P. Oscar Boykin

Today marked my triumphant return to running. Since my last race (a half-completed marathon), I have been recovering from Iliotibial Band Syndrome (ITBS). I had it diagnosed by a sports medicine doctor and I did a few weeks of physical therapy (which consisted of stretches and strength training of various muscles in my legs).

I’ve been running pain free for a while, but shorter distances than I was running before. This morning, I ran in the Great Gainesville 5K Road Race organized by the Florida Track Club. I had several goals bouncing around my head for this race (from the overly ambitious 18 minute to the safe goal of 20 minutes), but I settled on 19 as my goal. I started out a bit too fast (my first mile was about 5:30 or so, which is probably a PR). By the end of mile 2 I was preparing to give up on the goal. According to my trusty Garmin Forerunner 305, I had already fallen behind the 19 minute goal. I started to just think about doing the best I could. Then, I tried to remember a mantra I read in the recent runners world: “The pain is not going to get worse, I can take it”, and I pressed on.

I usually save some energy for the end, so at about 2.5 miles in I picked up the pace a bit. When I got a glimpse of the finish, I could see that the clock read 18:40 or so and I kept pushing and ran a bit harder, I finished at 18:56, which is a average pace of 6:05/mile. I was hoping to place in the top three for my age division (30-34). I was very excited to learn that I actually came in first.

Congratulations to everyone who came out to race!

Update (4/16/2007):
The results of the SunState Credit Union Great Gainesville Road Race 5K have been posted. My rank was 15th overall (out of 188).

Our dear Suma Adabala is leaving the ACIS lab for Microsoft. She’ll be working on Windows Live and we all wish her the best.

Last night she had us over to her apartment (and even invited our dogs). At the party, I played Suma a song I wrote for her. It is intended to be a bit humorous:

Hope you’re better off
at Microsoft
At least your paycheck
will be getting bigger

I don’t use
Windows Live
That’s okay
I’ll still miss you anyway

I’ll always speak about you fondly
(even though you now work for the devil)
I’ll always think about the good times

Like the time you gave me
a ride to the party
or debating causes
of the great depression

Or stories of you
working on a horse farm
and fearless dogs
racing with the horses

When we get sad we’ll read your source code
(from Invigo middleware)
We’ll think of you when we see Blue Screens

And when you think
of north central florida
We hope that you’ll
. . .

Think of ACIS
Think of ACIS
Think of ACIS
Think of ACIS

Update:
Vineet took some pictures from the party. Here is me performing the above song:

Hello All,

Yes: I will be teaching 4834 in the fall.
No: It won’t be C++, it will be in Python
Yes: There is a book: Python Scripting for Computational Science by H.O. Langtangen.

A syllabus will be forthcoming, but the idea of the course is for students to learn common programming tasks for electrical engineers: numerical algorithms, reading and writing binary and text data formats (including XML), concurrent programming, network/sockets programming, GUI programming, web/cgi programming. Examples, homeworks and projects will cover topics relevant to electrical engineers.

If you’re asking “why python”, read this argument for Python as a teaching language. My short answers would be something like: it’s not that different from Matlab, which is popular with engineers, it’s easy to focus on problem solving and not mechanics (compiling and linking for instance), it’s easy to link python to c/c++ code, and lastly, python is just a lot more fun than c++.

I hope it’s a huge class, because it’s going to be incredibly great.

I don’t use many social networking websites. I used to have an account with Orkut (since I, like many geeks, have a pathological Google fetish), and I have played around with LinkedIn. I don’t use any of the “popular” ones (are MySpace and FaceBook popular?). I do like using Last.fm, which allows me to see what music my friends are listening to.

With all of these systems, you can make links to friends. There is a boolean value between every pair of users, are we friends: True or False. What an idea, your relationships reduced to their most significant bits. This also comes up in instant messaging systems. Each is either on your list or not.

Friendships are dynamic. Interesting things happen at both transitions 0 -> 1 and 1 -> 0. Generally the 0 -> 1 transition is happy, fun, exciting, etc. The 1 -> 0 one is not quite as much fun (depending on your idea of fun).

The state changes have their own anxieties. 0 -> 1 is an opportunity for embarrassment or disappointment. What if the other person thinks you are a 0, but you really want to be a 1. What if someone wants to be a 1 to you, but you’re really more comfortable with them as a 0. On the other hand, the 1 -> 0 transition is clearly a sad one. When is the right time to make the change? Was there some big fight? Did things just taper off? How long should a pair go without talking to become a 0?

I’ve been through a lot more 0 -> 1 changes than 1 -> 0 changes (I guess everyone has). I still remember my first 1 -> 0. At first, I thought there was sometime wrong with the system (hey, we’re friends… aren’t we?… ohhhh). I imagine humans who grow up with such systems might find them natural (perhaps even comforting), but as someone who grew up with friendship states being very subtle variables, seeing them represented as single bits can be strange.