Trips
Match Day 1
Jul 24th
I got up relatively early this morning. I had had trouble sleeping due to being excited about today’s match! After getting up and ready to go, we wandered over to the hotel to finish setting stuff up. Our match started at noon today with Ali Eslami taking the first match in the public room and Phil Laak in the private hotel room. After getting everything setup, the match began with a bunch of fanfare from Jonathan Schaeffer. For the blow by blow details, check out the official home page for the blog that I worked on throughout the two sessions in the public room. To make a long story short, we drew the first session and won the second session by a large margin. We won! Wow, that was an incredible feeling.
I’m frazzled right now, so I need to head for bed. Let me quickly give some other hilights from today before I run. I didn’t really get a chance to eat lunch before the match started so I was starving by the time the first session was done. When a group of four of us (Neil, Nolan, Josh and I) descended to the lobby to go find food we ran into Phil, Ali and Ali’s girlfriend Ana who were about to pursue food themselves. So they asked us if we wanted to join them and we said … YES of course! So we went to a restaurant called Cactus Luv Cafe and got to chat it up with these poker pros (all three are pros: Ana plays limits of $100/$200), and talk about technology, and research, and life. It was awesome. All three of them are incredibly nice people and I’m so glad I’ve gotten a chance to meet them and talk to them about stuff that interests me.
After the match I had to make some updates to the website and finish off the liveblogs for the day. I then ran DIVAT analysis on the matches, and those graphs will hit the webpages when I get the chance to do it. Ali seemed incredibly interested in the DIVAT analysis and where they went wrong. It’ll be interesting to see how they adjust tomorrow.
Anyways, I’m off to bed. This is incredibly exciting, but I’m totally beat and I’ve got another long day of blogging ahead of me. Woohoo! G’nite all!
Heraldk
The Prep Day
Jul 23rd
IE: Vancouver, Day 2.
Today was preparation day. I woke up without aid of my alarm at about 8:00 local time, and went and checked my email. The poker event that we’re doing has been picked up by some major news sources including the Associated Press New York, and PokerNews.com. Weeeee!
Tomorrow’s the big day, so we needed to get stuff setup. Darse, Alexandra and I went and got breakfast at a place below us that served some decent omelets with some huge crossiants on the side. Sweeet. We wandered over to the hotel where we met with Phil Laak — he seems pretty distractable in person … pretty much like on TV. It’s pretty cool to meet someone you’ve seen on TV several times and never expected to meet. This is about as close as I want to get to fame — I’m not really looking to be famous 
Apple lent us 6 laptops so we picked them up from the hotel and went to go get them setup. Unfortunately, setting them up was quite a pain, and we didn’t get away for lunch due to the room prep and the laptop setups. The press conference was at 1:00. We didn’t get a huge turnout, but BBC had a radio crew there and there was a set of people from other news sources. We expect more media to show up during the event. We’ll have to see how that turns out!
After the press conference we had a player’s meeting in which we met up with Phil and Ali to discuss the rules and things to make the players comfortable. We want them to be treated well since they’re doing us a pretty big favour here. Everything went smoothly. Both Phil and Ali are very agreeable and I’m looking forward to seeing them in action tomorrow. I’ll probably learn a few things!
After the player’s meeting we continued making room arrangements. A few of us split for a late lunch at an express noodle place. It wasn’t too bad — a bit too oily on a couple dishes for my liking, but the food was alright.
We returned to the room to continue setup. It went well, but there’s a lot of stuff to do. We also needed to get the system up and running in order to test everything out. Hopefully everything works as advertised! Fairly late we found a problem with the power supply to the room. Apparently we were all hooked up to one outlet! That’d be 5 or 6 laptops and two huge projectors along with a camcorder. Yup, that’s not good. It looks like we’ve got the power sorted out now. Tomorrow we’ll have to double check the setup and see how things go.
We went as a huge UofA group to dinner at Earls. I didn’t really like the choice — we’re in Vancouver for goodness sake! Josh from our group used to work at Earls though and he suggested a pretty good drink: A Keith’s Iceberg. It’s a Keith’s India pale ale with some lime margarita mix in the top. It pretty much makes the Keith’s taste like strongbow which was pretty cool.
