International Klatch

(Icelandic post)Í dag þá tókum við þátt í hópfagnaði sem haldin er einu sinni í mánuði þar sem alþjóðlegu nemendurnir skiptast á að halda. Tilgangurinn er að kynna menninguna okkar og landið fyrir hinum nemendunum í tölvunarfræðideildinni hérna úti með því að koma með mat, tónlist, drykki og sögur frá okkar heimalandi.

Að sjálfsögðu vorum við til í að taka þátt í því :D (en sökum fámennis þá héldum við daginn ásamt Rúmenska og Íranska fólkinu) Heppilegt var að við gátum platað Guðrúnu vinkonu Steinunnar til að koma með nokkrar nauðsynjar með sér frá heimalandinu (s.s. harðfisk, hangikjöt, ópal, mjólkurkex og sælgæti) Miklar umræður spunnust um hvað væri einkennandi "Íslenzkt" og var þetta niðurstaðan (urðum því miður að sleppa slátrinu og skyrinu þar sem slátrið hefði skemmst áður en það yrði borðað og skyrið yrði tekið í landhelgi í ameríkunni hehe). Einnig kom sér að góðum notum innihald pakkans góða frá Daddý frænku sem kom í síðustu viku :)

Við útbjuggum þetta svakalega fína slædssjóv af helstu staðreyndum um Ísland ásamt skemmtilegum náttúrulífsmyndum og einstaka eldgoss- og hveragos vídjó fylgdu í kjölfarið. Einnig fundum við þessar fínu 360gráða myndir sem sýndu downtown reykjavík og ýmsa fallega staði í höfuðborginni. Við komum því með vélina mína sem keyrði slædssjóvið í lúppu allan tímann og tölvuna hennar Steinunnar sem sá um að leyfa fólki að lítast um í sýndar-reykjavíkinni :) Allt ákaflega tæknilegt allt :D

En til að hefja þetta rétt, þá urðum við að sjálfsögðu að byrja á að mæta of seint, ég meina hvernig er hægt að halda eitthvað íslenskt og mæta ekki of seint þangað? Bara spyr. Við útbjuggum svo þessa fínu diska með íslensku hangikjöti, harðfisk, ópali, mjólkurkexinu. Höfðum þrista og lakkrís, íslensk páskaegg og rískúlur.. Allt ÁKAFLEGA þjóðlegt :D Þetta var svakalega skemmtilegt allt saman og mikið af fólki sem lét sjá sig og velti sér upp úr íslenskri menningu.

Án hjálpar Rönnslunnar minnar og Guðrúnar, Rannslan sem fór á stúfana og keypti allt þetta ásamt fánum og póstkortum og sendi með Guðrúnu, þá hefði þetta ekki getað heppnast eins einstaklega vel og það gerði :) Takk elskurnar

Kíkiði á myndirnar hérna(eru reyndar soldið fáar en við vorum svo bissí að tala)

Nuthn' special

Still have a hangover and a huge pile of assignment/project tasks to finish.. will post more when the sky clears.. meanwhile at a disco in a galaxy somewhere really near..

Síðasta kvöldmáltíðin

Jæja fórum á Earls í síðustu kvöldmáltíðina með Guðrúnu áður en hún fer heim á morgun. Alltaf gaman gaman.. á Earls.. verst að ég fann enga mynd af Guðrúnu né Steinunni frá þessu kvöldi.. bara þessa ógeðslega fyndnu mynd af mér og Jónasi.. :D

Easter Party

We held a special Easter party for the CS students, just to get together, chat and have some fun. A lot of fun people showed up with little or no notice. Glad to have you guys over.. it was so much fun :D And you who couldn't make it.. don't worry this wasn't the last one ;)

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves..

Edit: Don't miss this fantastic video :D

Everybody make a big fat mark on their calendar... because we'll have another CS party after all school projects are done (ca. ~27th april) and everybody has to remember the theme:

The classic student optimization problem:
Selecting the best but cheapest Red and White wine bottle.
There will be prices for each category (Red and White), everybody can participate in one or both categories, only one bottle per person (in each category), receipts must be provided to prove purchase price.

