Dan Mayer's Blog

this week I actually have exams and stuff to worry about. I also have an AI assignment that i am really confused on. I guess I will have to kick it into high gear for a little bit. So wish me luck as I try to slide through and make it out the other end. So i dont know if i will have any fun stories for awhile. I can tell you that i had a blast on halloween and I will post pictures sometime soon. I went out to the bars with Dom and Nicole and we had some fun. Good times for everyone, except the two guys fighting in the foundry.

I will give a short but sweet review of this book. I know this book was really big a little while ago and I am a late comer, but I normally don't read a whole lot. So i just finally got to this book after being interested for awhile. I liked it a lot, it had some flaws and problems but over all I thought it was a great experience and kept a wonderful pace. When ever you felt like the book was slowing down a bit to much and nothing was happening it would jump forward a bunch real quick and keep the story moving. It might have started to have a bit to much fall into place for the ending for me, but it was still great overall. It is pretty critical of the catholic church, but seeing as that is mostly about documents the church wont release and whatnot, I am fine with that. I think all information should be released and then the public can choose how and what to interpret. Anyways if you like detective type of stories where great clues are laid out and solved, this would probably interest you as well.

Well the voting results dont look good. I am sorry to the world that thought the US would learn or change from mistakes. I am sorry to those whose voices fall silent. I am sorry for so much of what will happen in the next 4 years. I will have a good explaination as to why this all has happened and occured tomorrow evening.

Again I am truly sorry that i haven't been posting anything here. School, My job hunt, and other things have b een taking my time. I have written quite a bit of code and hopefully will post it all soon. I have alot of little pocket pc applications and I also have done decision trees, neural networks, and probabilistic agents.

I might have a pretty cool final project for my AI course to post but that will really depend on what I have time to end up doing for a project.

I said I would be writing to explain why Kerry lost, even though it seems that Bush was disliked by the majority of the public.... So here is my best description with out trying to go into the specifics of this particular election and just saying that the religious right and ultra conservatives have put them selves in a win win position of dominating power....

Despite whether there is any balance of conservatives and liberals, it is irrelevant. Currently the system is much more highly favorable to highly conservative views. I will explain why that, even thought the majority of the population doesn't agree with the highly right winged conservative views they are dominated the political actions and views. I will also explain why it will be much more favorable to the more highly conservative portion of the population for a long time in the foreseeable future. There may be ways to effect or change the voting system, but that is not an issue I will be discussing. I will only be pointing out what is currently the problem that leads to the unheard fight of the countries more liberal voters.

To read the whole article follow,

Staying Permanently Conservative, Liberals Lost Voice (word Document)

Staying Permanently Conservative, Liberals Lost Voice (web page)

add comments send me any additional supporting facts...

Well the elections are over and I have said my peice... so with that it is time to get this blog back on some other track and moving in another direction. So hopefully i will have some fun or interesting things to post soon. I am going to a field hockey support dinner tonight so that should be a good time. Also, I am going with people from my broomball team, so not to much can beat that... except maybe hearing good news... sometime soon... hehe

What the Bleep do we know?

This was a very interesting movie that i have thought about several times since I first saw it. The basic idea is that it is about quantum physics. It tries to show how they truly break all laws of the world, but at the same time govern everything we do. So if we base so much science of what happens with out knowing the under lying principles ... truly what do we know. It then goes on to discuss bigger and more important issues about life that can be thought of and related to quantum physics. It is half documentary, mostly involving interviews with prominent researchers. It is half fictional story about working through the struggles of life, and how your thoughts effect you. Overall I liked it, it needed some editing work, some parts get a bit repetitive. It had interesting points and a good story as well. Since so much of it is interviews that are almost lecture style thought, you can't go to this movie as you go to others. You can't expect to go and be entertained, you have to go and purposely be trying to learn something and to gain from the experience. You should think of it more like going to visit a very interesting guest lecturer. They will be interesting and have a lot to say, but some of it might be over your head, and some of it may not interest you.

If your not interested in science or questioning religion, I wouldn't both going to this film because you wont like it... But you might learn something... hehe

If you need a smile on your face this will put one there....

white boy dance

The wait for things is destroying me. I can't focus at all. I have been going out and doing interviews and trying to keep up with my school work and trying to enjoy my last semester in college. I just need some of this stuff to end so i can focus on other things... Lets hope the job hunt ends soon and well.

Well to kinda keep my mind from freaking out to much i have been painting. I did this one yesterday and I finished another today but i am going to let it dry and stuff overnight and I will probably post it tomorrow. So here is a painting of a friend, he ended up coming out really dark, because i didnt do a good job with skin tone, but I still think it is a really cool looking painting. So yippie.... Anyways enjoy.

Another one.. the one i finished yesterday. Also for those wondering... I still dont know and I haven't heard anything. This is Dom, my roommate. I did a better job with the shading/coloring getting the skin tone more properly this time. I like both pieces however... Peace of to AI class...

I am FREAKING OUT Man! ring phone!

At least i know that i wont hear anything until thursday. That is when I will know... so that is better than knowing nothing.

still going crazy....

This is ridiculous!

Still nothing? yep still waiting, but I at least now know that the others i know are waiting with nothing said as well.

