Mad Thesis Writing

in

Well now is the time that I concentrate on my thesis. Yikes! It's already August! My main goal now is to attempt to get as much of my thesis written as possible over the next couple of weeks. This will require a lot of concentration, but hopefully I'll be able to get as much done as I can with the hope that I can try to graduate without having to pay for another term of tuition fees.

So really, that's what is going to keep me occupied over the next few weeks. That plus the bazillion other things that happens in the summer in the city of Edmonton. The Fringe is coming up and I understand there's going to be several plays that I need to see!

In other exciting news, Diane received her keys to her apartment with Shelly today! I will be helping her move all her stuff in on Thursday. There's always some excitement that accompanies moving into a new residence, so times are pretty exciting! Speaking of Diane, we're still doing wonderfully together. We've been able to spend a pretty decent amount of time together since I got back from New York which was pretty nice. I think one of the big reasons I was feeling homesick was because I was missing Diane! Yeah I know ... too much sappiness. But I don't really care!

Check out the new photo on the photoblog! Heraldk

Adventures on the way Home

in ,

Well the last day in New York really wasn't all that eventful from a sightseeing perspective. We all slept in, which I was grateful for since I was still feeling pretty sick. We were actually woken up by housekeeping at 9:30 reminding us we needed to check out by 11:00. Bleah. We finally got up and checked out, leaving our bags for $2 a person at the front desk. We stopped for brunch at the cafe/deli we've been stopping at every day since we found it. We had some NY style pizza again, and then headed down to central park to wander around for a little while before we made our way to the airport. Central park is pretty cool - we walked all around the reservoir which is a big lake in the middle of central park.

After making the circuit we walked back and retrieved our bags and made for the bus. Mike S had previously found a bus that was only 10 short blocks (NY city blocks are short across the streets, but long across the avenues) away that would take us straight to the airport. So we walked there and caught the bus right away which was pretty sweet. It was a pretty long bus ride, but finally we arrived at La Guardia airport.

We had a mixup at the frontdesk when we checked our bags. The guy asked me if I wanted to get on the earlier flight out of NY with the added note that a thunderstorm moving in might make it hard for our flight to take off. I asked him if he had 4 spots for all four of us in our group, and he said yes. So we said do it! The problem happened when Nolan went to get his boarding pass changed ... the guy ended putting him on the standby list! Woops ...

Turns out Nolan never got on our new flight. But the story continues. We boarded our flight a bit late, but figured we wouldn't have a problem connecting in Toronto because we had a 3 hour layover. Well the stormy weather was already playing havoc with planes getting off the ground, so we ended up waiting on the runway for almost 3 hours! Nolan's plane got off the ground just after ours and we arrived in Toronto abou the same time. Funnier yet, since Nolan didn't check any bags, he was able to make the connection whereas the rest of us were rescheduled since our bags had no way of making it from the customs to the connecting flight. *sigh*. So ironically, 3 of us left before Nolan, but Nolan was the one who got into Edmonton first!

Anyways, it is good to be home. I've spent some time cleaning stuff up around the house and I'll probably do more of that tomorrow before I head to a family BBQ. I'm very glad to be out of the humidity of the East coast and back to Edmonton weather - though I'm told that it was really hot while we were gone!

Heraldk

Spamalot, and meeting Stephen Colbert’s “Black Friend”

in ,

Alright, so the exciting thing that happened last night didn't really pan out as I'd hoped. But it still makes a good story. At the comedy club last night, the first comedian to standup was introduced as recently being featured on "The Colbert Report". I was shocked and wondered who he was ... turns out he was Jordan Carlos. For those unfamiliar with the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert has frequently made mention of his "black friend Alan". In more recent episodes, Colbert found out that Alan was at some sort of student rally, which made him unhappy so he was no longer his "black friend" but rather just an aquaintance. This is where Jordan shows up - he plays the character Alan on the Report, in an episode that happened within the last couple months! So it was rather a shock to see him perform his standup routine at this random comedy club we just happened to have chosen. After the show, I talked to him, and made mention the fact that we were from Canada and got my picture with him. He offered to try and get us tickets to the Report which we had tried to do before but couldn't. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to get us in, but that would've been super cool if he could have!

Anyways, that's that exciting story. This morning Mike S and I slept in since our plan was to sleep in and head straight to the Spamalot show we had bought tickets for yesterday. The other members of our crew headed out early in the morning for their own endeavours. I was happy to sleep in though since my cold had worsened.

After we finally got up, we went down to the deli down the street that has become one of our new favourite places to eat. After having a big slice of NY style pizza, we continued on our way. I stopped at a drug store to grab a kleenex supply and some water before we caught the subway down to Times Square. I'm starting to get pretty tired of the area - its just *so* over the top, and so constantly crowded that its just not interesting to me anymore. Oh well. We had some time to kill so we walked around a bit and I bought a gift. And then it was time for our show!

