The Life Outside the Neards Realm (a.k.a. MIT)

Believe it or not I have once more been left out without internet here at Princeton. For some random reason the network administrator blocked me again because according to him my computer was behaving “maliciously” – whatever that means. He even suggested that the easiest way to solve my connectivity problems was to wipe out my eystem and reinstall it from scratch!! I couldn’t believe that the person in charge of maintaining the network said such thing. In all I’m really dissapointed at Princeton’s infratructure and the way is managed. In any case I’m tired already of complaining about this as therenis really no point to it, I just have to face the reality: I miss being at MIT where real nerds can take care of a network the way it should be done. I am only one week full of crazy math away from getting back. For now I’m off.

Filed under: Internet, Life

No Internet, no fun

Once again, for some random reason, I have been disconnected from Princeton’s wireless network. It feels as if part of me was missing. I mean half my life happens one way or the other through the internet: from reading the news and working to keeping in contact with my friends and family it all happens on the cloud. In any case, regardless of what it means for me to have Internet (or not) is not that relevant. What shocks me though is the way Princeton manages it’s network. I mean, to begin with in order to get connected a paper application must be filled out giving a bunch of data (some of which could actually be accessed automatically if this was done by a computer program – like the MAC address). Not only that, but it takes the university an average of 4 days to process each application! I mean really?! I am tempted to think that I’m spoiled with MIT Internet services, but still a paper application??!! I had never seen such an inefficient system in the era od information and I even less expected it from a tier 1 university in the US.

Besides that, not much has changed. I’m still studying like crazy to learn some of the contents tought at the seminar I’m at and in general enjoying the summer in this afkwardly technological place. Hopefully tomorrow (or in four days) it will get fixed. Until then (hopefuly soon).

Filed under: Computers, Internet, Life

Wireless Supremacy – Reloaded

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I described my failed attempt to connect to the on-board wireless connection on my flight from Boston to Dallas. Well, today I’m finally going back to Boston, however this time the service seems to work. After succesfully loading the welcome page I just realized that I need to pay (almost $7) to get internet. What is worse is that it will only work for the duration of THIS flight and I still have a connection to catch. I see no point I’m spending that money in half an hour of Internet that I will probably not use at it’s best. The only thing is that I am now going through all of the different cool things if I actually bought it: for one thing I publish this post, but going beyond that I could do things like calling back home through Skype… nice. Oh well, even so I still think it’s not worth. At least for this post I might as well just wait until I get off the plane and submit it through the 3G network. Can’t wait for these sort of services to be provided at no cost – until then I won’t be able to say that I have in-flight-blogged. Hmmm maybe we should call it flogged… Or something.

I just got arived at my stopover in Atlanta and got back to the cell network. Hope you enjy the post of while I was flying.

Filed under: Internet, Technology

Dejavu

For some reason I’m once again left without Internet and rely solely on my iPhone to blog. Living in an era where having connection to the cloud is as – or more – important than having any other service such as water and electricity, how can it be that on college campus the connection is unreliable to the point that it just comes and goes as if it had it’s own will. Well, it is how it is. I’m done with complaining as it makes no difference.

What i’m actually here to tell you is about Gustavo Cerati’s new album Fuerza Natural, which includes his new single “Dejavu”. One thing that I find amazing about Cerati is his capacity to reinvent himself over and over again yet keeping the essence of who he really is. He has such characteristic voice and his songs have this feeling to them that after rice seconds of listening there is no doubt that it’s him behind the mike. Not only is impressive that he is capable of doing this, but also how long he has been around doing this.

Once again with his new album Cerati has left me surprised and anxious for more. Check out the new single here

Hope you like it.

Filed under: Internet, Life, Music

Computer Headache

I think by now I should just stopped mentioning how much work I’ve had in the past weeks. Ok, I’ll complain once more, it’s a LOT. Even today, Sunday, when it is supposed my weekend break, I still have to grade tests, prepare classes and organize course materials. I spent most of the day doing this and just about when I was about to call it a day, my computer started to behave funny. It first said that it had no internet connection, although there was clearly other people connected to the wireless network.

The system started to feel slower and unresponsive at which moment I decided to restart the computer. When it came back on, nothing worked. Certain windows just wouldn’t open, I couldn’t connect to the internet and the Finder (Mac OSX‘s equivalent of Windows Explorer) was completely irresponsive. Restart again, and again, and again. I tried a bunch of commands done at restart that are sometimes recommended to troubleshoot macs. Nothing.

