I have 2-3 days of class every week. I don’t work outside of school, so I’m left with a lot of time to manage. There are many ofttimes conflicting tasks that need to be done. It’s hard to always draw a line between distractions and social/personal obligations (especially when you’re working from home — a truly challenging activity).

In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.
~Rollo May

Some may label what I’m about to say (in the words of Steven Pinker) as “shopworn topics, easy moralization and conventional wisdom”. I can understand that. However, when it comes down to the everyday decisions and actions, these ideas may not seem as “easy, and conventional” as they look.

Apart from that, I truly hope these resolutions don’t sound like #9 on this list. For fear of sounding that way, I’m going to stop writing resolution-based posts. The present document is the last in it’s category

Finally, let me point out that this note is unusually quote-oriented. What I wanted to say has been said before, with all the right words (and music).

Without any further remarks, here are the resolutions:

Change at least one bad habit.

Every day the opportunity exists to change your life. But most days, the idea of having to change the big things in life just seems like too much work. Should I lie on the couch and watch a movie, or should I confront my personal demons? You get the point.
~Jill A. Davis

Yes, there are two paths you can go by
But in the long run
There’s still time to change
The road you’re on
~Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven

30 day trial

Live in the present.

Not the future.

Who you want to be is not as important as who you are now.
~Unknown

And definitely not the past.

“Shall we never, never get rid of this Past?” cried he, keeping up the earnest tone of his preceding conversation. “It lies upon the Present like a giant’s dead body.”
~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of Seven Gables

To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.
~George Orwell

Living in the present doesn’t contradict with resolutions — they’re for improving how we live in the present, and it doesn’t contradict with learning from the past.

A time journal is a good way to be able to enforce this.

Believe in yourself but don’t take yourself too seriously.

Believe in yourself so you can aim for what you really want in life.  But don’t take yourself too seriously to have an all or nothing view about that aim.

Follow instructions and play by the rules.

This is unless you have a better idea that you can implement.

Don’t leave unfinished projects.

One of my friends listed “finishing things I start” as a superpower on his Google profile.  It really is a superpower.  Giving up on a project because of some bug or difficulty along the way is a common and easy road to take.

Pain is temporary.  Quitting lasts forever.
~Lance Armstrong

Here’s how not to finish your projects.

Mowlana didn’t plan for a six volume book when he started Masnavi.

Many people die with their music still in them. Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes

That’s that.  Here are a few links:

My eight lifetimes:  Do you feel that years go by faster as you get older?

Fanni -- "Drosted"

That’s my friend Atefeh and I at Fanni’s 69th Annual Graduation Ceremony held on March 3rd.  Big thanks to Atefeh for telling me about it and getting my entrance card.  I used the MathMap plugin for GIMP, code from here, to get this “Droste effect image” from the original photo.

Artful Mathematics: The Heritage of M. C. Escher [PDF], see Escher and the Droste effect (I’ll be giving a short seminar presentation on this right after the holidays.  I’ll post it here.)

The Song of Sparrows [the movie website] (آواز گنجشک ها)

“Whereas Europeans generally pronounce my name the right way (‘Nick-louse Veert’), Americans invariably mangle it into ‘Nickel’s Worth.’ This is to say that Europeans call me by name, but Americans call me by value.” (function evaluation strategies)

The Selfish Gene (a book I’d like to read if I can find it somewhere)

Finally, here’s a quote with a link to an article that invites us to consider whether we should really be spending so much time trying to soak up all the information we’re only a few clicks away from:

“Some activities are clear cut. Watching the same Seinfeld episode for the 15th time or playing online poker provides little growth or substance beyond adding entertainment and levity to the day, but what about all of those activities that trick us into thinking we’re using our time smartly when we’re really just wasting time?”

That’s it for today. Enjoy spring!

To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are things I like to talk about, however.  So let’s take a look back at 2009.

The “aftermath”

There’s a lot going on in this country these days.  These events make parts of an amazing story about courage and equality. They make a story about the Internet and it’s role in public awakening; a story about the disintegration of power on one side and the decentralization of leadership on the other.  It takes someone well-read in the history and politics of the country to be able to write about these occurrences in a way that would do justice to both the people involved and the significance of their actions.  As hard as it may be to understand, it can hardly be ignored.  Who can see all that’s happening today and not take sides?  Who can listen to the news and not feel disappointed?  Who can say that things will be alright?

