applied for the asia bridge graduate fellowship, where you research about one the following countries (China, Japan, Korea, India, or the Philippines), write a research paper, and present it in an academic setting. i had two ideas: 1) analyzing dialects in china, and the possibility of fine-tuning an LLM to understand and speak those dialects. 2) ai for climate change mitigation in china, how U.S. and China approach it, and what they can learn from each other. i went for the second one. fingers crossed i get accepted. i've always loved essay writing and research, and writing a paper is something i've always wanted to do.

researching for #2 had me go into a rabbit hole in class. this tackling climate change with ML paper has been on my to-read list for so long. Climate Change AI is the best platform for climate change X AI, with tons of rabbit holes to dive into. their wiki, list of papers, interactive summaries, tutorials and blogs.

i need a nice platform to track my paper reading goals. a goodreads for paper reading. where you can get recommended to other papers. leave reviews and comments. and follow other people.

been torn about career goals. it was always faang but what if i go for what i'm interested in from the start? working on AI for climate change feels like the most useful and interesting problem i could solve. everything else pales in comparison, every other problem seems insignificant. i need to love my work to do great work.

but i lack expertise. i need to do more projects, finish more things

i also need to study for quiz tomorrow, it's so hard to get myself to study and do class stuff these days. i have no discipline or motivation for school.

woke up super groggy. i've been sleep deprived for the second day. got to baincapital at 9 a.m.. the intial phase felt like we were going in circles, the idea still wasn't clear, things weren't working, it feels like you're navigating in the fog.

so many issues, instructor with claude was too slow, concurrent threads were the way. to speed things up, we used llama3 on pure groq api, but litellm had better abstraction. then we used llama hosted on cerebras because it was almost 10x faster. then there were rate limits and max tokens per day. there was also issues with generating json, so num_retries=1000 was the fix. then the responses weren't great, so it was gpt4o because claude 3.5 sonnet doesn't support json mode on lite llm.

this hackathon was a much better experience. no staying up the entire night to code a streamlit app alone. i knew i could count on my teammates, my last one felt like i was the only one rowing the sinking boat. we also had cursor to help out, i barely wrote any code by hand. in hackathons, you optimize for speed and execution, the fastest to debug and ship out the idea wins. i suppose if you're efficient with AI tools, and your goal is to just build, it's understandable. but i feel like i lack strong programming skills, it made me want to join recurse center. maybe sometime in the future.

nearing the deadline, watching the fog clear, the slides coming to shape and the demo working is one of the best feelings ever. vercel ceo came over to our table and we were running on over 400 doc files of vercel, it was so fun nerve-wracking but exciting to watch it run, especially with minutes left. everything aligned so well.

some ideas from the hackathon:

• pca cluster next.js github issue and chat
• chrome extension to record screen and audio to generate browserbase functions for agents
• ai powered feature flag management
• generate API docs in minutes
• AR validator with openCV, mediapipe, and openai
• ai categorization of changelog
• education tool for learning how github repo works
• spelling and grammar checker for docs (our team)
• minusX: chat assistant for jupyter notebooks, tableau, etc.
• hands off anomaly detector, replace datadog
• error logs fixer
• merge databases with LLMs
• tinder x arxiv
• blog post generator from new features
• codebase -> graph -> chat
• intent classification of chat
• better reasoning and planning for llms
• data extraction with llms

we won the best demo prize (all credits to A for his awesome demo), but we had to rank the pool of prizes, and in the end we only got one oura ring for 4 of us. the prize was disappointing, but nothing beats the experience. even though there are 3 quizzes, practicum rankings and interviews coming soon, hackathon experiences like this is why i wanted to come to sf.

i love the hackathon energy. i was creating a projects ideas page, as i was cleaning up the open tabs in my arc browser. i want to keep this energy alive everyday, building fun things that i would use, and share them with the world.

Writing computer software is one of the purest creative activities in the history of the human race. Programmers aren't bound by practical limitations such as the laws of physics; we can create exciting virtual worlds with behaviors that could never exist in the real world. Programming doesn't require great physical skill or coordination, like ballet or basketball. All programming requires is a creative mind and the ability to organize your thoughts. If you can visualize a system, you can probably implement it in a computer program.

