Ceaseless Student

I think I’ve caught a glimpse of what that must feel like. Here’s the first page or so of my report b/c it’s just text. Feel free to check out the whole thing here.

The birth of a control system

As I start to type up this lab, I continually glance back at my levitating object in wonder. I also glance up at the whiteboard and think that math is truly beautiful. I think my controller can best be explained by a story.

I was attempting to figure out a way to get the step response of the original system. It was not going terribly well. I could add a step, but I couldn’t see anything at all through the noise from the system moving just a little at equilibrium (I’m currently thinking that a levitated object is not the best way to get the starting point that I then disturb with a step). Anyhow, I tried to stabilize the system by using a plastic rod to hold things together at the set point. That got rid of the high-amplitude, low-frequency noise, but high-frequency was still killing me. So I tried just adding a low-pass filter so that I might be able to see the step response better despite the noise. There was sadly too much noise. At this point I started poking around for a bit and one of the things I tried was changing the system to open-loop for a bit. I then took a look at the signal coming from the hall effect sensor. Importantly, I did this by touching the output of the hall-effect sensor to the place where my probe was at the time (after the low-pass filter). Then things moved and I was confused (I hadn’t meant to change anything by probing the sensor’s output). In my attempt to figure out what was going on, I inserted the sensor output into the row with the probe and (I guess out of habit?) went to set up the levitated object. It stayed. It stayed for a long, long time. And it had learned damping. It was incredible. I drew up the circuit on the board. I did math. It makes sense. It’s absolutely incredible. I love math. I should still do that step response and system characterization thing, but I’ll write up the math for why this works and include a block diagram first. So my design process was rather lacking, but I did figure everything out and fully understand it post facto. I was planning on doing the same thing with active elements, but this is actually more elegant. I’m glad I happened upon it.

We’re doing problems like this one that I typed up for my portfolio (a deliverable for the IS). This one’s actually a super-early one; some of the newer ones are more intersting IMO. Click through if you’d like the example problem to be large enough to read. Oh yeah - the small caps are kinda vocabulary terms. They’re estimation techniques that we got from a text and that I define elsewhere in my IS portfolio. I’m going to assume you guys can figure it out, but I’ll be happy to define them if comments make it clear that I am unclear.

So this is is some correspondence after nobody in the Advanced Digital Systems class turned in their second lab on time. Our teacher offered help; I responded by suggesting that maybe the issue was really motivation and not technical stuff so much (although that issue also exists).

What motivates you to work in classes?

(Names are hidden b/c I don’t like floating people’s names on the internet - most readers know who’s who ).

======================================================

Hi Boris,

I appreciate the honesty of your answer. What motivates
you in other classes?

-###

======================================================

Hey ###,

Hmmmm… I’m not sure I have a direct answer, but I’ll just say things that seem relevant instead.

I’ll start with a disclaimer. I /do/ work. I even enjoy independent work and big projects. I’m doing my OSS right now, I’m in my second Independent Study, I’ve done research for a couple of profs (although motivation actually /did/ kill one of those).

—————–
On class types:
—————–

One type of class is just problems. You do them you’re done with them - great. This is a common set-up for math classes etc.

A more open-ended type is based around a big project. These tend to need self-motivation. I’m not really sure where it comes from, but I know I did a lot of research for my VLSI class starting months before anything was due because I thought it was absolutely awesome. That all being said, the end-game of actually making a chip was less than stellar for me (although I did finish) and Olin has yet to get a working chip back from this class (3 years). POE also has a similar feel to it and some groups take to it great while other groups flounder for a long time before getting things started. I’m not sure if this is relevant, but both of these classes do small labs at the beginning and then have one /huge/ project compared to ADS’ large project every two weeks.

Then there’s the type where things are very straightforward and linear. These can be arbitrarily hard, but there’s always a clear problem that needs solving next (###’s circuits class or last year’s Communications class with ### are good examples of this).

