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| I'm pretty excited about some things coming up pretty quick. This quarter at UCLA I decided to join the Tae Kwon Do club again. I had done this my first quarter at UCLA, but then I stopped the second quarter, just out of pure laziness. Well I couldn't forgive myself for that, so I'm back at it this quarter. Although, I'm happy to say that that one quarter of "break" was pretty well invested in physical fitness...at least to my standards.
Since winter break I've been working out pretty steadily: lifting weights and working on flexibility. Working on flexibility is tough. I wanted to get to the point of being able to do open leg splits, but I can see that's going to take a while. It begins to hurt a lot when my crotch area is about 20 inches from the ground. Maybe I should keep track of this measurement, haha. Well the good thing is that my front kicks are pretty good...I can kick a guy my height in the face without much of a struggle.
I can feel a definite change in my arms too..since I started lifting steadily. Now they feel a little bit more, uhm, firm, I guess is the word I'm looking for. I'm kinda hoping I can go lift with a guy I met over here...this guy is pretty hardcore about physical fitness too. Currently I can just lift up to 50lbs dumbbells on each hand, while on the bench. I think I can do more, but I'm not really confident in my ability to keep the dumbbells steady as more weight is added beyond that limit. I guess that's what a spotter is supposed to do.
The circuit training exercises we used to do in the Fall 2007 Quarter felt pretty intense. I remember feeling a little bit nauseous during those things. Now, I'm doing two circuit training exercises back-to-back and still almost begging for more, haha. I'm loving this.
So in this relentless spirit of self-development, I decided to go on to compete at Stanford's Tae Kwon Do competition coming up later this month, in late April. I'm really looking forward to kicking some ass in that one...I've enrolled in the beginner's heavyweight class. I know I need a lot of practice in a lot of things though. My biggest concern right now is stamina while fighting. I tend to jump around a lot when facing my opponent...this tires me quick, which kind of makes all that circuit training seem pretty much useless. I'm kind of wondering how I can change this. Well, I asked my coach to see if he had suggestions. He suggested that I run a mile each day between now and then...and that should help out.
I feel a very strong sense of commitment to all of this...like I can't let these guys down. Now even the whole idea of being a "Bruin" and that motto I keep seeing everywhere of "Champions made here" is kind of sinking in. I gotta get one of those shirts by the way...with those words written in the back of it, haha.
There's so many things to do with all of this. It's great to know that I can take this as far as I want to take it. Aside from having all this exercise nurture the mind and strenghten the body, I can feel it doing something else. It's giving me a little bit more focus in life. Setting goals, and doing the impossible to reach them. I'm hoping this can also give me better time management skills...and allow me to focus more on school.
I can already feel the intensity of this computer animation class. The biggest challenge for all of this, I think, is keeping all of the math and physics in mind while still engineering the software. That's probably going to come back and haunt my memories, but there's something inside me telling me to go ahead and do this, and still enjoy the experience.
Well I guess I'll keep my mind open and see what it is I can do.
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| Here's an idea: put that restlessness I had talked about in that other post into something productive. I think this is really what I'm looking for, I just didn't know how to express it.
I've often thought of doing a startup company, but the goal of the company has always been a little fuzzy. We've all seen websites like Facebook take off: I had the idea to build such a site a long time ago. Why did I fail at building that? Well when it comes down to launching something as ambitious as that, I think it all boils down to the execution of the idea...not the idea itself. Succintly put, ideas without proper execution suck ass.
Fortunately, there's many other things to do, however much less profitable. This is probably the one thing I absolutely love about grad school: I get to poke around with many new ideas/innovations, and see how they can be developed into something slightly more fruitful.
My first quarter at UCLA I had been doing research in wireless mesh networks: we measured the performance of an ad-hoc multi-hop mesh network that was built on top of Microsoft's Wireless Mesh Network's Connectivity Layer. The experience of building it was great: more than anything else, it involved building the test bench for the network, and then measure different network performance parameters...like a packet's jitter, delay, etc. after changing various other parameters, such as packet size, QoS setting, etc.
Researching networks seems to me to be on the "edge" of technology. It's great, since a lot of innovation is taking place in that area. The one problem I see with that though, is that everything seems to be overly-saturated with research. What do I mean by that? Well, I admit that this view is probably pretty short-sighted, but I do see this as a truth: coming up with an original break-through idea in that area is a little bit tough. All of this kind of contradicts my aspiration to "shock and awe," if you know what I mean.
I seem to be turning my attention on to other matters this quarter. I'm doing two things I have always wondered about how to do: dealing with multimedia database systems, and computer animation. These are two areas that, at least on my end, remain largely unexplored, and still retain that "edge" in terms of potential for innovation.
