Phipps by Night

I found out today that Phipp's Conservatory in Pittsburgh puts on a special candle-lit garden event during the holidays. Never having been to the gardens at night, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to see the displays that were up from the G-20 earlier this year (Hans Godo Frabel, glass artist)

He does a lot with these "long fellows", sprites, and theater masks. He also makes some really incredible, realistic flowers.



This one's a real flower.
Frabel makes some great clowns, too.

His pieces also sell for incredible amounts.If you like me a lot and have $6,000 to spend on me, I love this glass flower above. If you only like me by $3,500, I like the orchid, too.

Above is the Glass Tree that Mr. Obama commissioned for the G-20 (a good 34 of them). It symbolizes peace and the fragility of freedom.

Looks like Narnia out There

I woke up this morning to find this outside my window:




I promptly did so (click to enlarge):


Hopefully it stays until Christmas!

There should be more posts from me soon, perhaps with the trees a little more colorful. I have a lot to catch up on from the semester. In the meantime, have a great time with your last-minute holiday shopping!

Look, Ma, No Hands!

Classes have been keeping me busy, but they're soon coming to an end. I can't believe how fast this semester has been! The week after next is Thanksgiving, then after that there is another week of lectures, followed by finals. This is the time when you have to get a firm grip on the steering wheel, so that you don't spin out of control before the finish.

Thankfully, there's H1ghlander, the autonomous hummer that participated in the DARPA Grand Challenge a few years back:

Who needs hands? The car drives itself!

Next semester will be busier, but the classes will also be more interesting. Here's a link to my schedule, at present. I am very excited for all of my classes, especially Computer Architecture and Digital Computation.

New Do

My roommate and I took the 1.5 block trip to the hair salon today and got our hair trimmed. It feels great to have a lighter head again!





Yes, that is Kirby in the background.

Schedules in Real Time

College class schedules are like bacterial cultures, classes being the bacteria. Sometimes some die out, sometimes some grow when you don't expect them to. And sometimes they mutate to the point you don't recognize it as the same culture!

In case you were interested in watching my schedule evolve in real time, here is a link to my newest schedule.

Fall 09

Summer was full of many things, few of which were interesting, and many of which could be described as droplets of water, otherwise known as rain (Sudbury, MA, broke its record for "wettest summer" in mid-June). When the most entertaining moment was listening to the feeble attempts of a computer salesman -- "If you didn't know anything about computers, don't you think you'd be impressed by Vista, and want to buy it?" -- you know it's time to leave Summer behind and focus on what's ahead.

And oh, boy, have we got fun ahead! Here is a link to my schedule, as of today, so you can follow along.

This could easily be my most fun and exciting semester yet. I am finally taking upper level ECE classes, which by itself makes classes more exciting. Add on the great professors, and you add on the fun by the pound.

Day 1 was full of surprises. First, in 21-260 (Differential Equations), Dr. Handron, whom I had for Calculus my first semester at CMU, announced that we would have to turn in half our homework online. This was a disappointing event, since buying registration for the site is expensive, and, unlike a textbook, you can't resell it afterward. Otherwise, class was fine. I don't expect Diff Eq to be too difficult.

18-348 could also be called "Embedded Systems Lite." This course alternates years with the other embedded systems course, which is taught by a professor notorious for her back-breaking classes but great teaching. It's unfortunate that I got caught in its off year, but on the bright side Professor Koopman seems enthusiastic and knowledgeable, and is offering a different perspected on embedded systems. This course deals in the most common systems found in industry and elsewhere, whereas the other course uses micro-controllers that can hold its own OS (and you pretty much design one). I am very much looking forward to this class this semester.

18-300 was the biggest surprise. I played around with my schedule a lot this semester, to try to find a way out of taking a certain class, but still get an enriched curriculum. I chose Electromagnetics as a placeholder, until I could find a more enjoyable class (Physics has been painful in the past). 18-300 E&M was my favorite class of the day. Now I know one class that I am definitely not dropping.

18-396. What can I say except that I'm 9th on the waitlist for my section? Supposedly the administration is trying to find a larger lecture hall. Those appear to be sparse. I don't know why they assumed that they would have normal demand for the course when they put two courses in the same lecture.


Day 2:

18-418 is different. CMU is very computer-oriented, probably something to do with having the top CS program in the nation. Virtually everything in ECE has to do with computers (Even Dr. Bain, who does research in applied physics, does research on magnetic disk heads -- again, goes back to computers). 18-418 is about energy processing. Energy generation, energy transmission, energy distribution. It's a very different course. We'll see what happens with that.