The Shubert Theatre is absolutely stunning. I don't really know how to describe it, but I was quite happy to enjoy the scene before the show started. We were seated up on the upper balcony, but only 3 rows back so we had a pretty good view (I had no reason to complain anyways). They packed the seats pretty tight back there, but a couple hours of a little discomfort isn't new to us from flying so much in recent memory.

Spamalot was awesome! The show was roughly based on Monty Python's the Holy Grail, but with several twists and turns that didn't exist in the original movie plus a couple throwbacks to the other Monty Python shows. Sweeeet. Of particular note, they sang "Always look on the bright side of life" which was pretty awesome. Also a lot of fun was the Camelot scene where they made it as if they were going to Vegas ... and the memorable quote "What happens in Camelot, stays in Camelot!". The other hilight for me was several songs where they made meta references to the show. In both love songs of the show, the song goes (roughly) "Once (twice) in each show, there comes a song where we sing and kiss... this is that song". Pure awesome self referencing music!

Mike and I were totally entertained throughout the show so I think its safe to say we rather enjoyed it. We joined up with Mike and Nolan afterwards and headed out to dinner where we tried a Peruvian place (food from Peru). It was pretty good, though I really wasn't sure what I should order.

My cold had been bother me all day, so after dinner we headed straight back to the hostel though Nolan stayed out to do some shopping. Now I'm thinking about heading out to that deli again for a snack before I crash. Hopefully by the time I get back Nolan will be back and I can fall asleep without worrying about being woken up again when Nolan comes in.

Tomorrow is home time, and I'm quite glad to say so. Its been a long trip. Good, but I'm quite happy to get the chance to return home to my sweety and to the comforts of home which are seeming quite attractive at the moment!

Heraldk

Another day in New York

in ,

Well, New York is really overwhelming. Still, its cool to get to see some stuff, so we slept in a little later today because we were all pretty tired from our rather full day the day before. After we finally got going, we headed out for a quick brunch before heading to the United Nations. We got there just in time before a large group of people and took the tour, which was actually really cool. The tour guide was super awesome and the subject was interesting. The UN is a very neat building, and its cool to see all the different countries and how they interact in the UN.

Along the way to the UN, we saw the Chrysler building, which was reportedly the tallest building in NYC for a short while before the Empire State building claimed the title. More picture-ness!

We hurried back to the ticket office to see if we could get cheap tickets to the spamelot show, but apparently these weren't available. I guess the show is selling out regularly so they don't need to sell cheap tickets for it. Mike and I decided to pay full price for these seats. I figure we might as well check out a broadway show while we're here ... so we're gonna go. The other Mike (J) and Nolan will head out on their own to see things of their choice. We'll reconvene after the show (its a matinee) and hopefully have something super exciting to see! (more about that tomorrow, I don't want to jinx it).

After looking at tickets, we walked up 5th avenue to the Apple store and FAO Schwartz ... two big toy stores right next to each other (in fact, on the same block). The Apple store is a pretty awesome sight - the entire store is below street level with the only part that is visible being a big glass cube with an elevator and stairs decending into the center of the store. Only Apple, I tell you! Right beside it, FAO is a huge toy store for kids with multiple levels of toys and games and other fun things. The scale of this place is incredible! So many crazy things of any price (there's of course the big foot piano on the upper level that the price tag states a quarter of a million dollars ... heh). The extravagance of it all blows my mind!

We were getting hungry so our next stop was dinner at a quaint restaurant called Burgers and Cupcakes. Mike S had picked this place out as a place to go so we did indeed head there. Its one of these concept restaurants that kind of appeals to particular people. We had some fun with the restuarant. They even gave us free cupcakes ... because we followed the instructions on the sign in the window saying "Free cupcakes if you tell us you hate Bush". Easily done!

After dinner Mike S, Nolan and I went on to try out a comedy club - which turned out to be pretty fun ... and there's a little more to the story I think I'll share tomorrow once I figure out whether we've succeeded or not. Yes, I'm being all secretive here. Its a good story, just let me finish it up tomorrow!

So that was the day today - not nearly as full as yesterday, but still enjoyable. Unfortuantely, I'm coming down with a cold, so I've got to get some sleep before Spamelot tomorrow afternoon!

So on that note, to bed I go!

Heraldk

Marathon Day in New York

in ,

Okay, today was a heck of a day! We got up on our own accord around 8:30am ... after which we got ready and started out on our big day. Our plan was to try and hit some of the major tourist attractions that are "must-see" New York. We could've done this by transit for most of the way, but decided to instead do most of it on foot so we could also get a feel for the atmosphere of the city and see stuff we'd miss if we went on the train.

So after a short breakfast in a little bakery/deli, we started walking down Broadway with our first stop being Carnegie Hall. There wasn't much to see inside since the tour had just left and there wasn't exactly public access to the building. But we got some pictures of the outside of the building.

