That being said, as the title of this post may have clued you in, I’ll be beginning to write once again, starting today.  The reason for this is easier to state: I’m leaving in a few days to spend the semester at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.  Many people have asked me to keep them updated on my trip, and I think that a website is the easiest way to accomplish that.

I’m hoping not to bore everyone, so I’ll try to be heavy on the beautiful pictures and interesting stories, and short on the mundane details. Please leave a comment if there is any specific aspect of life in Australia that you wish to learn more about, or if you just want to say hi from thousands of miles away. I’m really looking forward to this adventure, and I hope you enjoy reading about it.

I’ll take another 8 weeks of summer, though. This next week I’m off with my family to visit Boston and Cape Cod. Boston is a special place for me because I lived there for 6 weeks the summer before my senior year of high school when I attended the Research Science Institute at MIT. I really loved the city, and hoped at the time that I would go to college there, but things turned out differently. I haven’t really been back to visit since that summer, so I’m excited to spend a few days there. I’m expecting the highlight of the trip to be seeing the Blue Man Group on Sunday afternoon. I’ve heard really good things.

Then it’s off to Cape Cod, a place we have visited every year since my aunt purchased a condo in Bourne. Hopefully the weather will be better than last year, when it rained all week. We just got a new bike rack that can accommodate four bikes, so we’ll probably be hitting the great network of trails that crisscross that area. I’m looking forward to beaches, lobster, and creemees! Hopefully I’ll get some good photographs, maybe I’ll even put up a short post or two in the middle of the week if I get some time.

The general consensus among the speakers was that the human species is at a very low point in its existence. This may seem counter-intuitive; after all, our collective body of knowledge grows at an amazing rate each year. Humans rule the universe; technology has allowed us to conquer the moon and send probes to other planets and to the far reaches of our solar system. We know both how the world was created and how our genetic code delicately intermingles to create new and unique members of our species.

But is all this knowledge good for us? One of the speakers this morning presented an interesting analogy. Draw a circle, and inside of it put all of the things that are known about the world. Outside of the circle represents the unknown. When we learn something new, the circle grows bigger to represent increased knowledge, but so does our interface with the unknown! For example, it was discovered many years ago that CFC’s (chlorofluorocarbons) made good refrigerants and cleaning solvents. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until much later, after copious damage had been done to the ozone layer, that the research came through on how much CO2 these molecules trap in the atmosphere. So many other chemical discoveries have parallel stories; their positive effects were widely hailed until studies came out years later exposing them as carcinogens or mutating agents or something else equally harmful.

The pace of technology has accelerated to a point where it is possible for science to keep up. Technology has also contributed to another one of society’s problems, one that could be viewed as a core cause of climate change. The human race has become largely “domesticated;” we have fallen out of touch with the world that we live in and on. We are a species that has neglected its habitat; choosing to destroy it and pave it over with with artificial dwellings whose conditions are carefully controlled and monitored. We are caretakers of our own zoo. Our ancestors not that long ago lived off the land. They were involved in building their own houses and growing their own food. They understood that they depended on the land for their sustenance, and that made them respect and honor it. In contrast, many people today have no idea where their food comes from, or certainly don’t think about it on a daily basis. Plenty go through life without ever making something with their own hands. My father helped to build his family’s house, but I would have no idea how to even go about making a bookshelf.

I could go on and on about the knowledge I gained today and the many themes that were discussed and brought together in interesting and startling ways. A psychologist talked about how people like to go to the mall because they think that shopping makes them happy, but his research showed that people who were outside experiencing the beauty of nature were actually the happiest. The paradox of the liberal-thinking university environment was discussed: many university communities like to debate lofty ideas for climate change, but universities are conservative organizations by nature because of the many stakeholders that must be kept happy, making it unlikely that radical change will begin at the university level.

The conference made me question many of my beliefs. I have always been a big supporter of “progress.” For me, the way to greatness always seemed to be forging ahead. I loved to hear about new buildings being constructed and new roads being built, because to me it was a sign that the species was one step closer on the road to perfection. Every scientific discovery was one step closer to what would eventually be a complete knowledge of the laws and idiosyncracies of the universe. Now, I think that maybe we ought to stop and rein in the monster that we have created. Earth was doing alright until humans, starting with the the technological advances of the industrial revolution, disrupted its natural lifecycle. We must act now to drastically reduce our carbon emissions, or there could be heavy repercussions.