How do we search for images right now? Most of us probably go on Google Images and find something quick. Well how does that work? There's a bunch of meta-data that the google search engine grabs from text surrounding the image...text such as HTML and the image name. That's all good and dandy, it really is. It's amazing actually....that someone was able to build a crawling algorithm to crawl the Internet to gather information on images. Current research on these multimedia database systems want to do it another way: how about building algorithms that can recognize objects in an image...so that instead of searching images using text, we can search for images using other images. Awesome idea, no? I'm thinking on possibly building a system this quarter that can do just that, but start out with recognizing objects in vector images. That will probably be "easy," but, I don't know how on the "edge" this idea really is. I guess I should go bug the professor with questions.
I doubt much research will take place in the computer animation class. This one is follows the philosophy of, "alright, let's understand how things work," and is much more project-based than research based. That's pretty good I guess...now I'll be able to draw more complicated things on the computer. Deep down though, I think all of this is fed by the idea that the computer gaming industry has boomed exponentially in the last couple of years. I haven't looked at the numbers recently, but the market for the video game industry is probably worth around $40 billion a year. Nice chunk of change...
Another idea: I'm currently building a web application that allows researchers to create educational modules online. Researchers can feed data into the application and allow a user audience (students, in this case) to analyze and find trends in that data. The beauty of this system is that it is very generic: data from various sources can be fed into the system, and allow the students to query it in various way to find trends. Well I think this idea is pretty break-through in a way. The only problem: the market that this application targets seems to be pretty small. In other words, the execution for this idea is top-of-the-line, but the idea itself is lacking something. Marketing. There, I said it. Maybe those marketing majors can help out. How do I make this grow? Maybe execution is not top-of-the-line. Well what is? How do I find out? Here I am, thinking out-loud.
Let's change the topic a little bit. I bought an iPod a few weeks ago: yes, my roommate here called me a sell-out, for diving into Apple's ecosystem. That's exactly what wound up happening. I used to think business-models were all just a bunch of b.s., but this iPod made me think otherwise. It is absolutely key in Apple's business model. Once you buy it, you tie yourself into using Apple's proprietary technologies. Here you go: you have to use iTunes to sync the iPod, you have to buy songs from Apple via iTunes, you can't play iTunes songs anywhere other than the iPod, you have to own the music you have on your iPod, you can only sync the iPod with one iTunes library, etc. And the list goes on, I'm sure. This is, effectively, Apple's ecosystem. It's exactly what Microsoft does: once you buy Windows, you're tied to using Microsoft technologies for the rest of the product's lifetime. Rebellions against these kind of ideas exist. Take Google: they despise absolutely anything related to Microsoft. For people like Google, open-source is the way to go. Well shortly put: I admire Google's balls.
One final word on the Apple ecosystem...it all stems from the focus of one man: Steve Jobs. Although deep inside I object to the ecosystem built around the iPod, I admire that man's skill. He seems to have that relentless, i-don't-give-a-shit, vision-driven, managerial style that demands execution, and makes his company sweat and bleed inside before a final product is ever released.
The question for me now is: can I channel all of the energy that I have inside, to achieve something as grand as that? I think that to find out, I need to visit Silicon Valley sometime, and see what that place is all about.
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| I did a little bit of research on something I've always had an eye for: radio controlled toys with internal combustion engines. I guess I've had this fascination ever since I was a kid, but it was especially interesting to me when I put together that little computer controlled RC car for my senior design project at UIUC. That thing was pretty cool. Here's a picture of it to refresh your mind:
I guess it looked pretty badass. This thing was rigged up with various contraptions: the goal was to control it through a GUI on the computer written in C#.NET, that sent signals through the computer's serial port, through a chip that converted the serial port signals to TTL, to a radio chip that transmitted the TTL signals via RF....to a receiver chip mounted on the car that converted the RF signals to TTL, fed them into a microcontroller, which in turn controlled the main drive motor (mounted on the rear) and servos that controlled the steering and camera position.
The project encompassed several areas of electrical engineering...that's why it was so fun for me I guess. Maybe one of the most interesting software components was the GUI: I added multi-threading on that thing...I think I had a thread dedicated to handle mouse events, and another thread dedicated to writing to the serial port. I guess another interesting aspect of it, although it was really easy to implement, was the power regulation used to step down the 7.2 V from the battery, down to the regular 5V DC used for TTL logic. Messing with the analog-to-digital converter on the microcontroller was pretty cool. Now that I remember, I was using that thing to prevent the car from colliding with objects...by using an IR sensor mounted in the front of the vehicle's frame.
I think I'll be reading this 20 years from today and wonder, "how the hell did I do that?" Or will I look back at this at some point and think, "oh man, that was simple as hell...why didn't I add more stuff instead?" Hmm, interesting....
Well this car is really cool, but it's electric...I guess I'm more interested in the miniature internal combustion ones...they seem way more powerful and captivating.
I did a little research on YouTube and found this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mutb7KgA9NM. It's a miniature V12 Diesel Engine. I wonder how long this link will hold up for...will YouTube be around in 5 years? 10 years? 40?
