ThePlaz's Personal Updates

8/25/2013 Yahoo APM!

Sat, 25 Aug 2013 13:00:00 -0500

>h2< >span class="mw-headline" id="Yahoo_APM"/span<>/h2< >div class="thumb tright"<>div class="thumbinner" style="width:302px;"<>a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/File:Marissa_and_Michael.jpg" class="image"<>img alt="" src="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/images/thumb/Marissa_and_Michael.jpg/300px-Marissa_and_Michael.jpg" width="300" height="225" class="thumbimage" srcset="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/images/thumb/Marissa_and_Michael.jpg/450px-Marissa_and_Michael.jpg 1.5x, /w/images/thumb/Marissa_and_Michael.jpg/600px-Marissa_and_Michael.jpg 2x" /<>/a< >div class="thumbcaption"<>div class="magnify"<>a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/File:Marissa_and_Michael.jpg" class="internal" title="Enlarge"<>img src="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/skins/common/images/magnify-clip.png" width="15" height="11" alt="" /<>/a<>/div/div<>/div<>/div< >div class="thumb tright"<>div class="thumbinner" style="width:302px;"<>a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/File:Yahoo_APMs_13.jpg" class="image"<>img alt="" src="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/images/thumb/Yahoo_APMs_13.jpg/300px-Yahoo_APMs_13.jpg" width="300" height="222" class="thumbimage" srcset="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/images/thumb/Yahoo_APMs_13.jpg/450px-Yahoo_APMs_13.jpg 1.5x, /w/images/thumb/Yahoo_APMs_13.jpg/600px-Yahoo_APMs_13.jpg 2x" /<>/a< >div class="thumbcaption"<>div class="magnify"<>a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/File:Yahoo_APMs_13.jpg" class="internal" title="Enlarge"<>img src="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/skins/common/images/magnify-clip.png" width="15" height="11" alt="" /<>/a<>/div/div<>/div<>/div< >pa href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/Yahoo" title="Yahoo"/a< as an Associate Product Manager or >a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/APM" title="APM" class="mw-redirect"/a<. After I finished classes at MIT, but before I was set to start at Oracle, Yahoo offered me to join Marissa Mayer's new APM program at Yahoo. Marissa started the program back when she had just joined Google - as a way to find and develop new Product Managers out of school, which she thought would be faster than hiring experienced PMs from the industry. This article describes the role >a class="external free" href="http://www.wired.com/business/2012/07/marissas-secret-weapon-for-recruiting-new-yahoo-talent/"/a< though that article overblows things slightly. >/p<>p/p<>p/p<>p/p< >h2< >span class="mw-headline" id="Mountain_View"/span<>/h2< >div class="thumb tright"<>div class="thumbinner" style="width:302px;"<>a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/File:Mountain_View_Home.jpg" class="image"<>img alt="" src="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/images/thumb/Mountain_View_Home.jpg/300px-Mountain_View_Home.jpg" width="300" height="225" class="thumbimage" srcset="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/images/thumb/Mountain_View_Home.jpg/450px-Mountain_View_Home.jpg 1.5x, /w/images/thumb/Mountain_View_Home.jpg/600px-Mountain_View_Home.jpg 2x" /<>/a< >div class="thumbcaption"<>div class="magnify"<>a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/File:Mountain_View_Home.jpg" class="internal" title="Enlarge"<>img src="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/skins/common/images/magnify-clip.png" width="15" height="11" alt="" /<>/a<>/div/div<>/div<>/div< >div class="thumb tright"<>div class="thumbinner" style="width:302px;"<>a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/File:Chevy_Volt.jpg" class="image"<>img alt="" src="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/images/thumb/Chevy_Volt.jpg/300px-Chevy_Volt.jpg" width="300" height="225" class="thumbimage" srcset="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/images/thumb/Chevy_Volt.jpg/450px-Chevy_Volt.jpg 1.5x, /w/images/thumb/Chevy_Volt.jpg/600px-Chevy_Volt.jpg 2x" /<>/a< >div class="thumbcaption"<>div class="magnify"<>a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/File:Chevy_Volt.jpg" class="internal" title="Enlarge"<>img src="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/skins/common/images/magnify-clip.png" width="15" height="11" alt="" /<>/a<>/div/div<>/div<>/div< >pa href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/Mountain_View" title="Mountain View"/a<. >a class="external text" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/theplaz/sets/72157634601732288/"/a< I'm sharing a house with 2 other guys, who were friends of friends. I've purchased a >a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/Chevy_Volt" title="Chevy Volt"/a<. >a class="external text" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/theplaz/sets/72157634595577805/"/a< It goes 40 miles in a charge, but after that it can use gas. In almost 2 months, I haven't gone to the gas station once! >/p<>p/p< >h2< >span class="mw-headline" id="Leaving_MIT"/span<>/h2< >p/p< >div class="thumb tright"<>div class="thumbinner" style="width:202px;"<>a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/File:Pens_MIT_Spring_2013.jpg" class="image"<>img alt="" src="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/images/thumb/Pens_MIT_Spring_2013.jpg/200px-Pens_MIT_Spring_2013.jpg" width="200" height="150" class="thumbimage" srcset="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/images/thumb/Pens_MIT_Spring_2013.jpg/300px-Pens_MIT_Spring_2013.jpg 1.5x, /w/images/thumb/Pens_MIT_Spring_2013.jpg/400px-Pens_MIT_Spring_2013.jpg 2x" /<>/a< >div class="thumbcaption"<>div class="magnify"<>a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/File:Pens_MIT_Spring_2013.jpg" class="internal" title="Enlarge"<>img src="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/skins/common/images/magnify-clip.png" width="15" height="11" alt="" /<>/a<>/div/div<>/div<>/div< >div class="thumb tright"<>div class="thumbinner" style="width:202px;"<>a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/File:Paper_MIT_Spring_2013.jpg" class="image"<>img alt="" src="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/images/thumb/Paper_MIT_Spring_2013.jpg/200px-Paper_MIT_Spring_2013.jpg" width="200" height="267" class="thumbimage" srcset="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/images/thumb/Paper_MIT_Spring_2013.jpg/300px-Paper_MIT_Spring_2013.jpg 1.5x, /w/images/thumb/Paper_MIT_Spring_2013.jpg/400px-Paper_MIT_Spring_2013.jpg 2x" /<>/a< >div class="thumbcaption"<>div class="magnify"<>a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/File:Paper_MIT_Spring_2013.jpg" class="internal" title="Enlarge"<>img src="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/skins/common/images/magnify-clip.png" width="15" height="11" alt="" /<>/a<>/div/div<>/div<>/div< >p/p<>p<>a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/File:Pens_and_Paper_Usage.png" class="image"<>img alt="Pens and Paper Usage.png" src="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/images/Pens_and_Paper_Usage.png" width="481" height="289" /<>/a< >/p<>pa href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/A_Framework_for_Community_Engagement" title="A Framework for Community Engagement" class="mw-redirect"/a< is a refinement of the community engagement process which administrators currently follow. >a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/Problem_Solving_Teams" title="Problem Solving Teams" class="mw-redirect"/a< proposes having students work as "management consultants" on the Institute’s biggest problems. This joins >a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/index.php?title=Unrelenting_Advocacy&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Unrelenting Advocacy (page does not exist)"/a<, about how stundets should act like lobbyists and consultants. This rounds up my [MIT Policy White Papers] series. >/p< >div class="thumb tright"<>div class="thumbinner" style="width:302px;"<>a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/File:MIT_Graduation.jpg" class="image"<>img alt="" src="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/images/thumb/MIT_Graduation.jpg/300px-MIT_Graduation.jpg" width="300" height="200" class="thumbimage" srcset="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/images/thumb/MIT_Graduation.jpg/450px-MIT_Graduation.jpg 1.5x, /w/images/thumb/MIT_Graduation.jpg/600px-MIT_Graduation.jpg 2x" /<>/a< >div class="thumbcaption"<>div class="magnify"<>a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/File:MIT_Graduation.jpg" class="internal" title="Enlarge"<>img src="http://wiki.theplaz.com/w/skins/common/images/magnify-clip.png" width="15" height="11" alt="" /<>/a<>/div/div<>/div<>/div< >pa class="external text" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/theplaz/sets/72157634578617238/"/a< However, I'm happy to say that I've now graduated. It was sad to leave all of the stuff I really liked about MIT behind. >/p<>p/p< >h2< >span class="mw-headline" id="Personal_Style"/span<>/h2< >pa href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/Personal_Style" title="Personal Style"/a<. I spent several months iterating on this - and it ended up being quite lengthy! I wanted to record this, because I know with will update over time, and I wanted to make a record of it. I think it's also helpful for people to know how I approach problem solving. -->a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/User:ThePlaz" title="User:ThePlaz"/a< (>a href="http://wiki.theplaz.com/User_talk:ThePlaz" title="User talk:ThePlaz"/a<) 02:55, 25 August 2013 (EDT)

5/28/2013 MIT Retrospective

Tue, 28 Mar 2013 13:00:00 -0500

This is a special edition of the personal update containing a retrospective on my MIT experience. I am still adding the other content (work, photos, etc) which I usually talk about in the update, so I am hoping to post a normal update in the next month or so.

MIT was an awesome experience. I was extremely fortunate to be able to attend.

Prequel

I didn't know that I wanted to go to MIT until I applied on a lark my senior year. Like everyone else who was actually admitted, I didn't think I had a good shot of getting in. (Almost everyone at MIT, including our Chancellor, has felt the "imposter" syndrome, in which one feels that one was admitted by mistake.) I come from a middle class family (65th percentile) in the US. My parents don't work in industries with MIT graduates. This makes things more challenging, because, in general, students from prodigious backgrounds come to MIT better prepared and leave better off. (Prodigious does not necessarily mean family name, or a specific income-level, but working in an area which MIT grads tend to go into.)
When I was admitted, I was surprised, and I was unsure if I actually wanted to attend. "Too geeky" I wrote on my initial visit sheet. I spoke with my admissions officer for an hour where he said that he thinks I would "invent something great." Senior year of high school I had said that I wanted to study how computers and people interact. I was initially targeting an information science program. Even later on at MIT, I signed up for management first; I initially didn't sign up for computer science, till I took 6.01 and enjoyed it. I initially thought computer science would be too difficult to mater.

Good Match

I think I was a perfect match for MIT. At MIT, the focus is one science and technology, which is what I am interested in. However, that also includes how technology effects people; for example, the program in Science, Technology, and Society. MIT is not mired in tradition, and is always looking for ways to improve itself. For example, future.mit.edu is an idea board where members of the MIT community can submit ideas for the future of education at MIT. MIT is also a place of limitless potential. There are no internal limits - there are no limits to transfer into a major; classes are pretty much open to all students, especially if you can convince the professor you should be in; most classes don't have caps, if they are well-subscribed, the department tries to add grad students; there is only one organization, which is open to all - unlike Harvard where undergrads dare not step foot in the business school library. Once your in, you're in. There is also an openness here. A bit over 10 years ago, MIT looked around the online education space and decided to put everything online for free as "Open Course Ware". While I was here, MIT decided to go a step further and launch EdX, a non-profit dedicated to online education. I'm not sure to what extent this is at other top schools, but MIT students are also fairly involved in how the Institute is run.

Perfect Playground

MIT is one of those very special places where students are free to explore and learn as much as possible. It's full sensory stimulation. Even for people who get bored easily, you won't get bored here! There are so many different things to master, combined with an almost infinite depth that if you're bored at MIT, you're not doing something right.

Peers

One of the best parts of MIT are the other students. With very few exceptions, people here are at the top of their game. People go to top industries: consulting, banking, entrepreneurship, so you can learn about these "1%" jobs that one would have never heard about back home. You can learn from your peers and model their behavior to fit into these jobs.

Awesome Deal

I also received a very good deal financially in order to attend. My parents and I paid about $10,000 per year to attend, about 1/5 the billed cost and perhaps 1/8 of MIT's estimated total spending per student. It would have cost me more to have gone to a lower ranked schools, where I would have had far fewer opportunities. I do have some debt, but I could pay it off today, with my cash on hand, if I wanted.

Economic Mobility

MIT is also one of those auto ladders to the upper class. It won't necessarily get you in the top 1% (~$350,000/year household income) or at least not immediately, but it will at least get into the top 10% (once you control for household size) almost right from the start. MIT and the other ivy league schools with generous financial aid policies are probably one of the 10 most important factors for social mobility in the world. I'm making more than both of my parents made last year, combined, my first year out of school.

What I learned

Focus and Intensity

MIT is like bootcamp for your brain. Everyday is not fun. I've had days where I was so tired I couldn't wait to get to sleep, but I still had work to do. There were days where I didn't think I could manage everything I had to do, or days when I thought I was going to fail a test. However, in the end, just like real bootcamp, in that it is an intense experience that is worth it in the end.
The unofficial motto of MIT is IHTFP. This can either mean "I have truly found paradise" or "I hate this fucking place" depending on your mood that day. Another benefit is that everyone is in the same boat. One of the ways you can help deal with the stress is to commiserate with other students. Since we don't have honors on degrees, the competition is not strictly against each other, but against the work and the challenge. There is also competition with students at other schools for the best jobs. I think MIT would be fairly easy if you just tried to get through doing only the minimum amount of work possible. There are a number of difficult GIRs, but they are hard to fail completely. Instead the difficulty is that most people here feel a need to do high quality work.
One of the best parts is that everyone is all in when at MIT. When you here you are singularly focused on education. There aren't many distractions. People, even those that live nearby, don't go home on the weekends. This is a significant difference from what I've heard from my friends happens at other schools, where people have other commitments and go home. This helps contribute to productivity. I've found I am more productive when I am busier - as it forces me to focus. Even though I get started early and force myself to work on stuff, I get stuff done faster under pressure. In addition, when I go home for breaks I find that I am also much less productive at home. I can't watch commercial television anymore, there is just too much redundancy and simplification.
When you look back, you remember the good parts, and forget the bad parts. Plus, I've been told by MIT grads that after MIT, everything else after this is easy.

Analytical Ability

I think I am able to look at situations much more clearly now. In part this is due to greater specific, content knowledge, but I think it's mostly because I think my analytic abilities have improved. When I see something, I being to decompose the problem into multiple, independent sub-problems. This process, which is the hallmark of management consultants, makes it easier to think about big problems.
Things in the world no longer seem random. Instead things seem to fit into some sort of pattern or framework. MIT also give you plenty of examples - over and over again in different situations. For example, in high school, I didn't understand how the school board or township board of commissioners operated to approve a project. I now understand this much better, not only so I can interact with, but so I can analyze and compare the process.

Management Ability

I see a huge difference in how I interacted at my Disney internship after junior year and how I interacted at my Deutsche Bahn internship. At DB, I broke every rule in the MBA playbook, since I was not aware of them at the time. On the other hand, at Disney, I was much more aware of the rules and I worked much more in concert with the organization.
Although it seemed like I had a greater impact at the Deutsche Bahn project (designing the UI of the Touch&Travel app), I think this is because I got very lucky with the Deutsche Bahn project - I was in the right place at the right time, and I augmented a skill-set that they lacked. Disney was much more on top of it, but I also tried to not reach too far beyond my own role, which is probably the best long-term strategy for a manager in a big firm.

What I did

Academic

It also took me a while to adjust to MIT. I came in fairly not well prepared. However, I did better than I did the previous term 6 of the 7 terms. I ended up with a 4.4 GPA, which is respectable, but not on the high end.
I sampled a lot of fields at MIT. I was a double major of Management and Computer Science. I also took about a class or two which were not strictly required for either of my majors many terms. I took 7 classes a term three of my terms here. This amounts to almost double the average of 48 units a term.
I did fairly poorly my first few years. I came into MIT not really being prepared. I even took the "easy"-version of Calculus in high school. Other MIT students did math competitions in high school, which I wasn't even aware of, and if I was, I would have never considered joining, as I didn't have the drive to improve my skills back then, as I do now.
In addition, as with many MIT students, I never really had to study in high school. My first semester was a shock to me, as I wrote about in Learning to Learn. Since then, I used those techniques all of the time, and greatly improved my ability to learn stuff. I wish I have known that in high school, so I would be better prepared for MIT-level work. I think I would do far better if I was able to retake those classes.

Management Experience

On the management side, I think I cracked the code about how to get stuff done at MIT. In my 4 years, I've made connections with people at every level from the line staff to President Reif. I remember reading every page on the MIT First Year website super carefully in the summer before MIT. Once I got here, I learned more about the inside working of those policies and the politics behind them; I even helped shape some of the policies.
I think every MIT focuses on something. I just happened to focus a lot on Institute management and politics. I learned a great deal from this arrangement. From my position on various Institute committees on both the student life and academic sides, I got to know the Institute's leadership. I got to work with a real-life $2 billion dollar organization and understand how its leaders operate and how it makes decisions at every level. I developed my ability to inflence and persuade, writing up what I learned in a white paper for future student advocates.
With Baker Exec, I got the opportunity to run an organization with about 20 volunteers and a $50,000 budget. It had its ups and downs, but I got to learn a lot from how much autonomy to give subordinates to how to motivation volunteers to setting high-level strategy.
It also got me thinking about policy design with the Baker Rooming Policy, Baker Security Plan, and the Framework for Student Engagement. Policy design is a lot like programming, you have to anticipate every edge case.
I started to do this at Disney, and now I need to do it at Oracle. I must learn the new players in the game and adapt to that situation.

MOOCs: MITx and edX

I was also very fortunate to being in the right place at the right time with the roll out of EdX. Since early high school, I've wanted to improve the world's access to educational materials. I started scanning and putting all of my notes available online in 8th grade. When I started this, I remember being influenced by MIT's OCW program. Because of this, I ran for the undergraduate spot on MITCET, the MIT Committee on Educational Technology. While I was on the committee, it came to light that then-Provost Rafael Reif wanted to counter Stanford's AI class with an Institute-wide initiative of our own. I was involved in the initial discussions with MITCET and then-Provost Reif on how the new group should be organized with respect to MIT. In that memo, I proposed a platform which I called "EDUx" as a software platform which would help both MOOCs and traditional classes. This was about 6 months before MIT and Harvard announced "edX".

Looking Back

I would certainly come to MIT again. The quality of the exits and the experience that one can have here is almost unparalleled (save perhaps Harvard and Stanford, but they have slightly different twists but are otherwise on-par).
I sought a non-traditional exit from MIT by going to the management track of a large company. I think many MIT students try to either start their own firm or go into engineering at large tech firms like Facebook or Dropbox. That never particularly appealed to me, so I didn't prepare enough for those roles.
I'm sad to leave. There are a number of things that I know I will never be able to replicate. Living in Baker was amazing. Not only is it a architectural landmark with million-dollar views and handmade, hardwood furniture but it had my friends living right next door. I had plenty of amazing conversations at 2am when friends just stopped by my open door. In work, especially at the entry level, you focus on one or two things at once. Only once you rise through the ranks, must you balance multiple challenges again, but you still generally have a small set of goals.

What would I do differently?

