luoser

[luoser]

on gaz

i think about this album when i make transactions on the ethereum blockchain

the first time i saw a.chal was by total accident, stumbling into baby’s all right one summer night a few years ago. the vibes were absolutely right and the crowd was a stark contrast to the usual 18+, pre-ketamine energy there. the kind of energy you could just tell this performer grew up in nyc.

as i left i ran into a friend i used to work at at the aquarium; we were both surprised to have remembered each other.

[luoser]

mf doom

the end of ‘because i’m me’ by the avalanches echos with a familiar song; i had never seen the video and its batshit fire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjfspM5sDIA

[luoser]

slump

Music has hit a weird wall since 2017, some goodies here and there, but it seems like everything is tired and everyone is trying to find themselves again. At times that latter seems to be the new genre, e.g. 100 gecs, and that wildness is _refreshing_ somehow. The former is the feeling of listening to Migos in 2019. 

Regardless of that I’ve been a fan of K Roosevelt these days, chill, melodic, just enough reverb that feels more sustainable in the sea of overstimulation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhV2b_MTveM

And don’t sleep on “Bet You Didn’t Know” by E-40 off his new album, Practice Makes Paper. Absolute gem.

[luoser]

happy president's day

[luoser]

lisa’s top ten albums of 2017

this was a dope year for music ehhhhh. here are my top ten albums / mixtapes / eps whatever. they are the ones i listened to straight through over and over, again and again.

10. Saturation II - Brockhampton (August 25, 2017)

i watched GOLD and i was hooked. brockhampton in a word is COLORFUL–their videos, their voices, their sound palettes in each song

9. EP2 - Yaeji (November 3, 2017)

raingurl is my anthem and yaeji is an incredible artist. i didn’t know i fucked _hard_ with slow burning house music until she came along

8. Flower Boy - Tyler, The Creator (July 21, 2017)

new tyler is a soft tyler, a sensitive tyler. there’s a deep dive into a mellowed-out psyches here, ft. flowy collabs ranging from rex orange county to anna of the north to lil wayne 

7. Huncho Jack, Jack Huncho - Quavo and Travis Scott (December 21, 2017)

this one really slipped in last min. while the album art does trick me into liking the music more, quavo and travis scott killed this record. a soulful intro slides right into travis vibes, then ebbs and flows with the bump-factor.

6. Still Striving - A$AP Ferg (August 18, 2017)

ahhhhhh is it me or is fergie ferg’s voice so soothing. like plain jane, with that backtrack silence before dropping into a song that flows and flows, this album just goes.

5. DAMN. - Kendrick Lamar (April 14, 2017)

yeah, of course this album made it. white most people love kendrick and so do i, DAMN. is really a masterpiece.

4. Droptopwop - Gucci Mane ( May 26, 2017)

gucci mane was en pointe this year with mr. davis and el gato but there’s something about his mixtape that gets me going, probably mr. davis’ buttery smooth verses over some darker heavy bass beats that make me feel wavy all day

3. Without Warning - 21 Savage, Offset, Metro Boomin (October 31, 2017)

not sorry, this album is LIT. seconds into the first track i understood why the album name is well-deserved. the bass is kicking, the verses are crisp, the tags are echo-y and amazing, and 21 savage is low key hilarious. i don’t even care that every supreme store probably plays this album, if i hear this playing anywhere i’ll stop drop and bump to it. play ric flair drip at my funeral.

2. Beautiful Thugger Girls - Young Thug (June 16, 2017)

guitar-weilding young thug singing as country billy, there’s something spectacularly spiritual about BTG.

1.  Playboi Carti - Playboi Carti (April 14, 2017)

did you know this mixtape dropped same day as DAMN.?? dropped right into the depths of my heart. this is one holy grail of a mixtape that has me hitting “replay” again and again, vision quest mode or not. it’s more than magnolia, it’s the transcendent soundscape of every song that playboi carti conjures up that often leaves you wondering if you’re hearing the right lyric. his signature ad-lib-scatting, that bass, his beats, those strange noises, the random tags that are now iconic, they’re everywhere from start to finish and it’s perfect.

[luoser]

#newyork i love u but ur tiring as #fuq

[luoser]

Half-bottle parents

December 24, 2016 8:00 PM Kitchen, Boston, yellow sweater & duck pjs

I had a wonderful conversation with my mom tonight, at the scene of where we usually have our lit discussions: the kitchen room table.

I attribute my successful, though short, career so far as an engineer to two things: 1. quitting rowing and 2. failing my first Art History exam. It’s like if that drone never died in A New Hope, and Luke didn’t take home R2D2 with the death star plans — there wouldn’t have been Star Wars.