After dinner I bought some plastic poker chips to play some poker with my colleagues. There was a lot of action hands … and it appeared that people played pretty well even with no money on the line. I played really well (and also got really lucky, hitting some good cards). Then I lost a key hand where I flopped a set of 2s, but the guy who pushed into me had an open ended straight draw and a flush draw. His straight hit on the turn, and his bigger straight/flush card came on the river. No love for me. That crippled me, though I doubled up on the next hand with 33. Unfortunately I lost my stack on the next hand when I flopped top pair of 7s only to lose to Neil’s better kicker. Oops.
So now I’m back at the hotel trying to get my photos from today uploaded to my laptop so I have a clean memory card when I go in tomorrow. I need a clean memory card since tomorrow I’ll likely fill my card with photos!
Anyways. That’s day 2. Tomorrow is the first 2 session of the man-machine poker match!!!!
Heraldk
Vancouver Day 1
Jul 21st
I’m in Vancouver! Today is day 1 of several, and I’ll be trying to keep up with the blogging over the next few days. We’ll have to see how well that works …
My day started really early. I couldn’t sleep for some reason so I spent some time working on the man-machine website starting at 5:00 in the morning. My parents came to get me around 7:00 and they dropped me off at the airport with plenty of time to get through security and wait for my flight to board. En route, I picked up a copy of the new harry potter book at the airport bookstore. No lineup!
The flight was pretty painless — I was on a flight with Maria, Duane, and Neil which was cool. We ended up hanging out for most of the morning and afternoon. For lunch we stopped at a place called the “Bellagio Cafe” … which I thought was fitting since the Bellagio is only a huge casino in Vegas, and we were here to compete in a poker match!
After lunch we went to go visit the Planetarium, which was pretty neat. I was a little disappointed with most of the displays, but it was a good way to kill some time that’s for sure. There was one of the motion simulators though which was pretty fun. We also went to two shows in the planetarium dome itself. Both weren’t that great and I found myself drifting off to sleep which wasn’t very good. That might have had something to do with my being awake at 5:00! We also attended two live demos. They were pretty neat, but the second was particularly fun because the second potentially good omen was that the presenter gave particular emphasis to the north star … Polaris. Which just happens to be the name of our bot.
We ran into Nolan, Mike, Josh, and Andrew at the planetarium which was cool. We separated early though since we had been there for a few hours already and we needed to get back (I needed to meetup with Darse whom I am sharing a condo apartment with).
It took a little while to get organized, but finally we confirmed that we’d be going out to dinner with Ali. It was pretty cool — Ali seems like a pretty smart guy. Phil should have arrived by now, but I haven’t had a chance to meet him yet. Dinner was a pretty fancy restaurant called Cin Cin. It was pretty good, but certainly more expensive than I’d eat on a regular basis. I mean, $11.50 for dessert? COME ON! (Arrested Development anyone?)
Tomorrow there will be a press conference with both Ali and Phil. I’ll try and get some photos during that to post to the website. Afterwords there’ll be a players meeting where we confirm all the rules … and we get to test all our equipment (again) to make sure everything runs smoothly. The match runs on Monday!!!! That’s just 2 sleeps!
Hope everyone is doing well. I’m having fun!
Heraldk
Skiing!
Mar 6th
This weekend I went out skiing at Kimberley, BC with a small group of friends. It was fabulous! It was a bit of a long drive just for a weekend trip, but I definitely felt it was worth it. The snow was incredible, and the weather was unbeatable. On Saturday we hit a high of +4-ish, and on Sunday the forecast was saying it would hit +7!
Diane and I, along with Rob, drove down starting in the afternoon on Friday and made really good time. We arrived at before 10:00, and hung out for a couple of hours. We enjoyed using the private hot tub which was one of the excellent features of our suite. The condo we stayed at was actually an amazing deal. It cost us $100 a night for the condo … split 5 ways! So $40 for the weekend’s accomodation was pretty sweet I’d say!
On Saturday morning, our group got up in an attempt to get on the hill as soon as the lifts started. After a full day of some really fun skiing, we got cleaned up and went out for dinner at the Kelsey’s on the hill. Fun times! Somehow Rob decided it was a good idea to pay the bill for dinner: Thanks Rob! You really didn’t need to do that!
