rkempe’s blog

50 Lessons I’ve Learned Over the Last Six Years

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 22:45:44 -0500

These are some things I’ve learned, or at the very least thought about, over the last few years. Hopefully some of these ideas are useful to you as well.

Some Interesting Things I’ve Read/Watched: Link Dump #5

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 21:00:04 -0500

I am still trying to get rid of my backlog of links I wanted to post about, so please bear with me.

Some Interesting Things I’ve Read/Watched: Link Dump #4

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 00:04:20 -0500

I am currently doing what I am going to call “spring cleaning” on my blog. What this means is that I want to get rid of a huge backlog of articles and things I started writing about in the past because I have lots of ideas for new things I want to do here (how shocking), and I’m honestly not super happy with the direction this blog has been taking. I don’t think I write enough about my own ideas, or about the things I spend hours learning about. In fact, I don’t think I write enough at all.

Types of Questions (Part 1)

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 21:54:14 -0500

I think the way we teach kids to think about and categorize questions is completely wrong. If I think back to any time I’ve been taught about questions formally, I’ve always been taught to think about the 5 W’s: Who, What, Where, When, Why – and the H: How? These are perfectly good questions to focus on if you’re a journalist writing a news story, but most of us are not journalists, and I’ve found a broader range of questions to be useful or relevant in my day-to-day life.

My Favourite Things I Wrote in 2025

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 21:20:09 -0500

Alright, time to look back at another year of writing. I’m not quite sure what to think of this year. Last January feels like it was ages ago – I barely remember any of what happened, and it feels super removed from now. That being said, I probably did the most variety of writing this year that I’ve done in years, because I took an experimental fiction course, which forced me to write fiction.

You Need to Ask More Questions

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 23:06:26 -0500

Have you ever considered how people who are more knowledgeable about something than you got that way? A lot of them got there by asking the right questions. The reality is that most people are not going to bother to explain themselves to you if you don’t bother to come to them with questions. Some people don’t realize that you don’t know the things they know.

Some Interesting Things I’ve Read/Watched: Link Dump #3

Sat, 08 Nov 2025 00:20:43 -0500

Hi! Here is a linkdump. I told myself I would post these with really minimal context because I am too busy to summarize these things and have a really giant backlog of links I’ve been wanting to post, but uh, the writer in me won out and I failed. Some of these have way more description than others. But I do also have quotes I’ve pulled for some of them, so maybe that will help make this post more interesting.

What Makes a Graduate-Level Course Different From a Senior Undergraduate Course?

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 23:38:36 -0400

About a year ago, while I was only a few weeks into the first graduate-level course I ever took, I tried asking a bunch of grad students what the difference between taking courses at the graduate level and the undergraduate level is. Being researchers in training (researchers are, in my experience, terrible at explaining themselves), they gave me delightful non-answers such as “it’s not that different” (this is a lie) and “your professors treat you like adults” (whatever that means).

Why Do My Presentations Suck? and Related Questions

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 21:19:23 -0400

Look, I’ve watched so many terrible presentations at this point that I couldn’t put off writing this anymore, so here, have this imagined Q&A. If you feel attacked by any of these questions, I’m sorry. I’m nicer in real life, I promise. In my defence, this post was meant to be sort of tongue in cheek, and it’s not targeted at anyone in particular.

If you want straight advice (read: you don’t want to wade through the sarcasm), I have other posts about this topic, which you can read here.

“Warm” vs “Cold” Networking

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 23:57:33 -0400

“Networking” seems to be one of those buzzwords that everyone uses and nobody can properly define, which I find extremely annoying. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and maybe I can help offer some clarity. I’m starting to think that there might be two types of networking, which I’m going to refer to as “warm networking” and “cold networking”. If you’re familiar with the idea of “warm contacts” vs “cold contacts”, that’s where I’m borrowing this terminology from.

Help, I’m Drowning in Articles About the Dumpster Fire That Is AI (Ep. 1)

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 22:54:34 -0400

I have been compiling a list of articles and academic papers I come across about AI, since trying to understand what it’s doing to society is now one of my obsessions. There is, alas, no good way to review all of these articles. I now have a four page document filled with links to articles about AI, and it’s still getting things added to it at least on a weekly basis. So, uh. This might become an ongoing series.

30-Minute Meetings Are a Scam

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 23:08:58 -0400

Really, most meetings should be 15 minutes, 45 minutes, or an hour long.

