yoursunny blog
computer, Internet, and life

Hiking in Arizona

Junxiao Shi

I was a couch potato before I came to the United States six years ago. There aren't many outdoor adventures in my hometown Shanghai, because Shanghai is located on a flat peninsula, and the only place that resembles a mountain is the 97-meter Sheshan Hill. In contrast, Tucson is surrounded by five mountain ranges, and it is a hiking paradise.

My First Hike

Among the grad students in computer science department, there is an organization called the Graduate Student Council (GSC). On the same week as orientations, I attended the first GSC meeting, and learned about various activities organized by GSC. One of them is a "hiking club". I joined their mailing list, although I did not know what I was signing up for.

The first hike was on Oct 01, 2011 going to Butterfly Trail. I took an early morning bus to school, and brought "plenty of water for yourself, sturdy hiking shoes, lunch, warm cloth" as instructed by the trip leader. We departed shortly after 09:15, and it was a long ride in Jeremy Wright's car.

Butterfly Trail, 01OCT2011

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My Favorite Tucson Restaurants

Junxiao Shi

During my six years living in Tucson, I visited hundreds of local restaurants. Here are my top picks. Those restaurants are all good, and their order within this article does not indicate my preference.

Best on campus: IQ Fresh

crispy fish wrap from IQ Fresh

Located in the main student union, IQ Fresh is my usual place for a quick lunch between classes. They mainly serve wraps: shredded meats and veggies rolled inside a piece of tortilla. They offer 14 different meats and veggies, and 10 tortilla flavors, giving 140 choices.

My favorite is the crispy fish wrap in spinach wrapper, with a side of sweet potato fries. Sadly, this particular item has been discontinued in 2015, and I stopped going there altogether.

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Academic Papers

Junxiao Shi

Writing and publishing academic papers is an essential part of PhD education. During my 6-year PhD career, I published three academic papers as first author in peer-reviewed conferences:

Publishing an academic paper is hard. In the process, I must:

  1. Come up with an idea.
  2. Confirm the idea is feasible.
  3. Design and execute experiments to show the design is superior to competitors.
  4. Write the paper to make others understand my idea and experiments.
  5. Submit the paper, and hope my paper is better than most submissions in the same conference.

The Idea Phase

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Heat and Monsoon

Junxiao Shi

Tucson has four seasons: spring, summer, monsoon, and winter. Located in the desert, the climate is very different from my hometown Shanghai. I have been accustomed to Tucson's climate after living here for six years.

Summer Heat

The summer is extra long. @TheTucsonHeat arrives in April or earlier, and would not leave until Halloween at end of October. Thus, seven of the twelve months belong to the summer.

Heat is the number one weather related killer in Arizona. House cooling is not optional. Heat warning signs are everywhere:

"the heat is on" sign in Joel D Valdez Main Library

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Heavy Iron Stuff

Junxiao Shi

I started going to the gym regularly during my fourth through sixth years at University of Arizona. Weight lifting helped me to lose weight of up to 30lb, and replaced some of my body fat with juicy muscles.

How It All Started

I have been swimming since the second day I arrived in Tucson, but my body looked the same, because my roommate was cooking large bowls of white rice and fatty meats for me. Since I moved to University Arms and started living alone, I decided to change things up. I started running on treadmill and using the elliptical trainer on and off in the Campus Rec. I was thinking to eat less and cut back on ice cream.

I ate only one apple at the breakfast of Oct 14, 2014, and felt hungry two hours later. I wondered, am I eating too little? To find the answer, I decided to calculate how much calories I was eating on that day. I searched online for a "calorie calculator", and found MyFitnessPal. It is not only a "calculator", but also an app to keep track of how much I ate. I made my first entry:

MyFitnessPal food diary on Oct 14, 2014

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On Two Wheels

Junxiao Shi

Tucson is walkable when staying around UA campus and downtown area. To go farther, I often ride a bus with six wheels, hail a taxi with four wheels, or drive a rental car behind one wheel, all of which costs money. More frequently, I would ride a bike on two wheels. I enjoy riding a bike because it is free: I can go places without buying a ticket, and I have the freedom to go anywhere without worrying about missing the bus or being unable to find parking.

Rillito River Park, π day, 2015

First Ride on Cat Wheels

Cat Wheels bike sharing program, offered by Parking & Transportation Services, loans bikes to students for free. I can pick up a bike at any parking garage, ride for a whole day, and return by 16:00 the next day. Since garages are only open on weekdays, a bike borrowed on Friday won't be due until Monday, making this a plusgood deal.

my first Cat Wheels rental bike

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Share LaTeX Document on Netlify

Junxiao Shi

My dissertation is finally finished. Before finishing my dissertation, I was eager to share it with my classmates so that they could read and give me suggestions. Normally, I would give them read-only access on the Git or Subversion repository containing my dissertation, so that they can check out the LaTeX source files, and then compile the dissertation. This procedure creates a hurdle for them, because LaTeX is normally not installed on mobile devices they might use.

For most people, the solution would be sending PDF attachments. However, when I add more and more text and pictures into my dissertation, the PDF becomes increaseingly large, and I don't want to send large files and use up the quota of my and my classmates' mailboxes. There is a better solution.

Netlify is a free hosting service for static web sites. It provides a Node.js client app, which can deploy a prepared website from the command line. It can also pick up commits into a git repository, and compile the website from source code.

While my dissertation is not a website, hosting it on Netlify is totally feasible. Although Netlify's continuous deployment does not support LaTeX, I can still compile the PDF locally, and upload it to Netlify. To do so, I added a Makefile rule:

REVISION = `git rev-parse HEAD`

dissertation.pdf:
  # normal build steps

upload: dissertation.pdf
  rm -f www/*.pdf
  cp dissertation.pdf www/$(REVISION).pdf
  echo '<!doctype html><title>paper</title><h1>Named Data Networking in Local Area Networks dissertation</h1><a href="'$(REVISION)'.pdf">revision '$(REVISION)'</a>' > www/index.html
  netlify deploy -t ndn-lan-thesis -p www
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Meet the World at International Student Association

Junxiao Shi

Most of my social life during my six years at University of Arizona was at the International Student Association (ISA). I made friends, made frenemies, and had fun through events and gatherings organized by ISA.

ISA Trail Dust Town visit, Apr 04, 2013

The Very First Event

Every incoming international student is required to attend the International Student Orientation, organized by International Student Programs and Services (ISPS). In the 2011 orientation, ISPS recruited a group of student workers, called Peer Integrators (PIs), to assist with the orientation, and to plan and participate in orientation social events for new international students. One of the social events was a campus race on Aug 14, 2011, organized by Morris Zhou, a PI from China. I participated in this event because its name sounds like my favorite TV show The Amazing Race.

The goal of this event was to make students familiarize with the UA campus. Each team of two or three students were given a sheet of hints, each referring to a location on campus. Within one hour, the team must visit as many locations as they can, and take pictures of the team members in front of those locations. The team that gets the largest number of correct answers would be awarded the winner.

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I am a Moviegoer

Junxiao Shi

I watched over 150 movies during my six years at University of Arizona.

What did I Watch

My favorite genre is action and adventure (paid link). I love seeing superheroes save the world, because they bring hope to our world. My favorite character is Spider-Man (paid link), because he only does good things and is full of positive energy.

I also frequently watch science fiction (paid link) films. I particularly enjoy films set in the outer space, such as The Space Between Us (paid link) and Passengers (paid link), because the weightless shots are breathtaking.

My third favorite genre is drama (paid link). Some of my favorites are National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (paid link), Nebraska (paid link), and Instructions Not Included (paid link). I can have a good laugh out of them.

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