Geometry Wars

Arggghhhhh! I finally managed to break out of my high score slump and best my previous high score, only to find out that my profile was logged in on the drums, not the controller I was using. Naturally I couldn't switch it so that it would save the score. *sigh* Time to go try and get something on the same order of score again. (Score was 927,785, M^2 and Mason were watching.) Back to practicing.

That Day

Happy Christmas to all :) Hope your day and vacation (if any!) is going well!

Even more work...

So I got a great email today with results back from one of the people I want to collaborate with that I spent a lot of time talking with at the conference. Some great results and stuff to look into.

Unfortunately, my day was already heavily scheduled with some work on verifying the energy model parameters, and by the time I'd gotten the email I was deep into that work and it wasn't looking like it would end any time soon. So I wrote a quick reply and continued. It's now nearly 3am, but everything is looking good, whew. I didn't actually work straight through until now, there was a two hour break for some raiding (ZA again) and then dinner w/Mason, which was excellent and there's lots of leftovers which I need to go eat. :)

Sunday is for...

Grading finals. Sigh, it took 7 hours. And that was after a huge session friday (6 hrs+) which had most of the TA's present (maybe 9 or so? though I wasn't there due to the traveling), and it still took 5 of us that much time to finish stuff up. So yeah... my sunday was a bit busy, but at least that class is (nearly) done with. Just a bit more cleanup when I get some late quiz grades in and it'll be done with.

Saturday is for... (Open Thread)

My saturday: Chilling. Oh yeah. Played some Bioshock, raided ZA, now I'm just chilling. How about you all?

This was a triumph

I'm making a note here:
HUGE SUCCESS.

Ok, so that's not totally what the trip was, but that's how I felt thursday afternoon after my talk. I spent most of tuesday night working on it (again, I'd been working on it for nearly a week), and got a small amount of sleep. I went 3rd in the session, which we'd decided on because it made a nice transition from general biological (but non-DNA) systems to the DNA systems like mine and those in the fourth talk. The whole conference was on Decision and Controls, which is a much different area from mine, and the point of the session was to introduce problems in biology that were molecule-level which controls people might find interesting.

My talk itself was about 20 slides total, and we were scheduled for 20-25m each, plus some questions time. I caught myself speeding up talking early and managed to slow back down: one of the problems when giving a talk is usually speaking too fast, making it hard to understand. Somehow all the pieces I wasn't sure would flow together actually did, even in my practice an hour before the transitions just weren't working, but they did when I actually gave the talk. There were several points I wasn't sure were getting across, and it was really difficult to connect to the audience: we were in one of the grand ballrooms, which could easily seat several hundred, but there were only about 30-40 people in the audience (fairly typical for the biological controls track) and so it was really difficult to gauge how well people were following. I managed to reiterate the main points three different times in different ways, so I'm pretty sure it came across clear. Anyways, I managed to finish and get to the acknowledgments slide right at 23 minutes. Speaking of those, there's some people who I want to thank here, cause they couldn't see the presentation: Mylanda, M^2, Erik and L: Yall kept saying it would be fine and it was. Thank you again for the support. I thought of Mylanda's comment as I was walking up to start the talk and everything seemed easier: (paraphrasing): "You've GM'd tons of games, just think of them as players and you'll do fine".

So yeah. I got to the question section and thought I'd have maybe one or two, about normal for the other talks I'd seen. As one of the other guys who gave a talk in that session put it: "Yeah, when you finished your talk I went to the bathroom. When I came back you were still answering questions." And they weren't just confused questions, but a lot of very good insightful questions.

So the talk went very well (or so I've been assured by just about everyone who went), and the conference as a whole was very good. I didn't understand a lot of the subjects of the other talks, so I spent more time talking with people, working out new ideas on stuff to collaborate with them. I also met someone who I'd known as an undergrad (we'd worked on a learning systems project course together) who's now very well known in the decision/control field, and actually remembered me.

I finally understand!

I think it's been over twenty years, but I finally understand. Jazz is not something that should be experience passively, like listening to a CD without the context. It's meant to be heard live, when you're so close to the performers you can drop some bills in the hat and ask for a request, while they're still playing and no one else can hear you. It's music that you are a participant in, your enjoyment feeds back to the band and it makes you feel good.

That was my experience today, and my personal understanding what it is that I was missing about jazz which before now I've never really liked to listen to. I went out to dinner today with some of the people from the conference, and it was brought up that they were probably going to a jazz club afterwards. I figured I could go to dinner and then go my own way, but at dinner it was brought up that it was Preservation Hall that was being referred to. The only thing I could remember about that name (as I did have a memory associated with it) is that my mom would love to go there or hear the music there (or both). So I went. We got there around 7:20 and were first in line - the doors open at 8pm, it's 10$ to get in, and there's literally about 8 benches and some chairs around the edge of the room, and after that you can stand. No food, drinks etc are served there, and it's a very small space. It was a perfect venue for the music.

Thursday night is brass band night, and the group playing was the New Birth Brass Band. They were excellent the entire night, taking two breaks and playing for about three hours. They had a banjo, bass drum, snare drum, tuba, trombone, trumpet and sax, and all of them were excellent.

There were two things that stood out among the performances: the first was a request, by a couple who were celebrating their 15th wedding anniversary - Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World. The entire audience helped sing along while the couple held hands and the band played it for them. The second was something I noticed the entire night: there were many young ones there, babies and very young kids of tourist parents. The babies were super calm and appeared to love the music, and the same for the kids. What a neat experience for them, and what a relief compared to the craziness that is bourbon street.

Restaurant Review

Just a quick post tonight, for I still need to work on the presentation some (it's tomorrow at 1:30pm).

Tonight's dinner was at a restaurant called the Louisiana Bistro, a few blocks away from Canal and Bourbon streets in New Orleans. Pretty small place, wasn't crowded and the group I was with had made reservations. The menu was very simple: five entrees plus today's special (which I didn't notice until leaving, so I don't recall what it was), a few appetizers and salad choices, plus a pretty large drinks list. I can't speak much about the appetizers, salads or drinks, as I didn't have either of the first two, and while I did have a coke, it was pretty normal. Most of the rest of the table had a red wine which was apparently pretty good, I had a dash so as to not be without something to toast with, but was glad it was only two sips worth as it had a weird aftertaste in the throat (but maybe that's normal? I dunno).

I got the entree called "Surf & Turf", though many of the other options looked very good, I had decided that since I've had sausage/duck/etc gumbo for two earlier meals, it'd be good to have something different (though that only ruled out two entrees, the others were short ribs, which I generally don't like, and a lobster dish). This entree was listed as pan-seared filet mignon with crayfish tail scampi and served on garlic mashed potatoes. This listing did not do it justice, nor could my words, however I should still try.

I ordered the filet mignon medium rare and it was served perfectly. The presentation was elegant - the filet was served surrounded by the scampi, on top of the mashed potatoes, and there was a plentiful amount of the cook's special cajun sauce over everything. Very appealing without being spare or pretentious. The meat itself was perfect, probably the best I've had, and upon adding the sauce it was just heavenly. Spicy without being overpowering, complementary flavors in the garlic potatoes and the scampi, and just one of the best meals I've ever had.

Uncanny

There's something uncanny here. I finally placed what it is, but those reading probably need some context.

I'm in New Orleans for the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control. Some may recall me working like crazy on a paper/session proposal a few months back, it was for this conference. I'm doing part of a tutorial session on biomolecules and possible feedback/control problems relating to them. (Yes, several cool things, for one I'm actually giving a talk! two, part of it is a small paper that's being published in the proceedings, three, I get to meet other people here and possibly get some people interested in my field.)

Anyways, the uncanny thing since I got here (tuesday) has to do with race: A large percentage of the people I've seen who work here are black. But I don't think I've seen a single conference attendee who was. There's certainly many different races and countries represented here, but it's still a pretty glaring gap. I think what bothers me about it is my own projection of what the people who work in New Orleans think about the conference because of that skewed proportion.

Maybe I shouldn't be bothered though, the people I've met here (both conference attendees and people who live/work around here) don't seem to be bothered. I certainly like being here, there's something about the south and how friendly people are here that I like.

Sunset

I saw this today outside the apartment as I was walking home. I thought it deserved a picture. It rained today, our first in a long while, and so the rainy season has started.That's from the corner where we live, looking down Cordova to the west.
This is from the crosswalk shown in the previous photo, same direction. I tried some without the flash and they actually turned out a lot worse - everything looked really washed out. Sort of weird that it had the opposite effect. The flash did make the signs look a lot cooler in these, but it was really the colors on the horizon that I liked. Sadly, they'd faded a little by the time I grabbed the camera, and even as I was taking pictures the effect was vanishing.

