Tag microresolution (14)

pretty pictures!
Mood: excited
Posted on 2007-07-16 13:46:00
Tags: microresolution
Words: 111

So the project I mentioned is basically a web version of Pretty Pictures with Genetic Algorithms. (the final comp314 project) It mostly works - I need to fix it for IE, write it up and add the ability to load genotypes into a current generation, but I'm hoping I can do that tonight or tomorrow. I'm excited - the project turned out well and it's fun to play with :-) The only downside is that rendering large images is kind of slow...the backend script that draws them is done in Python, so I could probably speed it up by rewriting in C++ or D or something.

Haven't been much in an LJing mood lately.

0 comments

weekend, wow, project
Mood: loved
Posted on 2007-07-09 09:49:00
Tags: microresolution worldofwarcraft
Words: 220

Just another weekend up here, but it was pretty nice. We went to a wedding at Ft. Meade (quick ceremony, good cake), met up for lunch with bobacita and medryn (good times, made me jealous-er of google, good hotcakes), ran our first heroic WoW instances as a guild (cleared them minus one boss!, lots and lots of scary trash), watched a few good episodes of BSG, and generally had a good time.

Just bought tickets to the DC United game when the LA Galaxy come to town with David Beckham! Should be full of awesomeness.

I'm kinda stuck on my haskell hat puzzle thingy, as using random numbers is really kind of a pain. I bought a JavaScript book for general edification and in preparation for my next project, which is exciting and should be a lot of fun if it is technically feasible. Microresolution: I will have determined whether it's technically feasible and gotten started by the end of Sunday. We've been spending a lot of time on WoW (at least partially because it's our only way to keep in contact with folks in Austin) but I'd really like to throw myself into a project again, especially now that we both have epic flying mounts so I can ease up on the money grind. We'll see if it takes.

5 comments

Happy Fifth of July!
Mood: calm
Music: Radiohead - "Where I End and You Begin"
Posted on 2007-07-05 13:03:00
Tags: microresolution haskell worldofwarcraft links
Words: 334

Yesterday was nice - we got djedi his flying epic mount, finished Super Paper Mario, went out to eat at Copeland's, and didn't let the stormy weather get us down!

Super Paper Mario - pretty good game, and the story was kind of interesting, but not nearly as interesting as the ridiculous amount of conversation, etc. that you have to go through. Still enjoyed it though.

As previously mentioned, we saw Transformers at Bengies. I've only been to a drive-in once before, so it was fun! The place is pretty nice and retro, although the owner seems to be one of those people that sees it fit to enumerate every single thing you shouldn't do. See the House Rules and FAQ for examples. There was a condom machine in the bathroom that had (not exaggerating here) four paragraphs about how the management doesn't endorse their usage, and how it's just there for protection and abstinence is the only sure protection, etc. Yikes. The movie was pretty good for a summer blockbuster. (read: lots of giant robots fighting) I've never seen the series on TV so maybe you'd get more out of it if you did?

Microresolution complete! I spent some time on the hat puzzle genetic algorithm thing in Haskell. It's frustrating to work on because I really have to get in the functional state of mind, but I wrote a few tough methods (randomly selecting which genes to reproduce based on the fitness function) so I feel good about that. The genetic part of this is going to end up being a sort of framework for writing genetic algorithms in Haskell, which is a neat side benefit (although such things already exist).

I'm trying out Twitter. It seems neatish.

In Ohio, you can't get arrested on the Fourth of July! (except for felonies and treason...you would think the penalty for committing treason on the Fourth of July would be more strict or something :-) )

Babies learn to lie when they're six months old - lousy lying babies!

2 comments

ratatouille!
Mood: listless
Posted on 2007-07-02 11:11:00
Tags: movies microresolution haskell computer
Words: 195

For our anniversary, we ate at Famous Dave's BBQ and saw Ratatouille. Famous Dave's - not bad, but the meat was kind of fatty. And no, their brisket wasn't "as good as anything you'll find in the Lone Star State", as their menu audaciously claimed. Ratatouille - excellent, excellent, excellent (same director as The Incredibles!). Very sweet comedy. Made me hungry. kottke's review convinced me to see it.

After a little bit of pain, I got my new hard drive set up, SATA and all, and all the data copied over. It's even faster than the old one! I'm experiencing some weird freezes (usually if I wait 10-15 seconds it will come back) in WoW, but I think it may be a video driver problem; I just upgraded them so I'll try downgrading tonight or tomorrow.

Microresolution: I will spend at least one hour of concentrated time before the end of Saturday on the Haskell version of the hat puzzle. (writing the genetic algorithm) I've been trying to do this for a while but I always find myself distracted by other things. I don't know why it's so important to me to do this, but it is.

