Weeknotes — starting exchange at UT Austin
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A new format I am going to try for the next few months: short weeknotes, mostly as a forcing function to write regularly. If it sticks, it sticks. If not, no harm done.
This week
- Arrived in Austin. The campus is larger than I expected. The food is also larger than I expected.
- First classes. Cloud Computing and Natural Language Processing. Both look good. The syllabi feel more project-heavy than what I am used to at NUS, which I am taking as a good sign.
- Found a coffee shop near the engineering building that opens at 6am. This will matter during project season.
- Set up the exchange-student version of my homelab — just my laptop and a Tailscale connection back to Singapore. Surprisingly painless.
What I am reading
- Designing Data-Intensive Applications (finally working through it properly)
- A handful of papers from the ArXiv cs.DB back catalogue, in preparation for the ScholarAI project
What I am stuck on
The NLP course assumes more linear algebra than I have on tap. Spent Saturday rewatching 3Blue1Brown videos. No regrets.
See you next week.