From: A Philosophy of Software Design, John Ousterhout

started discussing about this new idea for accounting. feels like the start of something big. we can finally start building and stop wondering about what to build. we have a direction and guidance. enough talking. its time to build.

mechanics institute library looks like something out of cambridge. they had the paris review magazines. spent the entire time working on bash and pandas exercises and making a cheatsheet. what a waste of 2 hours at a beautiful library.

got blue bottle cappuccino for $6.23. it was the best coffee ive had. i haven't drank good coffee for years.

went for the mintlify ai devtools hackathon that was only 5 minutes away from home by walking. talked to keywords ai founders (llm observability). talked to fraction ai (scale ai but decentralized with web3 through telegram). mintlify cofounders presented. paradigm yc cofounders showed up later. greptile energy drinks. ideas for ai dev tools that were pitched: llm for error logs, for database schemas, for fixing grammar in docs, for changelogs, etc.

first hackathon in-person with W. learned about trunk, a useful tool to automate ci tasks. docs writing is huge for any software business. mintlify is smart to capitalize on that. working with llms is so finnicky. but hackathon demos are all about entertainment and cherry-picking.

left at 11. went back for some food, and on a whim went to monroe sf. stood in line for an hour. prompted claude 3.5 for our accounting project. so excited to get started. wondering how i can integrate agents into this. paid $10 bucks each. the club was so crammed. bodies pushing bodies. sticky floors and blinding lights. ear-piercing music and heart-thumping bass. mostly stood in a corner observing. left at 1:30 a.m. ears were ringing so badly the rest of the night.

writing this at 2:40 a.m., wondering what tomorrow holds with hope.

went to aws gen ai loft for a hackathon, got a badge and free coffee at 9:35 a.m. and proceeded to leave at 9:50 to get to class.

class was just practicing pandas. the seminar series speakers had us write what problem we would want to solve in our lifetime. i wrote something related to solving loneliness across all ages, and the heat in asia.

started looking into Watershed again. all employees there are from ivy leagues. i wonder who i can talk to, and how i can get in. i love that one of their culture is being curious about the world:

Climate change is one of the most important issues facing our society, so we see a broad awareness of science, technology, and policy as critical to our work. No matter what corner of the organization someone’s working from—marketing, sales, product, engineering—we know our best work comes from a deep understanding of the climate ecosystem. Not everyone comes to Watershed as an expert, but everyone comes to Watershed excited to learn.

Our culture of transparency means everyone is welcome to “lurk” into the work of other teams through docs, emails, and Slack channels where they can learn about the stuff they’re most interested in. Beyond that, we’re always actively helping each other stay informed–our “climate expert office hours” are among the most popular company meetings, and we love sharing out links to the latest literature or notes on our learnings.

relational db class was setting up google cloud and creating a sql instance and running queries on snowflake.

then realized our group did our assignments completely wrong and stayed 2 hours to redo everything, and then all of us get chipotle and talked about school and movies.

then rushed to church and got there at 9 p.m., was welcomed by everyone, ate soup, and talked, and played ping pong till midnight.

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.

Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman

originally: L. P. Jacks

in my data science communication course everyone had to go in front of a room and sit on a chair and answer the question "tell me about yourself". you can't be too excited or too robotic. you can't talk too fast or too slow, too loud or too soft. you can't swivel your chair. your eyes should be on the same plane and should move between a few people. you should tell a story about your motivations, give the WHY. you should be friendly and approachable, your goal is to make the person on the other side feel comfortable, and make them feel like you're a great person to work with.

went to the embarcadero gym for the first time, chinatown's ymca is closed. the equipments are much older. i'm hitting a plateau in my strength, i always do 3 sets of 40 lbs for 10 reps for bicep curls, and on the last set i have to go down to 30 lbs. what is the optimum way to slowly increase the weights? i need to be more consistent or i lose out on my progress.

listened to the backstory of patagonia's Yvon Chouinard. he's a self-taught blacksmith, a rock climber, a surfer, an environmentalist. he basically started patagonia for himself, to make the best climbing gear. he soon realized that it could become a business, and focused on making quality clothing.

“If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, "This sucks. I'm going to do my own thing.”

his philosophy is minimalistic. he believes in simplicity, in quality, and in doing things right.

"The more you know, the less you need."

the way towards mastery of any endeavor is to work towards simplicity. complexity is a sign that the functional needs have not been solved. use functionality as a design guidepost. have an obsessive focus on the customer, not on the competition.

in 2022, he donated all his shares of patagonia (worth $3 billion) to a trust and non-profit company for fighting climate change.

The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance - is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other's light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Lifesaving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.

