thoughts to blog

There are a few cats out there making some sweet videos of “lip dubbing”… quite inspiring.

Check out these two takes…

Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger on Vimeo

Double Time Rubik’s Cube and Lip Dubbing/Crazy on Vimeo

I gave my little (read: 70 minute) talk about Genetic Algorithms at the Twin Cities Code Camp yesterday.

My thoughts on how I did? Well… the intro/beginning was really really really rough. Yikes! The concept of genetic algorithms isn’t too entirely new or exciting, I mean… it’s just evolution and natural selection modeling right? It heated up during the demo and sparked some conversation and good questions during the talk…

One of the things that I tried to express was the emphasis on creativity and modeling for a GA being something that you should play around with.

My demos took up most of the time, with some really interesting conversations going on with the people in the room. I think this part was probably the best and definitely something that every Code Camp talk should have!

Here’s the slide deck: CodeCampDarwin.zip

Here are my demos:

C# - EvolveStuff… I meant to show some code, but unfortunately I was having issues with Vista (who isn’t?) and couldn’t give them the real deep dive code. The code is only slightly baked and includes one tiny model. This code WILL be changing from time to time as I have time to play around with it.

How to get it? - svn co http://evolvestuff.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/

Java - GAFramework… This was a sweet project I worked on at college… setup to run a 6 attribute Checkers Player. This is a NetBeans project and shouldn’t be too terrible to figure out. It’s hard coded to work with Checkers, but if you follow the code (written in college mind you), you should be able to apply any model to it.

How to get it? - download, unzip, install NetBeans, and go!

Ruby - You can’t have what I wrote… it’s too incredibly terrible and wasteful, I only used the small expression builder that I wrote to spark their thoughts around Genetic Programming…

Thanks Jason, it was a good turnout!

I know you’re all jealous…

http://myconfplan.com/conferences/RailsConf2007/users/gooberdlx

Give me your cell # if you’re out there and want to have a drink!

Click Here for more great videos and pictures!

What an event filled weekend!

Friday… came home, tried to teach the girl how to drive a manual transmission, had some beer and pizza at Red Savoy’s… great time!

Saturday… BEER PONG SON! 12 teams came up to the challenge of fighting for the 2007 Greg and Jake Beer Pong Championship of Minnesota and some of Iowa. The guy to girl ratio was OUT of control and the beer was flowing… Have no fear, when a party runs dry… Mikey comes to the rescue. A true hero who valiantly collected another dump truck load of beer for the game. 12 people ended up finding a place on our floor, some in the comfort of beds :) Congratulations goes out to “Balls Deep” as they proved, once again, that beer pong is a sport and they are good at it (winning 2 years straight).

Sunday… a day of rest, vintage video games, Chipotle, and of course: Entourage

Grilled food all weekend long, lots of ladies, beer, and pong… What else could you possibly want?

Back to the grind people… let’s roll.

So there’s been a new release on YFly.com… and included is a really sweet looking super media player.

Check it out (not a screenshot):

Media from | Get your own

Seriously, how freaking sick looking is it? Compare it to other media players out there… YouTube? Bland… Myspace Player? Bland…

And they also allow you to embed the single media view AND a super player (playlist functionality) on ANY website! If you’re a band or some sort of video producer, you can signup, create a profile, and upload all the media you could ever want… place the player on your website and you don’t have to do any hosting or development! All free!

w00t

Sign up now!

I’m one lucky mother trucker…

Dinner, a Timberwolves game, and a gorgeous woman.

Could a date get any better?

(and yes, she took ME out)

For those of us who listen to music at work… but don’t want to keep portable music players around or pay for subscription services (like Napster)…

Here’s an idea.

Head over to last.fm and sign up for an account. Pay the $36 for the year subscription to help the site.

Download the desktop application for last.fm

Sign up for iTunes and search for your favorite music. Play a demo track of it (30 seconds).

Click “Love” on the last.fm client.

Then when you do that enough and start the client, you can click on your “Loved Tracks” radio and get all the music played back, in full just for you.

Granted, there are still a lot of tracks that aren’t on there… and you don’t have a playlist, but you can skip and stop when you want.

I use it all the time so I can keep my music at home or on my iPod in my car, but still listen to my songs on my work laptop.

:: shrugs ::

I’ve been in such a rut with my blog… seriously.

With a new car, new girl, new video games, and spring time… there’s really nothing coming across my mind that I want to share that isn’t already linked to or talked about on another popular blog.

I could start talking about my feelings, but apparently I don’t have any.

It’s already been slow, but it’s so hard to motivate myself right now to blog… when there isn’t a payoff. I mean, it’s cool talking to other people out in the blogosphere and it’s great to write about things, but where does it get me right now? I should be writing a book or writing code or playing in the sun or driving… and it’s becoming more apparent to me that my blog isn’t as important to me as it was a few years back.

:: shrugs ::

You never know… I may turn the switch back on to blog more.