Ok, so I know we announced it at around Christmas, but *now* the Mindstab AI Go Competition is starting to get under way. Both Rob and I now have entries that can compete, though mine is mostly just an over engineered random bot, until I get even more framework in place.
Still, everything has really started happening this week as now that school is over, I've had some time to devote to this, so my bot finally got off the ground. And then we got together to day and hacked on the server some more cleaning it up, and making an 0.2 release of out Go client/server software.
Finally, and most fun, we whipped together a Matchs page where you can see all the results of games so far. See, real proof that things are happening!
So with this out of the way I can really start to focus on the bot. To that end I've defiantly come up against some quicks in Lisp and SBCL. But then today we were also working in C, Python and PHP and we certainly came up against some quirks in the first two (oddly PHP really does manage to get out of your way and let you do your thing). Still, I think I have things mostly worked out and I can focus on the bot. Which is fun because I'm finding for the most part I'm really enjoying coding in Lisp and Slime+Emacs is pretty rocking. As for the bot, I'm excited. I've got some fun plans for it and I haven't done nearly enough fun coding since school's been on.
I just wrote my first buffer overflow exploit... for marks!!
Apparently Stephane Dion is in the building I'm sitting in and giving a talk upstairs in 15 minutes. Might as well check it out. Weird.
So I've been adding a lot to my RSS reading list lately. In an attempt to broaden my world view a bit I added some stuff from the BBC and CBC. And for my own interest in random things I added some stuff like grinding.be, Coilhouse and a few other treats. I've also expanded my geek reading with sites like Phoronix and a few others. So in summery, lots of new additions!
Anyways, through all this, planet.mindstab.net grew less and less reflective of what I've been reading, but I finally got around to refreshing it's list of feeds, so go take a look, thats what I read or skim every day. It's a massive flow of information on things I wish to stay informed on. (The full reading list is displayed on the right side of the site, it's not small :))
As a note, the PlanetPlanet software that runs it is glitchy. I cannot seem to make it do times properly, and it insists on adding my timezone onto everything (+8 hours) even though no other webapp or app on the server has this problem.
Is it weird that half way through stats class I realized my ear rings still weren't in from monday's Aikido class, and so I flipped on my laptop's webcam and used it like a mirror to simplify putting my rings back in? (Because as good as I've gotten at putting them in "blind" it's still faster and easier when i can see)
And then I was pleased at the amazing integration my Gnome desktop has. My webcam app Cheese can export photos trivially to my gallery app F-Spot, which can trivially export photos to my web gallery. A few clicks and done, webcam to internet.
Then I spent a bit of time and found out that Gallery 2 now has the ability to install plugins from the web, and they have a community repository of plugins, and there is a tagging plugin, which I installed, because tags are awesome. So woo. I'm probably going to start using my web gallery more often again, and I'm wondering if it's too late to start the 365 Project. :P
So in September, my laptop Nika died of an electrical system failure. Going through a semester of university without a laptop was a hassle, but I waited and on Boxing Day I picked up a new laptop for $600 CDN ($300 off!). So what does one get for about the cheapest laptop in the store? Well, I got an Acer Extensa 5620 equipped with a Core2 Due 1.6GHz cpu, a pleasing 2 GB ram and a 250GB harddrive. It also had a Intel X3100 video card. So really, I couldn't have asked for any more in laptop. I'm pretty pleased. I named it Umbriel.
Then I threw Ubuntu 7.10 on it.
First, a few install details. I decided to save Vista since a) I paid for it and more importantly b) I might need it for Starcraft 2. Vista did at least come with a nice partition+filesystem resize tool that shrank it right down. So that was nice. And then Ubuntu installed smoothly onto the rest of the disk and setup Grub to dual boot them flawlessly. So that was all nice.
So what are the good and bads?
The goods: All the open source Intel hardware I could want, including a surprisingly good built in web cam. The Ubuntu install went without a hitch and everything worked. Popped in media and it went out in search of codecs and installed them. Cool.
