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About Me

I'm a 20-ish engineering student at Cornell University studying Engineering Physics and Computer Science. The double major is a lot of work, but I am deeply interested in both fields, and hopefully someday in doing work that combines them. I've been programming since I was 11, and interested in how the physical world around us is put together for as long as I can remember. Programming and physics are, to me, two windows on essentially the same question: how does this universe work, anyway? That question briefly drove me to study biology, but I ended up deciding that physics would be more satisfying for me.

Physics, as a science, is all about figuring out the universe, and as an engineering discipline, it's about using the knowledge acquired to build things. The joy of making things is what originally drew me to programming: you can build anything your imagination can think up! — or, that's what I thought when I started, anwyay. I've since learned that the limits of computers and of the imagination are rather mismatched; some programs can be easily imagined, but cannot really be coded, and some functions can be easily coded, but are very hard to imagine. I've come to draw a careful line between "programming" and "computer science" — one is a creative activity, and the other involves thinking about others' past and potential creative activities. Not to imply that CS is too abstract, useless! It's very interesting, but perhaps not my cup of tea. Anyway, enough of thinking about thinking.

As mentioned on the front, I play piano. As of this writing, I am working my way through Schubert's Moments musicaux, trying to learn the six to satisfiable quality. I got distracted by Kabalevsky, and, well, school, so my progress is slower than I'd like. But I'll finish eventually! Other than enginering subjects and piano, I am also studying Arabic. I'd like to learn quite a few more languages, but I'm not sure when I will get the chance. College seems the time to do it, but I've no time! Ah!

Well, time to stop rambling about myself and go write the rest of this website, I suppose. Hope you enjoy it!

(Incidentally, if you experience any problems with this site, including browser incompatibilities or broken links, please tell me! I wrote this site, so more general feedback is also welcome; I'm always curious to hear what people think of my work.)

(Written January 2010.)