imake

I know, I didn't write yesterday. But, that was for good reason which I won't be discussing publicly.

I spent the bulk of today and yesterday at the Developer Week 2017 Hackathon. This is the first hackathon I participate in in a while. I didn't particularly go for the prizes, but rather to practice my discipline. I feel like focus is one of my weaknesses and a hackathon is a good way for me to practicing focusing on a single problem and producing results in a short period of time.

The hack I did was for the Sensel Morph trackpad. The challenge was to use it for authentication. I tried several approaches, but the one that ended up working was having the user overlay their fingertips on the trackpad. I can then look at the x and y coordinates of the fingertips to see if they match an authenticated user.

Here's how it looks like in action:

And here is the source code: https://github.com/ielashi/sensel-auth

And now time for some مسقعة. Excuse me.

I went rowing this morning for the first time in a while. It unfortunately wasn't rowing in an actual boat, but on a rowing machine. I did a 30 minute audio workout that I found on movewith. It was very energizing and I think rowing, along with swimming, are two sports I want to stick to.

After work today I went to a comedy show where my friend and coworker Jesh participated in. I also met up with my friend Kat whom I haven't seen in months.

It may seem from my writing that today is uneventful. However, I did spend some time thinking about next steps in establishing a vision and doing some research. I am hoping to share a more detailed analysis this weekend.

I am going to focus today's post on a conversation I had over lunch with Dobromir. Dobromir is one of the people who has really influenced my time at TellApart/Twitter and has been a very valuable mentor for me over these years. Dobromir is one of the most exceptional engineers I ever met. His deep technical competency is accompanied by very strong communication skills - a rare combination.

We discussed a bunch of topics. We spent some time talking about the bio work I had done in NYC, and then talked about this startup idea of building something like EC2 for biology experiments. A super interesting and potentially very impactful idea.

One of the many things I admire Dobromir for is the exceptional level of clarity in thought that he has. Earlier this year he shared a document where he outlines in detail his goals for past years, the current year, and a list of life goals that extend all the way to 2035. That was definitely an inspiration for me and I am hoping to get myself to that level of clarity and direction.

I told him about my current state of confusion of not knowing what to do in life and how I am focused on finding a vision for myself. I was curious how he was able to attain such levels of clarity on his life goals and his thought process behind it. I am sure his outlook on life was hazy at some point like how mine is currently.

Here are some brief minutes from his answer:

• Your brain is very good at lying to you and in telling you that things are fine when they're not fine.
• Most people don't plan their life as if they're going to die. If you plan life as if you're going to die, then you know you can't accomplish everything in life. It's comforting to feel that you can do everything, and your brain will lie to you and tell you that it can. This is why many people, like me, have commitment issues. It's hard to commit to something because that means you're intentionally choosing not to do other things.

As for the thought process behind choosing his goals:

• I (Dobromir) am interested in the survival of the human race. Or, to be more precise, for "intelligence" to survive. The universe is a lot cooler and more interesting when it's inhabited with intelligence.
• Humans have been pushing humanity forward, but the number of people who are moving things forward is actually very small - maybe 10,000 or so who are really at the heart of the action. Everyone else is playing a supporting role. They're important, but their role is to support those people. For example, the person flipping burgers at the army is definitely important, but his role is to support troops who go on ground. Those are at the heart of the action.
• I want to get closest to the action as possible.
• By being qualified to be a VP of engineering in a year, I will have possessed some qualities that are necessary to drive humanity forward (e.g. leadership skills, persuasion skills, hiring skills, technical skills, etc...)
• Since I am interested in the survival of the human race, I can then use my skills to accomplish that goal and explore opportunities to help accomplish that goal on different fronts.
• One front, for example, is space exploration. Maybe I can explore ways to make exploring space profitable (e.g. mining).
• Another front is biology, to be able to live longer and potentially outlive our bodies with our consciousness. Democratizing biotech, the startup idea we discussed together, has the potential to play a role in that.
• Another front is childhood education. Having children learn to their potential to have more people contributing to the action as opposed to be supporting roles at the bottom of the chain.

I'll leave the analysis of this to another time, but I am writing those minutes now for my reference.

On another note, Indiebio held a demo day today and Karim Galil was pitching his AI biotech startup. I also met up with Fatima, Amr Saleh's fiancé who is visiting SF, and had her join me to the demo day as well.

I was supposed to go to a party with Omar and a bunch of his (really cool) friends, but I decided to stay behind because I am on pager and needed to reflect on my thoughts. That's not to say that I will be dialing my partying down anytime soon though 🙂

I did wake up just as lazy as I did yesterday, but I pushed myself through it at 7am and managed to go swimming. It felt amazing.