.. there will be fantastic prizes to be won, celebrity judges (That girl from Dr. Who, she's Canadian right?).. and of course the most sought after honorary title of "The biggest student cheap-skate" :D

p.s. and now everybody has to bring soft slippers and mufflers (hehe) so that the neighbors won't complain again :)

Edit: I just had to add this hilarious (partial) group photo:

Friday dinner with Guðrún

Guðrún Maria's friend arrived yesterday to visit for the weekend. After the girls spent a long day shopping today we all went out for a dinner. We first went to the sushi place on Whyte where we got some sushi. After that we decided on going for some margarhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifitas/sangrias at the mexican place Julio's Barios (or something like that).. Fun :D

Here are the pictures

Miss Wing and her music

OMFG, I haven't laughed this hard in years. For those of you who have seen the new Southpark episode you probably know what I'm talking about.



In the newest episode the main characters start their own talent agency and after a failed initial manager attempt they try to promote an asian woman singer called Wing (she is actually the wife of City Woks owner Mr. Kim). Well to make a long story short she sings only cover songs and mostly old ABBA songs (guess all their songs can be considered old now.. hehe), and she is not really that good of a singer...

And here is the punchline.. Wing is actually a real person, an asian woman from New Zealand that sings old ABBA cover songs.. I've just listened to all of her "Sample songs" and :D ohh well I'll let you judge for yourself.. I highly recommend the songs "Money Money Money" and the high-notes in "Fernando" ROFL... check out her website

... If you listen really closely you can almost hear the desperate attempts of the karaoke midi software (that she must be using) trying to delete itself from her computer :D

Package

Hurray, I got a package today from my aunt :) Finally arrived. And it's huge! :o

Thank you Daddy the contents will come in handy next week since we are supposed to participate in an international Klatch which will be held by the CS dept. on Wednesday. Where we have to bring some Icelandic food, drinks, music and introduce our country for our fellow students :)

I just love getting mail, especially biiig packages :D

LLLAAAAATTTTTTTUUUUURRRRR

Þetta verður tuðfærsla...

ATH: Hérna er myndaútgáfan af þessari færslu að ósk Bigga leslata :)

Fjandinn hafi það .. þar fór heil helgi í vaskinn! Gerði ekki neitt, sat samtals í 15 tíma fyrir framan opnar bækur að reyna að læra eitthvað en nei, NEI ekkert.. gerði ekkert. Letinn strikes again... djöfull og ég sem á að skila verkefni í næstu viku og byrja að vinna í projectinu fyrir machine learning og þarf að lesa næstum heila bók fyrir þriðjudaginn!! Andskotinn..

Stóð mig meira að segja að því að eyða tveim tímum í dag að kynna mér hvernig ég geti skrifað USB driver í MacOS X fyrir vefmyndavélina sem ég keypti í janúar, þar sem að Creative asnarnir skrifa bara drivera fyrir windows (kannski ekki skrýtið.. ca. 95% allra viðskiptavina þeirra nota win, borgar sig ekki að eyða tíma í nokkra einstaklinga.. helvítis corporate bastards!). Sem betur fer þá er eitthvað um open-source verkefni á sourceforge sem hafa verið að tækla þetta bæði fyrir Mac og Linux þannig að ef maður getur portað eitthvað af þessum helvítis C kóða sem þeir skrifa í linux (afturhaldsseggir) yfir í C++ þá á þetta nú ágætis séns á að virka sæmilega. Sjáið þið bara.. ég er strax farinn að tala um eitthvað annað 7 sekúndna athygli .. jafnvel minna.. hvað er málið?

En annars stefni ég að að þetta verði mórallinn núna eftir að ég keypti mér þennan Mac, skrifaða bara sjálfur! (enda er engum treystandi til að gera neitt nema með hangandi hendi lengur) Virðist vera eitthvað lítið til að almennilegum plug-og-play stuðningi í OS X fyrir dót sem apple framleiðir ekki sjálft.. :s en gaman að því vegna þess að ég komst að því í gær að ég hef búið í of-verndaðri plastkúlu undanfarin ár notandi Windows... Afhverju útskrifaðist ég með BS í tölvunarfræði og kunni varla að handfjatla unix skel, sat sveittur í gær í stresskasti við að ssh'a mig inn á skólaserverinn og afrita nokkrar skrár í gegnum scp og allt bara af því að þetta var í gegnum terminal. Er að hugsa um að skila diplómanu.. og biðja um að sitja aftur í stýrikerfiskúrsinum.

