3/7/18: Back to the Hustle

1. 3/7/18
1. Wake up, head to CSE to work on grad hw with Laura. We struggle with notation way longer than necessary :( I don’t wake up fast enough.
2. Head to biophysics, more elasticity theory, this time more on membranes. Interesting!
3. Grab kalua pig and speed-read the paper I’m presenting to the discourse group, on a efficient, greedy discourse tree parser. I’m shocked how quickly I grasp the whole structure of the paper, given that the method is fairly sophisticated and makes liberal use of Conditional Random Fields, a probabilistic model I just learned about.
4. Head to CSE and present the paper with gusto. As usual, I defend the paper’s strategy and approximation against the attacks of the more jaded grad students. It’s pretty entertaining and I’m on point responding to factual queries. Everyone is pretty tired, however.
5. We part, not without some tearful goodbyes. Then I run into Johan and Aishu in the atrium; Aishu, who I haven’t seen in forever, is organizing some crazy cross business / CSE event focusing on agricultural technology, and we talk about that for a bit.
6. Run to Haggett, grab a chocolate milk, and do my tutorials.
7. Return to 2104, start working, then realize it’s Swing Kids pilates night. Run over to Hillel UW, which is pretty awesome. The teacher works with Ben and specializes in pilates for dancers. Pilates, from my basic perspective, is isolation exercises focused on core strength and body awareness. Learned a lot about my back musculature. The thesis is that when walking, sitting, etc, and especially dancing, one needs to be aware that most of one’s structure resides in the back, where the bones and the supporting muscles sit. Seemed reasonable!
8. Hit Som Tam, looked at Pedro’s research. Want to talk to him tomorrow about research opportunities.
9. Return to 2104, keep working. Read biophysics lecture notes, talk a bit with Damir.
10. Chat with Gaya for a bit and hit the hay!