At work today we experienced an existential crisis on the work we are doing based on some updates from the board, but a public blog post isn't the proper place to talk about that.

After work I had a plan of having my team over to my place for a painting night. Or, as I would like to call it, a painting ceremony. I loved it! It worked out really well and I definitely felt that it was a memorable experience that we all shared together. And, on another positive note, the enchanted forest is coming together bit by bit. It's exciting!

Here are some photos from the night:

At the end of the night I had some incense, and the combination of the incense and the LEDs we newly installed in our room were quite powerful. Have a look:

It is not lost on me that today I didn't work on my top priority of finding a vision for myself. I'll be sure to not lose sight of this. This evening was a beautiful one though - I feel very content with the time I spent with my colleagues. May your life and mine be filled with nights like this.

I woke up today lazier than usual. I have been getting into the habit of going to a bootcamp class at Dolores Park at 7am on Tuesdays, but it was raining all night as well as this morning so I didn't end up going.

At work today I found out that my friend Craig was going to leave next week and travel around the world for a year with his girlfriend. I've known Craig for nearly six years now and he'll definitely be missed. The news of his departure though erupted the thoughts I mentioned earlier about establishing a vision for myself. I became disturbed to the point where my productivity at work today was abysmal.

This evening I continued reading Rao's thoughts on making a dent in the universe. I haven't fully digested the article yet, but a few pieces are standing out to me so far. I will write more about this tomorrow.

Counter Culture, the DIY bio lab in Oakland, had a social night this evening and I went to visit. My goal was to get a sense of what people are working on as well as to get a better understanding if this is a field I want to continue fiddling with.

I had three conversations there worth pointing out:

1) Jill: Jill is part of the "mushroom group". She and her group explore use-cases where mushrooms are useful. One example she mentioned was accelerating the decay of trees as well as keeping them moist so they don't become a fire hazard when they are dead and dry. Another use-case is composting cigarette buds. She showed me the different strains of mushrooms they grew in the lab. Here's a peak:

Another interesting concept she mentioned was grafting. I had no idea what that is, but they have a class on it next Tuesday.

2) Another person I spoke with worked on the OpenInsulin project. In this project, they want to create a "blueprint" for other people and research facilities to make insulin. Currently, she says, insulin is sold by three pharmaceutical companies and is more or less an oligopoly.

3) John: John is a retired scientist. He walked me through his career of developing drugs. One was related to eye infection and another was related to blood clotting. He gave me a detailed explanation of the FDA approval process for drugs.

Was it useful going to that social? I think so. I plan to attend the grafting class next Tuesday since it's related to genetic engineering, which I have an interest in. I am hoping that would give me more data points to figure out if biology is one thing I want to continue pursuing or not.

Today I actually did have a plan - to some extent. I woke up early and went for a swim at the gym nearby. It's funny, I have been rarely going to swim lately, but now that I asked to cancel my membership at the end of the month I started going frequently. I guess you never appreciate what you have until you know it's going to be taken away from you.

On that note, I need to spend more time feeling gratitude towards what I have. I am fully acknowledging how blessed I am with the life I have, but I am definitely at fault for not reflecting on that enough.

Anyways, I won't be getting into what I am doing at work in a public post for confidentiality reasons, but there is good progress on the project we're working on there.

After work I headed to NoiseBridge. I was delighted that Chetan and Nick Pisarro joined as well. I cut out a few more pieces of my enchanted forest art piece in preparation for the painting night I have on Wednesday.

And, no, I am not ignoring my top priority of finding a vision for myself. I have been reading this article on achieving self-actualization. A very interesting but dense read. I haven't finished reading it yet so no conclusions to share so far.

I came back home and was delighted with the LED light installations Omar had done. It looks amazing with the forest we're working! As I am sitting in the room typing this, I feel that the ambience now is just... perfect.

Here's a little peak into the LED + forest + black light combo:

A few learnings from today:

• I spent way too much ordering food while I was at NoiseBridge. I will carry a pack of space food with me for an instant on-the-go meal.
• There are a lot of toxic fumes when laser cutting. I was going to buy a respirator, but I just realized that I have a head-band that can serve this purpose pretty well that I'll pack with me always.
• I need to prepare my bag in advance the night before. I waste a lot of time in the morning looking for my gym clothes and other things to pack.

Similar to yesterday, I woke up this morning with no clear agenda. I did, however, get woken up by a phone call from my friend Ghania. He was asking me if we were going to go to this Egyptian gathering in San Jose to watch the finals of the Africa Nations Cup. I was very hesitant to go but ended up going anyways. We rented a car and Omar Shaker, Omar Fahmy, myself, Ghania, and Ghania's friend Mostafa joined.

