Kris Jordan

The last one in my undergraduate career. Hopefully. Blast you, physics! Between 8 and 11 am tomorrow I will determine my graduation applicability. For some reason (see: fear, disinterest, dream of making it big and never graduating / having to take this course, etc.) I put off perhaps the most difficult course in the Computer Science Curriculum at UNC. Physics: Electromagnetism and Waves. It’s a time sink. It’s also a brain sink if you haven’t taken calculus in over three and a half years now. But that’s fine. I tend to live my life dangerously close to the edge of horrible, horrible failure at all times. It’s what keeps me running. This may be the closest call yet though.

After exams are done I’ve got some loose ends to tie up with the independent study work and hopefully that closes everything out. Then its time for some fun stuff. I have a number of pet projects kicking around in my head, mostly unrelated to one another, that I’d like to churn out before I move up to Providence. Can’t wait to get cracking on the things I’m really interested in.

I cannot recollect the last time I successfully endeavored an all-nighter. Not in some time, for sure. I believe that is a testament to college maturity. I remember an anecdote from a high school teacher citing her experience with college. During exams the underclassmen would stay up all night studying away. The seniors, they were getting a good night’s sleep. Not for lack of exams, or drive (well, drive is up for debate at this point!), but because it usually makes little sense, or difference. I will be sleeping next week, for sure. When it comes to delivering papers and presentations by deadlines, though, there’s nothing like a silent, uninterrupted through-the-night work session.

Tomorrow I have a paper due in the Philosophy of Science course. Realism vs. Anti-realism. Should we believe in things which we cannot naturally observe, and theorize about them? Or should we not? I, for one, really like the atomic model. I have never seen an atom but I’m pretty sure they exist. Sort of like I’ve never seen a virus, but I have been around sick people and subsequently been sick. It seems too limiting for science to focus on the humanly observable. If we did, I am afraid the greater majority of all research being conducted in physics today would be for naught. Now, if only there were a computer program which could take my stance and turn it into 4-7 pages of coherent prose. That would be nice.

I’m currently writing this post from Microsoft Word 2007’s blog post editor. It is really straight forward. Let’s try out its imaging capabilities:

So what all is actually left?

Wow! Dropping charts and tables actually works. Speaking of the new office. It is quite great. Perhaps one of the most impressive software suites I have ever encountered. Microsoft really got it right this time.

I really should be working…

Everything is shaping up with regard to plans for the summer. The theme this go-round is preparation for graduate school. I will be starting work with Andy van Dam and the Center for Research on Pen-Centric Computing. The center is sponsored by Microsoft and explores the frontier of tablet based computing. Early June I will be heading to Providence.

I picked up two books I intend to read over the coming weeks. Douglas Hofstadter’s “Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” and “I Am a Strange Loop”. A column in a recent Time magazine turned me on to the works. I find it fascinating neither myself nor my circle of closest friends had heard of GEB. From all that I gather it is a classic amongst the nerdliest of the nerds. (Aside: Nerdliest and nerdliness are not actually words, however, I use them with clairvoyance. They will be ‘real words’ one day.)

Hofstadter finds mysterious beauty in what he refers to as ’strange loops’. Examples include many of Escher’s works (thumbnail below), Bach’s Endlessly Rising Canon, and Godel’s incompleteness. Each toys with the concept of infinity through paradoxical self-referencing loops. Perhaps the cutest logical example is drawn from Epimenides’ paradox.

Epimenides was a Cretan who made one immortal statement: “All Cretans are liars.”

- or -

The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence is false.

Hofstadter, a computer scientist himself, writes in a peculiar way. Interweaving examples of the ’strange loops’ of Godel, Escher, and Bach, with other excerpts driven by formal grammars and math makes for an intellectually neat endeavor.

Being only partially through GEB I can’t draw any conclusions other than so far so fun.

The past couple of weeks have been stressful. The big decision has been where will I be next year? Where is my future? The choice was between University of Colorado: Boulder, Columbia University, Brown University, and the University of North Carolina. I could easily weed out Boulder and Columbia for financial reasons. The most compelling offers were Brown and UNC. Providence vs. Chapel Hill.

