Meanwhile, I’ve been keeping busy. Here’s a recent sampling:

• The US Patent Office granted me a second patent. The first one, meanwhile, has already passed into obscurity.
• I got an alert detection paper [pdf] accepted to ICDM in Pisa, Italy, where I’ll be going in December to talk about it.
• I served on the program committee for a new workshop called WASL and am on the program committee for NAS ‘09.
• I applied to graduate… sort of. The requirements for a Master’s are a subset of those for my Ph.D., so I filled out the paperwork to pick up an extra degree. I already have an M.Eng. from MIT, so this one’s redundant and will be obsolete whenever I get my doctorate.
• I gave a few invited talks, most recently at a workshop at LACSS [slides].
• I agreed to serve on the CS Department’s faculty search committee.

I’m working on a system modeling paper for submission on Monday. Wish me luck!

I spend the two days before leaving for Black Rock City (BRC) at a shipyard in Berkeley, helping to construct the art car and to pack the camp’s supplies. The site is abuzz with the hiss of spray paint, the sizzle and crackle of welding, and the clangs of metal against metal. We work through the night and into the next day before finally mustering the troops and pointing our caravan toward Nevada.

BRC is a glow on the horizon as we pull toward it in the late evening. The city is still under construction; we have arrived early to set up. Fine particles blow up off the playa (ply-uh) and envelop us in a cloud of clay dust. I don my amber-tinted ski goggles, and the world is rendered in sepia tones—as though the memories here are destined to be treasured and extracted years later, weathered by time and wind and dust. A gentleman named Squirrel welcomes us. I step over a line in the sand and ring a bell; under the bright moon, I enter Burning Man.

Midnight on Sunday is the official start of Burning Man. Already, it has been three days since I had a shower. My hands are dry and filthy, layers of dust and bike grease and food coat them in a mottled white glove and outline my nails with black. I help make pancakes for the camp. That evening, I cook fajitas and then pitch my tent. As darkness falls, thumps of light and heat punctuate the flashing, glowing, musical hustle of preparations; they are huge, distant flame-throwers, launching fireballs into the air.

The first full evening of Burning Man is a Monday, and a full lunar eclipse. I begin exploring this surreal world: shots at the Tequila Shack, bad dancing penalized by fire at Dance Dance Immolation, jokes and songs in exchange for a mug of IP-fucking-A at the Carbofuckingnation Camp, building with magnetic blocks beneath a peaceful tent, pounding furiously on bongos as a carousel comes to life and animates a death-dance between a gorilla and a snake… As the eclipse begins, I bike to the Opulent Temple. There, I dance among the thumping techno, glowsticks, lasers, and dual jets of fire that periodically erupt from the DJ booth. One such flash burns an image in my mind: a beautiful woman, topless and bedecked with beaded decorations, arms and hair flailing wildly, her eyes closed. She is smiling. I dance for hours, moving from party to party, high on the energy of the city, as the shadow of the Earth consumes whole the once-brilliant moon.

Just then, when every eye is turned skyward, the Man begins to burn. The ceremonial burning is supposed to happen at the conclusion of the event on Saturday night; this is Monday, this is unplanned. Someone had torched it. Standing next to my bike, just outside the safety perimeter hastily arranged by the BRC Rangers, I watch pieces of the Man break off in flaming chunks and tumble down the sloped tent roof. The wooden effigy is fully engulfed in flames by the time water trucks and fire crews manage to tame the conflagration. The spectacle over, and I head toward home, but my attention is drawn to a cluster of red and blue lights. A shirtless man with face paint is being handcuffed and frisked, while half a dozen other officers supervise the proceedings and a K-9 team keeps the hippies at a distance. It was the arsonist, Paul Addis. I watch his arrest with the smoldering Man behind me and the red, eclipsed moon above.

The spectacles amass throughout the week. I slurp down ramen while watching a gorgeous moonrise, climb the steampunk tree, watch wraith-like kites drift in the sky like enormous white apparitions, visit the Thunderdome as people clamber over its geodesic shell and await the next battle, play with the bouncing glow-trees that left me giggling, and bike out to the fence-line that borders BRC. Pausing to rest at that edge between city and oblivion, I notice a serious-looking dust storm approaching. I cannot make it to my camp, but get as far as the Temple, a huge wooden structure that evokes thoughts of a pagoda. On the structure itself, stretching as high as people can reach, are messages scrawled in pens and markers. It is a temple of forgiveness and of loss. “Goodbye Mom, Dad, & Muriel,” reads one message. Another: “I ask for guidance…” Some are simple messages of joy (“I am alive!”) and others of hope (“Mom, let’s be friends again”). I wander around the Temple, reading these messages through my ski goggles as the storm completely whites-out the world beyond my arms’ reach. I cry. Picking up a black marker and bracing against the fierce winds, I add two inscriptions.

