Archive for March, 2006
Paper Push
Mar 28th
Well, lets see how this goes.
Darse and I are working on a paper that is due on Thursday at some undefined time on that day. The nervous thing is that this paper is much less complete than the last paper I worked on. There’s *a lot* of writing to do yet. So the next couple days are going to be pretty busy for that! After that, I get to really start concentrating on the Hex codebase in a push to get our hex program ready for Italy (which is looking like a pretty sure thing, as far as these tihngs go). I’m pretty excited!
But first, this paper! This has been a very busy week with many things getting my attention. I had a playoff intramural floor hockey game on Monday, and the playoffs for volleyball are on Thursday. On top of this maddeningly busy schedule, I’m still attempting to make it to the gym most days of the week … which is helping burn me out faster than before. Ugh.
So … wish me luck on getting through the week!
Heraldk
New Stabilo Album
Mar 25th
This is the first record that I’ve gotten excited about for a long time. Part of the trouble is that my music library is so vast that I have a hard time giving the songs I already have the listening that they deserve.
One of the latest bands that I really latched on to is Stabilo – a band out of Vancouver (if I remember correctly). They had one fairly big hit song called “Everybody” which I really liked. I saw them play in Edmonton at Klondike days, and picked up one of their cds when they were called “Stabilo Boss”. I fell in love with their music then, and since then have listened to the two discs I have from them regularly.
I had wondered what happened to them recently since they haven’t released a CD in a long time. Thankfully, they’re still around and they released a new single recently called “Flawed Design”. I got a chance to listen to it today, and it’s simply awesome. What I love about Stabilo is they aren’t afraid to write a whole bunch of really cool lyrics. The songs have cool rhythms, singable melodies and some harmonics you don’t hear a lot in rock music.
All in all, I’m really impressed with the new song and I’m gonna go buy the new cd “Happiness and Disaster” as soon as it hits stores. I think that’s on the 4th of April.
Heraldk
Italy?
Mar 22nd
Wow … this would be cool.
Apparently there is funding available to send our Hex programming team to Torino Italy where they are holding the CG (Computer Games) conference and the Computer Olympiad competition.
I had just about gotten myself out of working on the project with the attempts to focus on my own thesis work … but now I’m going to have to put some time into the hex project, or I’d feel guilty for going to Italy without doing any work since several months ago. I think the Hex project is one that will continue to suck me in long after I leave the university!
Oddly enough though, this comes at a pretty good time. From talking to Darse and my supervisor, it looks like I’ll be cutting back on what I was going to do for my thesis. It’s kind of nice because this way it’ll be easier to present my thesis as one overall topic instead of a dual focus sort of thing. More on this later, when I know for sure whether this is going to happen.
But that means that I can afford a little more time. Between getting ready for Italy and my own research though, I think I’m going to drop playing poker for a little while so that I have time to spend with Diane and some time to play some brainless games so I don’t go insane 
I’m pretty excited though – it’ll be cool to go to Italy!
Heraldk
Calm winterness
Mar 21st
There’s something strangely calming about walking outside after its snowed. Edmonton got a huge dump of snow this weekend … making this March the most snowy March EVER. When you walk outside for a bit, there’s this hint of quiet beauty in the air. Maybe I’m just imagining it, but the crisp cool air with the clean snow just seems to bring me a feeling of peace.
I’m in a weird mood again tonight. I’m not sure what it is, but I kinda feel like the world is rapidly changing around me and there’s nothing I can do about it. Have you ever had the feeling where you’re drifting away from the world? That’s how I feel now, I think.
A lot of the friends I’ve known in past years have drifted away so much that I either don’t even know where they are anymore … or I do, but I just don’t talk to them much. If it weren’t for the odd msn collision, I would probably never hear from them again. It feels weird … like pieces of me are being torn apart. And yet, I can’t seem to get off my ass to change things. I should be able to, shouldn’t I? I mean, all I should be able to do is make a little concerted effort to have coffee with my friends of old.
Maybe it comes down to energy? At the end of the workday, I find that I don’t have enough energy to do much more than sit down, play some video games and go to bed. I would love to get off my behind to go do a project, or learn to play the guitar, or something. If anything, maintaining old friendships seems to be harder than any of these tasks … and if I can’t do these projects, how can I do something harder?
And yet, it bothers me. What can I do about it? I don’t know. It tears me up inside though.
