the last two weeks have been a real trip through hellfire for my feelings of fulfillment as a grad student. I'm hoping today marks the end of it.

two mondays ago I finally figured out a crisis i've been feeling about my lesser personal project, the static analysis tool (pdf). up until now-ish, all the actual programming I've done for research has ( Read more... )

hmm ( Read more... )

on a whim I wrote a little blurb of text to go in my thesis (the sort you'd put on a dedication page, though I've currently got it in an appendix). the hope is that it is inspiring rather than cheesy or trite ( Read more... )

I didn't expect the academic culture at stanford to be so obviously different than it is at CMU, but I was surprised. the open house presenters basically couldn't stop talking about how great it was to be just down the street from all the tech companies, and it showed in the types of research problems the faculty were interested in. not that there ( Read more... )

ok, life update time I guess ( Read more... )

i don't remember where i found it, but i've had this article in a firefox tab staring at me for the past couple of days. it's all about how there are okay researchers, and there are great researchers - the kind that change the world with their work; and what characterises the different tiers of impactfulness in the work that you do? and so on. i ( Read more... )

i had a research meeting with jiri, garth, and randy bryant today, the latter two of whom are the former's co-advisors (with garth being my sole advisor). i am entertained at the notion of having a "step-advisor ( Read more... )

today was a particularly lonely day. i think i overcommitted a bunch of good mood to last week, or something ( Read more... )

alright, i am trying a new tactic today. i realised after i got back from running that i could feasibly take the rest of the day entirely off without the world ending, though it would hurt my coming weekdays. so, while i'm not taking the day off, i will make like anything worthwhile i get done today is bonus points. maybe if i can do this even just ( Read more... )

I had one of those moments where "whoa, this totally useless thing that I thought about for fun a long time ago turned out to be extremely helpful for something I care about!" for my research project today.

now is as good a time as any to plug my research blog, which has a post I just made about this, among other interesting stories.