Pug’s Place

Here is an article from the University of Virginia Cavalier Daily which reveals the publishing industry’s excuses for textbook prices. Nothing we don’t know about intimately, but it’s still nice to hear that textbook prices are increasing at twice the rate of inflation, and that effectively nobody in the country uses those supplemental CD-ROMs. Read here: A textbook case of gouging

1. Take control of the UF ACM Programming Team
2. Bum around the Reitz Union until 8 PM…
3. Watch Sin City with James

Sin City’s last showing is tonight and I had already intended to rent it and show it to James.

After finishing Feist’s The King’s Buccaneer I checked my email and, lo! a fellow here in Gainesville had purchased my copy of Sahni’s “Algorithms in Java” from Amazon.com’s used section where I had put it up last week. For conversation, we’ll call this person Bob. Bob’s address is here in Gainesville with a number that places it very nearby. A quick confirmation on-line showed this guy lived at the next apartment complex over, and Bob had just placed the order. So I put dinner on the burners, told James to watch the food, hopped in my car and popped over (I didn’t ride my bike because I wanted to be fast, and wasn’t sure how big this complex was).

The Boardwalk Apartment Complex here in Gainesville is a poorly-labeled maze of buildings which are comprised of a poorly-labeled maze of rooms. After a little backtracking I found Bob’s building, parked, and hopped out to find his room. The first pair of adjacent rooms I found had the numbers “5″ and “15″. Yes, they were on the same floor. I scratched my head, turned in the direction of #5 and continued walking. Sure enough, in a cubbyhole around a corner in this dim courtyard strewn awkwardly around loose cobblestones and leafless trees, there were rooms 4, 3 and 2. Room 1 was not in sight. Lacking any other ideas, I fell back and searched around the perimeter of the building where no rooms should have been. Should. Different than every other room in the building, there sat #1, on the exterior, on the far side. I knocked, a young woman answered. “Is Bob there,” I asked. “Bob!” she called, and up strode Bob.

Bob gave me an appraising look, silently querying my intent. I held aloft the textbook, the front cover angled straight toward his head. His eyes, formerly black voids, slowly glittered with recognition as I said, “You ordered this book, correct?” A silent heartbeat later he exclaimed, “Holy crap!” A second later I answered their unspoken question, saying “I pride myself on quick shipping. Also, here are the two dollars’ shipping credit back.” I handed him the book, the receipt and $2. Bob, taking these things, again uttered “holy crap!”

Bob’s lady-friend, whom we will call Clovis, broke the next silence by asking, “Are you a senior?” I replied saying I was a grad student, which ended that conversation quickly. Bob glanced at Clovis and told me, “This is awesome. Less than an hour ago we were discussing whether I should buy this book from a guy in Georgia for a little cheaper, or from this guy in Florida so that it might get here faster.”

“And you had no idea how right your choice was,” I prompted. “Speedy delivery. Leave me good feedback!”

“Holy crap!” Bob stated, and it wasn’t the last time he uttered those words in my presence. No no, boys and girls: Bob knows his favorite phrase and pays it tribute as often as is possible. Sensing that food was close to being cooked back at the apartment, I made to disengage: “I hope Sahni treats you all well, and that the book is engaging.”
“He’s not teaching it this time.”
I gave him a knowing grin and gave him a farewell. Bob and Clovis were ready to get back to their lives after this unbelievable* book service, but before I left, I looked straight into Bob’s eyes with the most piercing gaze I have yet to learn. He froze. I let show a half-grin and commented, “Also, you have excellent choice in DVDs: All four seasons of Futurama; you know your entertainment.” Bob immediately spun around to look at his entertainment center. It was jammed with DVDs, and it would have been highly unlikely for someone to notice the four Futurama jackets among the hundred or so there, all the way across the room. Luckily, I know those jackets’ coloration, and especially their coloration when presented in order, season 1 on the left. He, after a second, spun back around to face me. Clovis’ face was unreadable. Bob’s was somewhere around astonishment, with his lips forming a sort of “o” shape as he finished again crying “holy crap!”. Before either could say a further word I spoke - no! - it is more correct to say that I announced, “farewell!” and closed the door.

The last vision I saw of them was Clovis’ eyes widening and Bob’s silly post-interjection expression.

Another successful delivery.

You can call me The Deliverator.

Well, no, not really.
* I love my ego. *hugs ego*

Your first glimpse at the UI for Gpremacy is now available… the map view has basic functionality working — it knows about country boundaries, displays the country name with Pango, can read mouse clicks and show the background image. Next on the list are to code in the unit graphics and to add drag-and-drop support for moving them around (and drawing a cool arrow between countries whilst doing this!).