If I hadn’t quit rowing, I would have never taken computer science. I would have been too afraid of the time commitment. If I hadn’t gotten an F on my first ever art history essay, I would have been an art history major. Simple as that.

I thanked her for not being a helicopter parent: for never hounding me on grades at Dartmouth, despite how shitty they were. And while I started to go off about how progressive that was of her, she said that she only ever saw my freshman fall transcript and had never known any of my other grades. When I told her what grades I had gotten, she was shocked.

But what she said next I will remember forever: she never thought that grades in college meant anything. She said that getting good grades didn’t help you get a job, they didn’t help you get a promotion. That being a “bookworm” isn’t really a good thing. She said it was all about — it’s kind of hard to translate — but it’s all about discipline and personality.

She said that in her experience of failing to go to college then going to college then becoming a teacher, there were two types of kids who had a chance to succeed. 

The first, a child with two intellectual parents who had the resources and knowledge to teach their child. That child would be smart, and would succeed. 

The second, a child with — translated — “half-bottle” parents. That being, a child with a parent who is not educated, or with two parents who are not very educated. Those half-bottle parents leave their child be, they trust her and hope for her to learn from the world, since they feel the world would be a better teacher than they could possibly be. 

The worst, she said, was when half-bottle parents are also helicopter parents over their child. She said for the child, “in their head”, they would never be able to learn or move on because they are so worried about their parents’ unwarranted concerns. This child would not succeed. She said if she had tried to educate me about the world, she would have made me “dumber than her.”

For my mom to think this way is the distilled essence of how very wise and humble she is. And I truly felt and feel thankful that this is how I was able to pursue life…free to make so many idiotic mistakes and learn from it all.

[luoser]

remember when (at New York, New York)

[luoser]

why are all villainous powerful old men in terrible health?

[luoser]

Dear Old Dartmouth

Written June 10, 2016 1:36 PM on a train to NYC. David Byrne was also on this train.

A year ago today was three days from Dartmouth graduation. I wonder where I was then, what I was doing, at this time…it would have been a lazy weekday afternoon of senior week, which means it was probably not lazy at all and in fact full of “merriment”. I wonder if I had contracted strep throat yet at that point, three days out. I was probably doing a sentimental walk, if not already hammered, around the campus, or, if in the process of getting hammered, in some dark and familiar and familial basement achieving all my hopes and desires of the day.

It’s funny, for almost a year now, I’ve been saving the word ‘heartbreak’ to describe the feeling of graduating. Of Dartmouth, of leaving Dartmouth, of entering the real world. I still stand by that — when you choose to go to a place like Dartmouth, you set yourself up for heartbreak. A place so beautiful, I mean, so full of wonder, and adventure, and rowdiness, and most valuable, of peace. You seldom get a whole place like that to yourself, with your peers, your twenty-something year old friends and enemies all whom you love about the same, again. You can have the peace and the outdoors and hell you can surround yourself with the same friends and enemies, but it’s not quite the same. The four year spell is broken. 

[luoser]

secretlovechildren

I’ve been drawing more lately. I think is good for all the little creatures to get out of my head, get some fresh air, see the world for a change.

Here’s the Instagram account I’ve been sharing on:

https://www.instagram.com/secretlovechildren/

It’s called secretlovechildren because I think of these drawings as my secret love children. Inspired by a brief conversation with a coworker: “of the people you know, how many do you think have secret love children? Secret Love Children. That would be a great band name.”

[luoser]

Today is the my one year #workiversary. I am quite proud of what I have accomplished thus far: bringing an android app into this world, diving into iOS, knocking "Junior" off my title, and being slated to speak at a conference in Budapest this fall. The sentiments are strong, yes.

[luoser]

How to Navigate Computer Science Courses At Dartmouth

In June of 2015, I graduated with a degree in computer science, modified with digital arts, and a minor in psychology. In my time at and after Dartmouth, I’ve been asked many times for some guidance in which CS classes to take to make the most of a computer science education at this small liberal arts, finance-focused school. The following is my slightly dated advice, which you should take with a tsp of salt, seeing as how I very accidentally wandered into COSC 1 sophomore fall and failed my first exam. 

BASIC(s)

If you’re a freshman, take CS 1. Just do it, regardless of your prior experience and performance in computer science, science, or math,  your fear of technology, and especially your fear of how hard it will be a.k.a. how much it will interfere with your attendance of Bissell pre-games. It will not be easy, but you’re a fresh freshman so you still know how to work hard. I heard the phrase I wish I took CS 1 earlier many many times come senior year, when your priorities are different and your time for academic exploration greatly dwindles. NRO it if you’re really worried--trust me, you are very unlikely to ever use all of your NRs.

