Meetings
Nov 25, 02:01 PM by Eric Allen
Some people are detail-oriented, and some are big-picture types. A healthy mix of the two is crucial for any successful team. However, I’m not sure putting the two types in the same meeting is ever a good idea. I just spent two hours listening to discussions of minute details for a project that we don’t even want to do right now. Before even answering the most basic questions, like “can we afford to do this?” my detail-oriented teammate went crazy on all of the details of the project. It was amazingly boring and unproductive. At least our manager had the sense to realize we’d wasted at least $250 of developer time screwing around!
I’m going to take this as a lesson to avoid putting detail-oriented and big-picture people in the same meetings. Keep the communication between the two types asynchronous and mediated if possible. Putting them together just wastes time.
Free Time? What's that?
Nov 23, 04:34 PM by Eric Allen
I was catching up a friend the other day, and we happened upon the topic of “free time.” Apparently he (and many others) have this thing called “free time.” As he put it, “it’s this time when you’re, like, ‘hmm, what could I be doing right now’ and then you go surf Wikipedia or something.” Huh?? I guess I’m just too insane to understand. See, my process is “hmm, what do I need to be doing right now? I’ll go check my GTD list. Oh, yeah, that.” and then I go do it. If I’m not being productive, I’m being deliberately unproductive: reading textbooks, reading fiction, surfing the latest tech news, etc. I have so much going on that I never have nothing to do!
What am I up to right now? Still working on the Mobile Studio Project I mentioned a few weeks ago, putting the finishing touches on RPI Planner, and trying to figure out what I’m doing this summer. I spent ten hours on Tuesday soldering boards together for the Mobile Studio, and I have a presentation tomorrow afternoon for RPI Planner. I got an email out of the blue from a Sun recruiter today for a position that almost perfectly matches my credentials! That’s on top of several other interesting leads I’m working on. What recession??
The fall semester is rapidly coming to an end for me. This whole late-Thanksgiving thing is really messing with my head. We only have one week of classes after we get back! With an extra three-day weekend for the opening of EMPAC, the fall semester marathon didn’t feel as bad, and now it’s over! I haven’t even figured out what I’m doing for winter break yet. Of course I’ll be back in the Bay Area, but what am I going to do with all of that time? I guess I have more time to work on projects.
For Thanksgiving I’m going down to New York City to hang with a couple of friends from middle school. Our three families are getting together back in California, too! It’ll be pretty low-key, but I’m excited to be seeing Jamie and Morgan for the first time in six months. I leave on Tuesday!
First Place
Nov 8, 10:19 PM by Eric Allen
A couple of weeks ago my research advisor for my open source project encouraged us to enter a programming competition sponsored by several groups at RPI. I figured it would be a interesting way to spend a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, and hey, I might just win an iPod touch!
As it turned out, I won a $100 Amazon gift certificate, an 8GB iPod Touch, and an interview with Bloomberg! Not bad for three hours of effort. Oh, and I got a free T-shirt, too. There were eight problems, and I was one of two people who solved four of them in the three-hour period. I believe I was the only one using Java who placed in the top five, and I would argue that my choice of language is what gave me an edge. We got to choose between C, C++, and Java (I know, terrible choices), and I was by far most comfortable in Java. The big advantage came in the libraries, though. I had set operations baked in, didn’t have to waste much effort parsing input, and had full OO at my disposal. I guess my real-world experience helped, too.
So where do I go from here? I’m sort of thinking about trying out TopCoder now that I’ve shown that I can solve these kinds of problems pretty well. On the other hand, I still like building stuff better. Back to coding on real problems!
Laptops in the Classroom
Nov 5, 01:54 PM by Eric Allen
As an avid gadget freak, you might guess I’d be the last one to give up my laptop during class. Last year, however, I discovered that taking notes on paper helped me with retention and reduced distraction. I still pull out my laptop once in a while, but all of my class notes are on paper. This article highlights the reasons why it might just be a good idea to shut that laptop and go back to good ol’ pen and paper!
Why I Ban Laptops in My Classroom
Undergraduate Research
Oct 21, 01:55 PM by Eric Allen
A number of my classmates last year told me that they had come to RPI in part because of the opportunities for “undergraduate research.” I thought that was crazy. Spending hours upon hours slaving away doing menial work for some stupid professor? All of these kids doing “Undergraduate Research Projects” (URPs) must be brown-nosers with no ability. Yeah, I seriously thought that.