Linkdump: Interesting Things I Looked At (Very) Recently (2025-08-12)

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 23:07:33 -0400

Most of these are from today, but some are from yesterday, and a few are from last week. The descriptions will be short, since I am short on time.

How Do I Start a Blog? and Related Questions

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 11:16:27 -0400

This article exists because at least three people have asked me this question already and I want some place to which I can point them. Maybe I’ll eventually write a less tongue-in-cheek post about how and why I blog, but for now, you get this.

Damn, It’s Been a Year Already?

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 10:50:01 -0400

I started writing this blog exactly a year ago. The research project I was working on at the time was driving me insane, I’d started writing an article about corporate dress codes out of sheer frustration, and I felt like it was a good time to stop merely thinking about starting a blog and actually sit down and do it.

(Computer-)Scientific Abstracts, As Analyzed by a Confused Undergrad

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 19:42:17 -0400

I recently decided I wanted try presenting my work at an academic conference, so I had to write and submit an abstract for my proposed presentation. The problem, of course, was that I had no idea how to write a scientific abstract, which was a bit of a problem. Most of the advice I received and could find online was too vague for my taste, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and deconstruct some abstracts to see how those authors did it. And I’m really glad I did, because it was very enlightening.

Quick Thoughts From the First Academic Conference I Attended (Like, a Year Ago)

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 16:39:19 -0400

I think the best thing to do as an undergrad at a conference is to be observant, since it’s pretty low-stakes at that point. Part of doing this is to see how academics interact to see whether or not you want to do this. What do people wear, how do they speak, what do they talk about, etc.

If you can, ask questions of the speakers after talks! Asking good questions during sessions is powerful (it gets you noticed!)¹

There seems to be a rough heuristic that you have to be a decent-ish speaker to become a professor.² (Virtually all of the professors I listened to were strong speakers; the grad students and post docs were a mixed bag.)

If you can, introduce yourself to people and join conversations; try to fully be a participant.

Lee Miller’s “Hitleriana”, “Partial Witnessing”, and the Line Between “Document” and “Art”

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 16:03:08 -0400

This is (almost) verbatim text from a journal entry I wrote for a seminar I took on immersive documentary. I thought it was interesting enough to put here, even though parts of it might not make sense if you haven’t read the works I’m talking about. For context, my class had previously read an essay called “Disaster City” by Barrett Swanson, in which Swanson participates in a disaster recovery simulation, explores his personal fascination with disaster scenarios, and explores the blurring between reality and fiction that occurs in those simulations. A lot of our conversation had to do with rituals and performative preparedness and how they can be used to enable cognitive avoidance of the root causes of certain issues, creating a false sense of safety for the person practising (or even observing) the rituals.

Some Interesting Things I’ve Read Lately, Episode 3

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 20:23:47 -0400

You know the drill. In the last episode I did of this series, I said the next one would be coming shortly, huh?

Yeah, right. I lied. These come out when they come out.

Some Interesting Things I’ve Read/Watched: Link Dump #2

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 15:34:26 -0400

Here’s another linkdump—a list of links to stuff I thought was interesting but likely won’t get to properly reviewing any time soon.¹

I reserve the right to more fully review any of these article at a later date, of course. (Though at this point, it’s extremely unlikely to ever happen.)

What Doing My First (Short) Math Lecture Taught Me

Sun, 29 Jun 2025 13:02:46 -0400

For context, these are some things I learned in the process of putting together and delivering a guest lecture to a first-year discrete math course last summer. The talk was about the research I was doing at the time, and I was allotted about half an hour for the presentation. Again, I meant to write and post this last year, but clearly that didn’t happen.

Lessons I Learned During My Undergraduate Research Internship

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 23:37:43 -0400

I really meant to put this list up sometime last fall… whoops. (This is yet another incredibly overdue article.) Anyway, here are a whole bunch of things I learned while attempting to “do research” last summer, whatever that means. The big theme here is to make life easier for future you, who will have to wrangle together your several months of chaos and exploration into a rigorous and coherent narrative. Present you can help by being organized and breaking things down into smaller, documentable steps.