Enough said.

What I want

I’ll be turning 24 this coming May.  I’m happy with the person I turned out to be (with lots of room for improvement, of course) and I’m grateful for the people around me — my family and amazing friends. It’s been a long journey.

The journey I am talking about is a cultural one.  For me it was never about gradually learning a culture, but always a culture shock and forced assimilation.  I grew up in two very different countries, during different stages in life.  The fact that I wasn’t a complete grown-up when moving between the two countries exaggerated the shock effect.  Add to that my urge to be “politically correct” at all times, and you’ll see why I understood life to be more socially complicated than it really was.

I could write for pages, and maybe I will someday, about the details of these cultural awakenings.  But that’s not the point.  The point is the effects of this on my life as a student, as a friend and as a woman in this country.

This year passed, and I come out of it thinking I could have enjoyed life a lot more if I had felt more at home.  If I had felt that it is here where I belonged, then I would have taken more advantage of the opportunities that arose.

Letting go and moving on

I have left UT for AUT to start grad school this September.  It’s only natural for me to have made strong bonds with the people from UT over the past years.  And the majority of these people are great — smart, motivated, kind and caring.  But now I am in a new environment, with new people.  Today, I have more in common with these new people than the ones I was once very close with.  If I were to keep past relationships just as they were, given the same time and emotional capacity, I would make fewer new friends.  This could lead to a harder transition and acceptance of the new environment.  What I’m trying to say is that, as valuable as old friends are, the value of maintaining old relationships should be judged by care.

That was awkward.  I’m gonna have to clear this up in some later post!

About the value of friendship, C. S. Lewis has said,

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. It has no survival value; rather, it is one of those things that give value to survival.

I especially liked this quote about friendship by Ralph Waldo Emerson,

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.

Some links

Books, music, and the Internet are life’s true luxuries I guess.  They’re there when you need them and (if you know what you’re looking for) they never disappoint.  Here are some links and stuff (that I happened to come across in 2009).

Sohrab Sepehri‘s poems

The status of the P versus NP problem [PDF]

Bug zappers and electrostatics

The $25,000,000,000 Eigenvector [PDF]

Rentier state: “those countries that receive on a regular basis substantial amounts of external economic rent”; “external rent liberates the state from the need to extract income from the domestic economy” [PDF]

Nonlinear dimensionality reduction

Life Goes On In Tehran: This is THE best guide to Tehran and Tehrani life.

It’s 2 hours past midnight.  It’s raining like crazy here.  Looks like it’s gonna be a clean morning tomorrow!

Happy 2010.

Advanced Course

If you plan to work on a more research intensive project, I’d suggest taking an advanced course with your project supervisor.  This will give you some ideas and motivation to work on the topic.

Project Scope

Your main goal is a complete and edited report that is ready and printed before the deadline.  Don’t get over-excited, over-enthusiastic, or over-confident in choosing the project topic and scope.  Remember, you’re only in the learning phase of your research career and will have enough time to work on really cool problems later.  When time allows only one step, a small step to a local optimum is favored over a giant step to nowhere.

Clear statements

Make sure both you and your supervisor have mutual understanding on the project specifications, deliverables, and timeline.  Remember, s/he’s probably used to a special vocabulary when speaking with her/his grad students and colleagues everyday and may forget that you may not be familiar with the jargon.  I was lost for days trying to figure out what my supervisor was talking about, asking grad students, searching the Internet — all to no avail. It’s best to keep asking questions until the problem is “crystal clear” for you.

Having stood at this end of the chain, you’ll be able to see why writing well is valuable.  A good scientific writing has to be able to tell the most using the least number of sentences.  You don’t want to waste your reader’s time with redundant sentences, and you don’t want to be ambiguous.  Be clear, and take responsibility for the correctness of each statement.  One of the graduate theses that I was reading for my project was ambiguous in many respects and contained technical inaccuracies.  It was not only time-consuming but irritating to read, let alone build upon. Your bachelor’s project report can be a very useful document for other undergrads who might want to work in the same area, so keep that in mind when writing.  Based on experience, I can tell you that papers with higher citations are also easier to understand.  No wonder, right?

