December 2014 Bragging Thread

Ran 21k for the first time, within a few seconds of 2h. Reasonable grounds to hope for a sub-2h finishing time in the half-marathon I'm signed up for this coming March 8.

I memorized a 20-digit number in under a minute, then repeated it forward, backward, and forward again, and lastly repeated it while adding 1 to each digit.

I overheard a normal-speed conversation between two native speakers of a language I'm learning and understood over 90%.

I've applied to graduate from my Ph.D. program, and I've applied to several post-docs. I also secured an interview at a lab.

I successfully applied CBT to stop scratching my beard and plucking hairs until it looks apalling (blank spots, irregular). Not awesome but really satisfying for me personally. Earlier I shaved the beard once I started this. Or avoided growing a beard in the first place. But beards are attractive and I got positive feedback about mine. Thus I tried to get rid of my not unusual behavior.

I used this CBT approach from Attention Control is Critical:

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy has a highly successful approach for breaking habits, which requires only a very subtle alteration to this process. You notice that you are biting your nails. You immediately focus your attention on what you are doing, and you stop doing it. No rage, no blaming yourself, no negative emotions. You just stop, and you focus all the attention you can on the act of stopping. You move your arm down, focusing your attention on the act of movement, on the feeling of your arm going down, away from your mouth. That’s it. You can go back to whatever you were doing.

Actually I enhanced it by using positive reinforcement on myself (I took this from Seligmann); I praised myself whenever I succeeded in keeping my hand away. It worked quite well. Took me about a week. One relapse when I didn't pull thru until the behaviour was extinguished. But now I'm stable. I can even stroke my beard thoughfully.

Donated $300 to SENS foundation just now. My company matches donations, so hopefully a large cheque is going there. Fightaging is having a matching challenge for SENS, so even more moolah goes to anti-aging research. Hip Hip Hurray!

Realized that my business partnership was gradually falling apart, and jettisoned myself from it. Instead of waiting for my partners to come to me with problems(I was the analyst geek of the group - shocking for a LWer, I know), I'm going out there and drumming up clients of my own. I feel better about work than I have in months.

Solved a Rubik's cube in under 15 seconds. Still having trouble getting my averages below 25, though.

Early in November, I saw an announcement of a local-to-me meetup group for my current hobby, software-defined radio, and requested presentation topics.

I saw an opportunity to get around to working on an idea that I'd had scribbled down for a while, so I went and did it. In about one weekend of programming and writing, I prepared my presentation, and here's the video: “A Visual Introduction to DSP for SDR”.

I got a lot more praise for it than I was expecting. Besides the obligatory applause, people came up to me afterward to tell me how remarkable my visualizations were. And from Twitter afterward:

• "Coolest live 3D visualization of DSP concepts I've ever seen"
• “Finally a good 3D visualization example for complex valued waveforms!” — Michael Ossmann (actually builds SDR hardware)
• "The most impressive live SDR/RF visualizations I've ever seen. Implemented by @switchborg in JS w/HTML5 audio source!"

After I reviewed the video, I saw I'd flubbed my intro (I meant to follow up the "I have no credentials" speech with "so if I can do this, so can you", but I forgot), though I managed a satisfactory amount of looking-at-the-audience-not-the-screen and lack-of-"um" — but, I think the content of my presentation would have made up for all of those mistakes if I'd made them.

And if you're interested in digital signal processing, or if the Fourier transform is a mystery to you (that you want to solve), then you should watch my presentation.

(Also, in news of Being An Adult While Still Feeling Like You're Faking It, as of this month I have successfully navigated two major upheavals this year in my previously-arranged-to-my-satisfaction life which could be broadly described as outside forces telling me “You won't be able to keep that thing you currently have. Find a new one.” And I'm glad that worked out and I consider it a substantial accomplishment. But the above thing is considerably more awesome.)

Received the results for a master's degree in computer science which I completed this summer. I passed and got a "merit", with which I'm fairly happy. Translating grading conventions between countries is challenging, especially the UK's byzantine system for grading degree- and postgraduate- level qualifications, so I'll simply say that a merit is good though not astounding, being the category below "distinction", the best possible.

Nonetheless, I'm happy, especially given that I really struggled with the thesis which was a requirement of the course. I learnt (well, actually, confirmed, since I already suspected as much) the hard way that self-directed, large-scale, academic projects are Not For Me. Actually, I found it so hard that I had to get a substantial (!) extension on it. (I also posted on here at one stage asking for advice as I was struggling so badly with the thesis, so anyone who remembers that post and wonders what became of the situation can now breathe a sigh of relief that it has at least a moderately happy ending.)

And now I'm seeking a job in software development, which was the reason why I did the degree in the first place.

Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine has published my flash piece "To the Point" in their January/February issue. It's short (250 words) but at 10 cents a word, it's my first Mystery Writers of America qualifying sale.

Today I completed the "minimum viable product" portion of my final project for a coding bootcamp I'm currently attending. I ended up cloning Less Wrong's favorite prediction tracker.

You can find my project here. Don't take it too seriously yet; it's undergoing rapid development and you may lose your data during major updates.

I started getting programming gigs.

I've been writing programs and bug fixing for my other work and personal environment for twelve years, always loved programming more than the other work, but...

Got my first tutoring student.

Went through my first job interview of my current application submissions, for a position in Alameda, CA. In spite of having to do it by phone, I still came in at number 4 on the list. Waiting for further developments now.

Opened my first mutual fund investment.

I asked and answered a question on Math StackExchange- the first of three related questions. The third question will characterize all faces of the Tridiagonal Birkhoff polytope. The first question is about vertices of certain Tridiagonal Birkhoff faces, and the second will be about the combinatorial type of the facets of these certain faces.

I finished up to the first major plot twist/divergence in the rationalfic(well, sort of. I'll just call it an attempted rationalfic) I've been working on for 3 months or so, and it's now in the top 15 most followed fics in the fandom(Danganronpa). Link: light in despair's darkness