Fawkes News

Hi Internet,

I sit here in the sunny (not actually that sunny cause its night) Cayman Islands on a couch and blog to avoid paying my $5 fee. I have decided to hold off on my 6.005 critique out of overarching laziness with the theoretical rationalization that I will wait until my grade is posted before writing and emailing it to the staff so that it cannot affect said grade (I don’t actually think there is danger of that happening … but its a nice rationalization). I still plan to write it… but I’m not sure when. Maybe this week, maybe next. We’ll see. Anyway, I didn’t want to punt again and sitting, as we do, at the precipice of the summer break I thought I would take advantage of this opportunity to escape originality and present yet another formulaic post. “What I am planning to do this summer”.

Assured Arrangements:

• As I have previously indicated, I am living at the lovely pika in Cambridgeport. I look forward to the adventure of communal living, oft-vegan eating, and all that comes along with it.
• I am working for the Bose corporation as a Software Engineering Intern in the Home Entertainment division. I gather that I am doing some embedded C /C++ dev: whether that means memory management in DVD players or music visualization or dynamic audio equalization I have absolutely no idea. Hopefully it will be awesome
• But before we get there, this week I am staying at the Morritt’s Tortuga Club resort in the East End of Grand Cayman with my family, doing some (scuba) diving and such, but mostly just chilling and recuperating from a semester or two at MIT.

Probable Plans:

• As detailed three posts ago, I will be undertaking a grand experiment in beef known as the Boston Burger Crawl
• I will be maintaining my connection with my Fifth East brethren by frequent attendance of Friday evening soirees and perhaps hanging out other times
• I will take advantage of my car-ly-ness by adventuring to places that require a car such as the boston-rare fast food establishments of Chick-fil-a and Sonic, as well as possible other locations such as Laser Quest and .. what else does one use a car for?

Lovely Learning:

• Once again I would like to get involved in the Boston Ruby Users group, aka Boston.rb. Interestingly, the July meeting features a contingent from my hometown area code (aka 757.rb).
• Relatedly, I would like to finally learn Rails so that I can be something like a complete-er rubyist.
• I would also like to finish learning Haskell. I hear that some other summer-pikans (i.e. Andrew and Kyle) are also pursuing this. There has been some talk of getting a group project going for mutual development.

Fishily Forthcoming Fabrications:

• A remake of the toons site to be called toonsware, a complete a cappella group management site with such things as repertoire tracking and gig availability checking  (similar to doodle). Conceived as a rails project.
• I would still really like to develop a decent personal website at one of my many owned domains such as donaldguy.{com,net,org}, dguy.org, or fawk.es. There are various notions of “personal branding” I would like to explore… but I’m not convinced I am a good enough designer
• I would like to post here or elsewhere some actually interesting blog entries. Basic ideas include:
  • A comparison of ruby and python mentalities and culture and why I prefer what I do
  • A reflection on wealth and distribution in society
  • The aforementioned 6.005 critique
  • A critique of the “new” course VI curriculum generally
  • Various reflections on philosophy, religions, etc. … I don’t know

I’m sure there are other plans I have theoretically formed and forgotten. I may be getting dragged into a fitness thing by Keith Yost… we’ll see. There are some people I would like to have some extended conversations with over the summer to get to know better. I’m really not sure. Regardless… it will be an interesting change of pace from MIT.

Cheers,

~Donald

So … this is a long overdue blog entry. Like… WAY overdue. So much overdue that it was supposed to be the next entry (that never came) on this blog (that I kept primarily in hopes of becoming an Admissions Blogger and that died shortly after that stopped being a likely possibility (shortly thereafter, it stopped being an appealing possibility)). In any case, better late then never. Thus, I present to you a photo comparison of my living situation (and appearance) with photos taken at roughly three points:

1. The day I left for college (representing everything up and to that point)
2. Early/middle of last year (representing freshman year)
3. This morning or so… (representing … now)

I find it to be an interesting reflection on things. Maybe the lack of accompanying prose is a cop-out, but they say a picture is worth a thousand words. This blog-entry should therefore be worth tens of thousands. Enjoy.

The Yard

1.

My house in Virginia Beach the day I left

2/3.

EC Courtyard Early REX 08

EC Courtyard Mid-fall 2008 (but it looks pretty much the same now... with nicer grills)

The Lounge

1.

"The Playroom" / Family room, morning I left for college

2.

5E Goodale Lounge, Early Fall 2008 (Pic stolen from Karen)

5E Walcott lounge, set up for hall dinner Early Fall 2008. (also stolen from Karen)

3.

5E Goodale Lounge, this morning.

5E Walcott Lounge, this morning)

My Room

1.

My Room in VB, morning I left for college

My Desk, morning I left for college

2.

I appear not to have bothered to take any pictures of B601 prior to last summer

B601 shortly after I got my new bed.