As I said before, I wish I would have prepared more in high school. I should have been less reliant on sites like HotMath and studied more intensely to master the material. I just didn't have the interest, focus, or role models at the time.
At the end of freshman year, I said that I wanted to focus on classes while at MIT, because I felt like that was an experience that I wanted to maximize while I had access to those resources (ie. was paying tuition). I've since learned that there are many other resources which are only available to one while they are at MIT, such as close contact to the many very smart people here. Perhaps I could have focused more on those; but on the other hand, I don't know which classes I would have skipped instead - besides the ones I had to take, but I didn't enjoy.
If I was targeting an engineering role, I should have focused more on quality and engineering classes. I could have just focused on engineering, worked as an engineer for two years, and then have gone to business school. However, as I confirmed when I was at CardSpring last IAP, I don't think I would have found concentrating as an engineer to be very fun.
I wish I would have spent more time with my peers. I think I made a good number of close friends, but I always think I should have done more. I never really spent much time on the Sloan side because I never really paid attention to Sloan events or classmates.
I wish I had taken on more leadership roles. At first, I thought that I liked to be in the background, but being President of Baker helped me see that I like being in the spotlight as well. I was also cautious with my time. I could have been more directly involved in the UA. Looking back, I actually held less formal positions than my title suggested.
I wish I did more to learn more advanced Computer Science topics. I can learn more in the future, but I might not be around the smart peers. Compilers are still magic to me. I still don't know the internals of JavaScript and advanced topics like closures. Design patterns are still a bit cloudy. I've come a long way since high school, but I still have a lot to learn.
I think part of the problem was is that I didn't know where I wanted to end up. I still really don’t. I wrote a vision document my last week of summer before senior year. It was two pages or so, but it wasn't helpful. There were many possible paths to implementation which I was unsure between. Still I am fairly happy with where I ended up.
I threw away some opportunities as well. For example, I was well positioned to work in the MOOC space. However, I was just not interested in it. Instead, I took a position for which I didn't have an inside connection on. Do I just get too bored too quick?
I think MIT misses some things from not being a larger school like Harvard or Stanford. For example, there is no law school nearby, so people don't really think about those things. MIT is also more centralized, than entrepreneurial. I think I would have been slightly more entrepreneurial than management oriented at Stanford.
For that matter, I did very little to reach out to the outside community. For example, despite knowing about it in high school and being on their mailing list I only went to one Harvard Berkman Center event. I just never got to opening up their emails and adding them to my calendar. I probably also would have been too busy to make the ~20-30 min trip up to Harvard. --ThePlaz (talk) 21:15, 28 May 2013 (EDT) Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail., Subscribe via RSS feed, Subscribe via email, Detailed feed, See past updates
theplaz.com

2/7/2013 Winter Personal Update

Thu, 7 Feb 2013 13:00:00 -0500

CardSpring

IAP is about trying something different. After a string of management internships, I felt I was losing touch with my Course 6 side. Could I still program? Since I took a lot of course 6 classes this past semester, I had spent a lot of time benchmarking my course 6 skills. Course 15 naturally left me with less time to hack on code. I was lucky to be selected to extern at CardSpring, a company that powers loyalty apps by letting them place webhooks on when a credit card is used at a business. It was a great opportunity to join a bunch of hard-core backend-programmers. The CTO ran cryptography at Netscape during the SSL days. It was my first exposure to more modern tools like Git, Ruby, and Cassandra and working predominately on the backend (it's an API company). I studied hard the week before the job to catch up on the latest tools.
As a programmer I built a complete set of integration tests using rspec. The tests were designed to simulate the use of the API by publishers - both normal, expected uses and unexpected, error conditions. It was a good way to learn the insides and outs of the API. The team was really, really helpful to me and the other interns and helped us get up to speed with Ruby and the code base.
Continuing my benchmarking obsession from last semester I thought a lot about: How much are you expected to know going in? What are you expected to learn on the job? There are so many different subsets of programming that it is impossible to be an expert in all of them. How much should a new grad know about specific tools already? And more generally, how can you measure and compare smartness/aptitude: how fast should you be able to figure something out? How many times do you need to be helped with something before you can do it on your own? How much should you try on your own, before asking for help? Should you lean more towards asking if it is a risky operation?
In the end, I left with a positive review. The team was "sorry to see me go," "happy with my work product," and "thought I learned fast." This made me very, very happy - I was still able to code! I was able to catch up and learn up to their expectations as a MIT Course 6-er. I think this helped restore some of my self confidence I talked about lacking from the past semester.
However, in the end I also found that I personally like product management more than development. It is a completely different style of working - At Disney I lived in Outlook; here I didn't touch calendar invites once the whole trip. But I think product management fits my aspirations more closely. It's fun to read up on a system and then be able to understand it. It's exciting to think critically about a problem and come up with a way to crack it! Often the reward cycle is much smaller, as you are making visible progress every day. However, you are still stuck to your desk, doing work assigned to you. Ultimately, that type of work is not as fulfilling.

San Francisco

Living in San Francisco was super amazing. I am super glad I am moving there after school. So much of the field is in the Bay Area - so I have so many interesting friends in the area! Plus, the city is really nice. There are lots of shops and restaurants all within walking distance. I think the public transit is actually pretty good, despite what the locals say. I enjoyed exploring the different areas of the city; in part to look for housing: Sunset, the Presidio, Berkeley, SOMA, Pacific Heights and the Marina, and South Beach

Next Semester

This semester, my last at MIT, I have 4 required classes left, plus a paper. For my management degree, I have to take 15.053 Linear Programming/Optimization, as well as 15.075 Statistical Thinking and Data Analysis. For Course 6, I need to take one more AUS or CS Lab class; I taking 6.170 Software Studio . I also need to do an AUP. I am planning on working on something relating to Penopticlick with Prof. Hal Abelson. I also need to take one more HASS-D, 4.605, the History of Architecture. I am also taking 6.933 Founders Journey where entrepreneurs come in and talk about their startups. For example, in the first class, Paul English, one of the cofounders of Kayak shared his story. I am also "shopping" a number of other interesting-looking classes. --ThePlaz (talk) 00:57, 7 February 2013 (EST)

1/7/2013 Winter Personal Update

Mon, 7 Jan 2013 13:00:00 -0500

This has been a stressful semester, probably making it my least favorite at MIT. Why? A bunch of reasons.

Benchmarking

I think the biggest difference is that I coveted more the things which others coveted. Whereas I was comfortable with the level of my coding ability and grades in prior semesters, I felt much more pressure this semester to improve my performance to be more like the other students. Whereas before I was happy to buck the trend and spurn the things most other students valued, I tried to join the pack this semester. For example, I had wanted to improve my academic performance, especially in CS classes. That made it particularly stressful.
I also spent a great deal of time worrying about what distinguishes top performers from average students at MIT. Are they inherently smarter? Or did they make certain choices earlier? Do they have a head start since they have previous knowledge/exposure? Or is it something else? I was obsessed with benchmarking myself versus other students this semester.

Classes

42 pens used this semester

36" of paper

I was only taking 5 classes. But I did more "work" than last semester. As always, I tracked the amount of pens and paper I used. This semester I used 34 blue pens (for notetaking) and 8 black pens (for problem solving). Last semester, I took 7 classes but only used 27 blue pens and 2 black pens. That's a 44% increase in usage of pen ink! I used 36 inches of paper, versus 29 inches last semester. That includes both written and printed notes.
The grades focused paid off marginally; I ended up with a term GPA of 4.4, which did not budge my overall GPA which has been stuck on 4.3 for quite a few semesters. I ended up with an A in 6.858 Security, which was I was somewhat surprised by. I was doing ok on the exams, plus I didn't think our project was rigorous enough. But the professor really liked our project. I enjoyed the class, though I would replace the obscure research systems with more real life systems, like the ones from Security Now. I got a B- in 6.046 Advanced Algorithms which really presently surprised me. I've traditionally gotten straight Cs in math-style classes because it's not really my way of thinking. I was worried about even passing, but the B- made me pretty happy. I ended up with a point under the average on the final! STS.085 Technology Ethics was a great deal of fun, including the final copyright project. I ended up with an A-. 14.72 Capitalism and its Critics was a difficult, but intellectually stimulating exercise in philosophy. The class' material was not what I expected going in, but I had fun being in the class with my friend. I ended up with an A- as well. However, I ended up with a C in 7.012 Biology. I am super upset about this. It's not that I didn’t put time into it, I certainly did try. The concepts felt challenging at first; but I got help from my Bio friend, and things started making sense the more I studied them. It was a good intellectual challenge, that I thought I had mastered to a large extent. Much of the disappointment here is that I was competing with Freshmen. Plus, I had gotten Cs in all my freshmen classes. Had I learned nothing at MIT in meta/problem solving skills??? I feel much better at problem solving since freshmen years, but the data didn't seem to show it. Had I got a B, I would have a 4.6 GPA for the term, which would have been tied for my max term GPA. Plus, I would have had a monotonically increasing yearly GPA - though there is still time for that!
I noticed I ended up doing homework more on my own this semester. I remember writing the opposite last semester. I don’t fully know why the changed happened. I think the nature of the work was different. In addition, all of the people I lived next to this semester at Baker House have been super amazing. I don’t know how I can match living at Baker House from both a physical perspective and intellectual perspective ever in my life again!

Baker President

Being Baker President was more stressful this semester, for a number of reasons. It seems like with everything we did, we ran into problems - way more than other semesters. I'm kinda glad my term is over at the end of IAP. Being President of Baker was still a great experience - in terms of building a team, supervising people, building connections, and engaging stakeholders. It was certainly worth the trouble for the experience. The Rooming Review, Security Plan, CPW, REX, and all our events were tons of fun. We had dodgeball, a magic show, a winter formal, a Poker Tournament, and Iron Chef, among others. I'm super proud of my core team - I could not have done it without the dedicated group of volunteers on Baker Exec. Plus we had some good results: Baker had the highest retention rate of any dorm during FYRE; a large improvement in our performance from prior years. In addition, students that lived in Baker rated their happiness the highest of any living group at MIT.

Next Term

Next term will be my last term at MIT. I have 4 required classes left, plus a paper. For my management degree, I have to take either 15.053 or 15.058 Linear Programming/Optimization, as well as 15.075 Statistical Thinking and Data Analysis. For Course 6, I need to take one more AUS or CS Lab class; I am looking at 6.170 Software Studio most closely, with 6.814 Databases as an option. I also need to do an AUP. I am planning on working on something relating to Penopticlick with Prof. Hal Abelson. I also need to take one more HASS-D. I am looking at 4.605, the History of Architecture, with 21H.142 The Age of Reason as a fallback. I also want to take a Harvard class, but I am unsure which one and if I can get the logistics to work.

After MIT

In part this semester was stressful was because I was looking for a job in Silicon Valley/Bay Area. This turned out to be much more difficult than I was anticipating, and took far longer than I had planned. I was looking for something more unique than a standard developer role. But, I also didn't know exactly what I wanted. Some of my most favorite internships have been from jobs that were custom crafted - they certainly weren't posted externally. This necessitated an expansive search, which took a great deal of time. Also, I focused on Silicon Valley, which was more difficult because I had no experience there, since I had taken a more circular route, thinking it would provide a valuable perspective. I thought this would ultimately add more value, but I think most didn’t see it that way, since that was not their own background. Also leaving MIT for interviews, for even one day during the semester, was very hard since I had to squeeze the weeks' work into 4 days. I visited San Francisco once, twice, and Bozeman, MT.
In addition, full-time recruiting was different since things felt so much more permanent. Companies has much longer interview cycles, and companies are less willing to take a chance. For me, making a decision to specialize somewhere was much more difficult thank picking an internship, where I valued diversity. I spent a lot of time thinking and rethinking which route I wanted to take. Even after 6 internships at a variety of places from state-owned to self-owned, 250,000 employees to 10 employees, Fortune 100s to startups, tech to banking, etc, I'm not 100% confident of the way I want to go. I wrote this long paper What Drives Me and What I Want to Do at the start of my search, but it was of little practical help.
What standard do you use to judge an opportunity? Do you go to the place that matches your strengths or that you have the most to learn from? Do you go where you can learn the most or where you can add the most value? Do you care about the long term path that each position puts you on? If someone offers to let you skip the usual prerequisites is that as a good offer, or do the prereqs provide valuable perspective? What parts of the job do you value? Responsibility? Ability to problem solve? What aspects matter the most? One opportunity looks better under one metric than another.
I'm almost certain I want a PM role over a development role - having experienced both. I'm still happy I did both a technical and business path. While the problem solving of engineering is fun - it's not what really excites me. However, it's important that I keep my tech skills to notch. But what gets you more experience? A strategy role at a 10 person firm, a 100 person firm, or a 100,000 person firm? They both offer a different experience and put you on a different long-term path. One can always switch paths, though it’s more difficult.
In the end, I looked at where I had chosen to naturally spend my time at MIT. What did I reach for when I had a spare moment? What decisions felt right for me at the time - when I was not obsessing over every pro and con? Ultimately I ended up taking a role as a Product Strategy Manager at Oracle in their Cloud Customer Experience apps department. Why Oracle. At Oracle I can help companies develop great customer experiences. I think I have a lot to learn from Oracle - how to develop strategy, how to build valuations, etc.
I think part of the reason Oracle chose me was because of the unique perspective I can add. A good manager must balance fitting in and standing out. I'm not there to accept at face value the way Oracle has always done things. Many existing conventions are valuable, but leader must also know where to push the envelope and establish thought leadership. Plus, I don't intent on becoming complacent. Even if it is just on the side, it's very important to keep my spark alive and to continue to keep up my skills in tech and product management on the cutting edge.
I am not 100% confident that I made the right choice. I've had a few people try to talk me out of my decision. It's probably 80% of what I want. It's the riskiest approach: it could either be super great or super lame. I think I have the most to learn here, which I could not learn elsewhere. My perspective on all this changes day by day, though I'm trying to avoid the recency bias.

Winter Break

I've been super busy over the past two weeks, since school ended. I've been wrapping up my work for the semester, studying programming, and preparing MBA school applications. Some MBA schools let one apply now, and then, if accepted, you have an option to attend starting in two years. This ended up being much harder than I thought, but I ended up thinking a good deal more about my future plans, writing and rewriting the essays.
Stanford asked me "What Matters to You and Why" and "What Do You Want To Do - Really!" I wrote that I enjoy building manufactured experiences - building well-engineered experiences that surprise and delight users, and have a natural business case. The two flanks of that which I also enjoy are problem solving/engineering and the technocratic aspects of management. I think this is a good metric to keep in mind. I still think my decision would be the same, regardless. I also wrote What Did You Do Well and What Is Something You WIsh You Did Better for HBS.

IAP/San Francisco

My goal for this IAP is to get much better at programming. MIT Computer Science teaches you about the big concepts, but less of the more practical aspects of it. Plus, I spent a good deal of time at MIT focusing on the management side of my education both at MIT and in internships. I ended up getting an externship at CardSpring, a San Francisco start-up that helps companies set call backs on the use of credit cards.
I am staying at this Hacker Hostel in the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco. It's a great neighborhood. The people the first day were ok, but the people now are much better. There are plenty of interesting conversations. Living with others in the same room turned out to be not quite as bad as I thought. However, the place is a bit dirty and cold - which detracts from the experience [1].
I'm also concertedly trying to live differently than I do at MIT. At MIT my life is all about productivity. I feel bad about not spending time checking things off my to-do list. My goal for IAP is to engage in more intellectual conversations than just crunch through a stack of work. I am certainly more of a planner than a spontaneous person. I've already noticed my personality changing - being less time pressured and gravitating more to valuable experiences. Being spontaneous is kinda fun..! I've noticed most others at MIT are more spontaneous. Would it help me improve my skills more than my aggressively trying to crunch through work? (Thinking about benchmarking again…) I settled into that work-drive drive through Learning to Learn and Working Out a System - and I've been afraid I'll end up even worse by switching. It would probably be better for me to pick up the hard topics, but time is just the problem at MIT! Will my personality change back with the pressures of MIT?
At MIT, I've just never hung out much with the programming community. I always ascribed this due to not having time - I always wanted to be more connected with the folks in SIPB - I just subconsciously ended up making other choices at MIT. I never really get into that community really. Was that the right choice? Should I have lived in EC? I think my perspective would have been very different - because I would have had different friends… But on the other hand I said coming into MIT that I had no interest in inventing a 5% improvement in compression. Other MIT students would have loved to use some obscure math principle to make an incremental improvement in an existing technology.
I had a great first week at CardSpring. I'm really happy they are giving me a shot this IAP. I've worked there three days and it's been fun to listen in with what is going on. Everyone is super smart - on both the tech and business sides. Everything is leaner - things get done. Though tech challenges are mostly around scaling up the system, edge cases, etc. However, everything seems to be about engineering prowess - which is intellectually challenging. It’s also very interesting just to sit in the office and watch them work - from an anthropological perspective. There is a lot to learn, but I think I am learning the material and fitting in better than I expected. I think I undersold my coding ability over the last semester - I just needed a 2 week refresher and update on the latest material. It is interesting to reenter this world I have not focused on, but I still think I prefer PM over software engineering.
There really is this feeling of scrappiness and problem-solving here - that is missing in many other organizations. On one hand it just seem to fit my culture more. I hope to be able to bring some of that spirit to my future experiences. I wish I could be more like that.
Still I'm really enjoying my time here in San Francisco. I'm meeting new cool people everyday - at a rate far higher than anywhere else that I have lived! Plus, I am meeting up with my existing friends - I have something planned with a friend pretty much every day this week! I'm super glad I chose to come to San Francisco after MIT!
I'm trying to find an apartment with someone else from the tech community, not just since it's cheaper, but to keep me from becoming isolated. Originally this turned out more difficult than I was expecting, since way fewer of my friends are going to San Francisco, than I imagined. But in the past few days I now have 2-3 serious possibilities, but no slam dunk.

Closing

This semester my self confidence was at an all time low. MIT is hard. It's especially hard since you are competing with the best. Plus, one tends to comparing themselves against the best of others - taking the very best aspect of each person and combining it into this mythical person. However, San Francisco has brought back some my perspective. Things still ended up pretty good! My term GPA ended up pretty good. By many measures, I ended up with a very good job, even if it was not exactly what I had in mind at the start of the term. --ThePlaz 02:21, 8 January 2013 (EST) Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail., Subscribe via RSS feed, Subscribe via email, Detailed feed, See past updates

7/23/2012 Summer Personal Update

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 17:00:00 -0500

Disneyland June 2012

Disney

I am now 8 weeks into my internship at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Online. WDPRO builds the websites and mobile apps for the Disney parks and other travel operations. I’ve been having a great time here at Disney. I'm working on a mobile project for Cruise Line and a project to improve reference material here at WDPRO. I'm a product management intern, working for the VP of the division. I'm getting great exposure to what it is like to be a PDM intern here. As at Deutsche Bahn, I have a lot of freedom to use my time where I think is most effective.
One change from last summer is that Disney cares about quality. In fact, quality is the number one concern here. This makes the work environment 180 degrees different. It means a lot of concern over issues that on the surface look trivial. But when you consider the millions of people that pour though our parks every year, it starts making sense. A Disney parks experience means quality. If you think about the newly opened Cars Land, every little detail from the type of grass to the building architecture has been obsessed over for years by teams of people. Disney has a lot of people, who are managing every detail. This means there are a lot of people involved in any project. It’s very different from the small team mentality of other firms – but those companies don’t have anywhere near the integration that Disney has.
Plus it's my job as a PDM is to manage this. Somewhat jokingly, my job is meetings and emails. A PDM is responsible to build the relationships with the business to be able to specify requirements and act as the “product owner” in Scrum/Agile terminology. Though it’s been somewhat awkward working as a PDM intern. You won’t be around after the summer, so it’s hard to take over a project full time. But I’m doing what I expected. I can envision what things would be like if I was doing this full time here.

Opportunities

I’ve taken advantage of a number of great opportunities here at Disney. Every Disney employee goes through a training program called Traditions, where you learn the basics of working in the park and see “backstage”. They also offer a program called Cross-U where office workers can help out in the park during very busy periods. I was assigned to measure wait times at the Cozy Cone Motel on opening day of Cars Land. I ended up giving out more help than collecting wait times, but it was fun to be part of Cars Land’s opening day. Plus I helped beta-test a new game at Imagineering R&D. They are working on some interesting questions! Imagineering also has a big library with lots of books about the topics Disney works on and archives of the behind the scenes on the Disney attractions. This was fun to pour over. We can also over to the studio lot any time we want for lunch.
I also flew out to Orlando to meet with colleagues. This was my first business trip by myself. I stayed at the Yacht Club. During the day I had set up back-to-back meetings with WDPRO and DCL colleagues in the Disney Celebration offices. On Saturday, I drove out to the Disney Fantasy to take a tour and meet with shipboard colleagues. After work, I visited Walt Disney World – my first time there since elementary school. I even go to walk around the Utilidors – it looks exactly like the MIT tunnel system.