After dinner we wandered back to the suite (en route I took the above picture) and relaxed. We completed a game of scattegories we had started the night before and then watched the hockey game. It was all in all a good day! The next day we got ourselves all packed up and then went and enjoyed a few more hours of skiing before starting the trek home.
It was a very good weekend — full of snow, sunshine and some wonderful company. I can’t wait for the next trip!
Heraldk
Skiing!
Jan 30th
I got fairly late Sunday night from the annual department ski trip to Jasper. As usual, it was a ton of fun. Diane and I joined many of our friends for two days on the slopes of Marmot Basin. We had some absolutely gorgeous weather for skiing — just a couple degrees below zero with sunny skies. I’m not all that great a skier, but I definitely took my shot at some of the tougher runs (read: blacks not double blacks). I think I’m going to have to take some lessons some day soon to try and figure out how to ski better and not stress my knees too much. Since I’m largely self-taught (apart from some early lessons in elementary school), I can’t say I have any good technique!
On the last run of the day on Sunday, I grabbed my camera and went up to the top of the hill to go snap some photos from the knob and eagle ridge. I got some photos that turned out pretty well, so you’ll be seeing them hit my photoblog soon.
Now that I’m done my MSc, I’ll be looking for a job soon … but first I’ve been hired on for a few months by my supervisor to work on more poker stuff. I’m really excited about this work … I think it has a lot of exciting potential and can’t wait to get started!
Heraldk
Adventures on the way Home
Jul 28th
Well the last day in New York really wasn’t all that eventful from a sightseeing perspective. We all slept in, which I was grateful for since I was still feeling pretty sick. We were actually woken up by housekeeping at 9:30 reminding us we needed to check out by 11:00. Bleah. We finally got up and checked out, leaving our bags for $2 a person at the front desk.
We stopped for brunch at the cafe/deli we’ve been stopping at every day since we found it. We had some NY style pizza again, and then headed down to central park to wander around for a little while before we made our way to the airport. Central park is pretty cool – we walked all around the reservoir which is a big lake in the middle of central park.
After making the circuit we walked back and retrieved our bags and made for the bus. Mike S had previously found a bus that was only 10 short blocks (NY city blocks are short across the streets, but long across the avenues) away that would take us straight to the airport. So we walked there and caught the bus right away which was pretty sweet. It was a pretty long bus ride, but finally we arrived at La Guardia airport.
We had a mixup at the frontdesk when we checked our bags. The guy asked me if I wanted to get on the earlier flight out of NY with the added note that a thunderstorm moving in might make it hard for our flight to take off. I asked him if he had 4 spots for all four of us in our group, and he said yes. So we said do it! The problem happened when Nolan went to get his boarding pass changed … the guy ended putting him on the standby list! Woops …
Turns out Nolan never got on our new flight. But the story continues. We boarded our flight a bit late, but figured we wouldn’t have a problem connecting in Toronto because we had a 3 hour layover. Well the stormy weather was already playing havoc with planes getting off the ground, so we ended up waiting on the runway for almost 3 hours! Nolan’s plane got off the ground just after ours and we arrived in Toronto abou the same time. Funnier yet, since Nolan didn’t check any bags, he was able to make the connection whereas the rest of us were rescheduled since our bags had no way of making it from the customs to the connecting flight. *sigh*. So ironically, 3 of us left before Nolan, but Nolan was the one who got into Edmonton first!
Anyways, it is good to be home. I’ve spent some time cleaning stuff up around the house and I’ll probably do more of that tomorrow before I head to a family BBQ. I’m very glad to be out of the humidity of the East coast and back to Edmonton weather – though I’m told that it was really hot while we were gone!
Heraldk
Spamalot, and meeting Stephen Colbert’s “Black Friend”
Jul 26th
Alright, so the exciting thing that happened last night didn’t really pan out as I’d hoped. But it still makes a good story. At the comedy club last night, the first comedian to standup was introduced as recently being featured on “The Colbert Report”. I was shocked and wondered who he was … turns out he was Jordan Carlos. For those unfamiliar with the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert has frequently made mention of his “black friend Alan”. In more recent episodes, Colbert found out that Alan was at some sort of student rally, which made him unhappy so he was no longer his “black friend” but rather just an aquaintance. This is where Jordan shows up – he plays the character Alan on the Report, in an episode that happened within the last couple months!
