The Colonel

Baseball :-(

2009-04-14T11:27:21Z

After a week of regular season play the current AL East standings are as follows:
1st place: Toronto Blue Jays
2nd: Baltimore Orioles
3rd: Tampa Bay Rays
4th: New York Yankees
5th: Boston Red Sox

What's wrong with this picture? Why are the rankings backward. Since when have Toronto or Baltimore done well? Both the Red Sox and Yankees sucking? Will somebody put the fear of God into our pitchers and get us playing how we're supposed to be!!!!!

end rant.

Whatever happened to Halloween?

2008-11-01T15:22:04Z

Seriously, what happened to Halloween? It's not just that we got no trick-or-treaters... I mean hey more candy for me right. But look at the TV line-up that night. I understand that the newer shows will get their own Halloween specials rather than running old ones. And the discussion of how Hannah Montana, Spongebob, and all the other new kids and tween shows are horrible compared to what we grew up on really is another issue but come-on! No Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown! No Halloween Tree! Not even Rocky Horror! You know what VH1 showed instead of Rocky Horror on Halloween? The Wedding Singer! The Wedding Singer? really? Comedy Central? No Shaun of the Dead, No Army of Darkness... they just had normal programming. Thank God The Simpsons are still having a Treehouse of Horror on Sunday otherwise I might just have to cry myself to sleep.

OK magic Halloween chocolate, time to make everything feel better.

Back in the States

2008-11-01T15:06:09Z

Hi everybody. Thanks to everyone who came to the wedding or sent congratulations. I've been back stateside for a few days now, getting settled in again. Posted some pics of our trip on facebook, still waiting for the pictures of the wedding from the professional photographer but I'll get those up as soon as I can. If anybody has any pictures they took themselves please forward them on to me.

And again thanks everyone to making that a wonderful day.

GoodReads

2008-06-13T20:19:40Z

If anyone has a goodreads.com account let me know or friend me from there. Its always neat to compare bookcases and see what other people are reading / have read.

For all us Band Geeks

2008-02-27T12:52:00Z

I present to you the comic from today's xkcd. I think it says everything we already knew:

You can identify them ahead-of-time -- they lead with their left foot when the music starts.

The most entertaining thing ever

2008-01-14T01:53:18Z

I just found one of the most entertaining things I've ever seen in a video game. Try playing Arcanum with a character who has an intelligence of 1. On a whim I created a half-ogre who had the background of "raised in the pits" which gives bonuses to strength and dex with massive reduction to int. It is hilarious to see Virgil trying to explain the whole Panarii religion and what not to an idiot. He's all like "YOU... ARE.. OUR.. SAV..IOUR" Give it a try if you have the time.

Its all over

2007-12-19T22:48:01Z

As of ten minutes ago I have officially ended my first semester as a grad student. All finals done all projects completed, all papers written (or at least my portion of them anyway). Now I get to sleep, relax, enjoy Christmas and do research. Hmmm... one of these things is not like the others. Oh well 10 hours of research and 1 meeting a week is a lot easier schedule than 3 classes + research.

One Down Two More to go

2007-12-17T15:30:50Z

I had my first graduate level final today: Artificial Intelligence. Honestly, I thought the midterm was more difficult (but as we remember that was experiment part one where we study the effects of alcohol on Ben's grade). So just Computer Architecture and Natural Language Processing (plus finishing the paper for each of them) are left. For any geeky person after the cut is an interesting

We are comparing A* to Iterative Deepening A*. As a refresser A* works in the following manner: Every node in the search space has two values the h-cost (heuristic) which is the estimated distance to go this will always be less than the true distance to go, and the g-cost which is the distance gone so far. The sum of h-cost and g-cost is called the f-cost. Nodes are expanded in order of their f-cost (smallest g+h indicates shortest path estimate so grab the smallest f). Once a goal node is expanded the shortest path is found and the search is terminated.

IDA* works as follows: calculate the f-cost of the start node this is our upper bound. Perform a depth first search but do not expand any node whose f-cost is higher than the upper bound, instead save the smallest f-cost of these "garbage" nodes. If no goal is reached, set the upper bound to the smallest f-cost of the "garbage" nodes and re-run IDA*. Keep repeating this untill the goal is reached.

Question 1) A* expands fewer nodes. why?

Question 2) Despite expanding fewer nodes, A* may take longer to run, why?

Question 3) What changes could be made to A* to improve running time but keep the advantage on fewer nodes expanded?

