Archive for June, 2007
Man Machine Poker Match
Jun 12th
This has been in the works for a few months, but I’m happy to be able to finally share the news that the University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group (CPRG) has organized a match pitting humans against the computer. The match will run on July 23rd and 24th in Vancouver at the AAAI 2007 Artificial Intelligence conference. Representing the humans are Phil “The Unabomber” Laak and Ali Eslami. Representing the machine is the latest and greatest computer poker AI being worked on at the University of Alberta going by the name of Polaris.
This match is being run with scientific interest, so every effort has been made to make the match provide a statistically significant result. The reason both Phil and Ali will take part in this match is that it will be run in duplicate. This means that in one room Phil will play against Polaris, but in a separate room Ali will also be playing against Polaris. The cards dealt in both halves of this duplicate match will be exactly the same – with Phil and Ali playing different sides of the same hand. In this manner, a huge portion of the stochastic element of the game is removed leaving mostly the skill aspects of the game (for more information, take a look at my thesis on my Research Page).
We’re really excited about this match. The poker group has been working hard on some new AI that is much stronger than previous iterations. As a poker player, I’m pretty excited to meet Phil Laak and be able to chat with him about poker and the research side of poker.
For more information about the match, visit the official match homepage (built in part by yours truly), at http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~games/poker/man-machine.
Heraldk
Storm and Sun
Jun 10th
This was the view from my condo balcony after a particularly warm summer day. The thunderclouds were rolling in and made a very nice photo opportunity. I really like the contrast between the extremely dark clouds with the sun bathing the neighbouring condo building in a warm glow.
Links
Jun 7th
I decided to abandon the idea of posting links as full posts here, and instead went with a link solution that is kinda nice for the sidebar. If I see neat videos or websites, that’s where you need to look.
Hope you enjoy this near feature of my blog!
Heraldk
Love
Jun 6th
This is a photo we setup after my convocation ceremony yesterday. My mom took the photo, and I think it turned out pretty decently. The original image was cropped down to this frame, and I much prefer this over the original 
For those interested, the photo was taken at the water feature in the education courtyard just north of the education building at the University of Alberta.
Insanity
Jun 6th
This past week has been rather insane. Between the engagement and its associated activities plus getting ready for the AAAI poker competition at work, I’m tearing my hair out trying to keep myself organized and focused on one thing at a time so I can actually accomplish something.
Why am I blogging now? Well I’m waiting for a test to run so I’ve got a minute or two to tell you about the last few days. This past weekend was insanely busy. On Saturday Diane’s Mom, Diane and I went on a tree tour around the university campus. The above photo is one of many I took that day. Several will probably hit my flickr stream over the next couple weeks. It was an interesting tour — most interesting perhaps is that despite all the time on campus I’ve spent, I haven’t really noticed some of the cool trees that are peacefully growing on campus!
Saturday evening was a surprise birthday for my supervisor, Jonathan Schaeffer. He turned 50 last weekend, so his wife organized a big surprise party which went off really well! So that was pretty fun.
On Sunday, Diane and I had both our families over for steak dinner to celebrate our engagement. Unfortunately, my place isn’t all that well equipped to handle a large amount of people so we had people eating on TV trays. Oh wells, people seemed to enjoy our food and it looks like everybody is happy with our engagement which is nice.
Yesterday was my convocation, so I missed the poker meeting that day to spend a couple hours waiting for my chance to cross the stage and shake people’s hands. After convocation we wandered campus taking a few photos (including the one above) and then my family took us out for dinner as a combined congratulations dinner for graduating and the engagement. It was a super big meal Chinese banquet style with both crab and lobster and lots of other good food. We even got some presents. I kinda like presents! My Uncle got us a couple bottles of wine.
So yes, it has been a pretty insane few days. I managed to get some work done late last night which helped me find a bug in my code this morning. Hopefully I can continue to be productive over the next few days!
Heraldk
Bent Tree
Jun 4th
Diane and I went on a tree tour around the university campus. This is one you might recognize if you’re on campus – its right next to the vehicle turnaround by the van vliet centre. It’s a rather cool looking tree that I don’t really remember noticing before the tour. Funny how you can be on campus so much over the past 6 years that you practically live there, and yet not notice some of the cool things that exist there!
Engaged
Jun 1st
Well, it’s happened. Diane and I are now engaged. I popped the question last night.
It was Diane’s birthday yesterday, so I was more than happy to take Diane out. It gave me a chance to be a little more secretive about plans for the evening. I took her for dinner at the Creperie – a place we’ve been to before, but only in a large group. We both said we needed to come back at some point, so I figured this was a good time to do so. Dinner was very nice. The Creperie even gave Diane a little candle in some whipped cream with a chocolate dipped strawberry next to it for her birthday. They also gave her a coupon for future use at the restaurant. We’ll probably be back!
After dinner, I had it in my mind to go visit a Louise McKinney Park. We had stopped at this park a couple years ago after an event we attended, so it had some historical value to us. I kinda had in my mind the idea to pop the question there. But there was a large number of people around, and the mosquitoes made everything rather distracting, so we instead just wandered around and I took a few photographs (including the one above which I am very happy with!). It’s quite a nice park actually – there’s a Chinese theme setup there with a pagoda that’s under construction, a bridge, and some of those Chinese lion statues. There’s also a meandering path with plants lining both sides. When we were there last, there was a ton of flowers blooming, but it’s still too early for them when we were there last night.
So after our walk through the park, we returned back to Diane’s apartment. I knew there were some flowers awaiting her there from her family, so I wanted to make sure she got to see those. I then popped the question there, presenting her with the ring I had carefully chosen a little more than a week ago. More on the ring in a moment. She said yes! (not that it was a big surprise). We even put on some music after that and shared a waltz together (for those who don’t know, we met in ballroom dance class — waltz is kind of our thing).
The ring: I have an aversion to diamonds. In particular, an aversion to engagement diamonds. I find it rather disturbing that a company (De Beers) can manufacture a tradition that never really existed in the first place. There are a lot of other things I find disturbing about the diamond industry, and these facts all made me want to just avoid the whole diamond thing altogether. Luckily, Diane knew about this aversion and she seemed happy with an alternative gemstone. So when I went shopping, I went looking for an emerald. Diane’s birthday is in May, and the emerald is the birthstone for that month. So I found it rather appropriate that I would propose to her on her birthday with her birthstone!
So that’s my story. I must say that I am quite happy, and Diane is as well. We’re looking at a June wedding – so the planning should probably start soon!
Heraldk
Young Pine Cone
Jun 1st
I took this photo while Diane and I took a walk through Louise McKinney Park in downtown Edmonton. It’s a park that we had stopped to walk through one evening after an event we were at a year or two ago. At first, I had thought to pop the question in the park, but there was a lot of people around and the mosquitoes were out in force, so we ended up fleeing back to Diane’s place. However, not before I got this wonderful photo. I’m extremely happy with how this photo turned out. I hope you like it!
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