Le Jeu de la Vie

Busy Me

2006-11-05T13:28:00.000-08:00

Wow, I suck at keeping up on this. Over two weeks with no post. Admittedly I have been considerably more busy, since the school term has started now and I'm doing a lot of TA work, plus I had a paper deadline last Tuesday, plus I'm playing World of Warcraft again (MAJOR time drain), plus I'm doing tango classes/practice three nights a week. But that's no excuse! Actually, I'm very relieved that I have so much going on, since it's kind of kick-started me back into productive mode. Maybe I can hurry up and finish that PhD now.

The Changing World of Television

2006-10-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

I was commenting to someone the other day that I felt like the best TV shows coming out now were better than they've ever been in the past. More specifically, they had better character development and more sophisticated and intelligent plotlines. The person pointed out that a possible reason for this is the current ease of access to television shows. If you miss watching some episode when it airs, you can perhaps watch it online, or maybe you TiVoed it, or you'll buy the DVD, or you could even download a digital copy illegally from some file sharing site (not that I would EVER think of doing that, cough cough). The point is, there's are many ways of seeing missed episodes now, while in the past you would just have to wait for the rerun to come on, perhaps several months later. I think this has enabled producers to make shows that are more strongly interconnected between episodes, which allows better character development and offers the possibility of working with more complex and higher caliber plots. Of course, there are still as many (if not more) crappy shows being made out there as ever before, but it's good to see that at least some of them are pushing for something better.

Excuses

2006-10-18T08:08:00.000-07:00

I seem to be coming up with all sorts of reasons these days for not doing serious research work. It's a little easier to do now, as there are many things going on with my Graduate Student Association and because I'm the head teaching assistant for my advisor's course during the semester which is starting next week. And of course writing this post is another means of procrastination of my real work. I do have a conference paper deadline in just over a week though, so I'm really going to have to get my ass in gear in the next couple days. I suspect this weekend will include a fair bit of office time for me.

New Post

2006-10-17T08:23:00.000-07:00

Wow, I've done a really crappy job of keeping up on my blog lately. I guess I've been more busy with other stuff (tennis, gym, salsa, tango, poker nights), but that's no excuse! I pledge to do a better job from now on (or at least for the next week or so).

I finally bought a new tennis racquet yesterday, and will try it out for the first time in 40 minutes. I thought I had gotten a great deal, since it was on sale for about $180 down from $350, but I found out after you can buy the same on in the US for only $90! Oh well, as long as it improves my game, I won't complain (too much).

And lastly, if you're looking for a new TV show to watch, Heroes is quite awesome.

Dancing Through Life

2006-10-01T14:04:00.000-07:00

I've resolved that I'm going to put a concerted effort into improving my tango skills this term. This resolution was initially inspired several months ago by the film Take the Lead, which is a pretty bad movie, but has some cool dancing scenes. More recently, I've been meeting more and more people who enjoy dancing tango, and watching some of them dance it is pretty impressive. Of course, I will of course continue with salsa as well. I'd love to do swing also, but for some strange reason no one in Switzerland seems to know what it is.

My Rubik's cube solving time is now down to around 5 minutes. Still got a ways to go till 23 seconds though.

Rubik's Cube

2006-09-27T15:34:00.000-07:00

My officemate brought in a Rubik's Cube to work today, and I spent essentially the entire day playing with it. I'm pleased to say that after the first four hours or so, I did manage to solve it. I was about halfway through solving it again when I had to leave for tennis. My officemate can apparently solve it in 23 seconds on average, so I have a ways to go before I catch up. What a wonderful use of my time.

On a somewhat orthogonal note, I've decided I ought to make an effort to be more social, since I feel as though my social life over the last month or so has been essentially non-existent. This may mean I'm going to have to interact with people outside of the Computer Science department.

Office Comedy and Magic Engines

2006-09-24T01:09:00.000-07:00

Even though it's a couple days late, I feel the need to express how impressed I was with this season's premiere of the The Office. Not only did they resolve last year's cliffhanger in a way that doesn't ruin the situation, the way they did it may even allow for funnier situations. Also, the episode plot was excellent, fully in the style of former episodes. I'm not saying that the show won't lose its touch at some point, but it ain't there yet.

I saw this while browsing Slashdot yesterday. Could certainly be one of the too-good-to-be-true claims, but the description does make some sense. Maybe flying cars are finally going to arrive?

Another Blah Day

2006-09-21T11:35:00.000-07:00

I spent most of today at work watching political commentary and South Park episodes on YouTube. This was punctuated by a meeting with my advisor, where he informed me that I was making good progress on my PhD (go figure). After a brief peak this weekend, my motivation is once again running near empty. Please feel free to leave inspirational comments to get me going again.