Mulligan?

I think I'd like a mulligan on this month. Go back to day 1 of the month, keeping my current memories, and do things over again. I don't think I'd do much differently, but there's a few small things that are very important that I'd want to change. And a few small things that are not as important that I'd want to change too - for one, writing more posts. Let's see if I can manage to do that this December any better. See you then!

Another Word!

This week's word is flanuer, as posted by Mason.

The first thing that popped into my head (as a definition for the word) was a person with a flan (dessert) for a head. Weird...

The next thing of course was someone who hunted the monster Flan (found in some Final Fantasy games).

Well, the actual definition is much more realistic than my versions. Oh well! :)

I wonder

I wonder if babies stick their hands (or other people's hands/fingers) in their mouth as a way of building up their immune system?

Well, not intentionally for that reason, but does it have any effect?

Anyways, sorry for not posting. May get better about posting, we'll see. We may be doing a word thing tomorrow, Mason is due to post the word sometime today on his blog, and then the wording can start!

Word (Recap)

I know this is coming a very short while after my actual post for the word 'myrmidon', but it's technically the next day. :) Just some thoughts here: I picked a pretty hard word, at least I found that what I wanted to do (write a short fiction story) was terribly complicated based on that word. Nothing sounded right, and I had a lot of trouble actually writing anything down. Still, something finally came out, and I liked it, though I will probably not go back and read it for fear of not liking it now.

There were a bunch of other people who posted, with a delightful variety of types of posts. I enjoyed reading all of them, hopefully those who participated liked writing them. Here's links to those other posts, if I didn't catch you in this list, just let me know and I'll add a link to the correct post. (I checked other blogs after posting mine, and if you haven't posted yet but still want to, no problem! Don't let this stop you. :)

Lemming - Word-post metapost

Mason - Today's word is "myrmidon"

Lidarose - Expanding my vocabulary

Jonathan - Myrmidon

Maybe more to come as I catch them! :)

So, if people are still interested, the first person to volunteer (in the comments) can pick the word for next week and announce it on wednesday and that way it'll be easy to post something on thursday! :)

Myrmidon (short story)

He woke up that morning with a sense of purpose. The day had yet to begin, but he was already dressing, strapping on his well-worn armor. Unhurried, he checked his weapons: the short blade, the sword, the longbow, they were all ready to be used. He left the barracks, stopping by the kitchen for a warm breakfast, and then began the climb.

The views from the walls of Shadow's Keep are majestic. Or terrifying, depending on which wall you look out from. This day he stood guard on the Eastwatch wall, highest of them all and the one that inspired fear. Many recruits had stood this wall and gazed out into the gloom that lay eastward, barely recognizable as a mire that lay between tightly knit mountains. They were always assigned to the Eastwatch once during their first week. After their watch, he could always tell which would stay on as guards, and which would leave after their five years. The ones who stayed on had a purpose.

This day the mire was quiet. He took his place on the wall, exchanging a silent recognition with the guards leaving their posts, and the ones taking them. It would be an uneventful day, he could already see that, and for which he was grateful. It was not that long ago that the horrors had risen and the Eastwatch had been breached. He could still feel the burning touch that had left him with a permanent limp, no matter how the healers tried to treat it. Shifting weight, he again tested the leg. It was a habit now, to ensure he could rely on it in a fight, that he would not break when pressed into combat.

The day passed, lunch came and went, and finally the darkness came. He gazed out into the east one last time before his replacement made it up to the wall. The descent was the same, poorly lit with the dark, but he did not need the light to know the route. He hadn't needed it before, either. The courtyard was empty, and he went to the kitchens for dinner. It was quiet, mostly empty as he sat down to eat. After a while, an unmistakable figure entered the kitchen, the king's sorcerer, the appointed lord of the keep. He knew the sorcerer would come, had known why the whole day.

It was the last day of his fortieth year on the walls of Shadow's Keep. The rules were the rules, and he would not break them. A nod to the sorcerer. The usual things were said, he had seen and heard it several times before. He was given the letter, the one which would give him any position he wanted in the city, a merchant's life, a landowner, or just a quiet retirement. It was unwanted, and he could tell the sorcerer knew that, but would not change it. He said his goodbye to the others, and slept his last night in the Keep.

He did not wake up the next morning. His purpose was gone.

Word!

As promised, I've picked the word to write about tomorrow.

The 'rules' are very simple: write a post this thursday (tomorrow) which involves in some way the chosen word. It could be whatever you thought of to write when free associating on the word, it could be a story with some relation to it, whatever you like.

A lot of people mentioned they'd try and participate when I brought up this idea, so if all goes well I'll link them in a post on friday, but regular readers can probably figure out how to find the other blogs as well. :)

And now, since I would guess people are still waiting to see what word was picked, here we go: myrmidon

I tried several different ways of picking a word, and usually ended up with stuff like 'and' and 'the', etc. So taking a slightly more non-random approach, I took a look at dictionary.com's word of the day list, and finding those fairly random and interesting, picked one from the last seven days that I thought might be interesting. Follow the link given above for the word of the day archive for the word, I think there's also a link to the full entry.

Darkness

There's something about the season change that has got me depressed. Sorry for not writing much, nothing has been coming to mind and I've been in an avoiding people sort of mood.

L thinks it may have something to do with the amount of light out, as she noticed a similar thing last winter. This could be it, though in a lot of cases I operate better when it's dark, there are some things that it needs to be light out for and it gets annoying when it's dark then as well.

Guest Post by L -- Guitar Hero III: The same, but better

"Make a post about Guitar Hero III so I can comment on it!" I ordered Z.
"But I haven't actually played it at all," Z pointed out. "You've played it; why don't YOU post on it?"
He was right; I had commandeered our brand-new Guitar Hero III (and brand-new wireless Guitar Hero III guitar) to work out some frustration after spending an hour failing to install Java on my computer.

The first significant difference with the new game was immediately obvious: its guitar doesn't work. Specifically, in our case, the blue key didn't do anything when pushed (it also did nothing). The good news is this is a known problem with an easy fix. The bad news is the fix involves a rubber band and looks dumb. I was in no mood for dodgy repairs, so I tethered myself to the 360 with our old guitar and prepared to rock.

I intended my rocking to be of the low-key, wussy variety, so I started my tour on the medium difficulty level. Major difference #2: Guitar Hero III is significantly harder than II. Each tier feels at least as hard as the corresponding tier+3 in GHII. Instead of Medium being Easy with more notes, it's now more like Hard without the sliding up and down. There are more notes closer together, more hammer-ons/pull-offs, and lots more jumping around on the keys (blue-green-yellow-green-blue, repeat as necessary). Good news for people who want more challenge; bad news for people who have already used up their tolerance for frustration by installing Windows Service Pack 2. *ahem*

One positive effect of the increased difficulty is that the songs have been better translated to the 5 Guitar Hero notes. In II, you didn't feel like you were actually "playing" the songs (rather than the game) until at least Hard difficulty; in III, you can get that feeling just a few tiers into Medium. The Aerosmith song was a good example of this; Weezer was another. The Weezer song in particular was extremely enjoyable; large sections are almost entirely hammer-ons or pull-offs, a feature that was limited to Hard or Expert songs in GHII.

To a certain extent, GHIII can get away with the overall increased difficulty because it's cleaned up a lot of the more annoying features of GHII/I. I very much appreciated the removal of the "screen shake" effect when you activate Star Power, and the *much* more obvious hammer-on/pull-off indicators certainly made Weezer easier. It's also easier to tell when you've hit a note correctly, because the note indicators rise up like a sink drain.

GHIII has also greatly improved on GHII's non-gameplay elements. The graphics are better, the people look more like people and less like puppets, and the singer actually lip-synchs correctly with the songs! Also, the addition of pseudo-plot has, so far (I'm only up to tier 5), been amusing. Not as amusing as the hand-made car noises in GHII, of course, but those are hard to beat.

If you have a console and no guitar, GHIII is a no-brainer. If you're just upgrading from a previous GH, though, it comes down to being willing to pay $60 for new challenges. Personally, I'm waiting to see how much GHIII gets played after November 20th.

Rattie Update!

Okay, time for an update on how the ratties are doing. First off, they are very sleepy. We've been told that rats should calm down and nap more as they get older. I'm not sure if it's just that these guys have a wider range of sleepiness or if they are actually just more relaxed. In any case, here's one of the better pictures of them sleeping:

Yes, that's Blue in the wheel, completely asleep. Cao Cao and Scotty are underneath the water bottle, also asleep. It's a favorite place to hang out. No, I don't know why. Could be the only place to get a drink in their town. In any case, I was hoping to get a better picture of Blue sleeping in the wheel, so naturally I opened the cage door:

Just fooling! We're not really asleep now that you've come to play with us! This ALWAYS happens, they can be the most adorable sleepy rats and I just want to sit one on my lap while I'm working on the computer, and BAM, full of energy soon as the cage door is opened. Oh well.

