8 posts tagged “uc berkeley”

Tonight, after Obama was announced as the president-elect, thousands of students started pouring out of dorms, cafes, and libraries across Berkeley and started running through the streets of Berkeley. At the time, I was sitting in a cafe studying for a midterm. However, after some encouragement from my friends (thank you guys, I really owe you one), I sprinted home, grabbed my bike and camera, and rode/ran with the thousands of students for the next hour or two.

Now, imagine this entire crowd you see to your right screaming and cheering for Obama. And imagine every car you see holding down their horns and waving. These people were ecstatic. People were genuinely happy about our president. The police in the center of the crowd weren't violent, they were calm and waving. The cars were high fiving every pedestrian they could squeeze by. People were climbing telephone poles, buses, and buildings. Everyone was having a blast. This is what should happen when a president is elected. This is how it should be done. I've never had a lot of love for the political scene of America but I feel like this is a bold step in the right direction. Why? Because thousands of fucking people were running in the streets HAPPY about politics, for once. This man is a leader, and people believe in him. And for that alone - I'm ecstatic.

Another amazing thing about tonight was how the UC Berkeley police managed this crowd.I had a chance to speak with one of the officers and he had told me that they had anticipated this and planted officers on nearly every major intersection. All of the officers were calm and in control - and some were even cheering and smiling with the crowd. When I hopped a gate and climbed up to a balcony I definitely shouldn't have been on to take some photographs they were extremely civil and polite in asking me to leave. It was definitely the safest happy-riot I've ever experienced.

So, well done America. You've actually made Berkeley happy and excited about politics. I didn't think it could be done.

The rest of the photos are on my Flickr page.

 

I've been working on my schedule for Spring 08/beyond and I realized that if everything works out (and it looks like it will) I'll graduate in Summer 2008 vs Fall 2008.

That's an entire semester shaved off my graduation plan! Rockin.

I always enjoy reading about what my professor's are doing research on and checking out their academic history. It's interesting to see what someone has done before they decided that teaching courses at UCB was the best use of their time.

So one of my CS professors this semester, the one teaching the course in artificial intelligence, has a pretty remarkable academic history. The degree list / schools attended for any professor are usually pretty impressive, but I'm tempted to say this guy takes the cake:

Cornell: BA in Math, CS, Linguistics (summa cum laude)
Oxford / St. Johns University: MSt in Linguistics
Stanford: MS, PhD in Computer Science

I've seen some double majors before, but never a 'summa cum laude' triple major. Not intimidating at all.

Previously, the last CS professor with whom I mentally awarded 'most impressed' with got his degrees in CS from Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT. I read in a strategy guide that's some holy trinity of CS programs that awards a hefty stat modifier.

Anyways, this AI guy's research is in some pretty nifty natural language stuff. He demoed some of his work during the first lecture which was really interesting. I always want to pick these guys' brains about stuff but never know where to start. It's a bit intimidating approaching these guys sometimes... even though they're probably bigger geeks than I am.

Yesterday evening I had the privilege to be apart of a poster session that the RADLab was holding as part of their weekend retreat in Santa Cruz. All of the graduate students and professors setup posters regarding their graduate work while corporate sponsors / industry folk (from Google, Microsoft, Sun, Cisco, HP, and others (!)) wandered around asking questions and seeing what the RADLab was working on.

Although I'm not officially part of the RADLab (since I only took an undergrad course sponsored by them) I was still invited out to setup my laptop and demonstrate my application to the same groups of industry guys alongside the RADLab. I'll be honest, it was a little intimidating standing next to PhD students talking about their work on intelligent data centers while I was touting what was basically a half semester Rails project. However, it was very well received by all of the people I talked with. A few industry folks were asking about books they could pick up to read this weekend. In addition, many were interested in how the course itself worked and I got to spend some time preaching the merits and benefits of the course.

While driving four hours round trip wasn't my idea of a grand time, the free catered food and friendships/connections I made last night were without a doubt completely worth it.

It's no secret that Berkeley has monumental population fluctuations as it's student population moves away and back again during summer. What strikes me, however, is just how dead the streets can get. Here are two photos of Telegraph Ave at night. Typically speckled with wandering drunks (even at two or three in the morning), during summer the street is literally barren.

Only in Berkeley. The picture explains it better.