3 comments

*yawn*
Mood: tired
Posted on 2007-03-13 08:14:00
Tags: dreams music microresolution worldofwarcraft
Words: 705

It's weird leaving the apartment before my daily cron job runs...

So my latest project is taking data from the WoW armory and showing neat stuff with it. I'll probably put the public page up tomorrow. Microresolution: my next project will not be WoW-related.

Weird dream: I dreamt I had made a few friends and then I found out a friend was stealing them away from me (i.e. they weren't going to be my friend anymore). I was very upset about this and was ready to write a scathing LiveJournal post!

I've been listening to a lot of Avenue Q lately. My thoughts, after the cut:

At first, my favorites were the obvious ones - "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist", "The Internet Is For Porn", "Schadenfreude". After a few listens, I think my current favorites are "Mix Tape", "Schadenfreude", and "I Wish I Could Go Back to College". Here's why!

The Avenue Q Theme - cute little ditty. Does a good job of sounding like the Sesame Street without really "borrowing" any melodies.
What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?/It Sucks To Be Me - A nice peppy song. I like the little harmony part when they all start singing. The first "appearance" of Gary Coleman, whose stage representation has a really nice voice. I should take this opportunity to say that the Japanese character (don't know her name) has a really annoying voice. Ugh.
If You Were Gay - Rod's voice is a little bit off at the beginning. ("how can it get any better than this?") I do like the song because the comedy is done well, especially Rod's indignance. :-)
Purpose - I guess this is supposed to drive the plot a little, but this song is more or less boring. The guy's voice is reasonably nice, though.
Everyone's A Little Bit Racist - So I definitely like some of this song. The melody is nice, and I do like the message that perhaps we shoudl relax a little bit about race, and that no one's truly colorblind (a la Stephen Colbert's "I don't see race"). But it goes a little far (needlessly?) in kinda implying because of this, it's OK to tell racist jokes, make fun of people, etc, instead of maybe trying to make things better. See above re Japanese character's voice. Also, Gary Coleman saying "Whatchoo talking 'bout Kate?" is pretty funny.
The Internet Is For Porn - Cute song. I like Trekkie Monster. Kate's indignance is pulled off pretty well, too - her voice fits her character very well.
Mix Tape - I like this song a lot. The melodies going on in the background are very pretty (and catchy!), and the whole premise of the song (that you can tell if someone likes you by the songs they put on your mix tape) is pretty funny. "Fat Bottomed Girls" indeed!
I'm Not Wearing Underwear Today - Huh? Maybe this makes sense in context. At least it's short.
Special - Meh. Don't really like her voice.
You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You're Makin' Love) - Funny. Again with liking Gary Coleman's voice. I should add I feel weird listening to this song at work :-)
Fantasies Come True - This song is...OK. It's really more sad than anything. Poor Rod...
My Girlfriend, Who Lives in Canada - Even though it follows the sad song, I can't help laughing. The frantic voice totally makes it! I like the way he says "Canada" too.
There's a Fine, Fine Line - Not bad. Voice is good.
There Is Life Outside Your Apartment - A cute song, but it doesn't quite click with me.
The More You Ruv Someone - hate hate hate skip
Schadenfreude - Funny, upbeat, and lots of Gary Coleman. What's not to love? I can put up with the meanness!
I Wish I Could Go Back to College - Really pretty song, and who hasn't wanted to go back to college at some point? Best song on the album, if just for the a capella section.
The Money Song - Cute song.
School for Monsters/The Money Song - It's OK. I do like Trekkie Monster.
a bunch of reprises - Not bad.
For Now - Good ending song. Everything is temporary!

I honestly forget the point of this. Oh well. The point is, good album.

7 comments

(no subject)
Mood: energetic
Music: "Sweet Georgia Brown", whistled (IMH)
Posted on 2007-03-05 08:47:00
Tags: dodgeball microresolution
Words: 292

We had an action-packed weekend! <cut to commercial> We got together to play games Friday night, I played dodgeball Saturday night, we had quijax and thaneofross over on Saturday and Sunday, and Sunday night we went to a Harlem Globetrotters game.

Saturday morning was the dodgeball tournament - we lost in the first round, as expected, but we did win a game. (and had a "no decision", when it was down to one on one and their guy hit our guy in the head, which means they're both out. I thought it should a tie, which would give us another .5 points, but to no avail) We ended up losing 13-1 or something like that. Although I did get the last person out in the game we won :-)

Hosting people was fun, too - we walked around Annapolis for a while, found a new good Chinese place in Columbia, and played a good game of Starfarers of Catan (as well as some Rayman Raving Rabbids).