Check out the April 9th, 2007 edition of Time Magazine for a list of 51 things that you can do to effect climate change.

On to the point of this post – my summer plans. I decided about a week and a half ago to take a job with IBM. I’ll be a member of what IBM calls a “Speed Team,” a group of six interns that spends an entire summer overhauling a mission-critical component of the business. We’ll be working on the automation of the dice, sort, and pick process for MPWs (multi-project wafers).

I was on another Speed Team two summers ago, and it was a very positive experience for three reasons. Speed Teams at IBM have a lot of executive visibility – we often had meetings with managers three levels above us during which we had to present, with metrics, our methodology and progress. It gave a sense of importance to our work. Secondly, there was never a shortage of things to tackle. I am the kind of person that needs to be kept busy and to have two or three projects going at once so that if one stalls then I can move on and come back to it laster. Lastly, it was a blast to be in a room with only other interns. We had our own lounge/meeting space, and could shout to each other over the cube walls if we had questions. I’m hoping that this summer will be just as rewarding.

“What happened to Google?” is the question you’re all probably wondering about. After putting myself through their stressful interview process, I decided that I couldn’t let the IBM job offer expire to wait on a job offer from Google that may or may not have come. I never actually got rejected, though, which I’m proud of! When I let the recruiter know of my decision, I inquired about what time to start the internship search next year. This was the response I got:

Tyler,
I’m so sorry we were not able to turn this around quick enough. Please contact myself or (name removed) in December. Best of luck and please do keep in touch!

I didn’t know that they wanted to receive undergraduate internship applications that early – about two months earlier than I applied this year! Hopefully, should I decide that I wish to try for another Google internship next year, I won’t run out of time like I did this year. To anyone who got a Google internship this summer, congratulations! I’m a little bit jealous, but I’ll get over it. Burlington, VT is a great place to spend the summer.

Most companies are wrapping up their intern hiring by this time, so I wanted to make sure that I had a backup plan in case Google didn’t come through. I interviewed for a few positions at IBM over break and got two job offers that sound interesting and challenging. Both want a response by this Friday. I’m not willing to let those go in order to chase a Google internship that may not happen, so I’ve let the Google recruiter know that I’m on a tight time schedule in hopes that she can find me a group within the week.

I’m not sure how the intern hiring process works at Google. The recruiter mentioned that it can take anywhere from “one week to two months” to find an appropriate match, and that matches are made based on “intern experience, skills, and interview feedback.” The emails that she sends make it sound like they want to hire me, but they’ve really let the ball drop these past few weeks. I think that they must be busy trying to hire people to fill full-time positions. I also wonder if maybe this process would have gone faster if I had applied for an internship out in California, where they have more of their workforce.

Either way, I’ve got another week until I have to make a decision. Both options have their merits. If I work at IBM, I can live at home for free and hang out with all of my friends. I would give all that up, though, to have the chance to live in New York City and meet a whole new set of people. I think I’ll be happy no matter which way it goes, but I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed anyway…

Update: The second interview went alright. There were more abstract math questions this time, more emphasis on algorithms rather than data structures, although there were a few questions about trees and lists at the beginning. Once again, the interviewer was really interested in hearing my thought process, so I tried to think out loud as I was solving the problems.

Tyler:

Your first interview went well! We will now begin the process of matching your experience and preferences with groups within Google who are looking for interns this summer. Once we find a match, we’ll set up your second phone interview.

I’m looking forward to it. Now that I’ve gotten past the initial screening, I feel like I can relax a little bit. Hopefully the second interview will be less of a quiz and more of a way for my potential coworkers to determine if I would be a good fit on their project.

The first interview went really well. I got asked about my previous internships, then I was grilled on data structures and Big-O analysis. The culminating task was solving a design problem based on the one of the data structures we had just discussed in detail. My first solution was inefficient, but after a bit of prodding I had a stroke of genius and came up with one of the two optimal solutions.

My advice to anyone who has a phone interview with Google is to know your data structures. Know them well. If it has been a while since you took a data structures class, review them. I was really lucky that the stuff I reviewed was exactly what I was asked about. The questions aren’t simple, but having a good core understanding of data structures and other computer science fundamentals will help immensely.