—————–
Back to ADS:
—————–

Now, ADS is mostly open-ended. I feel it could do with more of a path. Or, alternatively, more guidance. The class effectively asks students to reach a goal. In two weeks. Students have about a decade and a half’s worth of practice procrastinating - this one is easy. Time goes by and the problem starts to seem intractable. Where does one start? Well. I know I have to do this tristate thing. I know I have to simulate the mouse. I know I have to read the PS/2 spec. So I don’t do much at all instead. Yeah. I don’t actually have a solution.

ADS labs are 2 weeks long - they are huge. They require /lots/ of debugging - in fact, debugging is likely the brunt part of the work. In short: they’re big, they’re frustrating, they have no clear starting point, and the work itself is mostly uninteresting (debugging). The carrot is great (it actually works and does something) but the path makes it look like it’s not worth it.

So. If I had to guess. I really enjoy analog more than digital - that could be part of the motivation. There’s also a class dynamic aspect of it where the entire class dreads the labs. So it could be the topic or the social structure. Here’s one more thought. The projects are large, but I don’t feel that I own them. They feel impersonal and difficult and that makes it hard to justify (as compared to big project classes where you design and implement your own idea).

Sorry I went on for so long,

-Boris

Lots of blogs tend to do the “OMG I’m so dead right now thing.” I thought I’d try to balance the blogosphere out a bit with this. Apparently, robo-Boris (a more efficient version of myself) was here from Saturday to Monday. As a result, I don’t think I have enough work to keep me busy tomorrow (Wednesday’s are nearly mid-weekend for me and are usually used for catching up).
On a related note, I played single-player Halo on a projector screen today. When I stopped playing after a couple of hours, my head started hurting and I felt rather nauseous. The screen is too big…

Most digital design uses clocks to ensure that everything works in the correct manner. The major idea here is that the system will be correct after everything has settled out (electrons travel through wires, transistors turn on, all the gates complete their functions). The major issue here is that our clock has to be slow enough that the slowest process in our circuit has time to finish. So what’s the solution?

Asynchronous design. The idea here is that instead of having a clock tick once everything must be valid, each module can tell the next module when it’s ready. In other words, the paradigm shifts from a global clock to many local ‘handshakes.’ I really want to just get to the cool parts - so hopefully this won’t lose people…

Let’s say there are two modules. A is the sender and B is the receiver. We’d like to get some data from A to B, but only once B is ready for it. So let’s say A is ready to send. I’ll run through two schemes…

Bundled Data scheme (with active sender):

In this scheme, A pulls the req wire high to let B know that the data line is valid. Then B uses the data and sets its ack line high. When A sees the acknowledge go high, it sets the request line back down to 0. B responds by setting the ack line to 0. So after all of this, the ack and req lines are back to 0 and all’s good. It’s worth noting that there could be any number (N) of data bits here for a total of N+2 wires.

So there’s one issue with this. When A’s data becomes valid, it sets request high… but what happens if B sees the req line go high before the valid data travels all the way down to be. These things all have finite speeds, so in the end we get designs that can move electricity faster down the data line(s) in order to get around the race condition.

DI Dual Rail scheme (with active sender):

So here’s a set-up that avoids the race condition entirely. Ass such, it qualifies as truly DI (delay insensitive). The idea here is that A has both the true line and the false line low - this is its null state and indicates it has no data. Now when A pulls a line high, B knows what the data is and that it’s valid… ZOMG! Once B has used the data, it lets A know by raising the ack line. A responds by returning to the null state and then B responds by lowering its ack line. Now everything is back where it started and we avoided the race condition!

But wait. This is engineering. I wouldn’t have bothered telling y’all about the bundled scheme if it was always worse. The tradeoff is in the number of wires. N bits will take 2N + 1 wires to implement in a DI dual rail scheme.

Neat.

Steve Pavlina, one of my favorite bloggers, wrote a cool article about achieving peak motivation.

Now. I’ll go ahead and warn y’all that Pavlina is pretty out there when he goes new-age on you. You’ll notice this in his fear/love usage that just smacks of Donnie Darko.

That all being said, the man is quite insightful. In particular I like his two paths to the same destination viewpoint - I’ll be adopting it with some major changes. Namely, I’ll take off the rather large biases he puts forth and strip the new-age out of it.