So a few days ago I got worried that Cao Cao managed to escape the cage, as he's been known to do so even with the doors closed and the top on. I thought this because I checked the cage and only saw the four rats pictured in this photo (taken around that time):
I ran around the house hunting him, called up L and asked if she'd seen him earlier, and finally went to get the yogurt drops as a last resort hunting method. I pull them off the shelf and shake a few times to make sure there are some left. Look over at the cage, the four rats are paying VERY close attention to me now, and then I see Cao Cao peek out of the hammock shown in the photo (on the right). What? I don't know, I saw the hammock but it looked like it was empty, and even looked in the sides (though not with the cage open). Anyways, he's in the hammock in the picture above, and the other four are shown in the picture. Yes. See that spot of grey-blue fur under Lu Bu's nose? That's Blue. He's being sat upon and was barely visible from any angle.

Another day recently, I got a mad gleam in my eye as I suggested that it was time to let the rats play (talking to L), while we were out in the living room. She immediately thought I had an Evil Plan (tm) to grab all the empty Dr Pepper 12-pack boxes and make a rattie fort. Actually, I'm not sure what I was thinking, but her plan was excellent, so I did that. Here it is:

It's got a total of four openings, the two you can see in the near area, and there are rattie heads poking out of the two in the back. The box on top is connected to the right side arm via a hole which the rats definately can use, which I was a bit worried about. They definitely like the castle, so it will stay around for a bit until it gets too chewed on, etc.

Anyways, that's about it for recent rat stories, so here's one last picture to finish up the post. This is Blue, being super-cute as usual:

When do you get to see them?

I did something today that I've been meaning to do for a while, which is to stop and talk on my way back from work. There's an old man who is often sitting along the sidewalk on chester in the afternoons, and he always seemed to enjoy being outdoors.

Today I stopped and talked with him. He is blind, and so I felt really awkward with some of the easy questions like how he liked the weather, as I was using my own perspective of how clear and bright it was. He didn't seem fazed at all and he liked it as well as it was nice and sunny. It took a while to figure out the conversation, in the sense that I wasn't really sure what I was intending to ask about (all I had known going in to it is that I had wanted to talk to him for a while), and I wasn't sure what was okay to talk about. It turned out that it didn't really seem to matter: he was happy to talk about anything. He asked about what I did and I gave the brief brief version, and then I asked about what he did, and I got to hear several really interesting stories. It turns out he didn't mind talking about his blindness, and it related a lot to what he had done for a living, so I got to hear about his job back in the 70's (he was a garbage truck driver), and how he gradually became blind. It turns out he's partially blind and can see faint shadows through one eye.

I found out he had kids, and grand kids, and he told me a lot about them. I then uttered the phrase "When do you get to see them?", and immediately was embarrassed, but he did not seem to mind. I do wonder what the appropriate term to use would have been. He mentioned he has never actually seen any of his children except the oldest, but we talked about that for a while and he seemed pretty ok with it, which isn't what I would expect from my perspective.

I also got to hear a story about when he was a kid, growing up in rural Louisiana, and about a time he went fishing in the creek. The setting reminded me a lot of when I used to go down to the creek near our house in North Carolina, and trying to catch crawdads.

Anyways... I am mostly writing this because I want to remember it. I hope I will get the courage to go talk with him again, as it was very interesting. I ended up finishing my walk home after a while, when his wife came over to see him, and I introduced myself to both before heading home. His name is Yhency (spelling unsure, that's what it sounded like), and his wife is Juanita. (and yes, I'm writing that here because otherwise my horrible memory for names will fail me)

Incandescence

So I just had this thought: it might be neat to think of a post title first, just any old post title, and then write something related to it. Or a short story that's called that title, or any old thing like that.

I had another thought (fulfilling my quota of two for the day): what if a bunch of people who read this blog all did the same thing? Maybe with the same word, maybe each picking a different word, and then posting it on the same day? That would be pretty neat to read a bunch of stories or posts with a similar theme.

If you're reading this and interested in trying it, let me know. I think some time next week would be cool to actually do it, and I can pick the word via random dictionary the day before and post about it so everyone synchronizes.

Multitasking

Continuing from sunday's multitasking attempts, I actually got some to work better on monday. In this case it was playing both L's shaman in WoW and my warrior, at the same time. The environment was PvP (player vs player combat) in a 40-man battleground, so the loss of efficiency from me playing both was a lot less impacting on the overall game than it would have been in a smaller match. There were several interesting strategies I tried: splitting viewpoints, supporting, serial combat.

Splitting viewpoints appeared to be the most effective: I would place one person in a defensive position while I played the other actively in another role - offensive or defensive in a different location. My spatial awareness adapted well to maintaining two viewports into the world, and so if the defensive person needed a reaction I could switch to them quickly and play at nearly full effectiveness. Since it was rare that both needed very active control, this was overall the most effective.

Supportive roles: I had L's character mostly support mine - healing and buffing and staying nearby to be able to do so. This was the second most effective but had some major flaws as it required input on several devices at once (primary character's keyboard, mouse, secondary character's keyboard) and that was hard to do well given the positioning requirements necessary for my primary character. The other critical flaw was if enemy players went for my supporting character, it was all over as I couldn't effectively fight them while having the supporting class evade them (as usually happens when someone is actually playing each).

Serial combat: Similar to supporting roles, but in the sense that I kept the second character uninvolved unless the primary character died, this let me have two chances at defending a node. Failed spectacularly when attacked by multiple enemies, or in one case (repeated a few times), by a single overpowered SL/SL warlock. Definitely had the most efficiency while playing of any of the roles, but overall effectiveness was pretty low.

Blur

Sunday went by in a blur. I think I did things today. I know I wasn't unhappy or anything.

I think the weirdness comes from trying to do too many things at once. At one point I was watching the world series (bleh), playing Halo 3 co-op campaign, and helping Mylanda, M^2 and L with a quest in WoW, and not really doing any of the three that well.

It did seem like a good idea at the time, as all three were things I wanted to do, but the combination was a little overwhelming. Maybe I should work up to it by doing two things simultaneously first.

Saturday! (Open Thread)

And now, the filler saturday post which will masquerade as an open thread!

In this post, Keanu Reaves will play Batman, Christian Bale will play the Human Torch, Hugh Jackman will be Cyclops, and Jean Grey will star as Emma Frost.

Whoa.

Retreat

The departmental retreat was today. It began way too early with a bus ride out to a beach somewhere west of here. We arrived and huddled indoors into nice room, where everyone promptly unpacked their laptops. Wireless was 10$ though, so no network for me. There were presentations, introducing the new grad students, talking about all the different CS groups, the ones whose profs were there and those without any present. Then the new faculty member gave a great presentation on some of his work, and we had managed to make it to noon without me falling asleep.

Lunch was good. I don't even remember what it was, except for one small bit: there was a pasta salad, it had some red peppers, salami slices and an excellent marinade. I wanted to go find the chef and ask how to make it. It was served again as a side for dinner, which was totally ok with me. After lunch we played a team game - computer science trivia! There were many categories of questions, including movie questions (where you could file the answers into a few categories: War Games, Hackers, The Matrix, Star Wars, etc), guess the number questions (How many colors did the Apple IIe have on its standard display?), and the best group, department trivia! The last one was the really big hit, as occasionally the responsible faculty member would be present and would recognize that it was about him, so when the group he was in answered the question, the rest of the groups who hadn't answered yet would quickly catch on. (I think the best of these was along the lines of "Which faculty member had a research paper published in Playboy in (some year I don't recall)?" That faculty member was present, and gave us the whole story after the question had been answered.)

After the trivia game, we headed outside. You may think that it's a shame that we went to the beach and didn't go outside until 3 pm. But really, it was completely overcast, smoke haze overhead, and pretty cold. Still worth going to the beach, but not the best of conditions. I grouped up with a bunch of other students and faculty who wanted to play volleyball, and spent all the time until the dinner doing so. Great fun, got to dive everywhere and generally look like I was expending a ton of effort (which I was) and being effective (not really), and so I had a lot of fun. Except now everything is sore, playing games on sand is really tough on some muscle groups that aren't normally used.

Review

Once again my PI (more on that later) comes to the rescue with well thought out, simple advice. I was having trouble reviewing a paper for an upcoming conference, mostly because I had expertise in some areas but not all the ones the paper was talking about. The advice: just comment about the parts you know, and note to the reviewing editor what your areas of expertise are. Oh. Much less stressed trying to figure out how to put things.