After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.
~Frederick Chopin

Weekly meetings

In my opinion, this is the most important thing to ask of your supervisor.  A weekly meeting, for as little as 10 – 15 minutes, same time every week, is necessary to ensure moving on the right track and getting results by the deadline.  You’ll need this kind of feedback on your work, especially because it’s (probably) your first real research experience.

Writing process

Have a written version of your report ready before each of the meetings.  The iterative process in software engineering works.  Learn from its lessons.  This will keep you at bay from having to go through worried, sleepless nights!

First things should come first.  Review the literature, and write your literature review as far ahead in time as you can.  Not only will you better understand the status of your work with respect to the existing research in the area, it will also take a big load off of your shoulders.  You can spend the rest of your time focusing on the main work, implementing the ideas, and giving references when necessary.

I had quite a journey working on my project.  I hope the advice is useful for you.

I want to dedicate this song to projects, exams, and deadlines …

The song reminds me of a quote from David Brooks.  It’s hard to agree with completely, but here it is,

Institutions do all the things that are supposed to be bad. They impede personal exploration. They enforce conformity.  But they often save us from our weaknesses and give meaning to life.

I hate to end on that note.  Here’s a nice document from Richard Hamming about the research process.  It’s enjoyable to read, but if it’s too long for you, you can look at a summary of that talk presented as 10 simple rules for research.

As far as the blog (now renamed to “Notes”) is concerned, I am typically undecided on why and what I should write.  Sometimes I’m afraid that writing something will be giving away unnecessary information — like things I’m not proud of, or ones I wouldn’t want to brag about.  Other times I feel obliged to do more research before theorizing about a subject, and it makes me wonder if the blog post is worth the time.  Also, disclosing my point-of-view on certain issues can be stressful.  I know that these thoughts go through many a blogger’s mind.  In my case, they’re causing a deadlock and a handful of unpublished drafts.

When I was younger, and before blogging platforms became so widely available, I used to write for myself.  Writing was my tactic to calm down and clear my mind.  Naturally, I didn’t hold back on any thoughts and feelings.  Some turned out to be acceptable works of prose and poetry (yes, poetry) and inevitably, others were purely idiotic, FLOABE¹.  I like to go back to that, in spite of some of the above-mentioned feelings which I will try to ignore.  (It’s not easy, I’m like this close to saving this post to drafts that won’t get published.)

You can’t avoid becoming self-conscious when writing for an audience.  However, the constant evaluation of yourself from the reader’s point of view, can lead to becoming more self-ware — and that’s a good thing. 

I’ll stop here.  Hopefully, the ice will have been broken next time I’m back.

——————————————————-
1 For Lack Of A Better Expression

This wasn’t my excuse in disguise.

Let’s talk about decision making.

Free will and decision making

If we believe in free will, then we need to accept that decision making is an important part of being human.  Our decisions, big or small, determine if we will reach our short- and long-term goals.  Therefore, decision making deserves much more thought and time than we are usually ready to allocate to it.

Luckily, the world and our bodies are robust enough to endure many bad decisions.  But the better decisions we make, the better the quality of our life.

In what follows, I plan to write of the heuristics that I have found to be useful in my own experience with making decisions — which should explain the preaching tone of the writing .

Some notes on how to decide

Take decision making seriously.  Sit down, think about your life, talk to people, and do research.  This is time well spent.

Begin with the end in mind.

Avoid making very big decisions.  Lessen the risk attributed to your final decision as much as possible.  Remember that you can never see the whole picture until you’ve acted on your decision.  No matter how much thorough thinking you put into it, your decision is based on a set of choices that you have induced from vague and incomplete information. 

An important heuristic in decision making – though hard to admit – is that the better decision is the one that requires the harder work to act upon.

Decide ahead if possible.  This is one of the best ways to ensure good decisions.  You’ll spend enough time for research and thought and you’ll be able to customize your decision in a way that suits you best.  This prepares you mentally for acting on your decision when the time comes.  It also prevents any adverse affects that hormones or any other sort of temporal distractions can have on your mental process.

Remember that your decisions are for you.  You can only be useful to other people if you are happy and satisfied with who you are.  Don’t lie to yourself and boldly consider your needs.  Make sure your decisions will entail them.

Don’t make decisions that would make life hard on others.