On the way home, a man hands me a plastic, glowing lightsaber. “Sundown at the Man,” he says and bikes away. Thousands of swords are distributed throughout the day. The evening proceeds predictably.

Midway through the week, I am surprised to discover myself sick with loneliness. It happens while I am dancing at the Deep End, watching the crazy costumes and funny people amuse each other. I return to camp and get all introspective and moody. I stand by the side of the road to watch the sunset. Just then, a man on a bike pulls up to me and says, “You need to get changed!” I glance down at my shorts and t-shirt. His wife pulls up next to him.

“This is really all I have,” I confess sheepishly.

The man stares at me for a long moment, brow furrowed. “Come with me.” And I do. He gives me a playa costume, and his wife gives me some jewelry. I return to camp looking ridiculous and absurd and wonderful. With that improbable and perfectly timed gesture, the strangers had changed my attitude. I am not lonely or out of place anymore; the camp and the citizens of BRC embrace me, and I become another comical gem in the dazzling all-night parties.

On my last day, like nearly every other day, I go to the Turkish-style steam baths. Sitting nude in a small, insulated geodesic dome with a dozen strangers, I sweat myself clean. My friend Sara begins to hum a tone, and this evolves until we are all chanting an improvised song. I close my eyes and listen, contributing notes where I can. There is no embarrassment, no self-conscious shame or blushing cheeks in that dark hut of singing naked strangers. No money has exchanged hands among its occupants. There are no debts or loans. We have all given each other gifts, and do so even now by sharing this spiritual moment. Afterward, I volunteer to help the camp prepare cleaned and boiled rags for use in the baths. My friends KB and Stephanie join me.

Suddenly, a man rushes up to the camp’s leader, and, for the first time, I hear a Burner invoke an authority figure. “There was a videographer,” he explains, “filming the camp. Should we notify a Ranger?” This struck me. I had seen the citizens of Black Rock City drive drunk and drink underage, commit public nudity and lewd acts, and violate so many drug laws I couldn’t begin to name them. But the only time anyone expressed genuine concern for the safety of their fellow citizens was when a man with a camera tried to capture them on film.

“It is amazing how important that privacy is to the culture here,” I mused. “We’re comfortable with our nudity and craziness because it’s only being shared with other Burners, who share alike. The camera is stealing that gift.”

Stephanie, a photographer, nods and describes the challenges involved with documenting a party; how do you prevent yourself from changing the events you wish to seize on film? I geek out and talk about Heisenberg and about the observer effect. It is a deep property of the universe that measurement may change the outcome. KB speculates, perhaps idly, that there must be some broader philosophical principle there. Before he is done speaking, I know the answer.

I understand why the gift of the playa costume so drastically altered my mood. Why the loneliness did not strike me until I stopped working on the camp and the art car. Why I felt compelled to share my strongest emotions with the Temple. Why the premature burn was so important and exciting, and why the ceremonial burn felt so artificial and sterile.

I nod and pick up another rag, pleased to have given this gift of my time. And then I share my epiphany, smiling at the simplicity of it.

“You can never just observe.” I squeeze water from the washcloth. “You must participate.”

“What is the weather supposed to be like?” I asked the woman who had just printed my wilderness permit.

“The same as always,” she said in a tone inexplicably laced with lamentation, “It never rains.”

I nodded, suspicious of her claim. My summer in New Mexico had taught me that there is always a storm in the afternoon, often with accompanying pyrotechnics. One of my few California hikes had been to the Lost Coast, where it rained with the constancy of Niagra Falls. Her words proved true, however, and I enjoyed the most mild and pleasant weather of any outdoor experience. No rain gear nor warm nighttime clothes were necessary.

With a full pack, I hiked the 8 miles to the furthest and largest of the ten lakes. I was pleased to learn that the women who were swimming in the lake when I arrived were camping elsewhere. I had the lake to myself. I pitched my tent in a prime spot and ambled cautiously down to the water wearing only my shorts. I waded in the clear, shallow water amongst the large tadpoles, stepping one at a time on the flat rocks which layered the bottom of the lake, less than a foot beneath the surface. The warm sun illuminated the submerged sand and made the water temperature pleasantly cool.

