User:Mchua/Interests

Subjects I've been fascinated by along the way
In the course of being interested in learning about learning, I've done a fair bit of learning along the way, and picked up interests in specific things to learn as well.

Current obsessions

 * Learning within hacker culture
 * IRC / IRC op classes
 * http://wiki.ubuntu-women.org/Courses/IRC/
 * http://wiki.ubuntu-women.org/Courses/IRCOp


 * Resources and theory on self-directed learning in engineering education
 * Engineering textbooks - as a literary genre (seriously; I collect my favorites both as references and works of fine writing) as well as on a meta-level regarding how they're produced, consumed, designed, and the effects they have on learners.
 * Reading journals of engineering education - I think I critique the work (process & style) more than I look to it as a model of best practice, though.
 * The work of Holt, Piaget, Papert, Applebee, and Kuhn in educational literature, and its applications to the above. Trying to pull off a self-initiated "mini-quals" type thing (read very intensively for several weeks, and get people in the field to give me oral examinations at the end for feedback).


 * The relationship between generative grammar, the semantic web, and (programming) language design
 * Currently reading "Rhyme & Reason," would like to re-read Sipser's "Introduction to the Theory of Computation," SICP, do some tinkering with Semantic Mediawiki, and/or read a programming languages book or similar in parallel - basically, upgrade this from "cool book!" into full-fledged class-like learning experience - but haven't figured out how to sync this up nicely yet. Would love collaborators.


 * Distributed music-making
 * see http://licenseserver.pbwiki.com/WhatTheHell
 * also see Jamming Online and UNIT-E (thanks to yeoman for the pointers)
 * gives me a good excuse to learn music theory, which I've been putting off since the age of 5
 * also gives me a good excuse to learn improv (...and apply it to blues/jazz/swing playing). I was classically trained on piano from age 5-14, then stopped lessons and started fooling around on keyboards, guitars, choral arrangements, and other things by myself before landing with my last jam group (which played together for 2 years and split when we all graduated).


 * Aural rehabilitation (speech therapy for the deaf)
 * learning the IPA (international phonetic alphabet)
 * tinkering with audiograms
 * also the impetus behind my re-explorations of signal/audio processing, as I haven't touched z-transforms for years
 * somewhat selfishly motivated here, as I'm severely hearing impaired and speak with what's apparently a slight but noticeable "deaf" accent which I want to learn how to both detect and eliminate.


 * Appropriate technology
 * in the context of entrepreneurship & business studies
 * and the tools being used to design/manufacture it
 * nurturing grassroots groups; how have current successes started? Reading about case studies, history.


 * The notion of self and identity in Tai Chi, Zen, and other eastern traditions/practices/arts/religions/philosophies
 * Most of my life has been spent in a never-ending quest to fulfill the "Man, Know Thyself" adage - I figured that since I grew up in a Western country (USA) I'd get a bigger perspective shift & appreciation from reading Eastern philosophers before Western ones.


 * Languages
 * Spanish (self-teaching right now)
 * Tagalog (may need to learn quickly next month - currently have a vocabulary equivalent to a 3-year-old's)
 * Italian (picked up a bit of reading/writing Italian in high school through a simultaneous obsession with operas and Italo Calvino, but faded out since I had nobody to speak it with.)
 * Japanese (learned in high school, rather rusty; I read it better than I speak it - probably ja-1 speaking, ja-2 reading).
 * Mandarin Chinese (planning to learn next year, at the moment)
 * Traditional Chinese
 * Chinese calligaphy (...and for that matter, brush painting)
 * Fookien (Chinese dialect of my home province - one of those someday/maybe things that would be really nice)
 * American Sign Language (used to have a full-time interpreter when I was a kid, really rusty now but would love to practice again - nobody to speak with though)

Past obsessions
There is a thin, thin line between past and present obsessions. In fact, the distinction is probably wholly arbitrary; I'm still ragingly passionate about these subjects - and many more - but not necessarily actively working on a project involving them.