If you do sign up for CS 1 freshman year, great! If not, but you are a sophomore or a junior or a senior, great! If not at all, then why are you reading this? Try to snag Hany Farid or Devin Balkcom, though all the CS 1 profs are generally good. Writing 5 and your Seminar will not be terribly hard classes, and in fact may be the most familiar to your high school classes (because ‘shmen + smaller class sizes).

In general, expect the TAS code and problem set heavy classes to be tough. Even if you are a genius, they take some brain power so complement CS classes with distribs or courses of interests. Mental health is good.

Specifics

Here is a link of upcoming courses. These are the major reqs, when you get to thinking about it. Below are notes based on my own experiences from 2012-2015, and metadata from fellow classmates.

CS 1 Intro Difficulty: Like doing the Ledyard challenge. Depends on how fit, sober, and comfortable with being naked / arrested you are and how many degrees below 0 it is outside (i.e. prior experience). Language: Python Pros: It’s really cool to learn about what “computer science” is, what it can do, and how you can make real things on your computer. Python is also an exceptionally useful language in the working world. Cons: Time consuming and steep learning curve. Johnny “I’ve programmed since I was 3 years old” sitting in the front of class asking those horrible questions that no one, including the prof, knows or cares about. Large class sizes due to small department, which may make it harder to get 1:1 time with profs, but there will be student TAs that will have open lab hours. Or you can make friends with that cute classmate of yours because you need so much “extra help” that you end up doing your problem sets together until midnight. And by doing problem sets until midnight I mean DFMO’ing on the dance floor of the Heorot highlighter party.

CS 10 Object-Oriented Programming Difficulty: Like trying to run Rip Road the Sunday morning of Green Key: extremely rewarding, but it might just kill you. Language: Java Pros: You learn and re-learn and implement some real fundamental computer science topics in this class, where you also now have a background understanding of programming.  Cons: The jump from Python to Java is a little daunting at first, plus some of the projects are very difficult to accomplish if you start the night before and or don’t ever go to lab hours and or class. If you finish CS 10 and still like / love programming, this is good.

CS 30 Discrete Mathematics Difficulty: Like giving birth to 8 children at once. Language: math, proofs Pros: I don’t really know. Not many people know. It unlocks Algorithms since it’s a prereq for 31. Well, it does get your mind thinking in more abstract mathematical ways, but algorithms are definitely more useful in the context of computer science. Cons: Just very complicated and abstract stuff, plus weekly problem sets and exams that you just constantly need to be on your A game to do well on. Probably the only saving grace would be having Prasad Jayanti as your prof, but even then it’s tough. Get this one out of your way if you’re going full CS major or minor. If you don’t need to take this course, don’t. Unless you are really considering taking Algorithms, which you really should + will make taking this course worth it, but all depending on how much time you have left.

CS 31 Algorithms Difficulty: Like getting to Foco and realizing you left your ID card in your room, but you live in the River and its -17 degrees out and you chose not to wear socks with your Bean boots, but all you want are those foco chicken nuggets so you walk back to your room, get your card, walk back to foco, and you get those damn chicken nuggets. Also frostbite. Language: math Pros: This is a challenging course, but such a fundamental in any computer science education that it’s absolutely worth taking. Plus, algorithms, particularly algorithmic thinking in computer science, really really really help with code interviews--try to take this before senior year (FYI: which involves taking 30 as well). Cons: Difficult, but definitely not impossible. Weekly problem sets that you should get started early on. It’s math, but it’s computer science math, so you have a framework of thinking to back up the work you need to do.

CS 50 Software Design & Implementation Difficulty: Like chugging a 40 in under 40 seconds. Language: C, UNIX, Bash Pros: No other project you complete in your CS career at Dartmouth will make you feel more like a bad b**** than your tiny crawler project, written in m****f***** C. And you can talk about it, forever, to whomever may care. 50 also unlocks most upper level CS courses, which get very interesting and way less painful. Cons: This will be the first time for many opening up their terminals, writing shell scripts, and coding in C. You have 1 week to learn this all, god speed, because then comes the hefty weekly project. There is no more hand holding in this course, as there will likely be 1 professor and 1 grad school TA that will not have any time to be a TA, and plus there are a million ways to implement / screw up in C. Be prepared to devote many many nights a week to this course. But once you make it through survive this course, it’s smooth sailing for the remainder of your programming career at Dartmouth, and kind of in life.

