sardonick

the last few weeks have been nonstop.

• First it was an excellent conference on computer aided language learning, hosted by the computational linguistics folks over at Ohio State University. Lots of interesting ideas gleaned and interesting people met. Perhaps more on this later
• Then it was 2.5 days back in Los Angeles, enough time to adjust to Pacific Standard Time, run some errands, wrap up the semester of research, unpack my conference bags and pack my international bags…
• Now it’s 1 week into a 2 week trip in Taiwan. Playing translator/tour guide to my parents, and having a 1-year wedding anniversary dinner for all of the friends and family over here that couldn’t attend our original wedding ceremony and reception. Taking lots of pictures, maintaining a constant state of being totally stuffed with food, and having a great time in general. But it’s totally draining—So far I’ve had more than one night filled with dreams in which I’m constantly translating to ppl around me what is happening, into either Chinese or English. And these kind of dreams make me wake up even more tired!
• Still haven’t made my requisite “tea run” this trip—my stashes at home in Los Angeles are running low, and the selection here is wonderful, of course. I’m especially interested in stocking up this trip, because I’ve found my tastes have matured quite a lot lately…
• After I get back, it’s a weekend of getting over jetlag, then I’m up to Mountainview for “new employee training week” at Google.

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Life is anything but dull, at least. Phew!

via LanguageLog:

Linguistics will become a science when linguists begin standing on one another’s shoulders instead of on one another’s toes.

–Stephen R. Anderson’s A-Morphous Morphology (Cambridge University Press, 1992):

Finally finished a script a couple weekends ago to synchronize data between Amarok, Rhythmbox, and iTunes. I now use Amarok exclusively, and it’d been bugging me for a long time that my old metadata from multiple machines and multiple apps was locked away and unexploitable. So i fixed that, for myself at least. I harvest everything into a common format and populate a big ol database with everything. Then I merge all the metadata together (averaging and adding, whatever, where necessary).

The code is ugly for now, so no public release. I might clean it up some time if anybody else wants it. Just ask.

• Finished up a semester of TAing. I really like teaching, so immediately rewarding, to see minds grow week by week. Research is so long-term by contrast (start working on a problem, get good results after 3 months, publish after 6 months).
• Signed Google’s job offer last week (will be working in their Santa Monica location part time next semester while I finish my thesis). Am not yet sure how much I can talk publicly about what I’ll be working on, but it’s got a lot to do with ontologies and tags.
• Attending what promises to be an excellent workshop on language learner modeling at OSU in mid December. It fits perfectly in with my research of modeling learner errors; I have high hopes for my time there.
• Later in December, the wife and I are taking my parents to Taiwan this Christmas. Two weeks. I’m pretty sure it is their first international trip, outside of a few days we spent in Vancouver, British Columbia (which is as American as you can get and still be in a foreign country) on a family vacation we took when I was in Junior High. Not to say that they aren’t culturally open (I grew up eating foods from a variety of different cultures), they just haven’t traveled too much. It will be awesome (we hope). Lots of places to visit out there (San Yi, Lu Gang, Hua Lian, Ying Ge…)