11 Years

That's right faithful readers (all two of you). You have been digesting my blabberings for three years now. I have been in Melbourne for 3 years as of yesterday (July 10)!

-Matt

First Class, and I Don't Mean Data

After my trip to Seattle to present at MSPC 2013, which I think went "OK," I headed back to the 757 to chill for a bit, visit my ole dentist, recharge my batteries (I am a machine... duh), and to well just get "home" for a tad. With that said, I did think about garbage collection some, and continued to work on my thesis. But that's probably not a good topic for this post, since the title mentions "First Class," and I don't mean higher-order language constructs.

So the story goes like this: When I was heading back to Melbourne, my flight plan took me from Norfolk, VA to Dallas, and from Dallas to Brisbane. The latter leg, by the way, is the 6th longest non-stop flight according to the wikipedia's entry on longest non-stop flights. Anyways, my Norfolk to Dallas ticket had no seating assignment. I was a bit baffled, but continued to play the game. Anyways, as I get ready to board, the ticket agent at the gate handed me a first class ticket! WTF?!? REALLY!?! Sometimes, you just take things and ask questions later. Anyways, this free upgrade comes with decent coffee in a ceramic mug, a steamed towel to wash my face with (travelling first class is hard work), and a free dinner. I rejected the dinner, because I had a prepared hummus sandwich awaiting me, and they didn't have much vegan awesomeness except for some nuts and salad. Oh, and the nuts come in a ceramic ramekin. The salad was pretty damn first class... and it came with a cloth napkin, freshly pressed rainbow milk straight from the nipples of an albino unicorn, a free yoga lesson, and shiatsu massage given by supermodels on their way to Maui for a photo-shoot. (Just lying about the milk (I'm vegan duh!).

So how did this first class upgrade happen? Maybe they oversold crap-class and had to choose a few suckers to ride pimp style? In fact, my neighbor is pretty cool here. But first class still doesn't score you free wifi. Oh, hold on, the lovely flight attendant is now offering a desert... I have to say no; I think I'll go for more coffee, because my bladder is definitely of infinite volume.

Anyways, I must say that I think the people in first class looked at me and were wondering if I were some rich famous musician, or hacker seeking asylum. I can't really say I am dressed to the nines here. And... my coffee is here; yet another ceramic mug! Oh, and the seat is spacious and I have enough leg-room for me to not even think about using the recliner feature on my chair. Just to think, my butt cheeks are sitting in the same seat that a thousand other well-off cheeks have graced. I am spoiled.

-Matt

I met... GCus

The title in this post is pronounced GCus like jesus but with GC. The latter being the abbreviation for Garbage Collection. This post is just to say that I met Richard Jones at PLDI this year (he is the guru of garbage collection) and his work has made up a huge portion of my thesis. He deserves infinite beers. I also chatted a bit with Hans Boehm again. I also met David Gay and Emery Berger, both whom I have cited in my thesis work. It's way cool to see these people, notable names of memory management! Way cool! Oh, and I had Mr. Jones sign a piece of trash for me, effectively he "marked some garbage" ... but since it has been marked, it shouldn't be reclaimed.
-Matt

jmp 0xSeattle

Wow! So that was one helluva flight. Actually, the flights were nice, since the Uni hooked me up with Quantas (I am a cheapskate and probably would have gone with a cheaper option if it were my wallet being genocided-upon by the airline industry). I finally got the chance to watch The Social Network and Tarintino's more recent Django Unchained. All I gotta say is that I was thoroughly entertained and I think I need to see more Tarintino flicks. Anyways, I am in Seattle for the Memory Systems Performance and Correctness (MSPC) workshop to present our research into garbage collection and region-based memory management, black magic, and the digital alchemical fusion of these two aforementioned dark sciences. Anyways, I think I'll go stroll around this city! My stomach cannot hold any more caffeinated beverages.
-Matt

Monkeys like Logs

So I needed a way to fight boredom this weekend. So I decided to start work on a new side project. I had an idea that evolved into a pretty simple concept, to create a console program that monitors text files (log files) and displays their most recent line. It was an excuse to do more curses hackery and to take a break from garbage collection and memory management (which I still hacked on anyways :-). With that said, I have an alpha version of the aforementioned log-viewer TreeTop which you can snag here. "Monkeys like trees, climb to the top."

-Matt

Seattle and Nacho

Well, the paper my advisers and self have been laboring over was submitted and accepted to the ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Memory Systems Performance and Correctness (which is in Seattle this year). More so, I wrote the original draft (with some incomplete pieces). It ended-up being rewritten by my advisers (and a ton of things were added!). Needless to say, it represents hours and hours of work, and composes ideas from their genius. It was great to work on this paper with them, and I am humbled that it was accepted. I have been implementing code for ages now to represent these ideas, basically a combination of region-based memory management and garbage collection.

On another front, I have been working on more PDF hackery. I wanted to make a PDF-grepping utility. I have a basic implementation cooked-up but the key piece is the simplistic PDF text-extraction library that I wrote (note that it is not fully featured and does not account for all encodings and compression schemes). I present upon the world libnachopdf because it ain't yo' PDF. Well, maybe it is your PDF, but that doesn't matter. Get 'yo nacho on over here.
-Matt

I miss industry...

So many of you are probably wondering, because I know I am the keystone in your lives, what is Matt up to? Well, not much, just some thesis writing and stuff. Yes, I am being vague. Anyways, I am ready to knock this PhD out. I have had fun, but personally I find industry more fulfilling, and I long for the day where I can return to that. With that said, here is what trying-to-get-a-PhD looks like.
-Matt