In my University, we have three common courses that form the early component of a Computer Science student’s career, CSC 116 – Introduction to Computing, CSC 216 – Programming Concepts, and CSC 316 – Data Structures. These courses were colloquially referred to by Undergraduates including myself as Java I, Java II, and Java III, respectively. We knew that these classes existed to give us a basic grounding in elementary programming concepts, and since I had been one of the advanced students who had been programming since high school, few of the concepts were particularly new to me. However, upon entering my Java III class, my professor (who I then went on to do some Undergraduate Research with) explicitly stated on the first day of class:

“This is not a java course.”

I don’t know about anyone else, but my mind was blown, and this was when I went from being a student who failed to see the cohesion in the material to being an out-and-out scholar who began to look at concepts to try to bring them together into a common channel. It was at this point that I stopped looking at my curriculum as a “string of classes”, and instead began to view it as a portfolio of skills that I could apply wherever I went in my life, which ended up turning out to be Graduate School.

I kept this in mind when I chose my electives, and even in my English, History, and Anthropology courses, I connected my technology to the big picture. Like I said in my last blog post, it’s not all about the technical contributions – a technical contribution should also have a societal benefit, whether it’s making life more efficient, comfortable, or secure. For one, you can see this in a History class that discusses how communication has changed with the advent of radio, television, and the Internet. Students in technical studies need the viewpoint offered by sociological classes to see the impact of their work, and why their degree matters in the first place.

What students don’t realize is that their curriculum isn’t simply pulled from whim of a disgruntled school administrator looking to make their lives difficult. Curricula are designed around a set of learning objectives that spell out what someone who is holding a degree in a particular field should be able to bring to the table. In theory, this is why an employer can say that you need a B.Sc. in Computer Science to work for them – because they know what having a B.Sc. in Computer Science means thanks to the accredited curriculum that the University follows. Universities work with academics and professionals to put together a curriculum that can teach and assess whether students are capable of living up to the expectations of their degree. Yet students don’t think of it that way.

I didn’t get to stay long enough to see the end of his talk and hear the big punchline, but I can kind of imagine how it ended. This is the wrong perspective. A college education is more than the sum of its classes, and by giving students a broader view of what they are really doing by taking all of these silly courses might help provide some cohesion so they can take their courses in stride, plan their electives strategically, and end up more prepared than their peers and colleagues. Professors who teach the 100 and 200 level classes are in the best position to do this, because by the time they reach the advanced classes, they’re already two years in, and at that point, it might be too late.

So with that said, it’s obvious that I can’t stay in the lab forever. It’s a great spot for getting work done because it is a static and secluded environment. However, these characteristics make it ill-suited for coming up with new ideas, and new ideas are what good research is all about. This is why I make such an effort to find inspiration for my work through the groups that I participate in. Whether it’s a professional organization such as the IEEE or a hobbyist club such like a Linux User’s Group, I try to build connections with people both in and outside of Academia who can help give me a fresh perspective on my work.

These sorts of professional and social groups are valuable in that they allow me to share my research with people who “get” technology. Even if I’m digging deep into some obscure technical details in my daily work, I can present what I’m doing at a high enough level for people who are reasonably familiar with the subject area to appreciate the challenges I’m facing and the approaches I’m using. When they don’t understand it, they are able to ask the right questions to learn more, and when they see the big picture, they are in a position where they can comment on it themselves. This has more to do with their interest than their intelligence, because if they didn’t care, they wouldn’t make an effort to learn about it from me. And nothing makes research feel more rewarding than seeing people who think it’s interesting enough for them to ask about it.

University-driven initiatives like NC State’s Preparing Future Leaders program are another avenue for making connections. Unlike the IEEE and LUG, the people I meet in these groups may not fully grasp the technical aspects of my work, they do often give me insight in how my field intersects with theirs, opening my mind to interdisciplinary opportunities. When researchers from diffrent worlds mingle, the possibilties are endless, and that’s particularly exciting for me. Yet, even when there is no overlap, these are still the folks who can fully recognize the lifestyle I’ve chosen by attending Graduate school and pursuing a life in research.