A question to ponder for enlightenment

2007-12-11T14:24:18Z

Why is it that my shower only gets good and hot about 5 seconds before I finish?

Ok, off to work/school. If I can survive the next week and a half everything will be good. Right now however I have two big projects do where neither of them are working particularly well. And we're trying to get a journal paper off by the end of December. I may be disappearing for a while.

An Experiment

2007-10-24T01:50:20Z

I've decided on what my first journal paper will be. It shall be titled "The Effects of Drinking Heavily While Studying on the Grades of the Two Midterm Exams I Have Back to Back Tomorrow" Magically teleported donations of beer are currently being accepted for those of you wishing to aide in this project. Expect a follow up paper on "The Effects of Grades from Midterms on Alcohol Consumption in Computer Science Grad Students" in the comming weeks.

TMBG

2007-10-21T04:15:54Z

Just got back from anabsolutly awesome They Might Be Giants concert. It was Karen's first time seeing them and the show was amazing. They had a brass section with them so they played a lot of songs they normally wouldn't live and they did some others that I've heard live before but are just so much more awesome with the horns. Birdhouse in your soul, Dr. Worm, and She's actual size were on the playlist lots of new stuff, some older stuff that I didn't know but still a lot that I did. Anna Ng was an encore, as was Istanbul. Also if you can find them you should give a listen to their opening act, Oppenheimer, a very cool band out of Belfast. They were so much better than that weird ukelele playing guy who opened for them last time I saw 'em. Alright, I'm too old to be out this late going to concerts and whatnot. Time for this little boy to go to bed.

P.S. It is now officially less than a year until the wedding. AAAAA!!!!!!! and AWESOME!!!!

Pics and whatnot

2007-06-04T01:53:43Z

First things first, thank you everyone for your little notes and congratulations. I cannot wait to introduce you all to Karen. Plans are just starting to be formed but we're looking at a fall wedding, probably mid October. More info as we get it. Anyway, I've posted photos of our trip on facebook. For those of you who aren't on there let me know and I'll see what I can do so you can see our pics.
Thanks again guys, you're awesome.

My return and big news

2007-05-30T19:16:34Z

Hello everybody!!!! So I have returned from abroad. England was amazing. we had some problems getting there at first... our plane to New York was delayed two hours which made us miss our flight to London... which of course was the last flight of the night. Long story short, we got there half a day after we had planned to. So then we spent 3 days with Karen's brother and went to warwick castle and Cambridge both of which were awesome. Took the train down to London where we did all the basic touristy stuff. I'll probably post some pictures soon, most likely on facebook.

Anyway, while that was all fun and what not, I have really big news for you all: in London, I asked Karen to marry me... and of course she said yes! So yeah, we really need to get you far away type people up here or us down there so everyone can meet and have a blast and otherwise just have fun. Between moving, grad school, and engagement this next year is going to be busy, stressfull, but also really awesome and fun.

So yeah, that's it. Let the shocked and surprised phone calls commence.

God Save the Queen

2007-05-17T17:41:49Z

So tomorrow I leave for England where I'll be for a whole week. I would have mentioned this before but well... there were some problems with passports. Not mine, mine got here a good month ago. Karen's passport on the other hand... I wont go into detail about all the trials and tribulations but we finally got it... yesterday. Cutting it close? Maybe but we like to live on the edge. Or something like that. So yeah. Hopefully a post and pictures to follow my return. Take care peoples!

Birthdays and Grad schools

2007-02-02T16:25:29Z

Last Saturday Karen and I went up to Boston for an early birthday celebration for me and a real birthday celebration for Mike. We missed the BSO concert we were going to but got to walk around the Museum of Fine Arts for a while which was lots of fun. There's way too much stuff there to do in one day. We're definitely going to go back a few more times. After that we had a nice dinner at an Indian restaurant and met up with Mike, Amanda, Ben and two of his friends for drinks. Overall a very enjoyable day.

I've just started to hear from some of my grad schools, I'm hoping the rest will pick up the pace. I just want to be able to make a decision and start the next phase of my life. So on the positive side, University of Florida is flying me down and putting me up in a hotel to wine and dine me into their PhD program. This is very cool and I'd imagine I'd do amazingly well in their program but frankly I'd really like to stay in the Southern New England area. On the negative side, Yale sent me an email today rejecting me. Now, I'll admit that there is an amount of prestige difference between the two schools and UFL is a bit bigger but I still find it funny how one is trying to court me and the other couldn't care. But eh, Yale would have been nice but I'm really hoping for Brown and I still have 5 other schools to hear from. I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens.