On PI: stands for Principal Investigator, and is essentially the person responsible for the lab, ie, the professor. Just a useful shortened version which gets used in academia sometimes. :)

Visibility: Limited

Though we are not in the path of any of the recent fires around LA and SD, the effects are definitely noticeable here. The air quality has been extremely poor since the fires started, and now that the winds are dying down the visibility is really poor, I think it's under a mile now easily, though I'm not a great judge of distance. Hopefully things will be under control and clearing up soon.

Totally Not A Spy, Honest!

One of the weird things in Team Fortress 2 (that originated way back in what, halflife? counterstrike?) is the ability to have a graffiti tag which you can spray onto the walls near you.
Typically these are just badly abused, but over at Three Panel Soul they have one of the best uses of a spray depicted: Proving you are not a spy! Totally awesome (as is the spray shown in the newspost for that comic), and I hope he posts the actual spray so that I can use it in game.

In other news, we saw Hot Fuzz today (rented it). Very funny cop movie that was in many ways a parody of other cop movies, but also really interesting in its own unique way. Definitely gets a thumbs up from me, and the final sequence was very awesome, in that you-know-it's-coming way which finally snaps and it actually happens.

A Special Moment

Yesterday was the baptism for C&J's baby Thomas. There were many neat things at the baptism and afterwards, but I just wanted to share one moment that was really special: Thomas was put back in his crib (in the main living room area) to see if he would go back to sleep, but he wasn't very happy about it and was instead investigating the people sitting nearby. Someone had the idea to sing the Manah Manah song to the baby. Frances, Jonathan, L and I all started singing the song, each taking turns on the solo. Thomas was enthralled! He gurgled and smiled and was very happy watching us. This led to more singing, and he was pretty amused the whole time, though a repeat of the Manah Manah song got a little less enthusiasm, especially for those of us singing bass (he appears to like sopranos best). But we ended with a moment that was just really fun: I started singing just a few notes, a rhythm really, and each of the others came in with improvisations, sort of a do-wop (?) thing without words, just each person singing to the same rhythm in their own ranges and making different harmonies. Really really neat, and Thomas spent a while figuring out whether he liked it, finally breaking into little smiles and laughs that sent F+L into laughter watching him. A really special moment.

Conversations

An interesting conversation was had today, and it was about having conversations with people. It was sparked by a book which had, for different professions, a list of questions you could ask them that might help start conversation. These questions were a bit outdated, but it led to some interesting methods of getting people talking being suggested by those of us talking about it.

I don't know how to continue this post to make it interesting to comment on, but I will mention several ideas: one was that (for a self-centered conversation), you can bring up a general area/idea that people are likely to ask questions about, for example, if you just traveled somewhere interesting, mentioning that can lead to many more questions about what it was like, and so forth. Another was that even with small-talk sorts of questions, it can help to give longer answers, because it gives more information people can use to continue the conversation, or to find a shared interest. I think there were several more ways mentioned, so if you were there, or know of something interesting about this, please post :)

Saturday! (Open Thread)

And now, the repeated post title, just because I can!

Today's open thread topic: Sandwiches. What's your favorite kind?

Travel Adventures

Friday's adventures were an exercise in being flexible enough to change plans as needed. The original idea(s) were to get people over to Pasadena, have dinner and play some board games, then go pick up Jonathan at the airport, and hang out for a bit.

Various parts that changed: meeting location turned into Redondo Beach, to make it easier on G&P and Mylanda, and we went to dinner there. The incoming flight was delayed, so timing would seem easier to make board games doable, but dinner took a while, to the point where I had to sneak out early to go to the airport (along with M^2, who came with to keep me company (Thanks!)). The flight ended up being only about 30 minutes late, and we ended up back at G&P's place before the dinner party got back! So there was a short walk over to see the pier and we got back right as they arrived. Then we ate a bit, spent a while talking, and went back up to Pasadena to sleep.

(Yes, I'm trying to catch up on updates, we'll see how that goes.)

Frisbee Day, pt 2

Sadly, this thursday was the mark of no more frisbee days til the sun decides to stay up later at night. Just not enough light so we weren't getting enough people showing up, and even with people showing up there wasn't that much time to play until it got really dark. Except for two weeks ago when someone brought a lighted frisbee (battery-powered), which actually worked pretty well as it made it easier to see the frisbee than it was to see anyone else. Anyways... there are still some games on saturday morning, but as I am not likely to wake up voluntarily at those times, I suspect I won't be playing much until next spring.

Calzones

Wednesday means it is Calzone night at Tarantino's, and we went there and ate calzones, it was just like old times and for that alone it was great, and the food was delicious as usual. This was the defining feature of the day - Mylanda was around for the career day at tech, and when that was over we hung out and finished the Halo 3 campaign and played a bit more.

Tuesdays

Went in to work, got very frustrated. Think I'm going to move offices to decrease the energy barrier to working in lab. Also had severe issues with the ITS wireless, which kept dropping my connection for long periods, then would work fine. (It's happening again today. I wonder if the sysadmins found anything when I asked about it on tuesday) So my laptop was usable, but with connection difficulties it was not entirely pleasant (I need cvs, ssh to our cluster, and so on to work comfortably).

Bleck

Monday: felt really ill the whole day, same sickness as last week. It's been coming and going, showing a gradual improvement and I'm down to a lingering cough today so it hopefully will be done with by the end of the week. Monday was bad enough that I took both a painkiller for headaches and a sudafed and ended up sleeping very soundly for much longer than I had been getting. Very helpful as I have been having trouble getting to sleep before that, but actually catching up on sleep appeared to help tremendously.

Hmm, oops?

So... I've been not posting for the last few days. (Writing this on thursday) No real reason why, except I haven't had any brilliant thoughts or even interesting ones to write down, so there's been some sort of energy barrier.

So I think I'll just fill in the space with non-interesting thoughts and what was going on in those days, so at least there's something there.

Sunday: almost had ethiopian (I think) food, but the timing didn't work out. People hung out at my place after dinner. Gaming was done, mostly Halo 3 with four players, doing local multiplayer and a bit of online. Very fun.

Saturday! (Open Thread)

Oops, it's sunday now though. Oh well! Hope you all had a great saturday, mine was very good. :)

So... how about them divisional championship series things they have in baseball? I haven't been actually keeping track, having sorta lost interest when 1) the Braves didn't get into the postseason and 2) the Yankees got eliminated from the postseason (yay!). I saw a quick blurb today that the Rockies are one game away from their first world series, that's pretty cool. :)

Oh yeah, this is officially a post for an Open Thread! So... if there's something you want to talk about, post! :)

Excited!

Mylanda is visiting this week! I can't wait to see him. :) So far the plans are for Cantor's on saturday night, and he'll be around the whole week. I'm hoping to get a RPG of some sort in sometime during the week, and I'm sure more will come up. I think most of the readers here (and in the area) who know him have been in on the emails, but if not please leave a note so we can include you :)

Externalized Thought

I have noticed many times, when riding the bus or just walking around, that there are a lot of people who appear to externalize their thought process into a verbal stream of consciousness. I have never had much luck trying to figure out why or how it works, I suppose usually because I get creeped out by those people pretty easily. Is it normal for people to externalize their thoughts like that, constantly? I certainly don't meet many people who do so in the college setting, so it's outside of what I would consider normal.

Hmm, anyways. Sort of a depressing thought, but it sorta fits my mood as I've been sick and not feeling much better yet.

I can see my house!

Or... I can see myself watching myself watching myself watching myself ...

Portal is a great game. The ending is superb, one of the best I've seen. The bonus levels are hard, the challenges are even harder and sometimes ridiculously so. The limited step count ones can be crazily difficult as they are very dizzy-inducing. Using a minimal number of portals is also challenging, but much more doable, as is the time-attack version.

So, the really quick review: Portal is a game based around a simple utility weapon: It can create portals. You shoot a projectile than when it hits a wall/ceiling/floor, marks it with a particular color (orange or blue) ellipse. When both colors are marked, a portal is opened between the two ellipses. Total momentum when traveling through the portal is preserved, but the direction changes to be relative to the ellipse. Energy is not conserved. This sets up some really crazy puzzles and uses for the portals, and within the context of a puzzle game it also sneakily develops a creepy plot. It's not a very long game, but the ending would be worth many times the effort it takes to get there. Now I just have to wait for more levels, by either the devs or perhaps the mod community. :)

Zoomp! (Open Thread)

I'm feeling a bit under the weather at the moment (cold - congestion/sore throat) so it's time for an open thread. To get things started, here's two links I found amusing:

Unitarian Jihad (via TNH's Particles on Making Light) - The Unitarian Jihad wrote in to the SF Chronicle. It actually got posted. It is awesome. I <3 Unitarians. :)

Team Fortress 2 Trailer: Demoman - An interview with TF2's Demoman. Any gamer will probably like this one, especially if you have played any FPS style games. (Also recommended are the other three TF2 trailers they have, I think I linked one a few days ago: Engineer, Soldier and Heavy)

Who's the...

... cutest rat to ever set foot in a Jamba Juice box? Blue is!
There's actually a great sequence of rats hopping in and out of this box, but this photo in particular I really like, for the expression on Blue's face. Here's a close-up version:

Super cute! Anyways, I actually copied photos off the camera, which is why I have this one. Still need to sort though, there were ~230 photos copied off, all new.

Rattie Update

The ratties say hi, approximately. Or at least, two of the keys they have stepped on today were 'h' and 'i', and thus they clearly meant for me to say hi to you all.

Other things they want passed on: They would like food donations. No, don't look at me like that. I know they are growing ratties, but even so I think they always want food donations. Even if they just had some wonderful stale chips, fortune cookies and other healthy snacks donated to them. They'll just stash it. They get lots of nutritional food too, but it gets eaten last. Except for the green leafy things which get happily dragged all over the cage until a spot is found where clearly none of the others will be able to take it.

The rats moved, which isn't surprising considering that L and I swapped which room was the bedroom. There's now a very nice table and couches setup in the old bedroom, which has yet to see use as a board game/rpg room, but which should serve pretty well once we do have a gaming night. The rats were horribly confused when allowed to run around in the new room, as all their usual hideouts were gone. They have taken to the closet doorway though, sitting on there and staring into the room, as well as generally climbing around the desk as usual.

Oh, and there might be pictures of the new stuff, but I have suffered a massive inertial attack courtesy of the camera and finding the cable to plug it in, so don't hold your breath. I think there are even pictures on there which were from the now fabled (well, not really) teaser post's intended ending point.

Body Part Identification

And now, the macabre humor. Or something like that. Here's team fortress 2, helpfully aiding with body part identification:


Funnily enough, this is pretty rare to have happy, usually the shot won't include any random body parts remaining after meeting an unfortunate demise. In other news, I found out how to take normal screenshots while playing too, will see if I actually get any good ones. I did manage to set up a sentry turret that had 3 whole engineers (including myself) repairing it, as well as the entire enemy team trying to destroy it. Ah, that was a good turret. I wish I had a screen shot of that set up, was a beautiful array of machinery laid out in a courtyard, that kept getting destroyed and then the engineers would pick up the pieces and rebuild after every enemy wave.

Nemeses

So, I got to play some Team Fortress 2 tonight. Totally awesome. Easy to get into, hard to master. I played around as a Heavy Weapons Guy (immortalized here) mostly, and had lots of fun. One of the best features happens when you die: it waits a few seconds, and then does a snapshot of the person that killed you, in their current state. Sometimes helpfully labeling things in the view, and usually offering an encouraging tip. If you keep dying to the same person, they become your Nemesis! Complete with an icon over their head whenever you spot them, and a glorious revenge bonus should you kill them. In fact, as I found out while dying horrible on the two forts map, you can have multiple at the same time! Nemeses! I got up to about 3 before a glorious run with a pair of medics healing me managed to drop the number back down. It adds a whole new dimension to the choice of targets. :) Later in the game, I swapped to a spy, snuck around and specifically went for my nemesis on the opposing team. Very satisfying to get the backstab.

Anyways, here's one of the screenshots of my death as a heavy weapons guy. Be warned, somewhat graphic death/blood shown along with the phong-shaded cartoony models.

And one more screenshot. Sometimes, when you die, you get rewarded with a shot of who got you that looks like this:

Spare Time

I've found it very useful to have the new laptop, as it's a lot more portable and generally useable than my old one. Today for example, I had a normal recitation section I was going to teach for CS1, and no-one showed up. Instead I got a bunch of work done while waiting around to see if anyone would show up.

I think in general it helps to have things close at hand: I may have mentioned before that I have trouble if I have ideas for blog posts and don't have anything handy to write them down. Clearly I should just carry my laptop around more places, but it's still a bit bulky to do so.

Hmm, maybe in a few years we'll all be using really small units with projected holographic displays... there's a dream. :)

Doing Nice Things

Some thoughts today on relationships, particularly the boyfriend/girlfriend relationship and the husband/wife one. The thing that struck me today has to do with just doing nice things for your significant other (hereafter referred to as 'SO'). Note that what I'm talking about is basically my experiences and observations, which are admittedly limited and not necessarily true in the general case.

Doing nice things for your SO seems like a common thing in the bf/gf relationship, it's part of courting: you surprise the other with a nice gift, or flowers, or a love note or whatever. It's almost expected in general in that type of relationship, regardless of whether it would be a usual thing for the people involved in other cases. This, to me, seems like a lie: it should exist in this type of relationship if you are that kind of person, or perhaps if you intend to be that way. Though social norms may suggest that since doing this is expected here, but not necessarily in a married relationship, you're not really being false by doing that here and not necessarily continuing, it doesn't seem right to me anyways. Unless of course you are going to continue to be that thoughtful about your SO in all the types of relationships, in which case you're just being true to how you are.

So what changes when you get married? I would say that it shouldn't change: if you're doing those nice things before getting married, it should be for good reasons, not the societal expectations. If that's the case, good for you! Keep doing them! They are special things and can really help a relationship. I know that for my own situation, the type of things that are nice surprises for L have changed over the years (correct me if I'm wrong, dear): for example, just calling her up at work just to say Hi and that I was thinking of her seems to help sometimes. Or if I'm going to get lunch at a weird time, bringing her food too and sharing it together in a quick break from work.

So, I guess what I'm really saying is that it's important to think of your SO, and if you think of something nice you can do for them, do it! The surprise and happiness they get from knowing you've been thinking/caring about them is a wonderful reward.

They Might Be Giants

Lem, Wendell, L and I just saw They Might Be Giants in concert, at the Ventura Theater. Wow, what a great show. I had been worried that maybe I wouldn't like the concert, but it was great!

Opening Act: Oppenheimer. A weird duo, one on synth and guitar, the other vocals and drums. I liked their sound though I couldn't really hear the words well (a common problem for me if I don't know the song well), so I may go look for their CD.

Highlights: There's a ton of these. New York City was the second song they played, and is probably my favorite TMBG song. Loved hearing it in concert, as the sound is different and good. Ana Ng was the third song and is one of my favorites, and the concert version is absolutely terrific compared to the album one. They hit a ton of my favorite songs and a bunch I didn't know which were also good. Birdhouse in your Soul was played somewhere in the middle, and Lem immediately thought we should call up Mylanda and let him hear it, which I agreed was a great idea. Sadly, it was probably a bit late to be calling him up, ah well.

Dancing: Another song in the middle of the concert started, and I immediately had to dance. L gave me a look and asked what song it was. It took me a few seconds of thinking to actually place it: The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight). Totally great and it had most of the crowd moving to it. They brought in three brass players (sax, sliding trombone, horn?) and did a bunch of the songs with those - Mr. Me was the first. Later there was a great section of solos by each of the players, and it led into Istanbul, with the brass players taking the violin part that's in the album version. Really really good.

Interlude: Speaking with the Dead. Yep, in the middle of the concert, they took a phone call from a dead person, Vincent Price. There was a great song-ish lead-up to it, and the entire bit was hilarious and there's pretty much nothing else I can think to say about it that could convey it. The rest of the concert, they played off the Vincent Price phone call - and now, a song about Vincent Price, in his previous incarnation as James K. Polk! They played both Meet James Ensor and James K. Polk, which was pretty cool.

Favorite song of the evening: She's An Angel. Already either my favorite or 2nd favorite (with NYC being the other), hearing it in concert was another thing entirely. Wow.

Humor: In between songs there was a lot of great humor, just funny mannerisms, making fun of each other or other things, etc. I can't really describe it well, but half the time between the songs we were laughing.

Encores: They came out for an encore, and announced that there would be twenty-four more songs. They then played Fingertips, which is a sequence of twenty-one different really short songs (originally on the album Apollo 18) and which worked REALLY well. Then there was a song of their new album, and then they left the stage again. I hadn't been counting at that point, but I should have - I knew Fingertips was at least 18 or so songs, but it wasn't til I got back that I actually checked. So it was not a surprise when they came back on the stage for a second encore: Mr Tambourine Man, originally by Bob Dylan and the more well known version by the Byrds. Really crazy to hear their take on it, but I liked it (as I also really like the originals). Then they finished with Doctor Worm, which they said was their favorite song, and it had a confetti launch near the end. Very cool. :)

Great concert.

A Day

I wish I could have all of today back again. I think I would have done things differently - scheduled the dentist appointment for a different day, gone to a class, spent the evening doing something relaxing. More importantly, I wish I had told L goodnight, or spent more time just talking with her this evening.

I guess it's stupid that I've only realized this many hours later, when I'm still feeling stressed, achey and tired, but not at all sleepy. L's asleep, and I don't want to wake her up now, I think somehow that while it might help me, she may be a bit cross at the early hour.

The only thing today that I don't think I'd have done differently was reading a book. I did that. Maybe tomorrow I can do more things right.

Short Review

I've read a few books recently that I am having trouble writing longer reviews of. So here's short ones:

Accelerando, by Charles Stross. There are nine chapters, divided into three sets of three. Each set follows one main character, roughly, and each chapter is another jump in technology. Each chapter also stands alone pretty well, and I found myself trying to project what the next chapter would be like and found it impossible. But looking at previous ones it fits together perfectly how things got there, so it was a really neat effect. :)

Thirteen, by Richard K. Morgan. Based on other books by this author, I went in expecting a cool main character, an interesting plot with unforeseen twists, and no happy ending whatsoever, though it would also be a good ending. I was not disappointed on any count. The main character was cool and very interesting, the ending I expected happened about 2/3 of the way through the book and the rest was a major twist, and the ending was very good, but not exactly happy. There were also several very interesting ideas about racial/genetic identity and stereotyping, which were in the context of the story.

I seem to remember another book which I should review here, but it escapes me at the moment. It's likely Assassin's Apprentice, as I read that on the plane home from MI, but I don't recall what I was going to say about it.

Remotely leading

Setting up and running something while you're not present to get direct feedback is pretty tough. I was organizing a raid saturday/sunday/monday, and saturday's one I wasn't actually going to be in. This made it pretty hectic of a day, I think I'd have been better off delegating that part to someone else, and just working on the stuff I had for sunday and monday. Oh well, maybe I'll have better sense and try that next time.

Gaming

This friday marks the end of the board gaming era in Pasadena. While I still love board games, one of easiest ways for me to get into playing them is a board games night sort of thing. And this was the last day Mason would be around, and thus there was gaming. It actually went towards guitar hero rather than board games, but the thought was there at least.

Farewell to England, Mason, and I'm looking forward to your visiting. I miss the board game nights already, you were always good about scheduling them :)

Parameterization

Lately I've been going back over some code that uses very large parameter files, comparing how the different source code(s) actually use the energy parameters, and what orderings/permutations they follow. It's been interesting, neither original source is written the way I'd like and how they actually use the different pieces is not always clear, so it takes a bit of work.

I had an idea today that I can't believe I didn't think of earlier though, which was how to actually split up the different file reading codes - I was setting it up as the same object and writing functions that could read either file. Stupid, what I should have done is write two objects that derive from the same class, and make each one read the appropriate type and interface that way. That'd let me use different sized data structures (one of the big issues), as well as being much cleaner for interface and requiring no computational overhead when switching energy models. Sigh, should have thought of that first.

Aroma

I just saw that my previous post was mislabeled as far as days go, guess I missed that. Anyways, that one was tuesday. The mood did go away after dealing with the core roots, which is good.

Today I had a hectic day. This evening was E's birthday party, which was a potluck thing at his place. I managed to make a dish for it, though I took a bit longer than I'd intended, and people seemed to like it. (If you can guess what dish it was, you get a point! Or maybe half a point, it's probably not that hard to guess.) I then just sat around and listened and was generally antisocial and tired, except for some passing comments in a conversation about the time hierarchy theorem which actually got pretty interesting. And now I'm back home, finished reading the book I started on the bus ride to the dentist this morning, and wishing this headache would go away, again. Not sure why headaches have been plaguing me the last week, but I hope it stops.

Mood Swings, part 2

But then there are also some days where I can't seem to shake certain moods, no matter how I concentrate. They feel like I just have to figure out the core of the problem and then they'll go away, but concentration can't do that, and sometimes I don't even know what the problem is.

Hmm...

I have the urge to describe today as a massively multiplayer headache, just because those three words sound right together. I think it's not quite apt though, as the headache experienced by me was probably mine alone, even though several people did have headaches today. It started this morning around 8am, and had some dulled periods where the excedrin worked well, and is still going now, after midnight. *sigh*

Mood Swings

Mood swings are curious things. For no good reason I can think of, there was a period of about an hour today (sunday) where I was just really happy and bouncy. I think I probably could have thought about it and stopped that feeling, but wouldn't really want to so instead just sorta went with that emotion rather than thinking too much, and it was nice.

Do others feel that sometimes? Can you change your emotions by concentrating? I know I can usually think/concentrate and return to a neutral emotional state, but changing it away from neutral is very hard just by concentrating.

Board Games...

... can take a long time to play! We played a game of Order of the Stick this afternoon, and the time flew by, at least for me. Ended up that we played the "short" version and got what was on the order of a 6-8 hour game. I think that may have been due to a bottleneck we created on the stairs to 3rd level, but still was a lot longer than the estimate in the manual. Very fun game though, I got to play Elan and ran around spawning lots of monsters for the rest of the group to kill, and very rarely got to actually kill one myself.

This was also a special day as it could have been in honor of many interesting things: (submitted by email)

- 100 days left in the current Calendar Year

- the 508th Anniversary of Switzerland becoming an independent state

- the 43rd Anniversary of "Fiddler on the Roof" opening on Broadway

- the 27th Anniversary of Iraq invading Iran

- the 20th Anniversary of the airing of the pilot episode of the television show "Full House"

- First saturday in 2007 after international talk like a pirate day
- First palindromic day after international talk like a pirate day
- Tommy Lasorda's 80th birthday
- The day hurricane Hugo hit Charlotte in 1989
- The day in 1915 that Siegfried Wagner got married to his wife Winifred (Wagner? Not sure... More backstory on this one in the email, but doesn't fit the one-line descriptions here.)

And... that's all. See you tomorrow. :)

Group Meeting - Presentation

So I gave a presentation on my simulator yesterday, including some experiments I was trying to reproduce, and also to give a tutorial on using it, to get more people using it so I get more feedback. As it turns out, I didn't have enough time for the tutorial section yesterday because there were lots of very good questions during the overview and experimental sections, which I don't really mind.

There was only one really embarrassing slide, where I managed to completely miss that I wrote one thing and meant another in two different places, and didn't see that on my read-through before giving the talk. Oh well. Other than that, it went really well, and especially nice was the new laptop - I could see on the laptop screen the current slide, the next slide, current times, all sorts of useful info, and thus I very rarely had to look at the projector or anywhere except the audience. Which is one of the keys to a good presentation, in my opinion, as I can gauge how interested people are, and how confused, pretty easily. So that worked very well, and there were a few really tough questions, but E helped me out on those when I couldn't manage them, which I very much appreciated.

Since the tutorial had to be postponed, I gave it instead this afternoon. There was again a really good turn-out for it (the room was full both times) and it went over well even though the material here was a lot drier. Hopefully I'll have a bunch more people working with the simulator soon. :) Also, afterwards I got lots of compliments on both presentations, and E. even said he was very impressed with them. So I'm pretty happy today that everything went well. :)

AFK

So, you may have noticed that I haven't updated the blog in what, 5 days? If not, please continue to not notice, I'll feel better about it perhaps.

If you did notice, well... I was out of town for the weekend, and been having trouble writing anything I think is interesting. More accurately, I keep thinking of interesting things, but not while my computer is available and thus they get lost into my poor memory.

I'm writing this just fifteen minutes before a group meeting, and I'm a bit nervous. I've presented on some of this before, but not with the new computer and not with all this material about experimental data. But I've done what I can, so just writing here as a form of distraction.

Anyways, all I want to say here really is that I'm sad there were no updates since saturday, and if you check back in, you may see me add a little something to each of the missing days, just so there is something there. Right now I'm thinking of just writing about the wedding for sunday, and maybe a bit about the traveling for monday, and the rest I'll just play by ear. I have some various thoughts on money and savings, plus various books I've read that I'd like to write about, so I think it will all be filled, just may take a bit.

Organizing Books

I'm posting this on friday, to fill in for some of the missing posts.

I think that when one goes to organize the bookshelf, it may be a helpful idea to tape the books closed. Not that it would have helped in this case, as L seems to be about 3/4 through Fire Sea, while the intended project was to enter all of our books into the library database on my laptop. I think this book was missing an ISBN on the cover, and so while there was one on the inside, taping it shut would not have been enough. :)

Whoa...

Are those photos? Thanks to Frances for these ones.

Here's one of me and Jonathan. For extra credit, spot the oddity(oddities?) in the picture:


And here's one of the bride:

Friday Flight

Friday was spent traveling and visiting. Went over to Redlands for my grandmother's birthday celebration, at which there were many relatives and lots of talking and stuff. After that it was a mad dash back home and to LAX for the flight out to Detroit. So I'm now out near Ann Arbor, MI, with Frances and Jonathan, getting ready for our friend M's wedding on sunday.

And that's all that goes in this post, sorry!

Stumbling Around

Today I spent a lot of time taking care of errands, just a lot of small stuff that needed doing. Still haven't managed to offload photos onto my laptop so that I can put up a big photo post, but maybe I'll have time for that eventually! Anyways, frisbee was today and we ended up having eight people total, so it was pretty exhausting though after we swapped around a bit the teams were pretty good so it was a fun game. I also finished reading another of the books I bought a few days back - Accelerando. More on that when I get a chance to write a review.

Relief

Wednesday was a day of relief. I'd gotten notice on monday that I would possibly need to file a petition for continuing study, as the candidacy requirements for the CS department are odd, and not what I had thought was the case (must turn in the MS thesis as the requirement), and so I would need more time to complete it and had already used the normal limit. This turns out to not have been the case, as my odd entry term as a grad student led to the system's miscalculating when that would be. So I've still got a few terms left before it's a worry, and so it won't be as I should be good on the requirements in one term, if the writing goes well.

Lies, Lies, Lies!

So, I finished reading The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch. Notably, this author was nominated for an award for best new author, and seeing as that was likely due to this book, I'm sad he didn't win, though perhaps it's a good thing, because that means that the author who did win must have had a BETTER first book. Wow.

You've probably already seen the Arcane Gazebo's review of it. If not, go read it either now or after you're done here. Please note that the following paragraphs may contain mild spoilers.

I really liked this book, and it falls into one of those weird categories of books for me: those that can't be read in a single sitting. This was due to the crazy complexity of the plot, and the quite unexpected turns it took at times, I just felt like I needed a breather before diving back in to the thick of things. This book contains the essence of the group heist movies: Italian Job, Sneakers, Confidence, to name a few that I've seen. No, I have not seen Ocean's 11 yet, though I picked up the DVD cheap. The lead man on the job is quite likable, and the gang is also great. Thus, finding out that this author is one of those for whom characters can and must die was a shock. Not that I mind that type of book, but wasn't quite expecting it here and so when several characters died
it was a very big shock.

Still, the plot was excellent and did a very good job of providing enough information that though it was being deceptive (unreliable narrative point of view, at times) you could still piece together some things before they got revealed, which is pretty satisfying. I'm definitely going to pick up the second book about the title character, as he's enough to keep me interested no matter the book.

Whoa

I just read a great line in an otherwise very sad article's sidebar: the sidebar was essentially a commentary with a professor of physics, Dr. Timothy Gay, about some of the physics involved in football. This leads to the striking line: "[...]' said Gay, who played football at Caltech." (actual quote omitted)

Whoa.

Book Retrieval

Vromann's (a bookstore here in Pasadena) had many books which needed a good home.

I wasn't able to bring many home with me, but I did get more than usual. Here's the new arrivals:

Accelerando, Charles Stross
The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch
Darwinia, Robert Charles Wilson
The Last Colony, John Scalzi
Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge

Also, as there's one book still on my to-be-read list from an earlier trip, I'll mention it as well:

Thirteen, Richard K. Morgan

Interesting things about these books: two of the five I bought today acknowledge TNH and PNH of Making Light (and I believe both of those were books which were edited by one of them). Their blog is usually very interesting, and the community which comments on it is one of the best I've seen. I believe both the authors which mention them have posted there, and there's a ton of interesting literary types there (and plenty of interesting non literary types, too).

Four of these books are sci-fi. One is fantasy, the other (Darwinia) I'm not sure how to classify based on the blurb on the cover, but I really liked one of his earlier books, Spin. I have read other books by four of these authors, and one book I got because I read a review of it. The last sentence of this paragraph is not needed to solve the logic puzzle posed therein, as the paragraph does not contain enough information on its own to do so anyways. But it would be cool if there was.

I will hopefully post some short (or long) reviews of these books as I read them, so if you're curious about them, stay tuned. Also, if anyone is particularly interested in one of the ones up there, let me know and I will try to write a longer review, or you can borrow it and write a guest review! :)

So...

The post of awesomeness that will never live up to the teaser posts for it, has been delayed! Oh no! I'm writing this sunday evening, and the time I was going to devote to it this weekend has already been put to more productive use. So... hopefully monday! :)

Whew

Friday was a very relaxing day after getting everything out and taking a breather. The weekend looks to be pretty quiet too, so hopefully next week will be less stressed as well.

Surprises

Thursday was going fine, the paper rewrite was nearly done, the figures were coming together, was going to get to play ultimate frisbee in an hour and then finish it up and send it on, when I get an email. Everything is needed ASAP, the conference organizers have some sort of issues and they need the paper right now. There went my frisbee plans, any semblance of sanity and then a mad rush set in.

Oh well, I did finish it up, Erik thought it looked good and the figures were very good, and I don't have to worry about it now. Or at least, I don't have to worry about it until they complain on zero notice and I have to work on it, but I'm hoping that doesn't happen for at least another two weeks or so. :) I actually got to relax tonight, it was great. Nothing I particularly had to do, at least until I go in to work tomorrow and realize all the other stuff I need to catch up on. But tonight at least was relaxing.

Oh, and the post I've been writing the teasers about is due this weekend.

Wednesday's Mostly Late Post

Wednesday... Well, I messed around with a lot of figures, panicked completely when my simulations that finished were not actually usable for the intended comparison, and rewrote huge swathes of the paper based on the comments the night before.

On the good front wednesday night I got a call from my brother in law (hi!) reminding me that all the stress had me preoccupied and I hadn't tried to work out final details so that I could make it to a mutual friend's wedding. A call to that friend, and some searching later and I was able to find a plane ticket that was still affordable even with my current low available cash problem (due to dentist visits, previous trips, etc). So that's a relief. Also most everything got done that night except analyzing new simulation data which I will likely use in the paper.

Tuesday's Extremely Late Post

Since I am writing this on thursday, this post is very horribly late! What happened on tuesday... well, I know I was doing a lot of work. About the only other thing of note is that we got together for frisbee, but not enough people showed up, so a group of us ended up tossing the disc for a while. Fun, but not as fun as a game. Also late tuesday night I got some feedback on a draft copy of the paper from the organizer, and thus wednesday was very interesting.

Thoughts

Just a quick thought before I get back to work. Often times I look too much at my adviser's faults, the key difficult one for me being a little late with meetings or just general busy-ness. But today I was again reminded of some of the really good qualities, and thought I should mention them.

The last week or so I've been working on a paper draft for a conference at which I'll be presenting, and it's been pretty tough to motivate for, the audience isn't one I'd usually expect, and so I have been getting discouraged easily. Every time this has happened, I've caught up with my adviser for a few minutes and talked about it. He's always really encouraging, and those quick meetings leave me ready to tackle it again and I find it a lot easier to keep going afterwards. Yesterday I sent him my current draft, and met up with him just a few minutes ago to discuss it. I really appreciate the way he offers really helpful constructive comments, and in a very non threatening way - sometimes I get really defensive to criticism, even constructive types, and that never happens with him. I left the meeting with a really good idea of what I needed to change and add, and that he thought my progress was very good.

So, I really appreciate that quality, and it makes it a lot easier to know I can approach him for feedback and get really useful information, without worrying about what he's going to think of it or me.

Teaser Post #3

*waves foot* It's coming...

Saturday Late Post

Saturday was filled with writing and heavy lifting. Wrote for about six hours, and then helped move couches and other heavy stuff for Lemming's move. Went well though exhausting, and it was followed by dinner at Robins with the Arcane Gazebo and his brother, so it was a good day. There was some board gaming later, but as I can't recall the name of the game it would be a little silly to tell you that I would recommend it. But I certainly do, it was enjoyable in a risk or diplomacy like way.

Teaser Post #2

*waves nose* It's coming...

Thursday Update

Frisbee again today. Apparently it got up to 103-107 in parts of LA (probably including Pasadena, though I haven't checked). Speaking as someone who was walking home from the dentist around 2pm, it sure was hot, past even my pretty high tolerance. Luckily it had cooled down some by the time frisbee came around, so the game was enjoyable. Which isn't to say that I did not drip 2+ buckets of sweat during the game.

Anyways... foot was a lot better while playing today, still a bit sore but on the whole it feels like it's healing up well. I even managed to pour on some speed on a few occasions in the game, which feels good when it's to outrun one of the people there who's usually regarded as one of the best runners.

