Pug’s Place

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (formerly known as the MTA, or Metropolitian Transit Authority) uses a smartcard system named the Charlie Card. If you don’t get the reference, disregard this message.

I spoke to my good buddy Dr. Dave today about my plans for next semester, since I register in a few hours. I showed him my schedule idea and he said, “you’re crazy.” He said taking 3 grad courses / semester is difficult enough, let alone taking 3 grad courses, an undergrad course and doing my senior project. So at his strong suggestion, I’m dropping CAP5805 for the fall (Computer Simulation Concepts). Instead I’m just taking 3 courses and doing my senior project, with a schedule like this:

So the courses I’m taking are:

• CEN 5035 - Graduate Software Engineering
• CAP 5416 - Graduate Computer Vision
• CAP 4800 - System Simulation
• CIS 4914 - Senior Project

Senior Project is, of course, not on the schedule above as I do that during my free time. That’s 12 credit hours, and I graduate in December.

So, what’s my senior project going to be? Well, Dave and I are thinking one of the following:

1. I join the group who, each semester, make a fully-featured computer game along with some Digital Arts and Sciences majors for graphics, etc.
2. or I work solo (or with one other person) and complete Gpremacy, the Battle of Superpowers.

If I choose option 2, I need to also write an AI for the game. That’ll be curious. I’m leaning heavily toward #2, since it’s something that I really want to do… but I can’t use the TripleA Strategy Framework as a basis if it’s my senior project - I have to write the game engine my self.

Any opinions from you, my peanut-gallery-like readers? Would you rather I actually make Gpremacy, or that I get involved with a group of people who might make a graphical hack-n-slash RPG, other board game, or something else?

Now, scaling back that one grad course from next fall has a ripple effect on my graduate program… but that ought to be manageable. I’ll look into that later. Now I need to solve another problem on my Analysis of Algorithms homework.

Wired has an article in this month’s issue on what is called “England’s eBay for Sex,” an Internet site which puts customers and… providers of various… services… together with secure monetary transactions, arbitration and an presumably helpful rating system, something like eBay’s.

I’m actually impressed at this new adaptation of capitalism, and also amused (but not surprised) that the site in question is based out of the Netherlands. So I suppose if you’re looking for extra ££’s while living in England, here’s an option for you. Not that I’m suggesting this to any person or persons in particular.

A scaled down version of the Hot Sicilian, it’s nonetheless excellent. I highly recommend a lightly floured bun or roll and provolone cheese.

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Being sick has made me find some cool games for Linux, I’ll tell you! Battle for Wesnoth is a hex-board strategy game based in the world of Wesnoth, complete with orcs, trolls, wizards, clerics, red mages, white mages, chargers, merfolk, sea creatures… and it’s an open source game. This is fantastically complete, and the campaigns (of which there are many!) are fairly well written (for the genre) and very entertaining! Units level up and gain nifty powers, you can play online or hotseat, and it’s just plain good ol’ fashioned hex fun.

It’s available for Windows, Linux and MacOSX, free and a hell of a lot of fun. Take a look at the website and the screen-shots for some eye candy.

Oh man, I just stumbled upon the coolest side-scroller ever. It’s called Gish, and in it you are a blob of tar. It’s so simple, but the game is so fluid and you can do so many incredibly awesome things.
Download the demo RIGHT NOW no matter what OS you’re using. It’s just, whoa.
Let me give you an idea — you can shift your weight (aka, move, except that you can also compress and extend your blobby self), become sticky, become heavy and jump. That’s all the buttons you have, except that when you’re sticky you can climb surfaces *AND* carry surfaces with you (act like a tire!), when you’re heavy you can crush enemies, sink in water, or add additional oomph to blocks you want to destroy… OR if you’re hanging from something, you can pull it down! It seems like everything I think of to try works! Damn it’s cool.

Sadly I have a minor performance problem (lag) here in linux, but if I figure that out I’ll probably buy the whole thing. This game is just nifty. Katie, Theresa — you in particular need to try this game!

