Applying the KISS principle to amp modeling
I’ve been playing electric guitar using only computer modeling software (without a physical amplifier) for about five years now. I started out with Garageband and Mainstage, then briefly experimented with Amplifikation Vermilion, and for the last year and half have turned to a free, open-source package called Guitarix and a small collection of impulse response files culled from guitar forums. In my experience, a good impulse response file fed into a basic convolver does a lot more for your sound than trying to optimize the countless parameters on an expensive simulator.
This year’s reading
A subset of the books I enjoyed this year:
- Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible, a novel about evangelical Christianity and cultural arrogance.
- 손원평, «아몬드», a novel debating whether or not emotions are a distraction.
- Walter Isaacson, The Codebreaker, a biography of biochemist Jennifer Doudna.
- Michael Lewis, The Undoing Project, a biography of behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.
- 황보름, «어서 오세요, 휴남동 서점입니다», a slice-of-life novel about a bookstore owner overcoming the loneliness of urban life.
- Ayoko Sono, Ningen no Bunzai, a “collection of writings” (according to Wikipedia, and I cannot come up with a better description). I read the Korean translation «약간의 거리를 둔다» by 김욱.
- 김애란, «달려라, 아비», short stories about the legacy of childhood experience.
- Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror, essays about identity, authenticity, and social media.
In progress:
- 김금희, «너무 한낮의 연애», short stories about people at the margins of society.
- David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest.
Two truths and one lie
A puzzle based on the icebreaker game.
Two truths and one lie:
- I have a twin.
- I used a random number generator to decide whether to place a true or false statement in #1.
- I do not understand the rules of “two truths and one lie.”
Solution inside.
Master’s graduation and two free optimization courses
On September 29, I received my master’s degree in industrial engineering from Seoul National University!
It’s been a wonderful two years. Despite the challenges of social distancing, I was able to take a diverse assortment of courses in optimization, economics, and human factors; participate in research projects in two different labs; present at a conference in Jeju; and write (in both Korean and English) a thesis I’m rather proud of.
Apply to fifty colleges
In this post, we’ll use fake numbers and a simplified model to argue that the most college applicants should apply to far more colleges than they actually do. You can probably extend the argument to job applications and the dating game. I’ll also compute a few fake comparative statics and speculate about why real students don’t apply to more schools.