15-211 -- I don't really need to say anything about it, because I dropped it already. I may take it again in a few semesters, but I don't have room for it in my schedule anymore. It is very much recitation-oriented (and high-level programming oriented), and now that I have 7 hours of lectures on Wednesdays, none of the recitations fit.


Within 2 weeks, I hope to drop another one of these classes. I.e., I have to drop a class, since I'm only allowed 54 units. It will be a hard choice, though! I like all of the classes I'm in right now, and since they're only offered every 1-2 years, making a decision about which classes to keep is difficult.

Peek into Boston

Between working and sleeping, commuting and cooking, rain showers and humid north east weather, I have found time to go into Boston and explore the city a little bit. Boston is a fantastic city with hundreds of things to do. Seeing the sights is just one of them.



Beacon hill, with its distinctive brick town houses. It is lit by old-fashioned street lamps, and virtually all the window sills are filled with flowers!

Harvard. Easily the most gorgeous campus I have ever seen (though Cornell gives it a run for its money. And I'm sure it has a lot of that.).

You can see a bit of downtown Boston between the buildings. This view is from Bunker Hill.

One of the old ships in the harbor.

Peter, Regina and I when they came to visit Boston this summer. We took the 3-mile walk on the Freedom Trail.

You can never prepare too early for Christmas!

Regina and Peter in the lovely Italian District. To the left, out of sight, is Paul Revere's House.

Quincy Market has lots of food vendors. It's an impressive-looking building (like many of the buildings in the area).

Some of the harbor.

There are actually a couple of slabs in this graveyard devoted to Paul Revere. Is he buried under this slab? The other one? Or none...?

MIT. Surprisingly, I still like CMU's campus better. Maybe I have a thing for dying grass.

The Charles River, with Boston in the background.

I believe this is a statue of George Washington.

The market place.

Boston City Hall. Also an impressive building, although it almost feel like someone forgot to turn it right-side up after they were done putting it together...

Greetings from Boston!

I landed in Boston last night, to settle before starting my internship with Raytheon on Tuesday. Needless to say, I am excited (and nervous!) to start my first internship, but I look forward to it a lot.

Before things really get started, I'd like to play catch-up. This is where I post everything that you've been missing these past few weeks! (and in some cases what I've been missing, but just happened to snap a photo while I walked from one computer to another).

Included in this post are pictures of CMU's infamous Carnival, ECE Day, the Pittsburgh skyline, and, as a bonus, some pictures of Lowell, where I'm living this summer!

Carnival

Every year CMU hosts its Carnival. The university gives its students two days off to enjoy Spring and a series of student-run events. It's an outlet for creativity, and a last hurrah before buckling down for finals.

My personal favorite, the annual Mobot race, draws quite a crowd.


Student organizations pulled out all the stops on Midway this year. The booths were amazing. Unfortunately, I was coding Malloc all weekend, so I couldn't go see many of the booths up close, but I did manage to shoot some of the amazing structures students put together.



SWE's booth: Mt. Everest. It turned out really well.

ECE Day

The sun finally decided to come out for ECE day, traditionally held on the last day of classes. It's a food-filled, faculty-soaked afternoon with music, games, and a lot more food.Look at all the smiling faces! Classes are over! But Proxy isn't. Can you spot the bags under the eyes?

Grant, my lab partner in 18220, attempts to dunk our 18202 TA, Kyle. Too bad I dunked him first! Then the professor himself has a go...
Max looking snazzier than usual in his hat that screams "I'm in charge of transporting burgers from the grill to Hammerschlag Hall, so if you want to beat the line, slip me a few green backs and one may get conveniently lost on the way!"

Pittsburgh

Andrey and I hung out for a day before I left for Boston, going places such as the Carnegie Science Center (we're 10-year-olds at heart) and Mt. Washington to see the Pittsburgh skyline. We also scored a free lasagna at Buca di Beppo, courtesy of the chef who forgot to remove the wrapper from the butter before baking it into the nine layers of pasta.

Andrey's first freeze-dried ice cream. This stuff comes from space?

A wonderful fountain contraption in tribute to the countless hours Andrey spent building fountains at this very spot as a child.


Panorama of Pittsburgh's beautiful skyline by night.

Lowell

Quaint and very, very empty on Sundays, Lowell is a small city that boasts UMass Lowell. And that's about it. There's an old church for sale on Merrimack St. for sale, if you're interested.
Washington would have had an easy time crossing the Merrimack here! This may be a product of the many canals throughout the city, however.

Edit: This is my 200th post on this blog! Happy 200th!