What I was doing when the past was now

November 2025

I'm in my sophomore year at Notre Dame now. Haven't been writing very much lately.

This fall I've been taking Data Structures, Probability, Systems Programming, Logic Design, and Discrete Math. I enjoy these classes a lot.

I feel a bit like I'm in a state of limbo. It is okay; you wouldn't call it limbo if you thought it was the end. A while back, I stepped on an escalator and my heels were separated from the ground. The past feeds on itself and I stand in motion. It is okay; my feet stayed on the stair after all. If I stand straight and lean forward a bit the rest of me will stay too. And so I wait expectantly, for the contact of my heels. Take a step! There is no one behind me but I feel like I must hurry. For the contact of my heels. Do you ever feel that to move is to deny yourself some kind of satisfaction? The escalator is long and my feet are tired. But in twisted thoughts where everything must be manufactured by the self, wouldn't you believe that movement precludes faith? I guess we all need someone to catch us.

I will have some notes and projects that should be posted before the end of the year. I might be back in Colorado for some time in the spring.

A song I liked today: Shida Shahabi - Petula

July/August 2025

I'm back home now for about a month before the fall semester. I spent almost 9 weeks at Notre Dame getting a really fun (and surprisingly hands-off) introduction to the world of academic cs research! Super grateful for our program coordinator, our group's mentor, and all the cool people I got to meet!

Currently planning to try out some new techniques in a 2D Gaussian Splatting video compression project (coarse+fine deformation)

Also continuing to follow Andrej Karpathy's wonderful tutorials on youtube :D

June 2025

Back in the bend, baby

Learning/working on 2D Gaussian Splatting for image&video compression

I need to write and create more but my mind and soul are still a little sick

April 2025

I am currently studying for finals! The weather has been much happier lately. My eyes are red and puffy and full of pollen, but oh man, spring is so nice here! Having grown up in Denver, I think I am unaccustomed to such discrete seasons as those in the Midwest. The solid three months of miserable, gray cold were spent without expectation of this pleasantly gradual warmth. Back home, it snows most in March and April, and I guess I just tended to wake up on some day in late May and start calling it summer. I am excited for summer's warm green light and heavy leaves, and I guess that itchy anticipation is what spring is all about.

Here is a picture of some late April trees:

This semester, I've been helping contribute to a research project on LLM agent simulations. This summer, I will be back at Notre Dame for a different project on image compression!

I've been watching some very cool tutorials by Andrej Karpathy that I hope to continue with this summer. I'm making micrograd.c as a final project in my cs class!

From A Basement On The Hill by Elliott Smith has been one of my favorite albums to listen to lately. I don't remember liking it as much in the past, but for some reason I now have a great appreciation for it.