From Barnesville to Barcelona and Back 
by Andrew Kerr
March 2006

Andrew Knight grew up in Barnesville, Georgia. He wrote me a very succinct e-mail replying to my query about who he was and what he did. I couldn't pen a better introduction myself. In his words:

I am a 4th year Senior in Computer Science.
My specialization is in Graphics & Visualization.
I was a TA for CS2130, Languages & Translation.
I studied abroad in Barcelona, Spain this past summer.
I am currently involved in researching navigation techniques for large collections of unfamiliar music.
This semester is my last as an undergraduate.

How do you describe Barnesville to Atlantans?

It's much smaller than what most people are used to, so I tell people from Atlanta that a hundred people graduated within my senior class. When I was in middle school the high school and the middle school were in the same building. While I was in high school they went to separate buildings.

What did you do to pass the time there as a high school student?

I got a part time job working at a computer and cell phone store. I hung out with friends, went to high school football games, all the normal stuff.

I really enjoyed ping pong. I played that pretty much every day. I played in tournaments at the school. There was no competition between schools. I had a ping pong table at home, and the school had several in a courtyard that we could play during lunch. I haven't played in quite some time. But everytime I walk by a ping pong table it's tempting!

Barnesville is about an hour outside of Atlanta, which seems moderately accessible. Did you ever go into the city as a teenager with your friends?

Most of the time I stayed in Barnesville. But we'd head up toward Atlanta where we'd go to malls to see movies occasionally.

Your father is the career/technology supervisor at Lamar County Comprehensive High School. Was it weird seeing your dad in the halls of your school?

Not really. He worked there during my junior and senior year in high school. He respected my space and didn't really interfere with what I was doing.

Were you always interested in computer science?

The interest started when I was around 12 or 13 years old. I started primarily with video games. I'm still very interested in video games and developing video games. I've just always been amazed that you can write code to tell a computer what to do--and then it does it. That's my main interest area, developing video games. But in order to get a job with a good company doing that sort of work you have to be good--and lucky.

Why did you choose to come to Tech?

I knew they had a good computer science program, it was close to home, and I'd have the Hope Scholarship. Overall I really have enjoyed it. I learned a lot and have met a lot of intelligent and cool people. From time to time you think twice about it. Tech truly does push you to your limits sometimes. But I'm always happy that I've done it after the fact.

How was the transition from Barnesville to Tech?

It wasn't hard for me because I truly understood that it was going to be completely different. I think students who are used to somewhat difficult high schools are more likely to be caught by surprise.

As a Tech student you went abroad to study in Barcelona. Why? And what did you study there?

It's the program that the computer science department pushes the hardest. I thought it was an excellent idea. Students who had gone in previous years had had an unbelieveably good time. It was my first trip to Europe. I really wanted to travel to several different countries while I was over there. In addition to Barcelona, I got to see Paris, Rome, and London.

Tech has 40 or more study abroad programs in numerous countries.

Did you get a chance to explore the fun side of Barcelona?

Oh yeah, definitely. Their sleeping schedule is really strange over there. They take siesta in the middle of the day--a nap. You can get to a club at midnight and the place is dead. But things don't really start hopping until 2 or 3 o'clock. At the clubs you meet people passing out flyers for clubs that open when the sun comes up. We heard from people over there, the locals, that it's starting to move away from that toward a standard 8 to 5 workday. But it's still pretty much like that right now.

What are your current living arrangements like?

I'm in one of the on-campus apartments. I live with three other rooommates. We share two bathrooms and a living room and a kitchen, and we each have our own bedroom. It's much better than the freshman dorms where two people have to share a room. One of my roommates is from Barnesville. He went to high school with me. The other two, me and my friend from high school met freshman year.

One roommate is computer science, one is aerospace, and the other is civil engineering.

Describe your current research.

The idea is that people have larger and larger music collections nowadays, and they're not always aware of the majority of songs they have. We group the music in terms of similarities extracted by computational means, factors one might not consider when listening to the music. Some basic factors are primary and secondary beats and the ratios between those beats. We are grouping the music visually, so you won't actually see individual songs. You'll be able to enter all your songs, run the program on your songs, and it will generate a world of music, something that looks like a planet, an earth. There would be continents where similar music is. On the continents there would be mountains and valleys. Say you know a particular song you like and you could find that song. It would show you where that song is located on one of the continents, and just from proximity you would know that the songs near that are very similar.

Me and R. Mitchell Parry, a doctoral researcher are both kinda thinking this up. His research is actually into extracting the properties from the music. He had the idea of using some sort of navigation using the properties he extracted.

Sounds very relevent to today's digital music generation. What will happen to you after you graduate?

I'm going to go into graduate school at Tech. I'm going to use the fast track program. It's for computer science majors with a particular GPA, and if you can get a letter of recommendation from a research professor they'll pretty much let you go straight into graduate studies.

Your father describes you as a model to many at Lamar Comprehensive High School. Is that just fatherly affection talking there, or do you continue to have ties to your old school?

I'm still friends with some people who are in high school, though there's a big age difference now. I've done a transition camp and went in and taught during the summer to help rising freshmen--people coming in from the middle school to the high school. I worked in the computer lab.

After you finish with your educational experience, do you see yourself staying in Georgia or moving elsewhere?

Unless I can get just an unbelieveable job somewhere I'm just going to try to get a job in Georgia. There are several gaming companies in other states; if I got a job with them I would have to move. But if I got a software development job, I'd rather just stay here.

What advice would you give to high school students getting ready for the college experience?

I think the biggest piece of advice you could give is to expect a much different work load. Your responsibilities increase enormously. And you should enjoy your new freedoms, but not overuse them, because you could easily get yourself in trouble and get behind in school.