The Globetrotters were...interesting. It was fun, and I liked the way they mixed the "real" basketball and the comic asides. I keep thinking that I've seen them before - not a full show, but maybe they made a cameo at a Rockets game once upon a time? Anyway, the Wikipedia link above has lots of information - they played the New York Nationals, which I discovered is the new name of the Washington Generals.

Microresolution: no soda this week (until Friday, inclusive) before dinner. I've gotten into the habit of having one with lunch, which is a bad thing. (although the caffeine helps me get through the afternoon...but if I'm really desperate I can have tea instead)

An article on how to be an optimist (and why it's good for you)

1 comment

little bit o' everything
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2007-02-27 10:25:00
Tags: microresolution worldofwarcraft programming
Words: 286

We went to an Oscar party this weekend. It was fun! Ellen did a good job hosting.

We've been playing a lot of World of Warcraft. I posted to the guild site about an analysis I did (using my auctioneer data lookup) about what potions you can craft to make money. I'm gonna try taking my own advice and see if it works! I also have been working on an Adobe Flex version of that interface which is almost done. The SDK is free and works on Linux, and since Flash Player 9 was just (a month or so ago) released for Linux I thought it would be a good time to try it out. Working in a data-driven language takes some getting used to but the resulting code is a lot simpler than the AJAX version. And it looks nice!

Via Fire Joe Morgan there's this delightful piece which compares sports bloggers to homeless people or...something. It's really hard to tell what the point of the column is, although from what I can tell the point was to be stupid.

The cablecards in our TiVo seem to be going on the fritz. Luckily Heroes recorded last night, although we haven't watched it yet. I reeeeealy don't want to have to call Comcast and get them to come out and fix them, especially since they work some of the time so you just know they're gonna work when the people come out.

I really really need to address and send those darn letters. I think it's the final step that makes everything "real" and I don't want to deal with. But sheesh, get over it. Microresolution: address the letters by Thursday night, send them by Monday.

2 comments

Ah, a day off
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2007-02-19 17:15:00
Tags: microresolution
Words: 156

Days like this make me wish I didn't have a job at all (but still had money somehow). Although I'm sure I'd get bored after a couple of weeks and want my job back.

We got a new vacuum cleaner which I'm oddly excited about. It works very well (the Eureka Boss Smart Vac Ultra 4870 - thanks Consumer Reports!) and even self propels itself a little, which means vacuuming is like talking a dog for a walk.

There's still a bunch of snow on the ground from last week's storm, and it encroaches on the road some places, eating up a half lane or so. This made driving in Baltimore more interesting than usual. (we went there for lunch yesterday and checked out the Lambda Rising bookstore) Another fun thing is that most places there's a layer of ice on top of the snow, which makes walking deceptively difficult.

Wrote my last letter today! Microresolution complete.

4 comments

Snow!
Mood: hopeful
Posted on 2007-02-08 13:23:00
Tags: microresolution snow referrer links
Words: 242

It snowed yesterday morning! We got a few hours off from work (which we promptly converted into sweet, sweet sleep) so I'm feeling pretty good in general. It's also starting to warm up a bit - only got down to 19 last night!

My last microresolution was to finish the auctioneer lookup, which I'm declaring myself done with. There's possibly some more data that could be gathered if I did a lot more digging and the web service took a lot longer to respond, but I'm pretty happy with what it does now. I haven't decided exactly what my next microresolution will be, but it's probably either something related to taxes or addressing/sending letters. Or maybe playing around with Adobe Flex.

A few weeks ago I bought and installed Mint for my web site - it's a web site analytics program, much like Google Analytics, but with a much nicer view and more options (or at least, the options are easier to figure out). I'm pretty pleased with the results - you can see what a Mint install on another site looks like. It's also fun to see what searches people are doing that lead them to my site, like "working at national instruments", swat ride, texas shaped sunglasses (hmm, where's my result on there?), etc.

Yahoo! released Yahoo! Pipes today, but it's currently down. Here's an O'Reilly article about it, though, and I'm looking forward to playing with it when it comes back up!

3 comments

Done and done...and I mean done!
Mood: accomplished
Posted on 2007-02-05 08:54:00
Tags: microresolution
Words: 208

My most recently expiring microresolution was to make 5 hand copies of the letter and put up wedding pictures. Success! I wrote the five copies over the weekend (while watching "Heroes" and the Super Bowl), and the letter still seems good (mostly because there's no way I'm writing it another five times!) Next up - getting addresses for people (wonderjess, can you help when you get a chance? It's not too immediate or anything...) and such. I also put up Leigh Ann's wedding pictures (I took more than 100, so this took a bit longer than I had thought) and I just need to let djedi's family know. Many of the pictures didn't turn out that great due to lighting conditions and my poor timing, but I did the best I could. I also installed a "Shopping Cart" module to my gallery, so you can select an album or a bunch of pictures and download them as a zip file for your convenience.