Once you’ve made the decision

Try explaining your reasoning out loud for yourself (or friends and family who have experience in the area).  Check to see if it sounds right.  Does it support or undermine your values?  Is this the kind of decision you want to be attributed to?  In the words of one blogger, ask yourself, “Is this me?”.  Are you ready and willing to defend your decision if needed?  My advice would be to write down your line of reasoning (enumerate all the pros and cons of your available choices), to be able to look back on, in case you’re ever in doubt.

There might be times when you feel you’ve made mistakes.  Having a written statement to remind you of the reasons behind your decision, will help you get through.

Some people have a tendency to say, “this can’t be done” or “you’re not the kind of person to do this kind of thing”.  Don’t mind them.  As Arnold Bennett beautifully said,

The real tragedy is the tragedy of the man who never in his life braces himself for his one supreme effort, who never stretches to his full capacity, never stands up to his full stature.

• Control your attention. The idea is that changing our trajectory once in a while can be good, even necessary, but changing it too often can make us miss out on a lot.  (It’s the exploration vs. exploitation problem, and for a different approach but same idea see here.)  To elaborate further on this topic, I would have to go over the myriad of decisions I’ve made over the past year.  Instead, I’ll turn your attention to this wonderful quote from David Brooks — also an inspiration for this resolution, which says,
  

Control of attention is the ultimate individual power. People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them. They can choose from the patterns in the world and lengthen their time horizons. This individual power leads to others. It leads to self-control, the ability to formulate strategies in order to resist impulses. [...] It leads to resilience, the ability to persevere with an idea even when all the influences in the world say it can’t be done. [...] It leads to creativity. Individuals who can focus attention have the ability to hold a subject or problem in their mind long enough to see it anew.

• Be great and kind to family and friends. Make them feel lucky they know you.  If you see you can help out with something, do so without being asked.  But you need to be constant and predictable in being great so you can become dependable.
• Welcome happiness with open arms. Don’t avoid being happy all your waking hours.  Let the smallest achievements, acts of kindness, and living minutes be reasons for happiness.  Don’t judge me as old-fashioned when I sing,

You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between

You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith or pandemonium
Liable to walk upon the scene

It’s a song we were taught and made to sing in Grade 3.  I guess I’m beginning to understand the value in its lyrics after 14 years

That’s it.  And now the review of the past:

I’m actually content about achieving most of last year’s resolutions.

I learned to touch type (I’m at 40wpm on a QWERTY keyboard, and yes, I’m still working on it.) For the first time in my life, I’m experiencing the kind of wrist pain most people complain about.  I have this post to thank for actually getting on the 30 minutes for 30 days plan.  Had it not been for the harsh and frank tone it carried, I would probably still be sitting, hoping for that speech-to-text software.

I got back in touch with math.  I took four math courses this recently expired year, which helped on the analysis topics at least.

Fitness-wise, I learned volleyball. I was always unsure and disapproving of the sport, mostly because I felt I had little talent for it.  However, after more than a few bruised forearms and aching fingers, I started to get the hang of the darn thing.  It was a truly humbling experience but made me realize that I wasn’t stuck with my existing set of abilities.  I needed to keep on trying until the breakthrough moment — when playing was no longer a struggle, but came naturally.

Without further comments, I like to end this note as I touch type with a sore wrist, aching fingers and a bruised forearm, by wishing you a year of control, kindness, and happiness. Happy 2009.  Thank you for reading.

Note: I will be presenting this tomorrow at 15:30 in class 11. It’s for the presentation course. You’re welcome to attend if you’re interested.

The accompanying LaTeX document can be downloaded here after tomorrow’s presentation session.

Update:

• Accompanying LaTeX document (test.tex, test.bib, make.bat)
• What it’s gonna look like (test.pdf)

As I look at my friends list, I see the bits and pieces of my history. Before joining FB, those pieces were separated and all over the place, they had nothing in common but me, who did a good job at keeping each away from the other thinking it was the obvious thing to do. FB became the tool that helped me merge the past and present, gathering all the faces that I portrayed, and the roles that I played, all under a single profile — that of Pardis Noorzad.

Having said that, I feel I should go through some minor user experience design problems that in my opinion, need to be addressed by the FB development team. They are enumerated below (in no particular order):

1. Status Updates Format:

It used to be <your_name> is <empty_space>, which took away the user’s creativity in the use of verbs and their tenses. Good thing, the ‘is’ was removed. However, the <your_name> part remains. If this is supposed to make the user keep the focus of their status on themselves, then it can be changed to I <empty_space>. Maybe it’s just me and the effects of all those Tarzan shows and movies I’ve been exposed to as a child, but I can’t help not having recollections of Tarzan’s lines every time I update my status or read others’.

