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Squishy fuzzy yummy thoughts
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Saturday, May 03, 2003
I've been reading a lot, from "Dune" to "American Gods" to "Fire, Women, and Dangerous Things" to "The Metaphors we Live By," to some draft book of some Berkeley CS prof. I've been working on an art project: http://ofb.net/~wtanaka/projects/dcent/
but progress has kind of stalled as of yesterday.
Going clubbing tonight.
What I need to do is take my GREs and send in some applications. Law school and Business school have both faded from my mind. I think the reason is that going to either of those would be driven by "earning more money," and I really want to have a more interesting goal for my life than that. Also, not working, I'm no longer exposed to the peer pressure that drives me to that goal..
So I started thinking about what I really want to contribute to the world. Perhaps too idealistic a line of thinking to be useful in the long run, but my mind wandered back to many years ago when I was interested in AI, and I wondered if it wouldn't be a reasonable goal to work on breaking down (all??) language barriers in my lifetime.
So I may end up applying to CS grad schools (CS grad students have the funding and the cushy offices, unlike other kinds of grad students (cog sci, psych, linguistics), I assume) and, since the next enrollment isn't until fall of 2004, I might move to China in the meantime and learn Chinese. Which is something I wanted to do ever since I was there, but am still afraid of doing.
Which is perhaps all the more reason to actually *do* it.
posted by wtanaka at 5/03/2003 08:05:00 PM
Friday, May 02, 2003
Went to one of these NTL group meetings. The professors were not there. Going to meet with Jerry Feldman next week. Think I'll work on this image montage zoomer.
posted by wtanaka at 5/02/2003 03:02:00 PM
Thursday, May 01, 2003
so I'm reading through this chapter of a draft book:
http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~jfeldman/Book/09.words.htm
which is actually pretty interesting
and i come across:
"Notice that "uhoh" only makes sense for someone who plans and expectations."
I think the sentence still works without the "plans" part, but the sentiment still struck me as deeply true.
posted by wtanaka at 5/01/2003 07:44:00 PM
Went to the dentist this morning to get my teeth cleaned. Not too bad. Afterward, I went to IKEA again to pick up the wastepaper bin that I saw a while back. I ended up buying a small yarn rug too.
For the people that get there a little bit before they open, IKEA has some complimentary cinnamon pastries and coffee, which I thought was kind of nice of them. Not quite as nice as had they already been open when I got there, but still nice.
posted by wtanaka at 5/01/2003 01:07:00 PM
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
image montage zoomer project is looking "good" in that it works now. There's a lot of cleanup and making the program more robust that needs to happen.
I'm going to start on this reading now.
posted by wtanaka at 4/30/2003 02:56:00 PM
Does my impression of someone change how attractive I think they look physically? Yes, very much so.
posted by wtanaka at 4/30/2003 01:45:00 AM
I think tomorrow I'm going to do some NLP reading.
posted by wtanaka at 4/30/2003 01:23:00 AM
tried going to IKEA today to buy that trash can, but they were closed early for inventory.
posted by wtanaka at 4/30/2003 12:32:00 AM
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
Been working on this image montage zoomer project. Looks like we're making good progress.
Met with Nancy today to talk about Berkeley and the NTL group. We ended up talking at Long Life Vegi House for more than three hours. We were walking back to the Berkeley BART station (which is on the way to where she works) and kind of got sucked into this Gelato store, which was good. We didn't leave there until about two hours later, although both she and I could have sworn that we didn't spend that long in there. I think that one of the hours just disappeared.
Then I hung out at the NTL lab for a bit, and talked to a few people there. They seem cool enough. Jerry wasn't there, unfortunately.
I'll just need to send him an email when I get the chance.
posted by wtanaka at 4/29/2003 11:26:00 PM
Sunday, April 27, 2003
So two days ago while I was taking a shower, I was thinking through a list of things that I find attractive. I wrote it down in my phone and now that I'm back near my computer, I'm writing it down here.
I'm attracted to women that are cute enough that I have the urge to look at them so much that I feel like I'm staring.
I'm attracted to women that are confident enough that their opinions are not swayed too quickly.
I'm attracted to women whose opinions and values are clear enough to understand easily. Through understanding the clear and simple opinions of others, I can grow and reflect on my own opinions and values.
I'm attracted to women that are financially independent enough.
I'm attracted to women that are caring enough. Caring in the sense of "caring for a loved one" as opposed to "caring about the result of the election."
I'm attracted to women who are aware enough and willing enough to share their feelings fairly explicitly and fairly precisely.
posted by wtanaka at 4/27/2003 08:57:00 PM
I was chatting with Gladys this evening. I get the feeling that she is hinting things at me. When people hint at me, I tend to get frustrated because they set up expectations that I will understand, when whether or not I understand depends on so many factors:
How well I am listening (which depends on many things)
How well are they communicating
What kind of shared experiences do we have that give us some understanding of each other
I realize now that one way that someone can get me to think about myself is to get me frustrated or otherwise agitated, because then I have a desire to stop and think about what it was that made me frustrated or agitated so that I can avoid having those feelings come on in the future.
I suppose this was a good test of whether or not I was able to pull myself into the present moment when faced with some feelings and become aware of those feelings, and I didn't do as well as I wanted to.
She suggested talking on the phone to clear things up. I'm not sure what it is that she wants to clear up.
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