Life's End

The weight of a particular book

Aaron Radke — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 15:08:14 +0000

After the dissertation defense, I walked around the halls of CSU and began to feel the weight of a particular book. I passed many classrooms that I have attended numerous lectures. Professors that I have had over the years shook my hand, patted me on the shoulder and congratulated me with great honor. The secretaries remarked that they have seen me grow up in these halls.

I realized this experience is the passing of a chapter of my life. It was a long period of time. I have forgotten there were chapters or even a book. I have read many books and seen many chapters in my friends lives: graduation, marriage, children and moves to other countries. Until now, I have not seen a chapter in my own life. I have been at CSU for nearly ten years of the most conscious period of my life. Here I have met many fascinating people. Here is the place where I began to wrestle with many questions of my faith. Here is the place where many answers and joys and learning of worship had begun. At the Sunday ceremony, I will turn the page to the next chapter.

Goodbye and thank you CSU for the great setting, characters and plot you have laid for the next exciting chapters of life. If the following chapters follow the pattern of this prelude of lows and highs, I am glad it was written by a sovereign Author that allows tension to grow to a climax so a deeper and wonderful conclusion may be shown.

Dissertation Defense

Aaron Radke — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 19:12:02 +0000

Great news! the dissertation defense on December 7th, 2006, 10am was a success! It was a long time coming. The current committee version of the dissertation and the beautiful Keynote slides from the presentation are available for download.

Thank you to everyone who has helped me accomplish this with much encouragement.

I want to give special thanks to Dr. Gao for much grace to help me grow. To have him as a teacher, guide and friend is a privilege few get to experience. I am also thankful for the peer advice from my lab partners, especially Rob Miklosovic and Brian Fast. Many others, including Frank Goforth, Qing Zeng, Wankun Zhou, Jeff Csank and Gang Tian were always there to review, challenge and support ideas.

Aside from technical help, this project and my degree was impossible without the continued support and encouragement from my family. Above all and especially these years, I thank God for the increasingly revealed grace given to me through Jesus. There is little I deserve, yet I have been given an infinite treasure to have joy in being considered one of His children.

The research is stimulating in its own right, however the process and non technical items that I learned along the way are more significant. Discipline, planning and procrastination need to be taken up with a fight. Reading, writing and arithmetic are fundamental basics that I am just beginning to learn.

Here is the abstract:

This research focuses on the disturbance estimation problem. A survey of existing techniques is first conducted, where extensive plant knowledge for state estimation is contrasted with less plant knowledge for disturbance estimation. To advance the latter methodology and to reduce over-dependence on model information in the former, the boundary between a model and disturbance is redrawn. With this redefined boundary, existing methods are improved. Furthermore, to make the estimators optimal as well as practical, a new concept of practical optimality is introduced. Several novel design techniques are developed and initial results show advantages over current disturbance estimators. Finally, the disturbance estimation techniques are applied to health monitoring of dynamic systems. Two engineering examples are used to demonstrate the effectiveness and practicality of the new methods, including the health monitoring of a servomechanism and the fault diagnosis of a three-tank level control system.

Reflection over the past ten years

Aaron Radke — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 06:35:40 +0000

I just finished designing a simple but powerful new system for management of a substantially large photo journal. This record is a great way to peer into my life and try to analyze my life's end. It really is life spilled and frozen in pixel form.

Setting up the system has generated some general principles of life. Each image required tags and comments. With over ten thousand photos this forced reflection was a fascinating exercise of re-experiencing the past ten years of my life. The experience has provoked several thoughts and conclusions.

Life is much more transient than I had previously thought.
Most people, even close ones are with you for only a short time.
Other than death, family is one that never ceases.
There are three or four friends considered as family.
There are around ten close friends.
There are 30 or 40 other friends.
There are around 700 collected contacts.
There could be somewhere around 3,000 associations.
People come into your life quickly and slowly fade out.
It is valuable to go through hard times. The view on the other-side is worth it. Even if you wish you and others would never go through an issue, you would be without the perspective to see it.
Continue to experience the many facets and wide variety of life.
Reflection is important. Building these memories is important. I now agree with what Restak ¹ says about building the continuity between you and your older self. Understanding the continuity is a helpful perspective.
Gigantic hurdles look small when looking back at them.
We plan but we react. We barely know what new event will take place next week.
As I get older, time goes faster but the bigger picture projects become viable. Discipline for 30 days in one area is just a small stepping stone now.
I see the importance of keeping many balls in the air at the same time.
I must reconnect with some people.
I should plan to call a different person of my past once a week.
Images store so much emotion, memories and reflection with ease. I ought to make an effort to keep this journal going, especially when life becomes busy.
Reflection is important but easy to squeeze out as non important.
God sovereignly works. "His footsteps are planted in the sea and he rides upon the storm." ²
Images are frozen in time. Many people throw away old photographs that remind experiences. The tendency to toss aside is easy than reflection. But leaving foolish and poor experiences in view reminds you of the transformation processes. Mahaney ³ finds living in Maryland a helpful reminder of God's past and future grace.
The human brain is amazing. Without any effort you can instantly remember if you have seen (memorized) a single image from tens of thousands. It must have been built for this kind of memory to pull in life.
Language is complex and powerful. Simply tagging each picture with a 6-10 word comment and 3-4 keywords allows plenty resolution to select a single picture.
There seems to be a few substantial categories in my life that pictures capture: family, friends, awe in nature, birthdays, weddings, parties, documents, projects and tools.
The pictures tagged with awe, the ones that generate awe, are most often linked with nature.
Projects unite and enflame a family with purpose and progress.
Time with friends is expensive and precious.
Investment in people is important.
Never miss an opportunity to meet someone new.
Live your life vigorously.
Your community shapes your values.
Community is important! Much of it is the connecting pieces of life.
Many ministries were simply context for community.
Of the many pictures, the ones that I treasure most are the earliest family pictures.

The new system is based around iPhoto and is simple and powerful. Using comments and keywords the iphoto_post program automatically generates albums based on unique comments, months and keywords. The albums are stored in a desired directory as static webpages. This system is much easier, quicker, powerful and affordable than a .Mac account. The files can be posted on any server. Ruby is the programming language that generates the albums. It parses the album.xml file and groups comments into unique public albums.

¹ Richard Restak, Mozart's brain and the fighter pilot: unleashing your brain's potential, Three Rivers Press, New York, New York, 2001
² William Cowper, The complete poetical works of William Cowper. With life, and critical notice of his writing, http://www.ccel.org/c/cowper/works/home.html , Gould & Lincoln, Boston, 59 Washington Street., 1853
³ C.J. Mahaney, Living the Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel the Main Thing, Multnomah, 2006

Life's End

The weight of a particular book

The Weight of a Particular Book

Dissertation Defense

Dissertation Defense

Reflection over the past ten years

Reflection over the Past Ten Years