robcoyne [dot] com

So I had a nice talk with my new co-advisor today about the status of my thesis. The first thing he asked me as I walked into his small concrete office, decorated sparsely with physics texts and discarded playstation 3 boxes, is whether or not I had been told that the department had awarded me a full Research Assistantship for next semester. Surprised by the revelation I excitedly informed him that it was the first I had heard of it, but that in no way diminished the elation I felt at not having to teach any classes next semester. He chuckled softly and nodded, saying how he was glad they were able to sort out the money so I could focus on finishing my thesis next spring, rather than teaching four classes in addition to my coursework like I’m doing this time around.

There was more to it than that though, I could tell that deep down there was a hidden message lost among my exuberance and his contentment. He was telling me that he was concerned about whether or not I’d have enough time to finish my thesis.

I can’t say I blame him, I’m a little worried myself. My thesis has changed so many times that I never got rolling on any of them, and now I’m faced with completing a brand new project, writing a 40+ page paper on it, and coming up with a compelling presentation all over the course of a single semester. My concern however isn’t that I’d be able to do it. In fact, I have no doubt that I’ll be able to finish my thesis. I’m worried that when I’m done with it, that it won’t be impressive enough to carry me through my future education.

As it stands right now, it looks like the skeleton of the project is going to be about code optimization for the playstation 3’s. It will start by showing how standard data analysis packages can be easily compiled and run, with little to no additional setup, displaying any impressive or important benchmarks along the way. After that, we’ll choose a select few libraries that have been optimized for the Cell architecture (the Fast Fourier Transform - FFT - for example) and do some benchmarks for that, illustrating the benefits of using the Cell. We’ll do some different approaches on the PS3’s (running optimized versus non-optimized code), as well as some cross-platform tests (runs on a Core 2, server rack, etc). All of these things together will certainly give an impressive view of what the PS3’s are capable of, but there’s one problem: there’s no physics in it!

So I need to come up with some nifty way of making this project about some kind of exciting physics as well as exciting electronics. I only hope that I have enough time to do that. Thoughts are more than welcome.

Before I let you go however, the wonderful people over at Animals Have Problems Too put out a fantastic motivational comic that comes to mind here. It’s hanging on the side of my cubicle, as a constant reminder of what needs to be done. And since it’s fitting, I will share it with you now:

It’s not my drawing, not my advice, but certainly words I can live by. Good night.

school advisor, computer science, Physics, playstation 3, thesis

I’ve got a new thesis project.

Now, your first reaction may be to say “oh, wow, good for you! I hope you’re going to enjoy this one more than your last.” To this I would invariably answer “oh yeah, definitely, I’m pretty pumped about this one” casually omitting the fact that this is the fourth or fifth time that my advisor has changed my topic on me. Comon! I’ve LOST TRACK of how many times my thesis project has been changed. That’s a terrible thing! The worst part is, it’s only about 1/8th my fault.

You see, up until now I’ve been working with a team of scientists at the Jefferson National Laboratory on a project called FROST. In technical jargon, it’s a project exploring pion photoproduction from a frozen spin target. In layman’s terms, we’re shooting stuff at other stuff and seeing what happens when the two things explode. Anyway, my role in all of this has been multivalued. At first I was assisting with the Time of Flight Calibrations, then my collaborator dropped off the face of the planet, didn’t respond to emails, and ended up finishing the project two months later on her own without any of my input. One project down.

From there I moved onto the Photon Tagging division. The director didn’t see fit to give a measly Master’s Student any work, so that flopped. After that came the two coding projects. The first was ultimately scrapped (as it wasn’t superb thesis material) and the second was finished. That’s right. We got all of the calibration code switched over to the new OS (Fedora 8, up from the older Red Hat 5). Turns out, my advisor never passed along the message, so the program director repeated all of my work one week and essentially killed off my participation in that aspect of the project.

So what does that make this? Project number 5? At least I don’t have to deal with anyone else doing my whole project for me, because now I’m working here on campus rather than in Virginia. I’m getting all of the code running on the PS3’s and we’re going to benchmark it. This is something I can get behind, and it’s something that’s attractive to potential grad schools. I’ll get into that more in a later post (time to get back to class), but needless to say I’m sick of the grad school gods shitting on my academic future and I’m going to make this one work.

That is all.

school Rant, school, thesis