Testing the Techniques

With all of my exams, except Math 316, done, I got to say that I think my current strategies will work for the short term. Math 416 might ( keyword: might ) be a lot better than I expected, as I do not have to worry more than I already am about my place and mathematical ability in the course. Overall, I have realized that a LOT of what I need to do is becoming a lot of consistent individual work or CIWs. These sorts of tasks will probably propagate more as I get into more rigorous courses in UMich and (hopefully) am challenged more, but for now, I am forced to explore them haphazardly as I hope to get a lot out more out of college than others. To define a CIW, so I can use that term later and not need to redefine it, I want to give such a task a real chance of increasing my skill level, I will say that, for now, it requires the following three tasks for sure: 1. A New Experience. Whether it is drawing or designing or new math, it needs to be something that either EXTENDS old co...

As no one is reading this anymore, I guess I can bear to be a bit more vulnerable. These past few days have led me to feel just terrible about my actions yet again, and honestly, I am just contemplating the worst of situations in an attempt to prevent myself from thinking about what might happen to me if I do not end up changing my social life. Every day just feels so empty in comparison to the rhythms I try to cultivate to change my life for the better. From the daily stress of all that I do, to the fact that I am pretty sure I'll be alone, a lot of things have lost their color. The ones that haven't, however, are so stained with my pain that I have lost faith in them and won't pursue them as what's the point? That said, I need to stop thinking about the problems with my life and, instead, focus on the alternatives which give me meaning. While there are none right now, I hope to find opportunities which do so and, as a result, bring a little bit of color back into th...

So... I did not realize I hadn't written in here for two days. That is rather insane. So - let's bring up a recap:  Thursday:  - My Math 316 teacher did not realize that the homework did not get sent out till the night before, and so I spent a lot of time trying to do work when I really did not want to. I ended up procrastinating waay too much, leading to several situations where I wanted to get something done but I felt way to tired to do so. Today isn't that much better at that, but at least I have some strict schedule to follow and I can just focus on getting my essays written instead of worrying about everything else happening in my life.  Friday:   - That day was the day I really felt worse about not celebrating any sort of holiday. Without taking a break, I was exhausted and made the dumb mistake of getting a nap and coffee at night, leading to a case where I was too awake to sleep yet too tired to do anything meaningful. My best guess is t...

Wow. I need to send emails and get stuff done. Telluride is coming up, so I'll probably not be writing too much here as I need to focus on writing essays there for that assignment. Thus, I'll need to be offline for the next few days while I get this sorted. I'll put some stuff up once I simply crank this out.

Welp. I guess I am not going on certain apps ever again. From computer troubles, to missed clicks, to even just oddities on the normal situation, technology increases the amount of helicopter parenting you see in people, and I guess I am not immune from that. It pains me, as I am pretty sure that I am being watched far harder than I reasonably should be given that I do nothing but study, but what can I even do to mitigate that? Now I just feel crummy and compelled to work because some people told me to, and honestly my frustration from something as simple and stupid as that still has me riled up. I just need to re-affirm my own priorities and remember that I am doing this for myself - and not for people who believe their interest is always in my best interest ( while it frequently is, they do not understand some of the nuances of interactions in today's age, which means I have to balance a knife of privacy trying to do things that are otherwise normal ).

Yesterday was relatively strange. The autograder went down for eecs280 and my math 316 professor did not come. Unsure what to do.

Wow. This morning, I found the courage and the stamina to get up, turn on the light, and get to work. A few hours later, I realized I had the most productive morning of my life. I think I understand now how to set this up: 1. Noise to keep thoughts at bay. 2. Focus to ensure my workload is not heavy 3. A hard problem to struggle against.

Honestly, yesterday felt rather meh. I feel like I have been trading situations where people actually wanted to be my friend for situations where they use me like a tool, and the worst part is that sometimes I feel as if that was justified. I keep beating myself up for past mistakes while making the current set of mistakes over and over again, to the point where I just feel burned out by it all. I just want friends. but I keep doing everything to make it hard for people to do so. I ... don't know anymore, and I feel as if I don't know anyone anymore. But, listening to the flowing track, I remember the good as well. I remember those who have supported me throughout the years, and I remember that these feelings will only be temporary if I manage to get my allotted work done. I remember that video games exist, and that there are some things I still wish to play. I remember LibriVox, and remember there are things which I still wish to record. I remember my family, who somehow sti...

