In this 2013 vlog, the creator (a Stanford PhD student in Computer Science) provides a personal update after a two‑year hiatus. He shares channel statistics (5 M video views, 1 k daily website visitors, 60 app sales per day, 6 k Facebook likes) and then showcases the tech and activities that keep him busy. He demonstrates his Google Glass device, mentions developing apps for it, and uses it to record the video. He briefly practices juggling with his roommate. The bulk of the vlog is a bike tour that takes the viewer from Stanford’s historic CS department (featuring old computers, Apple II, early Google server exhibit) through Palo Alto’s residential streets, past landmarks such as the Apple Store and Steve Jobs’s former home, and finally to Google’s main campus and the nearby secretive Google X labs. He references his summer internship at Google, where he runs large‑scale deep‑learning jobs on thousands of machines, building massive neural networks for image and video understanding—his core research at Stanford. He also shows campus amenities (electric‑car charging, bike‑share, conference bikes) and hints at internal facilities (micro‑kitchens, massage rooms, gym). The vlog ends with a reflective note about his AI research keeping him desk‑bound, a promise to return to YouTube, and a casual sign‑off.
Chapters
Hello internet! So it seems like the last video I posted is now 2 years ago, and since I missed you guys, I thought I should fix that with a video special. In this video, I'm going to show you a bit of what's been keeping me busy, but before I get to that, very briefly, some updates. My videos have now been viewed more than 5 million times, which is quite a lot. It's pretty amazing that one person can have the potential to take a few hours of his time and produce something that is enjoyed by millions of people for years down the road. That's pretty awesome. The website is also doing well and sees a steady stream of 1,000 visitors per day. The Android and iOS apps are also doing well, they sell about 60 per day. And lastly, my Facebook page now has more than 6,000 likes. So for those of you who like it, thank you for your support, and for the rest of you, you should like it. Um, I hardly ever post though, so it's kind of useless. Alright, so what has been keeping me so busy? Well, I'm not constrained to the desk anymore, and that's related to the first reason I'm so busy, and that's this thing that I'm wearing on my face right now. Um, I'm one of the first few thousand that have access to this device called the Google Glass. And so basically what it is, is it's a little computer here that you wear on your face. It's got a little display in there, and it can overlay things on top of your vision. So things like emails, alerts, and so on. It's connected to the internet, so you can do Google searches, and you can record videos, pictures, and so on. So you can see that the display is turned on because I'm recording right now. And so since I do a lot of programming as well, I've been writing quite a few apps for it, and so that's been kind of exciting. And so this device is also the reason I can take you around a bit today. I also have a roommate who's really into juggling, and so that's kind of what I've been doing a bit of as well. I'm trying to learn. And so I knew for a long time how to do basic juggling of 3 balls. Cascade. I've also been trying to pick up juggling of 4 balls, but I'm not very good. So let me show you around a bit.
Always wear a helmet. Oh, mad skill.
We're at Stanford. Alright, and this is where I work. This is the Computer Science Department here at Stanford, and I'm a PhD student here. And let me tell you, that takes a lot of work. Let's take a look inside. This place has a lot of history as well, so you'll see a lot of really random museum-like exhibits inside the building. Computers, old computers, old computers, tapes. Apple II, Macintosh. And this was at some point a robot. So this is from a really long time ago. Some of you may also know that Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the co-founders of Google, also used to be PhD students here. So they walked the same halls, and they started Google here. And the first Google server actually ran somewhere downstairs in the basement, and it used to be an exhibit. Speaking of Google though, I'm interning there over the summer. I actually need to go over for a bit because I need to start some jobs that take several days to run on Tens of thousands of machines. I'd like to get those running. All right, let's go over. This is Palm Drive. On one end you have Stanford and on the other you have Palo Alto. Let's check it out.
Don't try this at home.
All right, this is Palo Alto. From here we're going to go to Google. It's about a 30-minute bike ride. Cultural landmark: Apple Store. These are the streets of residential Palo Alto. I like to joke that this is where the American dream happens. There are lots of very beautiful expensive houses here. We're going by another landmark here, by the way. This is the house where Steve Jobs used to live before he passed away. People still leave flowers sometimes. Almost at Google, by the way. Cafeteria there I really like. That's where Larry Page sits. I heard that people tried to install a zipline that went through here. And we're arriving to the main campus here.
I see some people are playing volleyball.
We have a dinosaur. See the dinosaur?
Right there.
What's up with that? This is where we eat.
The main lunch area.
We get quite a lot of tourists here. Best parking spots get electric charging stations, and usually you see a whole bunch of Tesla electric vehicles parked right here. But right now it's holiday, so I can show you briefly these bikes. Basically, you see them positioned all over the place on the campus, and you just kind of grab them and you ride off. And so this basically helps people get around different buildings, go for different meetings, and so on. Very, very helpful. And you just drop it off wherever and you're off. This is what it looks like from a hill nearby.
So we have Google, Stanford, you can see the Hoover Tower, just barely, San Francisco, Bay Area, San Jose, NASA Ames.
Anyway, I can't be too specific, but we are right now very close to Google X. Secret laboratories, home to projects like Project Glass, Project Loon, and the self-driving car, which by the way I had a chance to drive in just a couple weeks ago. It was pretty awesome. Unfortunately I can't show you guys around here too much because obviously they don't want me to leak the anti-gravity device and stuff like that, so you know, we'll stay away. All right, let me just take a quick break because I got tired from all the biking. Alright, still got it. By the way, this contraption here is a conference bike, so several people are sitting facing each other and they're pedaling and the thing is going in one direction. It's kind of cool. So this is where I work, but of course I can't take you guys inside. At Google, by the way, I work on something called deep learning, and what that comes down to is that we're building huge neural networks, and these supposedly function like the human brain does, and we're trying to get them to look at images and videos and figure out what's in them. And this is a really challenging task, and it's also the subject of my research at Stanford. So that's what these jobs are about. All right, that was fun. It's time to go back to Stanford now. From one lab to another. I wish I could have shown you guys the insides— micro kitchens, the massage room, the gym, the showers. Lots of fun stuff inside. I guess you'll just have to study computer science and come work here if you want to see it.
The 101.
Palo Alto at night is much more charming. I think it's much harder to see now, but coming back to Stavarn, just a bit more work to do. And we're back where we started. All right, well, that's it for now. I hope you guys had as much fun watching the video as I had making it, and I hope you'll forgive me that I'm not more active on YouTube. I'm kind of trying to solve this artificial intelligence thing and it's keeping me a little busy. But anyway, that's it for now. Keep on cubing, keep on rocking, and I will see you guys later. I'm not constrained to the desk anymore, and that is because of this first item that's been keeping me busy. Oh no, I can't show you because my roommate is using the bathroom. I'm gonna dismount because I don't want to kill myself.