Issues

Disney has its typical big company issues as well. There are so many managers for this and that everywhere that most of every project is simply coordination between different departments. I realize that as a temporary intern, I might be cluttering up things further. This is what I am trying to balance.
I knew this coming in, but my base salary is quite a fair bit less than last summer and the only thing free in the office is free soda and breakfast one day a week. We were also promised park passes, but those are still stuck in the Disney bureaucracy. Also my work address is wrong in the internal company directory. I think I’ve talked to 10 people about getting this fixed, and while one person was able to fix my work phone number, the address is still wrong. Disney is very good at being very specific with its polices to the public, but backstage it’s a mess. It’s certainly not Steve Jobs’ philosophy that good craftsmanship means doing a good job on even the parts not readily visible to the customer.

Culture

That being said there are a lot of very smart people here. Stuff still manages to get done with relatively little problems. But I think having a stable operational platform would allow things to get done more efficiently and would be less costly. I’m writing about this not to criticize, but to wonder if its possible to do better. Disney is also a very relational company. I've recognized this and on the advice of others, I’ve set up what seems like 50 informational/getting to know you meetings.
The culture is also fun here. Many of the people in other Disney units have worked their way up from the parks so they are always happy and perky. At certain business units, though not really at PRO, everyone wears their Disney name tags around the office. It’s a way of showing that you are helping out the parks. WDPRO Glendale doesn’t require it, but many people still dress according to the fairly strict “Disney Look” – basically be clean-cut and wear business casual.

Outside of Work This Summer

I'm really happy how this summer is turning out from a friendship point of view. I'm being a lot more aggressive this summer to reach out and organize weekends with friends.

Travel

At the start of the summer, I went to Atlantic City with my dad. I went to Universal Studios Hollywood, Warner Brothers Studio, and Venice Beach with Eddie and Jeremy. On my own, I walked around the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Beverly Hills and the X-Games at LA Live and Downtown LA.
One week I drove up to Silicon Valley to meet with many of my friends in the area. On the Fourth of July, I walked around San Francisco with Jon, I stayed with Jeremy in Palo Alto, saw the Computer History Museum, and Stanford with one of my friends from high school, Dave Groff.

Cell Phone

While I was in San Francisco, my Nexus S cell phone broke. It would not boot up past the “Google” screen. I had to go most of my Silicon Valley trip and all of my Orlando trip without a cell phone! Luckily I had my LTE iPad which kept me connected. I could make outgoing calls on Skype, but not receive calls. This made me realize how much I depend on my phone. My phone has been fixed for a week now, but I still feel like I am without it and disconnected from the world. Battery life is also a great deal improved.

Books

I’m also getting to do a lot more driving than I ever have. I think in my first week here I’ve driven more than I have my entire life. It has also given me the opportunity to listen to some audio books. I’ve listened to Working Poor, the Steve Jobs bio, Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick. I also read a book on the History of Software Development, and I am reading a book on Project Management.

This Past Semester

My junior spring semester was a solid semester. I finished 7 classes with a 4.3 GPA average. This breaks my streak of having my GPA climb semester over semester, but I still think I learned a lot. My undergraduate cumulative GPA appears to be fixed at 4.3; this is the third semester in a row where it has not changed. It's not a particular stunning GPA, but since I chose to focus on breath and leadership opportunities at MIT, I'm by-in-large happy with how this semester ended up.
6.033 Computer Systems Engineering covered designing complex computer systems. Most of my classmates hated this class; I didn't find it half bad. The class is not well designed - the very thing it is trying to teach! It seems that too many unrelated components have been slapped in. In addition, I wish it focused more on the human side of building a system (more of a project point of view). Anyway, I got an A in that class. 6.813 UI Design was right up my alley. I think most people in the class couldn't care less (it's the easiest AUS and department lab). Plus the professor was trying hard - too hard - to be objective. I was not that happy with my final project, RScanVP. 6.006 Intro to Algorithms was challenging for me. I think I easily grasped the basic concepts, but the problems seemed to come out of no where with the TA unable to offer robust strategies to solve them. I ended up with a C because I did not do well on the final. Your grade basically dependent on if you "figured out" the problem. I don't like making excuses, but I really don't know how I end up with a C in every math related class I take at MIT.
15.565 Management/Web 3.0 was a class I required to take. I didn’t like the class, so I didn’t spend much time on it. I even got in a big disagreement with the TA since I thought my approach was way better than his. I ended up with an A-. 15.571 Business IT Strategy is perhaps my most favorite Sloan class ever. I really like the work Jeanne Ross and the Center for Information Systems Research is doing at Sloan. I ended up with a B+ because the group project (which I really enjoyed) was graded lower than other students and Sloan has grade quotas. 15.301 Management Psychology was fun, although I don’t think the other students cared that much, but I really enjoyed the topic. I ended up with an A. 18.06 Linear Algebra was a challenge for me. Unlike other course 18 classes, this one was more about theory than calculations, though I am not very good at that either!
I think at some point I had 6 group projects active! This was a bit much, because there is a lot of overhead in scheduling group projects. I think I also did much more group P-Setting this semester versus before. I was much more conscious to take the time to cultivate relationships and set up times to work on homework. Overall, I'm glad I'm being more social. This is one of the life/soft skills where I am 180 degrees different from how I was when I entered MIT.

Outside of Classes

Baker House

Also I was elected as the President of Baker House, my dorm at MIT. I was unsure about doing this role initially, but it has turned out to be a great experience. I have a budget of about $50,000 per year and about 20 people are involved in house government. It really is a fantastic leadership opportunity because you have to recruit really busy people to help out, train them, and then throw great events. You also have the autonomy to try things out and make mistakes. Our Piano Drop was a huge success with syndication on over 300 world-wide news outlets. Here is the big one from the Boston Globe. In addition, we had over 500 people at our annual CPW party. My term runs one more semester until IAP 2013.

MITCET

This semester I continued to be involved in MITCET [1], the MIT Council on Educational Technology. I can't believe I forgot to mention it in my last update, but MITCET was one of the groups advising then-Provost Reif on setting up MITx and EdX. I was on the inside on the announcement of MITx and EdX and I met with then-Provost Reif to discuss the issue. I think MITx and EdX has the potential to revolutionize education. I think education has economies of scale which, if taken advantage of, could radically change the course of the industry. Why does every school need a different school curriculum? Instead of having each teacher re-invent the wheel - invest in a few good solutions. Then you are able to justify the extra work to refine the technology to be able to adopt to people's needs.

ThePlaz.com

I made some small adjustments to the nav bar on ThePlaz.com. Gone are the separate TI-83 and Video categories and instead I've added an engineering and business header entries, as well as getting all of the classes up to date in the header.
Content from the spring is up. I have scanned a fair bit of old content that I still need to work though. Hopefully I get a few moments later this summer.

Travel

My brother is currently looking for schools. Over Spring Break I was in Pittsburgh with my family.

Semesters Ahead

For planning ahead, I have 10 classes left in order to graduate with a double major in 15 and 6-3. I had originally thought I needed 11 more, but I realized I had actually satisfied a requirement without realizing it! This means I only need a normal 5 classes per semester! Plus, one of these classes is a PE class, which I have not historically counted in the number of classes I am taking, so we are down to 5 and 4 classes.
I am planning on taking 7.012 Intro to Biology. I've tried taking this GIR class every semester, but it always conflicted with my schedule. Well I am finally going to take it! It will be mostly freshmen - I've come so far in terms of my study skills from those years… (See Working out a System) I'm planning on taking STS.085 Ethics Online. I think I am going to really like this class; I enjoy working on the topic. It also wraps up my concentration in STS: Science, Technology, and Society. I will have to take 6.046 Advanced Algorithms. I'm not looking forward to this class at all! Plus my extremely smart 6.006 partner, Shri, dropped out of MIT (is technically on-hold) to do a start up. What am I going to do?
For my AUS class, I picked 6.858 Computer Systems Security. I heard that in the first lab with write a buffer overflow attack. I hope to pick up low-level programming skills (i.e. C) and learn how to actually write attacks. I heard that the labs are long and hard, but it seemed like the best choice as to what I was interested in. For my HASS D class, I picked 14.72 Capitalism and its Critics. This seems like an interesting class about different economic systems - I picked it partially because it is from the econ department, something I want more exposure to. My top choice was 17.30 Making Public Policy, but this has a time conflict with 6.046. As alternate choices, I put down 17.40 American Foreign Policy and STS.003 The Rise of Modern Science. I liked the book Legacy of Ashes, but I prefer econ more; and I think I've heard enough about the start of science with STS.050 and STS.011.
So with my 6 classes this semester I might be bored. I'm considering picking 2.009, the famous product design lab. I've always liked the idea of the class, so when I got an email from the professor announcing that the class was looking for non-course 2's I was intrigued. I do want to spend more time on self exploration on other topics and greater depth on in-class topics, but I'm skeptical how much that will happen once the rubber meets the road.
So in the spring semester I still have to take 15.053 or 15.058 as well as 15.075, both Sloan math classes. I probably should not be taking those so late, but that's when they fit in. Plus I need to do a third HASS D class, as well as my course 6 project 6.UAP. I also need to take 1 more PE class at some point. I also want to take advantage of cross registration with Harvard for some class to say that I've done it...

After MIT

So what am I going to do after MIT? I don’t think I am going to do grad school immediately. I don’t feel like spending more time in school. If I were to go to grad school, and if at MIT, I would do either Sloan for research, or the Media Lab at MIT. I feel like I’ve already seen what a Sloan MBA would be like. I don’t quite have the grades for M-Eng and since I don’t see myself doing that sort of work, I don’t think another year of access to course 6 classes at MIT is a good investment of time. Looking at the class list, nothing really stands out.
So what do I want in a job? I want to be busy – at MIT taking 7 classes at a time forces me to get stuff done. Without that pressure, I tend to be a lot less productive. I want to work on hard problems. I want to continue to have new experiences. I don’t want to master a job – though I might master and formalize the process of working (as I’ve done at MIT). I might do business consulting, PDM at Disney, or product management somewhere in Silicon Valley. I might even do my own thing.
I think my 5 internships have given me good perspective on the good and the bad. For some of the other interns at Disney this is their first internship. Between my internships, school classes, and MIT leadership opportunities, I think I’m much more aware of the differences between places, the reasons those differences exist, and attempting to answer which is better. As to another major change I've noticed, I think I've become much more Establishment.--ThePlaz 21:57, 23 July 2012 (EDT) Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail., Subscribe via RSS feed, Subscribe via email, Detailed feed, See past updates

2/5/2012 IAP Personal Update

Sun, 5 Feb 2012 17:00:00 -0500

Classes start in only a few days. Let me give you an update about the semester past, my break, IAP, and the semester ahead.

Last Semester

Fall 2012 Paper. 22.5 in. 12.5 reams.

Last semester was my best semester yet. I ended up with a 4.6/5.0 term GPA, despite taking the most units ever - 81 vs 79 last term. I got an A in 6.005, 15.387, 15.665, and STS.011. I got a A- in 6.034 and a B in 6.004 (just barely). I continued to struggle in math, squeaking by 18.03 with a C-. I went through 12.5 reams of paper - producing a 22.5 in stack, versus 19 inches Spring 2011 and 16 inches in Fall 2010. The typed and scanned notes from these class are now online.

Working out a System

Last term I recorded all of the policy and procedures that I have created to allow me to be as productive as I can be. I wrote down my time management, paper shuffling, studying, sleep, and food tips in Working out a System. I also proposed a "kanban" system which would help me and other students stay organized.

High School Papers

Over break I scanned many papers from high school. I scanned the papers I has remaining from 10th and 11th grade. These were the papers that had gotten wet in the flood. About 40% of each year got soaked. Luckily these were the years I had already scanned. I also scanned 9th grade files. Previously, I had added computer files, but no scanned files from 9th grade. 10th and 11th Grade had scanned papers - but most were scanned at pretty bad quality. The old files continue to be spread across image files. The new files continue to be large PDFs from my ScanSnap S1500. Unfortunately Scribd does not process files over 100MB, so you have to download the entire PDF. Look for the link under the Scribd preview.
I believe I forgot to mention in my last update that I added files from middle school. 7th and 8th grade now have typed assignments. I still need to scan my notes from then. Hopefully my basement does not flood again before that!

Chicago

I went to Chicago with Melanie the first week in January. Check out my photos from the trip. I went to the Planetarium, the Aquarium, the Field Museum, the Chicago Theater, the Willis Tower, a Bus tour, the Museum of Science, and the University of Chicago.

AltVil

Over IAP, I worked at Altman Vilandrie & Company as an analyst extern. I worked for 3 weeks on a data center due diligence. The last week I worked on the hospitality strategy for a major cable/satellite provider. I enjoyed the second project much more.
I am already noticing changes of how I look at a situation. For example at a HDC meeting last Wednesday, I felt like I was thinking more objectively about how to solve a problem. I thought about building an Excel model to solve a particular problem. I am also more confident with best practices. This was my first job truly in the "big leagues." I also feel like I am thinking more clearly. For example, I am noticing that I often start with a topic sentence that overviews the detail points and then I dive deeper into each of the points. Perhaps I always did that, but I seem to be more aware of it now.
My favorite part of the job was piecing the parts of the puzzle together. You're like a detective - always learning more information. And with consulting the whole puzzle starts fresh every month or two. I liked conducting the interviews and discussing the case with my coworkers. On the flip side, consultants are very aware about little issues - like how much to contact someone or phrase things. After seeing it, I think it does help in appearing professional and getting work done, but it is just something to learn. I think I certainly learned and got better at that as the job went on, but it irked me. It's just not my current personality.
I'm not sure what job I want to do after school. I still need to figure out where my competitive advantage is. So far I have tried coding, consulting, and next summer I will try product management again.

Disney

As I talked about in my last update, I have accepted a position at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Online next summer. Parks and Resorts Online is the internet sales and marketing channel for the Disney parks, cruise ships, and guided tour businesses. I'm excited to get to work as a product manager. This has historically (ie. before MIT) been my dream job - so I will see what it is actually like. I ended up doing something similar at Deutsche Bahn on Touch&Travel.
I'm particular exited to get to work so close with Imagineering - which is the high temple of theme park design. As a kid I used to think a lot about experience design, floorplans, branding, etc to create an immersive experience. Disney is known worldwide as the pinnacle of branding/experience design. In middle school, I was involved in theater. After going to MIT and doing management consulting, I want to reinvigorate that creative spirit. Now, this is still a pretty much a "business job," but I hope to get to work with creative people.

ThePlaz.com

Speaking of what I have done before, I have written or tuned up many pages on ThePlaz.com about things that I have done in the past. I added pages or added content to pages about places I have lived, MIT committees, theater, and my websites.

Next Semester

I have planned out a draft schedule for next semester. I have 18 classes left to graduate. I have I have to take 18.06 Linear Algebra (it's about matrices); I'll probably do poorly on that. Next I'm taking 6.006 Introduction to Algorithms. I am particularly interested in this class because most of the computer programmer interviews ask these sorts of questions. I am also taking the required 6.033 Computer System Engineering. I have no idea what that is about - but it's required. I am also taking an AUS 6.813 User Interface Design and Implementation because it fit into my schedule and it sound the most interesting. On the management side I am taking 15.571 Business Strategy and the Role of IT, one of the classes for the Sloan IT concentration. In addition, I've been interested in how IT can help big companies streamline while providing better service. I am also hoping to take 15.053 Optimization Methods in Management Science. I can't make the recitation, so this would be the first class I drop. I am taking 15.301 Managerial Psychology Laboratory, a required, basic course 15 class that I have not managed to take yet. Rounding it out, I am hoping to get into 17.50 Introduction to Comparative Politics a HASS-D #4 class to fill the second of my 3 HASS D slots.
I am concerned that my schedule this semester is too heavy on math, which I have traditionally spent more time on.
That's all for now. It's time to get geared up for the next semester. --ThePlaz 16:57, 5 February 2012 (EST)

11/23/2011 Thanksgiving Personal Update

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:00:00 -0500
Well it's the day before Thanksgiving and I am on the MegaBus back home to Philadelphia. So far we are only an hour and a quarter late.

Classes

It's been a busy semester at school. I'm in 7 classes (84) units. 3 of the classes are Course 6 (EECS) classes. 6.034 is Artificial Intelligence. It's fun to learn about the methods, but the exams are pretty much an exercise in how closely you can simulate an algorithm. 6.005 is an introduction to programming in Java. It's fun to get exposure in Java, but the P-Sets are an exercise in closely following the directions. Consequently I play it safe, instead of trying new things. 6.004 is my favorite class this semester. We are building a computer from the CMOS gates up to the assembly language code that runs the machine. Chris Terman has awesome slides as always.
I am in two management classes this semester, both for fun/knowledge as opposed to a requirement. 15.387 is a class in how to be a sales man. I don't want to do that job, but the same strategies to identify needs, convince people, and solve complex problems are good anywhere. 15.665 is a class on how to negotiate. I mostly did the class for taking part in the negotiation simulations. I've noticed using skills I used in the class in real life.
I am also in 18.03 Differential Equations. Despite my efforts, I am struggling in that class, as I have been in every math class at MIT. The class moves very fast; I'm barely able to understand something till the class moves on.
STS.011 is a lot of fun. It is my first HASS-D and it is part of my STS concentration. The class is about controversies in science and technology. It got off to a difficult start, but it is now moving into more concrete interesting topics. Next week's lecture is on how slot machines are addictive. That should be very interesting. I am researching Net Neutrality for the class. I think the class could be better if the professor could specify a bit more clearly what he is looking for.

Activities

I also continue to serve on the dining committee. MIT started its new all-you-can-eat mandatory dining plan this year. Reviews for the new service are mixed. I am personally bummed they took out made-to-order stir-fry. Other dorms have it, just not Baker. In addition, the price is between 50-300% higher, depending on how you look at it.
On the UA Committee on Student Life, I am working on putting together an Institute-wide resource guide for students. We currently have buy-in from across the Institute; we now need to put it together. I am still Baker VPFS. We bought a new projector which should be a lot of fun.
The Pharos hold-and-release printing system was installed at MIT this semester. I was on the committee freshman year which recommended the new system. First numbers show a 50% drop in pages printed and many students actually prefer the new system – so I think we have a win-win here.
I am the undergrad representative on MITCET, the MIT Council on Educational Technology. This is interesting because many of the senior members of MIT are on the committee. I disagree with the focus on modularity this year. I think it's unrealistic and possibly not even desirable. I called one of their proposals a complete waste of money, at best – I think we're off to a good start!

Work

For IAP, I have been placed in an externship at Altman Vilandrie & Company, a telecommunications strategy consulting company in Boston. I was selected for one of two slots from among 12 applicants. I hope I have a good experience this IAP. I actually have the same HR contact who now works at AltVil as I did last year at State Street.
I started my search for a job this summer early this semester. I wanted to get this done early, so I could not worry about it later. In addition, some companies only have a certain number of positions, which fill up. I was offered a Project Management internship at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Online in located Glendale, CA, along with Imagineering. Parks and Resorts Online runs the public facing information and sales websites for Disney parks and other travel offerings. I took the job because I want to do Project Management and they might have an opportunity to work on cool stuff, like I did freshmen summer at Deutsche Bahn. I'm not looking forward to arranging living in L.A. No landlord wants to rent out a property for just 3 months – they want the promise of an open-ended lease, or at least a year. Plus either getting a car, or doing without one in LA will be a big hassle.

CA trip

Shortly after I wrote my last update, my family and I visited California. We saw Sequoia National Park, King's Canyon, Yosemite, San Fransisco, Stanford, and the Pacific Coastal Highway. It was a lot of fun to go and see Silicon Valley and San Francisco. This brings me to 74,000+ items on Flickr.