I climbed atop a boulder that decorated the small outcropping of land that I had designated my personal peninsula. I let the afternoon rays dry my legs and reflect off of my pale skin, blinding hawks and chipmunks, alike. Satisfied, I leapt down and returned to my tent to fetch my shoes. The deer was waiting for me.

It was a doe (a deer, a female deer), or a buck cruelly gypped of his male birthright. It froze at the sound of my approach and we stared at each other. She broke the gaze first, dropping her head down to graze. I wondered if the animal would understand human body language, and so I turned away in a feint of disinterest. Convinced I was no threat, the doe returned later that evening, braver this time, coming within a few feet of me. She appraised me and lingered with me for a few minutes on my peninsula as the sun began to disappear behind the pines.

I ate dinner on my boulder: hot chicken noodle soup in a bag. After an exhausting day, it was a delicacy. The eastern edge of the lake was rimmed by towering cliffs. While I hungrily devoured my painstakingly timed meal, I watched the steep face of rocks and shrubs turn bright yellow, then orange, and then a fiery red before the darkness of night finally consumed them.

I awoke in the daylight, unaware of the time, and leisurely fired up my stove for some morning tea. Everything looked different, shining with light of a quality and angle unlike the afternoon before. I watched a chipmunk run down the shore into the lake, only to immediately leap back out again: wet but not soaked. A power shower? I smiled and turned away from the water to find the doe waiting for me.

“Hi,” I said. “Hello.” I felt the heat of the tea conducting through the mug handle and burning my fingers, but I ignored it, acutely aware of the precious fragility of the moment. But the lithe creature was not there for greetings, but to say goodbye. She tilted her head slightly, one ear focused on me while the other swiveled toward some sound beyond my hearing, and meandered down to the peninsula for some breakfast and a drink of water. Then she bounded off into the woods, quickly vanishing among the shadows and branches.

I sighed and perfunctorily packed my gear. Then I, too, swallowed some dried fruit, took a swig from my Nalgene, and trudged off, away from the lake and the cliffs and along the path home.

My paper talk goes well, and I post the manuscript and slides on my Research page. I make a surprise announcement at the end that we are able to release our data; there is much rejoicing.

I decide to skip a portion of the afternoon sessions to be a tourist. I hop into a cab from the Hilton and ask for the Scotch Whiskey Heritage Center. There is a pause. He mumbles something and starts driving. I say again, half-question, half-repetition, “Scotch Whiskey Heritage Center?”

“Scaaatch,” the cabbie retorts, mocking my American pronunciation.

“Scotch whiskey,” I try again in my best Scottish imitation.

“I understood ya’, I joos had ta think about it a wee bit.”

At the booze museum (for what else is it, really?), I meet a Canadian named Dean with whom I have lunch after the tour. We do a flight of scotch drams from the four regions of Scotland: Lowlands, Highlands, Speyside, and the Islands. According to an extremely scientific blind experiment, I can identify two of the four by smell, and all four after tasting. I win a 1 pound bet with him about whether our waitress was Scottish or Irish. Sláinte mhath!

The conference excursion takes us to Stirling Castle, where we have a guided tour followed by champagne in the garden and a banquet in The Great Hall. The meal begins with an Ode to Haggis. A bagpipist, instrument singing, leads in a waiter holding a plate of haggis aloft. The plate is adorned with napkins curled up like the ends of a viking long boat. The musician then recites Burns’s “Address to a Haggis“, in the most exaggerated accent he can muster.

The Edinburgh chapter of my travels is nearly at a close, and I will depart for London shortly after I post this. Pictures forthcoming once I settle in London and move them off my camera. I should really get a flickr account…

Jared Casper, a fellow second-year, generously volunteered his server for the task. Even though I have moved off of Eddie’s server, aquatica.mit.edu, I want to thank him for hosting this site for almost four years. He tolerated my belligerent requests and foolish questions with the patience of a saint. Thanks, Eddie.

You will also immediately notice that the appearance has dramatically changed. My blog is now driven by WordPress instead of MovableType. The theme is a modification of the Mandigo Theme by tom; the header image is credited to Marc-André Besel.