So it was rather a shock to see him perform his standup routine at this random comedy club we just happened to have chosen. After the show, I talked to him, and made mention the fact that we were from Canada and got my picture with him. He offered to try and get us tickets to the Report which we had tried to do before but couldn’t. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to get us in, but that would’ve been super cool if he could have!
Anyways, that’s that exciting story. This morning Mike S and I slept in since our plan was to sleep in and head straight to the Spamalot show we had bought tickets for yesterday. The other members of our crew headed out early in the morning for their own endeavours. I was happy to sleep in though since my cold had worsened.
After we finally got up, we went down to the deli down the street that has become one of our new favourite places to eat. After having a big slice of NY style pizza, we continued on our way. I stopped at a drug store to grab a kleenex supply and some water before we caught the subway down to Times Square. I’m starting to get pretty tired of the area – its just *so* over the top, and so constantly crowded that its just not interesting to me anymore. Oh well. We had some time to kill so we walked around a bit and I bought a gift. And then it was time for our show!
The Shubert Theatre is absolutely stunning. I don’t really know how to describe it, but I was quite happy to enjoy the scene before the show started. We were seated up on the upper balcony, but only 3 rows back so we had a pretty good view (I had no reason to complain anyways). They packed the seats pretty tight back there, but a couple hours of a little discomfort isn’t new to us from flying so much in recent memory.
Spamalot was awesome! The show was roughly based on Monty Python’s the Holy Grail, but with several twists and turns that didn’t exist in the original movie plus a couple throwbacks to the other Monty Python shows. Sweeeet. Of particular note, they sang “Always look on the bright side of life” which was pretty awesome. Also a lot of fun was the Camelot scene where they made it as if they were going to Vegas … and the memorable quote “What happens in Camelot, stays in Camelot!”. The other hilight for me was several songs where they made meta references to the show. In both love songs of the show, the song goes (roughly) “Once (twice) in each show, there comes a song where we sing and kiss… this is that song”. Pure awesome self referencing music!
Mike and I were totally entertained throughout the show so I think its safe to say we rather enjoyed it. We joined up with Mike and Nolan afterwards and headed out to dinner where we tried a Peruvian place (food from Peru). It was pretty good, though I really wasn’t sure what I should order.
My cold had been bother me all day, so after dinner we headed straight back to the hostel though Nolan stayed out to do some shopping. Now I’m thinking about heading out to that deli again for a snack before I crash. Hopefully by the time I get back Nolan will be back and I can fall asleep without worrying about being woken up again when Nolan comes in.
Tomorrow is home time, and I’m quite glad to say so. Its been a long trip. Good, but I’m quite happy to get the chance to return home to my sweety and to the comforts of home which are seeming quite attractive at the moment!
Heraldk
Another day in New York
Jul 25th
Well, New York is really overwhelming.
Still, its cool to get to see some stuff, so we slept in a little later today because we were all pretty tired from our rather full day the day before. After we finally got going, we headed out for a quick brunch before heading to the United Nations. We got there just in time before a large group of people and took the tour, which was actually really cool. The tour guide was super awesome and the subject was interesting. The UN is a very neat building, and its cool to see all the different countries and how they interact in the UN.
Along the way to the UN, we saw the Chrysler building, which was reportedly the tallest building in NYC for a short while before the Empire State building claimed the title. More picture-ness!
We hurried back to the ticket office to see if we could get cheap tickets to the spamelot show, but apparently these weren’t available. I guess the show is selling out regularly so they don’t need to sell cheap tickets for it. Mike and I decided to pay full price for these seats. I figure we might as well check out a broadway show while we’re here … so we’re gonna go. The other Mike (J) and Nolan will head out on their own to see things of their choice. We’ll reconvene after the show (its a matinee) and hopefully have something super exciting to see! (more about that tomorrow, I don’t want to jinx it).