House flooding

However we had some misfortune during the trip. There was a hurricane at home while we were in California. It blew down the tree in front of our house. This knocked out our power. This caused our sump pump to fail. This caused our basement to flood with about a foot of water. Unfortunately, I had a lot of my dorm things on the floor in the basement. I lost a carton of books, my monitors, and some other stuff amounting to a thousand dollars or two. Also the paper copy of many notes from 10th and 11th Grades were damaged. Luckily, those two grades are mostly online. Apparently our insurance did not cover the loss, except for $5,000 which my parents spent on an overpriced “cleanup crew”. I left for MIT the next day. It was a whirlwind getting ready for the semester. I still don't feel like I know where everything is.

Coming up

Everything from last year (MIT Sophomore) is basically online, with some exceptions. I have a lot of final projects this semester. I already completed one. Despite being in 7 classes, I only have 2 finals this semester. There are basically 2 weeks left in the semester! --ThePlaz 22:21, 29 November 2011 (EST)

6/26/2011 Mega Personal Update Summer back to January

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 02:10:00 -0200

I am sitting in New York City writing my end of semester update more than a month and a half late. This update was actually written on 3 different days over 2 weeks… Updates are also getting longer and longer… This update covers this summer back to January/IAP and is the first to have subheadings....

I received my class ring, the "Brass Rat".

[edit] Summer

This summer, I am working at NextJump [1], an online affiliate advertising firm. Their main business is running corporate perks websites. For example: "since you work at IBM you get 10% off Avis car rental." They recently launched their first direct to consumer site, OO.com. I like working at NextJump so far. It has gotten me back to coding, which I have not seriously done for a while. On the train in the morning, I am skimming over CodeCraft and the examples feel much more real. I also like the integration with business - my "pod" or team is "cross-functional" and I sit next to business people. I also really like how NextJump gets their employees involved in product design. Every 2 weeks they everyone in the company participates in a 3-hour brainstorming session; I'd just wish everyone was as existed about it as I am. They also have weekly whole company meetings. I think these really work and are worth the time.
I realize now how unusual my arrangement was last summer at Deutsche Bahn - sitting next to a business person and starting out a big project. I wish I had a bit more of a product design role here, but in tech recruiting it seems that if you can code, you're a coder. I also have not yet had the chance to make the transformative impact like at Deutsche Bahn, but that is because I am doing my assigned work and I am surrounded by people who are also at the top of their game. Still I try to rock the boat a bit to aim towards a better product.
The office environment at NextJump is much better than DB and State Street. The free food, free laundry service, and fully stocked gym certainly help. I think connect with my coworkers more; there is no language barrier (unlike DB) and they are my age (unlike State Street). I can also spend time with them, unlike last summer where I lived with relatives over an hour away.

New York City

I am also really enjoying living in New York City. I am living at the School of Visual Art's 101 Ludlow St. It's a brand new building; it was built in 2009. I am on the 18th floor and I have a view of the Williamsburg bridge and the constant 24-hour traffic flowing across it. I am in the middle of the "hip" Lower East Side neighborhood. Unfortunately my housing lasts only 8 weeks of my 10 week internship. I still need to find something for the last 2 weeks. Plus the dorm furniture makes me miss the Baker furniture. The all metal bed squeaks at the slightest movement and the chair is the most uncomfortable thing I have ever sat on.
Still I have spent much of my 2 weeks that I've been here exploring Manhattan. I walk home most days, covering the 33 blocks in about 40 minutes. It actually takes me 20 minutes by subway, in comparison, since it keeps stopping due to heavy train traffic. I've been to Wall Street, Times Square, the High Line, and Propect Park in Brooklyn. On the weekends I am meeting up with friends from home and MIT. I went to the Statue of Liberty last weekend with Ted.
I've also subscribed to The Economist for 12 weeks under their 12 weeks for 12 dollars program. Yesterday I just sat in the comfortable basement armchairs and read - without anyone bothering me - must have been a Saturday night... I like sitting back and not working on much. I also like that NextJump is giving me the resources to live fairly comfortably in NYC. Unfortunately MIT will "tax" much of that money at 50% - by pulling it off my financial aid for senior year. I would also appreciate settling down and not having to move so often. Then I could rely on real furniture - not cheap-o squeaky dorm furniture.
I have also been working on side projects at night. I've fixed up Baker House's voting system - fixing some bugs and adding new features. I next want to upgrade my wiki, re-do my dad's website and build a summer mail system for Baker.
So far in New York, I have met many of my friends from back home and MIT - 10 friend interactions so far in 2 weeks for a rate of 5 interactions/week. I am also hoping to see some Broadway shows. I really want to see Spiderman because I love technical theater. Many things go on only in New York. I was walking home from work and I stumbled into the HP TouchPad launch party at Best Buy.

MIT Classes

I am now halfway through undergraduate years at MIT. I took 8 classes this term - well I dropped one to listener, although I still attended. I always had to think a little when someone asked me what classes I was taking. "Normal" class load at MIT is 4 and many people do 5, but almost no one does 8 in one semester. I earned 79 units this term. One of the best things about MIT is there are no additional charges for an overload. It was tiring, and something that I do not plan on repeating. I was only able to do it because many of the classes this semester were management classes. I had expected that the schedule would harm my GPA; however, I had the best term GPA this semester, a 4.3 vs 4.1 in the fall and 4.0 freshmen spring (no GPA given your first semester at MIT). I also felt like I made a good connection with the faculty members, particularly in 4.211, 15.279, and ESD.051.
The only class I wished I had more time for was 6.042 Math for Computer Scientists. This class worked with math in a way I had no experience with; I never thought about math that way. It went fast as well. I am still amazed many students grasped the concepts so easily. I just made it by with a C-. I don't think I mastered the concepts or even understood why they were important. I hope the topics don't come up again….
14.02 Macroeconomics was a complete and utter disaster. The class was run by inexperienced TAs with absolutely no oversight. I wrote a complaint letter detailing my logistics complaints about the class. Plus it is taught in a very math and models way. You can get by with just knowing math - the class does not really cover economic principals and it has absolutely no empirical work. I think this is dangerous for future Wall Streeters; it may help you somewhat to be an econ grad student. Because of the poor instruction and strange coverage, I think I learned more about economics in high school AP Macro Econ.
4.211 was my favorite class of the semester. I was required to take a HASS-CI class; and I had my eye on this for a few semesters. We learned about the history of cities and urban development. It was a small class, seated at a large single table, where the professor talked about her work and led class discussions. (I guess that is how liberal arts colleges operate.) I got into many good intellectual fights with the professor. We read books and investigated a site in Boston. I researched Copley Place in Boston. I really enjoyed the deep research I did for Copley Place. Like STS.050 in freshmen spring, I've found I like doing original research - from primary source materials on something no one else has ever covered. I wished however that the class focused more the economic tools of urban development rather than the natural causes (the professors' specialty) and did away with the repetitive papers on our site.
ESD.051 was a very fun class. Blade Kotelly knows how to teach, making it a fun class. It was about design and engineering leadership. I was very familiar with the concepts, but it was good to hear it again from Blade. I dropped to listener in the class because I did not have the time to build a cool voice app. Instead I am getting an opportunity to practice my skills at NextJump with the intern project.
6.02 Intro to EECS 2 (Communications) was also a good class, like 6.01. Course 6 really cares about their teaching and has taken great care to coalesce their content into really well structured lessons. Each lecture and lab is almost perfectly structured. Chris Terman is also a good lecturer, with the right amount of jokes in his lecture. I think I learned a lot about the fundamentals of digital communications. I think that the 2 course 6 classes were a very good foundation for a different way of thinking about problems: break them down and abstract the pieces.
15.401 Finance 1 was cool for being a Sloan class. It was at 8:30am which gave the class a weird vibe. I bought the recommended textbooks for the class - they were big and long, but the Sloan class seemed to focus on the basics and teach them well, so you could learn it. Maybe because it was I already really busy, but I thought the class had just the right amount of content. I was not actually required to take the class, but I wanted to be able to understand the finance terminology. It was also was other Sloan students, which did not seem as big of an issue as I've had before.
15.279 was a surprisingly fun Communications class. I went into it thinking that this was going to be boring and not useful, but the professor made the lectures fun by talking about his days in the publishing industry. I participated a lot in the lectures and learned to make things short/simple for short attention spans. I learned to look at what I make from someone else's shoes.
15.761 was Introduction to Operations Research. I chose this MBA Sloan class because I wanted to learn some of the formal management models. Unfortunately, the professor was new and seemed to not be knowledgeable about the topics or how to manage a class. It was also a large MBA class, just as 15.567 was last term. After two of these large MBA classes in E62 I found I just don't like them. The classes are really big (~70 students). This is ok in other departments when the classes are just lectures, but when the classes are discussions it does not work at all. Plus, I talked in my last update how the MBA students do not seem to be engaged in classes. It's a "I'll do the minimum work, but I'll suck up, so everything will be all right anyway attitude". I can't stand it; I'm going to avoid classes in E62. One MBA student even came up to me and offered me some "unsolicited comments" that "only a**h*** consultants talk that much." Well sorrrrry. I'm not changing my style. I think my attitude of continually trying to learn, improve, and solve problems, as well as rocking the boat for the good of the product has gotten me this far and I am going to continue doing it. It makes me consider dropping Course 15.
I calculated that this semester's stack of notes was only slightly higher than last term's, despite the extra classes.

MIT Dining

I was reelected as Baker VPFS for a second term and I also served as Baker's representative on dining. Although HDAG wound down after I joined, without a single meeting, I helped MIT select a new house dining vendor and I now serve on HDIG, the implementation committee. The selection committee was very fun and interesting. I learned a lot about the contracting process. I also traveled to other schools, and I often heard more about the details of the contracts than students at the schools I visited. The highlight was when I flew out to Chicago with our Dean of Housing and Director of Dining. We flew out in the early morning, visited the University of Chicago and Northwestern and then flew home early morning. It moved so fast, I barely had time to process the trip - I guess that is how business trips are. I also got a lot of time to talk with the administrators. When we were flying home, we were in the front row of the plane; it wasn't first class (it was Southwest and lots of people walked by the seats!) but it felt like it!

We ended up renewing Bon Appetit, a division of Compass. I was stunned by how happily people spoke of them at Roger Williams. I also had no reason to cast them aside based on their work at MIT. I am now working on implementing the plan. The marketing needs a lot of guidance between promoting the plan while making MIT sound neutral towards the different ways that students can eat nutritiously. This is different from many schools, where the school funds other projects from the "profits" on meal plan sales. We need to work out how/what to do during orientation, what the hours should be, etc. We also need to diffuse concerns about what cuisine will be served where. One of the more important things is to negotiate the scope and scale of the take-out program. I am also hoping that BAMCO will make an API for the menu data. I have been pursing the cause, but BAMCO does not seem to have the technical resources to pull it off. Finally, I think one of the most important things to do is to define the metrics that will define the success of the program.

I've also found though my tour that the reputation of colleges actually really matters. When I was searching for a college, I considered everyone who sent me a flier; rather than just go after the schools with a top reputation. I now realize that for better or worse reputation is very important. Many companies recruit only at top schools, because the selection process to get in to the schools does the filtering for them. The self fulfilling prophecy. Now this is not all made up. I felt like I have learned a lot when I look back at one year ago and two years ago. I think that the difference comes from the resources the schools are able to attract worth reputation, as well as the faculty the school attracts. The other students also make a big difference, because you want to feel competitive with the other students.

IAP/State Street

Although IAP/January is now a while ago, I've realized I've never written about it. Over IAP (January) I worked at State Street. I did not enjoy my month there. It sounded like an interesting position, but I ended up doing secretarial work in a newly created department with no direction to it. I wanted to try something in finance to see if it would interest me. It did not.
In my report I wrote after the position, I talk about how entry-level management positions are mostly grunt work. However, this summer in New York, at both NextJump and hearing what my friends are doing, I think I over generalized about the uninterestingess/small impact of business jobs. I've realizing now that salary might correlate well with the interestiness of the job. I want an interesting job where I can make a big impact and use my skills. I think when companies offer a lot of money they expect the person to do a lot; because they are selective with who they select to fill those positions. I think, in general, I qualify for these positions and I actively want to do them. I would rather work hard on something interesting, than just pull a paycheck while I spend all day trying to minimize how much work I do.
During my experience at State Street, I decided to add a joint-major with Course 6. Since I was not doing anything interesting at State Street, I filed the paperwork for adding a double major in course 6. I realized that Course 6 would help build my skills. I wrote before that I did not like my course 15 classes. I also really liked 6.01; I thought it was really well done and improved my thinking process. Looking back now, one semester after filing the paperwork, I am happy with my decision. I think course 6 is where my future is, despite my prior apprehension at being a coder. I think if I work on it I can do it. (As I write this, I am realizing this is a common theme; I should just go for it in the future) Plus I want the challenge; course 15 is just too boring. After one year as a course 15 student, I have completed many of the course 15 requirements. I now need to catch up in Course 6. It is also harder for me to do well in course 6 classes.

Website

I am very behind in uploading stuff to my website. I have not yet processed this year's work. The reason I am so behind is I spent much of my time home scanning old middle school papers and throwing them out; rather than posting stuff to the web. I need to find some time to do the boring task of uploading and organizing. I will also be uploading stuff from middle school - which was never before on the site, which was started in 9th Grade.

[edit] Montreal

For spring break, I traveled with my family to Albany and Montreal. I also got yet another camera, the Panasonic DMC-ZS6. My Samsung HZ30W started nice but it broke in a bunch of different ways, finally with a gash on the lenses. 3 months into the Panasonic, I am really liking it. I now have 65,000+ photos on flickr, and I am 2 weeks behind on NYC photos.
So there you go; have a good summer --ThePlaz 02:21, 10 July 2011 (EDT)

12/22/2010 Personal Update Fall 2010

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 04:10:00 -0200

There goes another semester! I am writing on the Megabus home after my last final yesterday. At least the power works this time; usually neither the power nor the WiFi works. The WiFi only worked for 10 minutes before crashing today. At least Megabus now goes direct PHL-BOS without having to change in NYC! Why bother with the bus? Because it's cheap! I book in advanced, so the fares are only $5 or $10 each way. Even when you book late and pay $30, it's still much better than $80 on Amtrak or $300 on the airplane. I learned in 16.71J this year that the PHL-BOS airplane market had the highest yield (fare per mile) of any domestic route!
Anyway, I am very happy how this semester went. I had my own room this year; I think this allowed me to focus much more. I also came into the year with the mindset of fully dedicating my self to school work; not doing too much work outside of class work, and working all nights and weekends. I think I finally was able to achieve the proper level of focus at MIT, especially since I was taking 6 classes (69 units), which is 190% of "full load". You may remember that I struggled my first semester here. During my second semester (when I took 54 units), I did not have it all together either; I would sometimes do homework the day it was due, or not at all. This semester, I only did that once, and I don't think I missed any assignments. I am really proud that I pushed my productivity to an new level by stabilizing my learning.

I think 6 classes was just about the limit. If I try and do too much, I will not get enough sleep, and be far less productive. It's kinda like a control system, like we learned about in 6.01. I need to go right up to the line, without crossing it. I like being busy. I find that I am much more productive when I am busy. I hate just sitting around; I want the pressure to get stuff done in an efficient manner. Also, I still want to take advantage of my time here, by focusing on stuff I can only do when I am here.
This was my first term as a Course 15 Management major. The Sloan school at MIT has a very big MBA program, along with a whole bunch of various programs. (Each division at MIT has its own way of generating revenue. Most do it via research, but Sloan does it with students.) Undergrads take classes with the MBA students. Harvard does not do this. In 15.567, I was one of only 2 undergraduates. In addition, the students at Sloan are very international, which brings a wide perspective.
15.567 The Economics of Information: Strategy and Pricing was a mishmosh introduction to doing business online and using information in business. I don't know. In general, I was not awed by the experience, compared to other classes at MIT. The Sloan students are very different from the other MIT students. Many are only there for a year or two, fly home every weekend, and in general, have a very lose connection to the Institute. Most put more effort into finding a job; there seems to be much less passion than the rest of MIT. Their interest seems to be strictly limited to "how can I make money off this," with little tolerance for the details or culture behind it. Now of course I believe, this attention to details is what leads to success. For example, any one can put out a buzz-word compliant HR plan, but how do you actually implement it? No wonder front-line employees are filled with sarcasm about management. Ultimately, I am uninspired. In this class, I was dubbed the "class technical expert" by the professor. During presentations, one student said he would now accept questions from anyone in the class except me. The MBAs were sick of my tough questions. I got an A in the class, which is the highest grade I have ever gotten at MIT (although the +/-modifiers do not matter).
15.501 Corporate Financial Accounting was very boring. It is a boring, but necessary subject, but the lectures were extremely boring. Only about 5% of the class came to lecture each week. Luckily, the textbook was very helpful. The homework felt like busywork (and could be done in a group) and the exams seemed to measure how fast you could pound your calculator. I guess the other students did not take it seriously, since I got an A- for the year.
14.01 Principles of Microeconomics was another required course for 15. Jonathan Gruber, who was deeply involved in the writing of the new health care bill, was the lecturer this semester. It was nice to hear from him, but I wish he would have talked more (both more often and more in depth) about his "day job". 14.01 was largely a review of AP Micro Econ from high school. However, they teach the Calculus version at MIT. This was difficult because the units don't really line up in economics. Also the math parts were not taught very well this semester. The textbook does not go into the math concepts, and the P-Sets (HW) is due before the math is reviewed in recitation. In addition, Prof. Gruber invents very difficult exams. I ended up with a B in the class. I don't really know how I could have done any better.
I also took the first Course 6 EECS class, 6.01. I really liked it. I was a lot of fun. I really liked how the class was very well planned out. The lectures and assignments all fit together well, and I felt like I learned a lot. I also really like the beauty of EECS - namely that you reduce everything to reusable, abstract pieces. I thought that I did well in the class. I solved every homework problem correctly, I pretty much understood all of the material, I thought I did well on the exams, but I kept getting 80s on them! I ended up with an 86% for the year which is a B. I was shocked to see on the distribution that many people did better than me. I don't know what it is, but it seems like no matter how much I study, a lot of people do better. How do they pull it off????
My hardest class this semester was 6.041 Probabilistic Systems Analysis. This was a required class for Course 15, surprisingly. It was very difficult. I ended up with a C for the semester. I did spend a lot of time on it. I read every chapter in the textbook and took notes; I went to every single lecture, recitation, and tutorial (the class was 5 days a week), and I went to office hours almost every week. However, I was not very good at it, especially compared to the older students. I was at the same place in the grading curve (1 st. dev below avg) like I was all last year in every class. I think that I am not very good at abstract math concepts. When I can put a story behind it, and visualize it, I can do very well. For example, I did very well on Markov chains on the final. The one part which I did the worst on, was the part taught in the last week of the class. Since there is no homework the last week, I did not adequately review that material. I still think that I would have done far worse if I had not reformed my study skills this year.
However, I think that this class, along with my learning to learn experience has shown me that I can do hard classes if I put effort into them. I think challenging myself like this is worth it. Combined with my experiences above, It made me think that I would rather do EECS, than Course 15. I think at this point I will double major. As part of that, I need to plan out my schedule for the rest of my time at MIT to make sure that it is feasible.
After the first week of classes this semester, I decided that I wanted to add another class, so I looked through the catalog to see what would fit in my schedule. I had seen 16.71J The Airline Industry in the course catalog, and it filled in a hole in my schedule, so I decided to add it. It ended up being a fairly interested management-style class, since many of the lectures and assignments were about how to schedule operations. Much of what was taught works with any transportation methods, such as trains, which I am interested in. Some of it even made me think back to last summer working at Deutsche Bahn, the German national railway.
Outside of classes at MIT, I am still involved in university governance. I am still the VPFS at Baker House, and I am planning on running for reelection. The Institute Athena and printing committee] turned out to be over from last year. No one wanted to talk about Athena spaces this year. Our recommendations from last semester are being implemented. IS&T upgraded all of the Athena cluster printers to new models and is now providing paper and toner to dorm printers. They are currently building the authenticated Pharos system and they are planning on starting a trial during IAP.
I also became involved in the dining issue at MIT. For those of you who are unfamiliar, dining is MIT's perpetual controversial issue. I wrote a research paper about it last term. This semester, I became Baker's representative on the committee to select a new dining vendor. I proposed a radical idea, and got seriously flammed for it. At the end of the semester I was also appointed to the main dining policy committee, the infamous HDAG. My current position can be found here.
This IAP I will be an extern at State Street Capital in Quincy, MA. I picked this experience because I wanted a short induction to the world of finance. It turned out that this job is in their IT department, similar to last summer where I worked in the IT department of a train company. Still it should be a promising experience. I am also thinking about other activities which I can do to stay busy during IAP. I may be a research assistant with Prof. Brynjolfsson from 15.567 at the Center for Digital Business at Sloan. I am also planning on taking a night class introducing MatLab. There is also a Poker competition to build the best poker playing AI. I just want to listen in on the class, as I highly doubt that I can win. I also don't know how much time I will have to spend on it. Lastly, I will try to go to a series of lectures on the OLPC initiative at Sloan, by the founder of OLPC Walter Bender.
I have picked out a slate of potential classes for next semester. 15.401 Introduction to Finance, is a popular core Sloan class. I want to learn more about the financial markets, and learn more about why the financial crisis happened. 15.761 is another core Sloan class; this one is about making things efficiently. I also plan on taking the next EECS class, 6.02 which deals with communications at a very basic level. That should be very informative, although some of my friends told me it is not as fun as 6.01. I also need to take 7.013 Biology and 15.279 Managerial Communications as requirements. I am not looking forward to them. If they fit in my schedule, I will take them. If they don't then I will kick the can down the road again. I also need to take 14.02 Macroeconomics. I don't remember the currency markets very well, so I can use a refresher. I don't know what the format of the course is. I hope that it is taught better than 14.01. I am also signing up for two math classes. 18.06 Linear Algebra is supposedly a pre-req for 6.02. I did not see that before, so I am plan on taking it concurrently. 18.443 is one of the two options for a statistics class. I want to take the Course 18 Math version, because I think it will be more rigorous than the Course 15 Management version. I know this won't be too favorable for my GPA, but my experience in 6.041 says I can do it if I try. I also need to take a HASS class. I chose 4.211 The Present and Future City as the one that seemed to be the most interesting this term. Unfortunately it is not a CI-H or a HASS-D class, which will put me a little behind on those requirements. The HASS restrictions are just too complex and restrictive at MIT. Why are more classes not HASS-D classes? Lastly ESD.00 is a new class for this year. It is designed to introduce freshmen to the world of systems development, but it looks interesting, so I am planning on taking it as my fun class. Now I know that this is too many classes. I will likely end up with 6 of them that fit together in a schedule.
I have been doing The Weekly Spin during the term. Gdovin's internet connection at Kutztown has been bad (not as bad as mine over the summer though), but I hope the show is still informative for people. We are covering the same issues as always.
I took about 3,000 photos this term, bringing my flickr item total to 54,931. My family took me on a road trip halfway through the term, and I went on a walk through of the new MIT dorm W1/Massey Hall which will be completed next year. I have put the most of the rest of the photos into the Around MIT Fall 2010 set. These are my first photos with my new Samsung HZ30W camera. I am very happy with it; it is much better than my old Kodak M1093 IS camera.
I am looking for another internship this summer. I want something that combines tech with business, like last summer. However, this seems to confuse most companies I talk to. I always get pegged for a regular technical position, for which I am only moderately competitive for. Oh well, here's hoping I find something.--ThePlaz 16:05, 22 December 2010 (EST)