OK, it’s been four months, let’s do this:

• I went to May’s funeral in San Diego, and spoke at her memorial service at Stanford. I cried at the funeral, but not during my eulogy. Barely.
• I volunteered at Admit Weekend and lured numerous students to Stanford with my disarming charisma and unassuming charm. Also, sometimes, with bribes.
• Googlers from NYC took shifts visiting me in Mountain View. Daniel and I hit on a bunch of cute girls in SF, without noteworthy effect. I suspect they were turned off by my Eau de Geek cologne.
• I had papers accepted at DSN in Edinburgh, UK and ExpCS in San Diego. You can find them on my Research page.
• I attended IPDPS in Long Beach, CA, and was disappointed.
• I spent four months studying for my quals.
• I took my quals.
• I passed my quals.

I’m back, this time for reals.

Let’s see, what did you miss?

I went backpacking on the black sands of California’s Lost Coast. I gave a conference talk in Rhodes, Greece and waded barefoot through the clear waters of a Mediterranean beach beneath the shadow of a white-painted town and castle-crowned hill. I spent a memorable week in Oxford, England with Yong-Hwa: we celebrated May Day in the rain while a boys choir serenaded from a clock tower, saw the Queen, went to the English National Opera for La Belle Helène (looking posh), punted on the Thames while drinking fine Burgundy and champagne and watching the sunset, ate fish and chips in a British pub, took walking tours of London, feasted in the dining hall from Harry Potter, ate cake from a sword, and noshed on assorted goodies from a French market.

I spent the summer in Albuquerque, New Mexico at Sandia National Labs studying supercomputers and surrounded by surreal devices like the massive Z-machine, perpetual fighter jet traffic, and enough nuclear weapons to wipe the planet clean of life. My host, Jon, and I wrote a paper on our results. I hiked all over the state: climbed New Mexico’s highest peak, had a terrifying encounter with a tarantula hawk, saw ancient petroglyphs inscribed on stones, wandered (hopelessly lost) through a blistering hot desert, and once awoke deep in the wilderness to find an elk drinking from the stream near my tent.

I flew to Cairns, Australia for another conference talk. I went snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef and ate emu, crocodile, and kangaroo. I went to NYC to watch my friend Goose get married and subsequently drunk. My uncle underwent open-heart surgery and recovered like a champ.

I moved into a two-bedroom house in Mountain View, California that I share with a woman named Teresa and her adorable border collie puppy, Mollie. I learned that my office was Sergey Brin’s old office. I started learning Japanese. I got a paper rejected. Jon and I are trying our luck again elsewhere, which I hope will give me the opportunity to present the work in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Oh, and it’s my birthday. A quarter century; twenty five years of not dying, in a row.

The Writings and About pages have been updated, as has my resumé. The Gallery is borked.

It was a long and inevitable hiatus. It’s good to be back.

I met John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco, in an elevator. For those of you in the biz (whatever that means) you should be familiar with the term “elevator speech.” It means a short pitch that shouldn’t last any longer than the short time you may suddenly find yourself sharing in an elevator with Mr. Important. I always thought about it as a metaphor, but there I was with Mr. Chambers. I’m not looking for a job, venture capital, nor really… anything. So I didn’t make a pitch, but I introduced myself and joked, “Quick, what’s my elevator speech? Hit [the button for] 5! I need more time!” John and his entourage got a real kick out of this, apparently, because they continued laughing until I left the elevator. Jacob, who witnessed the exchange, suggests that I had primed him to listen to whatever I may have wanted to pitch. Which, unfortunately, was nothing.

Jane has been helping me get my recommended monthly allowance of culture, inviting me for group voyages to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the local opera to see Puccini’s Manon Lescaut. The museum had an exhibit of 18th century artists from Kyoto. I have long been fascinated by Japanese culture, an intrigue that was only strengthened by my trip to Japan last summer and my persistent consumption of anime. It was wonderful to see the artists’ renditions of a China they knew only from the descriptions and drawings of exiled Chinese monks who had fled to the isolationist Japan. I was also very proud of myself for being able to point out in the artwork temples that I had visited while in Kyoto. The opera was enjoyable but plot-wise ridiculous, which might be a tautology. Nearly everyone is dead or miserable at the end, which might also be a redundant comment.

