Crunch Time part one

Darse and I have been working super hard over the past few days trying to get an entry ready for the AAAI Computer Poker competition. I put in two 16 hour days the last couple days ... so I'm totally taking today off. It was kind of weird actually. I hadn't worked that much or that hard on something at the university since my first year of my masters when I spent many days like that working on Jonathan's heuristic search course. There was one late night while we were in Italy working on stuff - but apart from that, I haven't put in a huge number of late nights on projects. So in some ways it's good to know I can still put in a lot of productivity in a short period of time.

Heraldk

EAS Tree

On the tree tour I mentioned awhile ago, I took quite a few photos. This one is of a tree next to the Earth and Atmospheric Science building. I rather like the reflection in the building's mirrored glass.

LRT Bridge

Back to another one of my walk pictures - this one is of the LRT bridge on the south side of the North Saskatchewan River.

As a side note, I'm a big fan of the LRT - I use it almost every day to get to work and home again. I'm glad that they are finally expanding this great service. It is waaaaay better than the bus!

Man Machine Poker Match

This has been in the works for a few months, but I'm happy to be able to finally share the news that the University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group (CPRG) has organized a match pitting humans against the computer. The match will run on July 23rd and 24th in Vancouver at the AAAI 2007 Artificial Intelligence conference. Representing the humans are Phil "The Unabomber" Laak and Ali Eslami. Representing the machine is the latest and greatest computer poker AI being worked on at the University of Alberta going by the name of Polaris. This match is being run with scientific interest, so every effort has been made to make the match provide a statistically significant result. The reason both Phil and Ali will take part in this match is that it will be run in duplicate. This means that in one room Phil will play against Polaris, but in a separate room Ali will also be playing against Polaris. The cards dealt in both halves of this duplicate match will be exactly the same - with Phil and Ali playing different sides of the same hand. In this manner, a huge portion of the stochastic element of the game is removed leaving mostly the skill aspects of the game (for more information, take a look at my thesis on my Research Page).

We're really excited about this match. The poker group has been working hard on some new AI that is much stronger than previous iterations. As a poker player, I'm pretty excited to meet Phil Laak and be able to chat with him about poker and the research side of poker.

For more information about the match, visit the official match homepage (built in part by yours truly), at http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~games/poker/man-machine.

Heraldk

Storm and Sun

This was the view from my condo balcony after a particularly warm summer day. The thunderclouds were rolling in and made a very nice photo opportunity. I really like the contrast between the extremely dark clouds with the sun bathing the neighbouring condo building in a warm glow.

Links

I decided to abandon the idea of posting links as full posts here, and instead went with a link solution that is kinda nice for the sidebar. If I see neat videos or websites, that's where you need to look. Hope you enjoy this near feature of my blog!

Heraldk

Love

This is a photo we setup after my convocation ceremony yesterday. My mom took the photo, and I think it turned out pretty decently. The original image was cropped down to this frame, and I much prefer this over the original :)

For those interested, the photo was taken at the water feature in the education courtyard just north of the education building at the University of Alberta.

Insanity

This past week has been rather insane. Between the engagement and its associated activities plus getting ready for the AAAI poker competition at work, I'm tearing my hair out trying to keep myself organized and focused on one thing at a time so I can actually accomplish something.

Why am I blogging now? Well I'm waiting for a test to run so I've got a minute or two to tell you about the last few days. This past weekend was insanely busy. On Saturday Diane's Mom, Diane and I went on a tree tour around the university campus. The above photo is one of many I took that day. Several will probably hit my flickr stream over the next couple weeks. It was an interesting tour -- most interesting perhaps is that despite all the time on campus I've spent, I haven't really noticed some of the cool trees that are peacefully growing on campus!

Saturday evening was a surprise birthday for my supervisor, Jonathan Schaeffer. He turned 50 last weekend, so his wife organized a big surprise party which went off really well! So that was pretty fun.

On Sunday, Diane and I had both our families over for steak dinner to celebrate our engagement. Unfortunately, my place isn't all that well equipped to handle a large amount of people so we had people eating on TV trays. Oh wells, people seemed to enjoy our food and it looks like everybody is happy with our engagement which is nice.

