relbs's Xanga

Friday, November 07, 2003

Fri, 07 Nov 2003 03:03:34 GMT

Dare to dream. That's what they always tell you, right?

I want to be able to control a computer with my mind. I want to think a thought, and with that thought, launch thousands of computational processes marching in order, performing the tasks outlined in my thought and playing Beethoven's 9th symphony while they do it. When I'm lying awake in bed at night, and my mind wanders from place to place, if I stumble on a creative insight and think gee i should write this down, I want my computer to write it down for me.

I want my computer to distill my muddled thoughts and spit them back out at me, rinsed, washed, dried, and folded.

I want my computer to take my fantasies and paint me a picture of wondrous lands and places that I've been to in my dreams. Then I want to put on a headset and explore the world I created.

I want to pace around the room, muttering jumbled thoughts to myself. But when I stop and look at the computer and tell it something, I want it to listen and do what I say.

But if I think a shameful thought, I want privacy. I don't want my computer to decide good from evil, truth from falsehood. If I have a secret to keep, I don't want my computer to ever be able to pry it out of the deepest vaults of my mind in a thousand years.

I want a computer that knows what's going on in the world, that knows if it's going to be snowing three months and two days from now, that knows the cheapest and fastest way to fly to taiwan. And when I ask it, I want it to tell me.

You got all that, god? My birthday is next wednesday. Thanks.

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

Wed, 22 Oct 2003 04:33:42 GMT

I am a firm believer that laptop keyboards are bad for your wrists. The small keys and small size force your arms into an uncomfortable position, and are a nightmare for people with RSI.

Stacy started to have problems with her wrists last year. Carpal tunnel problems, pretty standard. She has this Acer laptop, and even when you know it's not good to use the laptop keyboard, you use it anyways, because it's there and it's so convenient.

So I decided to remedy the situation. When she came up to boston a couple weeks ago, I ripped the keyboard out of her laptop and replaced it with a piece of cardboard.

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

Wed, 22 Oct 2003 00:37:59 GMT

So that HIPAA thing that I've been ranting about... yeah, well the national deadline for implementation was originally October 16 (last week). All health care organizations were to have implemented the standardized electronic data interchange protocols by that date. Well, they did a survey a little earlier and the results were disastrous. Fewer than 20% of all surveyed organizations said they would be "HIPAA compliant" by the deadline. So then they were like, maybe we were a little strict, and pushed the deadline back to February. *sigh* Expect to hear me rant again later.

***

The name of my research group is Oxygen Research Group. We are in the field of pervasive computing. Explanation:

Early developments in computer science resulted in many people using one single computer (mainframes and timesharing systems). Later on, in the 80s, was the advent of the personal computer - one person to one computer. Now, the theory goes, we are shifting to one person using many computers. Already it's happening - computers in your car, your cell phone, pda, your desktop computer. Computers are becoming ubiquitous, pervading our lives.

Project Oxygen is an effort by MIT to study this phenomenom, to study how we might best utilize computers as they change in our society. There is a vision of a day when computers are taken for granted, much like the air (oxygen.. haha) we breathe, when they truly are pervasive (like oxygen.. haha) and fade from the monstrous attention demanding behemoths that we toil in front of today to the invisible technologies that are woven into the fabric of our lives (fabric.. haha).

Nobody really knows where the deep academic subjects are in pervasive computing. It's not like AI, or supercomputing, where the problems are very clearly defined. In supercomputing, you just make the computer go faster. In AI, there's an aim to create rational decision making programs, to build machines that can perform complex tasks.
But there are no unproven theories in pervasive computing. Hell, there are no real theories. If you read the academic papers and proposed scenarios, it's all lame stuff like being able to tell your car to book you a plane ticket to london while you're stuck in traffic on the 95N, or about your television magically knowing what channels might interest you given your mood and the phase of the moon.

But there's definitely something there. Oxygen Research Group was founded to study pervasive computing from the computer science perspective, and that's what I'll be doing (I think...)

Friday, October 10, 2003

Fri, 10 Oct 2003 04:59:30 GMT

Question: What happens when you add yourself to your own buddy list on AIM, and then block yourself? What if you warn yourself?

Hypothesis: Due to the self-referencing nature of having yourself on your own buddy list, blocking yourself should cause a rift in the fabric of space and time, thus causing the universe to implode. Similarly, the double effect of warning yourself should trigger an incosistency in AIM's Oscar protocol, disabling their servers and forcing thousands of users offline at once.

Method: 1) Added myself to my own buddy list. Sent myself a short IM consisting of the message "lkj.jk". Blocked myself. Sent myself another message. 2) Warned myself

Observations: Blocking myself didn't seem to do anything. The universe continued to function normally, and all subsequent messages were delivered. Warning myself increased my warning level by 20%, which seems to be four times the amount of a single warning.