 * Art (what I was "known for" around high school)
 * the "old masters"
 * Picasso. My first intellectual obsession centering around the work of an individual person. Especially his progression through multiple styles.
 * Pencil/graphite, charcoal (what I do most of my work in)
 * Pen & ink (what I want to learn)
 * soft pastel, conte crayon (which I'm terrible at, but absolutely love)
 * Photography - primarily digital, and image manipulation. Brief love affair with doing staged narratives back in 2003.
 * fractals! and mathematical art in general
 * computer-generated art
 * and tools to produce it
 * user interface design
 * advertising art
 * industrial design
 * as an art form and as an evolving field, and its relationship to both the studies of engineering and marketing


 * Math (my first academic love)
 * number theory (in particular, a brief flirtation with Gauss-Jacobi sums)
 * graph theory (especially when meshed with communications engineering topics, but also as an alternative intro math course in elementary school)
 * proofs without words
 * visual mathematics, especially fractals (I once spent an entire semester reading Mandelbrot's book "A Fractal Geometry of Nature" during my math lectures, which were decidedly not about fractals.)
 * meta-math - things like Godel's Incompleteness Theorem (yay! someday I want to read the actual proof instead of just books about it, but I'm not ready yet) and also mathematicians on math, such as Polya's "how to solve it."
 * math poetry, parodies, and humor, and what constitutes beauty in mathematics


 * Communications engineering as an analogy for education
 * Inspired by Raymond Yim, an electrical engr. prof at Olin College, and a 6-person independent study group (MetaOlin) I was lucky enough to be part of.
 * Seriously, it works! Think of the transmitter/receiver = teacher/learner metaphor, lossy channels = noisy classrooms, sleepy students, etc. and peer-to-peer/mesh networking = talking with friends after class, passing notes under the table, whatever.
 * Attempting to procure a copy of Proakis (classic communications textbook) so as to actually understand the analog & digital communications topics well instead of just vaguely knowing what the words mean (it was a class I... to put it mildly, didn't do very well in).


 * Religion
 * My family is super-Catholic. (Filipino roots.) I am... not. I have always been fascinated by this, and adamant about learning what it is that I was supposed to be believing in.
 * I've read the actual Catechism of the Catholic Church multiple times, beginning in middle school, but want to someday study it as a living document, and a document in historical context, rather than just a fascinating reference in its own right.
 * Also very interested in - but not very knowledgeable about, since I grew up surrounded by Catholics - other religions and beliefs. Would really like to do more with this interest someday.


 * Sociology
 * of institutions of higher education
 * of 'hacker culture' - particularly of learning within various technical communities
 * accessibility, diversity, and bias within
 * would love to do something with ESR's "How To Become A Hacker" doc


 * Computing
 * computer programming itself (currently consider myself reasonably passable with C, C++, Scheme, Python... passing experience with many more, with the ability to pick up new languages with relative ease)
 * culture of
 * mathematics behind
 * tools used in
 * as a way of thinking about and teaching math
 * as a way of understanding the way people think and learn
 * I'm leaving out a lot here


 * Medicine
 * anatomy. I want to take a summer course on cadaver dissection someday.
 * physiology
 * and its relation to "nonconventional" therapies (Rolfing, Feldenkrais, Alexander, Shiatsu, other bodywork)
 * and dance
 * traditional Chinese medicine, particularly acupuncture and qigong


 * Dance
 * swing (primarily lindy - I also play swing music on the piano occasionally)
 * blues
 * and relationship to martial arts
 * and relationships with biomimetic robotics


 * Physics
 * relativity - more in a historical sense; I love reading the original papers & books
 * string theory, quantum mechanics - two things I know a reasonable amount of "popular science" regarding but would like to study in more depth
 * classical mechanics


 * Music
 * piano (have played for 16 years; decent)
 * cello (have played for 10 years; reasonably passable)
 * a capella (have arranged for 4 years, sung for however long people can tolerate - I can arrange much better than I can sing)
 * vocal percussion (have done for 1.5 years)
 * keyboard/synth
 * theory
 * bass (electric & string)

And more. I'm leaving out quite a bit here.