Ceaseless Student

So I’ve been going to Vinny T’s on a weekly basis since I got to Olin this summer.

Their food is not exceptionally tasty, but I absolutely love the restaurant. They have huge, starving-college-student sized portions; and for a bit more they have incredibly big family platters that are meant to serve 3 or 4 people. To me this means I have dinner for a couple of days or something of the sort. More important than their portions, their service is great. They take huge reservations in stride professionally and without batting an eye.

They’re cool with things like “20-25 people I think… I’ll call if it seems like it’s going to be more…” Oh yeah. They also deal with huge bunches of loud college kids quite well. It’s really quite a pleasure to eat there.

So. Here’s my plan.

I recently decided that it’d be awesome if I could get non-student members of the Olin community to come. Last time we had one prof, and this Thursday I expect two more and one prof’s family.

I’m really excited to do this on a regular basis. I hope I can keep it going during the year; it’ll be much harder b/c the dining hall is such an easy option. And of course scheduling is annoying. There are conflicts every single day, so its actually been a moving appointment. We’ve done Monday, Monday, Friday, Wednesday and next week is Thursday.

If you’re an Olinite reading this in the Boston area, but you’re not at Olin itself, send me an e-mail to be included in the invitation e-mails for these dinners.

I am really excited for Thursday.

These things are sweet. Like, really sweet. The idea is that you write a program and the FPGA implements it in hardware (it makes a digital circuit with a portion of its hundreds of thousands of gates).

The parts I like are the cost and how much they jam on the board. All the stuff on the board can be used as either inputs or outputs (depending on what they are); also there’s some mode-controlling stuff on the board, but let’s ignore that for now.

I’ll describe one that’s just shy of $100. It has 8 LEDs, 8 switches, 4 push-buttons on the board itself. Then it has an additional 60 I/O ports that can be used for whatever. Some of these (24) are split off into groups of 6 pins that you can plug something called a Pmod into. These are extensions that they’ve already made for you such as video I/O or audio I/O or motor control etc. Oh yeah. It also has a 4 digit seven-segment display. This lets you make the simple squarish looking digital clock type numbers. And there’s a slot for a 1/8 VGA LCD screen. Sexy.

Anyhow. I keep on coming up with reasons to buy one that aren’t good enough to get me to do it. Case in point: for about $200 I can make a TV card for my monitor. I mean. OK, I could play Smash on my monitor. Or I could get a $50 TV card. But the FPGA can also do other stuff. But for $200 I could buy a new TV. *sigh* I need better arguments for myself. If anyone can come up with a compelling reason for me to get an FPGA other than their shininess, that’d be awesome.

I’m pretty sure this device has made me the happiest and most victorious-feeling for the most mundane tasks. For example, I felt accomplished after following a step-by-step screencast to make the FPGA count in binary and display the 8 MSB in LED form. And now, I’m failing to use the seven-segment display to make it count with numbers. Actually, I think I’ve gotten it to do it, but too fast for my eyes to resolve… I’ll work on that.

Oh man. Highrise is yummy. Thanks to the people who suggested it to me!

I’ve got only like 20 contacts up so far, but I should get much faster at this as I get a bit more practice and actually establish a system. I’ve had to do every single entry like 5 times because I keep adding things when I think of them. “Oh yeah… photos!” also phone number formats, labels, and, this one is key, birthdays.

This works really well as a tickler for birthdays or, hell, anything. I’m going to chuck all of my single task to-dos here and keep Mindmeister for projects and other more complex things. The ability to have tasks linked to people is rather awesome.

Complaints: Well I do have a lot actually. Inputting people is slow. I can’t add a photo or put on a label until after the initial creation.When I add a label I have to click OK instead of pressing enter. Little things, but things that shouldn’t exist in a serious site. I mean, I have on my list of to-dos for Olindocs “make OK pressed by enter.” Honestly. Not pro dudes. Oh. I also wish I could label contacts en masse. But I can’t. Lame. This requires much more forethought. Or going back to fix things. Or both.

That all being said. This is one-time. I can more than deal with it. It’s notes are awesome. I’m not sure if i talked to anyone who reads this about one of my original plans when I first got a Moleskine. It went like this:

I’d meet someone. I’d get their name. Then I’d pull out my Moleskine and scribble something. I’d then have a normal conversation with them; except for the part where I’m writing stuff in my notebook every 5-15 seconds. Well. Highrise gives me a reason to do something like this. Except not until after the conversation and only with people I don’t see all that often. Not quite as cool but hey.