B601 RIGHT before I moved out

3.

Me in G510 shortly after finishing painting/moving

G510 right now. ... sorry,it's kind of a mess.

Me at Desk in G510, shortly after finishing moving in

My Self

1.

At Busch Gardens Summer '07. I love this picture

Self-portrait. Morning I left for college

2.

Dying my hair makes me a cool EC kid, right? (Also, the only picture in my temp room)

... almost the same color as now. for a very short while

Froshy Fawkes is Froshy

3.

IAP or so.

Spring Break

So there you have it. What with living at pika this summer and moving into a new room on 5E next year, I may need to do an update in the future. I think it’s interesting to compare these things, and I’ll be curious to see what they end up looking like in the future.

I lack originality, but there is no reason to throw away $5.

So … Let’s review. I theoretically was planning to:

• Do research for my 21H.102 paper: partial check. I watched the documentary and read about half the book I was hoping to read
• Read that book on rails: no.
• Sleep: meh? I did … but probably not enough and my sleep schedule is kinda fucked now
• Watch 30 Rock: totally did that. I am now up to Season 4, Episode 9, meaning I’m only a couple hours behind what’s been broadcast. This is more sad than an accomplishment.

Some other things I did include:

• As I mentioned last week, did some packaging of meals for Haiti disaster relief.
• As I also mentioned last week, watched too much (i.e. any) C-SPAN during the healthcare debate
• Put an old personal project up on Github for the hell of it. It’s amusing to see how I programmed as a 16 year old. … I’ve written better software, I swear.
• Read the first 4 chapters of Real World Hakell
• Got some more internship applications out … with no results
• Almost went on a date but then it got cancelled
• Did a lot of thinking about who I am, what I want out of life, etc. … without reaching many conclusions.
• May or may not managed to have picked up some sickness somewhere… not feeling so great.

Overall, not so productive a break. I’m not particularly happy that it’s over. Oh well, can’t do anything but move forward.

:-/.

~Donald

I am tired and it is Spring Break, so I don’t feel like writing anything in depth and feel reasonable in being lame. So … here’s a list of some things I plan to work on this week with my free time if/when I become less lazy:

• Read a book, watch a documentary, do other research about communes from 1960 to the present for my 21H.102 paper.
• Read some more of Agile Web Development with Rails because my lack of Rails knowledge makes me feel like a bad rubyist sometimes.
• Catch up on the Debathena trainee meetings that I’ve missed thanks to conflicts
• Sleep. Other times of resting.
• Catch up on 6.002 LOL. JK. Dropped it.
• Watch more 30 Rock.

By comparison, what I did today was none of these things. I instead:

• Watched hours of C-SPAN coverage of the House healthcare debate.
• Helped make a couple hundred of the 28,110 Haiti-bound meals at a Stop Hunger Now event at my parents church
• Ate a cheeseburger.

Yea Spring Break!

~Donald

This week was kinda hellish. I actually started this as part of my freewriting last weekend. (It borrows some of its imagery from the prose thereof). I finished it this morning while avoiding sleeping and to submit to Rune by the deadline of today (the 12th). I can’t decide if the poem is actually any good.

MIT

There’s a fire hose:
You drink it.

Well, you try to drink it.

You playfully examine it
For a few moments, then
You wrap your lips around the nozzle,
And pump up the pressure:

It blows you back
And pins you to a wall.

The spray stings your eyes,
But if it brings tears to them,
They are washed away by the flow,
Before you, or anyone else,
Can be sure they were there.

Your limbs ache,
You think that if only
You could rest them,
You could hold them stronger
But the time for rest rarely comes.

Some people, washed in despair
Or simply sanity, step out of the way
Never to look back and never to regret.

Some collapse or simply drown.

Others stand the force.
The mass of the waters accelerates,
But still they stand strong.
Wavering at times,
But never giving up.

And one day the flow slows
To a stream, to a trickle, to a drip
Then it stops.

You stand there:
Sudden and Sullen,
Dripping and Deflated,
Percolated, but Proud,
Wet, but Wise.

And you reach out,
Brass Rat rusted to your knuckle:
You grab a beaker and into it
You wring the waters of knowledge
From the clothes of your experience.

You take this drought and distill it.
You bottle it, you market it, or you give it away,
But, with luck, it takes the world by storm.

From the fire hose flow rises the rarefied results
Filtered through your hands,
Tested in your trials, Fortified in your failures,
Vivified in your victories.

You look back with mixed emotions:
Wondering if it was all really worth it.
Your prospective my grow,
It may never be clear,
But the fire hose flows on…

~D.B. Guy (March 6-12, 2010)

It is approaching the Iron Blogger deadline, sort of. And more importantly I want to go to sleep soon in (yet another) attempt to dayshift (mostly cause I have a couple phone interviews before noon on Wednesday). In the interest of not completely laming out an just paying the $5 (which I seriously considered), I thought I’d throw in a filler piece. So … here it is:

Did you know that in addition to being a burgeoning programmer, singer, bboy (lol.), and web designer (see last post), yours truly is also a mildly-talented poet (in his-own-clearly-not-at-all-biased opinion)?

