Writing (not code)
I realized last night that I've been putting pressure on myself to get finished results, so I can present them to my collaborators. But since research work is rarely finished, the result is that I keep moving the goalposts and present only when I have to (e.g., in a meeting). This conceals all the work I've been doing and insulates me from useful feedback. So I decided to start sending daily reports to my collaborators. I think this will be a great way to keep my own thinking process going, too. I was way behind on this process, so, after my usual reading (finished NIST post-quantum standardization document) and breakfast with Emily and Libby, I arrived at the office and started writing up what I'd done over the past week or so. It took a couple hours, but I was pretty happy with the result, and in the process I figured out something I'd been stuck on the previous day. Short version: I was using a hack to measure when a quality measure had converged to optimal. Replacing the hack with something slightly more principled gave cleaner results.
Went to lunch at Okenshields. Ran into a Keeton resident named Alisha who was very curious about cryptography and asked me a bunch of questions. One interesting but natural confusion was between authentication and encryption. Then DC pulled up and we talked a bit about frisbee. Playing Pitt, one of the best teams in the country, last semester had made a big impression on him. He didn't think they did anything exceptional, but they were very consistent with fundamentals--in handler defense, holding the around mark and preventing upline cuts. This prevented easy resets and gave them a chance to make a play on the disc. I've lately been pretty frustrated with our around marks and trying to improve mine.
Back to the office, I thought a little bit more about the "next steps" ideas I'd suggested in the report. One of them didn't really make sense. The other one seemed like a really good idea, and easier to implement than I'd thought at first. I sent a short follow-up, then went on a walk to catch the rare Ithaca sun. Back, I started to implement the code. I'm getting a little bit better with my ergonomic keyboard, but it's still a little tricky. At the end of the day, I got caught up in some scheduling logistics. Noah was hoping for a research meeting tomorrow, but it potentially conflicted with practice and our staff meetup to schedule on-call. I floundered around a bit with too much context in my head on the walk back to House Dinner, and finally managed to reschedule the meeting so it at least didn't clobber the on-call meetup.
At Keeton, I remembered at the last minute I'd agreed to set up the House Dinner slides and ran down to do that. Then I breathed a big sigh of relief and grabbed some House Dinner food. Really good today! Poblanos, grilled chicken, and some delicious chipotle crema. Sat with Christian, one of the ACs; we talked about skiing and undergrad classes and studying abroad. Said hi to some of my 3 North squad. I left house dinner very full but with an inexplicable desire to play basketball. So I stretched a bit and hit Noyes, where my 4-some scored an upset victory against a more athletic looking squad. Played a game of 5s and narrowly lost. Hit some good shots but need to attack the basket more.
Back at Keeton, wrote this log early in preparation for the midnight beginning of "Varsha Day" (Varsha's birthday!) The plan is to meet Oli at his house at 11 and then drive to Monkey Run to drink chai in the beautiful, starry, freezing cold. Very much my idea of a good time!