The free version of Highrise has this limitation about having a single case. This means you can only have 1 foldery thing that keeps different things related. OR. I could use either labels or an additional contact to keep a project together. Pretty hackable.

In short: Highrise = cool. I will report on any changes in my opinion if it goes to pretty good or less or OMG this is the mostest awesome! or more.

All right.

So some of you might’ve noticed that I’m pretty organized. This is because organization doesn’t come naturally to me. As a result, I’ve worked on it all of my life and I’ve gotten very good at organizing any specific thing I choose to organize. I chose a new one today. I’m going to organize the people I know.

The sad part is, I’m not quite sure how I should go about it. I’m taking suggestions on any system you think would be interesting. Or even parts of systems or vague ideas; I love trying things out…

Here’s some of my thoughts up to nowish:

Put it in Outlook - What happens if I stop using Outlook? Also, I don’t know if Outlook has some way to have ticklers (reminders w/dates) attached to contacts for birthdays and such. Another con is that notes can only be seen once you open the contact; I hate slow.

Put it in Stikkit - This is nice b/c it’s online. The whole thing is a note, it’s very searchable, and it can have reminders. This is really quite awesome. The only reason I can think of to not use Stikkit is that it’s an internet thing. As such it could cease to exist or be rendered obsolete. Also, I tend to be big on switching programs around… In response to my concerns, I could download everything as a bunch of text files and do a variation on my next idea.

Make my own system - Use one .txt file for each person. Then have a python program that goes through and makes a database in whatever form I want. I certainly know how to make this searchable and navigable due to my experience from OlinDocs. It’s very customizable, but not necessarily pretty. And I can toss it online with security if I want remote access… Problem: takes time to make the program. Also, unless I write a gui or something for quick updating, going through lots of files could be annoying. I guess this is a problem with Stikkit too.

Use Excel - This might sound a bit under-powered considering how much I want my system to be able to do, but it can be done. With liberal use of concatenation etc, this can look pretty awesome and be nice to look stuff up in. Issue: inputting stuff would suck. A lot.

Use a Moleskine - Get a Moleskine address book. Or, more Borisly, get a normal Moleskine and do one person every 2 pages. That way, I can have a lot of updates before anything fills up. Also, it’d be easy enough to carry it with me whenever I meet someone new. Issues: Not searchable at all. Losable. Not very dynamic.

After writing this I have a bit of direction. Yay typing! That being said, it is only an inkling. What do you think? Comment or hit me with an e-mail (boris at students).

Lifehacker (among the cooler sites ever) is currently having a “show us your Firefox” contesty thing. I figured I’d send mine in since it’s a bit unusual. For those of you who haven’t been following this for a long, long time, my Firefox has a vertical column of tabs.I described how to put them there a while back. Anyways, I’m super-excited about this. If anything of mine gets on Lifehacker I’ll be really happy. I’m such an internet fanboy… I almost disgust myself…

It pains me to say this, but I no longer use Netvibes.

Netvibes is beautiful. Netvibes is functional. Netvibes has a ton of features and gadgets that you can toss onto it.

Alas. It’s functionality has been losing ground to a variety of sources for a while now. I enjoy using new things (new to me not necessarily new in general) so changing methodology is fairly common but I really thought I’d be with Netvibes longer. It was my killer app. I used it for my to-do lists, I used it to keep track of plans, I used it to do a good bit of the standard recommended GTD stuff. I used it for my RSS feeds. I used it for podcasts. It was, without a doubt, my home on the internet.

But as time went by I started using stikkit for some kinds of lists. Then I started using MindMeister for more near-term lists because it allows me to display more information faster. And then the dagger to the heart: Google.

You might be wondering: “If you liked it so much, why’d you stop using it?”
Well, at this point the only functionality that I was using Netvibes for exclusively was RSS.

Google homepage, I mean iGoogle, sucks. Hard. It’s RSS is clumsy. You can’t read items in the cute little frame; it doesn’t expand, it links. You don’t have a lot of control; it’s lame. It’s gadgets generally don’t seem to be worth the trouble, the community is less developed than the Netvibes ecosystem. Basically, not a cozy home. The coolest thing about it is the little image that changes with day and night and stuff.

