Yesterday I played soccer for the first time since 2005, and felt great. Well, actually my game was pretty awful and I was seriously winded the whole match since I haven’t done any sprinting since January 2009′s adventure. Regardless, I am very very happy with how my leg and ankle held up, and I’m already looking forward to playing again. Seb and I were just going to kick a ball around, but then got wrapped into a pick up game, and it was great. The only downside was a ball to the face that bruised the bridge of my nose, but luckily didn’t rebreak it.
I finished watching a sequel season called Ghost in the Shell: Stand Along Complex (2nd GIG) and really loved it. I wrote previously about the first season of this series and pointed out that I enjoyed how it treated issues of technology. In the second season, I realized that what I like the most is the particular issues that the writers brought up about artificial intelligence. Specifically, through the “think tanks” called Tachikomas (pictured) there are numerous discussions among them that I believe are meant to be a weak A.I. trying to decide whether or not it is a strong A.I. or still only a weak A.I. In context, you should read “think tank” in the military denotation as a tank that thinks, and not in the political denotation as a lobbying research “think tank.” Weak A.I. is the kind that lives in Searle’s Chinese Room and seems like a person but just isn’t. Strong A.I. is a non-human intelligence that is actually intelligent in the sense that it thinks and is conscious (as humans are), beyond just doing human-like computation with identical output. The Tachikomas were interesting to listen to because of their setup: they are child-like helper robots, synced in memory every night, but allowed to differentiate from each other throughout the day (since they are not always synced). They therefore seem to do and think about different things each day, resulting in a bizarre setup when they confer and each instance of the machine is talking to the different versions of itself that diverged through experience through the course of the day.
Meanwhile, since I have been saving tutoring money to upgrade my home computer, I have been back in computer hardware research mode. In the process I stumbled upon the following article that demonstrates that professional PC gamers have the physical health of old chain-smokers, but the minds and reaction times of professional athletes. It’s not surprising, but it’s fantastic that someone did the research. Here is a link to the article. Anyway, the only thing I’ve purchased so far is an Antec Nine Hundred Two case that was 50% off, new.
Recently, I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon with how I think about decisions. Basically, if it’s after 10 or 11 P.M. I’m a bit more melancholy about things. I find myself missing people that I care about but haven’t seen in a long time. Normally, I would write this off, but it’s been relatively consistent recently. The result though is that I consider the plans that I have made for the upcoming days, and start to reconsider all of them. I start to feel lonely and wonder if the plans that I have made are just empty emollients.
Here is the thing I can’t figure out: which of my persistent mindsets is more accurate to reality? Is it the sleepy and somewhat contemplative emotional mindset? Or is it the face-to-the-sun headstrong and sanguine mindset? How does one find out?
Hot Dude Party is on a break for the summer, and Chaos is in a serious MCAT study zone and therefore not very much fun to be around because MCAT is all that’s on his mind. But on May 26, we played a show at Herman’s Hideaway and my brother took photos, for example the one above. Meanwhile, in real life, closer and closer to finishing my first paper for submission.
Gabby is out here for two days for a conference, and it’s awesome to see him. He seems to work his ass off, and I really admire him. He’s staying at the St. Julien hotel, and it’s seriously posh inside. I haven’t been in a nicer hotel since staying at 21c in Louisville, KY.
I can’t stop listening to this song: Little Lion Man, by Mumford and Sons. It’s so good. Their whole album is good. A million thanks to Mike Larremore for the recommendation on these guys.
Last night I finished Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex which falls nicely into cyberpunk anime, but has so many nice threads and connections to Singularity theory. In fact, I thought Stand Alone Complex’s treatment of technology in general was really really good. This was a significant contrast to IronMan 2, which as far as I can tell, sees the future of technology as a bunch of hidden hinges in motorized metal parts. I think the IronMan sort of future looks a little bit more macho, but is so far from the mark. In my opinion, the future is at the interface of biology and computer science. Things will get smaller, lighter, and harder to see and detect. Anyway, I would rate Stand Alone Complex very high due to coherence of plot, universe, and exceptional animation. I’d put it up there with Dennō Coil for overall enjoyment in the futurist genre. Watch it!
Time for a little bit of internet management here. I did the standard self-google and decided to brush some things up. Here are links to some of the things that I would like to see more of:
My band’s website (recently created! I am pumped): Hot Dude Party
Eventually, it would be nice to get results for some of my publications, but of course, having publications is a necessary condition for them to show up in a search. I would also like Twitter to stop showing up. I disabled the automatic feed from twitter to the blog. If you still want to read twitterbits, just follow from twitter directly.
Meanwhile, life is good. I am running the BolderBoulder this coming Monday, and feeling decent about it. I also picked up a sweet new cycling outfit from Wheat Ridge Cyclery, which makes me feel a lot faster. I assume that it helps when the shorts match the jersey. I would estimate that I now go about 20% faster. “lol”
Research is going well. I am starting work with an undergraduate student named Kevin Murphy, and he seems to be really sharp…and works hard too. This should make for a good summer. Meanwhile, I am still working on a draft of the paper that we hope to submit pretty soon on the dynamic range of excitable networks. Dane and I have also started collaborating on a project about percolation. We’ll see how it goes.
