Revision as of 04:17, 21 July 2012

Hello!!

Hey, I am Brandon Tran. I'm currently a course 18 sophomore. I was originally Derplet, until Nathan Pinsker and Amol Aggarwal joined hall, evolving me/us into Derptrio. I'll usually have my door closed, since I don't want mice getting in, but I guess when I'm in my room, I'm tooling anyways. For the most part, I can be found in the lounges or Damien's room (because his bed has comforters and so I steal the bed often).

Random Thing

Also at some point, when Damien Jiang said, "Holy carp", I added "on a stick!" and so Damien got really mad. I proceeded to look up if this was a thing, and found bowfishing. Arrows are basically sticks, so yeah, it's a thing. Anyways, I'm often now associated with carp, like for Secret Santa, I received many tasty fish-resembling snacks. It's my tag for Smash.

Non-Academic Things I enjoy

Manga!

In my free time, I read a lot of manga and have read or am in the process of reading Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Fairy Tail, Reborn, Beelzebub, History's Strongest, Liar Game, Prince of Tennis, New Prince of Tennis, Eyeshield 21, Slam Dunk, Gantz, Air Gear, Deathnote, Negima. I've watched FMA and Rurouni Kenshin.

Gaming!!

I play a lot of smash, maining Marth and trying to pick up Fox. Leon gets mad when I play not-Marth though, and I don't really do so that much unless I'm getting annoyed at doing Marth-Sheik, which is impossible. I might try and pick up Puff for Sheiks. I use Fox when Vlad wants to play his Falco I guess. There are too many things I can't do with Fox, though, like short hop double lasering with Y, shine out of shield, multishine, etc but I'm working on it! I guess I sometimes also play Falco/Falcon, but only when I'm really messing around, like when we do Free-For-All 7-stock Falcon on Yoshi's or Falco on FD, or 99 stock matches, since after a while my hands get tired and I just use C-stick to walk.

I also enjoy random RPGs or MMORPGs, although it's probably a bad idea to play these during the school year. I've probably played nearly every MMORPG at some point or another, though the only RPGs I've played are KOTOR and DAO.

Not Gaming!!

I also like playing random card/board games with hall, like Fish or Galaxy Trucker. I also play bridge, but I'm nowhere near as good as the other hall members.

I also have a bad habit where if I start reading a book, I'll have to finish the series, no matter how bad it is. This is not actually that bad on its own, but together with the fact that every time I'm in an airport, I buy a book for the flight, it becomes a pretty bad habit. Recent things I've read are lots of Star Wars (Wookiepedia yeah!), Song of Ice and Fire, and the last book to Eragon (Books of Inheritance). I'm in the process of reading Malazen Book of the Fallen, recommended by Leon (I think). I finished book 1, and am halfway through book 2. It's pretty good and pretty similar to Song of Ice and Fire in its epic fantasyness.

Things where I have to move?!

I've heard that moving is pretty hard, though I wouldn't know cuz I don't do it.

On a more serious note, though I'm pretty much a lazyass, I'm usually up for a game of Ultimate Frisbee. I guess I'll also play basketball if there are enough people who want to, maybe. I used to play competitively, for some definition of play and some definition of competitively. I guess I also go jogging, but that's because the doctor said I had to, and so I use it as my alone time to think.

Grubbing

I also love food. It's one of the three main pleasures of life, besides math and smash. I'm always up for trying new cuisine or a new restaurant, or going to something like O'Sullivans for the nth time.

The only thing I don't like is Ethiopian food, and maybe Persian food, but anything else is fine. Alternatively, I could have just gone to shitty Ethiopian or Persian restaurants, so I guess I'd be up for even that. I joke that I'll eat anything that doesn't move, and maybe some things that do (I think I had a snail that moved once in Vietnam, not sure). This is pretty much true. I've eaten weird things. Motto: Eat first, ask later.