Poker Night

2006-09-20T15:52:00.000-07:00

After almost 3 years of trying (well, maybe half-heartedly trying) to make it happen, some friends and I finally had our first poker night. This meant I finally got to seriously use the swank poker set my dad gave me for Christmas. Five people, twenty dollar buy-in, and at the end of the evening I walked away with...eight dollars :( I think my problem is that I'm always too curious to know how things will turn out if I stay in the hand, so I don't fold when I should. Oh well, still a reasonable price to pay for an evening of fun.

Tennis Woes

2006-09-16T09:12:00.000-07:00

I tried out my newly restrung tennis racquet for the first time today and was crestfallen to discover it still was having issues; the bottom portion of the racquet has a much different response than the rest, giving me very inconsistent shots. It looks like I have no choice now but to go out and get a new one. The only upside to the whole thing was that, after losing some games to my partner, we swapped racquets, and I only lost a single point in the next three games we played. Doesn't change the fact that I'm gonna have to dish out some cash for a new racquet, but at least I know that once I do I'll be back to a pretty decent game.

Sloth

2006-09-13T13:20:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling quite heavy and sluggish today. Could have something to do with the long amount of time I spent in my office, or perhaps the large amount of online TV I watched while "working" today. I seem to be lacking in motivation to really do anything, including moving. I've also had an unusually strong craving for processed sugar. Hopefully a good night's sleep will take care of things.

Slow Advisor

2006-09-11T16:22:00.000-07:00

This Friday is the submission date for a conference to which I'm sending a paper. I thought for a change that I would try to do a really good job on my initial submission and iterate over several drafts with my advisor, so I sent him my first draft quite early. Three weeks later, and now three days before the deadline, I STILL haven't gotten comments back. I realize that professors have lots of duties to attend to, but it would be nice if, after me putting in the extra effort to get done early, he could have given it a slightly higher priority. I guess it's partially my fault for not bugging him more along the way, but that doesn't make it less frustrating.

P.S. I still think my advisor is quite good overall, and probably things like these seem even worse in comparison to his other positive qualities.

TV Addiction

2006-09-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

My daily average of time spent watching TV has increased dramatically in the last week, primarly because I acquired season 1 of Prison Break, and basically went through the entire thing in 3 days. Definitely rates as one of the most addicting shows I've come across. I kinda feel that it's very similar to the style of 24, but more intelligent (though I'm not a big 24 fan, so my opinion may be biased). The other show that's got me excited is Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the new dramedy from Aaron Sorkin of the West Wing. I've only seen the pilot, but it looks as though they may be trying to take the wit and fast-paced dialogue of the West Wing and apply it to an LA television studio, which would be more accessible to the general public without the esoteric details of the US governmental system to deal with. I just hope they don't lose that edge that made the West Wing so great.

The Joy of New Strings

2006-09-07T13:00:00.000-07:00

I finally took my tennis racket in today to get restrung (after 11 years of usage). The guy said it would take him a week to do it, but gave me a loaner racket to play with in the meantime. So this afternoon I played with it against my friend, and the difference was jaw dropping. I seriously was making maybe 20% of the unforced errors that I had been before. I had suspected my bad strings were having an impact on my game, but I had no idea it had been that much.

And here's something for all you bored Techers out there.

Crazy Robots

2006-09-04T05:13:00.000-07:00

I'm having trouble getting my latest robotic experiment working. I think my algorithm design may be alright, but during the experiment, robots will often crash into walls or each other, which sometimes causes them to reset themselves and stops the program. I tried to solve the issue by adding a layer of padding to the walls, creating a little "robot insane asylum" if you will, but the problem still seems to happen from time to time. Maybe the next step is to get some robotic straightjackets.

Defending

2006-09-01T16:26:00.000-07:00

I attended my first thesis defense this afternoon. This is a little unusual, since most people have been to several in their first three years of grad school, but no one from my lab has finished yet, and I guess everyone else I know either started later or is slow. I was kinda surprised at how high level the presentation was. I guess it makes sense, especially if people like your parents are there watching, but for some reason I had the impression that a PhD thesis defense would involve much more hard core research details. I actually personally feel that all technical presentations should be designed to be reasonably accessible to people not in the field. The better you're able to communicate your research effectively, the better people can understand the coolness/usefulness of the stuff your doing. Though I guess if you're working on crap research, maybe being completely incomprehensible would be a good thing.

And the beat goes on

2006-08-30T12:15:00.000-07:00

For the first time in I don't know how long, all the university tennis courts were in use when my friend and I went to play today. Maybe people have realized there aren't so many days of nice weather left before the gloom of Winter sets in and are trying to get the most out of the remaining ones. It wasn't too much of a disappointment though since I've been feeling kinda tired all day.

My labmates and I went to the on-campus cafeteria which serves a Thai Menu for lunch today. Amazingly, the food quality there is quite good, which is doubly surprising consider (a) the quality of Asian food around here sucks, and (b) it's a university cafeteria. I should count my blessings on this one.

