New Computer Time

It's been about two years since I built my current computer (Athlon 1.4GHz) so I figured it was about time to upgrade. Of course, the new Half-Life 2 videos had something to do with this. :-) Anyway, the new computer parts are all ordered. Pentium 4 2.6GHz C, Asus P4P800 (Springdale), Corsair PC3200 DDRAM, Sapphire ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, etc. Hopefully, I'll get everything by the weekend.

As far as games go, I finally bought a Game Boy Advance SP. I got Metroid Fusion and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. I'm about half-way through Fusion right now; definitely liking it better than Prime. The storyline is keeping everything interesting whereas Prime felt very distant and impersonal. Also downloaded the extra Splinter Cell level Kola Cell for XBox-Live and promply beat it. It was short but hard just because there were so few checkpoints. Still thoroughly enjoyed it though. The plan is to beat Fusion and hopefully continue on Zelda. I suppose I might just get the new Tomb Raider even though the past 3 have all been disappointments.

Summer is Now

Finally finished my last final project yesterday and now summer vacation is in full swing, sort of. I got a nice little job at the NCSA for the summer. My project will be to classify a bunch of emails. Looks like I'm finally going to have a chance to apply all these machine learning techniques I've been learning. I will be doing all my stuff in the automated learning group.

Other than the job, a bunch of other things happened over the past month. I'll just quickly list them here. Sold my old IBM laptop, bought an Apple Powerbook, new Deftones record came out, got Raven Shield, and finally saw a bunch of amazing Half-Life 2 videos from E3. Some of my big plans for the summer are to upgrade my main computer to Pentium 4, install Gentoo, and (hopefully) release another record on my record label.

And lastly, I just quickly moved all the entries you see here into the MySQL database. Doesn't really change anything other than the front page won't be as long now.

Taffy is Delicious

Hooray! The data mining paper I was a part of earlier this year got accepted for VLDB 2003, one of the premier database conferences around. The conference is in September and is held in Germany. With this publication, my M.S. thesis will follow sort of naturally. Can't wait to start working on that.

In other news, all my final projects are coming towards the end now. So the next couple of weeks is going to be brutal. I got this awesomeDillinger Escape Plan 7" a week or two ago. On one side, two tracks start almost next to each other so you have put the needle down very carefully to listen to each song. On the other side, one of the songs start at the middle of the record. For some reason, my record player doesn't like it when I move the needle towards the middle so I haven't even heard the song yet. O well.. I guess I'll just get the EP or something. And lastly, I got an advance of the new Shai Hulud, ``That Within Blood Ill Tempered''. It's the most excellent.

More Zelda and More Metal

Got further along Zelda the last couple of days. So far, I've decided this is certainly better than Metroid Prime. But for now, Eternal Darkness still reigns as the top game on the Gamecube. Got some new music lately, new Caliban, Boy Sets Fire, Terror, Minus the Bearand some others. See my reactions to them. I should be getting the advance to the new Shai Hulud soon. Can't wait for this; the whole hardcore/metal scene is going to explode when this comes out next month. Also signed up for next semester's classes today. See my tentative schedule here.

I am Link

Finally broke down today and bought Zelda: The Wind Waker. Put in about 3-4 hours today and I just made it to Dragon Roost Island. I don't think I'll get much time to play right now so the game'll probably have to wait until summer vacation. Overall, the game has been very impressive. I haven't found any quirks with the controls. The camera is close to perfect. You can see more of my reactions to this and more games here.

NCAA rant: Marquette doesn't belong in the Final Four. Why couldn't Texas stop Carmelo Anthony? I was hoping for a Texas-Kansas final but I guess Syracuse'll do. At least T.J. Ford's coming back next year. Texas will have all returning starters; that's gonna be hard to beat.

Spring Break is Nice

Back home for spring break this week. Just been reading a load of papers and such. And of course, watching this war going on in Iraq. I just want that to be over so all these jerkfaces on CNN or MSNBC can go back to doing nothing. Last week, I bought the Palm Tungsten T. Very sweet. I think I'll stick with this now. It's small and sharp, pretty much everything I'm looking for. New Zelda came out this week but it looks like I won't get a chance to play that until this summer. O well. I also ordered a bunch of vinyls a couple of days ago. One of them is this Dillinger Escape Plan 7" that basically recorded two songs on the same groove. Can't wait to hear that mess...

Look at Me, I'm Dumb

So it seems like I wasted my money on the Sharp Zaurus. It's just not a good PDA, for me. It's bulky, slow, and terrible at recognizing my handwriting. So it's been put up on eBay along with my Clie. So now that both of them will be gone soon, I'm on the hunt for another PDA. The Palm Tungsten T seems pretty good right now. Recent playlist: Xiu Xiu, Mum, and Prostitute Disfigurement.

I Like the Metal

So I've been working pretty much non-stop on my CS 448 Torpedo project. It's been coding all day and training all night. I had initially tried genetic algorithms but soon gave up after seeing no convergence. Now I'm on reinforcement learning; hopefully that'll work out better. The results I've been seeing have been encouraging.

Last week, I got my new PDA, the Sharp Zaurus. I also ordered an 802.11b CF card for it so I can use it to check email and stuff pretty much anywhere. Should be really neat. The thing runs on Linux so the possibilities are endless. But first I need some free time to figure out how to sync the damn thing. I also got Colin McRae Rally 3 for the Xbox last week. Haven't played a driving game extensively for a while (the last thing I played seriously was Sega GT I guess). So it's taking a while to get accustomed to the physics. The game's supercool though.

And finally, I've been getting lots of good music. The new re-recording of Zao is out. So's the new Soul Embraced. Also got a bunch of other cool releases. See my brief reactions if you care. O yea, last thing. Da Ali G show on HBO! Watch it and laugh your face off.

School and Such

It's been a month since the start of school. Nothing much has been going on in my classes, but I have been busting my ass off on a data mining paper for submission to VLDB 2003. Hopefully it'll get in. Haven't played much games lately. For now, it looks like I'll never finish Metroid Prime. I have been playing a little bit of Counter-Strike, again. Hopefully, it won't get out of hand and take over my life, again.

I did get the Sony DRU 500A DVD writer last week. It's pretty sweet. Burns around 4.4GB in about 16 minutes. The only downside is that DVD media are so friggin' expensive. Burn a coaster and that's $3-4 down the drain. Been also on somewhat of a vinyl binge lately. Got some Youth of Today, Black Flag, Isis, etc. One of the Isis vinyls was a European edition limited to 125 copies. Pretty sweet.