(warning: personal post with no merit in technical stuff)
So I've mentioned that GAI.NET is almost BETA2, but I'm just a slowpoke. Well, I did a little shopping this weekend. I hate any kind of shopping. I'd rather shop online. I avoid malls or anywhere where people congregate. It's not fear, it is loathing. I loath waiting. I loath being behind someone who has nothing better to do with his or her time. I know, I need to take a break, rest, lighten up, etc. Even The Liz tells me to do so. The other thing is that I hate just being away from things that I like, like my books, computers, friends, etc. Sometimes I tolerate shopping, other times, I just hate it. Even the bookstores are a pain to me as I live in Milwaukee, WI where there are few people with core interests in mathematics and computer science, so the local Border's and Barnes and Noble's are stocked with Pop-Culture math books like Calculus for Dummies and How to Pass the Mathematics Section of the SAT. I've been to the Border's in NYC when I worked in the World Trade Center (Tower 1, 87th Floor) some years ago. They usually had the best finance, math and computer science books on the shelves. Just go downstairs at lunch, look for a minute and get some stuff. The Border's In Emeryville, CA also had good books when I worked out there (again a few years ago). Our university bookstores are not really very well stocked either. They hold inconvenient hours (for me) and only have the good stuff on rare occasions.
Is it me, or lately is there a new genre of books with titles like The Golden Ratio: The Best-est Number in the Whole Wide World or The Deep Mysteries of pi ? Dr. Fortnow had a post Is the Thrill Gone? on this. The Geomblog had this post What you need is a degree in acting, not a Ph.D.... Is the new way to get people interested in mathematics and computer science to find heroes in TV shows and write books on "cool numbers"? Next thing you know, they'll substitute actor's names for popular theorems. I give you the "Macaulay-Culkin Theorem" in place of the Maclaurin-Cauchy Theorem. I hope I didn't give any publishers or editors any ideas with that one.
I'm not an academic and I don't pretend to be, but I try to avoid the pop culture stuff when it comes to mathematics or computer science books. Yuck. Lately, I'm really beginning to be disgusted as well with the sheer number of books that kill trees for the sake of mediocre storytelling or second-rate junk. I'm not even a tree-hugger; I'm a moderate republican. Anyways, for the sake of Americans who can't take the time to raise their level of competence, the biological effects of killing trees is really brutal. I know that it is condescending of me to decide which books should be tossed, but I'd rather have my copy of Goldberg's The Design of Innovation or Devlin's The Joy of Sets, Hopcroft and Ullman's Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages and Computation, First Edition or even Bollobas' Modern Graph Theory rather than You are Irretrievably Depressed: How to Fix Your Life in Less than 10 Days from the Comfort of your Couch or Get Rich in Your Underwear or finally How to use that Double-Sided Spatula (with the companion How to Whip up Eggs and Cut Through Frozen Food with Your New 6-in-1 Utensil). Of course, Set Theory and the use of a spatula require explanations of equal length, once you measure the audience IQ and adjust accordingly. Even my Dictionary of Russian Obscenities is more interesting (for conversation with my Russian friends) than anything I find locally.
But, my shopping trip took me to a local computer store to get some goodies. I am going to be leaving GAI.NET as BETA2 (when it is completed shortly here; quit distracting me) for a while and moving on to reading and a few other projects. So the shopping trip had me pick up (1) Logitech USB microphone, (2) Logitech QuickCam Orbits, (2) Saitek Cyborg Evo Joysticks (without force feedback and ambidextrous grips), (1) Labtec mono headset with boom microphone, a few USB hubs and some other USB devices. This is great, because in my main work area, I already have two workstations, one with an HP f2304 23" LCD and one with two Samsung SyncMaster 243T 24" LCDs (on a stacked swivel). Those are the off-network machines, i.e. off of the Internet and on my two Gigabit Ethernet switches (connected to rack servers). I still have another PC that's connected to the Internet on a separate 100BaseT switch, so I can let that thing get all infected with viruses and spyware and just regen it as I need to. So this is just the clutter that I needed. I have always wanted to make sure that every last square inch of desktop space was cluttered with devices. This makes it certain that I will have no room to leave books or work papers in plain sight while working on my computers. Don't even ask about my server area.
To top it off, I'm constantly ordering books from Amazon, so I have to make room in bookshelves, reorganize my mathematics collections or figure out where to leave certain books in the house (I leave a few in each room). Some of the books from Amazon have legs. I haven't actually caught them walking, but I do know that they tend to congregate in the downstairs half bath. As of this writing, the following have managed their way onto the reading rack in that bathroom (that's right; the bathroom is a reading room):
- Freakonomics - Levitt
- Experimentation in Mathematics - Borwein, Bailey, Girgensohn
- lex & yacc - Levine, Mason & Brown (O'Reilly book)
- Teach Yourself Linguistics - Aitchison (good starter book; good refresher; only $12.95)
- On Intelligence - Hawkins
- Dynamic Logic - Harel, Kozen and Tiuryn
- First Order Logic - Smullyan
- The Wizards of Langley - Richelson
- Valuation - Copeland, Koller and Murrin
- Prey - Crichton (That's where I left it)
- Body of Secrets - Bamford
- Pi, e, gamma, phi, chi, delta - Some really bad author (no this isn't a book; see above)
- Dell's Math Puzzles and Logic Problems - July 2005
- MSDN Magazine - July 2003 (GDI+, DirectX 9); perhaps I should consider rotating in a new issue.
- A few assorted recent copies of The Onion
It seems to me that I mentioned somewhere that I try to keep two books in each room of the house. So the only explanation, after all other facts have been removed, is the obvious: The books have legs. This is a direct result of evolution. Trees turned to pulp have now formed legs.
Anyways, I have some more books on the way and some more that I need to order. I like looking at all of the pretty math formulas and stuff. Time for some more bookshelves. Made of wood.
I'm having a nice weekend. I'm feeling a little stress because there aren't enough hours in the day to get a few things done that I need to complete. I'm just about done with Beta2 of GAI.NET. I expect to complete it tonight, but don't hold me to that. The article is basically done. The scaling problem is fixed, the GA Engine is fully separated (decoupled) from the UI, etc.
But I'm writing tonight because the lower cased one has a new application, Labyrinth. After watching him struggle with a number of parts to make this application work, he has finally delivered. It is pretty. Pretty awesome that is.
If you remember the old wooden Labyrinth game where you put a metal ball on a wooden maze and by tilting the top of the board, the ball would move through the maze, the lower cased one has duplicated it for the TabletPC.
Now here's the coolness. He uses camera flow, i.e. a camera mounted on the TabletPC controls the angle that is fed to the table. NO MOUSE REQUIRED. As you tilt your TabletPC, the game responds and the table top of the Labyrinth board is rendered with the changes. He refers to a few people that helped him with the physics, including me, but the effort was all his. The binaries are available now, with the source coming at a later date.
Way to go man.