This wouldn’t be a hard choice if I didn’t love Chapel Hill. I love this place. This weather. This basketball team. This state. These professors. I know Chapel Hill. I know how amazing it is. That is why it isn’t easy to say good bye. It isn’t easy to leave when unforced.

I did not have to make a decision until April 15th, and I didn’t intend to, but I made it yesterday. My thoughts were consumed with internal debate for one school or the other. School work has been piling up while I was sitting pensively reading everything I could about Brown and about UNC. The simple decision was weighing me down. So I made it.

The letter is in the mail. I will be enrolled in Brown University’s Computer Science Ph.D. program this August.

My reasoning went as follows: I want to maximize the value of the next 5 years in school. The value of school is learning and growing. Brown’s professors specialize in different areas and teach in different ways than UNC’s. I should encounter different ideas and schools of thought (no pun intended) therefore learning more. Brown is in New England. It will not have North Carolina culture. It will not have North Carolina weather. It will not have North Carolina (or even Chapel Hill) rent. Growing is achieved through persevering challenges, facing fears, taking risks, and expanding horizons. These challenges will force me to grow and adapt. It will be more difficult. For these reasons it is the road I’ve chosen.

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

-Frost

After returning an item I was ‘borrowing’ from wal-mart, they gave me a nice wad of cash which I couldn’t help but to burn through. My first purchase was a no-brainer. Borat. A defining movie of our times.

My second purchase, slightly more expensive, was Microsoft’s Wireless Desktop 7000 Keyboard/Mouse combo. It is maybe one of the best computer related purchases I have ever made. It operates over Bluetooth so the range of both keyboard and mouse are excellent. It is also incredibly well designed. Thin, sleek, and light. The keys themselves resemble the feeling of keys on a laptop. Crisp, short strokes to depress the keys. I don’t have any quantitative data but I would say my typing speed is at least 10 words per minute faster on this keyboard and my laptop’s verses the generic Dell I was using before.

Now I need to buy a cord to connect the computer to my TV and I’ll be in business. The media center controls built in are nice. Good job Microsoft Hardware.

Ever wonder what’s going on in my life? Now you can find out…

The link can also be found on the sidebar.

I saw this link to a recorded talk on Google Code. This is mostly a reminder for myself to watch it. The abstract sounds interesting:

If happiness is an inner state, influenced by external conditions but not dependent on … all them, how can we achieve it? Ricard will examine the inner and outer factors that increase or diminish our sense of well-being, dissect the underlying mechanisms of happiness, and lead us to a way of looking at the mind itself based on his book, Happiness: A Guide to Life’s Most Important Skill and from the research in neuroscience on the effect of mind-training on the brain.

Speaker Bio: Matthieu Ricard, a gifted scientist turned Buddhist monk, is a best selling author, translator, and photographer. He has lived and studied in the Himalayas for the last 35 years where he currently works on humanitarian projects. He is an active participant in the current scientific research on meditation and the brain.

Here’s the video.

I finally got around to uploading pictures. Cutting to the chase…

22nd Birthday: Kris Wine & Grind

Duke Game: Risers

Spring Break: Brown & The Caribbean

Enjoy :)

After an extended Spring Break filled with traveling I am back home and back in school. From Rhode Island to Jamaica I traveled well over 3432 miles by land, sea, and air. That’s about 1/7th the circumference of the world. A very neat week and a half.

Traveling down a mountain valley river by way of bamboo rafts in Jamaica was definitely the highlight. Similar to the way gondolas are a means of transportation in Venice, our captain Carlington guided us through the slow moving stream with occasional small rapids. He provided a pedicure, rare flowers, and some background information about the rafts, the vegetation, and the area. Yahman.

A wealth of pictures will be up as soon as I get my memory card back from Aubrey.

This week: lab exam, lab reports, physics homework, thesis work, philosophy paper, UNC Candidates Day, IM Soccer, IM Softball, … difficult transition from days of being served every meal, basking in the sun, and visiting foreign islands. But its no problem man.