An Epic Presentation

 

 

Ghetto Cooper

Random Observation/Comment #129: It’s difficult to publish entries when you’ve spent 4 days away from your laptop, and 70% of that awake-time in an inebriated state.  Work hard.  Play hard.

 

I summarized the majority of 1.5 years of torturous brain-fug work in a little more than an hour.  I didn’t necessarily rehearse this presentation – I already knew what I was talking about after spending hours (I want to say something like the ‘decade’ version of hours, which exists in Chinese as ‘see suns,’ which I think is 3 hours – it just seems like the emphasis would make my writing much more entertaining, although this explanation is interesting as well) writing those 90 slides (Yes, it was 90).  For some reason, I was never very good at memorizing lines and acting them with gravitas or even much fervor.  Every carefully phrased sentence written in my 20 pages of “talking points” was completely ignored – I decided to just refer to the intentional animations for different topics.  In fact, I used each of the slides as a simple bullet point reminder of what I should mention within my stream of random commentary. 

I say random commentary, but what’s a little more appropriate, is background song.  For the most part, the audience is concentrating on reading the slides and trying to follow the overall story.  The words that actually came out of my mouth didn’t really need to make that much sense.  I think it would be fine if I just ran the slides behind me while I sang a song and practiced Thai Chi (I choose Thai Chi because after 2 minutes, you’ll probably rather be looking at the slides).  The flashy animations and overall flow of your inflections are so much more important than your actual words.  Once you get famous, I’m sure there will be much more criticism, but I do not hope to enter this type of world anytime soon.

I know this wasn’t the best idea for a Master’s presentation, but I basically winged it*.  I went through a few practice runs, but it really didn’t help that much.  The hour-long speech was just too much to memorize.  Instead of seeing the entire presentation, I split it up in my mind to talking about smaller topics.  The slides were used to indicate which topic I should discuss next.  By thinking about this as 10 smaller presentations squished together, it became much less scary.  I stayed on topic and spent the extra time making sure I knew all of the cues. 

Throughout undergraduate, I’ve learned that the level of success for an engineering presentation is the amount of knowledge your audience absorbs by the end.  If I leave the presentation intellectually stimulated, I feel like my time was not wasted.  I focused the creation of my presentation surrounding this main idea.  In order to do this, I needed to bring an “earthier,” realistic aspect to the points I was making.  Since it was a Master’s presentation, it was definitely technical.  But I broke it up such that the theory and experiments related to more real-world examples.  For example, if I were explaining elastic collisions in a transfer of momentum, I would use the example of playing pool where we focus on the resulting action from a cue ball colliding with another ball.

For the most part, presentations are used to sell a product.  When you’re an engineer asking for more funding, you’re trying to impress investors with the practical usage of your topic.  When you’re presenting on financial road shows, you’re basically selling the services of the IPO to potential stockholders.  Given these examples, it may seem like the following is true: When you’re a graduate student presenting to professors, you’re selling the knowledge and hard work put into your thesis. 

In reality, your advisor usually knows how much work you’ve put into your graduate work, so the presentation itself is really not for him; it’s actually just a formality.  The success of the presentation is gauged by  the reaction from everyone else in the room.  The advisor just wants to see that you’ve understood the essence of engineering – the process of filtering research, conducting experiments, drawing conclusions, and (the most important, but usually omitted) transfer of results back into the community. 

One team of researchers cannot expect to cure cancer.  Instead, they focus on specific procedures that may propel other research in less ambitious areas to further the field.  This concept has been available and actively pursued for many decades.  The importance is the transfer of knowledge.  Engineering schools should further emphasize writing skills to make sure other people don’t waste time picking apart poorly written papers.  I found most of my frustration is the lack of a uniform agreement in units or notation to represent the basic ideas.  Well, I guess that’s why they call it research.

~See Lemons Finish

* Wing(-ing/-ed) it. Verb. The act of entering a task relying on a keener use of bullshit skills, rather than a practiced set of logical answers.  This does not necessarily imply being unprepared, but it does indicate a level of hubris or “oh, fug-it” nature.