UCB takes politics very seriously, and it's the oh-so-exciting voting week at UCB (well, was). UC Berkeley has a series of political parties, each with funding and many would-be politicians and campaigners who blanket the plazas with their fliers. Of course, with any serious event, there have to be those that make light of it and poke fun at it. There were some amusing mock-parties that made an appearance this time around, my favorite being the "Zombies for Reagan" Party.

These guys and gals (numbering around 20-30, although the photo doesn't show it because they were all in plain clothes) wandered through upper Sproul plaza shouting for brains and cheering for Reagan. They moved pretty quickly for zombies, but I managed to snap off the above photo before they dispersed.

Another great example of some recent Berkeley shenanigans was the Ninja Battle 'flash mob'. I missed this one (it only lasted a minute), but it's another great example why wandering through campus is never, ever, dull.

Side Note: This was a mobile post, but I fleshed it out upon arriving back at home. Attaching a photo via my phone and having them show up in the post is just plain hot.

A part of me (the part that isn't concerned with personal safety) loves to walk through extremely busy urban (or semi-urban) areas extremely late at night. I love how quiet and serene an otherwise busy area feels once the sun sets. It constantly amazes me that the entire human race all but 'stops' at night, and deserts the world until the sun rises again. While many people get a chance to experience their neighborhoods at 230am, not many get to experience mine. So, in brief (well, not too brief), here was mine:

At around 0220 my 12 hour Engineering-Lab on Rails Adventure (SVN version: 26!) wound down, and I got to take a nice stroll through the UCB campus back to my apartment. I encountered a total of three people during my fifteen minute walk through campus, compared to (I'd estimate) around the two thousand I'd encounter closer to 1230pm, making the exact same walk. If an event was happening in Sproul Plaza, that number may be closer to three thousand.

Walking through UCB at night is, to me, is a surreal experience. I like to think of all the great minds that have came and left before me and the fact we've shared lecture halls, lab stations, and the very roadways I walk on. It amazes me that a school can have so much heritage and cultivate such a challenging learning environment. Walking through the campus when it's deserted lets me reflect on what has happened at Berkeley before me... without dodging bicyclists and keeping a rough tally of people who are not talking on their cell phone. The school feels so much more regal and proud without the 20,000 students wandering through it.

As I finished my serene walk through campus and began to near Telegraph, the sounds of Berkeley slowly started seeping back in. Where walking through campus had yielded silence, Telegraph yields the cries of drunken lads and ladies, cars whipping around corners attempting to impress the drunk staggering home, and the homeless sleeping on the streets. Once I step on Telegraph and leave the campus, I'm thoroughly submerged back into reality. People are steadily staggering from the direction of Frat Row back to the dorms, and police cruisers outnumber civilian cars.

What really brought a smile to my face, however, was a couple (perhaps only for the night) wandering down Telegraph in my vicinity. As they were both thoroughly intoxicated, their conversation was more than a few decibels louder than it needed to be, making it hard to not hear them clearly. She was asking him about his major, and he was sharing the prerequisite social minimum. All was normal. She then asked what he did, and he became excited and began talking about his research.

I had to bite my lip to avoid laughing at what followed next. He begins excitedly (and loudly) talking about his research in the labs regarding designing and building Nanotubes. Their shape, their uses, what this could be mean for the future, etc etc. This poor girl, however, went from happily involved in the conversation to left in the cold. She asked him to clarify terms a few times, and he didn't seem to catch the drift that his date wasn't a science person. As they turned left he was loudly explaining the shape of nanotubes and how it led to structural stability, while she was walking a step farther away from him and staring at the trees. I wish I could know how that evening played out.

Now, as it approaches 0300, I'm sitting here with my laptop listening to my birds chirp themselves to sleep, attempting to guess what song my neighbor is playing by only the clear and present bass line, and subsequently realizing that these are the memories I'll look back to fondly. This is what I spent four years working for.

Oh Berkeley, how I love thee.

I feel the world needs to know that in the UCB Cory Hall engineering labs the HP oscilloscopes have the old Centipede game built in. It's quite difficult using two rotary knobs instead of a nice smooth trackball, but entirely too fun. I'm addicted to this game thanks to Les Bain.

My friend informed me that the oscilloscopes in a different Cory lab happen to have Tetris on them.

Truly breathtaking uses of technology.

Side note: I would fail an engineering class solely based on this.