Quick Summary
Here’s the train of thought:

• There exists a point at which one has the maximum leverage to achieve goals
• In terms of one’s self and one’s relation to the external world, this point is the same regardless of one’s goals
• This point can be reached in many ways
• It is easier to keep your eyes on a single goal than multiple balanced goals

• Thus, one should pick a particular goal

Polarity
So what the hell am I talking about?

//Skip this if you did not read the article I linked to
Pavlina’s idea is that one should polarize and concentrate on either improving one’s own life or improving the lives of others. In his view, people should work towards one of these goals relentlessly. Their overarching goal will help motivate them. In the end they will find that they end up at the same spot regardless of which path they took. The self-serving person will find that helping others gives them more interpersonal leverage and the world-serving person will find that they are in no position to help others if they themselves are in a weak spot. Apart from his new-agey views here I have some issues with the person who lives to serve others. That doesn’t make sense. They are serving themselves - they just happen to enjoy serving others.

//OK. you can start reading again
My view is that there are two sources of motivation for people. These can be described as internal motivation and external motivation; however, it might be more accurate to say that one’s actions can be measured against internal or external metrics. Let’s call the person who uses external metrics an outworker and the person who uses internal metrics an inworker to signify what they are trying to fulfill.

The hypothesis here is largely the same as Pavlina’s. Both inworkers and outworkers will find that they are maximally fulfilling their goals at the same point. Inworkers will find that they must compromise with the outside world in order to further themselves and outworkers will find that they need to maintain enough personal vigor to actively implement their external agendas.

Polarity applied to myself
So where do I stand?

Ok. I suck at this. I love improving myself. I generally have huge inworker tendencies. But then here’s the kicker. The things that I love most are all outworker things.

Helping out a friend in need feels great to me - helping out a friend in want feels trashy. I’m not really sure why, but that’s just how I do things. If you need a ride somewhere I’m not going anyways, do not ask me first. I’ll turn you down merely because you asked me first. True story folks. But if you have to leave in 5 minutes and it’s 02:30 and you’re about to call a taxi because your friend who was going to give you a ride is nowhere to be found… well then I’d love to help you out.

I love how messed up that is. I’m not sure how I reconcile the outworker core I have with my predominantly inworker nature. Of course, there’s no real need to do that, but I do believe that it’s easier to be motivated about a single goal than a couple of goals that are often at odds. It’s especially important in maintaining that motivation for an extended period of time. So what is a silly man like me supposed to do?

Well. I’m a stubborn dude. So I think I’ll conclude that picking a path is the rational thing to do because it makes the rest far easier. And then I’ll ignore that and continue to strive for this mythical point of greatest leverage with out polarizing.

Note: I e-mailed quite a few people about thsi article so my inworker/outworker concept is really just Pavlina’s ideas filtered through a bunch of smart people’s thoughts and processed by yours truly. Thanks to those that chatted with me!

I read a great article from the NY Times about Dr. Bostrom’s theory that we might be living in a virtual world.

The great part was that it used a completely logical argument for this. Here’s a quick run-through. Within around 50 years we will have a computer with the processing power of all of humanity’s brains combined. Within 100 years such machines will be totally commonplace. A simulation of a complete human world will be as easy to run as something like the Sims or WoW is now.
For a number of reasons, future people are likely to simulate humanity. First, scientists will want to know more about the development of their ancestors. Second, playing with people, place or events you’re familiar with is fun - witness the success of the Civilization series. Third, even if this was developed by some non-human race, they’d have fun playing with us too -witness orcs and elves in Warcraft, the aliens in Starcraft or even the near-infinite variability in the much-anticipated Spore.