Please, help me, oh wise ones in the corner store by Cooper Union.

 

Random Observation/Comment #128: “If you’re good at something, never do it for free” unless you’re really nice like the STA travel magical helpers.  These guys didn’t have wings, halos, tails, horns, excessive fur, additional limbs, or disproportionate body parts – I checked.  They’re just that one-stop shop, fully utilizing the Internet at their fingertips.  Bless you. 

 

If anything is taught to the “Engineers of our future,” it’s the warning of reinventing the wheel.  I think the emphasis of this school developmental process is not memorization, but the personal optimization of internal algorithms, data structures, and subroutines.  What I mean is; we’re all just learning how to learn and use our resources wisely.  If everyone started from scratch, we’d never keep up with Moore’s law.  It’s like asking someone who wants to write a book to build a typewriter and invent ink, first.  At some point, we must accept our technology and propel it as a tool.  That’s what makes us, as homo-sapiens, special – our developed frontal lobes give us the ability to plan ahead and use tools. 

Although this concept is easy to spot around us (just take a look at any invention and see how it’s commercialized to offer a more convenient way to perform a task), it’s terribly difficult to follow as an engineer.  This rule of not reinventing the wheel would work if the world wasn’t filled with such incompetence.  Sometimes your project is built with metal bars and the parts that you’re given are made of plastic Legos.  The functionality of that little wheel might exist, but it just doesn’t fit.  Duct-tape might work, but where’s the aesthetic appeal in that? I speak for all engineers when I say that we’ve had those frustrating moments when we’re completely perplexed by how much time and hair would have been saved if they simply wrote a few lines of documentation.  Isn’t it great to see comments around functions that simply say, “/*Fix this later */.”

Never the less, it’s useful to have references and it’s obvious that we all have different ways of thinking.  Replacing this unique individualism with a hive mind would be amazing with instant communication, but it would lose that “thinking out of the box” shyt everyone keeps talking about (just say “synergy” and I’m sure some business-major will jizz in his pants). 

Oddly enough, planning a trip is similar to writing a computer program.  Well, it’s actually nothing like writing a computer program except for this one thing (and even that one thing doesn’t really tie in that well).  A lot of people have traveled the world and they’ve felt their need to express their feelings about this privilege through their pictures, books, reviews, blogs, or well-paid television series.  I’ve emphasized the research phase of travel planning in previous entries, but I should mention again that no one knows what you want to see, better than yourself.  Some people love nature, while others love museums, so plan your trip according to your own (and travel partner’s) desires.  Remember the purpose of this trip – is this a honeymoon or vacation or self-help book in the making?  How does this relate to computer programming?  I don’t remember.  Moving on…

Someone actually found vacation planning to be a viable job market – go figure.  This means that there are angels in matching shirts, ready to book your flights, hotels, transportation, and give suggestions on places to visit with great prices.  If this isn’t in STA Travel’s motto or mission statement, it probably should be:  “Here at STA Travel, we understand the value of exploring the world safely and within your budget.  A live representative is waiting inside and ready to fulfill your travel planning needs.  ::rawr::”

Obviously they can’t do all the work for you – you have to know when and where you’re going, and how much money you’re willing to spend.   Actually, that’s about it.  I told them the days I’d like to travel and places I’d like to go along the way, and they just printed out the plane tickets (after paying them, of course).  Even if you have your own connections with travel agencies, I would suggest using STA travel as a major research resource.  Learn about where you want to go, and then speak with them to see if it’s possible within your timeline and budget.  They’ll help you solve the NP complete problem and tell you the must-see places along the way.  They’ve done this so many times that they know exactly what you need to plan a fun vacation at a reasonable price. 