After looking at tickets, we walked up 5th avenue to the Apple store and FAO Schwartz … two big toy stores right next to each other (in fact, on the same block). The Apple store is a pretty awesome sight – the entire store is below street level with the only part that is visible being a big glass cube with an elevator and stairs decending into the center of the store. Only Apple, I tell you! Right beside it, FAO is a huge toy store for kids with multiple levels of toys and games and other fun things. The scale of this place is incredible! So many crazy things of any price (there’s of course the big foot piano on the upper level that the price tag states a quarter of a million dollars … heh). The extravagance of it all blows my mind!
We were getting hungry so our next stop was dinner at a quaint restaurant called Burgers and Cupcakes. Mike S had picked this place out as a place to go so we did indeed head there. Its one of these concept restaurants that kind of appeals to particular people. We had some fun with the restuarant. They even gave us free cupcakes … because we followed the instructions on the sign in the window saying “Free cupcakes if you tell us you hate Bush”. Easily done!
After dinner Mike S, Nolan and I went on to try out a comedy club – which turned out to be pretty fun … and there’s a little more to the story I think I’ll share tomorrow once I figure out whether we’ve succeeded or not. Yes, I’m being all secretive here. Its a good story, just let me finish it up tomorrow!
So that was the day today – not nearly as full as yesterday, but still enjoyable. Unfortuantely, I’m coming down with a cold, so I’ve got to get some sleep before Spamelot tomorrow afternoon!
So on that note, to bed I go!
Heraldk
Marathon Day in New York
Jul 24th
Okay, today was a heck of a day!
We got up on our own accord around 8:30am … after which we got ready and started out on our big day. Our plan was to try and hit some of the major tourist attractions that are “must-see” New York. We could’ve done this by transit for most of the way, but decided to instead do most of it on foot so we could also get a feel for the atmosphere of the city and see stuff we’d miss if we went on the train.
So after a short breakfast in a little bakery/deli, we started walking down Broadway with our first stop being Carnegie Hall. There wasn’t much to see inside since the tour had just left and there wasn’t exactly public access to the building. But we got some pictures of the outside of the building.
Next, we stopped at a ticket booth near Times square looking for tickets for a broadway show (we’re aiming to see Spamelot, a Monty Python themed broadway show). The booth wasn’t open until 3pm, so we checked a show schedule just to see if there was any shows for that night. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any so we were forced to put that off until tomorrow. The advantage of this particular ticket booth is they offer discount tickets the day of the show – which we are a big fan of! So that’s on the agenda for tomorrow and hopefully tomorrow evening as well.
The next stop was the Empire State building – but the wait there was over an hour so we decided to put that off until later on as well. So far, not a huge success rate on the things we wanted to do!
Tired, and out of gas, we stopped at a Mcdonalds (yeah, I know … terrible). We were in a district that seemed to have a lack of snack/deli type food places that we could stop for a quick bite, a glass of water and get our wits back from the busy streets of Manhattan. By the time we found the Mcdonalds, I really really needed to sit down and take a breather. So that I guess is the reason for our stop there. From there, we caught a subway (being really tired and not willing to walk the rest of the way) to a stop near the NY stock exchange – which was yet another place we just stopped to take some pictures of the outside of and left.
Our next destination was a ferry to take us to the Statue of Liberty. Fortunately for our tired feet, this was really close by so we went there and got tickets for the next ferry. It is really a pretty cool sight, even if it really doesn’t have a lot of meaning for us Canadians. We wandered around the island and took lots of photos. Unforunately, we couldn’t go inside – apparently tickets for that are difficult to get and require more planning ahead than we were able to do. Oh wells.
After catching the ferry back, we walked through Battery Park on route to the World Trade Center site. This was a sobering place to go since it was obvious there was a gaping hole in the landscape. The area is under heavy watch, and construction has started on whatever they plan on putting there … we didn’t stay long, but it was kind of depressing just being there so I was glad to move on.
We had one more stop on our list … Brooklyn bridge which was not too far away. But first, we needed to grab some food so we stopped at a little place next to the bridge for some pretty good Italian food. It wasn’t Turin food, but who am I to complain? I got another chance to sample some juicy fresh shrimp. While not many of them, I was quite happy to have some! I totally have a new appreciation for shrimp!
