1010daniel

[1010daniel]

7/22/19 (W8D1)

My bad for missing...all of the weeks. Here’s the plan. This post will be a quick overview of all the stuff that I’ve been doing over the next few weeks. I’m not good at remembering to take pictures when I do things, but I am good at remembering to take keepsakes, so I’m just gonna talk about those events and throw in a picture or two here and there.

First thing I wanna keep track of: this app reads in your Spotify listens and then draws a really cool landscape out of it. Gonna start keeping track of these too because why not. Here's the explanation:

The background of your musicScape is purple because you've recently listened to music that relates to sad or angry emotions.

It's daytime in your musicScape because your recent music is mostly in major mode.

The mountains are less jagged because you've listened to less energetic songs.

You've been a less active listener during the past 24 hours, so your musicScape has one pair of mountains.

The mountains are tones of light green because your songs are mostly in the key B.

Work

One of the cool things about 1010data is that its data centers are stupid powerful. Their version of tracking data is called the "Trillion-Row Spreadsheet" which is exactly what it sounds. Companies push their data into 1010's data centers, and then they can run whatever analyses they want. One of the things that the platform is able to do is send emails that allow them to schedule queries and then export them onto their local machines. This is managed by what's called the Download Manager. Previously, the Download Manager like...sucks; it's written in K, and it's extremely hard to debug and is really prone to errors. I'm redesigning the Download Manager from the ground up, using Python, which should theoretically make it easier to debug. I haven't moved as fast as I would like; most of this is due to needing testing environment after testing environment, and with two weeks left until my presentation, I'm really hoping I'll be able to get this into the actual system soon. I've got the main stuff all written out and taken care of; I just need to get into the actual platform.

Food

I've eaten some pretty solid food in the past month and a half. One of the places that comes to mind right away is Breakroom, this small place in Chinatown on Baxter St. Y'all, the Breakroom Burger has pork belly in it. It's probably a gazillion calories or something, but it's so good I'm absolutely not complaining. Bao by Kaya is also a place I've been going to a lot, since it's in Urbanspace, this food court-like spot on 51st that's near work.

Other Stuff

I got a Switch a few weeks ago. Super Mario Odyssey and Pokemon Let's Go! Eevee has been taking over half of my free time.

The other half of my free time has been taken up by Teamfight Tactics, an autochess based game mode that League of Legends put out at the beginning of the summer. It's way less skill-based than the original game is, which is good because I'm pretty bad at the normal game LOL.

[1010daniel]

6/8/19 (W1D6)

So until I can find a better blogging platform/create my own website, I’m on Tumblr for the moment beacuse this is what I know how to use lol. And because I'm like thatTM, let's talk about this last week in terms of firsts:

First Time In New York City

6 days ago, I moved to New York City for the summer. I've never lived anywhere that wasn't Houston before. I grew up in Houston, I went high school and currently go to college in Houston, so I haven't just moved to New York: I've moved away from home period. It's definitely interesting; I don't understand how NYC has such big chaotic neutral energy and is somehow still functioning. Between people just crossing the street whenever they feel like it and drivers just going when the light's green, regardless of whether or not the car in front of them has started moving, it's a miracle that this city is the way that it is. I already miss Whataburger. But I get Uniqlo, so I guess that's a decent trade.

John Mulaney does this bit in his comedy special "New In Town" where he talks about the sequel to Home Alone and he's like, "Now I live in New York and I’m psyched, but that is a stupid movie title. Lost in New York? The streets are numbered! How’d you get lost in New York?" LISTEN JOHN, I'M NOT GOOD WITH DIRECTIONS. On Wednesday, I left my apartment like significantly early enough to ensure that I was going to get to work on time because I was cutting it kinda close up until then. I was doing so well, I boarded the 6 and I was chilling on the train only to realize it was going the opposite direction... Anyway, I was late. Don't judge.

First Internship

For those of you who don't know, I've moved to start my first internship with 1010data. In a nutshell, 1010data is a tech company that deals with massive datasets and provides analytical solutions to companies so they can make better informed business decisions. I've never been in a real workplace environment before; these last few years, I've been taking classes and doing research over the summer, so I've never had the experience of going "to the office". Like, okay. I realize a lot of offices have unlimited coffees and 1010 isn't special. BUT UNLIMITED COFFEE. We also have a Nespresso machine, so I'm constantly making myself redeyes because I need to be constantly caffeinated. I appreciate that a lot. And the fully stocked kitchen. I extra appreciate that.

First Time With K

We started off this first week doing typical onboarding stuff; presentations about the system architecture and the client-side application and about 1010's mission. But starting Monday afternoon, the engineering interns (me) started getting different onboarding sessions, starting with an overview of the backend and then 4 sessions making up a crash course about K.

Let's talk about K for a minute. K is a vector-based programming language based off of APL that most of the underlying infrastructure is written in, mostly because it translates into database operations really well. Only the engineering interns really have to learn it, and it's infamous for being super esoteric and hard to read. Like, look at this function that just returns any character in a string that occurs more than once:

f:{(?x)[& 1<#:'=x]}

Some of the underlying code does, in fact, look that ridiculous. And like...I kinda love it. First of all, it really looks like that because a lot of characters represent like 5 different operations each, so there's not a lot to type anyway. But overall, I really like vector-based languages because you have to think about it in a functional way, and I've always really liked functional programming because it's very math-y and simple to reason about. Some of my coworkers that have been coding in K for a few years just seem like crazy geniuses to me when they talk about K, and it's not because of the language: it's the way they think because they've spent so much time in it. Half of one of the sessions was just this guy gushing about the beautiful duality of mathematics and K/APL.

First Drink

Irish Mule at The Perfect Pint. I actually turned 21 on my first day of work, which was a real source of cognitive dissonance for me; over the last few years, I thought that my 21st birthday would be a wild time, and by the time it actually came around, I was in bed at 12:30am because I had work in the morning. But anyway, the engineering interns and I decided to go get dinner at this rooftop bar near work because we got stuck at work trying to figure out how to get access to some of the things we needed. The food was pretty good, and so was the drink lol.

Next Week's Firsts

Earlier today, I got some more details on my intern project, and I'm really excited for it. I've got my first scrums next week, and my first big boy paycheck is coming in next week too hehe. Stay tuned!

Extras

Last time I used Tumblr on my desktop, I was still in high school. Now I'm in college and I know how to use Markdown. nice.

More pictures incoming because I'm really bad at remembering to take pictures.