The most exciting news in the past week

2007-01-18T17:42:21Z

This is mainly for Adam, Colin, Shira, and Caroline and anyone else who's actually read A Game of Thrones (or any other A Song of Ice and Fire books) and if you haven't read them you should go read them now!

http://grrm.livejournal.com/11326.html

That's right, HBO has bought the rights to turn ASoIaF into a series. One season per book. Now get out there and email/write/phone/anything HBO and tell them to greenlight this project. And Shira, you should go back to working at Tor and get us all info on the next book.

Ok, back to real life.

2007

2007-01-01T08:09:18Z

I have a prediction for everyone: 2007 is going to be an absolutely amazing and wonderful year. I feel this in my gut with absolute certainty. So I would wish you all a Happy New Year but I feel that such a wish is irrelevant, your new year will be happy if I wish it to be so or not. So enjoy this coming year, ignore the minor annoyances of life that may occur and revel in each and every joyous occasion.
Peace.

GRE

2006-11-10T00:09:12Z

I take the GRE tomorrow at noon, yeah. I think I'm gonna do pretty well. Math I got down pat, verbal will probably be slightly lower than what I did on SATs but whatever I should be fine. The writing section should be interesting. I think I'll do alright but I think it's really all going to come down to what topics I get. Anyway, wish me luck.

Dear Hollywood, Americans aren't as stupid as you think (I hope)

2006-09-15T02:54:33Z

I just saw the movie "The Ringer" (Tronster had it on while I was making dinner) which was a movie that, when I saw the previews, I immediately decided I would never see. For those of you who don't remember or never saw these previews here's a little reminder. A guy, Steve, decides that he is going to rig The Special Olympics by entering as a contestant himself (no, he is not disabled but one must wonder if the writers are) the previews then go onto show various innane clips from the movie: Steve's attempts at a retarded charcter, a water balloon being thrown into his crotch and him saying he wet his pants, him fallilng down, etc. Basically giving the impression that this is one of those movies where the humor is far below slapstick and below fart jokes even.

Ok, so the actual movie was nothing like that. **spoilers ahead if anyone actually cares** So the real premise of the movie is that Steve's friend loses his insurance (because Steve has to fire him) and then gets into an accident where he looses 3 fingers. Now unable to pay for them to be reattached and unable to work to pay for the procedure things look pretty grim. Steve tells this story to his uncle who comes up with the plan to have Steve enter the Special Olympics and the uncle will bet on him to pay off his large gambling debt and also pay for the operation. Steve hates the idea but is pressured and pressured and eventually gives in. Most of the rest of the movie is about Steve dealing with how bad a person he is for doing that. Some of his fellow competetors figure out that Steve isn't "special" but ask him to continue competing to help put the reigning Special Olympic champ (who's a jerk) in his place. Throw in a touch of romantic comedy as Steve falls for one of the volunteers and you have a movie that really isn't half bad. Very little of the movie is crude humor and none of it is particularly degrading to the handicapped (apparently the real Special Olympics gave their seal of approval or something) and some of the humor is actually more for the thinking person. Steve takes on the persona of "Jeffy" as his Olympic athlete when asked what his last name is he says "Dahmer". You can't be a crude 13 year old to get that joke.

So my question is, why is the advertising so different than the actual movie? Are they trying to get a certain demographic (and pushing away others)? The lowest common denominator? Is this particular movie so different or the central plot point so overpowering that no other type of ad would really be feasible? And exactly how often does this happen? I had refused to watch "Anchorman" until the second set of ads came out. The first set depicted it as just a stupid movie hoping to get by on Saturday Night Live talent with a plot line that Adam Sandler would turn down. The second set (and the movie itself) showed it to be more satire and social commentary. In one month the movie went from 13 year old insipid comedy to 30 year old thinking mans comedy. How many good movies have I missed because advertisers market comedies like these in such a miserable way?

Maybe I should give "White Chicks" a chance...

Then again, maybe not.

Where was I when this happened?

2006-09-05T01:07:48Z

I was discussing movies and movie music recently. Good soundtracks, great composers etc. The thought crossed my mind that Michael Kamen (who did such works as Mr. Holland's Opus, X-Men 1, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) hasn't really done anything recently. Or at least I couldn't think of anything he's done. So I just went on IMDB to see what he's been doing for the past few years. Turns out not much of anything... as he's been dead since 2003. How did I not know this? That's the sort of thing I would know! Anyway... um that is all.