Finally done, we wandered around trying to find a pedestrian entrance to the bridge. It took awhile, but finally we got on the bridge itself – it is a pretty magnificent structure and well worth the time to go see. We decided not to walk the full length of the bridge, partly because of our tired feet!
Catching a subway back to Times Square, we attempted to find a comedy show to go see (since that’s apparently something to do in New York). Unfortunately, the only one we could find was half way into the show, the tickets were still a full $20 and there was a two drink minimum. Ugh – not too attractive. So we wandered a bit and found a Toys-R-Us that was pretty ridiculous. It was three stories tall, and had a FERRIS WHEEL in the middle of the store! That’s right … a ferris wheel. Pure, over the top, ridiculousness! Then again, I’m starting to really expect that here, particularly in the Times Square area.
Afterwards we decided to return to the hostel, perhaps with a stop for a snack and a drink. We stopped at a neat little deli where we got dessert and a beverage … and there was a kind old man who gave us cookies as well! Yay cookies!
Finally, we’re back at our hotel after a very long and full day. Typing this up even makes me a little tired … and mildly impressed that we actually got through all of this. Amazing-ness!
But I need to go crash. We’re sleeping in a bit tomorrow, and then we’re going to check out fifth avenue which is reportedly the locale of the new Apple store here in New York. We really have to check that out, as well as some of the other shopping along the avenue. Perhaps I will be able to find gifts for some people even!
Take care! I’m going to go sleep for as long as I can!
Heraldk
New York, New York!
Jul 23rd
Well it was a long day today!
Mike and I got into New York late last night, dropped our bags off at the hostel and went out in search of food since we were hungry. We bumped into Nolan and Mike on their way back from their dinner so they lead us to a fast food/sit down hybrid restaurant where we had some pretty good wraps.
After a quick bite to eat we returned back to the hostel and got ready for bed with a quick stop to use the internet to check our email.
The next morning we got up early at 8:00 to head for the Museum of Natural History here in NY city. We were meeting up with a couple of people we know from CS who were also in NY, so we needed to be there pronto when then museum opened. The museum is *huge*! When we quickly realized just how big it was after spending an hour in the first corner of the museum, we split up and agreed to meet up at 1pm for lunch so that we could all move just a little faster in small groups. Mike S and I wandered around from the top floor down while Nolan and the other Mike worked their way up from the bottom (this wasn’t really planned, it just sorta happened that way). There was some really cool exhibits including many many rooms full of animal displays, information overload and interactive booths.
Our break for lunch was at a small place a few blocks away that was pretty tasty, though I think I’m getting a little tired of spending so much money eating out every day. It’ll be nice to get home where the food is cheaper!
Ken and company had to leave after lunch so they did, but we wandered back to the museum to finish looking at the parts of the museum we had missed for about an hour and a half. There sure was some pretty cool things to see (though I don’t really have time to look into it)!
After meeting up again, we decided to head over to the Intrepid which is an old aircraft carrier which has been converted into a museum. We were pretty late in their operating hours, but we had about an hour to explore which was actually about right for me. If I had to spend much more time there, I would probably be a little more annoyed at the military propaganda that was everywhere in the carrier. It was still pretty neat to look at everything, and some of the views of the carrier both into the bay and into Manhattan were pretty nice!
When the museum closed, we decided to walk down to Times Square to take a look at this famous area. Crazy! The place was packed with people and this was only a random Sunday evening. What really struck me was the garish-ness of the ads placed *everywhere*. I realize that the area is prime ad-space for companies, but the combination of all the ads with scrolling lights, video, movies added with all the people left me a little dazed at the whole scene. It helped that I had my camera to take a picture once in awhile so I could zone into just parts of the scene so that I didn’t have to take it all in at once. Ugh.
We wandered down and saw the outside of Madison Square Garden, which was not all that exciting, but we can say we did it. From there we caught a subway over to Little India to go have some Indian food. Yay for good Indian food! After eating some really good food we returned back to our Hostel. Now its after midnight and I need to get to bed so that I can be up tomorrow morning at 8 again. We’re gonna push to try and hit several big things to see including the statue of liberty, the WTC site, and several other things over on that side of Manhattan … should be fun!
Heraldk
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