Heck yeah. This marks the 30th consecutive blog post I have had since I started, and boy has it been interesting tracking my mindset throughout the month, as I seem to have gotten a lot more serious and a lot more nervous about getting everything done. Today, however, I do have to say one thing: My biggest problem is one of energy. By which, I mean the following: 1. Firstly, I tend to put way too much of my effort into the little things, focusing on doing my best instead of doing what might be best for the class. In other words, I am not working as efficiently as I really should be, working for hours on stuff that should take far less time. I think, however, I 'll continue doing so as I need to do so to maintain quality. 2. Secondly, I tend to put way too little effort into physical fitness. I need to start exercising, as it's important to improve my mindset and to ensure I maintain mid physical form as I go along. I should start small and increase the load little by little...

Wow. Okay, so today I learned about a tool that makes my life a lot easier. Let me introduce you to the wonderful world of gcov: - Gcov is a program that handles line counts for g++. As many might know, the University of Michigan exclusively uses C++ for their introduction courses to programming for the major. G++, or the GNU compiler of C++, is a common program that is easy to install yet, for the most part, does not give a lot of detail about program execution. This lead to a lot of frustration for me, as I needed to understand how my program was executing without needing a visual debugger to see what went wrong and to better understand where my code was taking too long or not being tested. While g++ has many, many, flags which allow us to see more common warnings, errors, and other information, the compiler fails to give us pure execution data in a readable format. This is where gcov comes into play. After running an output file using a command like ./a.out, you can write gcov -...

These days are getting tougher and tougher to bear. I need to sleep and get some good moods in my system, but it was tiring to say the least

Recently, my thoughts have been drifting to the overall state of math education in this country. While this seems very pretentious, I have been labelled as "the math guy" by my peers for quite some time, and that focus on math has lead me to some very interesting places and to my current strengths, so I am thankful for it. With this in mind, let's go onto the main topic of today's post: math education. In many ways, the USA is a paradox of mathematics education. On the one hand, we do very well in the International Mathematical Olympiad, and do tend to place well with our contributors to mathematics. On the other hand, there are many, many, fields where American mathematics students tend to fail. It only takes one look at "The Art and Craft of Problem Solving" to see a chapter entitled "Geometry for Americans" to see this in action, as we tend to lag very behind other countries in teaching that part of mathematics. Additionally, due to many polic...

After coming to this college, I have started to see a lot of college in a very different way from a lot of my peers ( and maybe even my family ). A lot of people might view what college you go to undergrad as the be all end all, especially with respect to undergraduate curriculum quality and with respect to networking, but now I am unsure. The reason? Simple: I think that it's more a matter of motivation more than anything else, and that, as a result, college is so much more dependent on what you make of it rather than what else you do.  As a student now, I am thoroughly floored by what some of the students I have met here have done. From introducing me to Kerbal Space Program AI to composing multiple pieces using synthesizers and other related technology, I think that we tend to underestimate just the sheer amount of work certain majors put into their work when compared to other majors. Time and time again, I like to look at music majors for inspiration on not how just how hard...

For the second EECS 280 project, we had to implement the "so-called" edge carving algorithm, It was not too difficult to implement, but boy was it rewarding. It intelligently would cut out sections of the image row by row in an  attempt to crop it without losing any information, but what it ended up doing was distorting the images you put in, as it attempted to change the human figure to be thinner and more "hour-glassed" shape. While it's a very cool algorithm, it's not that intelligent as it does not have a global view of the program.

Finally done with some actual work, and I can have something to report: - Completed the next Math 217 HW. With this, I am now seeing just how different in length Part A is with respect to Part B. Part B's tend to be very, very long as the definitions are rather unwieldly in our book, requiring long chains of logic rather than simple application of theorems. I hope that I am not missing something, as it seems that these were rather long compared to everything else.

Overall, what a fun day! UMix, Math 217 and 316, and finally getting to stress - strain curves in MSE 220 was a real treat. I just hope I can learn more tomorrow about random algs and do the emails I want to do.