My semester so far has been full of ups and downs. Well, mostly downs. But that did not stop me from cataloguing my experiences in Austin in this blog post!

I had the opportunity to attend Facebook’s “Hack the Future” Roadshow at the AT&T conference center here at UT. I was very interested in attending this event because Facebook’s CTO, Mike Schroepher was giving the talk. I was keen on learning what technologies and initiatives Facebook was taking in their mission to “connect everyone on the internet” as Mike put it. The talk was extremely informative as Mike took the liberty in getting into the technical details of Facebook’s technology. Plus, who doesn’t love hearing about how Facebook engineers used a convolutional neural network and other Deep Learning / Machine Learning algorithms to tailor a unique news feed depending on a user’s preferences?  I think this was an interesting and fun talk to attend because it was different from most talks where they try to pitch and sell their product or brag about where their company is on the Fortune 500 list (Cough..cough…Peter Thiel…cough…cough).

 

For my next experience, I decided to visit the Blanton Museum of Art. I noticed very few people were taking out their phones to snap photos of the artwork. I sympathized with the majority who did not because I think that there is more to art than just taking digital photos of it. I made it a point to carefully look at the artwork with my own two eyes and note for subtle differences. Doing this allowed me to appreciate the subtle differences between each piece of art and I found that this was a satisfying experience rather than brazenly taking as many pictures as possible.

Lastly, I’d like to add a spot in Austin that everyone should visit. And it’s right here at UT! If you have passed by the POB to get to another class, you’d most likely miss this hidden gem. I’m talking about the Texas Advanced Computing Center’s Visualization Lab:

The TACC VisLab specializes in Data Visualization. The lab has a multi-tile display screen called Stallion (pictured above) that can be controlled with an X-box controller and it allows you to view extremely high resolution images and even (theoretically possible but untested) play video games. If you’re interested in VR, the Vislab has an Oculus Rift setup that you can try out. Did I mention the Vislab has a fancy augmented reality machine called z-Space? It can do this with a fancy pen and glasses:

The best part about the Vislab is that it’s open from 9am-5pm and you can get a tour just by walking in anytime. How do I know all this? I work here 🙂

Did I also mention we have CCTV footage from the cameras installed around UT?

Although I prefer to talk to a person on a face-to-face basis, I think technology plays an increasingly important role in shaping how I communicate with everyone else. I always make it a point to see what my interesting things my friends are up to on social media. Additionally, there’s no way I can coordinate with my group without using Facebook messenger/WhatsApp if I want to meet up to get a project done.