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Entries from September 2004

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Tomor Da (27 Sep 2004 at 01:03)

Happy birthday to me! I am now 25, a nice perfect square.

Today, my good health insurance expires (now I'm stuck with crummy student insurance) but my car insurance becomes cheaper.

In poker this evening, I almost quintupled my money. Thanks, poker gods!

I am still trying to figure out what my thesis will be about. This is probably the hardest part of graduate school so far.

About a month ago, I put out a proper Beta release of Escape, which I never mentioned here. Check it out! While people hunt for bugs and make levels, I have moved on to my next project, which is to get a head start on my nanowrimo for this year. This is that thing where you write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. I did it last year with satisfying results, but I decided this year to change my strategy a bit. First, I am trying to ease the word pressure by writing ahead when I'm in the mood (it can be really painful to do 1700 words a day, especially after a long day of work...). Second, I am going to put a lot more illustrations in this book, perhaps aiming for 175 pages rather than 50,000 words. (It annoys me that illustrations don't normally count towards the goal, since they take significant time to do, and I think they make books more interesting!) I may not meet the stringent requirements of the project, but I'll have another "novel" by the end of November.

Word count: 3472

Categories: video games escape nanowrimo

(18 comments) [ comment ]

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UPD: sml-lib (15 Sep 2004 at 10:30)

Boy, coming up with a thesis topic is hard work!

I don't like being idle, so I wrote some new code for sml-lib. There's a general-purpose memoization library (sig, sml) and implementation of the SHA-1 hash algorithm (sig, sml).

(9 comments) [ comment ]

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UPD: untitled.gif (08 Sep 2004 at 15:43)

The untitled.gif message board has reached a new power level.

(8 comments) [ comment ]

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CSD Logo Submissions (07 Sep 2004 at 17:58)

These are the logos I submitted to the competition to select a new logo for the Computer Science Department (CSD). I am actually not that good at making "general purpose" long-term logos, since my style is a bit more whimsical. (But it would be nice to leave some kind of mark on the department, and to help ensure that the logos don't end up being terrible!) Since these will be voted for by a general CS audience, I'm here trying to appeal to geeks by having rotational symmetry (you'll notice both logos are inversions) while not not being totally hideous or inappropriate for printing. Supposedly the whole logo selection process is to be completed by October 1.

You can check out my submissions here.

Categories: favorites contests drawings

(19 comments — 9 years ago) [ comment ]

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Now you're playing with power (03 Sep 2004 at 13:40)

Power at CMU went out yesterday evening, which left the tom7.org family of websites out of business for quite a while. Despite the annoyances, there is something serene and surreal about campus-wide power outages. I wish I had my camera and the skill to capture the sight of bleary-eyed computer scientists and physicists forced to emerge from their offices into the darkened hallway by the sudden sense that they had nothing to do. It's sort of like everyone simultaneously waking up in the morning, dazzled, or like driving around after a heavy snowfall with the roads obscured by drifts.

Today I am in a good mood. Well-rested, empowered. In search of a thesis. Tom qua ambassador to the incoming computer science students. Tom qua writer of grandiose, yet strangely disconnected narrative, a la 2000ish blog style.

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