Crazy Weather

2006-08-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

It was cold and rainy today. Admittedly I've only lived in Switzerland for 3 years now, but last I checked it wasn't supposed to be raining and in the 40s in AUGUST. One more thing to add to the list of signs of the coming apocalypse. I should start shopping for Twinkies and Tang soon.

Water and Pizza

2006-08-28T15:48:00.000-07:00

I saw the Indian film Water today. Nice movie, though a bit depressing. An Indian guy who was there watching with me was complaining that all the films coming out of Bollywood were either hypercritical and serious or completely irreverent, with no middle ground. I don't really know enough Bollywood movies to say anything definite about that, but one could imagine the same thing being said about Hollywood, with some occasional exceptions.

I also finally went back to (what I think is) the best pizzeria in town, which had been closed for late July and most of August (silly European holiday month). They have an absolutely incredible "Exotique" pizza. God bless the person who thought of putting curry on a pizza.

Global Warming

2006-08-27T04:03:00.000-07:00

I FINALLY got to see An Inconvenient Truth on Friday (stupid European release date delays). It was pretty impressive that a documentary on what seems like kind of a dry subject could turn out so interesting (especially with Al Gore narrating). After the film I was thinking what a great way that would have been to kick-off a presidential campaign - you actually have people paying to come see your advertisements pretty much. I guess Gore has said he's not gonna run in 2008 though, which is unfortunate because I haven't seen anyone else I'm particularly impressed with so far. I like the little bit at the end of the film where they're giving tips to fight global warming, and they say "Contact your congressman about the issue. If they don't listen...run for congress." Hmmm, something to think about...

Puzzling

2006-08-24T10:09:00.000-07:00

Today was primarily spent doing puzzles on Puzzle Boat (with a brief break for a meeting with my advisor). For those who don't know, Puzzle Boat is an addicting online puzzle challenges, where you move around an island, solving difficult puzzles everywhere you go, with the goal of reaching the center (solving a puzzle unlocks new locations). I finally managed to solve some on my own today, without the help of the other people on the team. Of course, this just makes me more addicted, so I'm gonna have to make a big effort to get any real work done now.

Yada Yada

2006-08-23T16:13:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally did my poster today, but the end product is pretty crappy. It's alright though, I don't much care about this work, and it's my advisor who has to present it, so I'll leave it to him to come up with some clever way to make it look good.

I got into a semi-philosophical conversation with some friends (one American, one Indian) this evening about the morality of arranged marriages. The American couldn't understand it, the Indian didn't want to do it personally but supported it for many, and I was somewhere in between. I think a good point I raised though is that Western culture is actually moving closer to some aspects of that mentality these days; internet dating has somewhat lost its initial taboo status and is becoming much more popular, and the profile examination is really quite similar to the initial assesment used for arranged marriages, though with different requirements of course. This is one of the many areas where I think there is some happy middle ground that might be good for both sides to adopt. Oh well, I don't think we're gonna see any major cultural shifts based on what I think.

Procrastinating

2006-08-23T01:48:00.000-07:00

I had one goal at work yesterday: do my poster for an upcoming research conference. And yet, the end of the day rolled around, and somehow I hadn't even started on it. I've become quite good at finding excuses for putting off work for a short while. And get enough of those small excuses together, you can waste an entire day. For example, right now I'm writing this post instead of doing anything productive. I'd better get back to work.

Challenges

2006-08-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

Like many others out there in grad school, I have my fair share of down days. I think that this is bound to happen when you're putting so much of your life into your "job" (or whatever you want to call it) and things are not going along swimmingly, which is gonna happen sooner or later. The plus side to all this is that I feel like those tough times are when we really learn the most and develop as a person. And you know, after you've been through hell, everything else looks pretty tame by comparison.

This post is dedicated to Monashake.

Takin' Care of Business

2006-08-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

For the first time in a while, I feel as though I'm being semi-productive at work. This is nice, since I haven't really felt like this since April. I think it's actually less a factor of how much I'm actually doing, and more of how many things I'm finishing (I just wrapped up a rough draft of my next conference paper this morning). Maybe now I should start thinking about taking care of those gazillion things I've been putting off...

On a separate note, Thank You for Smoking is an awesome movie. Go see it.

The Sporting Mindset

2006-08-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

I've been playing more tennis in the recent past. One of my friends just started this summer and has been very enthusiastic about playing every chance he gets, and who am I to say no to a game? Anyway, I've lately been frustrated because he's now beating me a fair portion of the time, even though I played 4 years in high school. I realize I'm not a superb player, but shouldn't it take someone more than a couple months to get to my level? My current belief is that my lack of ability is a result of me not having the right mindset. I think I often psyche myself out, and therefore play much more poorly than I could. Some of the games I'm hitting killer serves in every time, and others I can't even make my second serve over the net. There should really be reference material out there about how to learn the proper frame of mind for competitive sports. Maybe there is and I just don't know about it, but if not, I bet someone could make a bundle from publishing that.