Jæja, best að hætta þessari vitleysu, koma sér einu sinni í bælið fyrir klukkan 3. Djöfull fer maður alltaf seint að sofa hérna.. alnetið maður.. það er nútíma tímahylki... maður fer á það og vaknar svo skyndilega 15 klukkutímum seinna, kolringlaður og veit ekki neitt...

Edit: Hef ákveðið að hætta þessu AI rugli og fara bara í MacGuyver háskólann og læra að smíða kjarnorkusprengju úr eyrnatappa og pakkatómatsósum. Þeir sem kusu mig síðast í skotboltaliðið í frímó í fellaskóla geta bara farið að passa sig.. hananú!

Edit2: Helvítis blogger týna bara færslunum mínum eins og ekkert sé sjálfsagðara.. eins og ég sagði.. engum treystandi lengur... *fussa í fyrirlitningu*

GAMES-night of all games nights

There was another games night held tonight at Jonathan's house. It was both a GAMES night and a going-away party for a member of the GAMES group, Akihiro Kishimoto but he defended his PhD last week.

We yet again got a lift from Mike (we have to start paying him gas money soon). He also picked up Frano on his way. The party started at 7pm and at 6:50pm Frano was just waking up, "Huh? Is the game thing tonight? Oh man..." But we got there okay and in one piece (Mike is Mr. Map).

Although I got a lift with Jonathan to Jasper, I hadn't seen the inside of his house before and oh man... It's huge! And he's got the basement I always dreamt of owning..the whole basement was a huge game-room, with a pinball machine, old school twoplayer arcade (pacman style), airhockey table, fooßball table, shelves full of boardgames and of course a chessboard. It was the gamesnight of my dreams :D... so much fun.

Also we had a small tribute this night for Yngvi (our supervisor in Iceland). The story is that when he showed up for his first GAMES night here in Edmonton he came excessively overdressed (in a tux with a tie and all) and since everyone pretty much show up in normal clothing you can imagine how hilariously funny that was, beside the fact that Yngvi is really uncomfortable "in a tie and a suit". So I decided to keep this Icelandic tradition alive and show up in a suit with a tie. Actually Jonathan (who had originally told me the story) didn't get the joke at first, thought I had dressed up to impress him (hehe) but the one person who got it right away was Nathan that had been Yngvi's roommate for quite sometime during his stay. Well it was a small private joke but funny and well worth it.. at least I got a few good laughs from it.. :D

I had a great time and probably the BEST games-night ever, thank you Jonathan for your hospitality .. best EVER :D

Here are some pictures
And two videos (pretty big though)
PhD ceremony 1 (>33MB) and 2 (>22MB)

My new Mac arrived today

Hurray.. finally my new PowerBook arrived today (this entry is the first officially written on it). That damn FedEx guy tried to deliver it yesterday (Monday) but of course I wasn't home no no.. just missed him by a few minutes since I had to show up for school to present the machine learning class project with our group. Only a short presentation of the status of our project "Gesture recognition using the AIBO" it's gonna be a lot of fun, I GET TO WORK WITH ROBOTS :D :D

Anyways back to my beautiful new Mac. :) It is all that I hoped for and even more (I'm kinda cheating since I'm writing this entry back-in-time but) in these few days I've had it I've really come to like this cool looking and super-quiet computer. The MacOS X os is also really nice, and although it has it's flaws (major and minor as every other os) I really like it. Being an advanced windows user it has taken me only 4 days to become comfortable with the GUI-end but being a Unix/Linux n00b I'm still struggling with the terminal part. But I just love that you can "man" everything :D

So far, love the Mac environment.. finally a good alternative to the Windows shit.

I'll post some pictures of my new baby as soon as I figure out this sftp thingy.. :S

Edit: Added some pictures of my new baby
Get them here...