Next, we stopped at a ticket booth near Times square looking for tickets for a broadway show (we're aiming to see Spamelot, a Monty Python themed broadway show). The booth wasn't open until 3pm, so we checked a show schedule just to see if there was any shows for that night. Unfortunately, there wasn't any so we were forced to put that off until tomorrow. The advantage of this particular ticket booth is they offer discount tickets the day of the show - which we are a big fan of! So that's on the agenda for tomorrow and hopefully tomorrow evening as well.

The next stop was the Empire State building - but the wait there was over an hour so we decided to put that off until later on as well. So far, not a huge success rate on the things we wanted to do!

Tired, and out of gas, we stopped at a Mcdonalds (yeah, I know ... terrible). We were in a district that seemed to have a lack of snack/deli type food places that we could stop for a quick bite, a glass of water and get our wits back from the busy streets of Manhattan. By the time we found the Mcdonalds, I really really needed to sit down and take a breather. So that I guess is the reason for our stop there. From there, we caught a subway (being really tired and not willing to walk the rest of the way) to a stop near the NY stock exchange - which was yet another place we just stopped to take some pictures of the outside of and left.

Our next destination was a ferry to take us to the Statue of Liberty. Fortunately for our tired feet, this was really close by so we went there and got tickets for the next ferry. It is really a pretty cool sight, even if it really doesn't have a lot of meaning for us Canadians. We wandered around the island and took lots of photos. Unforunately, we couldn't go inside - apparently tickets for that are difficult to get and require more planning ahead than we were able to do. Oh wells.

After catching the ferry back, we walked through Battery Park on route to the World Trade Center site. This was a sobering place to go since it was obvious there was a gaping hole in the landscape. The area is under heavy watch, and construction has started on whatever they plan on putting there ... we didn't stay long, but it was kind of depressing just being there so I was glad to move on.

We had one more stop on our list ... Brooklyn bridge which was not too far away. But first, we needed to grab some food so we stopped at a little place next to the bridge for some pretty good Italian food. It wasn't Turin food, but who am I to complain? I got another chance to sample some juicy fresh shrimp. While not many of them, I was quite happy to have some! I totally have a new appreciation for shrimp!

Finally done, we wandered around trying to find a pedestrian entrance to the bridge. It took awhile, but finally we got on the bridge itself - it is a pretty magnificent structure and well worth the time to go see. We decided not to walk the full length of the bridge, partly because of our tired feet!

Catching a subway back to Times Square, we attempted to find a comedy show to go see (since that's apparently something to do in New York). Unfortunately, the only one we could find was half way into the show, the tickets were still a full $20 and there was a two drink minimum. Ugh - not too attractive. So we wandered a bit and found a Toys-R-Us that was pretty ridiculous. It was three stories tall, and had a FERRIS WHEEL in the middle of the store! That's right ... a ferris wheel. Pure, over the top, ridiculousness! Then again, I'm starting to really expect that here, particularly in the Times Square area.

Afterwards we decided to return to the hostel, perhaps with a stop for a snack and a drink. We stopped at a neat little deli where we got dessert and a beverage ... and there was a kind old man who gave us cookies as well! Yay cookies!

Finally, we're back at our hotel after a very long and full day. Typing this up even makes me a little tired ... and mildly impressed that we actually got through all of this. Amazing-ness!

But I need to go crash. We're sleeping in a bit tomorrow, and then we're going to check out fifth avenue which is reportedly the locale of the new Apple store here in New York. We really have to check that out, as well as some of the other shopping along the avenue. Perhaps I will be able to find gifts for some people even!

Take care! I'm going to go sleep for as long as I can!

Heraldk

New York, New York!

in ,

Well it was a long day today! Mike and I got into New York late last night, dropped our bags off at the hostel and went out in search of food since we were hungry. We bumped into Nolan and Mike on their way back from their dinner so they lead us to a fast food/sit down hybrid restaurant where we had some pretty good wraps.

After a quick bite to eat we returned back to the hostel and got ready for bed with a quick stop to use the internet to check our email.

The next morning we got up early at 8:00 to head for the Museum of Natural History here in NY city. We were meeting up with a couple of people we know from CS who were also in NY, so we needed to be there pronto when then museum opened. The museum is *huge*! When we quickly realized just how big it was after spending an hour in the first corner of the museum, we split up and agreed to meet up at 1pm for lunch so that we could all move just a little faster in small groups. Mike S and I wandered around from the top floor down while Nolan and the other Mike worked their way up from the bottom (this wasn't really planned, it just sorta happened that way). There was some really cool exhibits including many many rooms full of animal displays, information overload and interactive booths.

Our break for lunch was at a small place a few blocks away that was pretty tasty, though I think I'm getting a little tired of spending so much money eating out every day. It'll be nice to get home where the food is cheaper!