The reason I was hesitant to go is because I had a strong feeling that this trip had very little ROI. I am not a huge soccer follower so I don't really care about following the game. I also don't have strong ties with most of the people I was going to run into at the gathering, so I really had no good reason to go. Was my hunch right? Yes and no. I did run into a few people whom I haven't seen in a while and wanted to see, but I still feel like I could have utilized those seven hours better.

When we came back I did some work on my "enchanted forest" art project. I was cleaning up some of the vectors so I can go to NoiseBridge tomorrow and cut out the pieces. I invited my coworkers on Wednesday for an evening of painting. Or, as I would prefer to say, a "psychedelic painting ceremony."

As the evening came along though, I started descending into a state of mind that I very frequently descend into these days. That is, the state of feeling lost. I openly acknowledge that I don't know what I am doing with my life. I am lacking clarity in terms of how I want it to pan out. And, while I feel deeply gratified by the options I have as far as where I can live and work, my life is lacking on some basic fundamentals. Those many many options in life that I have, coupled with the confusion of not knowing what I want, is putting me in a state of paralysis.

As I am writing this, I am making it extremely clear to myself that this state of paralysis must end. I need to establish a clear vision for myself, and that to me is currently my top priority.

On another note, today I officially kicked off an experiment to study to what degree San Francisco is Islamophobic. I'll be posting a more detailed update on that some time this month.

It's almost 2am and I feel exhausted. But, today has been a good day. I woke up around 6.30am, did a condensed strength workout and went swimming for the first time in many weeks. I later ended up going to a biology lab in Oakland called Counter Culture. Counter Culture is a DIY lab just like Genspace in Brooklyn, but it's more spacious. Patrik, our guide to the lab, spent 90 minutes walking us through the different equipment available there. The vast majority of the equipment and tools he was referring were very unknown to me of course, but it was interesting to see the breadth of projects one can do at that space. Here's a little sneak peak into the lab. It's very scrappy.

Later in the afternoon I was supposed to go with Maysa to a Sufi night, which I  really wanted to go to. I unfortunately missed my train and couldn't make it. Instead I joined Omar, my roommate, and Omar Fahmy to this grand opening party of some community space. Later we went to Ragia's house for her farewell party, then we went to a park near Lake Merrit for some fire spinning. It was a beautiful night and I danced my heart out. I didn't spin fire myself but I instead played around with LED poi as well as my LED gloves - some good progress!

Here are a few videos I took earlier in the night:

Today was a really fun day. One thing I can do better is to have clear goals for what I want to accomplish in a given day. I woke up today with no agenda at all. Not that I don't want to leave room for serendipity, but I also want to make sure I'm using my time wisely.

I went to the Techshop this morning to attend a class on Carbon Fiber. I didn't in particular have an interest in materials, but this class is part of the casual purposeless exploration I like to do.

Jon, our instructor, gave us a rundown of carbon fiber layup and carbon fiber fabrication. I won't actually into any details, but the key take aways for me were 1) carbon fiber is a very strong and light-weight material, 2) 10% of the components manufactured by/for SpaceX are carbon fiber, and 3) I have no further interest in pursuing this.

Here's a quick video of the piece of carbon fiber I ended up making under Jon's instruction:

This is the first public post I do in 2017 on this blog. What a shame! I'll try to be more open and do a better job of documenting my life moving forward.

It has been raining pretty hard in the Bay Area the last few days, and last night was no exception. Staying at home was the most comforting choice. Omar Fahmy, a friend of ours, was visiting and the two of us ended up painting through the night. The painting is part of a big art piece I've been prepping for some time, and we're finally starting to make good progress!

Here's Omar painting away and unleashing his artistic skills!

We are painting the forest with psychedelic colors, and for paint we're using florescent acrylic paint. I'll be installing blacklight around the final piece from some extra trippy-ness! Here's a little sneak peak of how things are looking under black light:

And I just hung those up on one of the walls of our room. We'll slowly work our way to cover that entire frame with the forest.

More important than the art piece though is Omar telling me last night about how happy and present he felt as we were both painting. He hasn't held a brush since kindergarten, nor did he think he ever would. Omar's testament echoed feelings I have had for a long time, both in a small way and a big way.

In a small way, I too felt very content and present as I was painting. It was a very soothing social bonding, and I felt like I could keep painting forever in that serene ambience we had set up for ourselves. But, in a bigger way, I felt the need to have more experiences like this; social experiences where we do something memorable and create things as opposed to just spending time "hanging out" and doing nothing.

Yes, I need more memorable social experiences in my life, and I'll work on creating those for myself and for people around me moving forward.