E.g. Pardis wants better Internet access.

Reminds me of:

Tarzan is hungry, Tarzan wants food.

There’s really no need to have <your_name> there, the updates are always appended with a profile picture and a full name.

2. Application Boxes:

With the launch of the new FB, the boxes were moved to a separate tab. The bright side is that people’s profiles have a uniform look, the first page loads faster, and you don’t get bombarded with nonsense about your friends (like the fruit that they are ). The downside is, FB applications don’t get the attention they used to, even the good ones (like, wait, I’m thinking). FB apps lost the first class status they used to enjoy. I don’t have the statistics, but I can guess a fall in the number of app-users and therefore, a drop in the number of apps being created, and this is usually a bad thing.

3. Comments on Photos:

When your friend comments on a photo from a photo set of yours, that friend’s friends get access to all the photos in that set. This can be a privacy issue for many. And what’s frustrating is that you’re allowed to see pictures that you can’t make comments on

4. Tagging System:

To me, this is the worst UI design mistake throughout FB. And it’s a shame, because the idea of tags on pictures is brilliant and of FB’s strong points — after the News Feed of course. The tag box is not resizable and it’s not draggable. It’s only effective for tagging a picture with at most three people situated uniformly across the picture. FB developers should look at Flickr‘s tagging UI, which helps you put every tag exactly where it belongs.

5. Chat Boxes:

I’m not and never have been a chatter. I think of myself as a step weaker than Dr. Knuth in my control over personal communication practices; I check my email twice a day. Therefore, I like the simplistic chatting system on FB which is appropriate for a little exchange of greetings. But with the number of friends (mine is at a modest 180+) rising almost every day, and hence, the number of online friends, there should be a way to quickly switch between the open chat windows, like a keyboard shortcut.

6. Downloading the Whole List

I’m not sure if this fits as a user experience design issue or not, but it is much needed anyway. What if one day, you wanted to close your account at FB, or FB got shut down temporarily. People like me who now rely on their FB account for contacting friends — even more than their email accounts — should be able to make a backup of their friends’ contact information, downloadable in some flavor of XML.

7. Status Update Text Box

Microblogging is a fantastic way to express yourself, and let your friends understand and know you better. I like it better than blogging, because it is updated more often, it is more personal, and since it’s fast, it can be more sincere (I said “more”). However, there’s one major drawback. The text box size is too limited. I’m always running out of space in my status updates, I then erase the original and write a shorter, more dull version. I have to summarize and skip the cool details. Status updates should be something in between blogs and what they are now. They need to be extended to something more than just “Pardis is writing about this”.

That’s it with my little bit on FB design issues, I will add more if I see anything.

No matter how good FB is, or anything new on the Internet nowadays, you can’t ignore that they have the potential to take more out of your life and time than to put in. This idea is illustrated very well in a quote by John Ralston Saul,

The effect of new technology has been to draw even senior managers into minutiae. People paid to think and lead now spend much of their time typing and responding to or sending an endless stream of unnecessary messages, simply because communications technology invades every second and every corner of their lives. This bureaucratization of both the leadership and the creative process makes thought seem irresponsible and clear action seem unprofessional. It provides a sensation of activity while creating a broader sense of powerlessness. This is what used to be called being nibbled to death by ducks.

I’ll probably write a post someday on achieving “Internet use efficiency” using the available tools on the Internet. There is a way to benefit from all it has to offer without missing out on the rest of the more important things in life.

In the end, I’d like to point your attention to a very thorough article on the effects of social network apps like FB on individuals, written by Clive Thompson, in this New York Times article. Read it in your free time.

I gave up on Khorshid. My new and improved website now safely resides on a server provided by PersianTools. So far, I haven’t been able to move my previous posts and links from the old database server (called “Aftab” — which ironically, is another word for sun). I’m keeping my fingers crossed on that one.

In the end, I miss Khorshid, because I could upload my files locally, because it hosted for free, and because it provided a good testing ground for young linux server administrators. Hopefully, I’ll be able to help out next semester when I’m graduating … and I’m already feeling sorry for the future users