The "About Me" Post

I'm going to assume the first post of our blog will be an "About Me" post, so here's a modified version I used from the SR blog.

Hi, I'm Paul Taele. I got my Bachelors in Computer Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin (yes, I'm a Longhorn). I also studied Chinese for three semesters at National Chengchi University (Taipei, Taiwan).

Year:
Masters in Comp Sci, 1st Year

E-mail:
ptaele [at] gmail [dot] com

Academic Interests:
Neural Networks and Multi-Agents at the moment.

Relevant Experience:
I double majored in CS and math at UT. I primarily programmed in Java while there, since that's all that was taught. I took a variety of AI courses at the time: AI, Neural Networks, Robotics, Cognitive Science, Independent Research (on the CS/EE-side of neural networks), and Independent Study (on the math-side of neural networks). That was fun.

Why I'm taking this class?
I really liked what I learned in Sketch Recognition, both the research area and the class format. I'm taking this Gesture Recognition course expecting to learn another interesting research area that retains the same class format.

What do I hope to gain?
If I wanted to come to grad school just to learn a technical field, I wouldn't have bothered coming in the first place. I want to learn interesting topics that pertains to my major, and that is what I hope to gain from this class.

What do I think I will be doing in 5 years?
Ideally, I'd like to be at that stage where I'm finishing my PhD. If I end up working in I.T. instead, then the terrorists have already won.

What do I think I will be doing in 10 years?
I would like to work for a research group on something that I learned in grad school by then. It'd be hilarious if I'm still in school, but Josh Peschel has taught me that anything's possible. I was never good at predicting things ten years from now, though. Ten years ago, I thought I'd be working today. Silly me.

What are my non-academic interests?
I'm a big fan of East Asian movies, TV shows, and music. This is a consequence of studying Asian languages for several years, I guess.

My funny story:
I didn't plan on being a CS major during undergrad (I was originally a business major at the University of Southern California). When I went to UT afterwards, I decided to do pre-CS though since all my friends were doing it (at UT, students have to apply as a CS major typically in their third year). Out of my friends, I was the only one who got accepted into the CS program. I made new friends and decided to double major in math as well since they all were also CS and math majors. Turns out that I was the only one out of my friends whom didn't drop math as a major. I made some more friends, and we all vowed to go to grad school after we graduated. Well...yeah, I'm the only one out of them that went immediately into grad school. Wait a minute, that's not a funny story at all. That's just plain sad...

Random Stuff #1 - Why is my blog no longer pink?
There's two girls in the class now. I no longer have a monopoly on pink, hence the more dude colors.

Random Stuff #2 - Why am I doing grad school at A&M?
Haha, I sometimes wonder what I'm doing here after doing undergrad at UT. When I was thinking of doing grad school, my professors told me to go somewhere else for CS grad to gain a different perspective. I focused on A&M and UT Dallas because they were both in-state schools with decent CS programs, even though it turned out my profs originally wanted me to go out-of-state. In the end, I chose A&M for two reasons: 1) they gave me more money, and 2) Dr. Choe, one of the professors I would like to have on my advising committee, also went to UT (in fact, my prof for AI and neural nets and my prof for robotics at UT were his advisers when he was working on his PhD). Anyway, my friends gave me a new nickname: Traitor.

Random Stuff #3 - What do I think of College Station/Bryan?
It sucks.