CS 51 Architecture Difficulty: Like getting stir fry from Collis, during 12s. Language: Machine Code (LC3), Assembly, C Pros: I’m definitely biased here but I thought it was super cool to finally look under the hood of everything and see the very very fundamentals of how a computer works, and write lines of ridiculous TRAP and ADD functions that make simple loops and operations. Also building circuits on Logisim was pretty cool, the more hands on (but same idea) version of this course is CS 56 Digital Electronics, where you build up to hardware rather than to C programming. Cons: A lot of CS majors will take this class sophomore summer, since its one of the ones offered, so it’s a bummer to actually have to be functional and think and study for this course during __X term. However, the workload is quite manageable.

CS 60 Networks Difficulty: The president’s lawn Dartmouth 7: hard, from what I hear, but doable. Language: idk Info: Okay I never took this course because it never worked with my schedule but I really wish I did because knowing about Networking (the WWW!) is incredibly important in real life, plus it’s really rad and I wish I knew more about it in depth.

CS 61 Database Systems Difficulty: The 50 yard line Dartmouth 7: pretty easy, if the gate’s open. If it’s not open it’s not worth getting some gruesome injury while trying to climb the fence that you then have to tourniquet with your gross college beer hands while waiting for EMS to roll up. Language: SQL Info: Okay, also never got the chance to take this course due to scheduling but from CS major friends who did, and working as a software engineer IRL, knowing at least the basics of how databases work and how to write SQL queries won’t go out of style anytime soon. Websites and apps can often be considered glorified database interfaces. Pros: Very useful knowledge of how/where data is stored and accessed. Useful foundational industry knowledge as well. Cons: You can get by this and do fine in the real world, you’ll just need to play catchup on your own time.

CS 65 Smartphone Programming (Android) Difficulty: Like the final day of trips. You’ve already been through two smelly days, but this is your final day and the Lodj is in sight, and hell, you may even do the sunrise hike. Language: Java Pros: The only actual CS class where everything you learn about languages and algorithms comes to fruition in tangible, even usable apps. Cons: Subject to change, but can be a disorganized class, especially with changing android versions all the time. Also, not offered for iOS.

CS 77 Graphics Difficulty: Sorority rush, in the winter. Language: C++ Pros: Although the math may be daunting at first, it’s computer science math where operators are pre-defined and equations can be referenced. Graphical bugs and mistakes are phenomenal works of art and finishing the assignments (rendering, animations, etc.) is extremely rewarding.  Cons: This is definitely a specific and quite different track of programming that won’t really be used unless you go directly into some graphical development or fabrication career, but still cool to know.

CS 89, varies, Computational Fabrication encouraged Difficulty: Playing on an IM softball team. Language: C++, various Pros: At this point you’ve probably been through quite a few of the pre-requisite, soul draining CS classes. Electives such as these are your reward. Computational fabrication--i.e. 3D printing and laser cutting--is an endlessly interesting and emerging field of study, and this class is definitely a hands-on, in the best way, learning experience that allows for you to make a direct impact on the community at large. Cons: Though not the most difficult class, it’s definitely really time draining. Requires lots of outside-class time inside labs babysitting 3D prints while your friends get nice healthy tans in the sun. 

IRL Application

So how does a computer science degree from a liberal arts school help you in real life? 

Great question. You’re not at MIT, you’re not at Carnegie Mellon. But you are at Dartmouth, which probably means you’re well-rounded in terms of being encouraged and required to take classes like Native American Studies in addition to your major. Which is pretty rad.

Honestly, the following classes are all you really need (and more) to be a pretty successful software engineer, if that’s what you want. The breakdown of specific core classes and how they will help you is as follows:

CS 1 & 10: ace the job interview

CS 30 & 31: ace the job interview

CS 50: become a HAXXOR

CS 51: dig deeper, become a better bug fixer

Not too bad. With a CS minor, you can do a lot. At the least, as computers become more and more engrained in our everyday life, the basic knowledge you can take away from Dartmouth CS classes will submerge you in the know of computer science. Plus, don’t you want to stay as with it as little Rosie-the-7-month-old-with-the-iPad your friend babysits on week nights?

[luoser]

maintenance

It’s quite uncanny how easily we can put off, and eventually forget about, things that are important to us. How easily we can brush off meaningful tasks, big or small, until they live in this guilty state of consciousness.

Maintenance is an art--that finicky type of art that draws upon both our deep, reflective thinking, and our shallow ability to stay on top of things: Plato, meet your shadow, mr. micromanager.

Upkeep, whether it be of laundry, fitness, libraries of code, relationships--they are all our victims of negligence at some point in our lives. I’d like to believe, however, that we seek to achieve not an end, but rather a glorious sort of steady-state where things need to be maintained. For what happens when there is nothing in our lives left to be maintained?