– James Baldwin

what is the dream? at that moment, i could think of building in two domains. simple yet elegant consumer apps focused on keeping and maintaining contact with friends, family, and significant others in a low-effort, highly contextual, visual and audial way. and to build tools that help people write and introspect. these two ideas could even be combined together. a daily journal where all your loved ones has access to, integrated with your calendar and photos and location and health data. ever had something happen to you and you trauma dump to one friend, why not trauma dump into an app, and have your loved ones access and read it when they're available and ready to provide advice/comfort or just to listen?

watching recordings of myself speak is so painful. i need practice how to speak with confidence and assertivenesss. i sound like a 15 year old kid who is afraid of everything, the creaks in my voice needs to be replaced with an unwavering conviction in every word. I should be exuding energy, something like brian chesky but toned down a little. i need to extinguish "i guess", "i think", "maybe", and "probably" from my vocabulary. all they do is strip away any credibility i have. i need to speak in absolutes. i have to keep practicing and cringe at myself a little less each time, until it becomes second nature.

if you knew the end from the beginning, would you do things differently?

a lot of us think that we would, thinking it would save us and everyone else the pain

but that experience is what made you the person that you are. and all the people that you've met and the people that are in your life now are all wrapped up in that.

everything you go through, leads us to who we are.

– from cinema therapy on the boy and the heron

studying abroad 8000 miles away from home in one of the most expensive cities in the US means getting out of bed even though your entire body is sore from sleeping on the floor and you feel like you didn't sleep at all. it means going to class and paying attention even when your entire body is shutting down and your eyes feel as heavy as rocks.

it means walking home with a massive headache, feeling like you're about to pass out at any moment, so that you have time to work on 10 other things to stay on track. it means being floor-ridden for hours in a your room with the lights off because the light hurts your eyes, staring at the ceiling, twisting and turning, and wondering why your head feels like its on fire. it also means not telling your parents so they don't worry, and trying to cope instead with nostalgic old pictures and texts that provide a sense comfort and escapism.

it also means begrudgingly getting out of the floor to make your protein shake so you continue to stay healthy because no one else is responsible for your health, and going back to the bed again, trying to rest by reading the paris review, but eventually sleeping for another hour because your brain stops processing the words and its all just black ink on paper.

it also means waking up and packing a faulty airbed that you've been using for two months because you wanted to save money, and setting up a 60lbs mattress that has a one-year free trial, out of breath and exhausted because every inch of your body is fighting against movement.

it also means cooking the free plant based meat from YMCA and porkbelly that has been sitting in the fridge so that it won't go bad so you don't waste money, even when you don't feel like eating.

it also means testing for covid because you're so sick you're begging for a reason, but ultimately testing negative and drown in confusion and fear.

it also means staying up to work on projects that can help in your career instead of going to bed early to get better, because now is not the time to rest, you can always rest later once you have a job. you don't have that privilege now.

The only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life – Naval

overate for breakfast and had the urge to soak in some sunlight and move around. decided to take a walk to the ferry building. lots of tourists and families around. i haven't seen ferry building this busy before. went back to the same shop selling gifts by local artists where i bought the mini mechanical wood pencil i use to write marginalia for my books. they don't sell it anymore. there was a thrift shop within that shop that sells sweaters for $88 bucks.

went out of the shop, bay bridge and yerba buena island in view. saw friends and family engaged in conversation and quality time outside restaurants and on the benches beside the port.

went for a quick loop in book passage and saw the book "Chinatown Pretty: Fashion and Wisdom from Chinatown’s Most Stylish Seniors". found out Flushing is little taipei in NY. also wondered where these po po and gung gung are now. these pictures were taken 10 years ago. i hope they're still stylish and smiling and walking around chinatown. it inspired me to whip out my camera which has been trapped in my luggage for the past two months, and start taking photos of chinatown.

i've been feeling more optimistic seeing human connection and kindness around me. watching people move their seats so that newcomers have space to sit down with their family is a small gesture that makes me feel happy. watching a korean parent with their two boys eating overpriced food is heartwarming. the dad reminds me of a ghibli character. there was a homeless (or backpacking?) woman writing a few postcards from the bookstore while mumbling to herself. i wonder what her story is. who is she writing to? is she on a great adventure? in a sense, is she more free than i am?

i sat on the big table and tried to catch up on my blog for yesterday, but words just weren't coming out. its hard to relive experiences that happened just a day ago. i forget my thoughts and emotions quickly, i fear if i don't capture them, they disappear, which is a big part of why i write here. there was no wifi, and my data wasn't great too so i started reading the AI for energy paper by the US department of energy. ive been getting so passionate about the energy grid. i wonder if this is just a phase. i might have tunnel vision prioritizing kevala over meta.

the rest of the day just melted away with lunch, working on a project analyzing ev charging station locations, cooking chicken teriyaki with w, and too many youtube clips of love, actually and gilmore.

