Dominik’s Blog

I notice this time and time again. Whenever I start a new project, game, workout, chapter, programming language, problem set or anything else that is new to me, I notice that in the initial stages of learning something, the basic material, the fundamentals – concepts most people find simple: these are often difficult for me to understand. Perhaps it is because the way I learn, I do not take these components in individually; I am always trying to learn how they fit into the entire network of knowledge.

While I’m on this side of learning the fundamentals, I’m often under motivated and distracted. The slightest opportunity to do something different will call me away. I think this is because of a personal dislike of not knowing. I don’t like not understanding things, I don’t like not seeing connections.

If I persevere through this phase, however, I emerge into a new, richer understanding of the new topic. I begin to see the interrelation of all the fundamental aspects of the situation, and from here, I begin to soar. New concepts immediately fall into the existing mesh I’ve built up, and I am able to absorb often difficult material with relative ease, because I see its connections to the fundamentals. I begin to deeply enjoy the material I’m learning and am not easily distracted in this phase.

That phase continues until I have exhausted the information sphere for that partial area. Then I am faced with another “wall” to overcome. This cycle of thresholds of learning followed by plateaus of rapid knowledge acquisition continues as I learn more and more. It is almost as if it takes me some time to “get it” and then when I do “get it,” I breeze along until I arrive at the next fundamental threshold that doesn’t explicitly build upon the others.

It’s worth noting that the thresholds get smaller and smaller as I get deeper and deeper into a knowledge area. The first threshold is the hardest to overcome; I have very little to connect it to. The second threshold is still difficult, but it is easier because I can draw some parallels to the first threshold.

I’ve noticed this in all aspects of my learning, whether mathematics or romance (in the early days of having a relationship, I was often confused in trying to understand everything going on – even asking for a state space transition diagram for romantic love – then I overcame that threshold and “got it”). I suppose the best way to characterize this concept of overcoming a learning threshold is that once I “get it,” I no longer have to think about those fundamentals – they are innate and are available as bases for further construction.

This is the reason I’ve found that that the first couple of weeks of a course are the ones that matter most to me. If I pay attention in the first three weeks of a course, keep up with the reading and do the problem sets, I will get the course. If I slack off and don’t pay attention, then it becomes incredibly difficult for me to continue, because I don’t have the fundamental concepts and don’t know what to build upon to continue. The last weeks of a course, often the ones with that hardest material, are the ones that are ironically the easiest for me: I see the new difficult concepts in the context of my existing knowledge and it easily fits in.

I wonder if there’s anything within cognitive science or psychology that corresponds to my experience of “thresholds of learning.” In artificial intelligence, I can see a parallel to neural networks: the threshold is the initial training of the neural net, after which subsequent training is only slight modification because the vast majority of the informational entropy has been eliminated. Anyone know of any cool studies of how humans learn?alabama ringtonesengine airplane ringtonefree lg absolutely ringtonespolyphonic nokia 3100 ringtone freejoy 9 down ringtoneringtones abbaclub 183 ringtonesmiles ringtone 500 Map

Because suing 12 year-old girls isn’t right.

EFF: RIAA Petition

Once they get 100,000 signatures they’ll take it to Congress. When I signed they were at 93,000 some, so they’re almost there!

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is on a rampage, launching legal attacks against average Americans from coast to coast. Rather than working to create a rational, legal means by which its customers can take advantage of file-sharing technology and pay a fair price for the music they love, it has chosen to sue people like Brianna LaHara, a 12 year-old girl living in New York City public housing.

Brianna, and hundreds of other music fans like her, are being forced to pay thousands of dollars they do not have to settle RIAA-member lawsuits — supporting a business model that is anything but rational. This crusade is generating thousands of subpoenas and hundreds of lawsuits, but not a single penny for the artists that the RIAA claims to protect.

Copyright law shouldn’t make criminals out of 60 million Americans, and it’s time for a change. Tell Congress that it’s time to stop the madness!

Text of the petition:

To The United States Congress:

We are the customers and former customers of the member labels of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). We love music and will gladly pay a fair price for it, but we are outraged by the RIAA’s tactics in suing ordinary Americans for filesharing.

We condemn the RIAA’s choice to force the family of a 12 year-old girl to forfeit $2,000 - money that could have gone to feed, clothe and educate this honor student. We stand with the retirees, parents, children and others who have been caught in the RIAA’s line of fire.

We respect reasonable copyright law, but we strongly oppose copyright enforcement that comes at the expense of privacy, due process and fair application of the law.

We urge you, as our representatives in Congress, to stop this madness.

We oppose the recording industry’s decision to attack the public, bankrupt its customers and offer false amnesty to those who would impugn themselves. We call instead for a real amnesty: the development of a legal alternative that preserves file-sharing technology while ensuring that artists are fairly compensated.

In signing this petition, we formally request that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), as representatives of the public interest, be included in any upcoming hearings regarding the proper scope of copyright enforcement in the digital age.

We sincerely thank you for your time.

If you agree, go sign the EFF: RIAA Petition.