Ladies and gentlemen, with the power of Planet Planet, I have created Planet Pug! It’s a collection of most of my comrades’ blogs. The original intention was to make it simple for me to read everyone’s blogs from my cell phone (with or without a cool java RSS midlet).

So I’ve got this planet that syndicates everyone’s blog. Now you can go to a single hourly-updating spot to find out all about what everyone’s doing. You can also syndicate *this* feed, so that Firefox shows the latest posts (howto) or use anything else you’d like. There’s also a minimal HTML version suitable for cell phones, etc. Find all these on the right-hand side of the page under “Viewing Options.”

Note: E’s blog is not yet being posted on the page. For some reason her blog’s causing exceptions in Planet. I’ll try to fix this sometime soon.

I apologize if this post is really disjointed, as E. just pointed out, I’m rather ill today. I had a great bass voice last night though, and was only able to speak in a funny accent. I don’t remember much of last night, actually… ah well. Time to do something that requires no brainpower — study Man’s Food.

Well, life’s getting back into school mode again. Homework is rapidly being conquered, I’ve gotten a new driver’s license (I lost my last one in Greenville or Atlanta, who knows…), put together plans for a new addition to my car (details coming soon), and I’ve got photos up from last weekend!FurmanMarch2005/Katie_Approaches_2FurmanMarch2005/Welcome_To_CCLC

For note, the new FL license is portrait-orientation, not landscape, but is otherwise similar to the above linked image. Interesting…

If you want to see some amusing Linux parodies of the Demotivators (or, gasp, the Motivators), check out this collection. I specially like the Debian and Slackware ones, even though the Slackware picture is actually from Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. (Yes, it’s SAD that I can ID it…)

Original post title: “Gainesville sucks! Landing lights broken so flight canceled - stuck in Atlanta. Sucks to be Pug :(”

Anyway, last night after an uneventful flight from Greenville to Atlanta, the runway lights in Gainesville died. So my loaded and preparing-to-take-off flight to Gainesville was called back to the gate and we all deplaned. After more than an hour of waiting, I snapped the above photograph as our flight was canceled. No flights were allowed into Gainesville at night until the runway lights were again on-line. So Delta re-booked all of our flights, gave us a $7 meal voucher (expired at noon 22 March) and hotel vouchers for places serviced by airport shuttles.

So, tired in most ways after doing a lot of walking around Furman on Monday (while listening to my iPod and Katie was in class), I made my way to the baggage claim and ground transportation part of the Atlanta Airport, a part I had never before seen. Found the shuttle to the hotel, got there, checked in with almost no fuss whatsoever, talked to Katie on the phone and fell asleep.

And now I’m back in Gainesville, classes and such huzzah woo (not excited, this is sarcastic)
I’ll write more later. For now I have a homework assignment due at midnight that I haven’t seen yet. Annoying…

So we’re walking through the mall today after visiting a very fun game store named “Boardwalk and Park Place” and we came to the Build-a-Bear Workshop, but we didn’t go in. Then we went to a Waldenbooks (whee!), and then we went back to the Build-a-Bear. Jen wouldn’t go in unless Katie did too, and for 20 minutes or so Katie and Jen (one with a lot of prodding and one who needed very little) found themselves new stuffed animals (Katie in particular spent most of the time changing color between beet red and light pink). Cort and I provided plenty of helpful, not so helpful and downright terrible suggestions and then it was time to make the bears.

Katie went first and, despite being embarrassed beyond the abilities of standard Vulcans, did as she was told to stuff, clothe and name her bear.

Jen did much the same for her polar bear (named Pepsi!), who is still in need of a leather jacket.
Cort and I wanted to add strange sound-generators to the bears, perhaps a maniac giggle, or a growl, but the girls would have nothing to do with such ideas. Pity.

The two girls both got new cuddly friends, and this makes Cort and I happy. Here’s a picture of Katie’s new bear, Bartholomew: