Tumbling

While I plan on using this blog more concretely, I've decided I want a more abstract output.

http://alangfiles.tumblr.com/

Watson

I've really enjoyed watching Watson on the IBM sponsored Jeopardy! rounds. I felt like it was an amazing moment in history. (Here's a link if you don't know what I'm talking about)

Chess just seems like a machine's game. It seems like two humans are seeing which of them is the better computer while playing, looking ahead, etc (Although I greatly enjoy the idea of masters playing chess intuitively, making the right moves because they 'feel right'). But to have a computer play a language based game was so exciting. (Language rules being so interesting, especially since we usually go by what 'sounds right').

A lot of people thought of it as man vs. machine, but I saw it more as individual vs. community. It's amazing that so many great minds were able to program an understanding of language into a computer, to me it was beautiful to watch Watson work.

Resolutions

I decided to stop playing minesweeper in 2011.

I really picked it up in late summer of 2010 (I think), and would always play it while listening to lectures or talks or while I was watching video. Around game 500 I started getting pretty good, and brought it up from a win average of ~5% to ~13%. I started seeing minesweeper tiles in my mind, and my brain would play virtual games in my head even when I was away from a computer.