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Category Archives: University

Writing a thesis

…takes time, is stressing, is hard, is fun.
I’m defending on July 13th. =)

Posted 20 June 2009 † Matteo § English ‡ Comments (0) °

Productivity measure

I don’t know whether the same goes for other grad students / scholars involved into theory, but it looks like my level of productivity can be measured by the amount of bloc notes sheets I throw in the recycle bin at the end of the day.
Most probably, if you are really good, you don’t throw [...]

Posted 25 March 2009 † Matteo § English ‡ Comments (3) °

Capita a volte…

…che i sogni si realizzino. Oggi, uno dei miei sogni si è realizzato. Un sogno che è nato nove anni fa e ha avuto bisogno della realizzazione di molti sogni intermedi prima di arrivare a fioritura.
Stasera, una busta dal colore giallo istituzionale mi ha accolto di fronte alla porta di casa. Conteneva una lettera scritta [...]

Posted 20 February 2009 † Matteo § Italiano § Personal ‡ Comments (23) °

How’s my thesis going?

The core of it may be ready in a few weeks (hopefully <3).
I’m quite happy, because it makes lots of fun working on this problem and since I started in October I have learned a non-countable infinite quantity of new stuff, which is great. =)

Posted 18 February 2009 † Matteo § English ‡ Comments (0) °

Puff, Pant, Cough, …

… e qualsiasi altra espressione da fumetto che possa ricordare l’affanno.
Qualche breve aggiornamento per rassicurarvi (o forse no) sulla mia situazione attuale e su quello che ho fatto nelle ultime due settimane. Essendo il post decisamente autoreferenziale, cerco di non tirarla per le lunghe.

C’è stato il mio compleanno. Ho ricevuto un sacco di regali (vedi [...]

Posted 02 February 2009 † Matteo § Italiano § Personal ‡ Comments (6) °

Drops of goals

In a previous post (Drops of toughts) I put a list of “what to change in my life”.
After a few (4) months, I can say that:

I almost stopped drinking coffee and started drinking lots of tea.
While at Brown, I played soccer in the intramural tournament. I hope to play again in the intramural indoor soccer [...]

Posted 31 December 2008 † Matteo § English § Misc § Personal ‡ Comments (4) °

Dijkstra e le riforme

Sulla porta del mio ufficio nel dipartimento di Computer Science di Brown University è attaccato un cartello. Dice

Please adopt an Italian student.
Our government does not let us study.

La scritta è presa da una foto vista su flickr: una studentessa partecipava ad una manifestazione tenendo ben in alto un foglio A3 bianco con la [...]

Posted 04 December 2008 † Matteo § Italiano § Nerd ‡ Comments (6) °

Have a good day!

Thank you!
My day was great. I had many chances to be happy and satisfied, thanks to many different people.

I talked with friends I love and miss. I got my TOEFL results. I got my transcripts. It looks like I had a good idea for my research too, or at least it looks promising.
Oh, [...]

Posted 27 November 2008 † Matteo § English § Personal ‡ Comments (1) °

Magnis Itineribus (going on by huge steps)

In little more than one month at Brown University, under the supervision of Prof. Upfal and Prof. Pietracaprina, I think I learned a lot, both in terms of new concepts, ideas, tools and in terms of how to do research.
Yes, I’m really proud of myself and of the work I’ve been doing since I [...]

Posted 06 November 2008 † Matteo § English § FreeBSD § Nerd ‡ Comments (1) °

GRE

Yesterday it was a great day for me, quite important for my (near) future: I took the GRE test. I didn’t practice that much, just 12 days using Barron’s book, 2009 edition. My primary goal was to get 800/800 in the quantitative (maths) part and the secondary goal was to get a good result [...]

Posted 28 October 2008 † Matteo § English ‡ Comments (0) °