My auctioneer microresolution is also coming along nicely - it returns basic data and I just need to add the more detailed statistics, which looks like it shouldn't be too hard. (the data's in mostly the same format, just the names have changed...perhaps to protect the innocent?)

0 comments

Is the weekend here yet?
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2007-02-02 09:46:00
Tags: microresolution politics links
Words: 306

Thanks again for all of your help on writing that letter! I forgot to mention my impressions on Google Docs & Spreadsheets, which I used to compose it. I didn't try the spreadsheet part (except for a minute), but the word processing part is pretty neat. It has some rich-text options (fonts, colors, bullets, etc.), and it keeps a revision history so it's pretty intuitive to see what changes you've made. You can also save in a bunch of different formats. I'd be curious as to how the collaboration works. Anyway it seems more than adequate for something simple like writing a letter.

To make things interesting, I'm going to add another microresolution. I have a World of Warcraft auctioneer price lookup that doesn't work with the new version of Auctioneer. Microresolution: make it work again by next Friday. We'll see if having multiple microresolutions out at the same time is feasible or makes me fail to complete any of them :-)

Current position of my pages in a search for "microresolution" on:
Google: #3!
Yahoo: not present
MSN: #1!!
Ask.com: #6
The main competitors seem to be pages talking about microscopes and such.

Funny quote in this article about the mayor of San Francisco admitting to an affair with his aide's wife:


Tom Abbott, 36, an executive recruiter, said that having an affair with a loyal aide's wife was "a total slimeball move."

"Any guy who puts that much mousse in his hair can't be trusted," Abbott said. "You don't screw over your own boys."

However, Abbott said, he would probably vote for Newsom.


Venezuelan lawmakers just gave President Hugo Chavez authority to enact sweeping measures by decree. This is a little worrisome. Maybe Venezuelan "President" Hugo Chavez from now on?

I got a nice email from a Google recruiter - if anyone's interested, drop me an email!

7 comments

yay 3 day weekend!
Mood: okay
Posted on 2007-01-12 14:26:00
Tags: microresolution
Words: 74

Microresolution: make good progress on (i.e. mostly finish) one of my two outstanding computer projects this weekend.

I syndicated Erin's journal at erinwblog. I stole a fun Lesser known college rivalries from The Onion.

It's kinda fun being in a football-interested place. I mean, I guess UT counts for Austin, but it doesn't feel the same. (Austin is the largest city in the US with no NFL, NBA, MLB, or NHL team)

Go Ravens!

3 comments

David Beckham to play in US!!
Mood: excited
Posted on 2007-01-11 11:49:00
Tags: soccer microresolution
Words: 32

Holy crap! I gotta get me some DC United tickets this season!

My microresolution from last time was a success! It's nice to occasionally see that I have some willpower.

David Beckham!

2 comments

Microresolutions
Mood: optimistic
Music: Radiohead - "OK Computer" album
Posted on 2007-01-08 09:37:00
Tags: music dodgeball microresolution
Words: 274

Like most people, I would often make New Year's Resolutions and promptly forget/ignore them come, say, January 15. But in an age of microgames (WarioWare series of games) and microtransactions (Xbox Live Marketplace, Wii Virtual Console), why not microresolutions? On Friday, I made a microresolution that I would work out at least twice over the weekend (stipulating that dodgeball Saturday morning counted), and I ended up going to the gym Sunday to fulfill the microresolution. Success! Next up: I had a few bad headaches this weekend and I bet they're from caffeine withdrawal. Microresolution: no caffeine (tea/chocolate excluded) from today until Wednesday (inclusive). We'll see how this one goes.

Speaking of dodgeball, djedi came to watch my game on Saturday. We lost both rounds, but I did "win" our only game for our team. It came down to me and a girl on the other team, and I threw maybe five balls at her before I finally (barely) hit her. She was good at dodging! I felt a little bad because she's a girl (and I was throwing the ball fairly hard, which was helpful because when I missed it would bounce off the wall and come back to me), but one of the consequences of feminism is that I'm not supposed to feel bad about stuff like that, right?

I spent a Best Buy gift card this weekend and, on a whim, I bought the Radiohead "OK Computer" album without hearing any songs on it, although it's ridiculously critically acclaimed. Listening to it now for the first time - my microreaction is that I like it. :-)

Why doesn't the LJ spell checker recognize "dodgeball"?

8 comments

This backup was done by LJBackup.