My trips to Greece and England are planned, meaning I have plane tickets. I spend the last week of April at a conference on the Isle of Rhodes in Greece and then fly back through London to spend a week at Oxford with Yong-Hwa, who goes to the opera with the kind of frequency that I watch anime. While we’re on the subject of conferences, I had a paper rejected recently, which is always disheartening. One of the reviewers (who are “blind” and therefore cannot see the author names) pronounced that the analysis we used was reminiscent of work Larry Rudolph had been doing for 20 years, and that he would be surprised if it hadn’t been applied to this problem before. Larry was a coauthor. It hadn’t been done before. I got a kick out of that, as did Larry. We are reworking the paper for submission to a conference in Australia (ICS 06)! One door closes, one opens, and all that.

I’ve been investigating the possibility of getting a dog. I wouldn’t be able to do that unless I moved into a pet-friendly apartment in the fall. As a first-time dog owner, I probably won’t be getting a troublesome breed like an Akita or Husky. A Labrador or Golden would be most appropriate. But, man, if I can find a Siberian Husky with the mannerisms of a Lab (or, far less likely, a Lab with the appearance of a Siberian Husky), I would be all over that like a fat kid on a cupcake. There are a number of issues I need to consider, including what to do with the dog when I go on trips, how I can afford it, whether I can bring it to the office, and so on. Will I really be OK with dog hair on my stuff? What about allergies? Would it prevent me from finding affordable housing? Am I fine with picking up its poop for the next… decade?

I’m sure half of you have success stories owning pets and the other half have tales of horror. So, what do you think? What advice would you give a guy who’s considering canine companionship?

Then there was this evening, a dark and stormy night on the California 92. I was cruising at the speed limit, being unfamiliar with the windy road. I watched in my rear view mirror as a car approached and sped past. Then, suddenly, they hit the brakes, let me pass, pulled behind, and did the light-show thing. I recognized the police cruiser relatively early on in this process because I am paranoid about these things, so I knew even before I saw the red and blue what was going to happen. “Is there a problem, officer?” I asked this, even though my being pulled over was a pretty good indication that, yes, there was a problem. “Yes, actually,” the officer predictably replied as his partner approached the other side of the car. Rain was now falling into both windows. “We ran your plates and they don’t seem to be coming up in the system.” I explained that I had moved recently, but that my registration should have gone through by now. It had been weeks. I had all the paperwork, so there wasn’t much more to be said on the matter. They explained they wanted to make sure the car wasn’t stolen, and I explained that, if someone had stolen my car, I would very much want the officers to pull that person over. Later, I thought I should have added, “and then beat them with your night sticks.” Sometimes I’m lucky my brain works slowly.

I’ll say something of merit in the next few days, but now I’m sleepy. The life of an outlaw is exhausting.

Every year, Penny Arcade runs a charity called Child’s Play. A number of children’s hospitals around the world participate in the charity. For each hospital, an Amazon Wish List is set up with various toys, books, music, and video games. You go to the wish list for the hospital of your choice, buy some of the presents, and get them shipped directly to the hospital. Your gift goes to kids who are coming out of or going into surgery, fighting diseases, or living in a hospital due to some chronic illness. They also run a charity dinner and take straight up corporate sponsorship. In past years they have received more than a quarter of a million dollars in gifts and donations. You can read more about it on the site.

On the whole, I am wary of charities. I imagine them skimming off 20% for administrative fees. I picture them spending my donation on overpriced services. I worry that my hard-earned cash ends up going either to people who just too lazy or incompetent to get a job, or to people whose greatest need is not money. Not to mention that most charities try to motivate donation through guilt. My suspicion of and dislike for these organizations outweighs my desire to do good works.

Child’s Play is a different beast. First of all, it’s not some monolithic charity organization; it’s Gabe and Tycho. I’ve read their news and webcomic for years. I know their names and their children’s names. I know their taste in video games, for crapsake. In their own words, “There are no ‘administrative fees’ or other hidden costs associated with giving to Child’s Play – every cent is passed on.” Everything you purchase or donate goes to a sick child. It’s a good cause run by good people.

I just bought a couple of books for the Children’s Hospital Oakland, where I am making plans to volunteer as well. One book was about asthma, because I’m a survivor (heh), and the other was called The Mighty Asparagus, which is just a fucking awesome name for a children’s book. I’m only telling you this because I think it may help motivate you to do the same.

So, this holiday season, fuel my selfish desire to feel good about myself. Make up for not buying me anything for Christmas or Hanukkah last year. Go to the Child’s Play site, right now, and buy something for a sick kid. You cheapskates owe me.