So Much Stuff

2006-08-23T01:46:13Z

So, this weekend has been rather... eventful. As mentioned earlier it was HuskyCon so I drove Caroline to her parent's house then Adam and I continued down Long Island to the con. About 5 miles or so away from our destination my brakes started making these grinding sounds. That did not sound like a good thing to me. So I talked with Adam and he said he'd take public transportation to the airport after the con and Shira was nice enough to let me crash at her place while my car was being repaired. So on Sunday somebody was going to bring Adam to the train station and they back up into my car. So now the rear passenger door doesn't open. But despite all of my various car troubles I had a really great time this weekend. I got to relax, have fun and just forget all my troubles from before.

As far as the con itself went, I feel that I played fairly mediocrely though a number of people did commend me on some of my strategies. Also somebody there basically offered me a job in the DC area. I'm going to send him my resume but I don't know if he'll want me since it will only be for a year before I (hopefully) start a PhD program and I'll have to know more about the company and the like before I accept any offer. But overall things look good.

Hopefully adding to the trophy collection

2006-08-18T03:30:39Z

So this weekend is HuskyCon. For those of you who haven't heard much from me in the past 5 years, Diplomacy is a very fun boardgame where the winning is much more about conversations, conniving and well diplomacy between the players than it is about the simple game mechanics. Anyway HuskyCon is a little convention/tournament (arguably my favorite) held each year and bright and early tomorrow Adam and I will be driving up to Long Island to attend. I'm hoping to get another "Best Country" award this year, last year I won for Geramny I'm hoping for England or Russia this year but honestly any prize will be appreciated.

On a whim, and because being jobless allows me to do so, I've decided to head up to RI after the tournament. This really was a last minute decision so I might be staying for a day or for a week or anything in between. If I'm there for any decent period of time maybe I'll see some of the old Portsmouth crew.

Ok time to finish packing.

See ya later

2006-08-10T06:02:13Z

For whoever may be effected: I'm gone for the weekend. I'll be down in Nashville for my sister's graduation and should be back Sunday night. Then the job / apartment search will occur in earnest.

Space Beer!!!!

2006-08-06T05:36:14Z

Ok, this one is mainly for Ben and Mike but I hope everyone can find it educational. Now if only I can figure out how to have my PhD research revolve around beer... For the full article with pictures go to http://www.firstscience.com/site/articles/beer.asp

Of all the carbonated beverages people enjoy drinking today, beer is the oldest and most familiar. Beer has likely been a part of society since human civilization first arose. Historians believe that the ancient Mesopotamian's and Sumerians were brewing beer as early as 10,000 BC. The ancient Egyptians and Chinese brewed beer, as did pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas.

For the tradition of beer and its fizzy cousins to continue as people begin settling space, a few questions must first be answered.

Will fermentation work the same in weightlessness? What happens to carbonation when there's no buoyancy to bring the bubbles to the top? Can space beer form a proper head? Scientists who study the physics of gas-liquid mixtures would love to know!

Two separate space shuttle experiments tackled these questions. Both were engineered and mediated by BioServe Space Technologies, a NASA-sponsored Commercial Space Centre at the University of Colorado at Boulder. NASA's Space Product Development (SPD) program encourages the commercialisation of space by industry through 17 such CSCs.

Kirsten Sterrett, a University of Colorado graduate student, first became interested in how beer would brew in space while working at the Coors Brewing Company. Having studied aerospace engineering as an undergraduate, she began to wonder: How would yeast that perform fermentation fare in orbital free fall? The answer would not only shed light on the possible making of space-beer, but also provide valuable information to pharmaceutical companies with a keen interest in the biology of orbiting microbes.

When she returned to CU-Boulder for her master's work, she chose the topic for her thesis. Her experiments were sponsored by Coors and flown on the shuttle with the help of BioServe.

"I always said I wouldn't do an experiment that I couldn't eat or drink in the end," she jokes.

"Actually, after the experiment was all done, I gave (the space-beer) a little taste." The sample was only about 1 ml, which wasn't really enough to savor, she says, "but why throw something like that away?"

