Life Changes
To all my friends, I am sorry for the last two months. I have been slammed with work and unable to spend very much time with you. I hope that you all will forgive me for being somewhat colder and more withdrawn than I usually am.
This school semester started in January and ended yesterday. During that time I have read approximately sixty (60) computer science research papers on dozens of subjects and I have written about nine applications. Of those applications, two were large scale applications that consumed large chunks of my time.
For my masters project I wrote an Artificial Intelligence Tournament Framework. The framework allows a professor to write a game engine, like chess or checkers, and plug this into the framework. Then, the professor can give her students the assignment of creating AI players for the game. The framework serves as a middle-man for communicating between the AI programs and the games and allows the AI programs to be written in any language. The framework with the game can be given to the student to use for testing and building purposes. The student has the option of playing against his AI, letting his AI play a built-in AI, or even letting his AI play itself. Finally, when all of the programs are finished all the professor needs to do to find the best AI is run the tournament. The framework will report the number of wins, losses, and ties and ranks the AI's based on final score. The professor that sponsored this, Dr. Wilkins, loves the application and said that it will save her days everytime she teaches an AI class.
I took a class entitled "Scientific Data and Computing" this semester. The form of the class was that we meet twice per week and discussed a different research paper every meeting. There were less than ten students and our grade was partly based on participation in the discussions and discussion leadership.... The format of the class would was fun, but it meant that I had to be in class almost every day and that I had to read every paper. We covered topics across the board and I was exposed to a lot of technologies that I have not had a chance to look at before now. The semester project for this class was vague in its description. It basically said that students were to develop software that took a large scientific data set and do something interesting with it. Dr. Rhodes was the determining factor on whether or not it was interesting and so we had to present ideas to him and get them approved.
My idea was approved immediately after presenting it to him. Basically I took the 2000 census data and tied it to Google maps. As a user zooms and pans through the map I present census data that describes the area that the user sees in the map. For instance, if you zoom in to just Oxford, MS you find out that
Finally, this semester I wrote a paper titled "Introduction to J2ME Programming for CLDC/MIDP Devices". The paper is a howto for developers wanting to write Java software for cell phones and personal digital assistants. I just finished this paper about 3:30 A.M. this morning.
I graduated on Saturday but I just found out about an hour ago from Dr. Wilkins that my last research paper was accepted and that I was officially done for the semester. Finally, I can sleep and hang out with friends without the constant pressure of knowing I need to be doing something else.
Poor lost_angel has read all of my papers and helped me edit them. I would have been in a very bad shape without her this semester. Thank you Ginger.
Thats it folks, that is where I have been for the last few months. Just a warning I am back now and you will have to put up with me as usual.
This school semester started in January and ended yesterday. During that time I have read approximately sixty (60) computer science research papers on dozens of subjects and I have written about nine applications. Of those applications, two were large scale applications that consumed large chunks of my time.
For my masters project I wrote an Artificial Intelligence Tournament Framework. The framework allows a professor to write a game engine, like chess or checkers, and plug this into the framework. Then, the professor can give her students the assignment of creating AI players for the game. The framework serves as a middle-man for communicating between the AI programs and the games and allows the AI programs to be written in any language. The framework with the game can be given to the student to use for testing and building purposes. The student has the option of playing against his AI, letting his AI play a built-in AI, or even letting his AI play itself. Finally, when all of the programs are finished all the professor needs to do to find the best AI is run the tournament. The framework will report the number of wins, losses, and ties and ranks the AI's based on final score. The professor that sponsored this, Dr. Wilkins, loves the application and said that it will save her days everytime she teaches an AI class.
I took a class entitled "Scientific Data and Computing" this semester. The form of the class was that we meet twice per week and discussed a different research paper every meeting. There were less than ten students and our grade was partly based on participation in the discussions and discussion leadership.... The format of the class would was fun, but it meant that I had to be in class almost every day and that I had to read every paper. We covered topics across the board and I was exposed to a lot of technologies that I have not had a chance to look at before now. The semester project for this class was vague in its description. It basically said that students were to develop software that took a large scientific data set and do something interesting with it. Dr. Rhodes was the determining factor on whether or not it was interesting and so we had to present ideas to him and get them approved.
My idea was approved immediately after presenting it to him. Basically I took the 2000 census data and tied it to Google maps. As a user zooms and pans through the map I present census data that describes the area that the user sees in the map. For instance, if you zoom in to just Oxford, MS you find out that
- Oxford, Lafayette, Mississippi, 38655
- Total Population: 31,824
- Total Housing Units: 13,551
- Land: 386.3 square miles
- Water: 46.8 square miles
Finally, this semester I wrote a paper titled "Introduction to J2ME Programming for CLDC/MIDP Devices". The paper is a howto for developers wanting to write Java software for cell phones and personal digital assistants. I just finished this paper about 3:30 A.M. this morning.
I graduated on Saturday but I just found out about an hour ago from Dr. Wilkins that my last research paper was accepted and that I was officially done for the semester. Finally, I can sleep and hang out with friends without the constant pressure of knowing I need to be doing something else.
Poor lost_angel has read all of my papers and helped me edit them. I would have been in a very bad shape without her this semester. Thank you Ginger.
Thats it folks, that is where I have been for the last few months. Just a warning I am back now and you will have to put up with me as usual.