9/10/2010 Personal Update Back from Germany

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 01:20:42 -0200
My summer working at Deutsche Bahn, the state railway of Germany, is over. I worked on the PPX/Touch&Travel team. I worked on the design for the new smartphone version of T&T and I prototyped out a map/GIS platform. Hopefully they will like what I built and what I helped develop will be seen by millions of people. Working at Deutsche Bahn was real a change of pace from MIT; I did not even have access to my DB email outside the office. It was challenging to work in German and I learned a lot about what it is like to work in a big company. Hopefully I brought some American-style thinking to the team to help create the next version of Touch&Travel and improve people's trip planning.
During the summer, I had a great time going on trips to Berlin, Venice, Verona, Nuremberg, London, and Hamburg. I also went to smaller day trips to Mainz, Geysir Andernach, Wiesbaden, the Rhine, the Opel Factory, Holiday Park, and Worms, plus plenty of random photos. I also took lots of photos of trains and transit systems This trip help boost my flickr count to over 50,000 items! Almost all of the photos are geotagged. Over the summer I bought a new geologger, the I-Blue Tripmate 850 GPS Logger. This new logger is a lot more sensitive and accurate than my old AMOD 8050 GPS Logger. In addition it has a screen and a Bluetooth connection so you can see live data as it is recording. I've included a geotrack of my time in Venice, to demonstrate how good this logger is. Geoov should be up and running again with my latest photos. I built it last summer so I and others could see where I have been by displaying all of my geotagged photos on one map. I love seeing more and more areas being filled in!

I also built out my wiki with some new features and content. I extended the FlickrSet Extension to help meet some of my needs. I also built a Delicious Extension from scratch. In both cases I want to display more of my content from other sites directly on the relevant page on my wiki. I have not made much use of the extensions, but I am now able to pull flickr items and items tagged on delicious straight into certain wiki pages. I also wrote some new content about the Laptops, Cameras, GPS Loggers, MP3 Players, and Cell Phones devices I have owned.
I also figured out a way to once again display OneNote notebooks. This new method uses Microsoft Office Online/SkyDrive and it works in all browsers. However I could not trick it into embedding into my site, so you will have to click to go offsite. Also, ink will not display. I've uploaded ink notebooks from first semester in the legacy 2007 web export style. This displays ink, but only works in IE and Opera. This works out well since I was switching to scanned paper anyway and my tablet broke in March. Some of my notebooks from second semester were all in paper anyway, so I just uploaded a series of PDFs with the pages scanned in. I know this is lower tech, but in my experience, this is how I learn best. So check out my notes from freshmen year.
I am still covering the latest in tech news on The Weekly Spin podcast. With the start of episode 68, I wanted to redouble my effort I put into the podcast to be better prepared with the issues and stories. I am very interested in the things I cover and along with some of my classes this year I want to be able to understand the issues better. Hopefully this extra effort will pay off in the show's quality. Being on a better internet connection should help as well.
It looks like I will be shutting GridView down at the end of the year. Facebook recently discontinued the “Boxes” tab and they will completely remove application tabs from your Facebook profiles by the end of the year. You, and you alone, will still be able to see your GridView on the app's page. I don't think this small bit of functionality will be worth continuing to maintain GridView and keep it alive. I originally envisioned it as a way to show off your Facebook friends on your Facebook profile. With this change, Facebook will be prohibiting the purpose of the application. If you object, and think that being able to see your grid is still useful, please send me your feedback.
It is also time to look forward to next year. It my first year taking Management classes, since I got general requirements out of the way my first year. The department strongly suggests I take 15.279 Management Communication for Undergraduates. I just did 2 communications classes last semester, so I am grudgingly going along with their recommendation. I am also doing the requirement [[15.501|15.501 Corporate Financial Accounting] to get it out of the way, and I want to understand all of the financial terms, as well know how to manage the money in my own business. I am also doing [[14.01|14.01 Principles of Microeconomics]. I believe this is a requirement, and a fairly introductory class. I took a similar class in high school, but I have heard that the MIT version is very different! I am also taking a graduate-level management class [[15.567|15.567 The Economics of Information: Strategy, Structure and Pricing] which is about the internet and the sale of information. At MIT most of the detail classes are grad classes, so I wanted to try one out. This is my one interesting, somewhat discretionary class this semester. I have to take another math class [[6.041|6.041 Probabilistic Systems Analysis] for the management degree, so I have to do this one. I never really learned probability, which seems more interesting to me than Calculus. At HHS, the probability class was an easy math option, but I have my doubts at MIT. I also want to get a better understanding of computer science by taking a few classes, although I am not planning on majoring in CS. So I am taking the first class 6.01 Introduction to EECS to get a well-rounded introduction to computer science. This should help improve my programming by giving me a theoretical base to work from. It will be a fair bit of work, but I hope this will positively shape how I think, like 8.01/8.02 did for me last semester (see Learning to Learn at MIT. So this is 69 units, which is a lot. I may drop one of the classes if it becomes too much work.
This summer I did a bit of work on my UROP at the Media Lab on SocialSaver. If you are at MIT you can help by joining the experiment. I do not plan on continuing to work on that project. For MAS.111, I presented on my experience. I will be continuing as VPFS at Baker House and I will be picking up a job working on the Baker Website. I also plan on continuing to work on the Athena Committee for UA CSL. MIT has already started implementing some of our recommended changes to upgrade printers and move dorm printers under a full support model. I also plan on becoming more involved in SIPB, the computing club at MIT.
So that is all for now, with classes starting up at MIT, that will be taking up my time. I still have to update my bio to cover the full scope of the things I am interested in. –-ThePlaz 01:17, 10 September 2010 (EDT)

5/24/2010 Personal Update from Freshmen Spring Semester at MIT

Mon, 24 May 2010 20:47:42 +0200

I made it! I passed all my freshman year classes at MIT! I was really busy again this semester. When I look back, I don't understand how I was so busy. However, during the semester I was always optimizing every minute. I am trying to understand why I felt so busy. Part of it was that I learned the material. When I look back on a P-Set, I wonder why it took me so long to complete the first time. Of course this is normal and to be expected. Also, MIT provides an almost infinite array of options to spend every extra minute that you want to spend. Despite being over my head last semester, I took on new responsibilities this semester. I also let other activities fall to the wayside, and it felt like I spent more time on school work this semester.
It seemed like I took a lot of humanities classes this semester, and I think my writing skills have improved significantly. I took 21W.732 (Science Writing) which was the first time I had received detailed comments on my writing. In high school, I would receive a marked-up paper back from the teacher. However, in this class, I also received a page reflecting on the higher level problems of my writing. This was very helpful to me because I struggled with organization and focus. I tend to stuff too many details in, causing the reader to lose sight of the big picture. I tend to be comprehensive in my communications, whereas cutting stuff out would make the message clearer. I also need to work on how to organize large blocks of prose. In addition, I still have to work on mechanics. This semester, I wrote about Learning to Learn at MIT where I talk about how I finally learned how to study material during the first semester finals. I propose changes to THOMAS, Congress's database to make it easier to use. I wrote an article on the Sixed Sense project out of the Media Lab, and a review of Chris Anderson's The Long Tail.
I was also in MAS.111 (Introduction to Doing Research in Media Arts & Sciences), which had several professors who had been around the block a few times sharing their experience on journals, conferences, etc. It was a nice contrast to 21W.732, which discussed similar topics, but with their personal experiences as opposed to an establishment/party line point of view in 21W.732.
I started out taking STS.050 (The History of MIT) as a listener; however, I switched to taking the class for credit. The class tended to cover the state of technology in the world, and how MIT influenced and was influenced by that. This reflected the experience and interests of the professors. For example, Prof. Mindell talked about the history of the Apollo computer systems, which were invented at MIT. He even wrote a book on the topic, called Digital Apollo. The front cover of the book is an animated scene of what Neal Armstrong would have seen seconds before he touched down on the moon. Mindell researched the position of every switch and the contents of every display. The professors did not talk much about the history of MIT as an institution. Instead, students were assigned to research that. I wrote about The History of Dining and Scholarships and Financial Aid. We had to use Institute Archives to research for the paper. It was the first time I did research using actual primary sources.
I learned how to speak basic German from my mom when I was little. I never tried to read or write or learned any formal grammar. I took German 2 as a listener to learn how to read German and have a basic understanding of the grammar. I succeeded in reaching these goals that I set out, but I did not put the time in beyond that to score highly on writing pieces or exams. I felt that if I really put the time in, I could learn to speak and write correctly, as opposed to just understandably. I am unsure if I will study German more in the future.
I took 8.02 (Physics Electricity and Magnetism) and 18.02 (Mutli-Variable Calculus) which both felt like a lot of work because they had lengthy P-Sets and exams which I spent a lot of time studying for. Both of the classes are GIRs, or requirements for all students. I barely squeezed by in 18.02. I just did not like it. It just seemed like weird symbols that seemed meaningless. I only understood several important concepts when I found some nice 3D visualizations online while studying for the final. The class could be far better taught for visual learners, especially compared to 8.02. I am a big fan of the TEAL system of learning. In Physics, I felt like I understood the material better than I did first semester, but I ended up with almost the same grade. This was disappointing. I declared Course 15: Management Science. As I detailed before, I struggled to find a major that fit what I wanted to do. I was very interested in Media Lab human-computer interaction style work, as somewhat interested in STS/policy/law style issues. However, neither the Media Lab nor STS offered a major. I actually was a 17: Political Science major for 2 weeks. When I talked to the undergraduate administrator, she implied that I would be happier elsewhere. I did not want to do Course 6 (Computer Science) because I am not interested in inventing the next ZIP compression algorithm. I quickly considered Course 4 (Architecture) and 1 (Civil Engineering), but I just have minor interests in those fields. Many people urged me to major in an engineering major. I considered this, but I decided that I would rather do something that I was interested in and relevant to what I want to do. I may double major in Course 6, but I may not complete the full program. I would rather stay busy with classes around the Institute that I am interested and have time for UROPs or other experiences than just get a second line on my degree.
Next semester, I plan on taking 6.01 (Introduction to EECS 1) and 14.01 (Principles of Microeconomics). The department strongly recommends that I take 15.279 (Management Communication) next semester, so I will likely do that despite being humanities heavy this semester. I also want to take an actual management class, either 15.567 (Economics of Information: Strategy, Structure, and Pricing) or 15.501 (Corporate Financial Accounting). I will also take a math class, either 6.041 (Probabilistic Systems Analysis) or 18.06 (Linear Algebra). More info
I was elected the VPFS (Vice President of Facilities and Services) at Baker House. That put me in charge of the printers and the rooms in the basement. In conjunction with my RCC job, I supervised the trial of the Pharos hold and release printing system on our printer “bricks.” I also did the Baker House Signage Project where I replaced the visual clutter of the front door with a single nice sign, as well as installing signs in other parts of Baker. In addition, I participated in one of the most successful Exec's in history. With about 25 active members, which was about 10% of the dorm, we threw a large rooftop party during CPW. The line to get in to the party stretched down 7 floors from the roof to the ground and we signed in almost 500 people. I never thought I would learn how to run a party at MIT. This year's Exec also kept the Baker House Piano Drop traditional alive. Check out my video of the drop from the roof on YouTube.
I also became a member of the UA CSL (Committee on Student Life). I am the primary person working on changes to Athena (computer labs) and student printing. I am also on the Institute's committee that is working on changes. Although we were convened to save money, we are also working at reimagining what computer labs at MIT should look like in the future. The UA wrote a lengthy 22-page recommendation, but we decided not to release it, since the committee and the UA were on the same page. The committee is close to (or done?) a short-term recommendation, which will be coming out any day now.
I broke my old tablet computer, the T4220. After much research, I decided to get a Lenovo U350 (Model 2963-47U). I picked one up on Amazon for $500; it's actually more expensive today. I wanted to get a really light 13” machine after seeing my advisor tote his MacBook Air around China. I can't even feel the U350 in my backpack and it is very thin. It is 1/3 the price of a MacBook Air. The machine turns right on when you open the lid and goes to sleep when you close the lid. The processor is labeled as a “Pentium” but that is only Intel's marketing efforts. It only feels slow when I have 6-7 things open at once. I am not planning on doing much gaming or video encoding on the laptop, so it is perfect for me. I would highly recommend it for students.
I worked as a UROP on the SocialSaver project at the Media Lab, but I spent very little time on it. I continued to make mock-ups and icons for the project. I do not plan on continuing to work in this UROP. I may find a new UROP next semester, or I may focus on schoolwork.
I also want to do more to upgrade my website. I want to figure out how to communicate my interests beyond tech. I want the website to populate more stuff automatically. For example, delicious items should be listed on my site and when you search for something. I also need to figure out how to display OneNote Notebooks. Once I do that, more from my first year at MIT will be uploaded. MIT already proves many courses online at http://ocw.mit.edu.
I now have 41,000 photos on flickr. I uploaded many photos from the Spring Semester of MIT. If you have not yet gotten a chance, check out my pictures from China.
I will be working in Germany this summer for Deutsche Bahn, the state-owned railway company. I will be working on the [http:// touchandtravel.com Touch&Travel team]. I am excited to work on computer development at a transport company. I also am looking forward to working with RFID/NFC and mobile phone development. It will be my first time working for a big company and it will be extra challenging because of the language and cultural differences. I will be staying with relatives and commuting every day to work an hour each way. I don't think I bring my desktop with me on my trip which will be a bummer for developing. I leave later this week. That's all for now. I will be back with a new update after the summer. --ThePlaz 14:47, 24 May 2010 (EDT)

1/25/2010 Personal Update: Back from China

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:50:40 +0100

I am somewhere over the Sea of Okhotsk, off the coast of Russia, traveling at 33,200ft traveling back home from China. At home, it is 4:09 AM. In China, it's 5:09PM. I was in China as part of an MIT class, 6.A53, Entrepreneurship and China. We traveled through Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guilin, Yangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong. Along the way we visited companies, universities, and entrepreneurs. We also saw the sights of China and participated in the MAD 2010 Asia conference. It was a high paced tour of China's customs and business.
Google Earth file of trip
Taken with Amod GPS Logger
The trip started on January 1st. to Shanghai. There were a lot of families traveling back home on the airplane. Shanghai is the world's largest city, and it sprawls out since it is not contained by anything like Manhattan or Hong Kong. We took their $1.2 billion USD maglev ride. It was cool, but it did not really go too far. Also the maglev did not have good English. That was a recurring theme in China, even official tourist sites don't have good English.

We then got on their metro system. The system is all very new, all the stations look the same, and it is expanding with a line opening every month or so. This is so incredible. In the US a city is considered transit friendly if it opens a new line every decade!

On one day, we visited the Shanghai World Financial Center, one of the world's tallest building. So apparently that title is very contentious with what counts as a building and what is included in the height count. Wikipedia says it is the third tallest building in the world, but the highest occupied floor, the highest height to roof, and the highest observation deck. We were their a day before the Burj Khalifa opened and took some of the title of highest occupied floor and highest height to roof.

There are signs for the expo everywhere. I really hope to get to go. I think it will be one of the last big ones as they are expensive with little direct benefit. We had an hour one morning, so we visited the construction site.

All of the buildings, including the subway, use this granite. I suppose it makes the building look fancy, but it is very annoying. It is everywhere in China, and I think it makes the buildings feel cool and inhospitable. The worst part is when it rains. Depending on how it is cut, it can be very slippery.
Where we were was a very wealthy area. It was a home for the newly wealthy Chinese to enjoy conspicuous consumption, American style. In addition, there were a lot of hawkers. You could could buy a fake Rolex only a few feet from a luxury store selling legitimate ones.

It was very cold when we were in China, around 0C. Due to an old law, buildings below the Yangtze River cannot have heaters. Almost all of the homes have these inefficient “air conditioners” which have electric heaters in them. Dorms rooms do not have heat. One school even requires students to go to another building for water or showers! Even the Chinese think this is a little too rustic. The classrooms have a little heat, but are still cold by American standards. The hallways are not heated as well. I've also seen this trend in the Caribbean.
It is very hard for a Chinese student to break out and stand out. Entrance to universities in China is by entrance exam, counting school skills only. They have to work very hard to get to the top-tier university in China. But once they get there, the road is still very long. Only a few can go to an American graduate school, let alone MIT. Even if they go to American grad school it is challenging to find a company willing to sponsor their work visa. But they do work very hard to learn science and engineering.