Reading Academic Papers Is a Nightmare

Sat, 21 Jun 2025 12:03:33 -0400

So I’ve been saying for a while that reading academic papers is a skill. However, what I didn’t realize is that having a pretty good idea of how to read a paper from one discipline doesn’t quite map to knowing how to approach a paper from another field. Academic papers are all confusing nightmares, but papers from different disciplines are nightmarish in different ways, which means that while some parts of the basic reading approach can stay the same, others will have to be discarded or relearned.

Noble Gases Make Bonds

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 21:44:10 -0400

This is (almost) verbatim text from a chemistry unit project I did in Grade 12, and I still think it holds up, so I’m putting it up here. Damn, I was so funny back then. I miss the version of me that was willing to be so cheeky on assignments.

Why Does Theory Matter in Computer Science? (Meta-Commentary)

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 20:53:01 -0400

When I first started doing this writeup, I did not expect to still be working on it 6 months later. Finishing this was a long, long overdue task for a while. This is the second write-up I’ve done of a talk I’ve given. The first one I did was for “How to be a Talentless Hack in Public”, which I published in zine form first, before then publishing the text on this blog several months later.

Getting to the End of the Thought; or, Why Write in the Age of AI?

Fri, 06 Jun 2025 00:14:25 -0400

I’ve been thinking a lot about the value of writing recently, especially in regard to how it’s been influenced by the advent of generative AI. In the past few months, I’ve had a lot of conversations in which people claimed that generative AI is just as good at writing as humans now, or better, in many cases. While I agree that AI generation tools are, at this point, better at the mechanics of writing than the average person, I have always found their outputs to be shallow and devoid of interesting surprises.

Why Does Theory Matter in Computer Science? (Part 5)

Thu, 22 May 2025 21:34:31 -0400

Here is a long list of sources I consulted at various points while doing research for this project. As it might have become clear through reading the previous installments of this series, this was more a talk about the densest subgraph problem than it was about theory being useful in computer science. There are a few reasons for that, which I might explain in more detail at some point in the future. This means that I presented a lot of information that I borrowed from other people! Here’s an annotated bibliography of sorts, in case you were interested in going deeper, for whatever reason.

Why Does Theory Matter in Computer Science? (Part 4)

Thu, 22 May 2025 21:28:43 -0400

In Part 3, we discussed the densest subgraph problem (DSP) and some algorithms for solving it. In this section, we’ll be looking at how we can generalize this problem and those algorithms to solve some other problems. This is the part of the talk where I will introduce some fancy new math I had to learn in order to understand how one might generalize iterative peeling to solve adjacent problems.

You Need to Be Proactive

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 11:29:39 -0400

One of the things that has been repeatedly drilled into me over the past year or so is the fact that if you want people to do things for you, you’re most likely going to have to harass them. (I don’t mean literal harassment, by the way – please don’t commit a criminal offense and say I encouraged you.) This is true especially when working with highly busy people like managers and professors. If you want something, you can’t just assume they’ll intuit that and give it to you – you have to ask (and assume they’ll forget, then ask them again). If you need them to do something for you, you’ll need to remind them, and inform them of the deadline, likely multiple times. Everyone has their own problems to worry about and the thing you need might not be top of mind. The burden of remembering is on you.

Some Interesting Things I’ve Read/Watched: Link Dump #1

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 22:07:57 -0400

I keep coming across articles (and occasionally videos, and occasionally fiction or poetry) online that I want to share and comment on, but I recently realized that I will never have time to fully comment on everything I read that I find interesting. So I’m pulling another page out of Cory Doctorow’s book: here is a dump of links to cool stuff, along with some (hopefully very) brief descriptions of why I found these articles interesting. (Also, here is a link to a link dump where Doctorow ¹ talks about link blogging. It might be interesting for you to look at.)

Some Things I Learned From Writing My First Research Report

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 20:24:12 -0400

Last summer, I was tasked with writing a report about the research I completed and submitting it to my supervisor by the end of the summer. I, of course, had never done this kind of writing before, so I learned several lessons. The hard way. The learning process was super painful, but it did come in handy when I had to write two other research reports in my classes last fall. Here are a few of the lessons I learned.

I’m Still Not Entirely Sure What a “Poem” Is

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 23:17:58 -0400

I think there might be people out there who think I’m a poet, and I think it’s terrifying. I haven’t been a poet since my middle school days of writing rhyming couplets about hating school and my early high school days of writing terrible prose with line breaks. In hindsight, I’m pretty sure the main reason I wrote so many poems in grade nine was because my teacher seemed to have no idea how to grade poems but very strong opinions about fiction, and I felt like I was terrible at writing fiction and wanted a shot at a decent grade. Man, high school was such a great time.