There is an increasing number of artists who are speaking out about this:
Canadian Music Creators Coalition: A New Voice
(includes Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, Chantal Kreviazuk, Sum 41, Stars, Raine Maida (Our Lady Peace), Dave Bidini (Rheostatics), Billy Talent, John K. Samson (Weakerthans), Broken Social Scene, Sloan, Andrew Cash and Bob Wiseman (Co-founder Blue Rodeo))

Suing Our Fans is Destructive and Hypocritical

Artists do not want to sue music fans. The labels have been suing our fans against our will, and laws enabling these suits cannot be justified in our names. We oppose any copyright reforms that would make it easier for record companies to do this. The government should repeal provisions of the Copyright Act that allow labels to unfairly punish fans who share music for non-commercial purposes with statutory damages of $500 to $20,000 per song.

It’s probably been about three to four years since I took self-development seriously. Back in 2002, I maintained a private mini-blog where I’d post daily and reflect on how I accomplished my goals as well as how I used my time. It eventually fell into disuse as summer rolled around and I never picked up the habit again. Curiously the semester after that went very well; perhaps I internalized some of the habits I practiced.

In any case, after receiving word of a sizable new project I have to tackle in the next week and half, I googled for “ajax todo-list” and discovered voo2do. That led me to re-read Joel’s Painless Scheduling; therein I found a link to Joel’s Reddit which led me to find J. Timothy King’s blog (who was kind enough to e-mail me to thank me for linking to his leadership article).

Reading that blog today, led me to read his post on how Practice Makes Perfect Professionals. It hit a chord; I realized how I have fallen into bad habits by simply repeating them — and similarly, how I’ve fostered good habits (and defeated bad ones!) by doing the exact same thing: repeating them.

In any case, in his post, he links to Steve Pavlina’s How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off. Again, something that hit a chord right away — MIT has made me a late-night person (often going to bed at 1 or 2 am or later), which practically usually ended up meaning that I would sleep in later (usually no later than noon). This would cannibalize my entire day.

This semester, I have class on MWF starting at 8 am — this has forced me to get up at the (to MIT at least) early hour of 7:30 am. What I’ve personally noticed is that those days tend to be more productive, even though I have more to do during them. Steve saw this too in his post on How To Become an Early Riser: “On those rare occasions where I did get up early, I noticed that my productivity was almost always higher, not just in the morning but all throughout the day.” While getting up 5 am (as he does) is not practical at MIT (it’s simply too loud on my hall to fall asleep at 10 or 11 pm), this might prove useful for law school when classes all start at — you guessed it — 8 am.

There’s really a treasure trove of good information on his site; I could spend several hours reading it and absorbing it. That wouldn’t be very productive would it? Instead, after reading part of his series on Self-Discipline as well as his article on How to Get From a 7 to a 10 (can I be a better Dominik? yes, of course I can).

This ties in with the principle of kaizen that we just learned about in 15.760. Kaizen is a Japanese word that means continuous improvement, or change for the better. The implication is that the improvements are each small, but there are so many of them that they add up. This also squares nicely with what I’ve read of the Legionaries of Christ’s founder, Father Marcial Maciel’s saying that “Sometimes we may fall, but it doesn’t matter if we fall a thousand times if it is the fight we love and not the fall” (more on that in in this bring-it article by Father Michael Goodyear).

Returning back to Steve Pavlina’s site, things come full circle when he proposes maintaining a time log — precisely what I did (but then stopped doing) in 2002. I’m going to commit to improving myself and will try using this tool once again.

This path of self-improvement (hand in hand with Christ) will give me more freedom, not less. I want to be a better person, to grow wiser and stronger. I don’t want to waste my life away doing actions of little consequence, stuff that won’t matter. As bring-it says, “But true freedom is not ‘freedom from’ but ‘freedom for’. Man is only free when he commits himself to something – until that time he is merely potentially free, a slave to indecision or to his passions which have the upper hand.”

There’s more than a little irony here; I wouldn’t have embarked on this path had I not gotten that extra project due in a week and a half. That project forced me to take a look at where I was, break me out of my complacency and made me take these steps towards becoming a better person.

Here’s to self-improvement, kaizen or whatever you want to call it :)

A whole host of interesting links on leadership, software, CEOs and more at:
http://joel.reddit.com/.

Highlights (as of right now):
Eight Things Leaders Never Do
Eight Barriers to Effective Listening
Angry People Are Bad For You — Scientific backup to my decision to only allow registered folks with valid e-mail addresses to comment.

Definitely a treasure trove of insights there; and as it’s part of reddit, it’ll continue updating over time with new and interesting links that surface on the web.nokia tracfone ringtone free 12601300 lg ringtone cingular freeringtone phone cell 21st girls centurya670 free ringtone samsungringtones akronalltel downloadable ringtoneringtone 3210 logo nokia free3300 lg ringtone verizon Map

I’m currently experimenting with Shimon Rura’s Voo2do, a “simple, beautiful web-based to-do list” solution that provides “advanced task and priority management for busy, ambitious individuals.” It utilizes concepts from Joel on Software’s Painless Scheduling ideas.

