For symmetry and completeness, I’ll talk a little bit about Ubuntu given that I recently wrote about Windows 7. Ubuntu is very nice! I’m very excited for the next version, 9.10, to come out. Three days from today!

I’m currently running the 64 bit version of Ubuntu 9.04 on my laptop (simultaneously with Windows XP and Windows 7). Here’s a screenshot:

One great thing about Ubuntu is that it makes multiple desktops very easy. Windows 7 has quite a few handy tools to navigate around given your single desktop, more so than Ubuntu. Ubuntu, however, gives you multiple desktops:

‘Tis all for now!

Hey all, I’ve been taking some pictures over the course of the semester so far. They’re mainly random pictures of Boston and MIT, from just walking around and such.

Around the beginning of the year, I randomly decided one day to walk the bridge-loop (a path connecting MIT to BU and going around the Charles River). If I recall I was just getting over being sick, which is why I decided not to run the bridge loop. Here are a few nice pics of Boston I took:

Last week was the Head of the Charles crew race. Strangely enough, it was also snowing… pretty early, even for Boston! I took some pictures of the bizarre scene of lots of crew boats on the Charles, with snow simultaneously falling:

Cheers all!

Cheers all,

As you may have heard, Microsoft released Windows 7 yesterday. Because MIT is awesome, IST (Information Services and Technology) had it ready for students to download for free and install the same day. So, taking advantage of this, I upgraded my Windows 7 RC partition to the full-on version, Windows 7 Enterprise. And I have to say, it seems pretty nice so far! Here’s a screenshot of my desktop:

Since I never had Vista, I can’t compare speeds. It does seem to be pretty quick though, it looks as though the OS might be pre-loading or caching certain commonly used programs.

The only hiccup I’ve found was that, immediately after installing, Windows 7 didn’t recognize my graphics card, so I didn’t have Windows Aero and my screen resolution was small. Windows later redirected me to download a graphics driver from nVidia’s website, which worked quite well.

Coming from Windows XP and Ubuntu, one feature I think that’s really cool is the Media Center. You can play music and have a pretty, moving display of your albums in full screen mode. I think it’s pretty knarley:

Although it’s a bit early to say for sure, I think Windows 7 is going to be a success.

See you later!

I realized just now that I have a lot to blog about it, and I haven’t written anything in a while. But I don’t have a lot of time right now though! I have a 6-10 page, single-spaced LaTeX project proposal due tomorrow for 6.142 tomorrow, as well as a 6.041 pset due tomorrow, of which I have done very little so far. Such is MIT!

Here are some blog entries I’ll write  soon:

• Computer adventures – first steps in putting my server, electron-monkey, on my wall (and having it still work!)
• Computer adventures – getting a free laptop, and trying (unsuccessfully) to fix the keyboard
• Walking around Boston (the bridge loop) – took some neat pictures
• Pictures of Head of the Charles, during the snow…!
• Doing fun stuff, like going to Next Formal

Cheers!

Some random thoughts:

• A lot can change in a week
• Catching the flu sucks
• Cheerios are tasty, and so is coconut cake

What makes us happy?

Is it always striving to do better, no matter how “good” we are now? Is it finding new things to do or meeting new friends? Do we have the right to be happy when we know that other people around the world are suffering? If we cured cancer and ended poverty, would we finally be happy? Or is happiness something internal to ourselves – a sort of feeling or pride in one’s hard work ethic? The concept of constant betterment, always trying to make ourselves better in every way. Is it this quest for perfection that brings us joy?

I don’t think that this makes us happy. Continual self-improvement necessarily implies finding fault with oneself, in order to know which direction to travel in to do better. And there will always be fault; no one can ever become perfect. So, those who strive to become perfect will always be focusing on the negative, only seeing how they can do better instead of what they have now. This does not sound happy; it sounds depressing. I think that happiness is quite the opposite of striving for continual self-improvement; it is contentment and appreciation for what one already has. If we forget our aspirations and desires for a moment and take a step back from it all, we’ll realize that we have it pretty damn good. And that’s something to be happy about.

