The Blog is Back is Back
to stay.
My last post was in March 2021 - 9 months ago. Why? Things got busy and I had to shift my priorities.
What are things? Things are primarily school. When we left off I was in the second semester of my masters at Columbia. I decided I wanted to get as much as possible out of my time here, so I dedicated myself to my classes and research.
And it really has paid off; I've learned a lot.
In the Fall I was appointed as a teaching assistant, which is a position usually filled by a PhD student. I'm the first Masters student in the history of the Electrical Engineering department to get it!
So that made me feel good. Then I was nominated to do a research specialization (!), which means I'm doing a fourth semester to focus on research, write some papers, help develop a new class, and write a thesis (maybe).
Things are going well.
Although, the time and attention I've put towards my studies didn't appear out of nowhere. Other things in my life, like the blog, for example, have suffered as a consequence.
Life is about trade-offs. There's a balance out there somewhere, and maybe you need to visit both extremes before you find it.
I started this post months ago. It has pictures from early April to late June 2021. We're just going to roll with it, because I'm afraid if I don't send it out it will be another 9 months before I get around to it again.
Be on the lookout for a more polished update soon.
Then I went home to Beaufort.
We went to the sands to watch a rocket launch.
But it was scrubbed...
So we didn't have anything to look at.
New York City is still New York City. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
It's not the place for me, but it is awesome.
If you care about coral, and you're curious about global coral health, this might be interesting to you.
When I first saw this video I though it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. Then I learned that these Boston Dynamics robots didn't actually use any reinforcement or active learning to "dance". At least in this example they're entirely hard coded, or programmed to execute the dance imagined by the programmers. We're still far away from one of these robots being able to freestyle dance. Still super cool, but not as cool as it seems!