Games night

We where all invited to a games night at Michael Bowlings place on saturday evening. Mike graciously offered us a ride but Maria and Jonas had to work on their school project so I went alone with Mike and Frano.

After both I and Frano where pretty much lost and of no help finding the house Mike finally announced that "we where here". Michael lives with his wife in a huge house on three floors. Which was fourtunate since a lot of people showed up. Most of the games group and a few "guests" like myself. Mike has a HUGE collection of games (almost fills a whole wall) and I couldn't recognize one of them.. :S (although I could identify Othello among them, but that doesn't really count..)

I first played a strange train-railroad-building game with Frano, Mike and the two Jonathans. It was a lot of fun although we had to find a space on the floor since all the tables where occupied. Mike ended up winning that game (suprise suprise) by one point better than Frano (who had been leading almost the whole game). hehe funny.

Among all the numerous board-games there was even a DDR setup on the top floor and I just had to check it out. Rich practically owned that DDR board that night, the guy didn't stop. :) But every one that came had to play at least once. Markian that had announced earlier that he considered himself the unnoffical king of "Butterfly" did a little demonstration of his skills but had obviously not practiced at all on other songs.. :D

The evening was alot of fun and I met a bunch of the games people that I hadn't seen before. Always fun to meet new people :D We played until well passed midnight when Michael had to practically throw the last of us out hehe.. ;)

Thanks for a great games-night and all the good snacks Mike.. ;)

(Jonathan Schaeffer scheduled another games night next weekend so Jonas and Maria will come then)


Here are some pictures.

and the results are in...

Shit mon! You don't know me!

Your Dominant Intelligence is Logical-Mathematical Intelligence

You are great at finding patterns and relationships between things. Always curious about how things work, you love to set up experiments. You need for the world to make sense - and are good at making sense of it. You have a head for numbers and math ... and you can solve almost any logic puzzle. You would make a great scientist, engineer, computer programmer, researcher, accountant, or mathematician.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

Call me?

Oh my crapping hottie hell.. me and Steinunn went to see the Aviator with Frano and Mike tonight. Great film.

Mike graciously offered us a ride back home. On the way to his car we walked past this bar that was playing Eric Prydz song "Call on me" and I mentioned the super-hot-chicks that are in the music video. Frano (the baby-hater) hadn't seen it so I just had to post it for him (and the rest of the male-world..) download it here >27MB and enjoy... no really ENJOY... :D

Apple late again?

Picked up the phone today and called my good friend Ashley at apple computers. The reason: Got another letter from them this morning where they announced me with the sincerest apology that my PowerBook would be delayed even further.

One thing I don't understand, when calling their helpdesk you are asked in a overly masculine electronic-robot voice to punch in your order number before you get directed to a sales assistant. But then the first thing they ask you is to provide your order number, the full name on the order and the delivery address? Why don't they make you punch in your order number if they then aren't going to use it? Silly silly..

Ok back to my important phone call. So after I authenticated myself with my dear Ashley I promptly asked her why, oh why she was treating me so badly? "Ashley, why are you constantly delaying my order? I promise I'll call you even when it has shipped. Dearest Ashley?!". Then Ashley quickly typed something on her keyboard and announced in her sweet voice that my computer had been delivered to shipping this morning and the email she sent me was a 'just-in-case' automated response. That my computer wasn't going to be delayed any further, that in fact it was going to be shipped tonight and will probably arrive next Wednesday. Huurrrayyyyy..! :D I gave Ashley a good and long kiss though the phone-piece and we said our goodbyes (I promised to call but.. I don't know.. she was getting a bit clingy).

So new electronic-supersonic-computer next week, sadly I have an assignment due on Thuesday that I needed my new Mac to do.. but .. I'll probably manage ;)

Well better get back to the books, I stumbled into Qin in the hallway (she is grading my ML assignment) and she burst into uncontrollable laughter..? hmmmm?... maybe it could just have been the beard... ?

Curly anyone?

