Pasted directly from my chat log with a friend, but I typed the whole thing
Let me tell you a little story about a robot. Someone was training a robot to dual other robots. They would reward the robot for doing better each day. The robot learned that if it got shot it was bad. So it would run away. And it would be rewarded. But after a while it couldn’t do any better. The robot was very good at running away but it never did anything else. So it couldn’t improve.
It was trapped in what is called (mathimatically) a local maxima. It would have to do something that would make things worse to learn how to make them better. My point is it’s really easy to get stuck in one place and not be willing to take the risk to get out of the place you are stuck and find a better place.
(This is a true story about someone trying to build an battle bot AI of sorts, it would run away but never shoot.)
Austin is a nice town. It sees it self as a liberal mecca and in many ways it is. However I get an odd feeling that there may be a bit more don’t ask, don’t tell type attitude about things, meaning that although it is “accepted” people don’t openly talk about some thing. I don’t know if this is true, but I got an odd sense of that. That being said it is a really nice place. Lots of sun and nice weather some nice big parks inside the city. Also it’s a university town in many ways because although the student population is not a huge percentage of the overall population the city grew up around UT Austin in many ways.
Like I said in my last post none of this should be taken as factual information about anything especially UT Austin. It’s just my sense from spending 3 days in an around the campus.
Nice city. Feels a bit more like home than Philly. But in other ways I would prefer to be in philly.
Seems like a more connected department in the sense that faculty and students have more casual relationships. There would be some ability to walk into peoples offices and talk to them. It’s not PDX but it’s closer than UPenn I think.
The visit was a little more calm.
I really like Orc, however i don’t know how much real interest there is in doing a higher-performance implementation or even if it would be a good idea.
J. Misra is a very nice guy.
I find the work of Don Batory on code “synthesis” very interesting.
I feel like my work is at the intersection of more peoples interests and skillsets than at UPenn.
However there does not seem to be much type theory here.
Unless you get outside funding you have to TA to maintain funding. This can be quite a lot of work in some cases. However I do want teaching experience. However it can really cut into research time.
Like UPenn the faculty doesn’t seem to be willing to come in on the weekend even for the prospective students.
I could get involved in the Orc work directly and I could probably get publications out of that. It would be a lot work but that’s the way of publication.
Very few department clubs oddly enough. But there are lots of clubs on the rest of campus.
City is quite bikable. There are several grad students who ride everywhere. Not as good as portland but still nice.
Very strict police force in terms of enforcing traffic laws for bikes.
People love this place. However I’m a bit worried about finding actually like minded people. I’m sure they are there, but it may take a bit of searching.
Food is reasonably priced but a bit on the high end.
Housing is fairly cheap if I am willing to ride a few miles or have a share.
I really don’t know anyone in Austin.
An hour out of town you can get some nice astronomical seeing.
4mo sunny days per year.
It seems that fire dancing is legal in the parks with a permit!
At this point I am leaning heavily toward UT Austin. However I’m not very happy with that. It will be very lonely to move to another city where I know no one. If I went to Philly I could visit all my old friends in NYC and that would be really nice; I miss them. However I think as far as being able to follow the research direction I want and enjoying my degree I think Austin is better.
It has also hit me how much I will miss Portland. In theory I could stay at Portland State and get my PhD here. It would be faster for one thing (since I could roll my Master’s work over into the first requirements for the PhD). However Portland State is not well rated or well known, and although I believe it is a good school (although there is no one here whose interests line up perfectly with mine, but that will be true to one degree or another anywhere) I have been told by many people that school reputation matters and this makes sense. When someone has a bunch of applications on their desk they need a way to make a first cut and where you got your PhD is one of them. However other people have said that publications are more important. Honestly I don’t know who to believe. The only thing I know for sure is that having a PhD from a prestigious university like UPenn or UTAustin would be nothing put positive even if it isn’t the only important thing.
So I am faced with a choice of school something like this:
Portland State: Very fun and nice department with many smart people though no one exactly in my field. But not prestigious so I would probably have to work harder to get a job once I graduate. I have good friends here.
UPenn: Less fun department but with lots of smart, nice people however again no one exactly in my field. However it is the most prestigious program of the three so I would probably have an easier time getting jobs. I know 1 or 2 people in Philly and I know a lot of people in NYC and I could visit them which would be so nice.
UTAustin: Middle of the road department in terms of fun; intense but open and seems to enjoy itself. There are several people in the department working on what I am interested in so I would not be working on a secondary research project. This is a very close second to UPenn in prestige so either would be a good bet as far as getting jobs. I know almost no one in Austin or anywhere near by. I’m sure I could make friends but it is very lonely to move to a new place and not know anyone.
The issue about prestige bothers me a lot. As I said I have been told different things by different people and I don’t know who to believe. In the end I am going to have to just choose one and no matter which I choose I will have lost some things and gained others. That is the thing that hurts the most for me is that I cannot “just follow my heart” since no matter where I go I will have lost some opportunity I care about.
However there is one thing I am very happy about. I don’t have to travel again for mouths. Being gone to another state for two weekends in a row was really exhausting. It’s nice to be home, so I can try to get caught up on things. Speaking of which I need to get my thesis committee setup. My stress level is high enough that I have been running a mild headache for a week. Life is not fun at the moment.
PS: Again, if you have any comments on either of these schools or towns or recommendations or random thoughts on the subject tell me. I’m looking for all the input I can get.
Last weekend I visited UPenn. Philly is a nicer town than I expected. And UPenn is a very nice school. Here is some notes I took on Fri night after spending the day meeting with people at the school. These are of course only my person opinions based on spending a day and a half meeting people and wandering the city. None of this should be taken as factual information about UPenn.
Lots of people doing interesting work.
A very busy department. Some competition for time between students and other responsibilities.
Very nice people; both faculty and students.
If I followed the Lolliproc path I would be working on a secondary project which could make publication a bit more work. However Steve Zdancewic seems interested and I think i could do it without too much trouble.
Andre DeHon‘s work on streaming data processors also seems interesting. However I think that would need to be a secondary relationship because I don’t know it I would be happy doing just architecture.
Stephanie Weirich‘s work on dependently typed languages like trellis could be very interesting. I don’t know if they are looking to implement yet or not. It is not at all parallelism oriented. Also some people think trillis is just taking the wrong approach to the problem, so it might turn out to be a dead end.
Lot’s of type theory skill.
A big focus on security and program correctness. Which I really don’t care about since I want to develop new languages.
Department takes itself very seriously. Which is good and bad.
Could be a very stressful school. However the actual hours per day expectation seems reasonable (very high some weeks however flexible so other weeks you can catch up on sleep). So it’s a full time job + overtime.
Very active PL group. So I would learn lots of interesting things on any PL-related subject.
Also there is interesting architecture work, so maybe I could actually start to merge those threads but I don’t know.
Split culture the students and the faculty are not on a level and have seperate “living spaces”. That being said it is a first name department and there are club meeting once a week where students and faculty hang out and talk about various things.
They never gave us a break on Fri. It was a really intense day and they didn’t seem to think anything of it.
Everything was scheduled for Fri instead of Sat. One of the students mentioned that this was because the faculty didn’t like to come in on weekends. This does not seem reasonable to me since this is a open house and the faculty should be all in. I worry that this means that the faculty don’t feel like they need to do anything inconvenient to make the department work. That could make it hard to finish a thesis if my adviser refused to go out of his/her way to help me when that was needed.
Reasonably lax graduation requirements.
Would probably still take me 4-5 years.
Nice funding policy. I would have to TA for two terms. After that any TAing would be bonus and paid (at least a little) on top of the funding.
Living on the funding is fairly easy even with a pretty high standard of living.
First couple of semesters are harder but then it calms down a bit.
Nice city.
Bikable, looks easy to get around. Not as nice as Portland but not bad.
Reasonably cheap food and drink.
People seem to like it here and I think it’s honest.
2-3 hours from NYC by a cheap bus ($15 each way day of) or a train ($25). So I could see me NYC friends on a somewhat regular basis.
3 months of sunny days per year.
It is going to be very hard to choose between UPenn and UTAustin. They are both very good schools and are in nice cities. UPenn has the notable advantage that I would be near NYC without being in NYC. I still have a lot of friends there and I miss the people and places.  However I need to make sure to make a good academic choice (based on how the department and the school is) and not blindly choose one place over the other because I want to be able to hang out with my old friends once or twice a month. It’s going to be hard. No matter where I go I will be closing some doors (at least for the time being) and I have to make my choice on fundamentally incomplete information because I really do not know how it will be to go to any of these schools, since I will have only visited them for a couple of days.
This coming weekend I go to Austin, TX to visit UTAustin. Then I will start trying to compare in earnest. I have over a month to decide, but I don’t want to put it off too long because it will probably not get easier as I wait longer.
