Celebrate we will ...

Young love is nice, but does it have to be so noisy?

This is so cute! :) If you actually stop and read the letter, it mentions the Computer History museum as a possible date option, which is located right near Google Headquarters in Mountain View. The note itself is also sweetly awkward. Aw, nerdy Stanford love.

Linked up from Bay Area Girl Geeks.

I liked this. This also reminds me, LittleBigPlanet rocks my socks!

Netflix could never have gotten this work done on its own, even if they injected multi-millions into their R & D department. Truly a brilliant marketing scheme. This problem had become so popular that tackling it was the de facto choice for students' projects when I took my Machine Learning course.

And now it's solved!

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/netflix-awards-1-million-prize-and-starts-a-new-contest/

At UCLA, I fell in love with the Danish Language. I love the grammar, the glottal stops, but also how ridiculously hard it is to pronounce. I think it also speaks to a totally impractical part of my personality that just loves to learn things for the hell of it - the same part of my personality that chose Pure Math as an undergrad major.

And here, a hilarious video making fun of just how screwy the Danes speak. Enjoy!

It's 1am on a Thursday night. Why am I doing the Department of Defense's Defense Language Apitude Battery? And with Numerical PDE homework due tomorrow ...

"I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is."

I've got to read some Nabokov again.

A lovely clip from the movie Paris, Je t'aime - collection of 20 short films for the 20 arrondissements of Paris. I swear, that city is meant to be my home.

With the lovely Natalie Portman!

Hedgehog in the Fog, an example of state-sponsored Soviet Animation. Who knew this was coming out of Russia in the 1970s? Granted it's a bit abstract, but still a very impressive piece of work. Now I'm better able to understand why some Russians lament that their culture fell when the wall did.

"I wish I hadn't eaten that missionary,
said the cannibal chief with a frown.
I'm about to prove,
the proverb old,
that you can't keep a good man down."

And so does Congress!

Why am I more attracted to Puppies and Kittens rather than Human Babies? How is this evolutionarily optimal?


On another note, spending hours studying Automata Theory for an office hour that nobody comes to, likely because they're procrastinating until the last minute, is a bit defeating.

An ee cummings poem appropriate for today.
---

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings

The best song about ALF (you know, 80s Alien Life Form ALF) ... ever. It's an LDR love song between ALF and his love Rhonda who is back on the planet Melmac. Matt knew this song from his wacky-but-amazing childhood. Warning - it's entirely in German. :)

Before her dealings with the Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice was a tenured Political Science Professor and Provost at Stanford. Since all that remains of the Bush era is the world-wide mess, she is planning to take up university duties once again.

And what do the students think of this? These are the welcoming signs that will greet her upon her return to Stanford.

In White Plaza:



Posted all over campus:

This video was on the *main page* of CNN.com's headlines.

And here is CNN's description of the video:
"It's a photo that's been in newspapers, blogs, cable news, magazines, and even in prime time! Now meet the man who took it AND the horse herself!"

Ok, CNN, I'm through with you and and your games. You've subjected me to so much meaningless information in the past and I just took it mutely, consoling myself that things would be better in tomorrow's headlines. But I've been strung along for too long. Thanks to you I know the name of Paris Hilton's Chihuahua and the number of hot dogs that can be consumed by a small Asian woman in a single sitting. And all of this news-drivel is likely replacing my little remaining knowledge of that former Biochemistry major (Gluconeo-what?). That's it, CNN, You've now been permanently replaced with Al Jazeera English and Le Monde.fr.

This was one of my favorite poems as a child. I just found a site that has tons of translations and voice recordings of the poem in different languages, from Afrikaans to Hungarian to Klingon. It's wonderful. :)

The Owl and the Pussy-cat
By Edward Lear

I

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!”

II

Pussy said to the Owl, “You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?”
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

III

“Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.”
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

Though I do enjoy poking fun at my current academic institution, there are some really great things about Stanford. For example, right now I'm attending a seminar course about European Entrepreneurship, which is pretty damn awesome if you ask me.

I just came back from a panel of Finnish Entrepreneurs who shared their take on Business culture in Europe and how it compares with the Valley. Among them was Mårten Mickos, the former CEO of MySQL before it was sold to SUN Microsystems in a billion-dollar aquisition and now a senior Vice-President at SUN (whatever that means ...).

For me the most intriguing topic from the Biz Finns was on the hurdles that entrepreneurs and innovators face in the Old-World European culture. Mårten summed it up as the following:

"In Europe you can't make money. You can win it and you can inherit it. To make money is almost criminal. It is met with envy and suspicion."

Also pretty awesome is the Stanford Engineering Everywhere program. The program offers all the materials of genunine Stanford Engineering courses - taped lectures, homework assignments, exams and solutions - to anyone in the world free of charge. For example, my Machine Learning course from last quarter is right up there with the same Professor who taught it.

Now that I think about it, this means I could have done all the self-education I wanted from the comfort of my home without the continuous work and numerous nights lost to deadlines and due-dates. Well, crap.

Someday this will be my car. <3



Personally, I love the original Fiat Panda.