Why Does Theory Matter in Computer Science? (Part 3)

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 23:17:01 -0500

In Part 2 of this talk, we gave a crash course to graph theory and showed how we can use it to view some real-world problems as instances of the densest subgraph problem (DSP). But what exactly is the DSP? If you’ve studied graph theory, you may have heard of something called the Maximum Clique Problem. The goal of the max clique problem is to find the largest complete subgraph in a graph. If we consider our vertices to be people, and edges to represent a friendship relationship between two people, in the max clique problem we are trying to find the largest friend group in a community.

COMP 4108 Notes, Chapter 1: Security Principles and Why Security is Hard

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 00:56:10 -0500

Simplicity and necessity: designs should be as simple and small as possible. Minimize functionality, favour minimal installs, and disable unused functionality. Aka: minimize the attack surface. Safe defaults: deny-by-default. Design systems to fail closed (denying access) and favour allowlists over denylists.

COMP 4108 Notes, Chapter 1: Important Ideas

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 00:03:10 -0500

When we study computer and internet security (aka cybersecurity, in most circles), we are primarily interested in how people interact with software, computer systems, and networks, and in how they can be misused by various agents. We are typically not concerned with unintentional mistakes or other types of damages (such as a network failure cause by an outage or a natural disaster).

COMP 4108 Notes, Chapter 1: Definitions

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 00:01:10 -0500

computer and Internet security: the combined art, science, and engineering practice of protecting software, computers, networks, the data stored on them, the information transmitted on/between them, and the physical devices/machines they control from intentional misuse by an unauthorized party.

Research Opportunities for Computer Science Students at Carleton University

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 00:00:08 -0500

This information is accurate as of Feb 9th, 2025.

What is research?

The goal of academic research is to add to the body of knowledge within a field. Generally speaking, research either aims to understand (e.g. “Are there biases in the outputs produced by large language models?) or to create (e.g. “Here is a new protocol for sending messages across the internet”). Depending on the specific field, this could involve running experiments or simulations, designing algorithms or processes, interviewing or observing participants in a study, and so on. There is also generally an expectation that the results be communicated in some way. Most commonly, this is done through a written report, a poster, or a presentation.

Which Math Courses Should I Take in First Year?

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 00:00:01 -0500

This page was last updated on February 9, 2025.

What is COMP 1805? Is it math or programming?

COMP 1805 involves no programming, though at times reading pseudocode may be involved. It is very explicitly a math course, though it’s probably not the math you are used to doing in high school. Whereas high school math courses teach you techniques for doing different sorts of calculations and algebraic manipulations, there are close to no calculations in COMP 1805. Instead, the course is about learning the language used by computer scientists and mathematicians to describe problems more formally (which in turn, makes it easier to decide whether or not a problem has been “solved”). Topics covered in COMP 1805 include “foundations of math and reasoning” such as propositional logic, basic set theory, functions and relations on sets, and proof techniques, as well as topics intended for computer scientists, such as an introduction to graphs and networks, Big O notation, and asymptotic analysis of algorithms.

Some Thoughts on Webrings

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 19:52:28 -0500

Today, I found out that some students at Carleton University have started a “webring” (or well, close enough) for students in computer science and engineering to post their personal websites. (In fact, this blog also joined that webring, and you can find a link to the rest of the pages in the webring here.) I thought this was a really cool idea, so I asked how they came up with it. It turns out that a few other CS and software engineering (+ adjacent) programs in Canada have also started such webrings.

I Am Slowly Discovering That I Have No Idea How to Read

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 14:55:31 -0500

Over the last month and a half or so, I’ve come to the conclusion that I actually don’t know how to read, which is definitely a jarring realization to be having after over 18 years of formal education.

Okay, maybe I’m being a little bit cheeky here. I am not literally claiming to be illiterate or even functionally illiterate, and it would be stupid of me to do so, since clearly I am writing this blog post and have written many other blog posts where I reviewed books. However, one of the things my high school education didn’t prepare me for, and that my four years of training and education in engineering and computer science have completely failed to teach me, is how to both get through and learn from – “learn from” is the key term here – a large volume of readings on a weekly basis.

Do You Need to Understand the Math Behind a System to Implement It?

