Posts

I disappeared from blogging for a few days…here are some news:

A paper receives a major revision! New simulations and more clarifications are needed.
I’m going to Chicago for a weekend.

Last updated on Apr 17, 2022 1 min read

I used to be an user of Sublime Text 3, which I think is a very nicely made app. The major usage of Sublime Text 3 for me include:

write .tex documents when I do not need live compilation
open .R files when I do not want to run them but just want to take a look for reference
open all other type of plain text files

Its plugins, include LaTeXing and LaTexTools, has been life savers for me for a few years. While most plugins are free (some do ask that you buy a license), Sublime Text 3 itself is not. You can, however, keep using it in “trial mode”, as long as you can put up with the occasional pop-up windows asking you to purchase a license for continued use. I myself cannot deal with these, so I turned to the open-source world and googled “open source replacements for Sublime Text”. Numerous candidates came up, including Notepad++, Atom, VS Code, Vim, and many others. I didn’t try Notepad++ as it is Windows-only and I have a mac. I gave a shot to Atom before, but it was too young then, and was quite slow, despite the fact that it has many interesting plugins such as the power mode. Vim is powerful and I’m quite interested in it, but for .tex files I still prefer something simpler.

Last updated on Apr 17, 2022 3 min read

Measuring the Performance of Classification Models

Nearly all companies use machine learning to do classification now. When it comes to deciding which model best suits the data, we need to employ some performance measures. An inappropriate measure would lead to a poorly chosen model. Here are some general thoughts on model performance criteria selection.

Last updated on Apr 17, 2022 6 min read

What I Learned from My (Failed) Industry Interviews

My very first industry interview was in college, interviewing for summer intern at Deloitte Beijing. About 10 students are assigned to a big group, given a case, and we had to “fight” to shine. I did poorly. While everyone else was actively discussing and brainstorming, I was off-topic, and trying so hard to think of something to say but failed. Through the corner of my eyes, I saw the partner filtered out my resume, and discarded it like a worthless scratch paper. That was somehow devastating for me as a college student stepping awkwardly and timidly into the adult world, and I was afraid of interviews since then until last year. However, the fact that these interviews are crappy themselves doesn’t bother me. Being more like a techie nerd now, I won’t go interview at any company that assesses one’s ability and “leadership skills” in such a rough way.

Last updated on Apr 17, 2022 3 min read

Babies arrived!

No - I’m not having babies. Perhaps will in the future, but not today.

But - Zazzle Dazzle (aka Zazzi) gave birth to three babies yesterday! Here’s the beautiful new mommy.

Last updated on Apr 17, 2022 1 min read

Connecting WeChat and Telegram with ehForwarderBot

1. Why

WeChat is getting more and more bulky. The newest version on iOS is now of 230MB size. For people who only use WeChat to “chat”, many of the features are not quite useful, such as Moments (朋友圈), Shake (摇一摇), Top Stories (看一看), Message in a Bottle (漂流瓶), etc.. I am one of these people. In addition, in its major upgrade to version 7.0.x, the interface has been re-designed to match the popular minimal flat design trend. The color is too bright for me. These two reasons drove me to look for a substitute for WeChat, that has nothing but the basic chat function, supports dark UI theme, and runs smoothly on iOS.

Last updated on Apr 17, 2022 6 min read

A Collection of Docker Images that I Find Useful

Updated 04/14: Tensorflow

Updated 04/12: Ubuntu

This image is particularly useful when you want to utilize some of the command line tools that come conveniently with linux systems. Also, I manage my Python packages using conda, and there are times when I just need a package temporarily yet it is not available via conda. For example, I recently defended my thesis, and would like to make ad academic pedigree for myself using the excellent geneagrapher. The original code was written in Python2 but my local machine has Python3. Therefore I considered using the base Ubuntu docker image:

Last updated on Oct 1, 2023 3 min read

Parallel Computing on UConn HPC

1. Before we get started

I assume you have:

knowledge about how to use ssh to connect to remote servers via terminal on Mac, or via Putty on Windows
knowledge about using at least one of vim, emacs or nano, to modify files on command line interface
an account for UConn’s HPC

2. What’s special about parallelizing on a cluster

When running jobs only on our local machine, in the “computer science” terminology, we are using cores on a single node. Such parallelization can be done easily via packages like parallel on Unix systems, and doparallel on Windows. The parallel package, however, when used on clusters, is not capable of breaking the node barrier. No matter how may cores you requested, your code will still only run on cores within a single node.

Last updated on Oct 1, 2023 6 min read

My Vim Cheatsheet

Vim is a powerful text editor that is free and open-source. It is highly configurable. It can be accessed via terminal by typing vi or vim. Below I will put some useful vim commands that made my life easier.

Last updated on Apr 17, 2022 1 min read

Using Git to Version Control Your Manuscripts

I would like to in this post, explain why I like to use Git for version control, and provide a little guide for starters to use Git for academic purposes.

Last updated on Apr 17, 2022 4 min read