Building these networks of professionals, academics, and peers is a tremendously rewarding effort. Not only does it connect me with people that I can share my ideas with and get feedback from, but the fresh sense of perspective I get from these colleagues and mentors helps keep me motivated and excited about the work that I do. I’m convinced that this ambition and satisfaction with one’s work is absolutely critical to the success of an Academic.

barry peddycord (ishara comix): I would like to think that when people search for my name, they would be taken to my blog. While a number of people find my Twitter or LinkedIn page first, and then follow the link to my blog, some people end up here directly. Google’s searches are a bit non-deterministic on whether my blog will appear as the first link or whether a social networking site will appear first. Today, for example, my blog shows up first, but that isn’t always consistent.

the phd movie: A really awesome movie based on the PHD Webcomic, I wrote a review of the movie when I saw the screening at my university.

the phd movie rapid: Come on, guys. It’s not that expensive to just go and buy it.

minecraft banner: One of my favorite banners is my minecraft banner. Minecraft is a very popular game, so it makes sense that people would bump into my site if they’re looking for one. It actually appears on the second page of the search results, which is pretty spiffy.

eclipse worst ide ever: This is simply a true statement.

dcpu-16 programming: By writing a blog entry about a game being produced by game-dev demigod Notch, I kind of figured I’d be able to take advantage of the search engine tidal wave and get a blog visit by being among the first to talk about the DCPU programming environment for the upcoming game 0×10^c.

latex comix: “Comix” is a word with a bit of a checkered past, typically referring to underground and less wholesome comic strips that were produced to cater to the darker side of humanity. And as an academic, I find myself coding in more than any other language. So I guess it makes sense, even though I’m pretty sure they’re looking for something very, very different.

eating out my professor: … sometimes I worry about the world.

What kind of funny (or surprising) searches have led people to your blog?

Today’s my birthday, meaning I’m another year closer to becoming a bitter, cranky old man. Actually, having my age fall immediately after the end of the Spring semester has a number of very interesting qualities. First and foremost, I wasn’t even legally permitted to drink until after I had my degree! Supposedly American college culture is all about binge drinking and partying, but I was just too young for all of that nonsense.

On a more serious note (or maybe not) it’s nice being able to say that I got my degree when I was unusually young. I was 2 years younger than most of my peers when I got my B.Sc. because I was able to get my degree in three years AND my birthday occurred after the ceremony. So this means that I’ll be pretty young if I manage to get my Ph.D. on time. Some folks wonder what my rush is, but it isn’t really about rushing so much as it is about being excited enough to keep myself going forward at full speed. That motivation is really the determining factor in getting an advanced degree, since you have to be willing to push yourself to work hard enough at problems that quite possibly don’t even have a solution.

Another not-really-serious component of having my birthday at this point is that I’ve had a week to cool off from the semester and I get a chance to really reflect and look back on the year. I probably should have saved my year in review entry for today, but I was just so excited about finishing exams that a single Twitter update wouldn’t suffice for the occasion. I like to joke that I measure my life in terms of semesters and degrees, since apparently I’m wholly consumed by the academic life… which is pretty accurate to an extent. Once again, motivation is a big part in this. I get so excited about the people I get to work with and the projects I get to do during my Ph.D., and that’s what keeps me going. While I may not have a life outside of my studies, don’t pity me for doing what I love!

So as far as my birthday plans go, there wasn’t much to them. I was originally going to make some amazing dinner or something like kebabs, but this new project has me a little too exhausted to do any experimental cooking. So I kept it simple. I went out with my buddy for dinner, played a little Minecraft, and did some more research (surprise, surprise). Now I’m off to bed so I can get up and get back to work. As far as I’m concerned, summer break is now (already) over.

This is what keeps me going while writing a paper.

There have been so many “real” blog entries lately that I haven’t done a cooking-related one in a while. I’ve been hard at work writing, so I figured I’d post an entry saying what I’ve been eating to keep myself alive lately. In fact, I don’t think I’ve had a real meal in two weeks… my lunches have basically just been a peanut-butter sandwich, a bag of popcorn, and a delicious honey-and-oats granola bar.

When it comes to getting food to eat during the day, it’s important to make sure that it’s filling and that it won’t spoil by the time you open your bag for lunch. Sandwiches make excellent entrees, particularly when high in protein, like peanut butter or meat. I prefer turkey and chicken, and I also like to put a slab of swiss cheese on it as well. Even though I occasionally like a tomato on my sandwich, I prefer not to put it in my lunch since it makes the bread soggy. Peanut-butter is my prime choice, since it lasts forever and is fairly cheap for the number of sandwiches you can make with one jar of the stuff.

If your lab has a microwave, you have the additional benefit of getting to have something warm for lunch! My side of choice in this case is popcorn, since it’s salty, warm, and quite filling. However, it’s also possible to prepare a hot entree, perhaps from last night’s leftovers. Broiled chicken usually heats up well, so long as you have some kind of sauce to put over it to make up for the fact that it might be a bit more bland after cooking it in the microwave. I prefer microwaving broiled chicken more than fried chicken, since fried chicken gets kind of soggy and unpleasant – it’s best reheated in dry heat.

