Published! - Mind the Gap! Bridging the Dichotomy of Design and Implementation

Hi Everyone!

I just got word from the 4th International Workshop on Software Engineering for Computational Science and Engineering.  Aka SECSE 2011 and our paper Mind the Gap! Bridging the Dichotomy of Design and Implementation has been accepted!  Not only that, but our reviews were quite positive!  The best part is that this is one workshop of many which is at ICSE 2011.

Which this year, is in Hawaii!  Woot!  Hopefully this will get me there.  I have another paper in the works for another workshop in Hawaii and hopefully I hear about that one soon in a couple of days.  Maybe, just maybe, I'll be 2 for 2.

This is my first ever publication, which is awesome!  Looks like my academic carrier is off to a reasonable start.  I got to work with some great people and hopefully that will continue.   Everyone has to start somewhere and I apparently have started here.  Today, I had my first ever publication.  I'm also chilling in Portland enjoying great food and hospitality.  Tis a good day.

Thanks to everyone who helped out! Especially Donna and Yvonne!

I am so very excited.

-Liam

Thoughts on Grad School While I Warm Up my Curry

Made curry last night.  It worked out.

This point of my life has been extremely intense.  I've never felt so stressed out, nervous, excited, tired, awake or frightened before.  There have been very few points where I have felt this taxed and rewarded.  There is so much going on. It's hard to describe

Research has been good yet breakneck - though I am in a bit of a lull right now.  We managed to get two papers into conferences in Hawaii!  SECSE and IWMSE 2011 to be more precise .  One is based on my honors project and is pretty much all me.  The other is with a small team of us.  Both are kind of heavy for different reasons.  I think they both turned out pretty well.  I'm first author on mine, so here's hoping!  I had a lot of help from Andrew Brownsword who has awesome insights into performance and optimization.

Teaching is a very interesting experience and continues to be really rewarding.  I'm learning a ton every day.  Maybe someday I'll sort it all out and write some lessons learned, but first I have to figure out what those are.  It's super fun running a CSC lab - especially in 110.  You have a lesson plan, but we also get to add our own spin/creative variation. It's cool when people understand things or get legitimately excited.  Computer science is often pretty boring, but it really doesn't have to be. Making it fun and bringing people over to the dark side is pretty awesome.

In terms of actually coursework, I don't do a whole lot.  I'm in advanced cryptography, which appears to be working out.  It's interesting, but really theoretical, which isn't really what I'm into.

I'm also doing a grad seminar with a focus on being an international researcher.  Every Thursday we go in at 8:30 am and talk to folks in the UK.  That's kind of cool, but I think I need to know more about being a Canadian researcher before I branch out to the rest of the world.

Anyway, that's me for now.

-Liam

Grad School is Camping

Because it's in-tents!

No semester of undergrad can compare to how hectic its been in the last few days.  There has been an absolute ton going on almost all the time.  Getting into the swing of things has been tough and I'm also doing a lot of stuff I've never done before.  Tons of changes.  It is not like getting a bachelors degree at all.

I'm currently only in two courses - so I'm hardly ever in class while I'm on campus.  One of my courses is a "how to do grad school seminar" which may be more challenging than my actual course - which is advanced cryptography.

I'm instructing two labs:  Csc 110 - which should be fun - and Csc 355 - which may be tricky.  I'll also be doing some other related work and perhaps helping write up with one of the 110 assigments.  Still the fact that I could be teaching things to people - some of which are only 2 years behind me - is a little frightening.  Still the best way to learn is to teach right.

I have an office!  It pwns!  If you're ever in ecs and bored you could drop by.  It is theoretically a shared office, but I'm all alone in here so far.  I'm actually typing this in my office right now.  Having an office is awesome - mostly just as a quiet space I have control over.  My office is currently sports a tribble - proving that I do belong here.  I may owe some folks tribbles.

I need to get starting on doing research and defining what my research area is.  Perferably by the 13th which is freakishly soon.

Anyway I now have to run to a meeting about a project with the Hertzburg Institute of Astrophysics.  Life is insane.

-Liam