Colin's COSMOS '05 Blog

"Shall we go?" "Yes let's go." (They Do Not Move)

2005-08-05T11:15:00.000-07:00

This will be my final post on my COSMOS blog. I've had an awesome time here both in my dorm and in cluster 1. Our demo of our video game was well recieved, and the presentation went smoothly. All that's left is to show and present our poster to all the big wigs that donated to the program. I just want to thank both my professors and my colleagues for the past 4 weeks. Joe, Larry, Christine: Thank you so much. You have given me so much information that I will be able to use in the future. It's been fun and please write me letters of recomendation when I apply to UCSD! :). Chris and Greg: Thanks for everything. I've enjoyed working with you and hanging out with. You've motivated me to continue learing how to program. My RA Dave: You are an awesome guy. It's been a pleasure getting to know you. My roommates: I could not asked for better roomates. You guys are awesome! I hope to keep in touch with every one of you. To all my friends I met here at COSMOS: Much <3 to all of you. If you guys would ever like to talk to me, my email is satchamobob@eww4.com and my AIM screen name is Satchamobob.

MUCH <3 IS 2 EVERYBODY!!11! ^____^

Colin Wheelock AKA Satchamobob

The Arcane Twilight

2005-08-04T14:07:00.000-07:00

The whole week has been dedicated to nothing but working on our final project. Everything is coming together perfectly. Our power point presentation was well received (with a few constructive ideas given to us, our poster is uber 1337, and the game is looking really good. Other than that I don't have much to say. We have about two days left before we have to leave. I'm really sad that I have to say goodbye to all these people already. But hopefully I'll keep in touch with many of the friends I've made. Friday is a dance, so expect me to make a fool out of myself! ;) I'll try and make one more post before I leave on Saturday. If I can't though, much <3 to everybody!

SEGWAYS 4TW!!!11!

2005-08-01T09:54:00.000-07:00

The past few days, from Thursday on, have been really fun. Thursday was a "battle bots" competition. Grad students were assigned to different teams to write code for a game. The object of the game was to claim the other players' castle. This was achieved by writing a strategy code, and watching it work out onscreen against other teams. Unfortunately, our team was last place. :P Friday we went on a trip to the neuroscience institute inside of the SCRIPPS research institute, where we were given a "tour" by one of the guest lectures for the program. He showed us two of the robots they had designed. One of which was programmed to learn the difference between "good tasting" and "bad tasting" blocks. The other was built from a segway scooter and it played soccer. After seeing demonstrations of the robots we were all given the opportunity to ride segways. I must admit, I was ecstatic throughout the entire tour. This whole program has made me consider majoring in a field that will get me a career in robotics and AI. After the tour of the nourishing institute, we traveled to this strip mall to go see a movie. Before we went to the movie I played a few games of DDR (which was nice because I haven't played since I arrived), and Chris and I went to tower records where we made a deal to buy different anime movies and watch them (I have to go buy Princess Mononoke and he has to start watching Neon Genesis Evangelion). The movie we saw was Stealth, which was a horrible movie (how can a supercomputer for a stealth plane have only 10 terabits of bandwidth and why is it the black guy always dies first?). Saturday was the Wild Animal park and Sunday was a play entitled "Current Nobody." I thought the play was well done, especially the set in its simplicity and the actors were exceptional. Ok so now you know how my weekend was. TO THE BAT CAVE!!1

insert random title here

2005-07-26T15:06:00.000-07:00

Today's Discovery lecture was about the science of global warming. The speaker discussed the history of global warming and what the situation is like today. It was an intersting topic. The question was actually brogut up, "Why is this topic up for debate?" I found it funny when the speaker tried to answer the question with as little bias as possible (I actually just wanted him to say it: "blame Bush." :P). In the afternoon we had a lecture on congnitive science which was focused on Human Computer Interaction. We were shown some exciting new technology, such as a digital pen with was capable of storing information from handwriting and books and putting them into a computer. Work for the game has been going ok. I'm working on creating the NPCs, the enemies, items, weapons etc. Another person in my group is working on the storyline while the other is doing all the program. I would actually like to do some of the programming myself, but unfortunately becuase of the two week deadline, learning a language like scheme would be impossible. However, I'm going to try and help out as much as I can. I wish that we could have more time in the lab though.

/end rant

Lectures, Final Projects, etc.