Heraldk
On Sweetness
Mar 19th
You know, it’s odd.
This is the first time in a long while that I haven’t spend any part of the weekend with my girlfriend Diane. To be frank, she is the most wonderful thing to ever happen to me and being away from her is not exactly what I’d choose if I had a choice. But that’s not a problem. Really, it’s comforting to know that Diane is still there, on the other side of town … and that she’s with me. Perhaps not in person, but she’s there. I can sit here at my computer, look down and see one of the pictures she gave me and I can’t help but smile. There really is nothing better than the love of someone who cares for you … and the chance to return that love in greater quantities yet.
Sorry if this is too sappy, but I’m in a little bit of a weird mood tonight.
Diane and I have been together for more than 2 years. The beginning was a pretty exciting time (as all first months of relationships tend to be) for both of us. I dunno if I’d say that the excitement has worn off. Instead, I would say that the excitement has perhaps … stabilized. There is something extremely comforting knowing that there’s someone out there whom I know loves me perhaps as much as I love them.
Trust. You know, trust is a weird thing. It seems to me that in general it is tough to trust other people. I have been really fortunate to have a group of friends that somehow I know I can trust. Perhaps its because I’m in a close-knit department where I found many like-minded people. At any rate, I feel particularly blessed because the most special relationship I’ve found in my life … (Diane, of course) is the person I feel I can trust the most.
I’m not too sure where this post was going … I think I’m going to wrap it up there. Really though, I think the point of this post is that I very much appreciate the situation I have in my life. I very much doubt that everybody is as lucky as I am when out looking for their significant other. Diane is truly a special person to me.
Heraldk
Adsense, Performancing, and Experimentation
Mar 16th
So I’m trying some new things with my blog. I honestly have no idea how many people view my blog – its kind of just sitting here on the web with more posts than I thought I had actually written for it. So, I’m kind of curious what kind of traffic I’m getting (if any) and what people like looking at.
Recently, a tool for weblogs called Performancing Metrics was released, and it kind of looks like it will do what I want it to. I now have a tool to tell me how much traffic I get to my blog and find out once and for all how many people don’t feel like leaving comments on my posts ;^P.
The other addition is adsense banners. I figure that while I’m at it, I should try out the google ad banners thing. I don’t expect to make money from them. Mostly, I’m just trying it out to see what its like (the whole system behind the ads for instance). Of course, I won’t complain if you feel like clicking a link or two that interests you … I will get paid for those clicks, so click away! If I really cared, I would get those ads into places of prominence like the top of the screen or above the links on the right side for instance. But I decided to hide them away so that people won’t see them unless they actually scroll down to read my posts.
So umm … yeah. That’s the update for you. I’m kind of not too sure if I like the ads, and might decide to just take them down since I won’t exactly get a lot of money out of them. But it’s kind of cool to see some of the insides of the adsense program.
Heraldk
Poker Room
Mar 15th
Well I finally get to do the Poker Room PSO promotion. PokerRoom.com was my first ever poker room that I signed up for and I played a couple of their freerolls there. What I didn’t realize was that that was going to interfere with my doing a PSO promotion there.
Fortunately, I was allowed to wait 6 months after closing my previous poker room account and now I’ve reopened it and am ready for business! So I finally get to play at Pokerroom which is something I’ve wanted to do for awhile. I really like their software, and they have a lot of traffic which is kind of nice. So that’s what I did last night. I also played in the 4th PSO league event. I played terribly – I didn’t make a laydown that I should have and that cost me far more chis than it should have. After that, I was shortstacked and didn’t get lucky. Oh wells.
Other than that, life has been going really well. The research front is trucking along … even speeding up a little bit as I help get another paper ready for the end of the month. If this and the paper we submitted last month happen, I’ll have 6 papers in my research career before I get to my thesis. Sweet deal!
Diane and I are doing awesome together. We spend a lot of time together and frankly, I couldn’t be happier. We’ve been together for more than 2 years, and it still feels almost dream-like, though I think I’m finally convincing myself that it really isn’t a dream. Yay!
This past weekend was a busy one. On Friday, I joined a group of friends for a night of beer tasting. It t’was quite enjoyable. I hadn’t been at a drinking party in a long time, so it was kinda fun to do that … not that I had a huge amount of alcohol. Just enough to feel a pleasant buzz. On Saturday, we went out for Dimsum, and then hung out for a bit before going to a games party that one of the profs in our department put on. It was fun, as usual. Sunday was pretty quiet and I was pretty glad for it. Diane and I joined my parents for dinner to celebrate my sister’s birthday. We played some games and it was fun.
