Social Scientist

"What makes your writing become so slow?"

"I think I sort of loosing my sense of purpose and as you may already know, I am a person of ideas so if I don't see the meaning of it, things will become slow."

"You need to do something about it ..."

"I know, sometimes I feel bad of using people's story into research without ability to giving back. But don't you think this kind of thinking is colonial by itself, an assumption that people's need to be helped? On the other hand, is not it also ignorant to pretend that everything is okay on the ground?"

"Is that why you decide to return?"

"Yeah, that's one of the plans, although I am not sure how to create a path to go there and even if I become closer to 'them', I think I will still be 'the others' for them and at certain degree, that is something good I guess since diversity is needed to create change."

"What is this obsession with change?"

"Don't you feel the same, a lingering feeling of making things more equal?"

"Yeah, but whose lens do you use? Their lenses or thing that you think is best? And apart from this unpracticality of thinking about voices and representation, how do you want your own voice to be listened? Papers, more talks or being more outspoken?"

"I don't know."

Swab for Covid

Yesterday, I experienced my first swab test. It was not as painful as what I imagined but still uncomfortable nonetheless. I got the result for the antigen 20 minutes after I took the test and will receive the PCR result in two-three days time. Everything started when I went to a mall, which later one found to become a community cluster. To prevent the spread, the government provided a voluntary swab test for visitors of the mall. Since I went to the mall, I started to imagine the worst things, so I registered for a swab. Things became a bit complicated since I cached a cold a day before and it was categorized as a covid symptoms.   

At the swab test location, the official asked me to visit the nearest clinic. I went there, got medicine and did my swab test as well and got stay home notice until I receive my PCR result. 

So yeah, home sweet home.

Sense of Place

After moving to different places, what keep us human is a sense of belonging. A feeling of being part of something. This call becomes more urgent during the pandemic period where your movement becomes limited due to border restrictions. Sometimes you start questioning what you want in life. I think that's one of the reasons that despite everything is bright and shine now, I am still not sure about my future with him. Another long distance after a week meet up? What's the point of having that kind of relationship? On the other hand, I also haven't figured out where I want to be. What I know for sure is I want to be part of something.

These couple of weeks, I have been participating with new communities, one is Code in Place where I shared my journey with four other people and the other is a writer's community where people who want to write share their struggles and write together. I like my Code in Place peers. After the official class end, we met for a casual talk and shared our expectations. But being to many places, I became too familiar to a goodbye setting where the feeling was strong, we had a great time but now our paths won't no longer intersect with one another. That's what moving places has thought me, to be good with detachments. 

Probably, in the back of my mind, I still want to have a longer relationship, a sense of place that can give me stability. The power to paint my own room since I know the house belongs to me. Buying stuffs I want because I don't need to think about moving out. Something to call, mine. 

Routine

Entering the second period of circuit breaker. In a way, I am more use to it than earlier and it's also better since I have a better accommodation. On the other hand, how my research has shifted from field work to desk study also affected my productivity. Apparently, being on desk for too long is not really my cup of tea. While I kind of made up my data gathering by shifting offline interviews to online, I started to get fed up with online interactions. Can we just have a cup of tea and sit in silence than talking all the time? 

The bright side is I involve in a new activity: Code in Place. It's nice to distract my head with something else. I have been spending most of spare time to study a new thing and it felt nice. The best approach for me is to have simple projects, which should be solvable and challenging at the same time. I have been joining extra class as well. It's interesting to see different logics in solving a problem and how efficiency may not be the goal for the early stage.

So here is an example of what I did for last week assignment, creating a reflection. I add a twist in the assignment by creating additional filter in the reflection. And another one: the Warhol project. 

Die Hard

My mom told me that when I was a toddler, I started to walk at the age of 9 month. However, once I fell, I stopped walking until I was 11/12 month old. I have the tendency to stop doing something after a failure, either its a personal relationship or work related subject. Each time I face a conflict, I prefer to avoid it instead of solving it. As people say, old habits die hard. Probably, because I am not bad in studying, I could get away with avoiding the subject that I don't like. But it also made it hard to excel in something. I have been jumping discipline quite a lot, math, development studies, innovation science, urban studies and now, ecology. My methods also range from differential analysis, ethnography, case study, statistics, system dynamics and currently I am into big data through social network analysis and text analysis.