Another fun choice is to reheat stir fry. So long as the vegetables are still mostly crisp, it turns out pretty good. I’ve never been able to reheat home-cooked rice, but the rice you get from Chinese restaurants, which is slightly dry to begin with, heats up very nicely if you sprinkle just a little bit of water in it and toss it in the microwave for about 2 minutes. Or you can just get a rice cooker, which I may break down and buy one of these days.

Finally, dessert! Cookies are a great way to wrap up any lunch. Fruit bars and granola bars with a bit of chocolate are also a good choice. I’ve always found that a little chocolate helps the brain work a bit better, so I’ve always made it a point to have chocolate before an exam, and I’ve started putting chocolate chip cookies into my lunch as well.

Wrapping up, it’s probably not a good idea to get too fancy in the lab. Hot plates are a no-no, both because they are against my university policy and because they are just too dangerous in a place where science is being done. So you need to be able to plan ahead when preparing lunch so that you can make the most of your environment. Also, a great way to increase the number of containers to carry your lunch in is to order lots of Chinese takeout. When it comes in the nice, plastic containers, those are usually microwave safe and good for storing the messier options like stir-fry.

By the way, I know it may sound odd, but I have a strict No-Ramen policy for the duration of my Ph.D. Even I have standards.

When I sign my name on this blog, there are a lot of people that I represent with each entry. My instutition, my teachers, my advisor, and in the event that I teach, even my students. None of them have really consented to being a part of this blog, but these people are connected to me and (as anyone who’s been involved in double-blind reviews knows) it’s quite easy to figure them out through the publicly available information published by the University and my Department. I’m not going out of my way to make their lives difficult, but we live in a connected era that makes it very hard to speak about our own lives in a vacuum. Whatever we say, we make references to the people who inspire us, and that’s the way it should be.

But it introduces an awful lot of liability into something innocent like a blog. A slip of the tongue can land you in a libel suit, or if you mention something about a student’s performance in class, you could get knocked upside the head by the feds for violating FERPA. When this happens, the consequences ripple outward. It embarasses your institution. It embarasses your advisors. It makes things very uncomfortable, so most people choose the road of anonymity. An anonymous blogger griping about his advisor doesn’t raise a concern since nobody knows the blogger, and hence, nobody knows the advisor. However, since most students only have one advisor, once the student is known, you can’t really hide the identity of the advisor anymore.

So why do I do things this way? Because I’m proud of what I’m doing. I’m proud of being a student at NC State, and I’m immeasurably happy that I get to collaborate with the brilliant and passionate people that I call my advisors, colleagues and peers. I’m not on this blog to gossip, complain, or gripe about the things and people that I don’t like about my University. I will, if I can make a thoughtful post about it, but that’s not what I’m here for. I’m here to share the adventures of my life in Academia, and because my life involves other people, I’m not going to throw away a perfectly good blog entry because I’m afraid that someone else is going to take offense at me mentioning them in an off-hand way that is respectable, sensible, and in perfectly good faith.

This is one reason why there are so few pictures on this blog. I don’t feel like getting clearance from other people to have their pictures appear here, so I just don’t worry about it and post pictures of buildings, nature, and my ugly self. I can’t imagine a more awkward question to ask someone than “can I blog about you?” Maybe American legal culture has just got me paranoid about liability. I dunno.

On a completely unrelated note, I saw a very similar articles on GradHacker today. Sounds like people have got image on the brain this month.

The talk was primarily about a long-term study that they’ve been conducting on how professionals in various fields from education, engineering, science, and business communicate in their day-to-day duties. They analyze the results and apply them to the material taught in discipline-oriented communication courses like ENG 331, so that students are kept up-to-date on how things work in the “real world”. Whether you’re flying around the world making million-dollar deals or sitting in a cubicle coding a login page for your boring manager Rob, communication is at the heart of every line of business, and the surveys of these professionals in the field help to reinforce that with both anecdotal quotes and cold, hard numbers.

However, innovations in technology are dynamically changing the way that we communicate. Formal memos have been replaced with e-mails while phone calls are upstaged by Skype and Instant Messaging. Internal communication may be powered by Status.net or Wiki software. And, of course, social networking sites like Twitter are becoming more ubiquitous in our personal and professional lives. With all of this happening, it’s clear that we need to rethink a lot about what we think we know about communication. Is the letter really dead, or has it just evolved into something a little different?