And now I will cross my fingers while I wait for next week to arrive!

I did things the right way with Google from the beginning. One of my professors has a colleague who works in Google’s NYC office; I got in touch with her by email, and had a recruiter contact me to set up a phone interview within the week. I was extremely impressed by their quick turnaround time.

The phone interview is 4pm on Tuesday. I’m nervous and excited. I’m hoping the Googler on the other end doesn’t completely own me, but I also realize that this could be the gateway to a really awesome opportunity. The interview is scheduled to be 45 minutes, and the email that I received said, “In terms of what to expect in your interview, you will be asked a variety of technical questions including questions around coding, algorithms, design, problem solving, and general computer science fundamentals.” I consider myself a decent interviewer and a good under-pressure thinker, but I keep having dreams in which I am drooling in front of the phone saying “Huh” as the interviewer asks me to write a complete operating system kernel in 5 minutes.

Luckily, I believe that Google is looking for people that know how to think, not people that have memorized the solutions to all the problems they have ever come across. After all, Google is inventing new areas of computing science as they construct a massively parallel system that has to deal with a truly staggering amount of data. The people there are inventing new algorithms that have revolutionized internet search, not implementing something that every student is taught in CS101. I say “luckily” because this is the type of interview I believe I will excel at. I know my CS fundamentals, and I hope to be able to use them to come up with a solution to anything they throw at me.

That being said, I still plan to review a bit. Today I read the chapter on sorting in my data structures book. I plan to review my labs from C++ class last year, specifically the ones on templates, memory management, object-oriented topics such as polymorphism and overloading and linked lists and trees. I’ll try to remember the details of the stuff I did the past two summers, in case I get asked about that. Toss a bit of general OOP theory on top, and I’ll be good to go. Wish me luck.

1. Learn Digital Photography. If you haven’t done this yet, go to Flickr and just browse through some of the featured photos. It is inspiring what people can do with a digital camera and a bit of post-processing. Every time I look at my own photo library, everything about the shots looks amateur. A really good picture is about 1 in 1000 for me. I want to learn how to take amazing pictures. This involves learning not only about cameras (focal length, shutter speed, exposure), but also about the digital toolset that is integral to producing a good photo. I know very little about how to use Photoshop. It also requires expertise in color theory. When people throw around terms like saturation and tone, I have no idea what they are talking about. I would love to someday be taking pictures that I would be happy to use as my desktop background.
2. Finish Snake World Tour. This one doesn’t require much explanation. Snake World Tour is a game that I started writing while I was recovering from jaw surgery. I never got around to finishing it, but it’s so close. I may have to drop the 2006 from the name, though.
3. Run Fast. I had jaw surgery this past summer, and it ruined an entire cross-country season. During recovery, I wasn’t allowed to run at all, doctor’s orders. I lost six weeks of training, which is about half the summer. And when I came back, it wasn’t pretty. My legs looked like sticks and I could barely run 3 miles. Losing two pints of blood will do that to you. It was a long climb back up, but I wasn’t ready for the fall season, and I ran really poorly. I was so discouraged that I seriously contemplated quitting for a long time. But I stuck with it because running is something I need in my life, and I knew it would be hard to run every day if I wasn’t on the team. Right now, though, I feel faster than ever. My goal for indoor track is to break 9:00 in the 3K. For outdoor track, I want to break 4:10 in the 1500 and 16:00 in the 5K. And for cross-country, in the 8K, I need to get myself under 27 minutes if I want to be taken seriously. These goals represent significant increases over my current PRs, but my training has been going really well lately, so I’ll see what happens.
4. Learn to Draw. I used to hate art class, because I believed that some people had drawing talent and others didn’t. I used to place myself in the latter group. Then a few months ago I bought the book “The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards. I read the first chapter; it explained that the ability to draw has nothing to do with motor skills; rather its all about perception. I began to look much more closely at things in my everyday life, seeing them as if I was going to draw them. “I can do this,” I thought. But I have yet to read past the first chapter. I believe that I could become a competent artist, but I’m nervous about the time it would take me to achieve that goal. Drawing also requires patience, which is not something that I always have. The one good drawing I remember making in my life was of my yard. It was a side-by-side of how it looked at night versus how it looked during the day. I was so proud of it when it was done.
5. Read More Books. It’s hard to find time to read in college outside of all the reading and homework that I have to do for class, but I should be able to devote a half-hour each night to books of my own choosing. I’m currently in the middle of “Hard Times” by Dickens, and there is a gigantic list of stuff that I want to read after that. More of the Ender series, Moby Dick, Hamlet, The Jungle Book, Vonnegut, Catch-22, A Clockwork Orange, Fitzgerald, and Alice and Wonderland are just what I came up with in 5 seconds. My next book, however, is going to be “The Prestige” by Christopher Priest. I just saw the movie and it was incredible; I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, and the movie never came together until the last 5 minutes. (A side note: I absolutely hate books that have been rereleased with a new cover that ties in with the movie version. It’s like destroying a work of art.)
6. Find a Research Project. This is important. At every college I toured, I asked how easy it was for undergraduates to get involved in research. At the University of Rochester, it’s really easy, but I haven’t done it yet! I have a meeting on Monday with a professor that I had last year who I really liked. He does research on Computer Architecture – how to design computers at the block level to make them more energy-efficient and, of course, faster. This is an area that I am really interested in myself.
7. Go to a music festival. My friend at home put the idea in my head, and another friend at school found me the perfect one. Just check out the lineup. It’s in California. Travel is expensive, tickets are expensive, and it’s on a school weekend. But we can all dream…

