DARPATech 2004 | Proceedings

New and interesting ways to protect the fine citizens of the United States by killing people.

DARPA is perhaps the most successful government program of all time, producing massive amounts of value, and fostering amazing development. But the directionality of the fostering is neccesarily quite unpleasant ot think about too much.

I thought about applying for SBIR qualifying rounds with some of my artificial intelligence research on my own. As some of the outstanding projects fit comfortably within my project goals. The downsides are complete loss of control, it being shifted in purpose towards whatever nefarious goals the official designation proposed.

Lucky I managed to find someone else to sponsor me in my research. Yay for research teams. The downside being that I am now following someone else's line of research, which is of course suboptimal(my ideas being the best!), which means I spend a lot of time recapitulating past work, and getting to work within the idiom. But this is more efficient, and it's at a more advanced stage. So the tradeoffs are quite simple to evaluate.

hmph, these late night posts always turn into roaming evaluative sessions. I should close this up, print my latest write up, and go to bed, early meeting tomorrow.

I spent part of today marveling at the facility of the internet to connect me to many many people, without actually providing any of the solace of companionship. I should really try to get out more. Or something.

Oh, interesting, Joshua(coworker) and I started the first of a series of long term Go games, setup between his and my desk. We play moves in pauses of work, when inspiration strikes, or in small fast play sessions. We talk over the strategy, which helps raise the level of play a bit, along with the taking of much time, when neccesary. This first game is holding at about 60 moves(joshua is asleep now), and it looks like this is a good idea.

I am winning, of course. ;-) I have a bit more time put into Go than josh, but talking all the strategy aloud keeps me from doing stupid tricky newbie things to him.

I was recently told that IGS(the server I play on) is bad, and I should switch over to KGS for good players, and better rankings. The guy who told me that was pretty strong, and I've long suspected that my 1 kyu rating was massively overinflated by the rated games I've played on IGS. So I'll probably start playing over on KGS instead, using their webclient. More as this develops. (Since I'm sure you're all riveted by the minutia of an amateur Go player advancing in his spare time)

Been listening to girl bands like Poe and Pink, and Laika for sentimental reasons.

Ah, the fair lost to me,
the fair and passionate.
How I hate this distance, and the result.
It was real!
I am not just a memory.
I am not the past.
I am still here.
I continue on overdrawn hope.
You can cash or continue
I guess it's always been so.