I like to study, but every time I face a hurdle, my natural logic sends a break function into my brain. The only thing that usually keep me going is either group pressure (i.e. in class setting, or obligation). But still, if I cannot solve a problem, I have the tendency to create a never ending loop, which lead to a broken program by forcing it stop (I give up) or dragging someone to solve it so I can make sense of it and keep on going. Learning for me is like a rubber band, if you pull it too hard, it will break, but if there is no challenge, it won't be moving. Finding the right balance between challenge and the limit break is the challenge. 

So there I am, in the Code in Place journey. I have no problem following the materials in the Ed environment provided by the course. But when I started working in Visual Studio Code, problems start to emerge. I think that's what code in the wild means, there are many unexpected variables that influence the program. And sometimes being stuck in the details of the wild can be discouraging. 

Game of Nimm

Coding is so fun!!! Where was I ages ago when I learned coding in my undergrad degree? Probably, people can change, you may be disinterested with something in a moment in your life, but you can get hook by it at another moment in your life. So yeah, this my code for a game of Nimm, where the rules are: each player can only pick one or two stones and the player who picks the last stone loose. In the code below, I play with the computer that operates on random function.

I don't know how to insert a code without making it messy, so I put the code in the form of picture. If you are interested, you can find the code in my github account here: https://github.com/Yuti-AI/Games/commit/bafda1edf14c5bea10d41c53ae7992573bf30376

After trying different environments: PyCharm, Anaconda, Spyder and Visual Studio Code, I like VSC the best. So will stay with that one until I find a better one. 

Decomposition

One of Chris' slides about decomposition, infinite time of lathering and rinsing since there is no stop command. I think ghosting works that way, you will fall into infinite iterations since you don't know what went wrong and the other person just vanished into thin air. I know it's bad but sometimes ghosting is the easiest way out, no confrontation. 

Anyway, back to coding ... After studying Karel the robot to understand the basic idea of programming (control flow, logic and decomposition), this week we move to Python. The main difference (for me) is that in this Python world, we play with more types and functions, which usually scared me. I used to be overwhelmed with different types integer, string, numeric and others, how to write and other details. But since I started the python journey by playing, I really enjoy the journey. 

 

Chris' explanation about decomposition is really beautiful. I call things as beautiful if they are logical :D I usually make my code quite long and after understanding the pattern, I make sub-blocks. But the better way to do it is to understand the problem first and then create sub-block.

Code in Place 2021

Super excited to join this course!!! I have been wanting to learn python for quite some time and until now, I kind of did it, on and off. Most of the reason I discontinued my Py learning was due to the process of understanding the 'world' of Py through different types of character i.e numeric, integer, string and others, whereas what I interested the most in coding is the logic. The Code in Place starts with exactly what I want, a robot named Karel, a beeper, 4 basic commands (move, turn_left, pick_beeper, put_beeper) and 20 conditions that I can play with when creating loops and conditions.  

 

What make Code in Place special is its energy, you can feel how Chris Piech is very passionate about teaching (and he admitted it as well in the welcome speech that he LOVES teaching) and the same energy came from all the instructors and student (12,000) that join the Code in Place journey.

I have done all my obligatory assignments, but still struggling in solving "the Fence Post Problem" when trying to solve the hospital assignment as a bonus point.

So here is my code:

def main():

    """

A code to build a hospital using 6 beepers and stop without creating a bug. Haven't succeeded yet :(

    """

    if beepers_present():

        buildhospital()

        while front_is_clear():

            findbeep()

            buildhospital()

    else:

        while front_is_clear():

            findbeep()

            buildhospital()

    

def buildhospital():

    turn_left()

    move()

    put_beeper()

    move()

    put_beeper()

    turn_right()

    move()

    put_beeper() #4,3 second tower

    turn_right()

    move()

    put_beeper() #4,2 second beeper second tower

    move()

    put_beeper()

    turn_left()

    

def findbeep():

    move()

    while no_beepers_present():

        move()

def turn_right():

    for i in range(3):

        turn_left()

if __name__ == '__main__':

    run_karel_program('HospitalKarel2.w')

While my code works perfectly in a world where the last beeper of a hospital has a space before a wall (Fig 2 below), my code breaks when it has no space (Fig 3). What a bugger!

Fig 2

Fig 3