Figure 1: Google Street View

Incidentally, I recently met Mok Oh (a graduate alum), founder of Everyscape, who pushes a visionary service debuted hours before Google Street View. Everyscape presents a vision of painting the world and allows people to visit every corner of both public and private space. Check out the interpolation between public and private space of the Cheers restaurant in Boston (Figure 2). Everyscape not only offers the ease of searching for momos in the area, but also the virtual experience of indoor dining. Although it’s still a small company in Beta testing, Everyscape has some neat demos and is striving to be a serious competitor.

Figure 2: Everyscape’s Complete Virtual Experience

Of course, all this reminded me and others of a piece of work done in 1978 here at MIT (OK fine, it was done in the research group I worked in) known as the Aspen Project. The Aspen Project won the “Golden Fleece Award”, an award presented to those projects which waste an obscene amount of government money and deemed completely useless. Luckily, that viewpoint has since changed. See Figure 3.

Figure 3: The Aspen Project

Figure 1: Standard graduate student (S.G.S) with meal consisting of leftover Bertucci’s bread “lumps”, cheese, and tomato

Discussion:

At 4pm, the standard graduate student (S.G.S) receives an announcement for leftover Bertucci’s pizza from a meeting on the 4th floor. Unfortunately, arriving 3 minutes late results only in the consolation prize: bread lumps. Bread lumps are actually quite tasty. These bread rolls come with the standard order of Bertucci’s pizza and are described on the website as having a “heavenly aroma”. Sadly, at some point in time, the free-food lists began referring to the warm and tasty rolls as “bread lumps”… thus giving them a poor connotation within the graduate community. However, the S.G.S remains positive and chooses to make the best out of the failed free dinner expedition. Store-bought fresh cheese and tomatoes add a nice flavor to the seemingly bland lumps of bread.

Conclusion:

Results conclude that with a proper choice of supplemental dressings, free consolation-prize food may be upgraded to a tasty meal for sharing.

I had a paper deadline at midnight Pacific time yesterday which really means 3AM for us. This is all the norm but depending on the working style of your research group, this could mean that you are up very late with your advisor for the days before a deadline (and submitting to the last second). For me, this was the case. I knew about this before I chose my advisor in CSAIL and opted for this style as a personal preference. All things considered, I really appreciate the attention in the group.

On the other hand, this research style means balancing classes, social life and sleep. In the case of classes, I like to take a lot. I generally find that even if you only get a fraction of what was taught in the course, it will eventually be useful toward your own work. Different people have different opinions on this and perhaps my own view will change in the future. All things considered, however, I consider myself a student and I like to take classes (both in and outside my area). As an institution, Area II requires you to take four (and get three passing grades) to pass quals.

In the case of social life, I find myself very bursty. This past weekend, I had to offload spending time with my guest to my housemates (and the other admits in the house). Given other weeks I would have really enjoyed showing somebody around. Perhaps that means you should visit again!

I love sleep. Again, depending on the group you join, you will have different sleep patterns. Back when I was at the Media lab, sleep was on the shelf during demo deadlines. In my current group, sleep is on the backlog around paper deadlines and camera-ready deadlines. Overall though, as with most things, there is always time to catch up later.

So thats the shimmy on circadian rhythms. It’s probably not that much different from your current lifestyle. I hope you’ll come back to visit… but if not, I’m sure we’ll catch up later!