Since it’s the start of the school year, why not blog the classes I’ll be taking? I like them all so far; I think it’s going to be a great (although very busy) semester!

2.004 – Dynamics and Control II

Since I’m minoring in course 2 (mechanical engineering), I’m taking one class from the MechE department. It seems like a good class so far; and I already tried to learn a significant chunk of the material from OCW over the summer. Control theory is pretty important in robotics, which is one of my main motivations for wanting to take this class.

6.041 – Probabilistic Systems Analysis

This class seems like it’ll be pretty good. I’m taking 6.041 even though I already took 6.042 last year, because 6.041 has a lot more probability than 6.042. 6.041 will satisfy one of my MEng math requirements, and since probability is important in AI, I elected to take it instead of some other math class.

6.003 – Signals and Systems

This is one of my favorite classes so far. The content is really cool, it’s taught very well, and it applies to a lot of engineering. 2.004 is very similar so far to 6.003, although I expect the two classes to diverge a little bit as 6.003 focuses more on signal processing and 2.004 will focus more on mechanical controls. Tasty.

6.142 – Robotics Science and Systems II

I’m really looking forward to this class. Unlike nearly all the other courses I’ve taken so far at MIT, this one is more research-based rather than concrete lecture-style. You may have heard of the DARPA grand challenge, a competition in which teams must develop autonomously-driven vehicles that drive themselves around a city-like course, complete with other cars. MIT competed in 2007, and is now working on a spin-off project to try and develop an autonomously-controlled forklift. That is, the forklift will ultimately be able to take in user input, and automagically drive to and pick up crates of stuff and move them around. That’s pretty hard to do in a non-controlled environment, and is on the cutting edge of robotics. In 6.142, we get to explore the codebase for this project (which is in active research in the CSAIL lab, and much of the code is based off the DARPA grand challenge), and do an independent research project on some component of the system. If our code works well in simulation, we’ll get to try it out on the real robot (awesome!). And if it works really well and is helpful in some way, it may even make it into the final robot (double awesome!). This definitely seems like the kind of class that the more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it.

21M.392 – Music of Africa

And now for something completely different. This is my humanities class, and it’s been quite fun so far. We get to study the music across the continent of Africa, learn a little bit of Senegalese drumming, and even go to some concerts at jazz clubs around the area. Yeah!

So, those are my classes for this semester. Ideally I’ll have time to do well in all of them, have a life, *and* have time to sleep!

I agree with my friend WS’s blog post about taking risks.

One goal I have for this year is to try new things and do things that are out of the ordinary for me. I’m going to try to keep an open mind about things, and do things that I’d be too uncomfortable doing before. After all, with no risk there can be no reward.

On an interesting side note, I’ve been at MIT for slightly over 2 years now. Looking back, the things that I remember the best and have the most fond memories of are the things that were the most out-of-the-ordinary for me. It is the fun, risk-taking events that I remember the most. For example, I don’t remember anything about the pset I was punting last year on halloween. I’m sure there was one (since there’s always some pset that can I be working on), but I just don’t remember it all. What I do remember, however, is the fun and out-of-the-ordinary of that night – going ice skating (for the first time), going to halloween parties with friends afterwards, etc. I’m really glad I decided to have fun that night instead of staying home and just doing homework, because it’s a memory I otherwise wouldn’t have had and it was a great time!

So, I’m going to try new things this year, be chill, and have an open mind. Let’s give it a shot…

It’s time for a philosophy post. Haven’t done one of these in a while…

As you may have heard on the news, Ted Kennedy (US senator representing Massachusetts) passed away a few weeks ago. Amid all the press, stories of his life came out. Whether you agree with his liberal political ideology or not, he was indisputably an honorable guy. It says a lot about someone’s character when a bunch of conservative Republicans (including John McCain), who fought against Kennedy all their lives in the Senate, showed up at his ceremony and told stories of close friendship and camaraderie that one wouldn’t expect. One person who spoke at his ceremony offered this summarizing quote about Ted’s life: “he didn’t take himself too seriously.” And this got me thinking …. what does that really mean? Don’t take yourself too seriously? I usually take my life  seriously, and I had thought this was a good thing. After much thinking, I offer you my thoughts on this interesting piece of advice.

