National Talk Like A Pirate Day

Ok, so the post title is a bit of a tease. When I got up this morning I didn't know it was Talk Like a Pirate Day, just that it was Wednesday and that I had class and meetings. I haven't spent a single minute trying to talk like a pirate, and it's way too much work to try to write like one. I do have a fountain pen, and I'm not afraid to use it, but sometimes banging stuff out on a keyboard is they way to go. It's just that it's the middle of the week, I have a ton of work to do, and I thought some random typing would get me out of doing it for a few minutes and then I could go to bed. I have a math test on Friday, and then on Tuesday a presentation for Software Engineering where I get to deliver a short introduction to poker hand evaluation tools. Should be fun. Yet another term of kinda liking the math better, but I'm starting to prefer the work of coding maybe a little? I know there are classes coming up where there won't be much difference: I've got a couple of texts on Algorithm Analysis lying around that are frightening to look at right now, but I know from experience that if I dig in hard enough I will get it. Eventually. I've gotten to chapter 3 of one of the books on Lambda Calculus, a 400/500 intro by Greg Michaelson. He's a good writer: he's making the topic somewhat digestible. The other books I have on Lambda Calculus and Recursion Theory are still basically unreadable, so they will just have to wait until I get a little bigger. Right now I am wondering if there is a recursive algorithm for poker hand recognition. How do pokerbots make decisions? Everybody has heard of poker tournaments for people, but there are tournaments for AI pokerbots as well. Actually at this point, to compete in on-line real money poker games these days, you pretty much have to have a pokerbot helping you or you're just giving your cash away, just because of the existence of web-interfaced pokerbots, and the fact that you have to be a very rare kind of savant to beat them. So um, yeah, this is what grad school is like. The University of Alberta has had an Poker AI lab since 1999. So it's an established academic field with quite a few papers out there. I'm reading one right now by Frans Oliehoek, a masters thesis from the University of Amsterdam. I have learned nothing about the UvA athletic teams, or what their School Mascot may be. So I'm going to presume that they're Pirates. Oh yea, bedtime.

Late at night and all is well

So I passed Professor R in the hall, and he asked if I had it all under control. I said that I kinda did. He asked, "Really?", because, after all, I had a class from him last year. "Yes," I said, "but it can still all spin out of control later." He laughed, reassured, and we went our ways.
This semester is fun so far. I'm glad though, that I only have my two classes. I've cut down on my anti-depressants, so I'm not feeling as sedated and stupefied, but it's still a decent workload. If I get tired of poker hand recognition algorithms I have a couple new books on lambda calculus and recursion theory to read.
Wednesday nights at the Big Haus a new class has started on the History of the Ancient Near East in the context of the Bible, which might just be Evan Wilson  geeking out on one of his favorite subjects, but because of that I know it's going to be richly rewarding and a chance for me to geek out on it too.
I have my first math midterm in a week, Determinate and Indeterminate Finite Automata, Regular Expressions, basically the first and simplest ways you can describe or generate a Formal Language. Set Theory based math is different. One of the comments I'm still thinking about from The Soul of Science by Pearcey and Thaxton was that it's helpful to think of mathematical insight as a sixth sense about the world around us, very much like the other five. With the small caveat that it takes a bit of training for your brain to really enjoy/exploit it.
This is a Porsche Carrera GT. Mid-mounted V10 goodness.

I enjoy these the same way any eleven-year-old kid would. They exist and they're awesome.