I’m hesitant to speak about the semester when it isn’t actually done yet. Although 23 credits was absolutely insane, and I’m entirely sure that I won’t take that much of an overload ever again in my life, I must say that it was a really good experience to have. It will make next semester feel like vacation in comparison, and it has really gave me an idea of what it is like to be so busy you feel like you are going to go out of your mind. Another great thing about it was that it made the semester absolutely fly by. Most weeks I didn’t have a spare minute to think, from Monday at 8am to Friday at 3pm, and I really enjoyed it. It also helps that my classes were interesting.

Looking back, I thought that:

• My Multivariable Calc class was going to be easy (Hell no)
• My Discrete Math class would be interesting (Turns out I already knew most of the course material, and the homework was really long and repetitive busywork)
• My Physics class would be moderately hard (There were pages, and I mean pages, of math every lecture. I still haven’t wrapped my head around all of the derivations)
• My Arabian Nights class would have really good discussions (There were classes where only one or two people talked)
• I would really like my Circuits class (I loved it)

Top prize for my favorite class of the semester was my circuits class. The lectures were well taught, the labs actually helped me learn the material, mostly because they required designing circuits as pre-lab exercises, and the homework was almost fun in a nerdy way. Physics was a close second. That class took me to a whole new level in calculus, and made me want to get a minor in Physics. Lectures were good, but not outstanding, but the lecture notes that our professor gave us every class were fantastic. It was like he wrote his own textbook. So if you attend the University of Rochester and you ever have the chance to take Circuits with Professor Jones or Honors Physics with Professor Cline, I highly recommend it.

Next semester is the first semester that I am taking not a single liberal arts class. Quantum Mechanics, Data Structures, Signals & Circuits II, and Computer Organization are all on the horizon. I’m pretty excited, but first I have four exams and a hopefully fun and relaxing holiday break to get through. A thoroughly satisfying fall semester, but one that I’m glad is almost over so I can stop being so busy! Now back to the books for the next seven days straight…

The monitor they were selling was a Samsung 205BW (20″ widescreen). It has a resolution of 1680×1050 and its brightness is 300cd/m^2. It is dual-input (VGA/DVI), and it supports HDCP. It swivels 360 degrees, is height-adjustable, and tilts up and down. It has a few different selectable color modes, which I’m not sure that I will use, but I’m going to try them when I watch a movie to see if I notice a difference. Unfortunately it does not rotate to go from landscape to portrait mode, but this is not something I’m overly concerned about. It’s normally $350 but it was on sale for $180. I really love it – the quality of the display is phenomenal and it is really bright. In fact, the display is so bright that it makes my Powerbook G4′s screen look dark in comparison, so I have to run the monitor at 80% brightness so it doesn’t look out of place.

The form factor was as important to me as the specs. I wanted a monitor like Apple’s cinema displays, with a really small, symmetric bezel. Also, I wanted unobrtusive buttons. The Samsung meets both of these requirements and overall has a really clean appearance. With this and my recent purchase of TextMate, I can now say that I am programming in true Mac nerd style.