Work and School

I'm diggin work lately. Like most software developers, my favorite part of my job is making new software. The least favorite part is writing documentation. Documentation sucks. Thankfully, the place I work is not a very documentation oriented sort of place (it should be, but we have no process control to speak of). And thankfully, we have so many signed or nearly signed contracts that each project is rapidly becoming just one developer per project.

I actually prefer working by myself when it comes to development. Not that my coworker aren't great, but I find development something that I have to "get in the zone" to complete. That means a lack of distractions for a good 5 - 10 minutes, something that is harder to get when there are more people involved. Generally, I can actually measure my productivity at work via the music I listen to. On good days, I will get through at least 3 or 4 complete CDs (that is still only 4-5 hours of music when I think about it). On bad days, and I have had more of these then you would believe, I will not get through even one CD:(

School is done for this semester. I only take one class per semester, so unlike Sue the end of the semester is rather anti-climatic for me. I've started my Master Thesis, which I am super excited about. I'm actually annoyed with my advisor, because he is so slow to do anything related to the project. My thesis is that I can create a neural network (sort of a pseudo-brain built in software) that can find interesting differences between high resolution images of 2D Protein Gels (you have to ask Sue what that is; something to do with biology). Fucking cool if you ask me! The best thing is that the neural networks are not really programmed. They actually learn based on the inputs you give them. Its some of the closest stuff we have to a model of how the brain learns.