The students do not get much chance to work as a team or think creatively. Entrepreneurship in China in some senses is very strong; there seem to be millions of people selling stuff. However, entrepreneurship as a career path is not looked upon as high as a standard position in a large company. In addition, the infrastructure is not ready to support ventures who want to go for economies of scale and lead the industry, in the way that Silicone Valley ventures do. Part of this might just be the scale of business in China. The cost of labor is so low that firms can not really use technology to compete. In addition, failure is highly stigmatized, where as westerns know that one learns for failure.
One of these universities serves more meals in a minute than MIT does all night. It is also far lower cost. One meal is about $7 RMB, or 1 USD, while MIT struggles to make money off $7 USD meals. Granted, it looks like a prison cafeteria and the food is mass produced, but the cost is so much lower.

Cisco has set up an R&D center in China with about 1,500 people. They told us that they did that as a pre-condition for being able to sell to the Chinese government and state-owned telcos. It does look like they invested a lot of money into the center. The people we saw seemed to be doing testing – for operations and temperature. I got the feeling that the center does the testing and entry-level engineering, which Americans would find too boring. I suspect that these centers will be doing more and more. The Chinese are also very proud to be doing entry-level engineering work for an American firm. (no photos from this stop)
We visited two large factories, one produced bags and the other produced clothes. One had a city of about 12,000 people. Both worked for many well-known US brands side by side in different production lines. The label is responsible for the design, picking the fabric, and ensuring quality. The cost of the product to manufacture is about 1/5 of retail cost. The workers make a little more than $1,000 RMB a month (about $150 USD). Both companies were run by Hong Kong owners and managers. The company with the large city had a 300 room “hotel” for its managers.

These factories are successful because of the nearly endless stream of China's 1.3 billion people into the city looking to take any job they can. Southern China at $1000 RMB/month is actually too expensive; many factories are moving up north where labor is only about $500 RMB/month. Remember the cost of living is far, far lower. From what we saw, the workers seemed OK with the work. They want to work more and earn overtime. For them it's better than the farm where they made nothing on plots the size of an Olympic-sized swimming pool. People's quality of life is improving, but for many, a comfortable life still has a long way to go.
I liked the town of Yungsho very much. It was a very outdoorsy-tourist town, like the Jersey Shore. That means that the town does not have big luxury hotels and stores, only moderate priced locally-operated stores. They said that before most of the visitors were western, not now it is 80% Chinese. The town exists for the wonderful landscape that you can see with rafting down the river in a Bamboo raft, or riding a bike.

We took a sleeper train from Guilin to Shenzhen. It was the first time I had taken a sleeper train, and I enjoyed the experience. China's railroads have very little scenery around as you go by. The train station in Shanghai was very nice and big. I was surprised at how many people were in there. They also have more of a process where you wait in a waiting room and when you exit, you take a separate path. The trains were also all full, even the CRH (China Rail Highspeed). In the west the train system is used mostly by business travelers, and is far more expensive. In China, everyone travels by rail. The cost of a ticket, even for high-speed, is only a few US dollars.

When you cross the border into Hong Kong, it feels very different. It just seems cleaner and more modern, including the customs building. 95% of the signs are in English as well, and they use good English. The place has more history and they don't use that granite tile everywhere. The trade-off is that the buildings are older and smaller. Our hotel room was very small. Over the border in Shenzhen we had four times the space for the same cost.

Over the trip, I read both Superfusion and China Inc. Both were written before the current recession. Superfusion's thesis was that the United States and China's economy have become, without much notice, intertwined and inseparable. An idea that I agree with, but can be described with far fewer words. I enjoyed China Inc. much more. It recounted this history of China and smoothly jumped from topic to topic on China's economic rise. It explained much of what I was saw and experienced for myself in China.
I believe that in the future, pure manufacturing and engineering jobs will continue to leave the country, much to the protest of unions whose artificially high wages and benefits will come crashing down. The US still has the lead in creative enterprises for now. As the Recession Generation article from Newsweek points out, the US will be faced with a world where credit may not be as easy as it was in 2008 and where more people are facing a comfortable standard of living around the world. However, I disagree with the assessment made in the article that hard work no longer pays off in America. We will have to continue to work hard, study science and engineering, and come to terms with the new way things are. Personally, I think that all of the hours I have put in have led to my admission to MIT and my selection to go on this trip. Entrepreneurship and advancement in a company are still tied to hard work. Americans cannot grow up and be entitled to a job. There is too much competition from worldwide.
I took over 5,300 photos and videos on this trip. Most are geotagged. They are on Flickr

12/18/2009 Lesson Learned and Embracing Scholarship: End of the First Semester at MIT

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 04:11:11 +0100

It is the end of my first semester at MIT. I have not seen any of the grades yet - hopefully I will do well enough to pass. The physics final was a perfect bell shaped curve around 50%.

MIT is the first time that I really had to seriously study for a class. As such, I did not do as well as I have historically done. But that is why MIT has pass/no record for the first semester. For 8.01/Physics: Mechanics, I studied 40 hours for the final, 10 for 3.091/Solid State Chemistry, and 35 for 18.01/Single Variable Calculus. If I had worked during the year, it would have been less. But that intensive end of year studying made me realize some things:
It is very important to figure out how you learn best. I went to a one day presentation by Edward Tufte last month. He did not like how an aircraft manufacture mandated that they move to a paper-less system with the design of their new aircraft. He thinks that people can understand something much better when they are looking at something on a piece of paper. Also the process should not get in the way of the result.
I agree, and I realized that I have been sometimes putting the process ahead of learning stuff. I have talked at great length about Tablet PCs. Last year, I did all my class work on a tablet PC, and I talked positively about the experience. This year, I used a tablet in 8.01 and 3.091. I used paper for 18.01. I found that I learned stuff better in 18.01. When I really need to concentrate, I need to write on paper. There are no distractions, I can focus on what I am doing. For studying, I sat down with a large pack of paper and worked through problems.
In a history class, a computer is still great to type notes, and look up stuff. If you have a professor's slides it is nice to write on top of them during the lecture. A tablet is great for making small drawings quickly and digitally. Most people can type much faster than they can write, and writing seems to go slower on a tablet. Apple has shown that a tablet can make a nice mobile interface, if software has been designed for it, but I realize now there is a reason tablets have gone mainstream.
I bought a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500. It was expensive, but it is awesome! I can throw my entire notebook in it and it will quickly scan through. It has an ultrasonic overlap detector that is fairly good at detecting problems. Its scan quality of typed papers is excellent. It also OCRs typed text to make it searchable in Adobe Reader. Handwriting is still a challenge. When I started ThePlaz.com I would spend 10 hours putting notes online. By not labeling stuff and doing auto upload I could do it in 2 hours. Now it takes a minute or two.
You also have to pay attention in class. In high school, you could often not pay attention in class and look something up on the internet. At MIT, every minute matters. You also really need to be awake and paying attention in every class. Some mornings that is a challenge, but it will catch up to you.
When it comes time to study, it is so hard to get started. But when you get over the hump, and get started it is easier to stay focused. You also need to stay concentrating, one chat message tears you away and it takes a few minutes to get back into it. You also need to make sure you do not have anywhere to go. One of the biggest struggles in the semester was always having to be somewhere. You can make yourself very busy at MIT, but you need time to study. This was my mistake in this first semester. You need to clear your schedule for the next few hours and work.
For example, I would often go to review sessions or office hours simply because I felt like I should be doing something to study. The sessions, of course, would only be open for a certain length of time, so I would want to take advantage of it. But those session are generally helpful only when you come prepared with questions. Otherwise you just give the appearance of studying. Usually it is best to just lock yourself away in a quite area and study.
Having a clean desk is also important. One student on my floor has his desk in his room completely empty of stuff. He can focus on what he is working on. I always go out in the hall when I need to concentrate. Most recently, I found an old office in the Media Lab that has been vacant. I went in, spread my stuff out, and worked for 6 hours.
In the middle of the semester I felt like I did not learn much of anything; but after studying I felt that I mastered a lot of concepts at the end of the semester. Certainly not all of them (see physics exam final curve) I knew in the beginning of the year that classes were the part of MIT I least looked forward to. Now that I have proved to myself that I can do it, I feel like anything is possible. I knew that it was critical to learn these concepts because classes next semester will use them and will award letter grades. I may now decide to pursue an engineering major.
I can not decide what major to do. On one hand, Course 17/Political Science, is something I am interested and has the least requirements of any major, allowing me to explore more different things that MIT has to offer. The department has a single digit (<10) number of students per year. On the other hand, many people have urged me to take an engineering major. About a third of MIT students do Course 6/Computer Science, but I feel like I want a smaller, more individualized program. Course 3/Material Science would be something completely different. I now know that if I focus, I can do it, but will I be happy working on something like that? The analytical and problem solving skills that you learn there are applicable to anything. You feel that you can master anything.
Now don't get wrong, MIT is an awesome place. I have plenty that I would rather do than classes. As I talk about in the last update, I would rather be a grad student - free to work on projects.
The new Media Lab building, E14, is now open. Photos on Flickr. The building really really looks nice. The lab looks to have gained many more students - it hasn't - they are just more visible now. The grand opening is next year.
This January I will be in China with MIT, with the 6.A53 advising seminar. I am really happy to be going. As always, photos will be posted. For the last class, our advisor brought in Zach Anderson. Zach not only did the MBTA subway hack, but now works full time in a startup to make energy recovering shock absorbers. It is Popular Science's Invention of the Year. The project has caught the notice of military top brass as well as GM, since it can lower fuel costs by around 5-10%. Zach is an awesome role model.
Next semester, I pre-registered for 18.02/Multi-Variable Calculus, Phyiscs Electricity and Magnetism, 21F.403/German 3, and 21W.732/a writing class. I am also going to be a listener for STS.050/The History of MIT. I am also doing MAS.111/Introduction to Doing Research in Media Arts & Sciences which should not be much work.
I am doing German 3, because I got an internship at Deutsche Bahn this summer in the Touch&Travel department. Here is an article in English from 18 months ago http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleprint/3950/-1/1 It will be very challenging, due to the language, since I will be working with hardware, and programming for an enterprise. I knew German from my mom and can speak it at home fairly well. I lack, however, the business and technical vocab words. In addition, I've never really read or wrote German. I can read if I go very slowly and sound out the words. In addition, working with hardware is something that I've not done before. I've ordered an RFID kit and some books to start working with the stuff. I hope to replicate Zach's experiment and learn how to build a system which is Zach-proof. You can make stuff secure - if you really try hard. If you make some small mistakes, (like wireless WEP encryption) your stuff is, as Ars Technica puts it, crap-o. Mobile is also a very interesting space. I am excited to be working internationally, for a transit company, on mobile products after my freshman year.
One of the things I realized at MIT is how hard it is to do things when you start from scratch. At the Media Lab, we work with technology that is at least 3-4 years from the market. We don't know how something will actually work, we must make a good decision and hope that it will be good in 15 years. The Mifare system is a good example. When it was first designed in 1993, it was several years from its first implementation. Today, billions of rides have been granted using the cards, and there is no way to fix the broken system. I talk about this a lot on The Weekly Spin audio podcast.
--ThePlaz 21:53, 18 December 2009 (EST)

10/11/2009 ThePlaz.com Update from MIT

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:54:21 +0200

My first semester is halfway over at MIT. My 3 hardest classes are 3.091 (Solid State Chemistry), 8.01 (Physics), 18.01 (Calculus). All 3 featured content that I also learned in high school, although at a far more difficult level. Physics forces you to work with derivatives and integrals to understand what's really going on. Calculus revolves around the proofs. If you are not perfectly clear on the rules of algebra, it's a real challenge. The work revolves around the edge cases which require you to really understand the material, not just memorize formulas. Chemistry is taught by a professor who is big into battery research, in fact he is fairly wealthy as a result. He gets really into his lectures too which makes it fun. You can watch them online
The first semester is pass/no record - which is a good because I still need to find the right amount of studying to do. I need to be better at memorizing what I am not interested in. I think I never properly focused the time on academics in high school. In Middle School, I had built up so much momentum that I coasted through the first part of high school, and in the second half, I was able to make it through thanks to grade inflation and cramming. I really need to get on top of things more. During the week, it's a challenge to get done everything I need for just these 3 classes - let alone get ahead. I've felt like I spend a few days really working to start being comfortable in one class and then I am behind in the others and it becomes a never ending cycle.
I am far more interested in my MAS.110 and 6.A53 classes, as well as my UROP. MAS.110 covers typographic design and how we interact and think about technology. It is an introduction to the Media Lab, part of the Media Lab freshman year program. 6.A53 only meets for a few hours each week and is fairly informal. One person owns a clothing store in New Jersey, and my advisor owns a [http:// rallypoint.info company making hi-tech gloves for the military]. In class, we are doing a basic introduction to China and we talk around business. Recently we have been planning for a business plan competition. I am wondering which is better - a business that grows agilely and uses rapid prototyping to get out in the market fast to test its ideas, and then finds funding ("bottom up") - or the slow and steady approach of building up relationships and team members for months before having a big launch ("top down").
I also have a UROP in the Media Lab, working on SocialSaver, a project to study if knowing what your friends are buying/doing will affect you. I created a mobile HTML menu (for iPhone), as well as UI and design for the group. It's great because I am working with 3 other undergraduates who have different skills in programming. Unlike the SeniorQuoter group study and Videre in Governor's School, everyone can program. In addition, there are so many parts that each person can work on a different part. One person is making a native iPhone app in Objective C, another is programming for Android in Java, and a third is working on the back end with Python in Django. My advisor, Kwan, manages the project and designs the interfaces to make all the parts work together. It's a really good experience to work on a highly-talented programming team. I'll post more about the project once it is public.
I also try and attend various talks and lectures. On Monday, I am going to Startup Bootcamp. Last week I went to a talk by the former mayor of Shanghai, and the week before that I listened to Noam Chomsky. I find these peripheral activities much more interesting than classes.
Geoov is done as well. You should be able to add your own geotagged photos on the map. My issue is always publicizing the sites. I need to do more to help that. I was also behind the Sprout contest on Facebook. For big brands, it shows the power of social networks to spread awareness without traditional advertising. For me, it shows what a big brand can accomplish just by putting its name on something; Tecker 911 was never even close to that level of popularity. Perhaps we should have been more adapting to the needs of our audience.
My Palm Pre has been very useful for the fast paced life at MIT. I can quickly check my schedule or look something up. I also use it a lot for talk; I went over by a few minutes last month! I am also getting to explore Boston. See my flickr photos.

--ThePlaz 00:54, 11 October 2009 (EDT) Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail., Subscribe via RSS feed, Subscribe via email, Detailed feed, See past updates

8/17/2009 ThePlaz.com Roundup Summer 2009 Update

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:03:32 +0200

So the summer is coming to a close. I leave for MIT in about 48 hours. Let me tell you what went on this summer.
The first thing you may notice is that ThePlaz.com has a new look since July 12th! It's called Nuvola for the Nuvola icons it uses. I wanted to make the site easy to use and make it look less like Wikipedia. The first big change is that the dropdown menu is now "part of the site" instead of "part of the page". In addition, the subjects have big icons and a better looking and working drop down. The drop downs was one of the first things I programmed in 2006. Second, the sidebar is redesigned to make it easier. User actions are hidden unless they are needed. The edit button is big and yellow. I separated out page operations and site operations. I integrated the MediaWiki and Google search boxes. The third big improvement is the new footer which has lots of info about me. One colum is my friendfeed which brings together my flickr, twitter, delicious, blog entries, etc. Once I publish this update, it will be on the list. The second column is my most recent 10 flickr sets. The third column has my sites that used to be in the header and some info about me. Finally, I spent several hours optimizing the site for quick loading on slow connections. It should work with Firefox, Opera, IE 7 and 8, and WebKit (Opera, Safari, Palm Pre). IE 6 works without drop downs. If you are using IE6, please do the internet a favor and upgrade. Read more about the Nuvola Skin
Geoov is a new prototype I created. I was frustrated that there was no way to get an overview of your geotagged photos on flickr. I did some investigation and I was able to use Google Maps's MarkerCluster in order to solve the problem of too many points on one page. As you zoom in, the clusters break up smaller and smaller until you read an individual photo. When you click on the pushpin, the photo appears. Check it out! Geoov only does my photos now, and make sure you are running the latest version of your browser.
I got a Palm Pre!! photos I felt that I needed a smart phone in order to stay connected at MIT and because I am interested in mobile development. I like the Palm Pre because it seems like it is in middle of everything: business (keyboard, exchange) and personal (fun, graphical); open (hackable, homebrew) and usable (app store, Linux hidden); web programming (using JS and CSS) and native programming (stages, assistants); new (2 months old, not many apps) but liked by reviewers (not N800). I did get the Touchstone (it was on sale!) and the webOS programmers guide. I have a few ideas.....
All summer, I have been doing The Weekly Spin where my friends and I talk about the most interesting technology stories each week. I have advanced access to Microsoft Office 2010, and I've talked about my experiences with that, along with plenty of talk about the Palm Pre. We are still ranting about the cell phone industry and the music industry, and Gdovin is still talking Apple rumors, so don't worry. Subscribe to the weekly audio I hope that I can still do the show at MIT.
Tecker 911 has reached the end! We have shot and edited 100 episodes! Head to http://911.tecker.net to watch them all! I am so proud that we were able to reach our goal of 100 episodes. Thank you also to Gdovin, Reed, and Jordan for hanging in there. The last 40 episodes went especially quickly. Watch episode 100 for a look back at our history.
At the end of the summer, I have been traveling a lot. Not everything is online yet, but check out my most recent photos on Flickr including New York City, Ocean City, MD and Hershey Park. As and always, everything is geotagged! I also did a stone project in my backyard.
Next year, I will be at MIT! (Why MIT) I did get into the advising seminar I wanted. This January, I will be going to China to learn about entrepreneurship, in part on MIT's dime. I got into the dorm I wanted, Baker House. I will be in the Product Design FPOP next week. I don't know what I am doing or what I will post, but look for it here. I applied to be a blogger for the admissions office, so my next post may be on there. Finally, I still plan on doing the Media Lab Freshman Year program. I am so excited to go up there.
--ThePlaz 09:03, 21 August 2009 (EDT) Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail., Subscribe via RSS feed, Subscribe via email, Detailed feed, See past updates

8/17/2009 ThePlaz.com Roundup Summer 2009 Update

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:03:10 +0200

So the summer is coming to a close. I leave for MIT in about 48 hours. Let me tell you what went on this summer.
The first thing you may notice is that ThePlaz.com has a new look since July 12th! It's called Nuvola for the Nuvola icons it uses. I wanted to make the site easy to use and make it look less like Wikipedia. The first big change is that the dropdown menu is now "part of the site" instead of "part of the page". In addition, the subjects have big icons and a better looking and working drop down. The drop downs was one of the first things I programmed in 2006. Second, the sidebar is redesigned to make it easier. User actions are hidden unless they are needed. The edit button is big and yellow. I separated out page operations and site operations. I integrated the MediaWiki and Google search boxes. The third big improvement is the new footer which has lots of info about me. One colum is my friendfeed which brings together my flickr, twitter, delicious, blog entries, etc. Once I publish this update, it will be on the list. The second column is my most recent 10 flickr sets. The third column has my sites that used to be in the header and some info about me. Finally, I spent several hours optimizing the site for quick loading on slow connections. It should work with Firefox, Opera, IE 7 and 8, and WebKit (Opera, Safari, Palm Pre). IE 6 works without drop downs. If you are using IE6, please do the internet a favor and upgrade. Read more about the Nuvola Skin
Geoov is a new prototype I created. I was frustrated that there was no way to get an overview of your geotagged photos on flickr. I did some investigation and I was able to use Google Maps's MarkerCluster in order to solve the problem of too many points on one page. As you zoom in, the clusters break up smaller and smaller until you read an individual photo. When you click on the pushpin, the photo appears. Check it out! Geoov only does my photos now, and make sure you are running the latest version of your browser.
I got a Palm Pre!! photos I felt that I needed a smart phone in order to stay connected at MIT and because I am interested in mobile development. I like the Palm Pre because it seems like it is in middle of everything: business (keyboard, exchange) and personal (fun, graphical); open (hackable, homebrew) and usable (app store, Linux hidden); web programming (using JS and CSS) and native programming (stages, assistants); new (2 months old, not many apps) but liked by reviewers (not N800). I did get the Touchstone (it was on sale!) and the webOS programmers guide. I have a few ideas.....
All summer, I have been doing The Weekly Spin where my friends and I talk about the most interesting technology stories each week. I have advanced access to Microsoft Office 2010, and I've talked about my experiences with that, along with plenty of talk about the Palm Pre. We are still ranting about the cell phone industry and the music industry, and Gdovin is still talking Apple rumors, so don't worry. Subscribe to the weekly audio I hope that I can still do the show at MIT.
Tecker 911 has reached the end! We have shot and edited 100 episodes! Head to http://911.tecker.net to watch them all! I am so proud that we were able to reach our goal of 100 episodes. Thank you also to Gdovin, Reed, and Jordan for hanging in there. The last 40 episodes went especially quickly. Watch episode 100 for a look back at our history.
At the end of the summer, I have been traveling a lot. Not everything is online yet, but check out my most recent photos on Flickr including New York City, Ocean City, MD and Hershey Park. As and always, everything is geotagged! I also did a stone project in my backyard.
Next year, I will be at MIT! (Why MIT) I did get into the advising seminar I wanted. This January, I will be going to China to learn about entrepreneurship, in part on MIT's dime. I got into the dorm I wanted, Baker House. I will be in the Product Design FPOP next week. I don't know what I am doing or what I will post, but look for it here. I applied to be a blogger for the admissions office, so my next post may be on there. Finally, I still plan on doing the Media Lab Freshman Year program. I am so excited to go up there.
--ThePlaz 09:03, 21 August 2009 (EDT) Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail., Subscribe via RSS feed, Subscribe via email, Detailed feed, See past updates