In case you are curious, I thought I’d throw up a couple of old(ish) poems to fill this space.

Here is one I wrote shortly after getting into MIT:

A Scholar’s Aubade

An ode seems appropriate
To the classical style
Of the columns and the domes
Above the green court.

Many things have adorned that dome:
Squad car, fire truck, droid, and phone
But today, viewed in a mind’s eye—sunlight.

But as were that phone booth still apparent
From afar it now calls, and now I shall answer.
Over the river, and through the urban jungle,
Through the sky, 400 miles, as the airliner flies
But worth every inch, rod, meter or smoot.
It beckons to the mind and to the heart;
It beckons to the soul of a scholar.

Were I less knowing I might think not
That light fell from above onto that dome.
But rather, that the hemisphere
Gave forth the blazing light
ebullience of photons, amidst
Torrents of knowledge.

Its hallowed halls, numbered precisely,
Soon no longer a forbidden temple shall be
Instead, I shall tread there, such as I am
Learn from efforts I effect and others I see

O Halls, I shall greet thee, O Tunnels in winter
Traverse and find warmth to keep body to task
For knowledge, always, comes with a high price
In joules, dollars, cents, days and hours of rest
Long nights turn to dawns, nose to the grindstone
Maybe just one more tool; okay, maybe another.

But brother meets brother, and sister meets sister
On both sides of the river, and the work gets done.
Whether Greek or not, there is community here
A problem, or a set of them, is always seen through.

As the sun now rises, a new day sets in. In a few
hours of my life I will rise to these challenges.

With a chirping, I shall cross the paths that I come to,
Enter the halls .. and my journey shall begin.

~ D. B. Guy (December 2008)

and here’s a sonnet:

A morning dew sits on my dearest rose:
A shadow of evening’s coolness stands still.
How gleeful I’d be to remove that chill—
That accursed blight, I yearn to dispose.
Not in my powers, no warmth from me flows
Not matter the measure of my goodwill.
Only the sunrise this quest shall fulfill
And light, my dear efflorescence expose

Always that morning seems ever unsure,
Yet surely it comes as the world still turns.
Finite be the hours my rose must endure;
Nothing this must be allowed to obscure!
For surely as in the sky our sol burns,
Warmth still exists for my rose to make pure.

~ D.B. Guy (November 2007)

There are, in fact, more (though not a lot more) where that came from. I imagine a lot of the audience of this blog doesn’t particularly care. But if you would like to see more then you can let me know on zephyr or something I can forward you a link to where I post these things.

If you’d like to discuss or critique either of the above in the comments here, that would be cool too.

IAP is half over (!!!). I’ve had a pretty decent first half. Here’s looking forward to a good second half and a good term.

~Donald

CAMBRIDGE, MA — It’s 2010. You may have noticed. Since it already seems to have been a trend amongst some of my friends, I have decided to also do a resolutions post before doing it becomes just silly. So without further ado:

Philosophical Resolutions:

• Adjust my philosophies on work. Less perfectionism, more kaizen.
• If things aren’t to my liking in ways that matter, make them better.
• If things aren’t to my liking, and I can’t make them better, don’t be afraid to walk away. (especially if it will make my life better to do so). Don’t be afraid to say no when doing so is reasonable.
• Be happier with my life.
• Be true to my self. Care less about others’ opinions.

Practical Resolutions:

• Have a substantially less shitty summer. Get an internship that I am happy with, and follow through.
• Take better care of myself. Get nutrition better. Try for regular meals, but failing that … just more and healthier than now. Exercise more (swimming regularly maybe. break-dancing workouts after the IAP class? Getting my DDR pad up here and doing that regularly?)
• Do some research. Find something UROP-like for if not this term, than at least by the fall.
• Actually follow through on a personal project or two. Improve my follow-through on ideas in general. These can be of the technical variety (e.g. ruby athena libraries, some barnowl extensions I’ve thought of) or of the social variety (e.g. “the burger crawl”, bringing back ΣΠΒ shirts). Ideally both.
• Get some of the web designs I wanted to do done and up.
• Follow through on responsibilities I already have. Always be dependable.
• Forgive. MIT gives me enough to stress about without holding grudges.
• Be happier with my life.
• Listen more. Maybe talk less.

I’m sure there are some I have that I can’t think of right this second. Maybe I’ll update this post if I think of them. Maybe I won’t.

Anyway, Happy New Year! Just a few more minutes until its been a new year for a whole day!

Good luck all around,
~Donald