Daily -> Weekly Note (14-21st August 2026)

22 Aug, 2026

So many things happened this week (i'm sitting and typing this from a new keyboard and monitor that i love), but I haven't been good about posting daily notes, so here's a big weekly dump to try and make up for some of it. This note also veers more on the personal and less on research, but that's sometimes the way life goes. Especially since I haven't been doing great this week both physically and mentally, it's good to occasionally have a week that allows for more free-association.

14th (Fri) - Met and talked to Curt Dodds & Earl Bellinger (who has a really fun research group named YAML and was talking at astro-coffee about LRDs possibly being pulsating black holes). Curt tells me about the current IfA computing resources (still need to finish and send out the computing survey!) and cross-collaboration things like the NSF's national research platform (NRP), and about his collaboration with folks across the university, and we talk for a bit about our thoughts on AI, LLMs, and the research and education implications. I have a lot to learn.

Highlights: Ms. Coach has a performance at the Rat! And it's recorded!

15-17th (Sat-Mon) - My first big storm here! Lose power for a bit, turns out I can't cook anything because the stove is electric (my lesson to meal-prep if a power outage is imminent), and the IfA also lost power. Had prepped with a bunch of canned food, bread, protein bars and chips that got me through the day. Meanwhile, Ms. Coach was planning their show (I could briefly join for a bit over google meet) and going through all sorts of ideas, from forming two teams with 'captains', to doing life coaching with pros and cons as a the prompt, to the punny Ms. Coach does Ms. Chif. Went to watch Hawai'i AF (my first improv show here!) amidst pouring rain (got so drenched getting there that I bought a merch tshirt and changed into it to be dry). The show was really fun, a mashup of sketch and improv and music in the style of Asian AF. Monday's declared a holiday due to the power outages and such, but a bunch of people end up at the IfA anyway - restarted the crossmatching effort since it got abruptly cut short.

Highlights: Ms. Coach has a performance called check on your friends! and it's really fun!

18th (Tue) - basically the only work day of this week. had a planning meeting for the AI-in-resarch lectures we're planning at work and scoped it to roughly 6-7 monthly lectures. also met with MJ and talked about more project pitches, and about the different kinds of ways to handle missing data (performing imputation, combining posteriors from independent networks trained with each modality¹, or tokenizing everything and running it through a transformer/something that doesn't need a fixed-length input). Ran a set of DB fits for the OCEANS survey that Raymond Simons is working on. Talked to Fei Dai about astro-ph and the stats course. Turns out that the techniques course he teaches covers a lot of the 'pure astrostats' stuff I was thinking about, so I'm glad that exists. Thinking more about the 'stats of ML' course in that case.

19-20th (Wed/Thu) - new faculty orientation takes up most of my day. need to start thinking of funding allocations for R-HIVE. A bunch of the destiny folks are putting something together called the Genesis initiative. Cross-matching is nearly done. Met Cami on Wed, and it was really fun catching up! Talked to Jen van Saders in the evening, and got a lot of really great advice about things ranging from astro-ph to putting together a stats course. Something that stuck with me is the importance of being frank with a student - i'm also learning things with you, so I'm going to screw things up and that has to be okay, we'll work through it together - and is something i need to start explicitly including in my session-0's from now on. Had a fun dinner at Rohan's place, until I started fading and needed to beat feet when i found myself struggling to stick to human-base-reality.

21st (Fri) - eventful day. went for an (allegedly) ill-advised bike trip to the north shore to see turtles on Laniakea beach. Didn't make it all the way there (google maps taking me into military complexes², the 'flat ground' portions of the ride being more uphill than i'd estimated, and my blood sugar taking a sudden dive when i rested for a bit) but got to Wahaiwa and had some delicious French toast with purple ooze³ and haupia sauce. Saw some genuinely picturesque places along the way, streams and forests and lakes and tiny waterfalls.

Took the bus back (the bike racks in the front don't fit my fat tires), and impulsively disembarked when i saw a sign for a really cute bookstore called Friends books and music that turned out to be a nonprofit where all sales raise funds for Hawai'i's 51 public libraries. Had a really nice time talking with K there, nerding out about webnovels (need to try the Wandering Inn, which reminds me of the inn between worlds), poetry collections, improv and D&D (critical role, worlds beyond number), and she told me about a show called 'yes, and dragons' that combines D&D and improv happening tonight. I'd have gone but was already committed to watching a pau-ha-hana show by think fast improv in the evening.

Cycled back home, rested a bit, and went into work (mostly to try and slough through a bit of my backlog of emails). Left for the improv show directly from there, got a couple slices of pizza and reached in time. The venue's generally a rave-y disco-y place in the nights, so the theater kids can take over in the evenings when they open. Got to talk to some of the locals and make contacts before the show, while I waited for MN, who told me about the show, to get there. Patrick and Dan do a twoprov show called Baiku, and the monologist/storyteller⁴ was from a group called improv superette whose members are all local and from Hawai'i⁴. The set itself was very fun, and everyone was super comfortable with each other and was having a lot of fun (makes sense, given the group's been performing for over 15 years). In contrast to my experiences so far, everyone was extremely friendly and fun to talk to, and I got to learn a lot more about the improv community in Hawai'i, ranging from occasional jams, to these 'blender' shows that someone named Brian(?) organizes (kinda like soup-of-the-day teams assembled from invited improvisers the day of the show), to a comedy festival in November sometime, to drop-ins and workshops. It all seems really fun, and is not something that google was able to tell me about. Thanks to Beth for being a wonderful human being and telling me about all this after the show! Looking forward to watching a lot more of this group in the future!