[luoser]

why, and how, I made my website

My website is my playground for trying out new technologies and designs.

I realized last year that I needed some sort of portfolio if I ever intended to boast web design and development skills. With limited wifi and limited distractions, I put together this. If you have basic coding experience, even if not, challenge yourself to make your own website! It's a great exercise in design and basic coding in HTML/CSS, Javascript if you'd like to get fancy. Here are some tips for setting up a simple website, and some of my links in my "webdev goodies" bookmarked folder:

I use Namecheap for the DNS and it's hosted on the Heroku free tier (#college).

The home page includes the division raster script from the PaperJS library. The hidden image? Well, I'll never tell ;-)

Everything about it is pretty standard. It's built using Ruby on Rails and Bootstrap. I wanted the stark black/white contrast to keep the website clean. I wanted the only colors on the pages to be my artwork.

Along the way I found the fun in choosing and designing buttons and icons. My favorite webfont/css style-able icons are from MFG Labs icons (thanks kylejson!) and FontAwesome icons. I like these buttons. 

Recently I've been tinkering around with image loading, as they are the main content of my website. I've been working with implementing Masonry for a nice fade-in image effect, and this page was very helpful in understanding masonry. I've also implemented lazyload, which is the smarter way to load images, however it doesn't work quite as seamlessly as I'd like on the heroku free tier at the moment.

Many friends ask about having portfolios and websites, what to build it with, what to fill it with, etc., so this is a breakdown of what I used. I like having a space on the internet that is just my own. Although it does have a function of consolidating my online presence onto one page and showing my work, it's great to have this space to play around with code and try things out.

[luoser]

#GHC14

This year was my first time attending the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing and it was quite the experience. I was excited to travel to Phoenix, AZ to escape Hanover weather for a week, meet 8,000 other women in computer science.

Highlights of the conference included several impressive keynote speakers that opened the conference each day, including Satya Nadella telling 8,000 women not to ask for raises.

<rant>

Satya's remark about women and raises and karma managed to momentarily jerk my attention away from a riveting game of Tiny Bird, so we know it was interesting.

"Good karma" he said, surrounds those who focus on their work, implying that in the end we will have the salaries we deserve. I am 21 and I know that the real world does not work this way. Success comes with an inexplicable amount of luck that we do not all have, and if you're the poster child of successful immigration, hard work, and assimilation, you should know that better than most.

Perhaps I'm biased but women should 150% earn all the $$$$ we deserve. Any deserving person should. My mother immigrated to the USA about twenty years ago and she is the most brilliant woman I know who has, for over a decade at her company, been an invaluable contributor. I have been scolding her since I was a teenager to ask for a raise, but she never has. She's afraid. She's too grateful for the opportunity of employment she already has. Is this right?

</rant>

The rest of the conference was an organized chaotic flow of events and career fair swag trolling.

18 hair ties + 16 tshirts + 12 pens + 8 phone chargers + 6 calculator watches + 3 nail files = a very successful #GHC14 #basic

— Lisa Luo (@luoser) October 11, 2014

I could go into another mini <rant></rant> about the hair ties and nail polish and nail files and pocket mirrors and tight fit v-neck women's cut tshirts that I shamelessly requested a size XXL of, but I do not, sincerely, want to detract from how wonderful of a step Grace Hopper is in realizing the presence of women in computing. Plus I got a handful of phone chargers, battery packs, and one tool kit that I am genuinely excited to use. And as they say, a girl can never have too many hair ties.

The coolest talk I attended was by Heather Pritchett, a Disney graphics wizard who gave a lightening talk on some subsurface scattering work done in Frozen.  Seeing these well known and loved characters in pre-production form makes the whole process of animation so...doable. I'm excited now to spend more time in the digital arts side of my major, to spend more time modeling and animating and bringing the characters in my head to life, too.

In conclusion, my takeaways from #GHC14 were 1.) it's awesome having women in the computing workforce and the US is missing out on some amazing talent and 2.) Google has an inconceivable amount of money. 

[luoser]

air and light and time and space

"–you know, I’ve either had a family, a job, something has always been in the way but now I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this place, a large studio, you should see the space and the light. for the first time in my life I’m going to have a place and the time to create." no baby, if you’re going to create you’re going to create whether you work 16 hours a day in a coal mine or you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children while you’re on welfare, you’re going to create with part of your mind and your body blown away, you’re going to create blind crippled demented, you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your back while the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment, flood and fire. baby, air and light and time and space have nothing to do with it and don’t create anything except maybe a longer life to find new excuses for. © Charles Bukowski, Black Sparrow Press

one day, i will paint this on a wall.