Well anyway, that German dude really knows what the hell he's doing. Well in general I'm just surprised that people have managed to shrink internal combustion engines to that size. There's even way smaller ones...the kind people put on planes and things like that.
This kind of thing looks really fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTD9kLB_kZY. I think that's the kind of thing that draws me the most into building these kind of things.
I dunno, whenever I get to build one of these things, I think I'll either build a racer, or put a plane together. It'd be cool to go all out on electronics and mount camera's and what not...but maybe down the road.
Damn it's so late...gotta hit the sack.
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| Whoa! I'm back on Xanga! I felt like an idiot a little while ago searching for the "Add New Weblog" link. That took me a while. I like the new menu's they put up. I guess those Xanga guys want to keep the site looking nice and pretty. I can't believe it's been eight months since I was on here! Damn...time flies.
Heck...so much has happened since then...I don't even know where to begin. My thoughts are all over the place. I feel like I can go on about anything....I'm thinking, "focus," "focus to a point..." but I know it won't happen. I'm all scatter-brained....it's probably for the best.
It was nice to see a picture of the Camaro right down there...I guess that says I was pretty in love with it since way back when. That thing has let me down a couple of times already...but of course, all that is expected and almost "welcomed," haha. The worst thing that has happened with it is that it left me stranded once in Venice (part of L.A.) as I got out of a bar out there...at 3:00am. That was a late night...to say the least. But of course i got the car to start again around 3:30am...that totally got rid of the buzz I had going on. Oh well, the lincoln put me through worst...so this time I was just sitting there smiling that late at night...thinking of all the poor hungry people in the world.
I've been listening to a lot of Rap lately. People like 50 Cent, Eminem, 2 Pac..."Why? How?!" You're asking. Well it all started with the hot ass summer in Phoenix, and an "I don't give a shit" attitude. Then I heard about 50 Cent and his lyrics, and I kinda thought, "hey, I think like this guy." It was great. I guess I also got it from the movie 8-Mile with Eminem. That was a great movie. I think I can see an analog between it, and my life, almost. That's probably the reason I like it so much...I mean, a guy growing up in the ghetto and facing all these mudafucking bullies...then somehow overcoming all that jazz...by just doing his thing. It's pure greatness. I absolutely love his Loose Yourself song. Fuck! That's the shit, what can I say?
"...if you had one shot, one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted...one moment...would you capture it? Or would you just let it slip? ....he opens his mouth but the words won't come out...he's choking now...snap back to reality...oop...there goes gravity....back to the lab again yo!..."
Honestly this song brings out some very violent and ambitious thoughts...some rage felt from deep within...I don't know how to express it, quite honestly. I spoke to my dad over the phone a few days ago...I told him I felt a certain "restlessness" inside me. Then he says, "well, you're young...I'm old and need a lot of rest," kinda half jokingly. So I guess it's all natural....but it doesn't end.
One way I've dealt with it is through art I guess. Sketching and what not....but that doesn't get rid of the restlessness. I think a lot of patience, virtue...foresight are needed to sit still to put something artistic together. While that's all good and mighty, the restlessness is still there. So I've been looking for other ways to get rid of this feeling....the primary ones being weight-lifting and meditation.
What do these two things do for me? Well, simply put, they nurture the body and the mind. My body feels the most restless when I haven't worked out in a while. Then I give it what it wants, and I can feel it "thanking me back," almost.
What about the mind? Well, the mind is very interesting. You'll think I'm crazy when you read this, but then again, I can look at you in the eye and plainly tell you that, "I just don't give a fuck what you think." This is how I think, so let's just let it be.
I've been looking for a way to escape the physical world. Is this possible? Well I think, I've been in school for about 20 years. What have I gained? A lot of physical knowledge...about the world we live in, yes. That's it. What else is out there? Is there something no man knows? What would that be? How can I understand it? Do I want to understand it? I think I spent a lot of time over spring break trying to figure this out. So all of these thoughts took me to the bookstore...so I had to buy a book that discusses all of this stuff, from the philosophy of eastern cultures...like India, China, and Tibet. It's interesting as hell...in Spanish too...I guess that's another reason why I bought it. What am I looking for? Maybe I know, but maybe I don't...
I was watching a documentary show, on Discovery Channel, of course, a few days ago. This thing was about some kids looking up on some website listing a bunch of legends about haunted places. So these kids, "legend trippers," I believe they called them, would to go these haunted places to see if they were actually haunted. Smart thing to do? Probably not, if you ask me. But these guys I think share a similar curiosity and "restlessness" that I'm feeling. They want to know what lies beyond the physical world. I guess that's their way of finding out, not mine. I do believe in spirits, but not in messing with them. I ask myself, what is the one thing that I have that can help me learn more about this? Ha! I have a spirit. Why not learn more about it? How? Yes, so we're turning this quest to learn more about the non-physical world into a quest to learn more about the self and inner-spirit.
That's what I want to do....learn about the things that I'm capable of doing. Y como dice el dicho, "lo demas, me sale sobrando."
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