Ken and company had to leave after lunch so they did, but we wandered back to the museum to finish looking at the parts of the museum we had missed for about an hour and a half. There sure was some pretty cool things to see (though I don't really have time to look into it)!

After meeting up again, we decided to head over to the Intrepid which is an old aircraft carrier which has been converted into a museum. We were pretty late in their operating hours, but we had about an hour to explore which was actually about right for me. If I had to spend much more time there, I would probably be a little more annoyed at the military propaganda that was everywhere in the carrier. It was still pretty neat to look at everything, and some of the views of the carrier both into the bay and into Manhattan were pretty nice!

When the museum closed, we decided to walk down to Times Square to take a look at this famous area. Crazy! The place was packed with people and this was only a random Sunday evening. What really struck me was the garish-ness of the ads placed *everywhere*. I realize that the area is prime ad-space for companies, but the combination of all the ads with scrolling lights, video, movies added with all the people left me a little dazed at the whole scene. It helped that I had my camera to take a picture once in awhile so I could zone into just parts of the scene so that I didn't have to take it all in at once. Ugh.

We wandered down and saw the outside of Madison Square Garden, which was not all that exciting, but we can say we did it. From there we caught a subway over to Little India to go have some Indian food. Yay for good Indian food! After eating some really good food we returned back to our Hostel. Now its after midnight and I need to get to bed so that I can be up tomorrow morning at 8 again. We're gonna push to try and hit several big things to see including the statue of liberty, the WTC site, and several other things over on that side of Manhattan ... should be fun!

Heraldk

Foxwoods Casino

in , ,

Mike and I met in the lobby on Friday morning all set to take a bus to Foxwoods casino. This was to be my first live poker ring game experience, and I was pretty excited. The bus ride was about 2 hours long from Boston, and we arrived at Foxwoods sometime in the early afternoon. Foxwoods is an amazing sight - it is absolutely *huge*, with three buildings of hotel rooms, slot machines, poker tables, and other casino table games. Instead of heading to our hotel right away, Mike and I checked our bags and headed straight for the poker room. I sat down at a 2/4 limit table, and Mike joined a 1/2 no limit game. My first impression? These players were *terrible*. I got frustrated though because I couldn't get cards to take advantage of it! After about 4 hours of play, I was down about $60 or so.

Mike was really hungry, and I my stomach was fast to agree, so we left to get some food at the Hard Rock Cafe. We seriously had the best service at a restaurant so far this trip there, which was pretty cool so we left a pretty good tip. It helped that Mike was up almost $200 at that point!

Before returning to the poker room, we wandered around for a few minutes to take in some of the atmosphere. Really, it felt like any other casino I've ever been in ... just that it was ginormous. We stopped at a craps table and played a few rounds where I won about $25 ... not too shabby. Craps is one of the only casino games that I find fascinating because at a full table, there's so much going on. People placing bets like crazy, and yelling and cheering as the dice are rolled - there really isn't a game more fun that craps in a casino environment. Plus its a low house edge game if you know how to bet, so that's another advantage!

Anyways, after our brief break we returned to the poker room. This time, I got a rush of cards and pulled up about $50 at one point ... only to hit 3 bad hands for me in a row including twice running into pocket aces with a big pair of my own. I swung up and down quite a bit, but ended up only down $30 when Mike and I decided to head back around 3 in the morning.

We caught a cab back to our hotel which was just a few minutes away, and checked in. I got to sleep a little after 4:30 in the morning which is officially the latest I've been up all trip. I woke up around 10:20 to the alarm clock so we could catch the shuttle in after a bit of breakfast. The hotel had free breakfast before 11am, including these awesome belgian waffle makers that were all set up for the perfect one every time. So I rather enjoyed breakfast!

Mike and I caught the 11am shuttle back to the casino. We had about an hour and a half to kill before we caught the bus (so we thought) ... so we returned to the poker room for a little bit of play. I started up fast - with 3 hands in a row which I raised preflop (ATs, JJ and JJ again). I won the first two and lost the third, but was up for a decent amount of time. Not too much later though, I had a terrible beat. I had A6 of hearts and limped in. The guy in the blinds raised so 4 players and I all called. I flopped a flush draw with a Jh 4h 2s, so I check and called with lots of odds. The turn was a 2c, which looked a lot like a blank. Again I check and called with one lady also staying in. The river was the queen of hearts giving me the nut flush. Unfortunately, the preflop raiser had just made queens full. Ouch!

So I took another $25 hit, but all in all I don't think I played terribly. I should probably have laid down my Jacks to the Aces last night, but besides that, I felt really comfortable and the amount I lost was totally within reasonable statistical variance. Still, it would've been nice to come out of foxwoods ahead!