Yesterday was my convocation, so I missed the poker meeting that day to spend a couple hours waiting for my chance to cross the stage and shake people's hands. After convocation we wandered campus taking a few photos (including the one above) and then my family took us out for dinner as a combined congratulations dinner for graduating and the engagement. It was a super big meal Chinese banquet style with both crab and lobster and lots of other good food. We even got some presents. I kinda like presents! My Uncle got us a couple bottles of wine.

So yes, it has been a pretty insane few days. I managed to get some work done late last night which helped me find a bug in my code this morning. Hopefully I can continue to be productive over the next few days!

Heraldk

Bent Tree

Diane and I went on a tree tour around the university campus. This is one you might recognize if you're on campus - its right next to the vehicle turnaround by the van vliet centre. It's a rather cool looking tree that I don't really remember noticing before the tour. Funny how you can be on campus so much over the past 6 years that you practically live there, and yet not notice some of the cool things that exist there!

Engaged

Well, it's happened. Diane and I are now engaged. I popped the question last night. It was Diane's birthday yesterday, so I was more than happy to take Diane out. It gave me a chance to be a little more secretive about plans for the evening. I took her for dinner at the Creperie - a place we've been to before, but only in a large group. We both said we needed to come back at some point, so I figured this was a good time to do so. Dinner was very nice. The Creperie even gave Diane a little candle in some whipped cream with a chocolate dipped strawberry next to it for her birthday. They also gave her a coupon for future use at the restaurant. We'll probably be back!

After dinner, I had it in my mind to go visit a Louise McKinney Park. We had stopped at this park a couple years ago after an event we attended, so it had some historical value to us. I kinda had in my mind the idea to pop the question there. But there was a large number of people around, and the mosquitoes made everything rather distracting, so we instead just wandered around and I took a few photographs (including the one above which I am very happy with!). It's quite a nice park actually - there's a Chinese theme setup there with a pagoda that's under construction, a bridge, and some of those Chinese lion statues. There's also a meandering path with plants lining both sides. When we were there last, there was a ton of flowers blooming, but it's still too early for them when we were there last night.

So after our walk through the park, we returned back to Diane's apartment. I knew there were some flowers awaiting her there from her family, so I wanted to make sure she got to see those. I then popped the question there, presenting her with the ring I had carefully chosen a little more than a week ago. More on the ring in a moment. She said yes! (not that it was a big surprise). We even put on some music after that and shared a waltz together (for those who don't know, we met in ballroom dance class -- waltz is kind of our thing).

The ring: I have an aversion to diamonds. In particular, an aversion to engagement diamonds. I find it rather disturbing that a company (De Beers) can manufacture a tradition that never really existed in the first place. There are a lot of other things I find disturbing about the diamond industry, and these facts all made me want to just avoid the whole diamond thing altogether. Luckily, Diane knew about this aversion and she seemed happy with an alternative gemstone. So when I went shopping, I went looking for an emerald. Diane's birthday is in May, and the emerald is the birthstone for that month. So I found it rather appropriate that I would propose to her on her birthday with her birthstone!

So that's my story. I must say that I am quite happy, and Diane is as well. We're looking at a June wedding - so the planning should probably start soon!

Heraldk

Young Pine Cone

I took this photo while Diane and I took a walk through Louise McKinney Park in downtown Edmonton. It's a park that we had stopped to walk through one evening after an event we were at a year or two ago. At first, I had thought to pop the question in the park, but there was a lot of people around and the mosquitoes were out in force, so we ended up fleeing back to Diane's place. However, not before I got this wonderful photo. I'm extremely happy with how this photo turned out. I hope you like it!

Ring

Last night, I asked Diane to marry me! I doubt this will come as a surprise to anyone who knows us. We've been dating for nearly three and a half years, so it was definitely coming.

The ring is a simple white gold band with a tension set emerald. I have many different reasons why I didn't get a diamond - mostly it comes down to the fact that I kinda dislike diamonds. The simple, elegant ring is very much what I wanted to find. Diane doesn't really wear rings, so I wanted to get one that was as unobtrusive as possible so she'd be more inclined to wear it.

She loved it :) I dunno how much she'll wear it on her hand, but I also got her a chain to wear it around her neck if she so desires.

Spying on the Ducks

Back to my walk pictures -- here's a photo of a couple of ducks swimming upstream in the North Saskatchewan River. This is one of the only photos in my stream that is cropped - I don't usually crop my photos, but this one was much better with some of the trees and distracting scenery cropped out.