Why didn’t somebody set me straight?? As I’ve now discovered, URPs can be really cool projects, even as cool as the stuff I didn’t do for credit! I’m now engaged in two projects: one for pay and one for credit.
I ran into my first URP when I went to my Data Structures & Algorithms professor asking for advice on open source licenses. He gave me a couple of books to read, and then asked if I wrote much open source software. Of course I do! One thing led to another, and now I’m developing a tool to help RPI students create customized plans of study and getting paid for it.
My girlfriend has been pushing me to meet her Circuits professor almost since the year began. I’ve been reluctant, since I really had no excuse to just walk into his office, but I finally contacted him and set up a meeting. He is currently working on a tool to change the way electrical engineering is taught, and he needs more researchers! As chance would have it, I actually worked with his one graduate student early last year, so Matt and I were already on good terms. Now I get to spend a semester sucking every bit of knowledge I can out of an awesome grad student! I’m going to be working on a few minor features this semester, but next semester and beyond I have opportunities to work on some big stuff that will have a lasting impact on education. I guess I was just in the right place at the right time.
The East Coast is Getting to Me
Oct 17, 05:53 AM by Eric Allen
The East Coast culture is really starting to get to me, and it’s a good thing! I grew up in a unique environment. In Silicon Valley, the highest achievement is to start a successful company, sell it for millions, and become an angel investor or maverick CEO. That isn’t even remotely normal! Because of that mindset, though, I held an exaggerated disdain for higher education. I was going to college because sometimes people required a college degree on your resume, not because I wanted an “education.” My real education is working at companies like Allocade and Wesabe, where I was an active participant in early-stage startups.
Come to think of it, I have never learned about the field I enjoy from teachers until I got here. All through middle school and high school I was teaching myself programming and computer hardware with very little adult help. Dad got me started, but I taught myself most of it. I discovered other people would pay me for this knowledge, and I hadn’t even been taught it! So then what’s the point of going to school and learning from teachers?
I came to RPI with that mindset, and I resolved to engage in worthwhile things outside of school while not working too hard at academics. Even though I came in a semester ahead thanks to AP credit, I figured I’d just have a few easy semesters and do more work outside of school. I chuckled to myself at the kids who thought they could get their Master’s degree in four or five years. “Ha,” I though, “they’re going to come out with a piece of paper and that’s all. I started at this place making more money than they will when they graduate.” There was no way I was going to graduate school. Who needs it? Maybe down the road, but higher education is worthless, remember?
And then it hit me. Instead of blowing off school and focusing on doing cool things outside the university, I could blow off academics and focus on doing cool things inside the university. What a concept! And it gets better: Cool projects here are called “research.” I always thought of research as working in a wet lab with goggles and a lab coat, slaving away over equipment until you could publish some insanely dense paper about some esoteric topic. I was blatantly wrong. Even more awesome? I get credit for doing research (working on cool projects)! Credit = graduation, so if I load up on research I can graduate earlier. Since I’m already ahead, this would allow me to basically finish my B.S. in three years. And you know what they do in graduate school? Research!
In less than three weeks, I’ve gone from never in a million years getting a “co-terminal” degree (working on undergraduate and graduate degree at the same time) to planning on getting a Master’s of Engineering in Computer & Systems Engineering by Spring 2011! I’ll spend the same four years here on the same financial aid I receive, but instead of coming out bored with a B.S., I come out having worked on an awesome project and with a really cool piece of paper that says I’m qualified to do all kinds of stuff.
The pieces just sort of fell together, really. My girlfriend had this awesome professor this semester who she kept bugging me to meet. I finally sat down with him, and now I’m “stuck” with him for the next three years working on his Mobile Studio project! It’s software, hardware, user interaction, and embedded control all in one project! Oh, and I already know and like his grad student who I’m replacing. I worked with Matt at a startup in the incubator last fall, and I am having a blast learning from him. He taught me this really cool game called Allegro where you have to connect all the little pins according to the plan without letting any of the wires touch. So fun!
So yeah, I’m sorry to all of you who I’ve laughed at (internally, of course) or ignored. I was the naive one, but I’ve finally come around. It sure took long enough! 21 credits (the normal load is 16) per semester, here I come!