Mike is up about $100, which is nice for him. It pretty much pays for the sidetrip to foxwoods for him with a little on the side. Apparently I should've been playing no limit.

I typed up this post when I was waiting for the bus to show up at the bus terminal. Turns out that the bus was almost a full two hours late! So we waited for a long time for the bus to arrive and then were late arriving in new york to meet up with Mike and Nolan.

Up next? Adventures in New York! Our first visit is apparently the Museum of Natural History.

Heraldk

Last Conference Day

in ,

Well today was the last day of the conference, so tonight is the last night in Boston. Man, time goes by quickly, particularly when you're being kept crazy busy! Tonight's post is only one day of coverage so shouldn't be quite so long. This morning was another 8am wakeup. The night before we had Brad and Chris stay the night in our room since they hadn't had a place for the night. Apparently the hotel hadn't managed to find them a room in the hotel for them that night despite them being on the waiting list for a room over a month ago. Plus a couple people we personally know booked rooms since and got in. Weird.

Anyways, we got up and proceeded to get breakfast again before heading to the first paper talks of the day. The hilight of the day were the talks by Mike Smith and the other speakers at the "Hall of Champions". The first speaker was from Austin, Texas and he talked about their general game playing program (they had the 2nd annual competition this year at AAAI). The 2nd speaker was from the DARPA grand challenge winning team from Stanford. It wasn't the same guy as the last talk from the same group - instead it was the lead programmer. Not a long talk since it was for a paper, but it was still very interesting to hear them talk about the sort of challenges they had to deal with. Mike did well at his talk, considering he had to follow up such a crazy intelligent presenter. The pool stuff is actually really cool, so I don't think there was much trouble having people pay attention to his stuff.

After the talk, we wandered over to a session that was pretty much a UofA hilight session. Michael Bowling gave a talk, his student gave a talk, and Doug (another UofA grad student) gave a talk as well! All told, Michael Bowling had his name on SIX AAAI papers this year, which is pretty insane. That's a whole lot of work he's got his fingers into.

Lunch was the next thing on the plate, so we organized and went out for lunch again at the LTK. It was okay, though they weren't quite so snappy with the service that we've seen in the previous visits, so I wasn't as impressed. Still, I was happy.

The last talk we attended was the results for the three competitions that were run. In particular, these were the general games playing competition, some sort of robot interaction/integration competition, and of course our poker competition. Yay for the UofA!

We had the afternoon/evening free from the conference as this pretty much wrapped up the events. So we got up and headed out to find an ice cream place Nolan claimed was supposed to be really good. It was called Toscanini's, and it was actually not bad but I'm not too sure it was worth the long trip and the cost of the ice cream itself. It wasn't the marble slab! Still, one cannot argue with ice cream!

We returned to the hotel to meet some people after wandering around Harvard with our ice cream. Then we headed out for dinner - and got lucky. We tried the "Barking Crab" which looks like a popular place. Unfortunately, so popular that we had no chance of getting in in time to sooth our hungry stomachs. So we left and headed downtown - and caught the kitchen still open with about 10 minutes to spare at a bar called Coogans or something of that flavour. The food was alright, but nothing incredible. Still, it was good to get some food. This being the last night, several people drank heavily but I didn't really feel like having too much. I did join them for a drink called the "Dirty Girl Scout" which turned out to be a drink with Baileys, Creme de Cacao, Creme de Menthe and Kahlua. It was *really* good - so you should try it sometime!

We stayed for awhile until the bad bar music got on our nerves and several of us left. I had brought my tripod and got some neat shots of the tower that was close to the quincy market. There was a fog over the city almost all day and this made for some interesting pictures.

And now we're back in the hotel room. I'm gonna try and pack up most of my stuff so I just have to shower and meet up with Mike - we're off to foxwoods tomorrow morning! w00t! Wish me luck!

Heraldk

Poker Competition Results!

in , , ,

I'm up fairly early this morning and the first person to shower so now I can wait for everyone else to shower and spend some more time catching up on me blog!So last night four of us got back soaking wet from a night out at another bar. You know, I'm not a big drinker or anything but it seems I'm out a whole lot more often than I am in Edmonton. I guess its kind of fun to explore the city and hang out with newly met peers.Anyways, I got to bed around 1am last night and we got up around 8 in an attempt to get to the conference. After looking at the program we decided to skip the invited talk and get breakfast before the first paper talk. The set of games talks were on, which really was the stuff I was particularly interested in at this conference. I would attend several more talks than the previous day - one of the talks was the paper my name appears on. The official title of the paper was "Optimal Unbiased Estimators".

At 2:50pm, the announcement of who won the tournament occurred. The only people who knew who won were Marty and Christian with everyone else being kept in the dark until the announcement. Turns out, we won! We won by all metrics and it appears we got statistical significance in most areas which was pretty nice. I'm looking forward to getting the logs from the match so I can run the DIVAT analysis on them.

