work

Work was a bit lack-luster this week. I was pretty focused on enjoying the last days in San Diego and lost almost a whole day on the plane. It might be prudent to learn how to actually work on a plane, but I just have trouble focusing in cramped and crowded spaces. Despite the setbacks, I managed to have most of my meetings and get a few things done. One of the big things was catching back up on my TCC reviews! I only have a couple left, so I should be on time by next Wednesday. It's been a little tough while traveling and because I have a set of papers with a pretty diverse set of topics. My other projects I would say had more incremental projects, but I'm really excited to continue work on them next week! And, I'm glad that some will move to in-person meetings in my office, which I feel like are always more productive.

non-work

Othter than the flight, life outside of work has been great! Most of the action happened in San Diego, because I've been an little tired since then. But my last few days there with my partner were super fun! We went to the beach and had some fun on an old roller-coaster and some other carnival rides. Then, we just spent some time appreciating the beach. During the week, my partner and I were more chill after the busy weekend, but we still managed to finish the first two seasons of Twin Peaks which was just a really...strange show. It started strong and interesting, but the ending almost got a little too artistic and abstract for me. It intrigued me enough that I'm planning to watch the prequel movie and the later season produced in 2017. My hope is that it comes together in a way that the original didn't, but I'm not sure.

I also am still working on Stench, and hopefully I'll finish it in the next week or so. After that I'm hoping to finally read The Mind is Flat, but if my loan expires, then I might have to read something else.

questions

• What is the most interesting or most useful interdisciplinary work that could be done with cryptography?
  • I have a feeling there are some interesting things to say about epistemology and philosophy of science and crypto, but they don't seem very useful.
  • I wonder if there are better topics though which might be more practical though.
• What projects should be given to a student new to a field that they want to eventually research in?
  • I'm not sure if it's more important to just try to do like a mini-course and given the background or to try to throw them into the deep end.
  • Specifically, I'm concerned about quantum computing and cryptography, which is pretty broad.

Thanks for reading to the end! Here are some pictures from the week!