About me:

I am an undergraduate at Stanford from El Cerrito, CA Madison, WI.
I am an RCC in Crothers hall this year (C241).
I study Computer Science.

Who I am

I was born in East Lansing, Michigan. I can't remember the 2 years I lived there, nor can I remember moving to Davis, California. I attended 3 of these schools, many of which had different names back in the early 90's, until 4th grade, at which point I briefly moved to Austin, Texas and had a generally OK time. Then I got dragged back to Albany, California. I went to 3 more elementary schools, then attended Albany Middle School and Albany High School, both of which had a handful of good teachers, but enough bad teachers to make me briefly consider teaching as a career. Some notable events I recall are getting 4th place at a couple of Bay Area quiz bowl tournaments, totally owning everyone else on an english group project by making an animated website, doing pretty much nothing (guitar hero!) and having a great time in general during journalism "class", and enduring the endless, though rewarding, pain of 4 years of French with the same teacher, who was actually pretty awesome in retrospect. I also was a mathlete, programmed games, and wrote (admitedly bad) music. Despite Because of this, I got rejected from MIT and made a big deal over it. Since I didn't have a second choice, I went to Stanford, which seemed like the best school out of the ones I got into. Whoops.

What I do

I mostly code in my (productive) free time, and since college, all the time. I use C, PHP, Python, and Javascript for my personal stuff, but have also used Java, C++, and Scheme in classes and actionscript 2 & 3 (ugh) for work. I know a bit of OpenGL, which I have used for various things. There's a list of coding projects I've done here. For anyone who cares, I use vi, ([g]vim mostly), mostly because emacs isn't installed on my ubuntu [virtual] machines.

I started programming using Game Maker in 2002 when it was not a commercial product. As a side note, I did know about C++, Java, etc. but all the simple tutorials involved making console applications, which didn't interest me, so if it weren't for GM, I'd probably be another premed student, since the only other thing I'm good at is memorizing useless facts.

I decided to specialize in graphics because I enjoy the fact that I can be doing something vaguely artistic using math. The only other area I'm ok at is computer systems, but I decided against that after taking a systems course with my least favorite professor ever.

Other than coding, I also pretend to be a connoisseur of popular music, watch movies about suburban angst, study computational mathematical jibberjabber, and occassionally play videogames.

As far as school/plans, I aim to graduate in 2010.5 + .5 and go to graduate school (hopefully at UC Berkeley or MIT) to get some sort of advanced degree and become some sort of corporate or academic researcher, since I don't aim to ever do real work. Of course, given my inability to realize my own dreams, this probably won't be what happens.

Stanford

Academically, Stanford is OK. There are good professors and really bad ones, just like any other place, so the amount you learn is pretty much dependant on you. I've found that (at least in CS) higher level courses tend to be better taught and much more interesting than the lower-level courses, and that's slowly improved my opinion on academics here as time has gone by.

However, on the non-academic side, things aren't quite as nice. I'm not as rah-rah as all the other undergrads here about this place, mostly due to fact that my freshman dorm experience was terrible. It may have just been my inability to adjust to a new setting, but I made zero friends for the first half of the year, while everyone else seemed to be having a great time. I thought it was just me being a social failure somehow, but then after finally making some friends elsewhere realized that the people I lived with actually didn't care about me, which is something I'd rather not have realized. I got lucky the next year and ended up with people I mostly liked, but it could have just as easily gone the other way.

That's the problem with this place - outside of classes, there is literally nothing to do on campus (unless you really like watching fountains). Which means that for (most) undergraduates, your experience is defined by the people you live with. So that's great if you live with good people. If you don't... you'll have serious problems. Adding to this is the fact that almost everyone puts off an air of success and happiness, which makes it incredibly hard to talk to people when you have real problems, since it feels like there's no one you can relate to.

I really think this place is nothing special in any way besides a handful of excellent professors and my closest friends. That's fine, I don't need to be at a perfect university (wish I'd known that before I got rejected from MIT). But the fact everyone else pretends it's perfect here really bugs me. Stanford has some serious problems that I can't see being fixed anytime soon. It really isn't worth it to ruin your life trying to get in, like I've seen quite a few people do.

This site

I coded this site (html, css, javascript) & and wrote all the content, except where noted. I'm not sure why I'm doing this, but it seems like a good repository for any further work I do for future reference.