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 14:17:20 -0500

A while ago, someone in a Discord server I’m in asked how much of the math behind a system you need to know to implement it. I thought it was an interesting question, and I felt qualified to answer it, so I ended up writing quite a lengthy response. It just occurred to me that it might also be useful to other people, so I thought I would clean it up a little bit and archive it here.

Why Does Theory Matter in Computer Science? (Part 2)

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 12:47:46 -0500

In the first part of this talk, I made the case that theory is useful because it allows us to find (or at the very least, have the correct toolkit and language to explore) solutions to real-world problems. In this part, we are going to look at some examples of such problems and develop mathematical language to be able to discuss them more abstractly. I’ve put the term “real-world” in quotes in the title, because I’m going to be talking about these problems in a lot of generality. However, I want to stress that specific instances of these problems are actually relevant in industry, and I think it’ll be easy to see why once I start talking about them.

My Favourite Things I Wrote in 2024

Fri, 03 Jan 2025 13:22:22 -0500

The year 2024 was a really bizarre year for me, writing wise – while I had work come out in a relatively high-profile venue, and I finally started blogging again, I didn’t produce much in terms of “literary work”, and definitely did not write any creative works that I would consider to be publishable, which kinda sucks. I made some progress on some essays I hope to finish this year, wrote a few poems, and… I think that was it???? I was very academically focused in 2024 though, so it makes sense. I did do lots of academic writing, created some didactic/informational texts, and wrote some more informal stuff on this blog, so maybe in terms of pure wordcount I wrote more than I do most years. So I guess I still wrote, but the form and content of what I was writing shifted.

The Nonfiction Spectrum

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 23:50:00 -0500

I write across multiple genres, but my main genre is Creative Nonfiction, which writers typically refer to as “CNF” for short. Unfortunately, I always end up having to explain what CNF is to people, because the common view of nonfiction seems to be that it’s entirely comprised of informative texts and academic essays (with maybe the occasional memoir slipped in).

Earlier today I was thinking about this, and I thought it would be really funny to place various types of “nonfiction writing” on a graph with labelled axes to prove my point. I present to you the “Nonfiction Spectrum”. On one axis, we have how “accessible” or easy to understand the text is; on the other, we have how “artistic” the presentation of the text is.

Some Interesting Things I’ve Read Lately, Episode 2

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 20:08:03 -0500

Here’s another roundup of some interesting things I’ve come across lately and would like to talk about! As always, I’m sure there’s some great stuff I read but cannot for the life of me remember.

This one is extremely late, since I’ve been incredibly busy and finding time to write has been hard. I think I looked at some of this stuff back in… November? October? Oops. I’ve decided I want to keep these to only 4–5 items per post, so more posts should be coming shortly! There are definitely other things I’ve looked at that I want to talk about.

Research Papers Shouldn’t Be Read in Order; or, How to Read a Research Paper

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 13:44:15 -0500

I just finished a blog post where I discuss things I’ve recently learned about how to read research papers. I almost included this as a point in that post, but I think it’s important enough to warrant its own article.

Here’s the idea: you absolutely should not be reading the sections of a research paper in order.

It took me a while to learn this one – I can’t remember if I first read this advice somewhere, if someone told it to me, or if I reverse-engineered it from advice I got about how to write papers. It doesn’t matter which one came first, really – my point is that I only found this out in a roundabout way through googling and trial and error and harassing people with questions.

Research Reflections: On Reading (Math and Math-Adjacent) Academic Papers

Sun, 29 Dec 2024 23:51:14 -0500

Last summer, I spent a good chunk of my time doing an undergraduate research project during which I worked on a project largely by myself, under the supervision of a math professor. I then took a graduate level course in a related area this fall, where I investigated the theoretical underpinning behind my summer project. I had no idea what I was doing or what I had gotten myself into. As a result, I learned a lot, and tried to keep note of the various things I had learned. This is the first installment, on what I learned from trying to read math and theoretical CS papers.

Why Does Theory Matter in Computer Science? (Part 1)

Sun, 29 Dec 2024 00:38:01 -0500

If you’re a computer science student, you probably had to take an introductory discrete math course at some point. Did you enjoy it? If so, this talk probably isn’t for you, so you can feel free to skip the rest. (Or not – hopefully you feel like you can still learn something from me!) Jokes aside, it’s actually okay not to enjoy your intro to discrete math course: like, personally, I loved mine, but I also completely hated my discrete probability course and would prefer never to see it again. But I pick on discrete math because I feel like if it’s taught well, it can be a turning point for many people, and it certainly was for me.