Career-bound students these days need to learn about how to leverage new technology like social media to their advantage. For example, there’s a lot of negativity surrounding social networking sites, warning students that “your employers are going to find you!” However, it’s been the case that students from my own Computer Science department have not only developed healthy professional relationships using social media, they have also been able to use their presence online to distinguish themselves from their competition and to get that interview with the company they’ve been following. When I’ve interviewed with faculty for research opportunities, I’ve found that some of them have actually searched for me online and found my blog, and have used that as a conversation starter.

The playing field is changing, and students that are able to navigate this bizarre new Web 2.0 world are going to have an edge up on their competition who don’t understand or take social networking seriously. Your profile, your tweets, your blog posts, all of these create an unofficial portfolio that employers are bound to find. So if you conduct yourself online already knowing this, you can subconsciously convey the fact that you are a healthy, well-adjusted, professional member of society.

Things seem to be changing really fast nowadays, but it’s good to see that once again, the faculty here at NC State are keeping up with the field and making that information available to our students as part of their curriculum. Now if we could just get this information out to Grad Students too…

This is what OpenID looks like on SourceForge.net!

So now that exams are over, the only thing on my mind now is my paper due on Thursday. Well, that and also OpenID. For those of you who don’t know, OpenID is an open standard for a little thing called Single Sign-On where a single account on one website allows you to log into many websites without having to deal with passwords and whatnot. If that sounds a little fishy, good on you for noticing that. To the untrained eye, it may look like a weakened form of security, but I’ve been playing around with it for a while and decided I’d spend a blog entry talking about why I think it’s actually a pretty cool thing.

As you know, most websites are powered by the old-fashioned username and password authentication scheme. Let’s use everyone’s favorite social networking site, WordPress, as our example. In order to prove to WordPress that you are the person that you say you are, you provide a secret that is only known between you and the WordPress, called a password. The security of the password is based on the trust that the password will remain a secret between you and WordPress. If you give your password to other people, then WordPress can no longer accurately identify you. If WordPress leaks the password, then you can no longer be confident that your blog has not been accessed by someone else. The password is the oldest form of security, and for the most part, we have gotten pretty used to it.

But let’s just face it – nobody’s perfect. We use our password on multiple websites all of the time, even though it’s a very bad practice. Remembering a unique password for every website you go to is flat-out painful, especially when it’s one you only visit every once in a while. On the flip side, with the frequent password leaks we’ve seen recently in the news, it’s getting hard to trust a web site with a password these days, especially if you use that password in multiple places.

So consider this situation: let’s say I want to create an account on a new website, like SourceForge. However, instead of creating an account with a password, I can tell SourceForge, “instead of having a secret between the two of us, I would like for you to allow WordPress to vouch for my identity.” Since WordPress and I already have a shared secret, and I trust WordPress more than this little SourceForge website, I would rather have WordPress tell SourceForge to let me in rather than trying to remember a whole new password.

This is called Single Sign-On, and OpenID is an open standard for implementing Single Sign-On. This doesn’t really give SourceForge anything that it can use against me, so I’m able to use the password for the site I trust more on a site that I trust less. In a way, it’s like using Paypal. I don’t trust other websites with my passwords or my credit card information, so I can use OpenID and Paypal as a trusted third party to go in between us.

There are a number of advantages to this approach: first of all, it means that SourceForge is not responsible for storing my password anywhere securely, so I don’t have to worry if they get hacked or some silliness like that. On the other hand, if WordPress gets compromised, then WordPress can be added to an OpenID blacklist until the problem is resolved, preventing anyone from using WordPress against me. In this case, the keys to my account are only in one location, and WordPress is a location I can trust, while I might not trust other, smaller sites to protect my account information. And of course, on the user side, I just have to log into the one website I trust the most, and then I don’t have to worry about logging in elsewhere.

While I wouldn’t like to see banks trying to use “log in with WordPress” any time soon, I think it’s quite appropriate for small, niche forums and news sites. These sites are pretty slapped together, and I don’t really want to deal with the security issues that come with running them. In fact, it would be nice to see websites that have absolutely no password support at all, and only accept OpenID connections. That would set a good precedent for small websites and even small businesses, so that they wouldn’t have to deal with the irritating liability of taking care of passwords.

So now that that’s out of the way, I have just reached the conclusion of my first year in Graduate School, and while I may only be hanging on by a thread, I’m still alive. This day marks the last day of my fourth year and eighth semester here at NC State University, and if I was a “normal” student, then this would be the day that I would say good-bye to my friends and go off into the real world. I’m far from normal, however, and as we can see, I’ll still be in school for a good while as I have chosen the long and grueling life of the academic for the next four or so years. When it’s over, they’ll call me Doctor, and maybe that’s worth it.

