misc

This page contains a list of resources that I have found particularly useful and helpful during my academic career, including tools that I recommend to my students, as well as a few interesting talks, podcasts, and texts related to my hobbies.

tools

The list includes various engineering tools that are useful or even necessary when working on a thesis or a research project.

  • valgrind - the most standard and useful tool for debugging memory errors and bugs on Linux.

  • ccache - speed up compilation of C/C++ programs.

meta

  • You and Your Research by Richard Hamming, a must-watch for PhDs, researchers, and engineers.

  • Scientific Benchmarking of Parallel Computing Systems: twelve ways to tell the masses when reporting performance results - the “art of the scientific benchmarking” paper by Prof. Hoefler, covering the most important aspects of gathering and interpreting measurements data on computing systems.

  • The Science of Scientific Writing by George D. Gopen and Judith A. Swan, a short and very useful paper on writing papers.

  • How to Write a Great Research Paper great talk by Simon Peyton Jones with many helpful recommendations and tips. The most important lesson from this talk: practice paper-driven research by beginning with a paper draft, as explaining the idea helps to find key challenges and weaknesses and quickly identify which ideas are worth working on.

  • How to Give a Great Research Talk another great talk by Simon Peyton Jones. The most important lesson from this talk: focus on one key message, present it very deeply and with many details, use examples to drive the narrative, and omit other details from the paper. The audience should remember the one major contribution of your work.

  • Leslie Lamport on Writing Papers
  • what is the most important reason to write a paper? “You have done something that you are excited about”. Don’t include jokes in papers, don’t submit papers because conference deadline is approaching and you want to be there, bad thinking cannot lead to good writing. Use formulas and solid examples to present the ideas, instead of long and verbose descriptions in plain English.

history

  • (Podcast) The History of Rome - an excellent podcast covering the entire history of ancient Rome in almost 180 episodes.

  • (Text) Why the Classics - a poem by Zbigniew Herbert, a famous Polish poet who has been exploring classic authors and mythology extensively in his works.

  • (Video, PL) Początki narodu polskiego..? - a lecture on the beginnings of the Polish nation by Prof. Henryk Samsonowicz, one of the most accomplished Polish historians.

  • (Video) (EN) Napoleon the Great? - a debate on the legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte between Andrew Roberts and Adam Zamoyski.

  • (Video) [Barbarossa] The Major Errors and Blunders - Or why Barbarossa Failed The WWII and Eastern Front have been extensively exploited by the pop culture, spreading many myths and half-truths. This video by the Military History Visualized, a YouTube channel created by a German historian, covers the usually ignored problems of logistics and intelligence, providing a high-level overview of the Barbarossa campaign and its ultimate collapse.

  • (Book) Ring of Steel - major and popular history books on world wars tend to focus on the perspectives of Allied powers. Instead, this book provides a very wide and in-depth analysis of the German and Austria-Hungary empires before and during the First World War, covering the geopolitical, ethnic, economic, and agricultural situations of both countries. A highly recommended read to learn the other perspective on the Great War.