The main reason I chose Erlang over say Haskell, Clojure, or some other functional language is my interest in concurrency and scalability. From what I’ve read people have had a lot of success with Erlang in situations that require concurrency and scalability so it seemed like a good way to satisfy my concurrency itch and my curiosity for functional programming. For the curious, Wikipedia has a short list of some projects using Erlang including some big names like Facebook and Amazon.

I’ve been reading Programming Erlang by Joe Armstrong. It’s a pretty solid book so far. It’s well written and easy to follow. There’s a lot of code snippets for you to try which fits my learning style. I wish there were some exercises at the end each section or chapter to get the reader thinking and writing some code instead of passively reading. My strategy for getting around this so far is to redo my 15-212 homework in Erlang, which has worked out pretty well.

I find my 15-212 homework easier to do in Erlang. It’s dynamically typed so I can add an integer and float together (what a concept!). I know you can do that in SML if you call the real function but it’s a pain and makes the code hard to read. Also, guards are awesome. One of the things that really annoyed me about pattern matching in SML is that while it was a very elegant, you still had to resort to if/else to check for things like inequalities and greater than or less than relationships. Guards in Erlang let you do this in natural way that feels like an extension to pattern matching.

Erlang is great so far. I’m starting to get into the concurrency features of Erlang so hopefully I’ll have more interesting things to post later.

It’s kind of strange to be one eighth of the way done with college already. The last few months seemed to have passed rather quickly. The first couple months were hard. I missed home; the classes were hard; and everyone seemed to know more than me. I figured out how to manage it all and cope with the stress after talking to a few people. There were moments where I wondered what I was doing here at CMU and if I had made a mistake in flying all the way across the country for school. I managed to convince myself that I wouldn’t be happy anywhere else knowing I could have gone to CMU. That worked for a while, but the longing for home was still there. These past few weeks have been different. CMU finally feels like home. Nothing has really changed, but I guess I’ve finally settled it.

I can’t say it will be the best years of my life since I have still a long life to live ahead of me, but they were right about one thing: you will change more than you know and so will your friends. When you first enter as a freshman, the counselors make you fill out a questionnaire with some random questions about yourself. Four years later, they show it to you again just to prove their point about how much you’ve changed.

As a freshman I was timid and shy around strangers and socially inept at times. Now… I think I’m just socially inept. Two out of three isn’t too bad. I’ve become a somewhat competent technologist too, but I’ll save that for another blog someday. My philosophy on life has changed significantly for reasons I don’t remember at the moment. It goes something like this: overcome one hurdle at a time; when you knock one down, look back to see what you did wrong, but focus on getting over the next hurdle. More recently, I developed another when I had an introspective moment this year: don’t care so much about what people think.

Thinking back, I can remember the many different phases I went through, particularly this year, where I behaved and thought differently in each. Sometimes the transition between each phase was gradual and at other times it would be quite sudden.

The friends you have as a freshman may not be the same friends you have as a senior. The reality is that although you may hold onto a few close friends all the way through high school, many of them will change and you will make new ones along the way. I met most of the people I hang out with now in my junior year: Luke, Abbi, Melissa, Sadie, Brian, Julia. Interestingly enough I got to know most of you through IB Physics. Matt and Brett, my homies, my partners in crime, you guys are awesome. We’ve been making ruckus together for all four years. Rock on at OSU and try not to get into too much trouble.

I’ve learned to appreciate the immeasurable value of mentors in one’s life. At the time you don’t think much of it, but afterwards you appreciate how much time they’ve set aside to make sure you succeed. I’m not sure what motivates them, but it is a gift that exceeds all others. I have been fortunate enough to have two mentors during my time at Gresham. The first is Stephen Scannell who without him, there would be neither InvenTeams nor FIRST Robotics for me. The second is John Walker, who has imparted many words of wisdom and helped me realize, perhaps, the human side of technology. If I ever write a book about my life, both of you will most certainly get a shout-out. It’s been an honor.

I mercilessly teased some of the lower classmen about how many days of high school they have left (actually, I only talk to one so you know who you are), but part of me is envious of him. A small part of me doesn’t want to let go. There are a lot of people I don’t talk to much outside of school. Previous summers have always been fairly easy to cope with. I think part of the reason for that is that I knew that I would get to see everyone again in the fall. But this summer is different because we’re all headed off in different directions, or at least many of us will be. We were all traveling the same road for a while, but it is nearing the time where we all must choose our own path and follow our own destiny. Perhaps they will converge again at some point, or at least cross.

I decided where to go in English class of all places. My teacher passed out note cards so that people could write what college they were going to and stick it on the door of the classroom for everyone to see. By that time I had already researched everything from recreational activities to how the computer science program is structured. I doubted there was much else I could find out about the schools without actually visiting, which I couldn’t do due to cost of travel and lack of time. So I’m sitting at my desk with a blank note card in front of me and I think to myself “Ah, what the hell. Now is a good time as any other.”

I wrote Carnegie Mellon on my note card and proudly stuck it on the door.

To be honest, I didn’t think we would be able to make a robot in six weeks. We knew nothing about robotics, didn’t have the proper tools, and the team as a whole seemed like a ragtag group of freshmen and sophomores who were just looking for some free food. Many people left after the first few meetings and didn’t come back. All I have to say to those people is that I understand why they left. We weren’t doing much in the beginning, but I feel the need to say that they missed out on what I truly believe is one of the most unique experiences you can have in high school. Every school has football, basketball, swimming, mock trial, band, etc. but not every school has a FIRST Robotics team. Not everyone has the opportunity to build a robot in six weeks and pit it against other robots in a competition.