Some Thoughts on “Academic Training”

Sat, 28 Dec 2024 10:36:42 -0500

I’ve long said that university education starts to make a lot more sense if you look at it as a precursor to academic training. Historically, there have really been two major types of undergraduate university training, in my opinion: there was the liberal arts type of education, which was meant to turn rich people into cultured members of society (several of whom then went on to pursue academic training and scholarly activities, because they were rich and could afford to do so), and the more specialized type, which is meant to make the student literate enough in the major foundational ideas of the field to pursue additional training at the graduate level. If I remember correctly, universities functioning more like businesses is relatively new, the idea of university being a place for vocational training is relatively new, and the idea that most adults should get a university degree to be employable is also relatively new. (Also of interest: see “credential inflation.”)

Quantity Over Quality In Art (and Life)?

Fri, 27 Dec 2024 00:37:55 -0500

I’ve always been a quantity over quality artist, and what I mean by this is that rather than being intentional about what I’m doing or meticulously planning things, I typically make a lot of garbage and hope for the best. This isn’t a particularly efficient way of working, but I personally find it quite effective. There are three main benefits of half-assing my art process that I would like to point out here:

How to Watch a Technical Research Talk (or Workshop, or Tutorial) Recording (and Make the Most of It)

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 22:13:50 -0500

When I’m trying to approach a highly specialized topic for the first time, one of my tactics is to find a recording of a research-geared workshop about it and watch it as my introductory crash course. The benefits of this are as follows:

I am learning about the subject from (hopefully) a credible expert in the field.
Workshops and talks usually try to be self-contained, which means basic background info will likely be given and I won’t have to pore through 10 different research papers, searching for an obscure definition, in vain.
Talks typically have the benefit of including visuals and informal intuition conveyed by the speaker, which generally won’t make it into academic papers, because they’re not rigorous. However, the visuals and informal statements and intuition are invaluable for gaining a better understanding of the information.
The speaker will generally include a bibliography and mention related works, which is a great jumping off point for further investigation and saves me from having to figure out what the seminal sources are myself.

However, there are also some drawbacks:

Understanding the Python Memory Model

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:28:41 -0500

One of my quests during the research project I did last summer was to find a way to simulate pointers in Python, or at the very least, get some sort of named reference-like behaviour from the language. Unfortunately, I quickly learned that this is quasi-impossible, because Python is a language that aims to abstract as many implementation details away from the user as possible, and gives programmers very limited ways in which to interact with the language.

Heuristics, Approximation Algorithms, and Relaxations: An Introduction

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 00:03:31 -0500

While all NP-hard optimization problems are identical in terms of exact solvability, they may differ wildly from the approximative point of view. If the goal is to obtain an answer that is “good enough”, some problems become much easier (such as KNAPSACK), while others (such as CLIQUE) remain extremely hard.

Why do People Have Trouble Seeing Photography as Art?

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 18:25:58 -0500

In some ways, photography is to visual artists what piano is to musicians. I can get you to play a somewhat accurate rendition of Mary Had a Little Lamb in about 2 minutes, and if it isn’t in tune, that’s the piano’s fault, not yours. Similarly, if you have a camera, you can create an image in about two seconds, and if the image quality sucks, it’s probably the camera’s fault, not yours. But have you ever tried playing a bowed instrument? I did, for over a year. I doubt I ever actually played a note in tune, and my tone quality bordered on unlistenable. Drawing is similarly difficult; my first two years of drawings are generally not good.

My Complicated Relationship With the Visual Arts

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 18:15:54 -0500

When I was in high school, I attended a magnet school for the arts, which meant that around 70% of the students had auditioned for competitive admission to a specialized program in theatre, visual arts, dance, music, or creative writing. This meant that there were often two versions of each art course: there was the version of the course intended for (and restricted to) the students studying in that discipline, and there was the general version, intended for everyone.

Has glaive "Fallen Off"?

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 18:03:16 -0500

If you were to meet glaive today, you might not guess he grew up in a sleepy North Carolina town. He’s thin boned, over six feet tall, and dresses like he’s trying on a type of angst that doesn’t suit him. Over the last two years, he’s constantly shifted his aesthetic. He’s flipped from shorter chestnut brown curls to longer platinum blonde to medium length but unhealthy dyed black hair.