Then it’s game engine time, and after a bunch of game engine programming I’ll start writing the displays in the sidebar — the market, resources, order of play, etc…

Oh, and Chris — Gpremacy is dedicated to you.
Gpremacy is an adaptation of the 1984 board game by the same name to the computer (and the first of its kind, AFAIK) and my senior project.

<NOTE>This post is made despite the risk of sounding destructively arrogant</NOTE>
After three years of top-tier university education with computer science courses every semester, I finally feel that I’ve enrolled in courses which will teach me what I’ve come to learn. Take heart, younger true geeks: there are professors who will teach you something you don’t know, but you’ll have to fight your way to grad school before you are allowed to study under them.

I’ve now visited all of my classes once; impressions:
Computer Vision
My “fun” class for the semester, taught by Prof. Baba Vemuri. I had a good feeling about this course as soon as the man came in and spoke in jargon. It’s about damn time! I don’t want to be coddled, and this man isn’t willing to do so: our first meeting was a description of the difference between Computer Vision, Image Processing and Computer Graphics, with the intention of getting ignorant people who had registered under false pretenses to drop the course. I know full well what Computer Vision is, so I grinned as he showed slides of what image processing did and said, “this is NOT what we are going to be studying. This is what we’re going to utilize, but I won’t teach you anything about it.” I’m not sure what it is in me that finds joy in that statement, but I suspect it is that this man is dismissing telling us about a major field in linear algebra despite its relevance because he assumes we know it already. Joy! No worries, folks - I already know quite a bit of image processing… amusingly, Pizza Delivery Jedi taught me a lot, while doing the special effects.
Computer Simulation Concepts
This class is both a graduate and an undergraduate course at the same time, in the same classroom. Grad students are just held to a higher standard, required to answer more questions on the exams, etc. The course is about simulating things, discrete events and time-slicing. The professor already told us “this class is creative in nature. I will teach you the concepts and teach you the techniques, but as most of the grading comes from mostly open-ended projects, this is all about creativity.” I’m not worried about the subject matter: Dr. Fay’s job is to do modeling and simulation, and he has taught me enough that I have no fear of the subject matter. I will learn, I will code and I will simulate. I’ll post my results as time goes on.
Software Engineering
This class was today, taught by a Turkish professor named Tuba Yavuz-Kahveci who not only speaks clear and excellent English, but obviously knows the field of software engineering as I know Resmiranda’s internals. After a brief intro of what we’d be talking about in the course, she explained that 100% of our grade would be team-based. 80% will come from the term project (designing & delivering a web-based Teaching Assistant Registration and Management program, the best of which will replace the one in use by the CISE department) and the other 20% will be based on a group presentation on a recently published peer-reviewed paper on the subject of Software Engineering. Finding a good group appears to be an essential task, one I haven’t done yet. To help us with the process, the last half of the class had us each in turn introduce ourselves, our skill-sets and our software engineering/team work backgrounds to the class. Before class on Tuesday I’m going to approach some folks and see about finding a cadré.

Summary
All of my classes will be coding things, along with my senior project (which is coding things!). It feels like I’ve finally arrived at school. Be happy for me!

You can see where I live now — some things still are working toward finding homes, but it’s only a matter of time before everything’s happy.

Ran across Gatorpedia a few days ago - it’s a wiki for UF. I’ve added a few entries to it already, and I think eventually it’ll be a great tool for students. I added UF Aikido, Burrito Brothers and Sawamura. I added El Toro to the list of restaurants, but haven’t added the entry yet.

Other UF folks, you should take a look. These things are cool.

Liz, E. and April collaborated (in a weird way) to find 50 Things I Am Not Allowed To Do At Hogwarts, which is a list that sounds like one the CSC and I would come up with in our years at Hogwarts, mostly from trial-and-error.
Wonderful.

Looks like a new Switch campaign to me…

Hollywood, FL was the location of this year’s Florida Governor’s Conference on Tourism, so my parents and I spent 5 days in the Westin Diplomat. In addition to reading a lot, Mom and I lazed by the pool, drank piña coladas and went on an air-boat ride through the Everglades.

In the Everglades, well, what can I say? We met alligators, alligators and alligators! Most of the photographs I have in the above slide-show are of various gators in the everglades and in the “gator theater” attached to the place where we hopped on our air-boat. Mom and I weren’t as entertained by all of the alligators being showcased around as the Hollanders and New Englanders were, but I still took enough pictures, sheesh.