And then there’s Google Reader. It’s not as pretty as Netvibes. But it’s too damn good for me not to switch. All items view is downright sexy. Every item, expanded, in an otherwise spartan page; kkeyboard shortcuts that let me get my reading done fast. So effective. I could’ve replicated something like this with Yahoo pipes and all of my RSS feeds and Netvibes, but if it’s not the best tool for the price it’s got to go.

I love Netvibes, but not as much as I love efficiency.

Wow. So I sent two pictures to randomness; they caused quite a ruckus. I sent them out at 22:40.

By 22:44, three people had responded. Two were generally confused and one was concerned.

It was also said that the pictures were “obviously photoshopped.” Honestly, I wish I was that awesome. To have not only photoshopped a picture, but then photoshopped the same scene from a different angle… so much badassness. But alas, such is not the case. An expedition was launched to photographically verify the lack of trees to a few doubters.

I caught them on their return with evidence and aided in lovingly berating the doubters. By the time I got back to my room (22:49) three more e-mails had gone out. One was from our aforementioned concerned citizen advising his fellow students that a work order had been sent out. The other two were from more perceptive folk who pointed out that the trees that had been cut were exclusively the ones that, well, were already dead.

Wow. People react to things so amusingly.

I was about to post but I figured I’d put in the newest e-mail (23:05). It concerns a student questioning the work order that was sent. Perhaps someone will question the questioning or something so that my entertainment can continue. One can always hope.

And one last e-mail (23:08) after I already posted and am going back for minor edits. A sarcastic fellow suggest that maybe new trees should be planted. Fantastic. I love randomness. And humanity.

I shall never be bored so long as I have other people in my general vicinity.

I learned a new drill called practice reading. The idea is that you read for a set amount of time (say 3 minutes) and make a mark where you end. Then you read the same passage again in the same amount of time. Now you reduce the amount of time (to say 2 minutes) and read up to the same mark. Then you reduce it again (maybe to 1 minute) and read to the same mark. At this point there is no way you can actually read this fast, but the key is to get your finger to move at that speed. Ideally you’d like to see all the words but not have time to process them. Now here’s what floored me.

After doing this practice, read something new. Calculate your reading rate. I got over 900WPM both times I’ve measure after doing this this drill so far. That’s a massive jump (I came close to doubling my previous fastest).

I imagine I didn’t retain as much, but I feel like I was actually reading… wow.

This seems to actually be doing stuff. I started at a speed of 240WPM for a serious-ish book and 360WPM for a fun book. Since then the exercises have only been with an easy fun book, but I’ve gotten 408, 478 and 373 WPM. Not bad considering I have to be thinking about new stuff.

The big things they’ve done up to now are using your finger as a pacer by moving it under the line you’re reading (move it across to the right, then pick it up [sounds obvious but I never thought of it] and move it to the left), posture/lighting (the book should be at about 45 degrees and the lighting should be diffuse and soft), and fixing regression (this is when you go back and reread things). Also they mentioned getting glasses that are right; my new ones should be coming any day now…

In practice, I’ve found that using my finger makes me liable to rush and then need to reread more… I’m so impatient. I’ll soon get a handle on this… *crosses fingers*

So far, so good. My goal is 1000WPM for easy books. Why 1000WPM you ask? Because it’s a nice round number. And I get an extra digit; that’s pretty cool. For reference, Ship of Gold has somewhat more than 400 words per page. At 1000WPM that comes out to less than 3 and a half hours to finish the book; at 240WPM that comes out to just about 14 hours. I could dig on some speed…

Anyhow, I finally have a good deal of work to do for NASA. I have to learn Verilog so I can use FPGAs and I have to make a simulation of mirror stuff with x-rays. w00t!

So I forgot to bring a CD over to the AC today. Luckily I’d made an iso so I just mounted it and I was good to go. People were quite infatuated with the idea so I thought some of you all might like it.

I use two free programs to make an iso and then mount it in a virtual drive.

The first is called LCiso Creator. This program just reads a cd and makes a copy of it into a .iso file for you - super easy to use.

The second is called Virtual CDRom. This involves doing a little bit more doing, but the readme is quite easy to follow. It might take a couple of minutes the first time; whatev.

You can get them both from me here. Enjoy!