Along with her taste test, Sterrett performed a protein analysis on the beer and the yeast, measured the beer's specific gravity (the force exerted on it by gravity per unit volume), and "repitched" the yeast by brewing subsequent batches of beer with it. By all of these measures, the space-beer appeared to be essentially the same as beer brewed on Earth.

The behaviour of the yeast was somewhat puzzling, though. The total cell count in space-borne samples was lower that of "control" samples brewed on the ground, and the percentage of live cells was also lower. One of the yeast's proteins also existed in greater amounts in the space-brew.

Sterrett's experiment couldn't suggest reasons for these changes, but the overly abundant protein bears some resemblance to a general stress protein.

The low cell count was particularly surprising, says Sterrett. In space, yeast cells remain evenly dispersed within the "wort" - a brewers' term for the pre-fermentation mixture of water, barley, hops, and yeast. Ideally, this would give the yeast cells better access to nutrients in the wort compared to similar mixtures on Earth, where the weight of the cells causes them to pile at the bottom one on top of the other.

"It's the same question that we're asking on the pharmaceutical side," says Louis Stodieck, director of BioServe. "We know from subsequent space experiments sponsored by Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute that the efficiency of producing fermentation products increases [in a weightless environment], in fact quite significantly." Some of those experiments produced as much as three times the fermentation products as control samples on the ground.

Pharmaceutical companies frequently use genetically-engineered microbes - usually bacteria - to produce medicinally-valuable proteins such as antibiotics through fermentation. By introducing the gene that codes for the protein into the bacteria's DNA, scientists convert the microbes into inexpensive, self-replicating medicine micro-factories.

Space research with microbe fermentation might help improve this process.

"What we're trying to do now is to find the specific mechanism of that (increased fermentation efficiency in space), and then we can ask whether we can modify the fermentation process on Earth to take advantage of that - or is it possible that we could genetically engineer an organism to mimic what it does in space," Stodieck says.

A more efficient fermentation process, even by a small percentage, could potentially save millions of dollars in production costs.

For beer, of course, increased fermentation efficiency means a more alcoholic brew - not necessarily good news for crew members who need to remain sober in the dangerous environment of space. The alcohol content of space-brews would need to be adjusted accordingly and, of course, consumed in moderation.

But for alcohol content to even matter, future space residents will first have to get the beer into a drinking container - a trickier feat than it may seem.

"How do you dispense a beverage and keep the carbonation in solution until the person is ready to drink?" Stodieck asks. "That's the challenge."

Changes in temperature and pressure, or even physical agitation of the beverage as it's dispensed, can cause carbonation to come out of solution prematurely. Because bubbles don't rise in free-fall the result can be a foamy mass.

This problem was addressed by experiments flown on the shuttle by The Coca-Cola Company, again with the help of BioServe. "They (The Coca-Cola Company) have a lot of technology that they develop for future ways of providing their drinks anywhere and everywhere," Stodieck notes. And indeed, their dispensing device flown on the shuttle managed to serve a drinkable cola. It controlled the temperature of the beverage during mixing and dispensing with computer accuracy, and minimized agitation.

Similar technology should prove effective for carbonated space beers. Unfortunately it doesn't lend itself to the traditional frosty glass mug! Instead, beverages are dispensed into a special bottle (pictured above) that screws onto the dispenser. The bottle itself, which contains a collapsible bag, is internally pressurized. The pressure around the bag is slowly released as the beverage enters, maintaining the drink under constant pressure and producing a palatable soda or beer.

So maybe it's not exactly like having a beer on Earth, but astronauts might nevertheless welcome a sip from the strange contraption. Bubbly, frothing, and ticklish - it's a welcome taste of home.

Time for something new

2006-07-22T00:33:10Z

As some of you may know, I am no longer employed at the Iowa Foundation for Medical Care. Frankly I'm actually glad to have been "down-sized", I don't have to put up with the boring monotony that is doing nothing all day and I got a weeks worth of severance pay.

Unfortunately, this is sort of the first time in my life that I don't have a particularly clear direction. Its also the perfect opportunity to start over or do something adventurous. Now if you are interested in my adventurous (pronounced "crazy") ideas you should ask me yourself. However, as far as starting over goes, I'm considering going back to school for an advanced degree. The problem with that is I'm interested in too many things for my own good. So, of the myriad of things that I am interested in and/or good at, which should I study? Time for a poll! Pick your choice of Ben's degree:

Master of Business Administration
Master of Education
Master / Phd of Computer Science
Master of History
Master of the Arts - Music (Theory/Comp or History... or Education)