My name is Morgan Kan, and I’d like to thank you for visiting my webpage. I hope you enjoy your stay! This webpage is filled a fairly random collection of my interests, day-to-day events, and random gems that are find-able on the vast space of the internet. I hope you find something of interest to you here, and if you do please leave me a comment telling me so! If I get some feedback about stuff you like, you might see more of that content arrive!

What to say about myself? My chief interests are things which require thought in some manner or another. I love strategy and the challenge of thinking about the simplest and most effective way to achieve goals. As a result, I love to play games that require this sort of critical thinking. Poker is an excellent example of a game which tests my reasoning abilities. The profit side is a nice addition as well, but it is unnecessary for me to enjoy the game. My competitive nature makes winning enough enticement for me to play my best.

I have spent most of my life to this point working in computer science. I finished my MSc in January of 2007 where I worked on the University of Alberta Poker project. My thesis was on post-game analysis of heads-up (2 player) Limit Texas Hold’em. The problem is that poker is a very high variance game which means that evaluating how strong a poker player/poker playing program is can be a challenging task. The tool I worked on, called DIVAT, is a way to analyze these games in a statistically unbiased way … but with far lower variance. To read more about my work, you can either view the documents available on the UofA poker webpage, or view my thesis in pdf or postscript formats.

Before my time working on poker, I worked on two other computer science related projects. The first was another game, called Hex. With Ryan Hayward as my supervisor, I worked on this game for a couple of years, and still return to the project once every so often because it still intrigues me. There is some exciting stuff going on at the UofA in terms of hex, but I’ll wait until the results are in before I mention them. Pay attention to my blog for details!

After working on hex for a little while, I moved on to work for Paul Lu on a software systems project called Trellis. I worked on this project for a couple years as well. The trellis system was about trying to weave a large number of computing resources into one large computer for large computations. The resulting system was an attempt at solving this problem using simple low-level tools that exist on most systems. We used the trellis infrastructure that I worked on to run the CISS-3 experiment which utilized over 4,000 processors across Canada to work on two scientific applications. All in all, this is a really cool project.

In my non-academic/non-work life, I’m fairly active and enjoy many pursuits. I enjoy many forms of sports including, but not limited to: floor hockey, climbing, ultimate frisbee, volleyball, badminton, soccer, and skiing. I enjoy heading out into the wilderness to camp or hike, and I absolutely adore the mountains for these exploits (thank goodness I live nearby!).

I have discovered as well, a love for photography. Ever since some of my early hikes in the mountains, I have enjoyed capturing some of the breathtaking scenery I have seen. Ever since, I have been taking a ton of photos at many things and have started to get into some more advanced photography. In 2006, before a trip to Italy for a computers and games conference, I purchased a Canon Digital Rebel XT which has been used a great deal since then. If you’re interested, I maintain a photoblog on Flickr where I add a picture every week from my ever expanding library. Drop by and let me know what you think of my photos!

If you’d like more content from me, you can check out my wedding blog that I update with my soon-to-be wife here: http://www.minoragenda.com.

That’s all I have to say for now about myself. I’d like to thank you for visiting my site, and I hope you find something of interest to you!

Heraldk