Personal

I went to Mackfest today to celebrate Alan Mackworth's contributions to AI. It was a lot of fun. I was happy to meet Alan and my sister again. It's been three years since we met last time! AKM is a great professor. I've learned a great deal from him. I also enjoyed the AI text book “Computational Intelligence” he co-authored with David Poole and Randy Goebel. I've read it at least twice.

Without his encouragement, TOS is almost impossible considering it's an after work project for me. With the birth of TOS, came the realization of my true potential. TOS is just the beginning, I know what I'm capable of:-)

I was also impressed by my sister's talk on her PARC robotic research projects. Obviously she's having great fun developing those robotic snakes:-)

What a beautiful Saturday afternoon! Sitting in bed, with a book in my left hand and a high lighter in my right hand, I looked out of the window. Blue sky, no cloud. Looked like it's Spring time for Vancouver!

I was walking towards a pet food store in the shopping mall. A usual Sunday morning up to that moment, and I was feeling almost completely recharged due to the extra hour I had last night. The shopping mall was quiet and empty. A woman was on the public phone discussing something about “mental illness”. Two little girls were playing on the wooden horses while their mother was supervising them nearby.

A man in his sixties approached me from a corner and asked, “Sir, Can you help me?”
“Yes?” I stopped, expecting a normal question about time or directions.

A Nice day today, but it's getting cold and windy. The bike's kickstand got stuck with the pedals. I managed to solve the problem in a quick way, by breaking the spring of the kickstand. This unnecessary overuse of force has cost me 22 dollars. Well, the bright side is, I will install the new kickstand far away from the pedals, so it won't get stuck again.

I'm half way through this book, “Artificial Minds, by Stan Franklin”. It's a very interesting survey on AI theories. It really makes me thinking a lot. I'm very impressed with author's idea of expressing the mind and intelligence as a matter of degree. I basically agree. But to extend this view to an extreme, even a bacteria can have a very little mind of its own. No, this extreme case is hard for me to accept.

How about cats?

I'm starting to bike to work again.

My last bike commuting experience happened two years ago. I didn't enjoy it very much, so it only lasted a week. The problem is caused by the difficult terrain. Vancouver has too many hills! I don't know how those city planners choose bikeways. It seems some of the bikeways have the steepest hills in town.

But I still like the idea of biking to work. Needless to say, there are tons of good reasons for bike commuting. One day, I said to myself, "How about putting an electric motor on my bike to help me climbing those hills?" So I started a web search. Humm, there are quite a few shops in Vancouver doing electric bikes!