By the way, I am not getting paid by STA travel to write this (although I would like to – actually this blog would be quite an elaborate sham for an advertisement).  They honestly work efficiently and walk you through the checklist to make sure your itinerary can, at least, prevent a few heart attacks from your worried parents.  Poor planning will probably build a terrible plot for an action/horror movie.  Imagine showing up to a foreign country without these essentials: Accommodations, Local activities, Transportation, and clean socks.  It would be a horror movie, for sure. (And I would watch it, enjoy the suspense during the movie, and then complain about how bad it was afterwards).

~See Lemons Happy to Receive a Helping Hand

Free time? Whatever. Just get me out of here!

 

 

This should relate to maturity

Random Observation/Comment #127: I definitely caught the travel bug.  I have all of the symptoms, including the ones on the most severe level.  Luckily, the cure for this is on its way.  My brain is slowly decaying backwards and I’m losing concentration on the more important parts of my life.  It’s time to be a little selfish.  It’s time to leave it all behind for a little while.

 

It may seem like I’m approaching my life backwards because I’m taking a vacation before I even start work, but it is simply planning ahead to enjoy what will inevitably happen – a crash, a clang, a burst, or a simple foamy overflow.  A “mid-life crisis” would be looking a little too far ahead, but I’m actually preparing myself for those intermediate intervals between the “quarter-life crisis” and “reaching the hump” years – those unpredictable gremlins knock you over the head with a club when you least expect it.  It’s the point in your life where responsibility has yet to completely settle into your brain.  You’re still living at home to save money and significant others aren’t very significant for long.  It’s a time when a part of you still wishes you were in college and spending those all-nighters drinking red bulls and working to meet the next deadline – wait, that’s not it.  I meant normal college with sex, alcohol, drugs, weeds*, and temptation around every corner.  

It seems to be a bit of a depressive state when time just passes you by so much more quickly.  You remember when you could finish all your homework and still sneak in hours of cartoons on a high school schedule.  But now, you see yourself slowly fade in productivity, even if you have a full day to finish one thing.  Granted, your tasks have become much larger, but there’s still that side of you that accepts pushing off the task to the next day – not like there’s much to look forward to.  It’s not exactly procrastination; it’s more like a bed sheet of deception you cover yourself with as you try to hide from your responsibilities by pretending to be a transparent ghost.  It feels like there could be so much more you could do with your life, but instead of actually doing something, you find distractions and consuming easier.  There’s a lingering image of your life following a mindless zombie stumbling through your weekdays and drunken mindless zombie stumbling through the weekends.  You start to question, “What is fun?”  Is getting drunk and spending obscene amounts of money for a night where you wake up with a hangover and desperately want more hours in the day, considered fun?  Am I having fun yet?

Ever since my ex-roommate said this quote, I’ve believed it with all my heart.  “Time enjoyed wasting is not wasted time.”  There are some exceptions, like watching prime time action television when you should actually be working on an hour presentation you have in three days, but in its essence, the quote expresses a perspective on life.  “Wasting time” is really dependent on what you keep as a priority.  If your priority is to have fun and travel, then isn’t the work you do every day just wasting time?  Would you consider it wasting time if the time is used to help your overall priority?  For example, would you disagree with the act of saving up money to travel a wasted time because it’s a conditional statement?  If so, then wouldn’t what you do with your free time (supposedly enjoyed) be conditional to your happiness?  Yes, you’ll be miserable when you’re catching up with what needed to have been completed to reach your long term aspirations, but didn’t that moment just add something to your persona?  Were you not enlightened a little bit or didn’t you learn something?  So is there wasted time?  I guess it’s only wasted if you had to do something else and you somehow replaced that shitty task with an even more shitty one.  Thus, it’s only not wasted time if you’ve enjoyed it.  I think I confused myself…

I can already predict the transformation and it scares the crap out of me.  Sitting in front of a computer screen for ten hours and constantly polishing your boss’ shoes is just a part of the process; it’s just the way things go.  Isn’t there so much to look forward to?  A higher salary is better than my current negative one. Social security – great, until you lose 30% of your 401k over blatantly dishonest business (I don’t know what world I was living in to think there would be any other type of business).  But where has all of the time gone?  When can you celebrate those birthdays of your close friends, parents, sons, and daughters if they fall on weekdays?  Where is all of that money actually going? 