What overall life advice do you have for young people?

Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step-by-step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day, and at the end of the day—if you live long enough-like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve

Life and its various passages can be hard, brutally hard. The three things I have found helpful in coping with its challenges are: 1. Have low expectations. 2. Have a sense of humor. 3. Surround yourself with the love of friends and family.

Above all, live with change and adapt to it. If the world didn't change, I'd still have a 12 handicap.

Charlie Munger

woke up from a traumatic dream where nurses repeatedly attempted to insert thin tubes/needles into my blood veins, probably remnant memories from my hospital visits in malaysia. felt so sore and tired, i didn't want to get out of the bed (floor). eventually crawled out and went to mission. had a unique experience picking up trash around manny's with other usf undergrad students. saw needles and alcohol pads on the streets for the first time. it was the closest ive been in contact with the homeless. i thought a lot about their circumstances and challenges, and my position of privilege, and how my problems pale in comparison with theirs.

i sometimes experience deep cynicism, where i feel there's no point in talking to other people, building relationships and having conversations, and learning new ideas and working towards a big goal is pointless because it all ends anyways. i experienced it today, it was paired with a deep sense of tiredness, it might have been the close exposure to the failure of the city and the system which engendered issues like homelessness and crime. i though about why we pick up trash, if there will always be people dumping them around, more homeless people around, and the conditions will be the same again the next week. but i forget that there will always be good people around to help clean up the city, and even though its a cycle, there are people around to help keep and restore the balance. things will never be perfect, but we will always try to make it better, and that's enough.

a few ideas i discovered from the commons rabbithole by kasra

• prospera: a startup city project in Honduras
• Gather AI: a bunch of DJI drones programmed for inventory management
• Skydio: american drone company with defense contract

i need to learn the skill of storytelling. to define good storytelling, i would say its a mix of charisma, confidence, deep understanding and intuition, and empathy.

you need charisma and confidence to get people to listen to you. you have to capitalize the attention of individuals who has every reason to be distracted by their own thoughts, and capture their interests even though what you're talking about is the most boring topic in the world. you need to spread excitement like its a viral disease, make it a problem that they should care about, and give solutions, something they can take away from. every word holds a lot of weight. filler words hurt your credibility and trustworthiness. humor adds personality and charisma.

deep understanding and intuition is needed to translate the graph of ideas into a narrative that people can connect with. if you don't really understand the material, you can only tread the surface level, the iceberg. when questioned, you should have most, if not all of the answers. you should be able to go deeper. when being presented opposing opinions, you should be able to make your case, but hold your opinions lightly, because you should always challenge your own assumptions. As Feynman has advised that the first principle of science is you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

you need empathy to put yourself in another person's shoes. to realize that you're not the center of the universe. that the people in front of you have vastly different backgrounds and experiences, who live in different worlds, speaking a different language.

its hard to communicate ideas well. its even harder to connect with people on the same ideas. but when connection happens, its like magic.

if our minds are always stuck where we could be, we miss out on being where we are.

next time is next time. now is now.

from: holywood's obsession with ambition

today was a long yet fulfilling day. woke up 7am. bible study on proverbs. 30 min train ride to grab free stuff from a house (a google deepmind cup, pickleball set, a trash can, board and card games, and food), bought egg tarts from yummy bakery, went to a malaysian party and had fun conversations and sang the national anthem on a rooftop with the malaysian flag, ate thai food, and saw a comedy standup in a bar, and got home at 9pm.

these long days are more rewarding than checking off my todo lists at the chinatown library or working on my long list of unfinished projects, or getting future assignments done early or reading up on articles and papers. optimizing every second of every hour. its conversations with strangers and making serendipitous plans that puts you in the moment.

its crazy how i met malaysians who went to the same high school and college, and people that lived 10 minutes away from my home in malaysia in sf. its comforting to meet people close to home with shared context and similar backgrounds.

i have a lot to work on for my social skills. i need to be more curious and attentive. i forget names seconds after hearing them. i fail to ask good questions. i stumble through my thoughts and fail to express my opinions well. i'm insecure and i don't speak with confidence. i wonder how im perceived by others. if i met myself, how would i feel about me. its so important to make other people feel safe and heard and accepted. thats what people remember. not what school you go to or what startup youre working on, but how you made them feel.

confidence in one self is a major part to socializing. and from cinema therapy, self confidence comes from self acceptance. its the foundation. validation from others can be a buttress for confidence, but confidence ultimately comes from self love.