Analysis: Conclusive evidence for the existence of multiverses. Due to the fact that this world continued to function, we must have forked at that moment in time, and the other universe that forked off of ours must have imploded. The Oscar protocol must have been upgraded recently to compensate for the warning deficiency.

Conclusion: I am slowly going insane...

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

Wed, 08 Oct 2003 23:27:37 GMT

in other news, my roommate's wife just moved in with us. straight from china, doesn't speak a word of english.

my roommate introduces us, and she's like, ni hao, and then I just kinda stare at her for a couple seconds before going, "uh... hey, how's it going?" (in english)

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

Tue, 07 Oct 2003 05:05:35 GMT

Have long since stopped mucking around with the cell phone. I hate wading through commercial documentation/tech specs. It's absolutely vile. Filled with cheap marketing shots, and so hard to find the important stuff. And then you find out that the docs were written by some cheap summer intern Nokia hired a couple years ago.

Anyway, so now I'm kinda drifting again, looking for a research idea/project. Larry has a couple of ideas that he wants us to flesh out for him, so I've been thinking about that.

I've finally got my computer setup the way I like it. ::grin::

Dual 17" LCD displays powered by Matrox G450 video card.
ipod docking station - ipod out for repairs =(
Shuttle SS40g mini-pc
Stapler and chapstick
Logitech Marble Mouse - for when my left hand dies
Kinesis Advantage contoured keyboard
standard mouse - for when my right hand dies
Dell inspiron 2650
6.825 homework

Tendonitis in my right arm has started acting up again. Couldn't work for most of today cause it hurt a lot. Not really sure what to do about that... =( Makes me want to change fields and go do research on natural computing interfaces (i.e. brain, speech, gestures) just so I can use a computer without feeling pain in my arms again. or at least port xwrits to windows.

::shortly after::

I am told that this last picture makes me look like a super-geek. To counter, I am now uploading a picture of all my winter gear that I brought up this weekend (I'm not a geek!! really!! at least not that bad... ::whimper::)

::grumble grumble:: not a geek ::grumble grumble::

Monday, September 22, 2003

Mon, 22 Sep 2003 22:20:16 GMT

Today is an MIT holiday. So no class, and all that. Which holiday, you say? It's suicide prevention day.

Apparently, the suicide rate at MIT got pretty bad at one point, so they were like gee maybe our students are working too hard and not getting enough breaks. So every month that doesn't normally have a holiday (e.g. September) they make one up, so that students get at least one day off in a month, and thus are less likely to commit suicide. And so, suicide prevention day was born.

Monday, September 22, 2003

Mon, 22 Sep 2003 02:32:21 GMT

Went blading just now, for the first time in more than a year. Felt good. Up memorial drive, most of the way to harvard. Harder to see at night, everything is so stark, so much more contrast. Skated through an empty park lit by flickering sodium lamps, imagining what shady encounters must have taken place next to the barbed wire fence overlooking the Charles. Can't wait for the ice rink to open. Less than a month now.

Monday, September 15, 2003

Mon, 15 Sep 2003 03:48:18 GMT

Why is Mike's Pastry so famous? The cannoli is kinda cool, and the eclairs are these ginormous monstrosoties of nature, but excepting those, it seems like a normal bake shop to me.

Larry (my assigned advisor) gave me a small project to do. I'm supposed to delve into the inner workings of a Nokia 3650 and see if I can make it interface with MIT's Cricket system. Cricket is kinda like an indoor GPS - if you have a cricket device, you can pinpoint your exact location inside a building. So then you could do the Star Trek thing and be like "Computer! Where is Worf?" Anyway, he figures if I can get the Nokia to work with Cricket, we can make these immersive indoor computer games. Sounds fun.

Friday was the Student Oxygen Workshop. They brought us up to the beautiful Ocean View Inn up in Gloucester. Lots of presentations of other PhD and MS projects and free breakfast, lunch, and lobster dinner. My department sure has a lot of money...

Tuesday, September 09, 2003

Tue, 09 Sep 2003 03:56:36 GMT

Advanced algorithms is too advanced for me. Well, I could probably eke through, but it's a really tough class. I'm not a theory guy anyway. They're freaky (the theorists). The advanced algorithms class is co-taught by two professors. One of them is 22 years old. Twenty two. February 28, 1981. That's 9 months older than me. If you've never felt stupid before, here's your chance.

So I'm switching to the easier theory class - Theory of Computation. Easy stuff, like finite state machines and basic complexity theory. Just to satisfy the class requirements. Yeah, I can do that.

Still not sure what research group I'm going to join. Hopefully I'll have a better idea by the end of the week. Meeting with Eric Grimson on wednesday to talk about his medical vision group (image guided surgery and fancy stuff like that) Also want to talk to Robert Morris about the Parallel & Distributed Operating Systems group. I'll probably be doing some work with Larry Rupolph cause he's sponsoring me this year, but we'll see...