Let’s say I’m doing the job-thing to pay off loans and save up money to support my expensive lifestyle.  The question I would ask myself before getting myself into this position would be “why am I planning to spend the money and live my life when I’m old or older?”  I am healthy, relatively attractive, and sexually active now.  If all you see ahead is that wonderful retirement stage, where you can sit back and measure the tree rings of the seeds you’ve planted, why not make those memories now?  If your retirement savings are for traveling, why not take out more loans and leave it all behind – escape?  I understand the responsibilities of many, but if you had the chance, it wouldn’t really make sense not to take it.  Financially, I will repay my parents – they already supported me this long, what’s another 6 months?  With regards to the timing, the Euro is down and sales are plentiful now that our economy is slowly recovering.  The planets seem to be aligning for me.  I think I’m waiting for Time to point me in the right direction; it doesn’t have to be an arrow – just highlight the door frames or simply show me the alternate futures.  Please?

Of course, I will take the opportunity because it’s awesome-in-a-nicely-wrapped-box. I would be stupid not to take the offer.  So then what is this thought bubble that fizzles back into existence whenever this topic comes up?  It casts a shadow over me and bellows this word in the deepest bass that orchestrates my heartbeat – “Maturity.”  To me, it’s like a torch where the whole stick is covered with the cloth and gasoline – I guess it’s just a burning rag in the shape of a stick that leads the way, but constantly keeps me in pain.  I see its beautiful glow giving me so much to look forward to. The walls of my dark, metaphorical cave are covered in scriptures that preach the meaning of life.  I see the importance of family and the happiness of that path.  With that said, I also see the hair-pulling frustration when you think everything your teenage child says is an imaginative fabrication to please your expectations.  But, on the brighter side, they strengthen your bonds and give a deeper meaning to life.  This soul adds purpose to your own.  This love extends your goals, aspirations, dreams, and fantasies blog entry to include that of your child and lover. 

I can’t wait, but I see that this is later down my path.  Now is the time to rejoice in youth.  Commitment will just have to wait.  Let me enjoy the silence by making my own “bumpin’ beats.”

 ~See Lemons Mature?

Trying to Solve an NP Complete Problem of Europe

 

 

frustration? a tease?

Random Observation/Comment # 126:  I never seem to stay on topic with my journal entries.  I read a lot of my suggestions from what’s supposed to be “useful to help other people plan,” but none of it is actually straightforward.  I enter a lot of weird commentary that just fills the lines with a horribly foul substance.  It’s not quite bullshit, but you do have to dig through something viscous to find what you’re looking for.  I oddly hope I continue writing this way because it gives me a glimmer of joy, just imagining the readers’ frustrations.

 

To summarize from earlier, I am bounded by a decision already placed into motion (the study abroad thing in Europe) so I researched in every nook and cranny possible to get an insight on different travel locations.  I did not know what I should choose exactly, but I knew I should take my time in each city and look for cities that were highly recommended by people who have my similar tastes.  Germany is a given, since I am centered there, but the bordered countries that are possible by weekend travel are quite numerous.  I could go basically anywhere in Europe because I’m right in the center.  In addition, since I have set housing in Germany, I will actually go on smaller trips based from Germany.  In my special condition (mostly applicable to study abroad students), I have chosen the main countries of Czech Republic, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and UK.

I chose the UK because of the cheaper flight costs to-and-from London.  Round-trip flights are always cheaper and if I want to travel Europe anyway, I might as well do a one-way flight to Germany and take the train back to London for the return.  I highly suggest considering this possibility: Book a roundtrip to a major airport, fly cheap across Europe, train ride one way back to the major airport while stopping by all of your desired cities.  You should probably check the airfares, but I know London Heathrow Airport is much cheaper because of the high volume of traffic.