A lot has happened in the past year. I took six classes and completed my requirements for core courses. I managed to keep my GPA above 3.0 so that I wouldn’t get kicked out of the program.

I attended eighteen leadership development workshops and become part of the inaugural class of the Preparing Future Leaders Season Pass. During that time, I met the wonderful faculty at the Graduate School of the University, including amazing and motivating mentors like Barbi Honeycutt. It’s made me feel better about the line of work I’ve chosen to pursue, and steeled my resolve to excel in research and teaching.

I broke out of my shell and started interacting with many more people than I ever would have imagined. I’ve regularly started going to the meetings of the Triangle Linux User’s Group, the NC State Linux Users Group, and even the local section of the IEEE, discovering colleagues, building connections, and making friends. I’ve even started to lend my services as the webmaster of the IEEE Section, and will serve as the Secretary of the University LUG starting in the Fall semester.

I saw the world. I attended a workshop at Carnegie-Mellon, a PI meeting at George Mason University, and went to another country for the first time to present a paper at a conference on the Caribbean island of Bonaire. I’ve never flown so much in my life, but it’s beginning to become like second nature to me. I love seeing other places, but even more, I love meeting other academics from around the world, and sharing my perspectives on their work and hearing their perspectives on mine.

I’ve worked on a real research project and almost have a paper ready for publication. I even presented a poster at our University Research Symposium. I’ve seen first-hand the process, the demands, and the fruits of research. It’s an exciting and rewarding experience, even in spite of the pressures of submission deadlines and professors pushing you to work harder to produce results. It’s a rewarding feeling to see everything from a research project come together.

And of course, I kept this blog going. I’m very happy with my blog and all of the folks who have joined me on my adventure by reading and responding to it. I’m happy with the folks who put together the banner art that inspires me every time I see my home page. All of you have made writing my observations and reflections an enjoyable experience, so a heartfelt “Thank you” goes out to you for that. I can’t wait to come back to the first entries six years from now and read through what I thought when I was just starting out. Six years is a long time for a person. It’s a long time to grow, and to change. The only way to find out is to keep writing.

So where do I go from here? Forward, of course. It’s been a long year, with plenty of bumps in the road, but I’m quite happy with my progress and where I seem to be going with my life and my career. I’m very happy that I’ve had the opportunity to take my education to this level. Four years ago, when I started college, I never imagined I’d be here in Graduate School. I thought I’d be off working for a company somewhere on some kind of software, nine-to-five, day-in and day-out. I’m can’t even remember exactly what sparked my interest in coming to Graduate School in the first place.

Well… here I am.

My pictures get more dull each day.

I was looking at my stats page the other day, because I love stats. I love looking at the graphs, seeing how my readership grows each month, collecting the flags in my Flag Counter, and seeing what search terms refer people to my blog. I like to see it as a game. Yes, you read that right. You guys are all just achievements to me. How’s that for the most dehumanizing thing I’ve ever written?

I noticed something very curious in my most recent visit, which is that the most popular tags section has its tags grouped in some very intuitive ways. The one that immediately caught my eye was that Linux, Ubuntu, Gnome, Fedora, and Unity were all clustered together. I usually just overlook things like these, but since I’m taking a data mining class with a great professor, I’ve stopped overlooking these little details. It’s a lot of fun trying to figure out what they’re doing to make it work.

My blog of 83 posts is divided into 5 disjoint categories and 81 overlapping tags (I’m not counting this entry in the data set). I imagine that what they do is take the tags out of the most popular posts in your blog, and then do some kind of clustering or association on the tags and categories of those entries to figure out which ones belong on a line together. As it turns out, the Linux, Ubuntu, etc. line was discovered because my last post was the first one to ever use any of those tags. Therefore, the tag Linux always appears with Ubuntu, Fedora, Gnome, and Unity. Even though it’s a really small data set to make that assumption, it’s good enough for a blog stats page.

The Responsibility, Public Service, and Volunteering tags were likely brought up due to my NCTech4Good article. Volunteering always appears with Public Service, but Responsibility only intersects with the two in the NCTech4Good article. This is what leads me to believe that it might only be the popular articles are being considered when bringing these tags together. The tag Teaching, which also appeared in the NCTech4Good article, was not part of this group, and maybe that’s because teaching appears in so many other, unrelated articles.

Granted, my blog doesn’t get enough readership for me to reach any sort of definite conclusions, but it was fun to think about, especially since my Data Mining exam is next week. It would be quite fun to do this experiment again when I become immensely popular on WordPress. Now I have to work on cutting back on the number of different tags that I use.