6/9/2009 ThePlaz Roundup

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 04:08:03 +0200

I've graduated from high school! (pictures on flickr) It has not really sunk in yet; it just feels like a normal summer vacation. I am sad to be leaving my friends behind. In addition, I tried out to give the commencement speech, but Chris Denny won. You can read my speech online.
Our Senior Prank was regarded as the best ever. Even the Principal joined in. Watch the YouTube video
Up until the last minute, I was involved with Haverford High School. With 3 other students, I wrote a new technology policy draft and presented it to the superintendent. I have an opinion/editorial in the school newspaper, The Fordian. I hear that the school is using my policy as a base for changes next year, and that they are currently planning a 3-month test period. Plans, however, are not finalized. The best part, however, was to pass on a tradition of activism to the 3 other students. I am also staying in touch on the new TV studio.
I did my Senior Project on Electronic Voting Machine Insecurity. Check out the very extensive 26-page paper and the PowerPoint presentation. I covered this topic from almost every angle and found that constant vigilance is needed to protect this fragile system.
All of the OneNote Notebooks from 12th Grade are now online. Unfortunately, they only works in Internet Explorer and Opera, because of the method I use. (Come on Microsoft!)
I got a new desktop! My old desktop, an Inspiron 600m from 8th Grade was no longer able to chug through Facebook JavaScript. In addition, because I will be going away soon, I needed my own high powered desktop to be able to edit HD video and manage all of my files. I purchased a new Dell Inspiron 537 desktop. It has an Intel Q9400 2.66GHz Quad-Core processor and 4GB of RAM. I bought 2 20" Dell displays and a dual DVI ATI graphics card to handle them. I installed Windows 7 RC 64-bit. It was all about $1000, and well worth it! Pictures on Flickr.
Next year, I will be at MIT! (Why MIT) I've already signed up for the housing lottery, taken an essay placement test, and put down 5 options for an advising seminar. I most want to get into 6.A53 Entrepreneurship and China since you learn about global entrepreneurship and get to take a 1 month trip to China for $1000. I am also interested in learning more about the electric grid (6.A54), operations research (15.A03), and designing consumer electronics at the Media Lab (MAS.A19). Finally, I may get the opportunity to have Walter Bender, the director of the OLPC UI "Sugar", as my adviser in Games, Puzzlers, and Other Things to Think With (MAS.A12).
Remember, I am on The Weekly Spin where my friends and I talk about the most interesting technology stories each week. Subscribe to the weekly audio
I will be going to New York City tomorrow, look for (geotagged) pictures! Meanwhile, look for pictures from Dorney Park, and my families' Prius taken apart to clean.
Lastly, I am planning on redesigning the CSS drop down menu for ThePlaz.com. It was one of the first things I coded 4 years ago. It works on some browsers, but breaks on others. I can do better.
-ThePlaz 22:05, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

5/19/2009 ThePlaz.com Roundup

Wed, 20 May 2009 05:43:02 +0200

Boy has it been a long time since I last updated this. There is so much to cover that I avoid starting to blog, which only leads to more stuff to cover....
After much thought, I have decided to attend MIT as an undergraduate. See Why MIT for my reasoning.
My second choice was to attend Drexel in their Information Science program, were I received a full tuition scholarship. Penn State had a nice program which was very similar. In addition, I was accepted at their honors college. However, University Park was a bit too remote for me. Temple also gave me full tuition and honors program, but I am not a fan of Northeast Philadelphia and the program did not stand out. I had originally wanted to go to Northeastern, also in Boston, but it would have cost me twice as much as any other option.
I am really looking forward to moving to Cambridge this fall and being among the top 1,000 or so seniors interested in using technology to improve people's lives. I have no clue what to major in (which is interesting because I have always thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do). At MIT, you don't have to pick your major until later, and a major is not too big of a deal. Finally, MIT made me a financial offer tied for first with two other schools.
I am excited for the opportunity MIT provides. I am planning on being part of the Media Lab's Freshman Year Program. The Media Lab is widely recognized as a leading innovator in new technology and user interface design. I am also interested in Political Science and a few other things. We will see. For housing I am going for Baker, Simmons, and German House in that order.
SocialView released 2 new products since I last wrote. ForumsPlace is an attempt to build a new community site and 4Change is a petitions app for Facebook. I think 4Change is promising because it uses the social power of Facebook to spread.
I did get a GPS receiver for the holidays and I took it on a few trips with me. It is a bit of a pain to run and merge the photos with location data, but it is worth it! I am planning on doing a Tecker 911 episode (#85) on it. You can see that in a few months....
I posted a lot of photos to Flickr recently, since I traveled a lot. I went to Boston twice. Once to visit Northeastern, and a month later to visit MIT for CPW. Over spring break my family went to the Caribbean on the Caribbean Princess. I also went to the Met, the Philadelphia Opera, and National Train Day at 30th Street Station. On most of these trips I took my geotagger. More than half of my 23,000 photos are geotagged; you can see my Flickr map. I don't like the way the new Flickr mapping system work since it does not make it easy to discover locations....
Tecker 911 hit a slowdown because Premiere Pro CS4 did not work very well. I have posted up to episode 74 at 911.tecker.net. Today we filmed up to episode 86. Hopefully things will get going again and we can get up to 100 episodes before college starts. Our goal is to finish with 100 episodes.
Recently, I created a Hell's Kitchen spoof and I posted a short film I made when I was 10. I just got a new Canon Vixia HF100. It produces really nice looking HD video provided you have enough light. My friend got a Nikon D90 which is capable, once you figure it out, of taking some really good photographs, like this one.
You may notice that ThePlaz.com homepage has been redesigned. Check out the new "FriendFeed" section which pulls together my activity on the web from 13 different places including Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Status Updates, Delicious, and many others. This will replace many sidebar widgets and hopefully speed up the site by reducing the amount of JavaScript code. I also moved the site to a new host which is a lot more expensive but does support Memcached.
Remember, I am tagging interesting sites with Delicious. I joined The Weekly Spin where my friends and I talk about the most interesting technology stories each week. Subscribe to the weekly audio
Material from the 1st semester of 12th Grade is now online. I found a way to export OneNote notebooks to the web which preserves its appearance. Unfortunately, it only works in Internet Explorer and Opera. However, it is now very easy to upload stuff; it used to take me hours to do a class.
Hopefully I will post more often in the future. -ThePlaz 23:42, 19 May 2009 (EDT)

12/17/2008 State of ThePlaz (Michael Plasmeier)

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:51:25 +0100

12th Grade is almost half over. This year has certainly been less work than previous years. I am enjoying my final year in high school with about half the workload of previous years.
I've been using my tablet to take notes in school. Before the year started, I detailed my experiences in The Quest for the Perfect Notetaking Medium, an essay I wrote for College Applications. It has certainly allowed me to be more organized while spending far less time organizing. Also, being in front of a computer allows me to accomplish tasks when I think of them, not at home. It makes the day feel like it lasts longer. As for notes on ThePlaz.com, I am now more aware of copyright concerns and I am developing my strategy for posting this years notes.
This also means I am deep into college applications. I have applied at about 5 or 6 schools. I am looking for a large university in an urban environment with an information science program. I would also like a minor in business. My final decision will come down to a decision between a number of alternative paths I am looking into. Financial concerns will also play a large part into choosing a school.
For the holidays, I have asked for a GPS tagger for a digital camera. I hope to look more into geotagging in the future. I have not found an application that can give you an overview of all of your geotagged photos......
Tecker 911 is up to 60 episodes online. I have about 7 which I have edited but are giving me a lot of trouble to render (or finalize). Also, we filmed 7 more last weekend. In the meantime you can enjoy: 60: Cell Phone Internet, 59: Digital Camera Workflow, 58: Firefox 3, and more on our website! We are hoping to make it to 100 episodes by the end of the school year.
With SocialView we are working on 2 new products. I need to dedicate more time for this. After working on the outsourced GridView rearrange feature I need to find the passion for continuing to do interesting projects. I am finding it is hard to do a full day of school and homework and then come home and work.
I am also using Delicious to "micro-blog" sites I find interesting. Subscribe to that RSS feed! or watch the sidebar on every page.

9/14/2008 State of ThePlaz (Michael Plasmeier)

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 04:20:30 +0200

Hey everyone! It's been 2 and a half months since I last wrote and much has happened since then! For one of those months I was at the the Pennsylvania Governor's Schools of Excellence in Information, Society & Technology at Drexel. While I was there I had lots of fun spending time with technical minded people. (Photos on Flickr) I wrote an article on what I learned there I lead a team which created Videre, a proof of concept for how to improve online gradebooks. Check out the demo!
The month after Gov School, I had off. I relaxed at home and more importantly launched the GridView arrange feature! It was very long awaited, unfortunately. This was cool because it was the longest, largest, most expensive project I had ever designed and led. Watch a 3 minute demo on YouTube I am very proud of the design and the integration challenges we overcame.
Tecker 911 is up to 51 episodes online with 9 more coming in a few days (they are uploading as I type). Meanwhile enjoy: 51: Podcasting, 50: Taking a Break, 49: TiVo, 48: OLPC, 47: PayPal Security Key, 46: Bookmooch, and more on our website!
On ThePlaz.com, I added my work from PreCalc (and there is a lot of it), AP Micro Econ and a few things I did in Biology. For 11th Grade, I only uploaded the notes from structured courses. Less structured courses I did not bother with, and I tried not to upload worksheets and teacher's papers.
I also wrote Laptops for Students and E-Note Taking over the summer which gives some of my experience using laptops in school, and I am branching off The Quest for the Perfect Notetaking Medium as a College Application essay.
In the last 2 weeks, I have started 12th Grade. This quarter, I am taking Entrepreneurship, English 12, Business Law, and Calculus. I have also started applying to colleges. I have look at more than 130 colleges and I have developed 3 "paths" I can follow. What I like best right now is an Information Science program at a school that keeps you in the real world like Drexel and Northeastern. A second choice is a more academically rigorous, less "practical" Computer Science program at a prestigious liberal arts school. A third choice is a school which is more geared for entrepreneurship. I would also like to minor in business.
SeniorQuoter 2.0beta2 was released yesterday. Beta2 fixes almost 95% of the outstanding bugs in version 2.0. Check it out!
At school this year, I am the CTO this year at the publications office. I am also a senior host at H-Vision which is further evolving this year.
I am also using Delicious now and I am tagging and commenting pages I find interesting. Subscribe to that RSS feed! or watch the sidebar on every page.
Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 22:20, 14 September 2008 (EDT)

6/30/2008 Personal Update

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:35:14 +0200

Hey everyone! I am in the Pennsylvania Governor's Schools of Excellence in Information, Society & Technology at Drexel now for 5 weeks. It's great to be around people with the same passion for technology. It's a diverse group - about half have some programming experience. I'm the only PHP expert and the only one who knew about version control systems. Still they have a lot of creative ideas and good input for fleshing out ideas. It looks like our ITP will be a reboot of SeniorQuoter making it modular and building a voting system (favorite song, class couple, prom song, etc).
We are also very close to launching new features for GridView! It's going to be very cool! It's been in the works for many months now!
I finished uploading my notes for American Studies. PreCalc is next. I don't think I will do any others. I know Physics still says "coming soon" even though that class ended 6 months ago.....
Tecker 911 is up to 52 episodes edited and 60 filmed. I just have to release more!
Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 21:35, 30 June 2008 (EDT)

5/18/2008 Personal Update

Mon, 19 May 2008 17:09:55 +0200

Hey everyone! I think I just went through the hardest months of my life. I was taking 4 major classes in school (the maximum) and I just took 3 AP exams (US History, Psychology, and Micro Econ)
In the meantime, I've been very busy with GridView. Things are shaping up with 876,340 users, and some cool features in the works.
I also have a month of school left! And I don't think I ever said that I was accepted into Pennsylvania Governor's Schools of Excellence in Information, Society & Technology. It's a 5 week residence program at Drexel University. Since I am looking closely at the iSchool at Drexel (it is at the top of my list) for colleges, this is like a 5-week free trial. According to one graduate of the person I talked to, it was the best thing in her life (above regular college too).
With all of this hectic things, I've neglected Tecker 911, SeniorQuoter and posting stuff to this site. All I managed to put up was my projects, if that. I haven't added any scanned papers in the last 3 months.
I am also active in school events. I was the media manager for Locks of Love which is tomorrow and I ran the TV operations for Mr. Haverford with a crew of 4-5.
Recent Flickr photos include: the 2008 BLAST (after-prom), Mr. Haverford 2008, Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination, thousands of photos from my Spring Break trip out West to the natural sights, and the addition on my house is done. See all
Also, I bout a new tablet pc! It's a Fujitsu T4220. It's a perfect blend of performance, portability, and since I bought a refurb at 60% of the list price, a good value too. It's running Microsoft Vista, which has new features for tablets (and is not all that bad!). It's only got 1GB of RAM, but I haven't noticed that at all! I was all ready to buy an upgrade, but I'm waiting now. I really like taking notes in OneNote (and that will make it easier to update this site) Also, since I am using Outlook with the Connector for MSN, I get my email (even sent mail), calender, contacts, and tasks synced online and on my 2 computers. It's very nice! I have an unboxing video I need to find the time to put together.
Plus, my family signed up for the Verizon FiOS triple play. I am waiting for the 15/2MBS internet, but I am not looking forward to getting rid of my HD DirecTivo! (sorry Tivo- it was really great when it came out)
PS Hi Mr. Siegerman!
Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 23:35, 18 May 2008 (EDT)

2/28/2008 Personal Update

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 04:36:17 +0100

Hey everyone! It has been 2 months since I last wrote an update.
The Dynamic Website Building Instruction and Practical Experience Group Study has been over for a month and we shipped SeniorQuoter 2.0beta1. Visit the SeniorQuoter site for all the details, screenshots, downloads, and ways you can help. Version 2 adds an administration interface. We are only 20 bugs away from releasing version 2.0, so please see how you can help.
Tecker 911 is coming along nicely. We have 44 episodes done and edited with the last 7 in HD (not out yet). The last few that were released are: Episode 33: Portable Apps, Episode 32: Web Hosting, and Episode 31: Flickr
And you can join in the discussion on education reform on Ms. Ward's blog and Arthus Erea's Amateur Learning post.
The second semester started at my school. This brings AP Psychology, AP Micro Econ, and Biology, along with more of American Studies and English 11. Scanned work from PreCalc is being added slowly, and the first half of notes from American Studies is now up.
Also I recently wrote an article for the yearbook Greystones about technology.
Recent Flickr photos include: the Prom Expo at my school, my trip to Drexel University, and the new school near my house. See all
Oh, I am getting an addition put on my house. Check out the photos as they come in
Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 22:36, 28 February 2008 (EST)
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1/6/2007 Update

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 01:04:25 +0100

Happy new year!
GridView, my app for Facebook is at 490,000 users! Growth this month was slow because I did not launch any features during December. GridView lets you add all your friends profile pics to you Facebook profile for you and your profile visitors to see.
I also moved GridView to a dedicated server (for which I am paying $100/month)! This lets it run without running up thousands of dollars of (mt) overage charges! Server utilization seems to peak around 80%!
I also brought on a partner to GridView, by selling him a minority piece of GridView. He works in advertising at a major social network and should help me focus on features and make GridView profitable. Speaking of that, I am currently working on a major change to GridView. Lots of you said it world be nice if you could move your friends around... Plus I found some much better mosaic code and I hope to drastically improve the user experience for Mosaics.
Our Dynamic Website Building Instruction and Practical Experience Group Study has only a few weeks left. We are working on the SeniorQuoter admin site which is coming together nicely. Photos and Screenshots on Flickr
I also finished my Governor's School Application. That was enough writing about me for a few months. Also, an essay on the power of Wikis. However, I will now have a leg up for the college application process. Where do I want to go? I don't know. I do have a few top choices.
Also, Tecker 911 will be filming new episodes in HD. We have 37 episodes done and edited. The last few that were released are: Episode 27: Notebook Cards, Episode 26: Words: The Latin Dictionary, and Episode 25: Behind the Scenes
Oh, I also just posted my research paper I did on the Patriot Act in 8th Grade.
All for now!
Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 21:04, 6 January 2008 (EST)

12/4/2007 Personal Updates

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:17:46 +0100

Hey everyone! Welcome to December!
I've been more focused on my code projects, that I am not going to upload my work from 11th Grade this year. Maybe I'll get someone else to do it, or do it eventually.
GridView, my app for Facebook 420,000 THOUSAND users with about 50,000 users every day!!!!! It's growing at about 10,000 new users every 24 hours. GridView lets you add all your friends profile pics to you Facebook profile for you and your profile visitors to see.
GridView recently launched GridView Mosaics, which lets you make a photo mosaic of your profile picture with your friends as tiles. Recently, I improved the quality of the Mosaics to contain 4 times the tiles, showing 4 times the detail. Unfortunately this takes up a lot of server resources, I've almost outgrown (mt)'s (gs) system. Looks like it's soon time to move to a dedicated server!
Also, GridView recently started to sell, through QOOP, products containing your GridView Mosaic. Check them out! The products are as follows:

Mugs from $11.99
Mousepads from $10.99
Luggage Tags from $7.49
MyCards from $9.99/pack
Magnets from $5.99
Stickers from $4.99
Keychains from $4.99
Greeting Cards from $.99
Postcards from $.99

GridView is reported by Adonomics, a 3rd party Facebook analytics system, to have a valuation of $203,462! I am currently in talks to bring a partner on board to help grow GridView and turn it profitable. If you have ideas about that, contact me (see below)!
Our Dynamic Website Building Instruction and Practical Experience Group Study is nearing the halfway point. Tomorrow, we are finishing up databases, and we plan to start working on SeniorQuoter next week. For more information and student work samples, see this post on the SeniorQuoter site.
School is going OK for me. I am increasingly interested in what goes on around the classes. This month is my campaign to end the draconian "Classrooms of the Past" technology policies. I am also looking at running a desktop background contest. I hope to do this next year for my senior project, so that I may dedicate the time to do it properly. Properly meaning set up a comprehensive website, selecting a judging committee and writing the contest rules.
Also, new Tecker 911s are out! The last 3 episodes are: Episode 24: Windows Movie Maker, Episode 23: Wikipedia Reliability, and Episode 22: Firefox Add-Ons Editing is going slow, but Reed, a new member is helping me to speed it along. I trained him this weekend, so hopefully he can turn them out faster. In the upcoming year, I hope to delegate more and more of the Tecker 911 tasks to younger members. We now have a half-a-year lead time between filming and releasing episodes!
I am also working with a start-up on a new, secret project. It will be very cool! It addition, I am mentoring a student on a new Firefox extension to be distributed through ThePlaz.com Networks.
All for now! (Isn't that enough!)
Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 17:33, 4 December 2007 (EST)