I attended another talk after the announcement and before Darse did his analysis of some hands in the match. Turns out one of the biggest things we took advantage of was CMU called down a lot on the river even if it had a bad hand due to some technical reasons. This is a terrible error, and I suspect this is a big reaosn we won.

A group of us headed out afterwards to go see Tomb which is an interactive puzzle sort of adventure. It was really pretty pricey ($16) but a pretty cool concept. Unfortunately, with our group being computer science people, the puzzles were a tad too simple to solve. I would really like to see them have multiple difficulty settings so that we would've had more of a challenge with it.

We had dinner at a steakhouse across from Tomb while we were waiting for our appointment. While being a steakhouse, everyone except Brad avoided the steak, which he said was a good decision. It's kinda funny how Albertans are so used to good beef which means we're pretty judgemental about other beef (particularly worse beef).

We decided to walk back through an area of town we hadn't been in before and passed Fenway park on the way to the Boston common. Fenway is where the Boston Red Sox play. We didn't get to see much besides the outside of the park but that was neat in itself. We walked back to the end of the Boston Common and got on the train back to the Hotel ... where we met up with Nolan, the girls from the previous night, and a couple of guys from Austin, Texas. After a quick shower, I joined them at a restaurant not far from our hotel called LTK (Legal Test Kitchen) which is a pretty neat restaraunt. They had super cheap guiness beer which was pretty awesome ($4.75!) ... though they didn't really know how to pour it properly.

Anyways, we stayed out until after midnight when the restaurant looked like they really wanted to kick us out so we vanished off to our hotel room where I stayed up for awhile catching up with yesterday's blog post.Any now I'm all caught up with my blog posts!

Heraldk

Boston Conference Begins!

in ,

I haven't had a large amount of time to actually sit down and keep up my journal, and I'm falling rapidly behind as a result, so I think I'm going to try and very quickly summarize what I've been up to. After exploring the MIT and Harvard campuses, we returned to the hotel via transit and joined several others for an excursion to find dinner. So ... apparently Bostonians don't eat dinner on Sunday nights. There were very few restaurants that were actually open, and it took us a couple hours to find a restaurant suitable for all of us. Finally we did though, and enjoyed a dinner at an Irish pub called Ned Devine's where I got myself some fish & chips.

Afterwards, we went and got a drink at another bar near by and then wandered back to the hotel to play some poker before bed.

The next day (Monday), I had a volunteer shift at the conference so I got up early to head over to the conference location. My task was to take tickets for the first two hours of one of the tutorials which was a little boring, but not something I was too concerned with.

After my shift was over, I snuck into a workshop session on heuristic search since this is something I'm actually interested in. I stayed for a few talks before I had to sign in for my last volunteer shift. Oddly enough, they had moved the stuff out of the booth I was supposed to be working, and the work there was simple enough that the registration desk could handle it so I was out of some work. I got the assignment of "help out at the pre-registration desk". Huh. Well I got leave to run over and join some people for lunch, and then come back and finish my shift later since I really had no set task.

After lunch, I came back and sat at the pre-registration desk which was actually pretty fun. I chatted with a couple of grad students for awhile about research and several other things. One guy had the same digital rebel camera I had and we talked about flickr and our photography experience together. If you're interested, he's one of my flickr contacts.

My laptop battery ran out, and I took this as a signal to finish the shift that was long since over so I left to go chat with the poker people about setting up our booth. We decided how we wanted the room setup and agreed to meet at 7:30 the next morning (and before the first keynote) so we could setup and get organized.

Monday was an empty-ish day for the conference as people were still arriving for the first day. The evening was the only all-conference people event which was a *very large*. There was snack food of many types, and there was even waiters carrying around more fancy hot food from the kitchen including some chicken satay skewers that were awesome. We were there for awhile, but then a large group decided to head out for some real dinner. A ... very large group.

After dinner, Darse and I headed back to the hotel (rather than joining a group staying out a bit later) because we needed to work on some slides for the next day. We decided we wanted to set up a DIVAT poster so we could use it to discuss our research to people who were interested in it. It took us awhile to get some stuff done, but we did get a couple done before our brains were fried and Mike returned to play some more dealer's choice style poker. Once Nolan and Mike got back we turned it in for bed around 1:00am.

Yesterday was the first full day of main conference talks. I got up early to go to the poker booth and help setup. Darse and I found some time to finish up our DIVAT slides/poster which we printed via our hotels awesome complimentary colour printing. After finishing those, we helped setup everything else and got a display setup for showing matches. We had a fair number of people come in and talk to us which was pretty cool. I have the feeling we're going to see some news articles in the next week or so on the poker competition at AAAI since there was at least two or three press people there.