Basically, once you have decided your generic path from the airport flights and dates of return, you will be given some restrictions by the transportation and number of cities you would like to visit along the way.  As I mentioned earlier, give yourself enough time to enjoy yourself.  Try to do a few city days and then a few nature walks to balance the week.  Although I will be abroad for 6 months, I will have a few major trips that require thorough planning. 

The weekend trips centered from Germany are quite ideal because I could still experience some backpacking without the heavy luggage.  Since I already know the countries I’d like to visit and the number of weekends I have allotted, I have planned the smaller trips based on travel time and location.  For example, my last trip must end in London for my return flight so it wouldn’t make sense to go to the Czech Republic and then make a “U-ee.”  That’s just inefficient and quite unnecessary.  Plus, the transportation problem (discussed in a latter entry) will make this much more expensive.  Therefore, my weekend trips will focus heading towards the Southern and Eastern areas since my final trip will be going west.

For the longer trips, I planned lightly and accounted for my heavy luggage.  Normally, I would like to stay in different places to make local transportation much easier, but with the luggage, I prefer paying more money in a central location and leaving my important things in a safe place.  I expect to spend a full week in major cities like Paris, Amsterdam, and somewhere in Southern France.  Along the way, I’ll definitely try the beer in Belgium and take pictures of castles in Luxembourg.  These plans are quite broad as of now, but I’m also expecting some change when I meet people abroad. 

Keeping this in mind, it’s also important to be flexible with your planning.  Sometimes the reading material for your city or country may have given you false impressions.  Booking hotels or hostels a week in advance would give you guaranteed spots, but if you want to leave, you should definitely have that freedom. 

There really isn’t an easy way to do this because unexpected weather patterns or other disturbances may drastically change your plans.  It’s impossible to account for everything, but it doesn’t hurt to do more research and have backup plans on places to visit.  Categorize your travel days to minimize your transportation costs and maximize the sights in the area, and include the backup days if weather isn’t on your side. 

~See Lemons Find a Solution that Fits

Making a REALISTIC travel wishlist

 

 

A time traveling dinosaur?

Random Observation/Comment #125:  It’s hard for me to accept the fact that I can’t experience everything first-hand.  I feel horrifyingly hollow knowing this fact.  It’s not even the idea that I wouldn’t be able to experience the differences between growing up as an orphan or as a medieval lord – I realize these are impossible given my current choices and subsequent timeline.  It’s the idea that I won’t be able to live all of the branches that exist in my lifetime.  The “Me” I think of now will only see that one path in the fourth dimension, even though there could have been infinitely more in the fifth.  Let me clarify with an analogy.  If we take these experiences as the pixel count of a simple Snake game (for those in my generation, we played this in high school on our TI-86 calculators instead of actually solving derivatives and integrals), the screen resolution cannot be fathomed.  If I were a snake trying to eat the experiences within my timeline’s ability (in this case they will come up as little pixilated apples), I would need to choose which path to take.  Given my time limit, I can only travel so many pixels my entire life.  Following the game’s rules, my snake tail will grow after eating every experience, but since the size of the board is so expansive, I don’t think that “oh crap I don’t know where to go without eating my own ass” aspect of the game will be taken account.  The new twist, however, comes in the weight of the experiences or the points each apple gives (the tastiness of the apple, if you prefer, since each experience is difficult to put a value to).  My limit, then, is not the amount of apples I eat, but rather the distance I travel.  If I see that I need to sacrifice a lot of “fun” experiences to reach the one in the end, I would have probably died with a shorter snake.  It’s quite unfortunate, but who says the size of the snake counts?  Well, if the size doesn’t count, then what is the ultimate goal of the game?  To tell you the truth, the programmer of this game was cruel, and He didn’t really have an intended purpose – you’re just procrastinating so you don’t have to pay attention during Calculus class…

 

Continuing from my previous post, I have decided to go to Europe based on that stage in my life.  I am ever-so curious and submerging myself into a spectrum of unknown, just hoping for any response.  Europe is broad and nowhere close to a travel plan because I haven’t introduced any realistic restrictions.  The two major ones are time and money.  Although there are other concerns with intensity of activities, weather preferences, and people you know in the area, I’ll let you weigh those independently.  If you already know what you’re looking for out of your trip, it’s highly probable that you’ve considered your time and money aspect within your first narrowing down. 