The medium: I did have to manually install DVD support. But it took like 1 minute so whatever. Same for enabling CPU scaling control from the Gnome panel applet (and I understand the rational for that).
The bad: Even though the graphics drivers for the newest Intel video card are open source and Intel backed no less, I can't have desktop bling AND video playback. One or the other. That's kind of lame. But will probably be fixed, and I'm really hoping by the time Ubuntu 8.04 comes out.
More annoyingly, the sound situtation. The speakers are way to quiet in some situations, like playing a DVD and only acceptably loud other times. Ditto for the headphones. The only minor saving grace is that this is also the case in Windows Vista which the laptop came with. That the computer industry as a whole is shipping laptops with crippled gimpy sound like this is a little discouraging and amazing. Does no one test the hardware and software they ship? Max sound on both headphones and speakers should be better than a whisper. Also, some weird regression in Ubuntu in that when I plug headphones in the speakers don't turn off. Awesome. I though we had that licked like YEARS ago. It worked on my old laptop :p
Still, as a work and school machine the laptop is wonderful and more than sufficient. Additionally it can smoothly play UT2004 with all the features turned to low (which is really a a nice bonus) and I'm hopeful that with in a year it'll handle video and audio just fine. And lets face it, $600 is pretty damn cheap :)
I'm beginning to wonder about my city's power system as of late. There have been a couple of power outages in the last year in my general area, and several other in neighboring areas.
Ah well, my APC UPS did the trick keeping my server powered and online. I gave it an extra boost it wasn't thrilled about in an effort to the power last longer by plugging my UPS into my XPower Pocket PowerPack (The one I picked up in the summer to power my IPaq and IRiver during a cabin trip). The thing says it can portably run a laptop for a while, and it has a 3 prong AC power outlet on it, but my UPS, probably understandably, insisted on flashing its faulty wiring light while sucking power from the thing. Still, it worked. You on the net never knew I had another power outage.
There's something kind of satisfying about being on a dark block in a dark house, but still having a server connected to the internet.
Small power outage in my neighborhood. It only lasted 10 or 15 minutes but it took a little longer to reconnect to the internet. The UPS worked but I wasn't sure how long the outage would last so I powered everything down. Then I hopped back into bed, got comfy, and the lights came back on.
Further connecting myself to the internet, I got myself a Twitter account. It's like a mini (140 char max) text only blog. Seems minimal. So why use it? It's trivial to post to from mobile devices like a DS, and you can update it via SMS text message from a cell phone as well. So it's meant to be used to keep track of yourself and what you're up to. Also, when you're out and about you can tell Twitter to follow your friends (on Twitter) and it will text message you any time they update.
Anyways, since no one I know actually has a Twitter account, obviously it won't be too useful as it is for anyone I know, so I'm integrating it into my site (Wordpress) and then my other Journal that wordpress auto posts to will also 'benefit' from this. So now I have Twitter fairly integrated. However some of my readers may not want that. I'm aggregated on Planet Larry and I'm not sure how much a Planet dedicated to the technical goings ons of Gentoo users cares about my current goings on and whereabouts. So I've rearranged my wordpress categories and now I have an RSS feed for everything but Twitter.
My RSS sans Twitter
My Twitter: twitter.com/dan_ballard
Next it might be interesting to look for a service that I can tie into Wordpress so I can update my blog with pictures from my cell phone...
Better late then never, i should mention that on Tuesday Rob dropped by with a late but fantastically practical birthday gift, an NVidia Geforce 6200 video card. Aw, he knows just what I like. But truthfully, it's just what I needed. Yes with the 8*** line out its 3 generations old, and bargain bin for its generation, but compared to the ATi Rage 128 I'd been forced to use for the last 3 weeks since my Nvidia 5900 burned out, it's amazing. Also, even though it's old and bargain bin, Rob managed to find one with two video out ports so I'm back to dual screen. It's perfect. Also, it actually has twice as much RAM as then 5900 did, fancy that. And with its next gen technology from my old 5900 card, it seem to run Doom 3 about just as well as the 5900 did. So I'm actually at about 100% video recovery. I'm thrilled.
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