The first keynote talk was one on the semantic web which I didn't really understand and I was pretty hungry so it was hard to concentrate on it. After the keynote I returned to the poker room to make sure everything was all setup and eat the sandwhich Darse bought for me. I spent a fair amount of time during the day answering questions in the poker display room despite the various talks that were going on during the week. Mostly, I wasn't all that interested in the talks that were being presented. I did attend a talk by the professor who lead the DARPA grand challenge winning team. For those who don't know, the DARPA grand challenge was a race for robot vehicle drivers. Each team was supposed to build a robot to race a vehicle through the desert somewhere in the US. It was a really impressive talk, with a lot of video that was really enjoyable to watch.

Afterwards, I returned to the poker room where we answered questions for awhile. A large group of people planned on heading out for dinner so I joined them. This time there was a significant non-ualberta contingent including a couple of girls from the University of Massachusetts and some people from the university of Maryland, and a few others I can't remember at the moment. We went to an 'asian fusion' place that I think was mostly americanized Chinese food place. It was actually not bad, but I assumed it was more americanized than it actually was and ordered expecting kind of a personal meal. Instead I had a plate of chicken much more like what you'd get at a real Chinese food place in Edmonton. It wasn't bad, but I didn't have much in the way of veggies!

Some of the people who were less fun (kidding) left to go back to the hotel and the rest of us decided to stay out a little longer and go to a bar for drinks and conversation. It sure was good to spend some time chatting with people from not the UofA. Not that UofA people aren't fun to chat with, its just that it seems odd to be at a conference where you're supposed to be meeting some new people.

We stayed out pretty late, and actually ended up getting caught in a pretty good rain storm. So the 4 of us walking back to the hotel were soaked - but we had fun!

It's pretty late and I still need to do email here, but I'll try and get today's and tomorrow's events up sometime tomorrow, but we'll see if that actually happens or not, but I'll try. Turns out that these posts take a long time to write!

Heraldk

Boston’s MIT and Harvard Campuses

in ,

I continue to experience great internet connectivity in Boston from our fancy hotel room so this is a wonderful opportunity to post more of my travel journal *while* its happening! So here it is, my second full day of adventures while in Boston! After my post yesterday, I napped for a short while and then managed to get a hold of Mike to organize heading out for dinner. As far as I knew it was just the two of us. We browsed some restaurants for awhile on google local curious what sorts of restaurants were around us. We found a few, but we really weren't sure where we should go and the information we got was a little self-conflicting. So we decided to wander and find a place on our wanderings.

When we got down to the lobby to leave a key for Nolan and Mike (the other one - this will be confusing I can see) after their fancy UAI banquet. Lo and behold, we find a group of UofA people just figuring out *their* dinner options. Naturally, we joined the fray and ended up at a restaurant called "Seaport" which I believe has no relation to the seaport hotel which we are staying at. I had a dish called the Regatta which was a three sea food dish including the biggest scallops I have ever seen, some king crab, and probably the best shrimp I have ever tasted. If you know me, I never really got excited about shrimp before because ... well I just never really thought it tasted like anything special. This shrimp, however, was *amazing*!

After dinner, we decided to wander around night-time Boston for awhile so we wandered around downtown for a couple hours. We found a place called the Quincy Market which was pretty alive with people even at 10:00pm. The Quincy Market itself was a long building teeming with fast food restaurants, candy stores, cookie places, and ice cream stalls. It's sort of setup like HUB mall - a big long narrow building with lots of shops along the sides but nowhere really to sit down.

After wandering down there with several people buying cookies and ice cream for myself, we left and then stopped at a little bar for a drink before returning to the hotel to crash. I had been up for almost a solid 2-day period with the 2 hours of attempted sleep on the plane between Edmonton and Toronto.

The next morning, Nolan and Mike had commitments at the conference - Nolan had a volunteer shift and Mike had decided to attend a workshop. I needed sleeping time so I tried to sleep in a bit which half-worked. I probably got about 6 hours and then another hour and a half after they left. It would have to do!

Once I got up, I putzed around until 11:00 when I had arranged to meet up with Maria, Mike and Brad to go exploring in Boston for the day. We hopped on a the silver line bus (the transit here is colour-coded for the various main sections of the city - so there's the blue, green, red, orange and silver lines to choose from) which took us to an interchange where we could catch a the red-line train. Our destination? MIT.

MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a very well known campus that is for sure. The first order of business though was not to check out the campus but to find food since most of us hadn't eaten yet. It took us a long time - many restaurants seemed to be closed on Sunday! Finally we found a little place where we were treated to a pretty affordable but tasty lunch.

After lunch we finally started to explore the MIT area with interest. The first place we found was the MIT museum which we decided to check out. Fortunately for us, it was not only open, it was free admission day! Apparently the 3rd Sunday of every month is free admission day, and we had coincidentally come at the right time ... sweet deal!

