Whatever you do don’t play Desktop Tower Defense. I’m totally addicted. If I don’t graduate next year, I’m betting this is the reason.
If against my advice you decide to play anyway, post your scores to the “cs.umd.edu” group. That way I’ll know I’m not alone in my addiction.
Some scores:
Finished the Easy levels
Finished the Normal levels: 5623 points
Update:
Finished the Hard levels: 6828 points
Maybe now I can stop playing…
I had the great pleasure of seeing a production of Late Nite Cathechism at the Olney Theatre tonight. The one woman show casts the audience as the students in a “Sunday School” class on Catholic belief. Covering everything from chewing gum in class (don’t) to the ramifications of Vatican II (the Church will never be the same), the show is uproariously funny and irreverent.
For those who are concerned that you have to be a practicing (or lapsed) Catholic to enjoy the show, rest assured that our party ran the spectrum of belief, and everyone had a great time! If you have the opportunity, do not miss this show.
A word of warning though, no one is safe, and you had better be on your best behavior.
I’m supposed to teach a new systems class at Georgetown this spring. My goal is to cover the basics of systems hardware that every programmer ought to be familiar with. I want to provide a basis for the students to evaluate their code for efficiency.
I’ve created a first-draft curriculum.
Your comments and additions are welcome.
I’m supposed to teach a new systems class at Georgetown this spring. My goal is to cover the basics of systems hardware that every programmer ought to be familiar with. I want to provide a basis for the students to evaluate their code for efficiency.
I’ve created a first-draft curriculum.
Your comments and additions are welcome.
The photoblog is being hit with a massive storm of comment spam. Most is being filtered by Akismet, but quite a few messages have gotten into the moderation queue this weekend. What’s odd about this is that I have comments “turned off” for old articles (and everything in the photoblog is old.
Even weirder is that this blog isn’t being hit as hard, even though it’s far more frequently updated.
I’ve set the photoblog to require registration and login to post comments for the time being. I’m looking for more good tools, any advice is appreciated.
I’m hooked on TiVo. If you’ve never used one, I highly recommend it. Unfortunately, the company’s insistence on charging monthly for TV schedule information, means that I turned to other sources when I got an HDTV and wanted TiVo-like features.
Specifically I turned to MythTV (or MythTVHD if you prefer). Being a bit of a do-it-yourself geek, it made total sense. I have plenty of experience with Linux and open-source software. After buying the appropriate hardware, I put together the internals of a MythTV setup. It took some tweaking, but I got the entire system working with over-the-air HD recording last March. I had intended to build a custom case and wireless remote control setup over the summer, but then two things happened.
Zap2It labs cancelled free schedule service for hobbyists (including MythTV users). While I’m sure they had good reasons, but I decided to wait and see what was going to happen with schedule service for MythTV. Then a couple of weeks ago TiVo offered to sell me a brand new TiVoHD unit, and transfer the lifetime service from my old (standard-def) TiVo for a total cost of $498. I pretty much jumped on the offer.
So after 6 months with MythTV, I’m now using a brand spanking new TivoHD box. How do they compare?
Truthfully, it’s that last bit that’s the clincher. It took me days to get the MythTV setup to where I wanted it, it took me no time at all to setup the TiVo. With lifetime schedule service from TiVo, the benefits of MythTV are minimal.
So I think I’m going to punk out, and dismantle my MythTV box. I suppose I could just turn it back into a gaming rig, but I don’t really need one of those anymore…
I feel like I have a deep case of depression that’s having a knock-down, drag’em out with a bunch of caffeine–somewhere deep down in my soul.
I’m thinking that this is some sort of reaction to whatever happy-juice they pump into the water in the Magic Kingdom… This sucks.
Sometimes I manage to seem like a completely normal person (stop laughing). But occasionally, I go into full freak-out mode.
Increasingly, large groups of people (or even small but dense groups) cause me enormous amounts of stress. The phenomenon seems to have been getting worse since high school, and I’m probably starting to avoid certain places and events because of it. Most recently Disney World triggered this response. I’m fine if I’m distracted (but that gets harder the larger the crowd), but in general I hate crowds. The noise, the movement (or lack thereof), it all just feels like pressure building up in my head.
It probably why concerts don’t really work for me anymore. It might also explain why I’m avoiding bars and clubs more and more (that and getting old). I wonder if this is just a symptom of getting older in general?
I love bicycling. And I hate to admit it, but I’m also a bike geek. While the latest and greatest bike technology is always interesting, I mostly ride older, used bicycles. I especially like mid-1980s vintage bicycles. (But I’d still like a new 2008 Trek Madone 5.2).
You can see my line-up of bicycles in the static pages, along with a detailed write-up about my 1983 Schwinn Voyageur SP
I’m just back from the 2007 Richard Tapia: Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference. I had a good time, and the weather in Orlando cooperated nicely. I met a lot of great people, found out about a bunch of post-graduate positions, and enjoyed several excellent presentations.
Part of the conference included a backstage tour of Disney IT operations. Their presentations weren’t particularly technical, but it was nice seeing behind the veil. I was somewhat put off by the uniformly pro-mouse nature of the people, but I suppose they wouldn’t work there if they didn’t like it.
I also managed to see La Nouba — Cirque du Soleil is always fun.