User:Gkammer

Gabriel A. Kammer
Room	H304
Year	2022
Course	Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Hi, I'm Gabriel! I no longer live on hall; I moved to pika after my freshman year, but I'm still around sometimes.

Dislikes

• The phrases "what's up?" and "how's it going?"
  • Because really, aren't many things "up"? What do you want to know? All it accomplishes is the responder saying something vague like "nothing much".
  • And what is "it", which is going? Where is it going?
• Those times in winter when it's more than cold enough for it to snow for like a week straight, but there's never precipitation, until that one day when the temperature exceeds the freezing point of water and it suddenly pours and things get soggy, and later icy.
• When you're in a comfortable position and you need to grab something but it's exactly 4 centimeters away from your outstretched fingertips.
• Bagged tea.
  • Why?
    • Just why?
      • You're paying extra for the taste of paper in your tea.
• Boba
  • It tastes good but for some reason I feel sick after having it.
    • Big sad.

Likes

• The following Chipotle order:
  • Sofritas, brown rice, black beans, spicy sauce, lettuce, sour cream, cheese.
• Bouldering
  • I starting rock climbing January 2019
  • Walker is a great place
• Puzzles
  • Once upon a time I went to the IOL.
  • After that, I thought I wanted to be course 24.
  • I then took 24.900 and realized that I don't actually enjoy linguistics very much, I just like IOL puzzles that vaguely have some linguistics brewed into them.
• Board games
  • My board game preferences tend to be slightly more heavy-euro-y than the average pizen's.
  • Favorite games include:
    • Amun-Re (it was the first game I learned to play at the age of ~6, much sentimental value)
    • Agricola (the kind of game that is so good to strategize about but so frustrating to play because you can't have it all)
    • Castles of Burgundy (I only played this a couple times in Brazil but I remember it being good)
    • Power Grid (the game where you have to juggle between getting points and getting an advantage in future rounds)
    • Mystic Vale (a spin on the traditional deck building game, where you literally build up the cards themselves)
    • Race for the Galaxy (it's quick and each round is super different from the next)
    • Istanbul (only played once but it was interesting how the board itself can change and make different playing strategies more/less viable each time)
    • Terraforming Mars (the new trend, and honestly it lives up to its reputation)
    • Stone Age (never played a hard copy, but it was pretty fun online)
    • Civilization the Board Game (extremely long, can get tiring, but I appreciate how logical the gameplay is)
  • Sadly none of these board games are currently found on floorpi
• Cooking
  • A good way to spend time that would otherwise have gone toward psets.

Things That I Am Studying

AP Credit & ASE

18.01: Single Variable Calculus: AP Credit
18.02: Multivariable Calculus: The ASE was surprisingly straightforward, stuck to simple applications of the material for all but 2-3 problems.
8.01: Mechanics: AP Credit
8.02: Electricity & Magnetism: It is apparently possible to pass the ASE without knowing what a Poynting vector is, even though it was tested in two out of not-that-many questions. I have done so. I have also learned what a Poynting vector is since then.
6.0001: Introduction to Computer Programming: I learned python the day before the exam. The exam wasn't hard, just make sure your IDE actually has a built in help function.

Fall 2018

21G.101: Intro to Chinese (Liao): A lot more work than one might expect, but the class was great. Attendance is also 100% mandatory and it runs 4 days a week, so if you're not a morning person don't take it early morning.
24.900: Intro to Linguistics (Unclear): It was fine I guess. I haven't taken other CI-H's to compare this one to, so I can't say whether it was worth taking or not.
18.404: Theory of Computation (Sipser): Great problem sets, Sipser is a great lecturer as far as I can tell, but I can't comment on quality of lectures past the first month because I stopped going. He wrote the textbook though the lectures are basically a slightly easier-to-understand but more time-consuming alternative to reading the textbook.
6.004: Computation Structures (Arvind and a few others): b l u e s p e c. They changed the curriculum the year I took it and there were lots of issues that hadn't been worked out yet, which made the class less enjoyable than it could have otherwise been.

IAP 2019

Chinese Calligraphy (Kang): Probably the most interesting/fun class I've taken. It was a great way to spend IAP doing something other than cramming for exams, writing papers, etc, but still getting HASS-A credit.

Spring 2019

6.046: Algorithms (There were 2 professors but I don't remember): Pretty good, I enjoy the material and it wasn't too hard.
6.009: Fundamentals of Programming (Unclear) : As someone said, "It's too hard if you need this class, and too easy if you don't". I came in knowing Python and I can confirm that it was way too easy for me, but also took a surprising amount of time grinding on the labs. I can also see why it would be very hard for someone without programming experience.
11.158: Behavior and Policy: Connections in Transportation (Zhao): Interesting class, I learned quite a bit. I probably shouldn't have taken it as a freshman though. I definitely felt like the young person who shouldn't be there at times.
14.01: Intro Micro (Unclear): Quite easy, not as big a time sink as some people told me. But maybe that's because I already took econ in high school.

Fall 2019

6.815: Computation Photography (Durand): A pretty good class, the problems sets tend to be quite easy and don't take much time.
6.035: Compilers (Rinard): I definitely didn't know enough programming coming into this class :(
7.012: Biology (Lander, I think?): I have never been to lecture.
18.03: Differential Equations (Unclear): I have never been to lecture.
CMS.608: Game Design (Tan): A very fun class, very chill. The prof is a former pizen!