Anyways this weekend I have to prove that I am a good coder capable of amazing feats, I have a program due on tuesday that I haven't started that most people have been working on for over a week and are having some serious problems on it. So I need to finish it this wekened hopefully with enough time left over to get on my Database labs. So I can no longer just not focus, I must force the focus, because your not going to hear anything during a weekend anyways are you...

So wish me luck, and off to classes I go, to return to a homework filled weekend.

Well I thought I would be having a really hard time getting all of my coding done in time for the project due tuesday, but I did some great coding last night and great debugging today. The program is all pretty much working and it is only 2 on saturday. I still need to vary some stuff and run some other tests on the data to generate all the info we have to turn it, but It is really looking like this shouldnt be a problem. Which is great news for me, but absolutely terrifying, to all of the data sets that machine learning will work on, because I am one step closer to grapsing all the concepts I will need to really start to do some cool stuff with machine learning... So yippie whoopie and rock on you rock on me.

I still know nothing... but here is a new painting of Gwyneth Paltrow...

well another day another I know nothing... I am however one step closer to getting an ulcer I am sure... that is always good.

almost every year i go to ft fun for the annual college kids thanks giving dinner that my friends Matt and Jesse and their friends always put on. It is always a really good time, and I am glad to see the tradition continue. So off I am for a night of food and fun. So this should be sweet and wonderfull.

tonight I was in the mood to go do something active get up and move around. I called some friends and we got a group together to just play some sports. It started with bowling, which was ok but nothing special. Then we split off in a smaller group and a wonderful thing I havent done for a long time.... We played squash hockey... for those that dont remember it... it is like field hockey but in a racketball room. We also had the first female players play the game with us. I must say it was a blast and hopefully I will get to play a couple more times before I am not a student anymore... rock on squash hockey I love it. Plus i got to run around a bunch... whooopie

Another day waiting, wishing, dreaming, and trying to get the things done that I have to get done now. I still have heard nothing and the glimmer of hope with in me fades. So anyways nothing yet...

for those of you checking in there is nothing new here nothing really at all.

It is official that i will know nothing until next week.... Happy holidays.... GRRRRRrrr so that is that for the time being. Oh well i guess that it isn't really bad news. It will mean my un ability to maintain focus on anything, will remain for a while longer.

well last night was a good time. It was ^2's 22nd bday. We went out and around all over the place, from bars in denver, to dave and busters and ending up in a quite bar where we could actually talk alot easier. Scott and Amy where in town to see there families which was great. Dom and Nicole came out with us. Over all it was a fun night and i think everyone had a good time. Anyways it was nice to see everyone and my head didnt hurt this morning so that is good.

well everything is covered in snow. It has been snowing here for almost two days straight which is pretty amazing. It has made things kinda pretty and very dangerous to drive. It has also been incredibly cold.

Also, I got to see Bobby and meet his boyfriend. It was a good time, I hadn't seen him for every. It wasn't like we had a ton of time to talk or anything, being in dave and busters, but it was nice to just get to hang out and have fun as if it was just a regular weekend night when we used to live by each other.

Oh well all of that i can live with the cold the slow and weird driving. What i am upset about is that when i came up with what I thought to be a better clustering algo than a very basic one it actually preformed worse on the task. So now I will have to look into it a little more and figure out what is going wrong, or adjust it. I know at least one solution to improve on my current situation, but i dont know if it will be a large enough improvement to make me happy. I have however worked on this long enough this evening to say I am done until tomorrow.

Tonight I send out happiness and inspiring thoughts to everyone except the new group that has begun spamming my groups blogs and will force me to write more anti spam software soon.

Merry it's like a white Christmas!

For those of you trying to keep up to date on the situation. I dont know anything new yet, but hopefully will later today. So I am off to my classes and hoefully I will have some good news later on. Wish me luck.

Other news tonight I have a broomball game and it is so sweet. I am pumped about getting to play tonight. If we dont win this will be our last game thought so hopefully we will play well and have enough people show up to do well. We better have our good goalies show up as well.

Also I improved my clustering algo a bit it still isnt performing as well as hoped but it is now beating out the naive implementation and I have some ideas on how to improve it even more. Giddy up... yes thats right Giddy up.

Looks like this is begining again... fun fun...waiting and waiting.

Email says wait longer... so i know nothing except to wait....Which I can't do to much longer...

For those that heard me talk about broomball you know I love it... but how is this for excitement... It was our first tournement game. If we lost we were done with broomball for the year if we won then we have another game or two... Anyways no one scores the first half but the other team had way more shots on goal and one of our players had and injury and was hurt (nothing to bad, she is ok, but couldnt play for awhile). The second half we were stronger on offense and had a few pretty good shots. Tie game and with 7 seconds on the clock Dom^2 takes a hard shot on goal the goalie goes down to block it, he does but the ball hits him bounces up in the air over him and into the goal. With 7 seconds left we won! How exciting is that, it was great so we have another game on sunday.

Also I got on some crappy skis I found in a dumpster awhile ago put those on with full ski gear and helment and was pulled around by a jeep with a rope through my neighborhood. The tons of snow has brought some good. I have some video and will put it up soon hopefully I will get to it tomorrow. Anyways, that was a good time it was just like water skiing you could turn and swing out sideways next to the car. You had to avoid sewer lids and other weird obstructions. Anyways good time avoiding homework for a night when I should have definately been working on some of it.