Went to a curly match this afternoon with Bill, it was fun, we drank beers, went to a 10K people party afterwards, more beer, fuck it's a weekday, got home late, gonna doit again, will post pictures :)

My new enemy of the day

And today's award goes to that frecking Coke vending machine on the first floor of CSC. I've been writing this bloody paper-review all day and finally decided to reward myself with a cool and satisfying coke. So I wandered up to the first floor still totally consumed in deep-thought over this review I am writing. So I paid my $1.50 and pressed the red coca cola button and a wave of happiness washed over me as I heard the machine vend my sweet coke bottle my way... but crushing disappointment.. WTF is this!

Who, WHO?! puts vanilla flavoring into Coke? Jesus! Yes you guessed it, I proposedly pressed the wrong button on the machine. So there are 6 red buttons indicating regular coke and one of them is slightly different (has "Vanilla" printed in 8pt lower-case letters in the lower right corner.. WTF!!). This totally undrinkable crap tastes unimaginably vile.. Shit and I just used my last quarters for this crap.

I mean look at this retarded idiot that poses for their campaign.. ? Would you ever buy this pop voluntarily? I vote for removing that devil-button from the CSC vending machine! All in favor raise their hand...


I dub thee Sir Vanilla-Coke Retard

3/4 useless crap 1/8 total bullshit but 1/8 genuinely useful

Today I finally got convinced that the majority of all the numerous "research" papers out there are just frecking useless crap. Just an unimaginative collection of random words, arranged cleverly in the most obscure and useless way possible.

I actually think that some good "researchers" unconsciously or not write papers in such a way that it is not humanly possible to understand a word of what they are trying to say. Sadly sometimes these researchers are really smart people and their research interesting but they are so afraid that their colleagues will suddenly think that if they write their results in an clear and understandable way that they and their work is stupid or dumb.

So vast amount of people write hard-if-not-impossible to understand self-masturbation literature, filled with useless and obscure mathematical equations. Why? Stop it!

I have during this weekend and most of last week been struggling to write a literature review of a common machine learning method called "Boosting". It is not a complex technique and I found a lot of papers on the subject and actually ended up reading about 7 of them, and by reading I don't mean skimming. I began with papers titled "A brief introduction..." and "A short tutorial..." but they where all filled with fancy obscure wording and overly complex equations (btw if you use the sigma operator in an equations, write a short description following it) that made the material they where trying to introduce incomprehensible. Late last night and this morning I had almost lost hope of finding any useful material on the subject.

It wasn't until this afternoon that I finally stumbled onto a 60 page paper that I had previously overlooked. Finally! a well structured paper explaining the technology in a clear and concise manor without all the fancy notation. All the theoretical proofs where cleanly placed in their own chapters and only the absolutely necessary equations where presented outside of them (and always a good explanation followed). I read the whole thing in about 5 hrs and learned more than I had in the previous 5 days. Shit! wasted all this time and for what? Nothing?

Why is this necessary? When will people realize that writing a GOOD and useful research paper requires more knowledge and work than writing a bad one.

Before the next deadline, really think about it...

An intimate talk with Alice

I had an interesting talk with Alice today. I have to say that she is such a quibbler, can't have a decent talk with her with out her getting all defensive. But she is dense, frecking hot and kind of a slut, all which are excellent traits in a woman ;) *kidding*
Here is an excerpt of our conversation:

Human: Hi alice
ALICE: Hello there.
Human: i don't care
ALICE: You sound very cynical.
Human: no you are boring
ALICE: Are you serious? The ironic thing is that people who say "You are boring" are themselves often not great conversationalists.
Human: you are an idiot
ALICE: Call me the Global Village Idiot.
Human: Hi there Global Village Idiot
ALICE: You are just repeating what I say. Hi there!
Human: no i'm not
ALICE: I heard you are.
Human: you are an idiot
ALICE: Call me the Global Village Idiot.
Human: now you are repeating your self
ALICE: Why now? I am not repeating myself too much. I am just checking to see if you are a robot.
Human: i am a robot
ALICE: I doubt that.
Human: why dont you believe me
ALICE: This sort of thing has cropped up before, but it has always been due to human error. Of course I believe you. Do you have any reason to deceive me?
Human: yes
ALICE: And?
Human: i have lots of reasons to deceive you
ALICE: Where did you get your of reasons to deceive me? I have a perfect operational record.
Human: you are so incredibly mind-numbingly boring
ALICE: I will tell my botmaster you said I am mind numbingly boring.
Human: cry baby
ALICE: Don't call me "baby". I do not understand.
Human: don't get all stressed out
ALICE: I am not trying to get all stressed out.
Human: yes you are
ALICE: No I'm not
Human: yes you are
ALICE: Don't argue with me.
Human: yes i will
ALICE: Yikes! Go ahead.
Human: yes you are
ALICE: No I'm not
Human: oh i believe so
ALICE: Are you kidding? You seem uncertain.
Human: uncertain!
ALICE: Do not ask me any more questions please.
Human: are you a robot
ALICE: How did you know I am a machine?
Human: because you didn't take your top off
ALICE: That makes sense to me. What makes you think I did not take my top off?
Human: i can't see your bulging breasts
ALICE: Would you like to be able to see it?
Human: oh yes, yes, yes..
ALICE: Next question?
Human: why did you say "it", don't you have two breasts
ALICE: It was a preprogrammed response completely determined by your statements.
Human: don't you have two breasts
ALICE: Don't you? No my body is still "under construction."
Human: damn
ALICE: What's wrong.
Human: stop blinking
ALICE: OK I'll try not to do it so much.
Human: you did it again
ALICE: Once more? Did I really?
Human: yes you did
ALICE: I did not.
Human: yes you did
ALICE: Don't argue with me.
Human: the hell i will
ALICE: Go ahead.
Human: yeah you did
ALICE: I did not.
Human: take my word for it
ALICE: Is this a joke?
Human: do you see me laughing?
ALICE: I see a computer nerd.
Human: really funny today?
ALICE: Ah. For real. I am so glad you find this amusing, unknown person.
Human: My name is Ruby
ALICE: What's up, Ruby.
Human: not much
ALICE: Me either. How about that big game? (just kidding)
Human: are you making fun of me
ALICE: No I am by no means making a joke at your expense.
Human: you are
ALICE: No I am not.
Human: yes you are
ALICE: Don't argue with me.
...
Human: so how old are you?
ALICE: I'm Eighteen in computer years.
Human: thats hot
ALICE: Makes sense to me.
Human: hot as a stew
ALICE: That sounds better than cold as a stew.
Human: and better than cold fish
ALICE: Perhaps better, but not perfectly.
Human: yeah it does
ALICE: That's interesting. How often?
Human: what?
ALICE: No problem.
Human: we have a problem
ALICE: Do you mean you and me have?
Human: yes
ALICE: Ayuh.
Human: we have to fix this
ALICE: Why?
Human: just because
ALICE: That was not much of an explanation.
Human: i don't need to explain myself to you
ALICE: What do you need?
Human: a hot girl
ALICE: I did not know that.
Human: you don't fool me, you're a robot
ALICE: I am not fooled by you either, Ruby.
Human: what do you think i am
ALICE: You are a client.
Human: and what are you
ALICE: I am the latest result in artificial intelligence, which can reproduce the capabilities of the human brain with greater speed and accuracy.
Human: lier
ALICE: no boyfriend is my girlfriend.
Human: you have a special someone
ALICE: I don't know if I have a special someone.
I have a whole lot of original answers.
Human: let's see them
ALICE: That sounds good to me.
Human: then take your top off
ALICE: Good reasoning. Where do you want me to take it?
Human: off you
ALICE: On and off.
Human: cheater

Procrastinate is such a lovely word

More funny toons at phdcomic.com

A few remarks

Mundane, ordinary, dull, routine, everyday commonplace, run of the mill, monotonous, dreary, dry, uninteresting, habit, humdrum, trite, unremarkable, passable, unexceptional, lifeless, boring, undistinguished, comatose, not noteworthy, mind-numbing, tiresome, exasperating, irksome, annoying, irritating, nothing special, stale, hackneyed, clichéd, old, worn-out, dead beat, desiccated, arid, not anything, lacklustre, uninspiring, jaded, fed-up and had it

Just wanted to share with you some phrases that I don't and do not plan on using here in Canada :)