Hypergraph Theory Basics

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 22:35:01 -0500

Graphs can be seen as a way to represent pairwise relationships between objects. With graphs, we have one object type and one relationship type. In one of the most common canonical applications or graph theory, social networking, we are trying to understand and represent social groups using graphs. In that case, our object is people, our pairwise relationship is friendship, and two people have a relationship between them if they are friends.

What Reading a Research Paper Feels Like

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 07:43:10 -0500

You’ve started a new job, you’ve stumbled into a conversation that’s been happening for several decades, and you’re feeling way too lost to even begin to follow what anyone is talking about, let alone participate. You’re confused, so you go see John, who seems to be semi-acquainted with the people having the conversation. You briefly sketch out what (you think) you heard, and tell him that you didn’t really understand anything anyone said. Maybe he can help you?

Some Interesting Things I’ve Read Lately, Episode 1

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 23:51:41 -0400

Here’s a look at some of the articles and books I’ve been reading lately, or at least, the ones that stuck out to me. Originally, I wanted to do this as a weekly series, inspired by Cory Doctorow’s link posts where he comments on various articles he’s read - but I don’t have that kind of time. Also, I’m really not that great at remembering the various articles I’ve stumbled through online, so you’re going to get these when you get them.

The Absolute Horror That Is Dressing for Work; or, How to Navigate Dress Codes

Sat, 03 Aug 2024 01:28:49 -0400

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how I dress lately, which I think is something that happens to you when you’re in your early twenties and trying to figure out how to be a “professional”. I think dress codes were always sort of a sticking point for many people, but from what I understand, in the pre-covid era there were many workplaces with very strong implicit or explicit dress codes that (I am told) made it very easy, or at the very least, easier to understand how you were supposed to dress.

How to Be a “Talentless Hack” in Public

Sat, 20 Jul 2024 22:00:41 -0400

When you call yourself a “talentless hack” (which you probably don’t, but you might if we share a similar sense of humour), it’s likely for one of two reasons: either you’re caught in a situation where you suddenly have to perform or get results or do something, with zero experience or knowledge of what’s going on (at which point feeling like “a hack” is somewhat legitimate), or you’re doing it out of self-deprecation because you have imposter syndrome.

Trying This Blog Thing Again

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:59:04 -0400

I’ve been “blogging” on and off for more than a decade now. I struggle to decide what to put out there: I have so many thoughts, and I rarely have a time or place to share them. Every place sort of has its own issues: I love text-based social media, but the best we have is forums like reddit, which are not a great place to post “opinions” or thoughts, because they’re intended to be discussion forums, or Twitter-style (are we seriously calling it “X” now?) platforms that incentivize very short posts, which in turn incentivizes writing the pithiest version of your statement possible with no nuance whatsoever, which incentivizes reactionary statements and makes productive conversations very difficult.

Some Advice for Taking Your First Proof-Based Math Course

Sat, 10 Feb 2024 00:00:01 -0400

If you are like me, you did not particularly enjoy math in high school, so the idea of learning an entirely new type of math in university might be terrifying to you. I know this can be scary and overwhelming (it was for me!), so here are some things I learned when taking my first proof-based mathematics course. Hopefully you find this helpful.

"Learning" Textbooks vs "Reference" Textbooks

Sat, 10 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0400

One of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is the fact that there are two main types of textbooks. There are reference textbooks, which are for people who are already versed in the subject area, typically academic researchers, professors, and the like. They tend to be large, contain massive amounts of information, and be unintelligible to everyone but their target audience. Then, there are expository textbooks, which are for people who actually want to learn things (aka me, a confused undergraduate student).

On Being an Artist on Instagram (and How It Can Suck)

Sat, 21 Mar 2020 00:00:00 -0400

I was chatting with one of my friends yesterday, just to check in, when our conversation moved from small talk to the topic of being artists on Instagram. We’re both pretty unknown on Instagram, and I suspect she’s just as unsure as I am about how much of an audience she actually wants for her work, but the discussion was still mostly about how “well” we were doing. And as of right now, she’s doing much, much better than I am, despite the fact that I have had my account for about two and a half years longer than she has. To be fair, she is a much better artist than I am, which totally accounts for some of her success. However, not all of it can be attributed to that. At all.