So that’s my life update. I have no idea how I’m going to keep this pace going, but it’s pretty fun at the same time!
Heraldk
Big trades for the Oilers
Mar 10th
Well, hockey season is super exciting this time of year. The trade deadline was yesterday, and our Edmonton Oilers are looking poised to make a push higher into the standings and deeper into the playoffs. Here’s the trades we made:
To Minnesota: 1st round draft pick, conditional 3rd round draft pick
To Edmonton: Dwayne Roloson
Edmonton gets a pretty good goaltender and they don’t even have to break up any of the team to do so. This really is about as good as it could’ve got since so many teams are looking for goaltenders. Not only that, teams that were supposed to be offering goalies decided not to trade them after all (Buffalo, Phoenix, etc). So in theory, Edmonton now has their goalie situation sorted out. Here’s hoping!
To Boston: Marty Reasoner, Yan Stasny, and a 2nd round draft pick.
To Edmonton: Sergei Samsonov
In this trade, the Oilers get a speedy winger who won the 1998 calder trophy, and can score goals. In return, they don’t give up all that much at all. I have never really been impressed with Reasoner (though I have had no reason to dislike him). So we give up some prospects for a fast player who looks to fit right into the Oiler style of hockey … sounds like a good deal to me!
Assuming the team continues to play as well as they have (lots of blocked shots, 2nd fewest shots on goal in the NHL, decent scoring power) … we should see the team finish strongly in the last 20 games of the season and I am really looking forward to seeing them go deep into the playoffs.
Gooooo Oilers!
Heraldk
Why do people Blog?
Mar 2nd
An interesting question came up the other day when some friends and I sat down for coffee. “Why do people blog?”. Its an interesting question, and one that I can’t quite be sure of the answer right away.
The purpose of my blog is to have a kind of journal that I will actually keep an interest in maintaining. One of the problems I’ve had whenever I try to start a personal diary or journal is I tend to write stuff that I don’t find useful later – its just embarassing. A blog though, is much more public than a personal diary, and thus even as I write it I need to evaluate whether I want other people to read it or not. This keeps my posts much less filled with future embarassment, and as a result, I find I can actually go back and read some of the stuff I’ve posted awhile ago and say “cool, I did on “.
Aside from that, I use my blog as kind of a personal soapbox. It doesn’t matter that I don’t have many (or any) readers. What matters is that I have an area where I can vent my frustrations or give an outlet to my daily cynicism at the world at large. In the days of geocities and tripod, I started a webpage called “The Domain of the Herald”. It has long since died away, and the only remnants of it are on a recordable cd I have somewhere in my house. However, this was my first foray into online editorial writing, and I found it was pretty fun to have this personal soapbox. Since then, I’ve always enjoyed a chance to rant about the latest media outrage for instance.
So that’s the big reason why I blog. Primarily, it is a place for me that just so happens to have public access for those who are oddly interested in my life, thoughts and feelings.
There’s a lot of reasons that other people blog that don’t really fit why I do, but are common as well.
- Anonymous. The internet seems to give people this layer of anonymity that allows people to say whatever they want. As a result, more people tend to be willing to jump out and say things *because* they don’t have to worry about someone knowing who they are.
- News. Some bloggers take it upon themselves to help relay the news as they see it. A lot of these bloggers have inside connections to various places and are able to get news out faster or in a better way than your standard news sources.
- Commentaries. There are a lot of blogs out there that strive for readership. They consistently put out interesting articles and stories that bring back people to their site over and over. A good example is Daring Fireball, a site that has often brought up some very interesting things about the latest developments by Apple. Its blogs like this that really shine in this area.
- Other. Man, there are a lot of blogs out there, and a lot of them don’t fit into the standard things I refer to. Many blogs are a blend of these types. Some are very personal, some are totally not personal. Some are factual, some rely on conspiracy theories.
I guess one of the biggest things about blogs is they are a nice way of presenting a history of things. If you can formulate what you’re trying to say into this structure, than a blog will do wonders for you. Its simple, its easy, and there’s a lot of nice software out there to deal with your blog’s history for you so all you have to do is write. Its really quite wonderful.
Heraldk
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