Vista + New Video Card

Ugh, I've been so busy these past few days that I haven't had the energy to post in awhile. There's a whole bunch of stuff going on right now with the poker group at the UofA ... and it's making me go slightly crazy. Still, it's exciting. Late last week, my video card (a 6600GT) died. I think it's because the fan that was on it was just a little bit too small and it was driving too many pixels on my two 24" LCD monitors. So I think it was just overworked. In any case, I needed a new video card. I ended up at memory express two days later and bought a shiny new 8800 GTS. It is certainly a fancy video card and looks far better built so I'm hoping it lasts a good long while.

In any case, I also picked up a new hard drive. When I got everything setup and installed I wondered whether I should install a clean version of windows again. I love having a clean install of an OS - it feels so much better than a clogged down version. Windows seems especially prone to this problem, so it was certainly a tempting proposition. I decided, though, to pick up a copy of Vista from the University. The UofA has this agreement with Microsoft called the MSDNAA (microsoft developer network academic alliance). With this agreement, any staff and students of the University of Alberta get to borrow discs of almost all of Microsoft's products to take home and install on their home computer. So I went in and signed out a copy of Vista Business edition. I figured - if I was going to reinstall an OS, I might as well give Vista a shot and see if it worked for me.

Let me first give out a tip for anyone considering a reformat. The easiest way to install a new OS on an existing system with little or no risk of losing existing data is to use a multiple hard drive setup. You can, in the bios, set a particular hard drive as the boot up disk. So my advice would be to purchase a new hard drive (or use an existing one you can wipe clean) and set that to the bootup disk. Install the OS on that disk, and then mount your other hard drive(s) so you can access your existing data. Not only does this let you not worry about overwriting your data, you also get the opportunity to access configuration files and other application data for switching over to your new system.

So ... I now have Vista running. What do I think? Well so far it sure beats the hell out of XP. It feels snappier, and definitely looks prettier. Vista definitely is an improvement over previous windows versions. There are still some weird ass-backwards ways of doing some things, but on the whole it isn't so bad. Of course, it's not a Mac OS ... and I'm still seriously considering buying a mac when Apple finally releases new revisions of the Mac Pros.

Heraldk

Casey

My roommate Mike had a party last Friday where we got together and played some games at his parent's house. This is Casey, their dog. He's so excitable, especially around the pool table when there's a game going on.

Legislature

Another shot that turned out fairly well from the recent walk with Diane. This is of the Alberta Legislature located in downtown Edmonton. It is a beautiful area to go walking around when the weather is nice.

High Level Bridge

On my recent trek through the river valley toward the Alberta Legislature, I got this photo of the high level bridge (also known as the 109th street bridge). I rather like how it turned out :)

MayDay Flowers

I went on a walk in the river valley yesterday with Diane. It was rather nice to get out and get some exercise and enjoy the sunshine! I even had my camera so I got several pretty decent shots which I'll be sharing over the next few days. Here's a closeup of some flowers on a mayday tree.

A Weekend of Fun

This was a pretty packed weekend. On Friday, a group of us went over to Mike's parent's place which Mike is house-sitting at. We played some games and pool and stayed out pretty late. On Saturday, my family got all dressed up to go do a portrait photo which my mom won at a fashion show she went to in St Albert. We were *going* to buy prints for us and my grandparents and our other relatives. However, we were shocked to see that the price was $80 for a single 5x7 print?!!!! That's highway robbery! Diane and I had thought we would try and get some photos with just the two of us, but the prices were simply not reasonable enough for us to try that. We'll have to find somewhere else to go for that. So we went and got our one free 5x7 print and we'll have to look at other options for portraits. *sigh*. On Sunday was Nolan's 1/4 century Birthday party. It was a pretty good party and I got a tad liquored up. We had fun! Today, Diane and I joined her family for an afternoon picnic at Emily Murphy Park near the university. Afterwards, Diane and I took a leisurely stroll down the river valley and across the bridge walking eventually to Corona station where we took the train back to my place to watch the season finale of Heroes.

*whew*. Busy weekend huh?

Heraldk

Alberta Sunset

I am incredibly happy with this photo. I took this photo out of a moving minivan on the way home from my sister's first ticketed recital (she plays the harp). So this was out of a moving car through a tinted window that wasn't terribly clean, and this photo *still* turned out amazing.

Enjoy!