Optimizing Ray Marching through Partial Evaluation
I love ray tracing as a 3D rendering technique. I love it because in its purest form, it’s very elegant and beautiful. It’s a simulation of light and photons flowing through an environment. Because of...
View ArticleSilicon Valley, Six Months Later
Maybe you’ve been wondering why I haven’t posted on this blog in over four months. The main reason is that my energy has been going elsewhere. In February, I defended my PhD thesis and relocated to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
My Experience with the ESP8266 – Making an LED Strip I can Control from my Shell
IoT is one of those buzzwords that’s been thrown around so much that it’s become largely synonymous with disappointing marketing hype. Still, home automation, in principle at least, has a lot of...
View ArticleMy new Job in RL & Robotics Research
After I completed my PhD in early 2016, I took a job with the GPU compiler team at Apple and moved from Canada to the United States. I wasn’t sure if Silicon Valley was for me, but I figured that if I...
View ArticleMinimalism in Programming
I’m 32, and I’ve been programming actively for over 16 years at this point. I don’t have a lifetime of experience doing this, but over the years, I’ve come to develop a certain style, a kind of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Small Dose of Optimism
Before I went to see Blade Runner 2049, I sat down with a friend to re-watch the original Blade Runner from 1982. At the beginning of the movie, there is a grim portrayal of the future. A title screen...
View ArticleIt’s Been Done Before
I’m someone who comes up with a lot of ideas. When I was a teenager, I used to constantly get excited about new projects, and I found myself often getting sidetracked, ditching existing projects before...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Maybe Planets are Overrated?
If everything goes according to plan, 2020 should see the US finally regain the ability to launch humans into space, thanks to the Boeing Starliner and the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. That’s exciting,...
View ArticleCombatting Pessimism: 3 Keys to Innovation
I strongly believe that in order to innovate, it’s important to be able to play with ideas. When you’re attacking a problem, it’s useful to be able to brainstorm, come up with multiple alternative...
View ArticleDemocracy, Dictatorships and Access to Information
The last two weeks have been a painful reminder that, as comfortable as we may have it in the west, democracy is not the default state of the world. Historically speaking, democracy has been a...
View Article