10/6/2007 Personal Message

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 02:41:45 +0200

Hey everyone! 11th Grade is about 1/8th over. I haven't posted any of my non-typed work online. It looks like I won't have the time for that this year. May be I'll get someone else to do it, or do it eventually.
GridView, my app for Facebook I wrote on the last day of 10th Grade in about 5 hours now has over 250,000 THOUSAND users with a current growth rate of about 5,000 new users every day'!!!!! GridView lets you add all your friends profile pics to you Facebook profile for you and your profile visitors to see. I was totally blown away by the popularity. We're also rolling out GridView Mosaic, which creates a photo mosaic of your profile picture, with your friend's profile photos making up the tiles. I am rolling this out to users as fast as I can; I'm having some scalability issues now.
Tecker 911 just had a booth at Haverford Township Day. We were selling DVDs of the first 25 episodes, and raising local awareness for the show. We also hosted a live technology question and answer session. 7 people asked their tech questions to us. You can catch Episode 30, some time in the the future. Meanwhile, you can catch photos of our booth and Haverford Township Day 2007 on Flickr.
20 episodes of Tecker 911 are out. Check out the Tecker 911 website.
My Dynamic Website Building Instruction and Practical Experience Group Study starts in about a month. I've planned out the first 25 days so far, the part where I teach PHP and MySQL. I'm excited. Potential participants, remember to file your paperwork! SeniorQuoter is being used by our school this year, and is already reducing the work load on the yearbook department. Plus, I received word that at least one other school is using SeniorQuoter to ease the collection of their senior quotes.
My new computer is really sweet! It's a HP Pavilion Media Center m8100y with 4GB RAM, a Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor, and a 22" monitor. We got it all for less then $USD 1,400 (+tax) after getting $480 in discounts! It really runs fast. The only time I maxed out the processor is when encoding h.264 video for iPods. Otherwise, the hard drive is the bottle neck for the computer.
Dictionary Robot, my tool to help you look up a bunch of words at once is stalled. GridView took off, school started, and I am working on a secret project for someone who is paying cash for me to code for them. Because I need cash, I have to work on that at this time, at the expense of working on some of my other stuff.
Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Theplaz 18:21, 6 October 2007 (EDT)

8/10/2007 Personal Message

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 11:59:40 -0400

Hey everyone! I've been busy this summer working on web projects. Let me give you an update!
GridView, my app for Facebook I wrote on the last day of 10th Grade in about 5 hours now has over 26 THOUSAND users with a current growth rate of about 1,5000 new users every day'!!!!! GridView lets you add all your friends profile pics to you Facebook profile for you and your profile visitors to see. I was totally blown away by the popularity. We've had some stability issues over the last week, and it was overwhelming my old server, so I had to move ThePlaz.com to a new server from (mt)mediatemple. I haven't yet been able to re-enable Memcached a magic program which vastly improves the speed of MediaWiki, the software that runs ThePlaz.com and Wikipedia. So my apologizes if the site seems slow while I sort this out.
Also, speaking of ThePlaz.com, Chemistry and IAG 3H work is now online. That brings to an end 10th Grade uploading. Looking ahead to next year, I got my 11th Grade schedule. It's going to have to be changed to include my Dynamic Website Building Instruction and Practical Experience Group Study which will take place 2nd Quarter, 1st Block next school year. I'm so excited for that!
Tecker 911 is slowly releasing episodes. 16 are out already with like equal that number in the can. I'll try to speed up the release schedule. Meanwhile, enjoy Episode 16: RSS, Episode 15: Destroying Stuff!, and Episode 14: Ubuntu.
My family is getting a new computer! It's a HP Pavilion Media Center m8100y with 4GB RAM, a Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor, and a 22" monitor. We got it all for less then $USD 1,400 (+tax) after getting $480 in discounts! This should speed up Tecker 911 production by giving me a star system to edit on.
Teckcasts [1] is a new podcast channel on iTunes which combines the best of w3life [2], Tecker 911 [3] and our friends at sjTechZone [4]. Subscribe if you like to hear about Technology. You can find me on Teckcasts on Tecker 911 and also Leetspeek [5] where I am a regular guest offering my kinda-weekly rants about the technology industry.
Over the summer I visited Cornell University in Ithaca, along with Niagara Falls in Canada. Pictures are on flickr and can be seen in the 'Random Pictures' sidebar on ThePlaz.com. All of my pictures (over 8,000) along with most content on ThePlaz.com, is freely reusable under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license.
Dictionary Robot, my tool to help you look up a bunch of words at once is roughly complete. I still need to smooth out output and add extra features. Look for it to open in a few weeks. It has been a great lesson in 'hacking' (more like adopting - a mash-up) a program to do what you want.
So, I'm looking forward to another great year, not only on ThePlaz.com, but on the entire family of ThePlaz.com web services. Thanks for visiting!
Personal Updates are still available as an RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ThePlazPersonalUpdates Or you can get an email whenever I update this
Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 13:24, 10 August 2007 (EDT)

6/19/2007 Personal Message

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 10:36:57 -0400

Hey everyone! Happy summer! Just got out of 10th Grade and this gives me lots of time to work on some cool new web projects!!
I wrote my first app for Facebook, called GridView. GridView lets you add the photos of all of your friends to your Facebook profile. Add it to your Facebook!
Tecker is currently (for the past month) getting some AJAX features. This is the first time I'm using AJAX so it's a big pain to implement. Look for updates on the Tecker Blog.
I am also kinda working on the robotics club website. I just don't have enough time!
Uploads for IAG 3H and Chemistry are currently a bit behind. I hope to be all caught up, and to get those organized soon.
I forgot to announce my Dropdowns for MediaWiki were recently updated. They now support pop-overs, have smaller, cleaner code, and have some cosmetic changes.
There are now over 8,000 of my photos on Flickr. All are freely reusable under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license. You can also see 3 random photos on every ThePlaz.com page on the sidebar.
I am also working on a new project, Dictionary Robot. Dictionary Robot will take a bunch of words you throw it and look them all up in the dictionary. It will be very handy when you have a long list of vocab words to look up.
You can still listen to the music I like to listen to while I'm working for free at Pandora, an online radio station. Pandora has categorized each song in over 140 categories and offers very good recommendations.
Personal Updates are still available as an RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ThePlazPersonalUpdates Or you can get an email whenever I update this
Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 10:36, 19 June 2007 (EDT)

5/20/2007 Personal Update

Sun, 20 May 2007 20:25:16 -0400

Just got back from Monty Madness with our robotics club. We came in 8th in the seeding rounds and wnet up againts alience #1 in the semifinals. The first time we beat them 140 to 23, the highest score at the competition. But #1's defense was too much for us, and they eliminated us.
I also got to ride a Segway with founder's Dean Kamen's brother or cousin (sorry, I forget) (he looked just like Dean). It feels really weird. You only need to shift your balance, not lean, to move. It was hard to get the hang of, because you want to pull back to stop, but you only need to shift your balance (or just even think "stop")
I now have about 5,000 of my photos on Flickr. All are freely reusable under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license. I have also added a script which displays 3 random photos from my collection each time a page on ThePlaz.com loads. For some reason, it is only showing the ones from the cruse I took. I must find out why it is only showing these.
I took the AP Macro Econ exam. Two of the the three open ended question were about things I wasn't too sure about. All of the practice questions I had seen seemed to be more based on stuff I was more sure of. I confused the discount and federal funds rate, and international economics always make my head spin. On both practice tests I took I got 50 out of 60 on the multiple choice section. Hopefully I got the same. 60 questions always make you tired and cranky, but I answered them as best as I could. I think I got either a 4 or a 5. Hopefully I got a 5, but I don't know how this test breaks down in regards to scoring.
Also, I just re-discovered Pandora, a personal online music station. This is the station I'm listening to now. Pandora has categorized each song in over 140 categories and offers very good recommendations.
Happy May
Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 20:25, 20 May 2007 (EDT)

5/7/2007 Personal Message

Mon, 07 May 2007 19:33:09 -0400

I recently installed Memcached on ThePlaz.com wiki. I'm seeing a massive speed increase in page generation times. The homepage use to take 50 seconds to load, other pages generated in about 10 seconds. This was unacceptable. Now with Memcached I see about 4 seconds the first time a page is generated and then about a second for subsequent page loads. This big increase is because Memcached stores common database (MySQL) queries on the server and can retrieve them much faster then the database. Hopefully this will make ThePlaz.com more usable.
I purchased a Flickr pro account a month ago and have uploaded over 3,000 photos so far from my back collection. All are freely reusable under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license. I have also added a script which displays 3 random photos from my collection each time a page on ThePlaz.com loads.
More Tecker 911 episodes should be out soon. Meanwhile enjoy Episode 10: LAN Party and Episode 11: Windows Vista.
Tecker [1] now has email alerts. Sign up at the social question and answer service for technology. A brand new addition to Tecker is coming soon (it even has it's own domain!)
Version 1.3 of SeniorQuoter [2] is now out. We added character limits and terms and conditions. Check it out, it's open-source GPL software from ThePlaz.
Happy spring!
Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 19:33, 7 May 2007 (EDT)

3/30/2007 Personal Message - Spring Break

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 18:02:50 -0400

I'm witting this in a hotel in Miami. On Sunday I will leave for a Western Caribbean cruise on the Carnival Valor. It's 76F outside and sunny. This is going to be a fun trip. I'll post pictures when I get back. Have fun on your spring break wherever it is. Havertown is still lots of fun and I know some of my friends are in Europe.
We (Team 484) didn't do so well in Annapolis at the regional. We came in 26th out of about 55 teams. We weren't picked for the finals, but were last in the "dog pond." See more at Team 484#Annapolis Regional.
The Drexel robotics regional is ongoing now. I was only there for the set up and practice day, but we did very well that day. We were the first to be inspected and all practices went very well.
Tecker 911 Episode 9: MLA Formatting is out and features my MLA Template. More episodes are in the can, and are coming soon.
Everything going well. I'll ve back in a week with pictures. Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 17:59, 30 March 2007 (EDT)

3/13/2007 Personal Update

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:52:41 -0500

ThePlaz.com's traffic has been growing. We now receive about ~1,400 visits and ~4,000 page views a week. 80% of that is from Google. MediaWiki reports 71,943 page views, and 6,021 edits on Special:Statistics.
Tecker (http://tecker.net) the social question and answer service aimed at tech users is continuing to do really well. We are expanding slowly; we have about 60 users now. We just added advertisements to Tecker and Tecker 911, both network and featured (direct, no network). As always stay tuned at our development blog at http://blog.tecker.net/. We are just putting finishing touches on the page with recent answers.
The Tecker derivative, Conflicter (http://conflicter.org) is not doing well. Conflicter is a place for frank discussions on global issues. I finally opened it to the public, but no one knows about it. Maybe activity will pick up.
Tecker 911, the video technology help webcast is coming along nicely. The first 8 episodes are up at http://911.tecker.net and have been aired on Channel 11 in Haverford Township. 7 more episodes are in the can, I need to edit 5 of them. Each one takes approximately 2-3 hours to edit, so it always takes a while.
The first semester classes are all up online and organized at ThePlaz.com. I'm a month into 2nd semester and online postings are really behind. I am also working on posting some other things, which were not required for school.
Last time I wrote, the build season for our FIRST robotics club, Team 484 started recently. Now it's over. After putting in about 4 nights a week for 6 weeks our robot is done and shipped. The Chesapeake Regional competition is this weekend. We leave tomorrow for it. I will try and get pictures and a report up when I come back.
Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 20:32, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

1/10/2007 Personal Message

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 22:39:44 -0500

Jeeze. It's really been a while. Two months instead of the normal one month intervals. I had a good holiday break, and got lots done. In the past two months, we recorded 15,000 page views and added about 1,000 pieces of content. See MediaWiki.
Tecker (http://tecker.net) the social question and answer service aimed at tech users is doing really well. We are expanding small, we have about 50 users now. We were featured on net@nite episode 8. net@nite is a weekly call-in show about new technology websites ("Web 2.0") hosted by TechTV's Leo Laporte. net@nite is part of the TWiT podcast network. The TWiT podcast was recently rated as #9 on TIME's top podcast list [1]. As always stay tuned at our development blog at http://blog.tecker.net/.
I am also creating a new derivative, Conflicter (http://conflicter.org). Conflicter is a place for frank discussions on global issues. This is being done in conjunction with my Cultures Project. The site has languished, but I will finish it eventually.
Tecker 911, the video technology help webcast is coming along nicly. The first 4 episodes are up at http://911.tecker.net and are starting to be aired on Channel 11 in Haverford Township. The show is coming along nicely, now I just need to find the time to edit three more episodes already filmed and edit the unboxing of my new cameraphone.
Speaking of busy, I am really swamped. End of the semester is comming up at the end of the year and that means all of the teachers are dumping work on us, finals to study for, and final projects to do. See my groups paper on Globalization. The World Cultures Portfolio also is a nightmare of work.
In addition, the build season for our FIRST robotics club, Team 484 started recently. That is three nights I week. Well, I guess I will make it.
PS. I don't know what happened to the photo section. I think it kinda died. Sorry. I think I will take it off the homepage now ;)
My friend (and Tecker partner), Michael Gdovin, has launched his business, w3life (http://w3life.com) and his personal website Gdovin.net (http://gdovin.net) two months ago. Not much has happened, but check it out.
Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 22:39, 10 January 2007 (EST)

11/24/06 Update

Fri, 24 Nov 2006 22:22:55 -0500

Its been a while since I last updated this section. Happy Thanksgiving. In the last month, I have doubled the amount of content on this site to over 1,000 content pages. There have been around 30,000 pages views recorded by MediaWiki.
Today (Black Friday) I bought Photoshop Elements for half price. Now I need to figure out how to use it! Best Buy was busy!
My PHP project, Tecker (http://tecker.net) is is open to the public and doing well. I am still actively adding features; stay tuned at our development blog at http://blog.tecker.net/. Tecker is a social question and answer service aimed at tech users.
I am also creating a new derivative, Conflicter (http://conflicter.org). Conflicter is a place for frank discussions on global issues. This is being done in conjunction with my Cultures Project.
Tecker 911, the video technology help webcast is coming along. I am done the intro, and we have filmed the first 3 episodes. Now I need to edit and post them to the website http://911.tecker.net. I am still developing a work flow to speed the process and correct the video colors. Stay tuned to the above site for more details and to subscribe.
My friend (and Tecker partner), Michael Gdovin, has launched his business, w3life (http://w3life.com) and his personal website Gdovin.net (http://gdovin.net). Check it out.
Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 22:22, 24 November 2006 (EST)

10/22/06 Update

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 00:41:46 -0400

How's it going. I've joined Facebook and I'm addicted. Friend me! My PHP project, Tecker (http://tecker.net) is coming along well. It's a social question and answer service aimed at tech users. We'll be opening it up to the public on Halloween (October 31, 2006). Meanwhile, follow along in our development blog at http://blog.tecker.net/.
My friend (and Tecker partner), Michael Gdovin, is launching his business, w3life (http://w3life.com) and his personal website Gdovin.net (http://gdovin.net) in the next few days.
I just finished with the PSATs. I think I did OK, but am glad it's over. I hope we won't be doing that muti-camera thing on H-Vision anymore. Plus, we got a better switcher on order.
Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 12:41, 22 October 2006 (EDT)

10/3/2006 Update

Tue, 03 Oct 2006 18:29:03 -0400

I've been busy with 10th Grade! I have been posting literally everything. It's like 30-45 minutes extra work every night. I don't know if I can keep it up???? What do you think? Is this info helpful to you. Drop me a line (see below). I have been also been very busy developing my PHP project, Tecker http://tecker.net. It's a social question and answer service aimed at tech users. Follow along in our development blog at http://blog.tecker.net/. I will keep you posted there. Tecker is coming along quite nicely. We'll start letting people in after Halloween.
Thanks everyone for you positive response to last Friday's H-Vision. I know the sound wasn't loud enough (this was the first week I didn't do sound), but I've talked to the lady in charge of that. It should be better next week. Speaking of next week, I'm anchoring again...so be sure to pay attention. Plus, I've got Sophomore homeroom photos video up. Unfortuntly, I don't know if I can post it online for privacy issues.
Robotics Club has started and I'm selling candy as a fund raiser. Stop by and see me if you want candy (for only a dollar).
Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 18:29, 3 October 2006 (EDT)

9/13/2006 Back to School Update

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 22:28:25 -0400

I've been busy with 10th Grade! I have been posting literally everything. It's like 30-45 minutes extra work every night. I don't know if I can keep it up???? What do you think? Is this info helpful to you. Drop me a line (see below). I have been also been very busy reading my PHP book in preparation for Tecker http://tecker.net. Read our development blog at http://blog.tecker.net/. I will keep you posted there. More info to come soon.
Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 22:28, September 13, 2006 (EDT)

8/29/2006 Back to School Update

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 18:46:41 -0400

Sorry, again, for the drought of updates to my site. I went about a month without making major changes and additions. I added 2 photo collections from my trip to Germany and worked a bit around the web. The new skin hit some road blocks and the project is postponed. If any CSS wizards can get the "NavLinks" div to display to the left of the logo on my beta site. The dropdowns still don't work in Internet Explorer, just get Firefox, and get yourself a better, safer browser. I am most likely not going to scan all my papers from my 9th Grade binders. I might still add some more pictures from my trip, especially my excursions to Paris and Berlin.
Well 10th Grade starts next week. I am almost done my summer reading. The Poisonwood Bible is looong and seems to go on fooorevverr!!!. I am getting my papers together, and getting ready to go back. My Image:10th Grade Schedule.xls is now up online. And don't worry, I will be posting all the info right here at ThePlaz.com
Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 18:49, 29 August 2006 (EDT)

8/5/2006 Update

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 21:46:00 -0400

Sorry for the drought of updates to my site. I went about 2 months without making a change. Sorry. When school let out I worked on the site technically, adding the dropdowns (Now working in Firefox, still not working (yet) on Internet Explorer) After that I went to Germany for 5 weeks on vacation, and there was no internet access for most of the time I was there. Plus there were lots of other things that I was involved in. I just got back a few days ago, and I updated the site to MediaWiki 1.7.1 today.
Don't worry, I haven forgotten about the new skin. Check out my beta site to see how it is coming along. I don't know if I will scan all my papers from my 9th Grade binders. I might decide not to do all that. I might also decide to add some pictures from my trip, especially my excursions to Paris and Berlin. I am also planning to add some to Wikipedia. I already put up lots of photos already of the German Reichstag in Berlin to the Wikimedia Commons. (See all my contributions to the Commons here) So that's that. Tell me what you want to see. Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 21:46, 5 August 2006 (EDT)

6/14/2006 End of the Year! Update

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 19:11:58 -0400

What a great year it has been. It was my first year in high school, and I was busy adjusting to that. I really grew as a person, and found out more about my role and position in life. This was also the year I launched my website, 4 months ago now, I guess! To all of my friends and peers at school, THANK YOU. And a special thank you to those who helped me work on group projects, and had their work posted here, an even bigger THANK YOU. Even though I might not have always listened to your suggestions, you made me realize that I must do so in the future.
So, as I go now to study for my Math final, I want to leave you with what I will be working on over the summer. I am going away for a month to visit my family, but I will still have time to work on this site. I will finally add those drop-down menus at the top of the page I have been working on for months. My more ambitious plan is to totally re-work the "skin" or look of the site, making it more whimsical, with rounded edges (in Firefox) and Nuvola icons. Something like what the Main Page currently looks like. I also plan on increasing traffic to my site. Thank you to everyone who helped me. --Plaz 19:11, 14 June 2006 (EDT)