It’s so incredibly tiring to know that the moment you take a break is the moment no fewer than three people will be on your case asking you where their work is.
I need to stop freelancing, but I still want to keep my programming skills razor-sharp. Perhaps working on more of my own coding projects is the answer.
When practicing, the piece is not finished until I can play it with my eyes closed.
The 2+ octave leaps are difficult to do in this manner, but most normal jumps aren’t.
I still find it baffling that so many “experts” in data mining do not know how to do k-nearest neighbor classification. The concept is so simple!
Ding! Time’s up! Industry’s turn has ended and it is now academia’s move.
The sun’s swift descent,
another ended cycle,
the sky turns to flame.
(Purging urban soot,
from my heart, from my spirit,
demanding nothing).
My cousin is showing signs of a gift similar to my own in both scope and magnitude… except that this time, I’m here to train him. It will be interesting to see what happens. Will he grow up stronger for the help, I wonder, or has poor training become such an inextricable aspect of my own character that it can no longer be parsed out from what I’ve accomplished? Will someone who is given more be motivated to do less by sheer necessity?
I hope he’ll be more well-adjusted, at least. Aid of any form should help prevent an adversarial view of the world from forming, but perhaps he’ll end up out-of-step as well when he sees how much apathy and incompetence contrast his own vision and ability, regardless of having someone to fall back on.
If he continues as he is progressing now, he will certainly accomplish great things.
When I interviewed with Google, I spoke with several people on the Maps team. I mentioned that they needed to address the privacy issues of street view before they were sued. I suggested facial recognition and suggested some possibilities, primarily Eigenfaces. They responded (correctly) that what they were doing was not technically illegal. I argued that it was still going to be perceived as a violation of privacy (this is the company with the motto “Don’t be evil”, after all).
They did not listen. And now they are being sued. It’s definitely only the first of many, too.
A life is a heroic thing,
to never throw away.
To cherish always, and to keep,
with meaning in each day.
To count the seconds as the years,
both always in your grip,
to know the price of time is dear,
and never let it slip.
To bring creation into being,
and move from mind to sight,
ideas to grapple with the dark,
and from it extract light.
To eschew the path that most would take,
as easy as it seems,
instead to forge your own new way,
on the power of your dreams.
To lift the burdens of another,
but not become his thrall,
nor seek to be his master,
to be a friend; that’s all.
To always keep an open mind,
but sometimes ask for proof,
not accepting or rejecting,
just seeking out the truth.
A life is a heroic thing,
it’s yours to use or give,
so treat it with respect,
so that we all may live.
One consequence of trying to do many things with your life is that certain things get pushed to the side for intervals of a month or two. My mathematical work, however, has been sidetracked for over a year now and I need to get back to it already.
If only I weren’t so busy with all of these freelance projects…
I always seem to be interviewed in the wrong places at the right companies. I ultimately decided to reject the AT&T offer, even though I think AT&T would be a great place to work. I was going to ask if they had any more advanced sorts of positions open in areas such as implementation of networking protocols, data mining, or other theoretical research. I can’t see myself writing web apps for the rest of my life, and the contract ensures that I can’t move around in the company for at least 18 months.
Then I realized what I would probably be doing as a data miner at AT&T. The only thing worse than squandering my data mining ability would be setting it to use towards unethical purposes. I didn’t go through 20 years of education to help spy on people’s phone calls.
I don’t understand: they seek my resume out because they’re impressed with what I’ve achieved, and yet they propose to set me in an environment where achievement would lose all meaning.