It took us awhile to go through the museum. They had some fascinating displays, including a really cool hologram room, some sculptures/devices which were amazing engineering demos, and some pieces of computer history including the first hardware LISP implementation. All in all, it was a pretty good use of some time in the day!

Back outside, the weather had cranked it up a notch. It had started out hot, but it was getting quite a bit hotter - breaking 34 or 35 degrees I am sure. For us Alberta dwellers, the humidity is a lot more difficult to get used to than I figured it would. It kind of swallows you up and makes it a little tougher to move, breathe, and all that. Its not major - just something different to experience.

Despite that, we wandered around MIT for awhile. Nothing was really open that we could tell, but we got a chance to check out the main building with the dome that I hear engineers have used as the source of many pranks. After a few pictures we started walking in the general direction of Harvard to check out the other famous campus in Boston. It took us quite awhile to walk there, especially in the heat. We stopped at a place not too far away from campus that was advertising air conditioning and cold drinks. Sign me up!

After a couple drinks we walked the rest of the way to the Harvard campus. We were pretty tired, but the campus was beautiful. We wandered for awhile and then we felt the hotel calle us back so we finally hopped back on the redline back to the hotel.

I'm gonna have to continue the story later - everyone's starting to arrive. I think we're playing poker for a little while before bed. Yay!

Heraldk

Arriving in Boston

in ,

I think with the lengthy time that I spent between webposts on my Torino journal, I'm going to attempt to stay up to date with my blog *while* I'm here in Boston. It certainly will be easier for this stage of the trip since our hotel has a convenient LAN ethernet port which I can just plug my laptop into. So here goes for the first part of my trip. My relatives from Austria are in Edmonton, so last night Diane and I joined my mom and my dad at my Uncle's place for a hotpot. For those who haven't been at one of these, its quite an experience. You put a pot of soup stock in the center of a table on a hot plate and surround it with an array of sauces, vegetables and raw meat (including beef, shrimp, fish, squid, and really most anything). You grab a bowl, throw some sauces in there and throw some meat and veggies into the soup stock and cook it. Chaos ensues as people grab cooked bits of meat and veggies from the pot. It really is a tasty treat, particularly when my Aunt makes the yummy satay sauce!

We visited for a little while and then Diane and I headed out and picked up Mike on our way to the airport. After saying my farewells, we went and checked our baggage. When passing through security, my bag got stopped. I totally forgot that I had packed my toiletries bag, and inside I had a pair of cuticle scissors. Woops! Well, they confiscated those, which is okay - they were a cheap pair at any rate and I didn't really need them anyways.

We waited for our flight for about half an hour and then boarded. This was a red-eye flight leaving at 1:00 am (mountain time) and arriving in Toronto at 6:30 am (eastern time). The flight was uneventful - I found it really hard to sleep on the plane this go-around, so I'm gonna be pretty tired tonight though at the moment I'm pretty wired.

The wait in Toronto ended up being about half an hour after we finally switched terminals, cleared US customs and security, and had some breakfast. We got on the little plane taking us to Boston - it was a brand new and had little screens in the back of every seat. Unfortunately, they weren't working yet! It was neat to ride a smaller aircraft, but at the same time the plane was still new that it had a plastic-y smell that really kind of irritated me.

Finally we got in to Boston where Mike and I got our luggage and moved over to the Seaport hotel. The lady checked us in despite it being earlier than check-in time (hooray!), so Mike and I stowed our bags and went out to do some errands. We needed to book some bus seats to foxwoods and then from there to new york. The tickets ended up costing us $35 each which was pretty reasonable I thought.

After that we found some lunch at a fast food mexican place. Not too shabby actually - I got a chicken quesadilla which was pretty tasty. We then stopped at a radio shack for Mike to get a replacement power cord he needed because he forgot to bring the one from his laptop. Whoops. Easily done though.

We wandered around a bit more - we found a book Mike's been looking for. It happens to be the new Sklansky no limit poker book (which I should get from amazon soon I hope). I hear its a pretty good book.

Now I'm back at the hotel. Mike is checked into his hotel and taking a breather before we head out for supper. Hopefully I sleep well enough tonight so that I have enough energy for some exploring tomorrow!

Heraldk

Ready, Set, Go!

in ,

Well tonight (technically tomorrow morning), I leave for Boston where I'll be attending AAAI - one of the biggest conferences on artificial intelligence research. Once the conference is over on the 20th, a couple of my friends and I are going to spend a week in new york with a short stopover at Foxwoods casino. I'm pretty excited. It is pretty fun to travel, and it is also interesting to attend a conference where we can see what sort of research people are doing in other universities around the world. Plus I can't wait to see what sort of pictures I can get as we checkout the various attractions we see.

I will try and keep my blog updated while I'm gone, but that will depend on both time constraints and availability of internet.

Hope everyone has a good couple of weeks while I'm gone!

Heraldk