PS: If you have any comments on either of these schools or town or recommendations or random thoughts on the subject tell me. I’m looking for all the input I can get.
I should have done this a long time ago but here are some pictures and video of me throwing my fire whip. In these pictures I am throwing my 6′ kevlar rope whip. It’s not a very good whip and I’m not that good yet, so I cannot do that many different cracks. But I’m still pretty happy with it.
All the pictures and video here were in late July through mid August.
I also just ordered a lot of kevlar so I can make my own fire whip which will hopefully allow me to do all the cracks I can do with my nylon whips with a fire whip. I’m quite excited.
So I’ve been in my new apartment for a bit over a week now. I like it so far and the more I make it mine the more I like it. The only main issue I have left with it is the price. It’s about $750 including utilities, which is kinda high for a studio, but I’m paying for the location and I think it will be worth it for now. I will be able to ride my bike to school in under 10 minutes which will be really nice given that I’ve had a 1 hour commute for the last 5 years. I’m really looking forward to not that. Also the lease on the apartment is only 6 months, so I will have a way out if it’s a problem. I will probably start looking for other places in 4 months or so and consider moving.
One thing I have done to the apartment that I’m really happy about it adding lights. When I moved in there were no overhead lights in the main room. This made it really dark at night (though during the day it get plenty of sun, which is nice). So I went to the hardware store and bought some wire and some sockets and plugs and switches and made lights. I’m really happy with it though in retrospect I’m not sure it was any cheaper than buying lamps. But I like it more and they are really bright. (Note that my whips are hanging on the wall. I’m really like them there for some reason.)
I have now cleaned the place but as of 2 nights ago the apartment as a whole looked like this: (click for a high resolution version) (EDIT: This is a better version I made since I originally posted this)
This panorama is made up to 28 individual images taken using my cell phone. It’s got some real issues with brightness and color, but honestly it’s amazing how well it came out. I’m really proud of it. It was made using Hugin a open-source panorama stitcher.
I just got back from the burn. I’m in the hostel again for a night.
I’m about to take my first shower in I days. It will be awesome except for the part where I’m sun burned pretty bad. Anyway. I’m soo tired. But I’m back on email and stuff which is nice.
More on burning man later. But I thought people might want to know that I got back safe.
I like portland. The last few days have gone well. I’m ready for burning man. And I’m signing a lease on a studio this afternoon. The apartment is about 8 minutes by bike from school so I’m really excited about the commute. I hope winter will not prevent me from biking. I have been walking a LOT. It’s been good.
The apartment isn’t as cheap as I like but it should be very nice I think. Its reasonably large and has good sized windows that open well. Heat, water, garbage, sewage and even electricity are included in a flat rate utility fee. So at least there shouldn’t be any unexpectedly high bills. Also the building would allow me to move to another apartment in the same building for pretty cheap if I want to later. That way I could ungrade if I want to later. We will see. Also the lease is only 6 months so I am not tied down for long.
I’ve met a lot of good people. Half of them being the burning man crowd, but half of them from other things which is good because I don’t want to only know crazy hippy types.
I have not yet had a chance to visit my school. I’ve just been insanely busy. I will go up there once I get back to portland from burning man. I have been by my school though and I’m confident I will be able to get there easily when from my apartment.
People are really nice here and I really need to unlearn some of my NYCisms. They don’t apply here. The bus system is very nice and the street cars and trains are good. It is weird though that the trains actually run down the street.
Portland really is a bit like a huge lawrence, KS. Nice people, polite drivers. I think I will be at home hear quickly.
The flight in also went well. We flew by mount hood. It was beautiful.
Also since I started writing this I have actually signed my lease. So I have a place to live and I’m set to move in. I will still need to spend one night in the hostel when I get back from the burn, but I will move in the next morning. Then I will start working on settling in.
Right now I am in a mexican resturant having a victory lunch. And tomorrow at 3AM I will leave for burning man. I’m excited.
I’ve started scheduling my first few days in portland. I’m going to view 5 or 6 apartments on the first day. Hopefully one will be nice and I can rent it then and there. I would love to have a place pinned down ASAP. Then I will go to my school and otherwise get to know portland.
However in addition to that I will be preparing for Burning Man. Then after 6 days in portland I will be heading to the burn for a little over a week. Then I will be coming back to portland and actually moving into the apartment I rented.
I’m really scarred. But I’m also excited and having solid plans makes it feel more comfortable.