Team 2542 Go4bots

To the people who stuck with the team through all six weeks, I couldn’t be more proud of you guys. I didn’t think we could do it, but we pulled through. We had a working robot by the end of the competition. That’s not to say there weren’t problems though. There were a lot of things the team could have done better, myself included, but for a rookie team, I think we did a phenomenal job.

Our robot wasn’t quite finished when we shipped it off to the Memorial Coliseum. Fortunately they give you an entire day before the competition to get your robot into working condition and do a few practice matches. We didn’t get our robot ready in time to compete properly because we were all racing to get our robot to pass safety inspection. We didn’t actually pass until the morning of the competition and we did not get to test for problems. All day Friday, our robot suffered problems ranging from power issues to drive train failure. What impressed me while I was working on the robot was that no one gave up despite the robot having failed five times in a row while in competition—sometimes the robot didn’t move at all. The team’s resilience and determination and clever improvising impressed me more than anything else. Also impressive was everyone’s willingness to help. Despite being in competition, all the teams were more than willing to help other teams get their robots into working condition. Special thanks to the Team 1359 Scalawags for giving us a tremendous amount of help.

I was the driver for our team, so I didn’t get to watch much of the semifinals and I was too focused on driving the robot to notice the crowd. During the finals though, I can say with confidence that the crowd had enough energy to rival anything I have seen at a high school basketball or football game if not surpass it. Some team actually started a mosh pit that I might have joined during a six minute timeout…

It actually kind of saddens me that I won’t get to be part of next year’s Robotics team since they have a lot more experience and knowledge now. I suppose there will be other interesting things to do in college, but I still wish I had another year to do FIRST just to show what Gresham is capable of. Maybe I’ll comeback to mentor next year’s team. If not, I have faith that it will do well in FIRST, InvenTeams, or whatever program they decide to do next year. Rock on.

1. Power naps
   Starting around the second half of junior year, I started coming home exhausted almost every day. I’ve found the trick is not to force myself to stay up so I don’t waste time, but to go ahead and take a nap. Chances are you probably won’t get much done half asleep anyways, so it’s better just to catch a few Z’s. However, in the interest of saving time, because there simply aren’t enough hours in the day, power naps are the way to go. The idea of a power nap is quality over quantity. Short twenty minute power naps can rejuvenate you and in the end, increase your productivity.
2. Coffee
   Coffee is the life-force of all IB students. Live by it. Caffeine is the real driving force behind it, but it might as well be synonymous with coffee. Soda has caffeine in it too, but avoid it all costs! Soda has an insane amount of sugar in it and although that may sound like it would keep you going for a good while, it won’t. Sugar will make you crash like the Hindenburg and it will rot your teeth which is never good. Stick to coffee, but don’t over do it. One cup in the morning should get you into the afternoon.
3. Listen to music
   It’s not secret that IB can get really stressful really quickly. However, there are a few ways to un-bake your brain. My personal favorite is “Get lost in great music.” Find some music that you really like and immerse yourself in it. I mean, really get lost in it. Get your air guitar groove on and jam away. For me, a few minutes rocking out to Ok Go or The Fratellis does wonders to relieve stress.
4. Play video games
   Video games are fun and with the advent of the Wii, there’s pretty much something for everyone. Not only are they fun to play, but they also reduce stress. It’s okay to spend a few minutes saving the planet from an alien race, finishing off your enemies with a curb stomp, or jamming your way to rock stardom on a plastic guitar. But keep in mind the name of the game is to reduce stress, not compound it, so don’t attempt that one level you’ve been trying to beat for ages or hard mode on Guitar Hero.

Perhaps the most important thing you need to know is that you are not alone. That does not mean little green men are going to abduct you, but that there are plenty of other people in the same situation. Call, IM, text, or whatever your friends when you’re stuck on a calculus problem or you need someone to proofread your TOK paper. Then go to sleep and be prepared to wakeup in a few hours to do it all over again.

Natural Chorus

With my pen in hand,
I sit down to write my prose.
I scribble the first line,
But crumple the paper and throw it aside.

I am sitting at my desk,
The only light emanating from a lone lamp.
Crumpled paper balls litter the floor
From all the times I missed the wastebasket.

I’m tired, I want to sleep.
But I have to write this poem.
Nothing comes to mind though.
Poetry is hard.

Maybe if I shut everything out.
Turn off the music,
Switch off the light,
Remove all distraction.

I sit in darkness.
The beating of the heart,
The rain tapping on the window,
The ticking of the clock.

The sounds around me and inside,
Create a natural chorus,
From which the words of my poem
Begin to form.

In Theory of Knowledge, or TOK as we IB savvy people like to call it, we learn about knowledge, to put it simply. We ask questions like…

• What is knowledge?
• What constitutes as knowledge and what doesn’t?
• Where does knowledge come from?
• Are there different types of knowledge?

And we have lengthy class discussions in which we try to answer these questions, and more often than not the topic of religion creeps in somehow. Plato and his allegory of the cave will most definitely come up at some point.

It sounds like a really boring class but it really isn’t. I would go so far as to say it is my favorite. The topics we talk about in class are usually interesting and I often leave the classroom with something to wonder about. I also find myself making vague references to the things we learn all the time. For instance, I’ve made a few syllogisms since we learned about them. Even more weird is that I have managed to apply quantum physics to an activity once. Yay for Schrödinger’s cat.

So what is knowledge? Knowledge is true justified belief. What that means is a long story. We’re only spending the entire school year on the subject.