MSRI week 2.2

K, so I'm a day late of a weekly review. Whatever. The second week was a lot like the first- a lot of stressing out over projects.

Midweek we had to read articles regarding a new method of clustering. Granted, most of us had to learn what clustering was simultaneously. Not being a CS person has been really disadvantageous this week. That, and not having a laptop. Well, I'm sorry I'm one of only 2 people without a laptop. What can I do? But anyway we've been working our butts off trying to arrange a presentation on whether this new algorithm, Affinity Propagation, would be suitable for some of the projects we had been discussing. Long story short, not really, but we had to make it seem like it was the end all be all. I think we achieved more animosity during that project than the rest of the projects put together.

But fortunately, that's done with. We got assigned our full-time projects which we'll be spending the next 3 and a half weeks slaving over. My group project is actually two, which may or may not be a bad thing. The Supernova Recognition team got doubled up with the Track Reconstruction team (TR as when two protons collide with great energy, you quantum physics people know what I'm talking about.) Anyway so we want to see if we can distinguish the curves just based on data points to see if we can locate the ever elusive Higgs photon-thingy. I'm not totally sure how smooth this thing will go. With 3 of us in the group, it's probably gonna be 1 take the SR, one take the TR, and the other interpreting between the 2. Both projects have to do with machine learning algorithms, so that's why they got "clustered" together. I know. I'm a riot...

On Friday night a bunch of us went to go see a movie. Edgar, our TA whom we trust with our lives by now, told us that the best place to go see Rataoullie was at this one theater in a nearby suburb. So we got on the bus, got stuck on the freeway, and- what do you know?- the movie's sold out. We scrambled to come up with a substitute. I wanted to go see 1408, but we would up seeing Knocked Up. My roommate went on his own and watched Fantastic 4. Maybe I should've done the same. So we get out at 10. And then we have to walk a mile. In the dark. Of an unknown city. Along the highway. Uphill. to find the bus station to go back. Apparently we couldn't go at the place we dropped off because that would've taken us over the bay and into San Fran. Ugh. I think I'll stick with the crappier theaters closer to here. Don't get me wrong, the place was nice, but you pay 9 bucks to go see the movie, not where the movie is being played.

The weekend trip was pretty cool and tiring. We went to San Fran, like I had done with my mom before this whole MSRI-UP started. We saw the wharf, shipped under the Golden Gate, ate Clam chowder. Good stuff. Even though I had just seen it shortly before, I knew I had to take it all in. After all, I may never be back in San Fran again.

Things took a turn for the exhausting when the crew decided to walk back up to the BART transit. I got blisters. Bad. Good thing this Italian restaurant was nice enough to let us come in, have some free water, and vamoose. It didn't help that we were across the street from a bunch of strip clubs, either. But eventually I got home. My legs felt like jelly the whole next day. And I still had to go to church.

Today's been a mixed blessing. Our project(s) is intense but theoretically doable, which is good, but we have to put in a lot of back research. Guess they don't call them REU's for nothing. Learned more about some people than I had bargained for. I don't want to know the story of how you lost your virginity, thank you. Oh, and not that I want to make a deal of it because there is nothing to make of it, but I met this girl named Candice on the bus one day. That's it. And then today I had been waiting for 20 minutes to get a computer when she walks in. Just then a computer opened. So I let her go first. I don't think much of it.

The best/worst thing here is the bugs. Outdoors, they got some of the most beautiful dragonflies I've ever seen. Indoors, we have mosquitoes and spiders wanting to crawl underneath our covers because of all the foliage nearby. And maybe it's just that Berkeley is a rather liberal town (I like how the priest yesterday referred to how Berkeley became "that way") but there is an issue of homelessness around here. It's weird and bothersome. Maybe it's just the high cost of living, I don't know. But I saw a bum with an MP3 player asking for change. Um. Yeah. So I'll leave this wrap up at that. Um. Yeah.