Let’s say you’re going to see friends in London and you have a week of travel, then you can already concentrate on London locations and nearby flights to a few days in Ireland, or something like that.  If you’re going on a tour provided by Intrepid, then you don’t even have to worry about the itinerary (except for the start and stop locations). 

For those who really just have a lot of time and money, and don’t want to do the whole tour thing, I suggest traveling with a buddy and working out your preferences.  Ask your friends for suggestions and talk to elders about their backpacking experiences.  Not only will you find that old people have a lot of great advice, but you’ll also find that they love talking about their experiences – trust me, it’s endless (don’t give out your number or you’ll be on the phone with your friend’s father for hours, appeasing that grandfather-storytelling syndrome).  It’s very rare that people would just want to pick up and go without some type of restriction, and if you really don’t have a preference, then I’m sure some blog or set of pictures will strike your fancy.  If you’re having difficulty with this step, you’ll really break down and cry when you have to choose the specific cities when everything looks so appealing.

In my case, I will be attending study abroad program centered in Germany, so I already knew I would be Europe (in retrospect, sorry if the last entry was a bit of a sham).  I also knew that I would be starting in March, so the winter season and heavy packing was also a bit out of my control.  The fact that the season is off-peak will also come into account when I decide where to go.

First, focus on the time restrictions and prioritize based on efficiency and personal preference.  In general, I found it too messy to think of the entire problem at once.  Before even planning the flight days, you really need a sense of which area you’d prefer and how you would get around this area.  Start by reading and looking at pictures to wherever you want to go.  I conducted this research phase very methodically by consolidating everything I read online into a 30 page word document.  I copied and pasted Seasonal Attractions and made sure I knew the weather for the countries ahead of time – it would suck to go to London during its rainy/bad weather season (which is pretty much, always).

After considering the climate, I read a lot of tour travel itineraries.  It wouldn’t be too difficult to just download an itinerary and follow the main attractions at each stop.  You’ll have to work out booking the hotel and planning the leaving times for the train or airplane, but you’ll be in control of where you go and what you do.  Most of the time, for the extra money, booking the tour would save a lot of headache.  Plus, if you’re traveling alone, a tour is a great place to meet new people and concentrate on relaxing while going to these exotic places.  I’ve tried the tour life and it’s, for the lack of a better description at the moment, really nice.

After looking at a few tour itineraries, you’ll see a lot of repeats.  Everybody wants to visit those main places to see those cliché things.  Obviously, they’re awesome and a must-see for a reason, but the problem I’ve always had with tours is that “rushed” feeling.  Six cities in two weeks is not enough time for the full experience – actually, one city in 30 years isn’t enough time.  There are so many underground treasures and hidden beauties that escape those camera lenses.  For this reason, I’ve decided not to deprive myself of these experiences that would have been so much more heart-felt if I just spent that extra time digging deeper.  It’s like not scratching that scratch ’n’ sniff sticker long enough to get through the first layer for the full aroma – all you get is that metallic disgustingness, if you’re not patient. 

I expect a much more thorough life-changing moment if I take my time in every city.  I’ve so often mistaken my purpose of traveling – it’s not a checklist, it’s a road strewn with stores on either side for miles.  Why would you want to take a shortcut when every section of road has its set of unique experiences?  You’ll probably read this type of response in many of the tour reactions – “I wish we spent more time in <insert city of preference here>.”  That’s because tours can’t cater to your personality.  If you spend the extra time planning, maybe you won’t need to sit through an architecture exhibit if you prefer nature.  That is, if you dislike uncomfortable situations.  Knowing me, I would probably heat the coals for the brander.

~See Lemons Plan the EuroTrip