bulosan’s short story How My Stories Were Written and Phan’s Emancipation. Both short stories discuss storytelling and stories. I examine the idea of story ownership with Bulosan’s ideas about story ownership in mind.
An close reading essay I wrote for Asian American Literature on Kingston’s No Name Woman.
The final project report Kevin and I wrote for CS252r, a class on static and dynamic program analysis. The project attempts to determine the optimal series of questions to ask a user.
One of the final exam essays I wrote for Money, Markets, and Morals on Kant, Aristotle, and Bentham. The essay concerns the differences between utilitarianism and Kantianism, which are irreconcilable due to a fundamental difference in approaching morality.
One of the final exam essays I wrote for Money, Markets, and Morals on the morality of carbon offsets. Professor Sandel is unlikely to believe that carbon offsets are a morally appropriate mechanism whereas utilitarians might see it as an efficient and effective solution to address global warming.
For our “For Performance, Tradition & Cultural Studies: An Introduction to Folklore and Mythology” class, we participated in the practice of collecting folklore. For this particular exercise, I wrote about Adam’s House Drag Night. While I did not make this particular class a priority this semester, going to watch the performance was a very cool experience for me.
One of four essays written for Money, Markets, and Morals where I argue that, by combining the writings of Aristotle and Downs, one can make an argument for demoncracy being the best or least bad form of government.
One of four essays written for Money, Markets, and Morals where I argue that sellling votes may actually be argued against on utilitarian grounds, despite economic arguments in favor of the practice.
One of four essays written for Money, Markets, and Morals where I argue that Mill’s version of utilitarianism strays too far from the roots of utilitarianism and relies on some hierarchy of good that utilitarianism cannot defend from its first principles.
The first of four essays written for Money, Markets, and Morals where I argue that arguments in favor of price gouging rely on some assumptions about market forces that may not be valid during times of crisis.
An essay written for Epic: From Homer to Star Wars on Milton’s Paradise Lost where I examine the character of Satan and his portrayal as an antihero. As part of the epic tradition, Paradise Lost draws from and acknowledges its relationship to the Aeneid and previous works and those relationships are examined in the essay.
The first essay for Epic: From Homer to Star Wars where I compare the Iliad and the Odyssey’s treatment of heroism in the characters of Achilles and Odysseus.
In this essay for On Risk and Reason, I write about playgrounds and their role in adolescent development.
A short animation I drew for the final project of my freshman seminar, Getting Your Hands on Time, with professor Ruth Lingford. The subject of the animation was fear.
An essay I wrote for On Risk and Reason about prior belief and the difficulty of changing prior belief.
The first essay I wrote for On Risk and Reason.
A program from an animation screening from freshman year about storytelling with Ruth Lingford
A program from an animation screening with Ruth Lingford from freshman year.
A screening on evoking emotion from freshman year with Ruth Lingford.
A program from an animation screening from freshman year with Ruth Lingford
The final essay for Building Just Institutions.
The second essay I wrote for Building Just Institutions.
The first essay I wrote for Building Just Institutions.