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NEW: ICFP 2005 Contest Page (finally)
(26 Sep 2005 at 21:29) |
| Since the results are being announced tomorrow, I finally made a page for our team in the ICFP 2005 programming contest: Tycon Mismatch 2005. It's been so long that I forgot which robots we actually submitted, so if you were on the team and remember, let me know. Still, I hope that you'll find the drawings precious (if the puns impenetrable). | |
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July, July!!
(03 Jul 2005 at 12:26) |
Now it's July. Someone actually complained to me about the paucity of radar posts, so it must be time for an update.
The major, constant occupation in my life has been my thesis proposal. The thesis proposal is, for me, one of the trickiest parts of.. wait, this reminds me of a strange part of my dream last night: I was reading archives of Gödel's blog, I guess, in which sixteen minutes after he published his seminal paper, he wrote: 22:16 Sixteen minutes later. I am now utterly convinced that this result will need to be billboarded thoroughly. I trust that someone will be hired to deface the advertisements... and sure enough, I found while grinding rails Tony Hawk style at the local mall, some math vandals had spraypainted over all of the posters touting Hilbert's program. I guess the point is, looking for fame in mathematics is rather silly. .. graduate school, mainly because the process is so different (spell out problems but don't spend too much time trying to solve them; pick something ambitious but not a tarpit; write a single-author paper that involves often talking about what the author will do, minimizing the awkward use of "we" to refer singularly to myself). But amazingly I can see how this 24-page collection of disconnected text and citations can become an actual thesis proposal—a thorough one, even—and mounting guilt is making that actually come true. Soon, friends, soon.
Other intellectual interlopers (and banal buttinskies) have been punctuating this mission:
ICFP programming contest. We reprised our team called "tycon mismatch" [2000, 2001, 2002, 2004] in order to make an entry for this two-phase contest. Phase 1 was fun, but I suspect our showing will be fairly mediocre, due in part to the difficulty of coordinating a geographically diverse team. Phase 2, which happens next weekend, is what really matters, so wish us luck. Our team was not localized because Mr. Spoons is on an internship in New York, Noam was on his way to LICS, and I was in:
Go to Connecticut. My brother and I drove back to CT for a weekend to attend my grandmother's wake. This was, you know, bad and good in each of the ways you'd expect. Unexpectedly interesting: Since we buried her at a small family plot, Toms 7, 6, 5 (living), and 4 (who died before I was born) were in the same place for the only time I can remember. Unexpectedly bad: early ct-plates targeted speeding ticket (PA trooper: "please slow down while you're in our state") causes us to drive conservatively for the rest of the trip, which conspires with other unlucky traffic events to deliver a 12-hour return journey.
Read an excellent novel called "The Last Samurai" (Helen DeWitt), which I am continuously embarrassed to be seen reading in public, but only because someone seeing the title must assume that it says in smaller font "Now a major motion picture from Universal Studios!!!!" or "the epic tale of samurai masters", when in fact it is set in the modern day in England, and is about a boy and his mother and hardly at all about samurai. Now I can get to reading "Infinite Jest", which I can be embarrassed to be seen reading in public because it's like, so 1998, but at least that's true. Is it true that he's more obnoxious than Dave Eggers? If that is possible and so, then this book may be the first experiment in my new "violent reading" policy, in which the book is physically violated during scenes of exceptional misconduct.
Play some new video games: Doom III Resurrection of Evil mission pack (quite boring, but mercifully short compared to the original; humorously, they snag the "gravity gun" from Half-life 2 and "bullet time" from Max Payne/Painkiller/etc. You can almost taste the jealousy!), Evil Genius (in which you play a Dr. Evil-inspired criminal mastermind in a sort of Warcraft slash Risk slash The Sims base-building exercise; fun so far), and Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix II (which began as an attempt to get Heather to play video games with me, but now I am totally addicted to it).
Prepare to go to Oxford for the CSL 2005 conference in August. Does anyone have suggestions about things to do while I'm there?
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ListenQuest mini 2005
(26 Apr 2005 at 09:25) |
This morning I finished listening to every MP3 on my computer with a rating of 3/5 stars (ie, songs that I specifically like) or better. This took me two weeks! It is a nice way to listen to music, though--much better than when I forced myself to listen to every CD in my collection, all the way through, even like the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie soundtrack. I did that in College, and it would be at least twice as hard today, especially since there are a number of discs I've almost totally grown out of.
Speaking of mini, the Famicompo Mini vol.2, which is an informal competition to make new Nintendo music, is currently underway. It ends with the month of April. In addition to extending my midimml software substantially (changes are secret to give me an edge in the contest!) I've written about half a song, but I need to pick up the pace... | |
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Now Picnic Activate!
(26 Mar 2005 at 08:52) |
It's Puzzlestorm 2005! Despite having only 10 hours of notice (they just told us last night at midnight that it was going to be today), we've arranged a great team, called Now Picnic, which will win puzzlestorm once and for all!
Chart our progress on the scoreboard... | |
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Puzzle Royale!
(06 Nov 2004 at 10:25) |
It's puzzle royale time (with adam, jason, william)! Maybe this year team Eating Buildings will bring home the grand prize!
Word count: 14546 | |
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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. | |
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Ant Genealogy
(11 Jun 2004 at 13:12) |
| I added a cute family tree (mostly due to Adam) for all of our various ants in the ICFP programming contest over this weekend. | |
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NEW: tycon mismatch 2004 web page
(08 Jun 2004 at 21:12) |
I made a web page for our team this year. It has a nice drawing of an ant on it.
Tycon Mismatch 2004 | |
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Tycon Mismantch
(05 Jun 2004 at 23:08) |
The ICFP contest is really fun this year. Our team is great. The greatest joy is naming our creations and watching them battle it out automatically on the projector scoreboard.
Punchnitz beats Cautioutz. Cautioutz beats Stapler. Stapler beats Punchnitz.
... main screen turn on. ... | |
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ICFP 2004 Contest!
(04 Jun 2004 at 19:43) |
| Our sweet team, Tycon Mismatch, is participating in the ICFP Programming contest all weekend! | |
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