Movies

I'll watch most "good" movies, but my favorite genre is action. When I sit down for a two hour long film, I want there to be a lot of cool effects and explosions. Whenever a new superhero or other action movie comes out, Josh and I will usually lead a hall trip to the theatres. When hall plays a movie in the Sects Lounge, I'll usually watch if I'm not busy, just because watching movies with hall is always amusing.

TV Shows

This past year, I've only watched TV shows with hall, like Community, Sherlock, and FMA. In the past and on my own time, though (summers), I've seen House, 24, Chuck, Burn Notice, and Franklin and Bash. Of course, we all watch Game of Thrones as well.

Academics

As I said, I'm course 18, declared early sophomore standing. I don't really know what math interests me yet, but I did a number theory REU over the summer and liked it a lot. At some point, I thought I didn't like analysis, but the REU has given me cause to reconsider that. I probably will take some Harvard courses over the years, so people who are also interested in some Harvard classes should let me know. Besides math i'm also interested in TCS, though maybe this is basically math, I don't know. My advisor is Jacob Fox (what a god).

I used to think I wanted to do some sort of physics or CS (not TCS), but have decided that physics is too bashy and coding is way too hard.

Classes Taken

Fall 2011

18.701- Artin is a great instructor, though I didn't particularly like the problem sets and thought the tests were too easy.

8.09- Surrow was also a great instructor. He was extremely approachable (I went to office hours every week). Though the ideas behind the course material were really interesting, I found the computations too much.

24.900,- I've heard others say they enjoyed this class. When I took it, though, well I guess the online ratings speak for themselves...

7.012- I heard Landers was good, though I never watched or attended lectures. Some of the problem sets actually had problems that required thinking instead of copying from the book. That was nice.

Knot theory seminar- I had a lot of fun in this seminar. There were lots of cool new ideas.

Winter 2012

8.20- I only took this class because it was a REST, and I was still on P/NR.

I guess I also spent a lot of time reading/doing psets for 6.046 and 18.100.

Spring 2012

18.702- I attended around 2 lectures total. This had nothing to do with Artin's instruction though (he is a great lecturer). I had just already read the book. Again, I found the problem sets and tests not difficult enough to consolidate my knowledge.

18.901- I attended this class even less than 702 and so I don't know anything about Vertesi. I had fun with the problem sets, though. Some of the problems were pretty good, though others were quite annoying, but hey, can't win 'em all.

18.312- I strongly recommend taking this class (at least under Stanley). The "challenging" problems he put on the psets were very fun. The easy problems were never really bashy and could be finished quickly, leaving time to work on the nice problems. Also Stanley is a great lecturer.

18.783- I took this class the first time it was offered. It focuses a little too much on computation for me, though this changed drastically at the end (proving Fermat's Last Theorem yeah!). I think for previous years, our comments will be taken into consideration and the class may focus more on the math side of elliptic curves.

6.851- Another amazing class I took this year. Maybe I'm just biased because it was my only grad class and so went at a fast enough pace that I had to really pay attention to keep up. I found the material very interesting, though the problem sets were a bit too easy so that I didn't really feel like I grasped the material. Where I consolidated my knowledge was the open problem sessions, since in seeing stuff applied, I was able to understand it. Demaine's also a great lecturer.

21L.011- For a CI-H, this class was pretty fun. I enjoyed the first half, watching actual feature films and talking about them. The second half, though, when we started going into obscure avant-garde stuff, I got very lost, but whatever. The grading seemed very harsh, as no one but the amazing Jon got an A on the essays, but in the end the final grades were heavily curved.

Fall 2012

some subset of 18.905, 18.415, 18.405, 3.091, 14.01, Harvard Math 223a

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Feel free to ask me about anything: classes I've taken, life on hall, how to survive. I've already made tons of mistakes, so I'd be more than happy to share them so you don't do the same. Also don't be fooled by all I put up there. My typical day is something like wake up at 1, go to a class, go back, eat, tool, punt (smash usually), sleep at 4. Vlad says my sleep schedule is one of the most normal on hall.