The Grad School Experience

So this spring is the real deal: full-time student with a full-time Graduate TA appointment. It's a lot of work. I'm taking a short break here between Path-finding algorithms to whine about how tired I am, but I wanted this: I am immersed in grad school. Also maybe a little over my head: my homework for Artificial Intelligence is way behind schedule. Could be trouble. I don't really have time to post much.
This is a Paul Vallee Chanticler, a French Micro-Car made from 1956 to 1958. The smaller motor was 125cc's the bigger one was 175cc's. Micros really need to make a comeback somehow.

New Semester

   "Spring" semester started yesterday. Fall and Spring. We don't like to talk about winter, I guess, bad for morale? I love the light, tiny snowflakes that waft around, in no hurry to settle down. I'm not finding winter oppressive, and sunset is already nearly an hour later than it was a month ago.
   This semester I'm taking CS240 Operating Systems; CS395 Algorithmics; and CS570 Artificial Intelligence. I'm also a TA for CS121 and a tutor in the Computer Science Assistance Center. This is all looking to be quite challenging and fun. AI seems quite scary at the moment, lots of hard coding coming up, plus a graduate-level research paper due at the end. I hope I haven't made a big mistake. There is a Humbert Wolfe quote that I know only imperfectly: something about "faith, and the courage to fail in all but kindness." I am going to be mumbling that to myself quite often this semester. Also, I need to read some of this man's poems.

Christmas Eve

   The semester flew by and I hardly wrote anything here at all. That wouldn't be an inappropriate entry on my tombstone, either. Last semester I had Theory of Computation and Software Engineering. Both were fun classes, and I learned a lot. I managed a C in Theory, and balanced it with an A in Engineering to get my minimum 3.0 gpa and stay in Grad school. I really must have aced the finals to do that well. I did feel good about them. I'll just enjoy it for now and not look too closely at my grades' teeth. This also means that I get to be appointed to a full-time Teaching Assistantship which is a really big deal for me. It means an Out-of-State tuition waiver, plus a small stipend in cash. This is so going on my CV. Money has been tight this year. Things are looking up.
   So here it is, Christmas eve. I'm having to think about the actual  meaning of Christmas, because most of the cultural trappings are out of reach. Our kids are all here, which is great, but we have no money to spend on them. If Colleen hadn't found a way to cobble together a "tree" out of cardboard and twigs, there wouldn't even be that. No over the river, no through the woods, no presents. We have a roof over our heads, and we have enough food, but we're missing a good bit of what it's common to do. I was tempted to think of it as me just being childish, and okay, that's probably part of it, but also I've started to think of it as Santa's phantom limb. It's missing and it hurts.
   We'll try to have a merry Christmas anyway. In private conversations I've been saying that we're going to do like the Whos down in Whoville, after the Grinch had made off with all of their stuff: we're going to get up in the morning and sing. Sing praise to our King. He has come to be with us, and he is very welcome. He hasn't solved all of our problems, but he has solved our really big one, which kind of makes the little ones moot. ( I had a class, back at Fox, in writing for Christian publications. I got a really bad grade. Probably all three of you who are going to read this are going to understand.) All Praise and Glory and Thanks be to God Almighty, maker of Heaven and earth, who loves us, and came to us and spoke to us, and gave himself as a ransom for many. There's no gift exchange going on here, there's nothing we can bring him that isn't His already. I clearly don't know when or even how to stop. It's alright, I'm not tired of saying it.
Merry Christmas.

National Talk Like A Pirate Day

Ok, so the post title is a bit of a tease. When I got up this morning I didn't know it was Talk Like a Pirate Day, just that it was Wednesday and that I had class and meetings. I haven't spent a single minute trying to talk like a pirate, and it's way too much work to try to write like one. I do have a fountain pen, and I'm not afraid to use it, but sometimes banging stuff out on a keyboard is they way to go. It's just that it's the middle of the week, I have a ton of work to do, and I thought some random typing would get me out of doing it for a few minutes and then I could go to bed. I have a math test on Friday, and then on Tuesday a presentation for Software Engineering where I get to deliver a short introduction to poker hand evaluation tools. Should be fun. Yet another term of kinda liking the math better, but I'm starting to prefer the work of coding maybe a little? I know there are classes coming up where there won't be much difference: I've got a couple of texts on Algorithm Analysis lying around that are frightening to look at right now, but I know from experience that if I dig in hard enough I will get it. Eventually. I've gotten to chapter 3 of one of the books on Lambda Calculus, a 400/500 intro by Greg Michaelson. He's a good writer: he's making the topic somewhat digestible. The other books I have on Lambda Calculus and Recursion Theory are still basically unreadable, so they will just have to wait until I get a little bigger. Right now I am wondering if there is a recursive algorithm for poker hand recognition. How do pokerbots make decisions? Everybody has heard of poker tournaments for people, but there are tournaments for AI pokerbots as well. Actually at this point, to compete in on-line real money poker games these days, you pretty much have to have a pokerbot helping you or you're just giving your cash away, just because of the existence of web-interfaced pokerbots, and the fact that you have to be a very rare kind of savant to beat them. So um, yeah, this is what grad school is like. The University of Alberta has had an Poker AI lab since 1999. So it's an established academic field with quite a few papers out there. I'm reading one right now by Frans Oliehoek, a masters thesis from the University of Amsterdam. I have learned nothing about the UvA athletic teams, or what their School Mascot may be. So I'm going to presume that they're Pirates. Oh yea, bedtime.