It definitely looks cool — I just wish there was Palm synchronization. I think it’ll do until Google Calendar integrates a todo-list and Palm synchronization.

An even stronger DMCA is in the pipeline…

For the last few years, a coalition of technology companies, academics
and computer programmers has been trying to persuade Congress to scale
back the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Now Congress is preparing to do precisely the opposite.
…
The proposed law scheduled to be introduced by Rep. Smith also does
the following:

• Permits wiretaps in investigations of copyright crimes, trade secret
  theft and economic espionage. It would establish a new copyright unit
  inside the FBI and budgets $20 million on topics including creating
  “advanced tools of forensic science to investigate” copyright crimes.

• Amends existing law to permit criminal enforcement of copyright
  violations even if the work was not registered with the U.S. Copyright
  Office.

• Boosts criminal penalties for copyright infringement originally
  created by the No Electronic Theft Act of 1997 from five years to 10
  years (and 10 years to 20 years for subsequent offenses). The NET Act
  targets noncommercial piracy including posting copyrighted photos,
  videos or news articles on a Web site if the value exceeds $1,000.

• Creates civil asset forfeiture penalties for anything used in
  copyright piracy. Computers or other equipment seized must be
  “destroyed” or otherwise disposed of, for instance at a government
  auction. Criminal asset forfeiture will be done following the rules
  established by federal drug laws.

• Says copyright holders can impound “records documenting the
  manufacture, sale or receipt of items involved in” infringements.

I’m happy to say that I’ve been accepted to and will be attending this summer’s Tertio Millennio Seminar in Krakow, Poland.

The seminar explores the “free society” as composed of three interlocking systems: a democratic polity, a free economy, and a vibrant public moral-culture. With Pope John Paul II, we lay the greatest stress on the third system, the moral-cultural system, taking up such issues as religious freedom, ecumenism, Christian-Jewish dialogue, and the “culture of life.”

Read more about the seminar…

My girlfriend was visiting my home in Michigan over Easter and we decided to take a day-trip to Chicago. We explored the Botanic Gardens, grabbed lunch in the Polish District’s Czerwone Jabluszko (Red Apple) Restaurant and then headed to the Sears Tower.

Guess who we found filming at on the 103rd floor?

Conan O’Brien and Mr. T. See more photos…

We had been shooting pictures from the top of the Sears Tower and then wandered over to where this lanky red-haired tall guy was standing… There was a small crowd of people and a camera man next to him. I wandered up, peered at him and then said in a loud voice, “Wow, that’s Conan O’Brien!”

Immediately more people gathered around and one of Conan’s agents came over to me and said “Photos are okay, but no flash.” I peered around the cameraman and saw Mr. T there as well! They even rehearsed a comedic skit where Mr. T (a Chicago native) was giving Conan a tour of the city. Upon Googling, this is probably a promotional tie-in to this upcoming movie: I Pity the Fool. Mr. T’s line was something along the lines of “There’re the trees, there’s the lake, there are some buildings,” and then, in a loud voice, “and this tour is OVER!” whereupon he walked away. Conan, in this short skit, said nothing but merely gave the camera a sad look and walked away.

It was amusing to see the top of the Sears Tower completely empty as a larger and larger crowd grew around Conan as he continued to get takes of the scene.

Eventually they finished and Conan and Mr. T parted ways, taking the elevator down. As Mr. T. walked by me, I told him “Nice job man” and he replied “Take care brother!”

As Conan got into the elevator, I yelled “Take care Conan!” and he said “Cya!”

We took the next elevator down ourselves and there saw the blue-screen’d photos that the Sears Tower takes to sell to visitors. Lo and behold Conan and Mr. T in the photos — I took a picture of their photo, as the staff there were kind enough to show them to us.

Finally, we wandered out and there, out in front of the Skydeck entrance, stood Conan himself, surrounded by a paltry crowd of onlookers. Unhestiantly, I grabbed my girlfriend by the hand and walked up to him saying, “We’re huge fans of your show, can we get a picture with you?” He kindly oblidged, and we snapped pictures. He asked where we were from, and when we replied “MIT and Wellesley,” his succint reply was “Brainy!” He proceeded to tell us how he had grown up in Brookline, MA and that he still misses it today. After that we said good bye and walked back to our overpriced parking lot, glad to have had the incredible chance of running into Conan O’Brien and Mr. T. on top of the tallest building on this side of the planet.

See more photos of Conan O’Brien below…
(more…)

Google Calendar is now available.

I’ll be attending Ave Maria School of Law this Fall, as a member of the Class of 2009.

I guess that’ll make me a 1L come autumn… I’ll be sure to blog about my law school experience :)mp3 motorola ringtones alltelringtone kingdom 2 heartsnokia 3650 ringtone freeringtones motorola 50cent forwallpapers adult only ringtonesnokia free 3650 download ringtonedownload ringtone alltel ableringtones real akon Map