2005-07-25T10:23:00.000-07:00

Friday was an average day. We had a lecture on interenet worms which was rather interesting. More importantly though, we discussed our final projects at last. My group consists of Chris, Greg, and myself. Our project is desiging, from scratch, a text-based video game. The game is going to be of a fantasty RPG nature. Hopefully the game will be rather intricate, but I'm a little worried about the 2 week deadline. However, I'm working with a great group so hopefully we will have a well developed game in the next two weeks. I have the tedious task of learning as much as I can about a programming language called Scheme so I can actually lend a hand in programming the game. Right now though, I'm just helping with storyline and creating items, spells, etc.

Sidenote: Wow, only 2 more weeks left. Time really flies doesn't it?

Los videojuegos y ciencias de la computadora

2005-07-20T11:03:00.000-07:00

The first half of this morning was devoted to a guest lecture who discussed the connection between computer science and video games. It was really interesting. The professor discussed how games and the industry have evolved since the 70s and 80s. And while some people view video games as somewhat trivial, they are actually a rather complex field of work. In connection with computer science, building computer games require lots of math, for rendering, graphics, physics, lighting, etc. Other things to consider when designing games, include: the use of many algorithms and data structures that are time and space efficient; geometric algorithms that are useful in collision detection; how games manage hardware resources like an operating system; networking games on servers; security, architecture, AI, etc. Overall there is a lot that goes on when creating a game. And of course, me being a game geek, I enjoyed every minute of the lecture.

On a side note I'd like to make a comment about the cluster as a whole in the past week and a half. The cluster has really become interesting. It's definitely not what I expected. Like our professors told us, we are going more into the theory of computer science than just learning how to program in different languages. I have enjoyed all of the lectures we have had because they really have opened my eyes at what exactly computer science. However, I also would like to go home not only with that knowledge but since I have almost no experience in programming, I would like to see some time set aside to teach some different languages. The cluster as a whole has really made me excited about science.

Time marches on...

2005-07-19T13:14:00.000-07:00

Past two days have been rather uneventful but the lectures were again interesting. Yesterday were lectures on computating algorithims and human and machine perception. Today was a discovery lecture on Neurorobotics. I'm really enjoying all the lectures on AI. It seems like a very interesting field to go in. I'm actually thinking I may want to pursue that area of studies in college. But still, there's plenty of time to make up my mind.

Wow...That's really deep

2005-07-15T15:08:00.000-07:00

Today's lectures were incredibly deep but also very interesting (I'm still recovering from them but they were really good lectures). The morning lecture posed the question, "Can computers think?" We were shown the different viewpoints. The viewpoint from one professor included an analogy (a man in a room performing the task of inputting and outputting different Chinese characters) that bascially discussed how computers take information and process it but don't actually understand it. Other viewpoints included the idea that the components of the previous "Chinese room" as a whole can think and ever the question of what humans really understand. The lecture and discussion was quite intriguing. The afternoon lecture asked the question, "are humans nothing more than machines?" The idea behind the lecture was that are humans really nothing more, at the lowest level, than a series of calculations, or was there something more to us that separated us from machines? The discussion developed through a scenario of two brains "linked" to each other. When one brain experienced something, the other brain would experience the same sensation. Through that the question was if both brains would end up being exactly the same (think clones). Well, I've had my fill of philosophy for today but man were those lectures thought-provoking.

Things finally get interesting

2005-07-14T15:13:00.000-07:00

So it is almost the end of the first week at COSMOS and things are starting to get rather interesting in my cluster. Yesterday we had a lecture about AI. I was suprisied to find how much work goes into creating AI than just writing a program that tells the machine to do an action. Today, in the morning was a lecture about the human brain and in the afternoon we had a lecture about bioinformatics. I had never heard anything about bioinformatics so the lecture was quite fascinating. The professor talked about how many evolution processes were part of a simple arrangment of DNA strands. For example, the evolutionay difference between a human and a mouse consist of as little as about 280 arrangments in DNA. He described this whole process through the use of a high level algorithm. Overall, I was impressed with the lecture. Looking forward to the end of the week, but at least I'm enjoy the cluster more.

My First Post

2005-07-10T16:33:00.000-07:00

So yeah first post. Yesterday was the first day and it was nothing much but intro stuff and we did a couple of program activities and lectures. Today was basic stuff again. We went over the scientific method (like that's anything new :/) but right now we're working with different things like trying to use javascript, java, and C++ for making simple programs. Unfortunately, I'm having a little trouble with the languages but thank god I've got people who have been doing this stuff forever, so I will probably be asking them for help. In the morning we had a lecture about the technology of evolution. It was really interesting. Ok so I'm done for now.

/end rant.