Late at night and all is well

So I passed Professor R in the hall, and he asked if I had it all under control. I said that I kinda did. He asked, "Really?", because, after all, I had a class from him last year. "Yes," I said, "but it can still all spin out of control later." He laughed, reassured, and we went our ways.
This semester is fun so far. I'm glad though, that I only have my two classes. I've cut down on my anti-depressants, so I'm not feeling as sedated and stupefied, but it's still a decent workload. If I get tired of poker hand recognition algorithms I have a couple new books on lambda calculus and recursion theory to read.
Wednesday nights at the Big Haus a new class has started on the History of the Ancient Near East in the context of the Bible, which might just be Evan Wilson  geeking out on one of his favorite subjects, but because of that I know it's going to be richly rewarding and a chance for me to geek out on it too.
I have my first math midterm in a week, Determinate and Indeterminate Finite Automata, Regular Expressions, basically the first and simplest ways you can describe or generate a Formal Language. Set Theory based math is different. One of the comments I'm still thinking about from The Soul of Science by Pearcey and Thaxton was that it's helpful to think of mathematical insight as a sixth sense about the world around us, very much like the other five. With the small caveat that it takes a bit of training for your brain to really enjoy/exploit it.
This is a Porsche Carrera GT. Mid-mounted V10 goodness.

I enjoy these the same way any eleven-year-old kid would. They exist and they're awesome.

Fall Semester, 2012

   Classes start on Monday. I have two classes this semester, CS 383 Software Engineering, and CS/Math 385 Theory of Calculation. When I said to Clint that CS 385 didn't sound so hard, he just leaned back and laughed at me. I have since begun to surmise that it might be more of a weed-out class. Doesn't really matter, they kind of all are to me.
   I'm feeling particularly fuzzy-headed and ill-prepared for the new semester. No use in worrying.
   I've been reading The Soul of Science, by Nancy Pearcy and Charles Thanxton. It's a history of science that is also to some degree about the history of science. The authors are putting the Christian and philosophical context of the development of science back into the history, noting where and why it has largely been left out. I'll have to get back to this, it's a good book and worth more comments.
   "The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him," --Psalm 25:14
   EC Bell has pointed out in several sermons that what we actually fear reflects what we do not wish to lose, and that the right way to look at 'the fear of the Lord' is as a fear of losing him. Evan Wilson has more of an old-school view of  'the fear of the Lord' as a fear of being destroyed by his Judgement. Those views are probably more complementary than not, reflecting basically the same thing.
   I think I'm more determined this year to spend some time sharpening my philosophical and poetic and musical skills. Just because I'm not here to only be an engineer. Off to bed, and then tomorrow, it's back to being way over my head in Math and Engineering.

A futile, vain, and meaningless summer was had by all.

   School starts again in two weeks. I have a place to live and some iced tea in a glass. Reviewing all the things I didn't get done this summer would also be a waste of time. But one of the things I did do was go to Evan Wilson's excellent four-week bible study on Ecclesiastes. It was eye-opening. Evan articulated insights that I feel I had been struggling toward for a long time, but had been unable to  quite coalesce on my own. I am very grateful for the chance to listen to him. Of course I won't remember it for long.
   I was already most of the way into a proper futilitarian frame of mind: convinced that we won't be here long, accomplish anything, nor be long remembered. But there are a couple of things that struck me in particular.
"What is crooked cannot be made strait" (1:15)
   We are living in a fallen world and subject to futility. We can't fix it. But oddly, Evan said, futility paves the way for the virtues. Someone who's trying to fix something misses the chance to instead respond to a situation with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness or self-control.
   "Consider the work of God; who can make strait what he has made crooked?" (7:13)
   I suppose this is much like the other verse, I'm just still mulling over the implications. Especially in the arenas of how to treat ones' self and others. Right now I have more questions than answers, and they keep running ahead of me. I grew up in more of a pietistic tradition where I was trying to be perfect and not really need the grace of God, which is to say, not really need Him. Which was Adam's sin all over again, and where futility comes in. We're dependent creatures: we will never not need him. Futility reminds us of this, even though we're proud and kind of dim.
   "Be not righteous overmuch, and do not make yourself overwise; why should you destroy yourself?" (7:16)
    Another mind-bender. I'm sure I gawked at this as a kid and then blew it off. I'm still not sure I quite get it, I may have to ask Evan again, but I'm tending to think that both have the potential to ruin the moment or avoid it entirely with just too much stuffed-shirt prudence. The moment is really all we have.