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!

As the summer is coming to a close (wow, only a few more days before I head back to MIT …!), I thought it reasonable to summarize what I did and did not do. Back in June when the summer was still young, I blogged about a bunch of goals that I had for the upcoming months.

Things I said I was going to do and actually did:

• Pre-learn some of my classes (got particularly far in 2.004 and studying for 6.142 (a robotics class I want to take), but not far at all in 6.003). The idea is that I would have more free time during the semester (hopefully)
• Watched some TV
• SLEEP!!!
• Run and bike fairly often, more of the latter
• Had a good internship, and enjoyed living at home for the summer

Things I said I was going to do and didn’t:

• Learn Blender3D
• Build an electric bicycle. Oh well, there’s always next summer …not to mention the school year
• Develop perfect pitch. Didn’t really pursue this one too much, so it might be possible yet!

Things I didn’t expect to do at all, but ended up doing:

• Learning to play electric bass guitar
• Starting to program a very simple operating system kernel, along with a good friend MS
• Growing a goatee (!) :- )>

I’m really looking forward to going back to MIT and having a great year! I plan on trying as many new things as possible and trying to keep an open mind about everything. If you see me not doing that, please pull me aside and tell me what’s up.

Cheers all!

Hey everyone! Well, it’s been over one month since my family cruise to Bermuda, but I’ve finally got around to uploading my pictures. Between my camera and my parent’s cameras, we took over 800 photos! I’ll spare you the agony (and spare the scripts.mit.edu webserver the space) and only show you some of my favorite pictures.

Here are the pictures!

Leaving the port of Boston. Can almost see MIT… if it weren’t for those tall buildings!

Inside the ship, in one of the main dining rooms. Our ship is the “Norwegian Spirit”

On nom nom nom nom…

Circling around Bermuda as we arrive on Sunday morning

Elbow beach – nice and sunny!

Small cars and mopeds were everywhere on the island. Awesome!

The view of the Dockyard from the ship

A beautiful sunset, also from the ship

Check out those sunset-colored crepuscular rays!

A long exposure view of the town by the dockyard, at dusk. One of my favorite pics

A glass bottom boat! These things are pretty awesome. We went on one, and some of the pics are below. The bottom of the boat is made of glass, allowing passengers to look underneath and see coral reefs, fish, and ship wrecks. Floodlights mounted on the underside also allow for a great view at night. These boats are designed to operate in very shallow waters (the boat doesn’t penetrate very deep vertically down into the water), so it can go over coral reefs. Quality engineering!

Getting onto the glass bottom boat, right before dusk.

As the captain put it, “Welcome aboard, everyone! Part of our journey tonight will take us within the Bermuda triangle. Inexplicable anomalies have happened here as recently as several years ago. We’ll be sailing in dangerously shallow waters, where other boats have been destroyed. Also, it’s night time. Also, the bottom of this boat is made of glass, not steel. Sounds like a great idea, no?”

Another great sunset, this time from aboard the glass bottom boat

Looking through the glass! Check out some of that coral. The big black square is a floodlight.

Another glass-bottom boat; they all tend to circulate around the same area. In this case, we’re all checking out an old ship wreck called the Vixen.

We survived!

A lot of houses in Bermuda are painted pastel colors

The town of Georgetown, which has a reputation of being very colonial

British people are so stylish!

When we returned to our stateroom, we were greeted by a friendly towel monkey!

The grand centrum area on the cruise ship. Nice grand piano back there!

The pool deck

The bridge! Lots of cool measurement and navigation equipment in there. At one point, there was a rather extreme fog storm. You couldn’t see out those huge glass windows at all; it was completely white that day! Perhaps it was a storm from the Bermuda triangle, coming to eat us…

A clock in our room. Here’s a fun little science experiment! This is a clock we took with us from home, where it kept perfect time. We noticed however that when plugged in aboard the ship, the clock would consistently gain a few minutes of time each day. Strange, huh? Nope, we weren’t even traveling at relativistic speeds either. An explanation for this is that old digital clocks operate by counting the peaks in AC current, which is supposed to be standardized at 60 Hz. So every 60 cycles, the clock adds one second to the current time; every 3600 cycles the clock adds one minute, etc. Since our clock was gaining time however, that means that ship’s electrical generators systems aren’t operating at exactly 60 Hz; it’s a little bit higher! I measured how far off the clock went (using my watch, which is hopefully accurate), and measured that the ship’s AC runs at 60.148 +/- 0.003 Hz ftw. A bit too fast!

More on nom nom later on that night. There was plenty of this going on throughout the cruise I might add; I just refrained from taking pictures of absolutely everything I ate

A long exposure of the sea, taken at night

The ship’s main deck, on the last day before coming back to Boston.

Overall it was a great trip! We had a fun time, and luckily we didn’t even die in the Bermuda triangle. Cheers!

…or, at least I was on a boat. My family and I just got back from a fun summer vacation! We took a cruise from Boston to Bermuda, and just got back yesterday. We took a plethora of pictures, and I’ll post the best ones soon!

In all of the hectic flurry of studying for finals, declaring my minor, and choosing my classes for next year, I forgot to upload a few pictures that I took! Boston is quite pretty in the Spring when green, leafy things grow from the ground and on trees. Here are a few pictures I took:

And here are two panoramas that I took by stitching multiple images together (click for a larger view):

Here are some thoughts for the next school year:

• Linux kernels are cool. Why not have a Linux kernel-building party?
• Typically, I have little free time during the school year because of all of my classes, and lots of free time during the summer. Why not even it out a bit? Lately I’ve been trying to pre-learn as much as I can for some of the classes I’ll be taking next semester through MIT’s OCW (open courseware; MIT puts lecture notes/course materials for a number of courses online). That way, maybe I’ll have more free time next year!

NASA has a really cool website, the Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html

Most of the pictures are absolutely amazing; I have the site in my bookmark toolbar for quick access. I’d highly recommend it!