What’s the point? Well, if there are 9 million people playing WoW right now, it seems like a safe assumption that a similar number will play these new, more intensive games. So. If there’s one ‘real’ world that hosts a million virtual worlds and all we know is that we’re in a world, it’s hugely probable that we’re a simulation of some sort. Also, if computers start to be awesome enough, they’ll be able to simulate things like worlds were simulation techniques are developed. And then you get a million squared. And the argument to cubed and more can follow the same logic. Basically, we are almost certainly virtual unless there is something else correlated with having this powerful a computer. For example, if we believe we’ll blow up Earth earlier than this amount of technology then there will never be virtual worlds (assuming any aliens that could exist also kill themselves off before attaining this level of technology). He brings up other possibilities, but they seem sillier.

Near the end of the article, Dr. Bostrom says his gut feeling is that there’s a 20% chance that our world is virtual. Personally, I’m thinking it’s far far higher. Not that this affects anything for me, but it’s an interesting thought. Please do leave thoughts. I’d particularly like to hear a religious take on this article if anyone’s up for it…

Continuing my earlier line of thought, I’ve played far too much Xeno Tactic. But now I’ve got the 6th mission unlocked. I haven’t actually been able to find anyone online who says they beat the 6th mission. It does not bode well.

Boris’ Brain - This is stupid. This is a huge waste of time.
Boris - Yeah but it’s only for until Olin starts… (yes “for until”)
Boris’ Brain - Ok. Ok. Whatever.
Boris: Proceeds to forgo sleep in order to get the most uhmmm… nothing(?) out of his time

I came up with a pseudo-compromise. I will now close the webpage and put my ‘puter in standby. If the game is badly designed enough that I shouldn’t be doing such things I’ll declare it n00bish and ignore it for the rest of eternity.

I haven’t posted in a long time. Well here’s this to put an end to your brief respite from my evil online voice:

Uhmm… actually. Nevermind. I don’t really feel like writing anything. I’m gonna go play Noidzor. It’s a sweet breakout-ish game. You’ll note the noid in its name. I’m glad they acknowledge the time-sucking awesomeness that once was.

Then I’ll go hang out with friends. I’m home now, so it’s summer’s summer. No work and lots of time. The clear path is to use it as ineffectively as humanly possible.

I’m writing this as a response to a great comment on my post about metric system use in the US.

Do you really think so? Speedometers have both metric and imperial units, but I don’t think that’s done much to improve “metric literacy” in the ‘States.

Listing metric measurements after the imperial units doesn’t quite say “these units are the ones we will be using.” Even then, the things that list both don’t really have “teeth.” Switching speed limit signs to metric only would, I think, have a much larger effect since people could be punished for failing to process the information.

But, yes. Hooray for New Hampshire!

True enough anonymous. That being said, speedometers are easier to ignore. It’s an analog measurement so you don’t get the effect of repeated drilling of a=b. Also, the metric numbers are way smaller and on the inside loop. It’s true that you could just look at the left side of the sign, but I think the minimum benefit would be a definition for a number of common mileages (1, 1/2 etc). I’d guess a fair number of people know that 100 k/h is close to 60 mph because those actually have lines on the speedometer and they’re pretty close. Likewise I’d bet lots of people know 0°C is the same as 32°F because that’s a temperature that people are exposed to (on both scales) on a regular basis. I’d bet 32 f/s being equal to 9.8 m/s is also not uncommon.

Here’s a long-term plan I just came up with right nowish. Whenever an all-imperial sign needs to be replaced, put up a sign with imperial units followed by metric units in parentheses. When on of these imperial-metric signs needs to be replaced, put up a metric-imperial sign that has metric units followed by imperial units in parentheses. At some pint, once everyone is pretty hip on things, stop having imperial units on the signs at all. Hooray!

I don’t think teeth are needed. I don’t think this is a switch we can, should or will make quickly. My thought is pretty much that the next generation should be heavily exposed to metric - they should become SI literate even if we have failed to do so ourselves.

Is this just me? If I think about how many meters are in 32 feet, I take quite a while to get a correct answer. First I estimate by using yards and I get just under 11 meters. On my second pass, I use 1 m = 3.3 ft and get that it’s just under 10 m. Win.
It’s odd that my mind doesn’t just think of the fact that it knows 9.8 m/s ~ 32 f/s and that it can just cancel the seconds and get to a much faster, more correct answer…