Patrick Lam

Thoughts and travels of Patrick Lam

Bring less stuff!

Happy Reading Week! This week’s life tip is, for now, most relevant to those of you not from the Greater Toronto Area, if you happen to be going home for the week. Experience shows that it will apply to many of you in the next few years. Tip: Bring less stuff! There is often a skill versus stuff tradeoff. With more skill you can often improvise for having less stuff. A technical example is being able to use vim versus having to use a heavyweight editor that is tied to a particular operating system.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Sunday, February 16, 2020

Rock climbing in Wanaka

MP and I joined a NZAC Wellington club trip which was planned in two parts: Wanaka sport climbing and Darrans alpine granite. We only signed up for the sport climbing part. The granite part got rained out and people did more alpine objectives around Queenstown/Wanaka. Thanks to Derek for organizing! Driving We spent almost 0 time in Queenstown, driving directly to the Pak’N’Save grocery store just outside the airport and then to Wanaka over the Crown Range (highest main road in New Zealand!

Posted by Patrick Lam on Wednesday, February 12, 2020

Look at the Details

This week, we went to the Rangiwahia Hut for a walk (“tramp”) and then to some caves with glow worms. We have seen glow worms at night in Wellington but we were here four hours before sunset, so no glow worms for us. Today’s tip: looking closely at things can reveal unexpected details.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Sunday, January 26, 2020

Don't be a weka

Kapiti Island is a nature reserve from which the New Zealand Department of Conservation has removed non-native predators (possums, rats, etc.) Weka is not just a machine learning toolkit, but also a vulnerable flightless New Zealand bird. The bird will steal your lunch that is right in front of you on the table and run away with it if you don’t chase after it. Life tip: Don’t be a weka.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Sunday, January 19, 2020

2019 retrospective

New year, new website! I hope to start breaking out of Associate Professor Purgatory in 2020 and what I’ve accomplished in 2019 will lay the groundwork for that. Professional I completed my 3 year 4 month term as SE Director. It’s been rewarding but work/work balance means that I’ve had less time to spend on research. SE Director I was thrilled that my students successfully nominated me for the Friend of EngSoc award.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Tuesday, December 31, 2019

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Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo; patrick.lam@uwaterloo.ca

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