I was starting to freak out. All my work – and all the work of everyone else at this seminar – is stored in my computer. I had done a backup a week ago and was about to do one today. After around 2 hours of fighting with my laptop, I gave up. I though “Well, I’ll go tomorrow to the Apple store and hopefully they’ll fix it”. Went upstairs to my room and was about to go to sleep. I actually hadn’t even had the opportunity to blog today, so I thought of writing all of this in my iPhone – sort of a pain. I said to myself, I need to try one more time. I turned the laptop on I though “YOU HAVE TO WORK NOW”. For no real good reason, this time it worked. I have no idea what was different, or what caused it to behave so weirdly. The good thing is that I have now backed up everything. I will still bring it to be checked. Now, there is one even weirder thing. When I finally was able to operate my laptop normally again, I opened the trash folder and there was a directory called “Recovered Files”. Inside it was one file which I don’t remember ever throwing away. It was a song – I don’t have any music stored in my laptop. I don’t know how it got there, maybe some error while using Pandora, or something. It was labeled “FlashTmp”. I don’t even know the artist who plays it – if you know please send a comment telling me. Whatever, I just know that I have a really horrible headache and I want to get to sleep. It has been enough for today. Good night.

Filed under: Computers, Internet, Music, Technology, behave funny, Finder, gave up, laptop, magic, music file, nothing worked, restarted, trash, tried everything, troubleshoot, work

Understanding Disorder

Right now I am half way done with my summer job. I had worked in this program twice before, but unlike past years, this time my hob has involved much more logistics and organization rather than teaching “per se”. It all started by setting up a smart way of retrieving and formatting all of the documents produced, which I described in the article “Smart Latex Typesetting”. It was the first time for me to engage in such a big project.   As such I have learned tons of things, specially by looking at my mistakes. If I had to say only one thing of what I’ve learned: Organize EVERYTHING perfectly from the beginning – think of the unthinkable and prepare for it.

Although it might sound somewhat trivial, it is amazing how much what may appear as small details can potentially become huge pains to deal with if not tackled in a timely fashion. This is specially true when whatever you are doing will eventually be distributed to a public. In this case any bug left behind will reproduce exponentially and hunt you down. My project is puny compared to anything done by a software company, say, Firefox. Still just after finishing it, I can now barely imagine the level of organization and care required in order to maintain such complex systems. In the bottom line this is just a reflection of the mathematical fact that starting from a small environment (or a project, or anything) and keeping organized as it grows is a lot easier than trying to organize a big environment that is disorganized. I guess that I should start applying that same principle to my room .

Right now I am half way done with my summer job. I had worked in this program twice before, but unlike past years, this time my hob has involved much more logistics and organization rather than teaching per se. It all started by setting up a smart way of retrieving and formatting all of the documents produced, which I described in the article “Smart Latex Typesetting”. It was the first time for me to engage in such a big project.   As such I have learned tons of things, specially by looking at my mistakes. If I had to say only one thing of what I’ve learned: Organize EVERYTHING perfectly from the beginning – think of the unthinkable and prepare for it.

Although it might sound somewhat trivial, it is amazing how much what may appear as small details can potentially become huge pains to deal with if not tackled in a timely fashion. This is specially true when whatever you are doing will eventually be distributed to a public. In this case any bug left behind will reproduce exponentially and hunt you down. My project is puny compared to anything done by a software company, say, Firefox. Still just after finishing it, I can now barely imagine the level of organization and care required in order to maintain such complex systems. In the bottom line this is just a reflection of the mathematical fact that starting from a small environment (or a project, or anything) and keeping organized as it grows is a lot easier than trying to organize a big environment that is disorganized. I guess that I should start applying that same principle to my room .

Filed under: Computers, Internet, Life, Technology, distribution, Firefox, Latex template, organization, projects, spread of programming bugs, summer job. latex

Internet, Wikipedia and the Trivia Machines

Today I went with Rela and Tom to a coffee shop in Boston to enjoy the warmth of the “summer” (it’s June and the temperature is still around 15C/60F or less… that’s what I mean by “summer”).

After having a snack, Rela made a comment that struck me. She mentioned remembering herself when she was in elementary school and doing research by looking through encyclopedias and other books. And even though she remembers doing that, she has the feeling that the Internet has been there forever – I mean, how could anyone survive without it?

It is in a way strange, as I feel the same way. I did not grow up having Internet. Actually I can remember very vividly the first time I went on the net: We used this things called ‘modems’ and they made funky noises that made you feel like if you were on a space ship. Now, however, it has become second nature for me to lookup just about anything on Wikipedia and get a one page summary of what it is, its history, consequences, etc. Many friends here at MIT who are pursuing their graduate studies, tell me how pages like Wikipedia play a central role in research (for Math, Computer Science, Physics, etc), which is somewhat surprising.

More recently we have the access to ‘trivia machines’ which allow people to stop discussing about whether facts are true and focus on their actual arguments. These so called iPhones (or Blackberries, Palms or whatever you want to call them), put the Internet in people’s hands and allow them to interact with the world in ways we couldn’t even dream of a couple of years ago.

Maybe I’m just here talking about things that most of you know, but my real question is, if in 2000 (already 10 years ago) the world was so different, what can we expect from the upcoming 10 years? How do you think the world will look like in 2020? I can just start dreaming about it…

Filed under: Internet, Communication, Internet, iPhone, Knowledge, Technology, Wikipedia