Teaser Post #1

*waves hands* It's coming...

Ouch!

My foot has been hurting and I can't figure out why. It started at frisbee last thursday with no apparent cause, just was a little painful when landing on it or pushing off with that side. I don't really notice it at all when walking normally, or even light jogging, but when I went to play frisbee today it was definitely still around and just as painful to the same events. Oh well, I hope it gets better, if it persists past this weekend I will probably have it looked at. Frisbee today was especially rough: there's usually a smaller group that plays on tuesdays, but it turned out to be just five of us this tuesday. So we played 2v3, which is very exhausting. Fun, but we couldn't really play for as long as usual, so we ended up just tossing the disc around after.

Monday

Monday sucked, except for two conversations with people I don't talk to frequently, and a few other minor points (lunch). And I'm moving on to tuesday, which will hopefully be better.

Farmer's Market

I really like the Hollywood farmer's market. Enough so that one of the few reasons I'd want to get a car is to make going there every sunday easier. For those curious, the other reasons are: to visit Rissa in SF more, and ... I think that's it.

Today's visit was a good one, though I did feel really weird in the middle and had to sit down for a while, this was unrelated to the market. There were a bunch of excellent fruits: we got nectarines and pluots, and F got mango nectarines (they taste sort of like mangos, and definately unlike nectarines) and strawberries. There was also some japanese green leafy thing which the ratties really like eating, and a stunning idea: if I promised to wash all the dishes, I bet L would make the wonderful stew again! So I did so and we got all the various stuff to make stew, which I'm looking forward to. Lunch was pretty good: I got a bratwurst on a stick, which was pretty tasty. The same stand had a ton of different sausage types, and you could also get them cooked into a quesadilla with potatoes and cheese and stuff. Very tempting, but I'll save trying that for later. F had the jambalaya from the Cajun stall, which is what I usually get as I love a good jambalaya. L had fried plantains, and we all had various flavors of lemonade: I had strawberry lemonade, very tart and good, and there was also raspberry lemonade and watermelon lemonade.

We figured out how to get parking validated for the farmer's market as well, so after a few tries the parking situation there seems very manageable as all you have to do is park at the Arclite theater's parking lot, which is just a block or so away.

Pondering

On the way home from dinner today I had a stunning realization. I am very much blessed with family and friends. The thing that triggered this was L talking with Frances, and realizing that they would get along well if they had met (without me around) and would still be able to talk about very interesting things. Then thinking about this, I realized that between my sisters, brother-in-law, sister-in-law and my wife, we all get along really well and have great conversations. The same goes in a looser sense for our wider circle of friends, and that's really special.

Anyways, just a special thought that struck me on the way home from dinner. Thank you to all the family and friends, who are so special to me.

Group Meetings

We have had a few too many group meetings lately, culminating in nearly 4 in one week two weeks ago. After that we're down to a more reasonable one per week, but the timing has been changing each week, which is very annoying when one finds out that the one this week is at 5pm friday, which is the usual time for people to be leaving work on friday, not staying around for another hour and a half or more.

But one good thing did come out of the group meeting, I hit on a random idea (yes, it was sexy) relating to image analysis of some AFM data. Normally all the image analysis is done by hand, which is pretty tedious (can one say, 60000 tiles analyzed by hand?), but there haven't been any good ways (or people to implement them, perhaps) to do this in a more automatic way. I thought of one while in group meeting, and it seems pretty easy to implement and try out, and may even end up with some nice figures. So there's a bright spot, and at least it will be some programming that isn't dealing with energy model quirks.

Slow News Day

And today, in the slow news day we have the following items:

Frisbee is harder when you haven't played in two weeks, and one foot hurts for no discernible reason.

Buffy Season 5 starts out curiously and rapidly gets pretty interesting. Looking forward to this one, though just at a glance I think I'll still like Angel more.

I, too, am boycotting Gamestop. Perhaps will post reasons later, maybe will email/normal mail Gamestop with some of the complaints, though I dunno that it will do much good.

I have several DVD's I need to watch: Letters from Iwo Jima and Ocean's Eleven come to mind immediately, and I think there's a few more on my list as well.

It's a (Open Thread)!

Alas, a day late
perhaps too slow
or is it time?

One step too late
one step behind
or one step sideways?

Airport Visits

Our return flight was via Jacksonville to Houston to Los Angeles, on a completely different airline than our outwards flight. The first flight was really cold, but pretty short. Not much happened, I curled up on the seat and played a bit of Final Fantasy (PSP) and ate snacks and went ouch my tooth hurts from that. The flight was delayed by about 20 minutes leaving, and since we had approximately a 20 minute break between the arrival and our next flight on the original schedule, this was a cause for worry (which I am too prone to doing. I was also worried about the ratties, even though I'd called and checked on them and they were fine). We arrived and luckily the connecting flight had also been delayed, this one by an hour. So we got lunch and managed to arrive at the gate in plenty of time.

The next flight was pretty good, we were in the row all the way in the back of the plane, but the designers of this one (a 737-800) had left room so these seats could lean back! And with noone behind me, I didn't feel guilty and so went for it. Pretty nice, but didn't help my normal legs cramping problem, oh well. I got really tired about halfway through and dozed off, for maybe as long as an hour. Not really restful, but was too comatose to do anything else. I did get to see the approach into LA, figuring out which freeways I was seeing, and then managed to identify a critical interchange because of its familiarity (the 110/105 interchange) and did some traffic analysis, which proved to be pretty much useless as it took us a while to pick up baggage and make it out to the long term parking lot.

And now we're back, the ratties are happy, and Frances is visiting for a little since she's in the LA area. Went out to dinner and now I'm off to sleep. :)

Florida Wrap-Up

I'm writing this late tuesday night, from home where we have finally returned. Let me wrap up various threads and stuff that happened in Florida while visiting Mylanda:

RPG's: We played two different games of M's, the first being a D&D story we started on our last visit. I especially like my character for this one, though his name will go unmentioned (as I managed to get away with not actually telling anyone it this session). Very interesting to play all the crazy situations we get into. We spent a good part of an hour or more working out how to best attack a group of essentially mushroom-people. It ended up working out very well, and we managed to walk away with a small fortune in loot that may not have been apparent just from the mission statement. The second game is the long running Mage game involving world traveling in the 1940's and rescuing artifacts of all types. We finally continued our investigation into the Great Bear's Nail, an artifact from Lakota legends. Again, I really like the characters in this game which makes it interesting to play. Sadly we were down a few characters, but hopefully more will re-enter the game. We managed two pretty useful magical effects which involved nearly all the characters, allowing us to talk with the shaman from a vastly spatially separated tribe, in addition to working out exactly what trouble the artifact was in. Looking forward to continuing both these stories, hopefully at a faster pace if we can visit M more, or he can visit here.

Console gaming: Lots of Mario Strikers was played, it can get REALLY frustrating on the cup mode, as the computer starts playing very very well. Aside from that though, it's great fun on the slightly easier settings and the normal match play mode where you can set the difficulty. There was also some Guitar Hero monday evening, and we all wailed a bit. I don't recall any especially stunning solos, but one song I played left my hands crippled for that night.

Foods: Whoa, wings! We picked up hot wings monday night to cap off our food excursions, and M decided to test the place's Atomic wings. We also got hickory-smoked BBQ, Hawaiian (pineapple flavored, not exactly teriyaki though as that was another entry), Original Hot, and Cajun (much hotter than the original, in a more black pepper sort of way). I tried one of the Atomic wings, and I normally like pretty hot stuff, though not on the level of M or others I know. One bite later, I conceded defeat. Wow. That was pretty much pure concentrated burn. It took a while for it to cool down enough to make a stab at the other types, which were good (I had the two latter types).

Lots of other stuff I could write here, but I'm tired and want to catch up on posts.

Sunday Best

I was pondering today how wearing different clothes can affect my outlook. I only have a small sample set for what things can make me feel differently. For example, yesterday and today, the particular t-shirts I was wearing have this effect: yesterday I wore the "I Survived Barrens Chat" t-shirt, which is a World of Warcraft reference, today the Final Fantasy concert t-shirt. The common theme is not actually the one which causes any perspective change, rather it's that both shirts are actually the right size (in that they fit snugly but not too tightly), as opposed to my usual t-shirts which are two sizes too large.

I feel a lot more self-conscious when wearing these t-shirts, as it is a lot more obvious that I'm pretty much a stick figure. Sometimes I also feel sexier when wearing them, but that comes and goes pretty much evenly with the self-conscious bit.

Maybe I'll expand on this topic some time, it seems fairly interesting.