work

We just wrapped up the penultimate week of the semester! I didn't have to teach my class this week, because Wednesday was on a Friday schedule at Stevens. So, I didn't get to really check in with the students directly, but I hope they're all doing well and prepared for the final next week. Instead, I've been focused on finalizing the other grades and a variety of other responsibilities. We just started a series of job interviews at Stevens too, so I'm excited to see who we end up hiring! I'm planning to go to as many of the job talks as I can just to look a lot.

Next week, I'll be principally focused on the final exam and finalizing grades which are due at the end of Saturday. After that, I get to switch into summer mode and hopefully make a lot of progress on research and grant writing. :-)

non-work

I made a quick trip to San Diego to see my partner for a few days before the finals and grading really kicks into high gear. I've still had to work while I've been here, but we've still had fun going to the restaurants and some views that we like. This weekend we're also planning to head up to Torrey Pines for a hike and probably also La Jolla to go another restaurant we like. I'm sure there will be a lot of other small things that we find fun to do this weekend too.

This week, I decided to start reading Abundance! It's a bit after it's peak popularity, and I've already heard a bit about it. I'm glad that I can read it for myself though. So far, I think it's been a pretty good vision of what we could do in politics. I definitely agree that the problems they identify are critical problems that America is facing right now, but I'm not sure if I agree that the best solutions are the ones they propose in the book. Of course, there's still more to read, so I'll still reserve most of my judgment.

questions

• What would be the most useful information or features to add to Cryptology City?
  • I've been doing a good bit of refactoring with Claude, which has helped add things that would take a while to add myself
  • Just this week, I added some BibTeX citations based on cryptobib to the reference pages on the website!
  • What would actually make the website more useful to others though?
• Is there anyone in the San Diego area that would want to work on PIR/ORAM this summer?
  • I'm planning to be around for about a month this summer, and I'd like to work with some cryptographers in person if possible.

Thanks for reading to the end! Here's a picture of some ice cream my partner and I go this week. :-)