I’ll start off with pointing out some of the great ironies of life:

• We enjoy living the most when we’re not afraid to die (”Live life today like tomorrow’s your last day on earth…”)
• We often do our best work when we don’t regard it as “work”, but rather as play.
• We act the best when we aren’t self-consciously monitoring ourselves, and do not care how others perceive us
• Another irony can be found in taking an important test -  let’s say you want to do really really well on it. On the day of the test, you get very anxious with butterflies in your stomach, and all panicky because you want to do well so much. That anxiety ruins you; and you can’t keep your concentration on the test, and you start getting anxious when you don’t know the answers to all the questions. As a result, you do poorly.  Meanwhile if you had been calm and not cared so much about your grade, you probably what have done better because you would have been able to think more clearly.

All of these ironies share a central theme: Your conscious awareness of how bad you want something can actually get in the way of you  getting it. The moral is, be chill and just enjoy what’s going on around you. (But of course, don’t be too chill to the point where you do’t care about anything and hence become none-functional; that’s the other extreme. Find the happy medium). Be chill, take some risks, and just enjoy it. Don’t take your life to seriously, because then you’ll want your life to be good sooo much that you’re conscious awareness of this can actually get in the way of you living happily!

Here is another example that demonstrates this: Let’s say you want other people to like you. This is a reasonable thing that most people would like, no? One way to do this is to try to make yourself look really good and try to hype yourself up to all of your friends so that they’re all impressed by you. If it works though, those people won’t really see you as being a close friend. You’ll likely come across as distant and self-centered, and the “friendships” will only be unidirectional. A much better approach to getting other people to like you is to do the completely unintuivive thing of completely forgetting about yourself and your desire to be liked! Instead think more about your friends. Genuinely caring about them and there lives, will mean much more and hence develop much closer personal relationships. And then everyone is happy: you won’t be making yourself sick by self-consciously worrying about your image, your friends will have someone who truly cares about them, and they will of course like you for this. Win-win situation for all. This is what Ted Kennedy did, and this is how he had so many friends in the Senate, at both ends of the political spectrum. I heard countless stories in the news and at his ceremony about  how whenever a friend or political foe was going through a tough time, Kennedy would literally be the first to call and offer help. He made it his top priority to care about the personal lives of his fellow Senators. And because of this, Kennedy was liked by all, and turned almost into a martyr upon his death. I’m sure he had a better quality of life because of it too, since all of these friends genuinely admired him for it just as much as he cared about them. Irony: to lead a more happy and fulfilling life, forget about yourself. Don’t focus on improving your life; think more about others and you’ll end up having a happier life in the end. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

So, “don’t take yourself seriously” just might be my second favorite quote (right after “I’m on a boat” ). I think it means to be chill, content with yourself (even when you’re unsure), and not care too much about where you are right now. Because if you do that, you’ll necessarily find yourself on higher ground down the road.

After a seeming black-hole of packing, unpacking, and reshuffling, I’m finally all moved back into MIT! It was quite a tiring day; I was exhausted by the time I was finished. But of course a little fatigue is no match for a short power-nap, which can do wonders. After a little while, I felt awake, energetic, and ready to go so I took a little walk around next house and the MIT campus. A little later that night, some good friends and I decided to go party hopping, as it being MIT’s rush week and all. We visited PBE, but left after waiting because the line to get to their rooftop party was too long, so then we stopped by No. 6 club and had some fun dancing there. A few of us decided we were hungry afterwards, so we decided to head to LaVerde’s, which was to our dismay closed. On the way back we found that PBE’s line had disappeared, and we got in with a minimal wait and danced a bit more on their roofdeck (great view).

It’s good to be back at MIT, but I’ll certainly sleep soundly tonight!