If you watch the anime Hikaru no Go, you get to hear this phrase a lot -- or, at least, something that sounds like this phrase. I think it means "I resign" at the end of a game of Go, but for all I know, it can be "I will beat you to a bloody pulp, let's take it outside".
I'm happy to report that the scheduling program that I wrote for my girlfriend ran with mixed success. Despite all the crap that people tried to do to game the system and the relative tightness (i.e. limited free hours) of the schedules, the random algorithm managed to come up with a few schedules that worked, although they require a bit of tweaking and manual attention afterwards to give everybody the right hours. My girlfriend is in the process of processing the data; looks like it'll be a long night for the both of us.
But the title refers to what I've been planning on doing for a little while now -- I want to redo this homepage. Yes, I know that out of the seven (previously eight) sections of the site, I've only effectively finished four. And out of the four, some would say that I'm still lacking in content. But, I've been doing things badly for a while now, and as with most other projects, there's a point where the resources needed to start over and get to the same point outweighs the resources it would take to keep going. That is, if I don't stop and redo things, soon I will have accumulated so much that it'll be that much more painful to restart. There's something that rings horribly true about how bad design choices in the beginning only rear their ugly, misshapen heads at the end; in my case, they're already kicking my ass halfway through.
(for those interested in what I'm referring, it has to do with the flat text file backend I implemented for my journals instead of something easy like a MySQL database)
Magemashita. Magemashita indeed.
Most people who grew up this generation -- amidst computers, video games, and general laziness -- have heard of the name Final Fantasy. Created by Squaresoft (now Square-Enix back in 1987, it's one of these running titles that you have high expectations for and has gone beyond just video games to make an impact.
Final Fantasy! Concert!
Well, to be honest, some endeavors weren't very memorable. But an area that Final Fantasy definitely had an impact was in its music, which for most of the series was composed by Nobuo Uematsu. A lot of the songs were catchy and became mainstream, and some people play piano renditions of various themes without ever touching a Final Fantasy DVD/CD/cartridge.
Anyway, enough with the introduction. What's exciting now is that Square and Uematsu had decided to hold a U.S. Final Fantasy concert tour. Visiting seven cities, and borrowing local symphonies and chorale, they're going to play their music to appreciative dorks and video game hermits around the country. A few days ago, they announced that they will visit San Francisco in March, and soon after began selling tickets. I of course nabbed two tickets as soon as they were available; it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and for some of us who had grown up with video games and Final Fantasy, it's something to look forward to. For $50, you get to be a part of the experience; for $125, you get to meet the composer himself and shake his hand and never wash it afterwards (your hand, not Uematsu); for $25,000...well, for $25k, you would have gotten to meet the president had you not blown it on tickets that only went up to $125.
Update on the workshift system: so, as I was programming the scheduler, I realized that UI (user interface) design and programming is hard. I know that users, if not restricted and contained, will do stupid things, so I tried pretty hard to limit their options, but there's no end to the stupidity/frustration sometimes, as they unknowingly exploit things that you didn't account for. In this case, I failed to limit how many hours people can check off as "unavailable" -- some were trying to leave only 15 hours available to work, which, when you're trying to assign 5 hours of work to in a random assignment, pretty much guarantees failure every time.
End rant.
For the past few weeks, I've been working on a fairly noble project for my girlfriend. It has to do with cleaning pots, bathrooms, sweeping, and generally all undesirable cleaning-related jobs.
Let be familiarize you with the University Co-op system, specifically the one instituted at Berkeley. It's a housing system, where students rent out rooms (singly, doubly, or triply occupied) in a large house for cheaper prices and work off the difference. Now, after carefully sidestepping the gutter that I will frefer to as "your mind", these jobs usually involve keeping the house running, whether it is through cooking for individuals, cleaning, maintainance, and making sure that everything upon the face of the earth that can be decomposed will be left to rot in the open.
Anyway, the way their system is set up, tasks are broken up into edible chunks known as "workshifts", and it is up to a "workshift manager" to "assign" "tasks". If it sounds "tedious", that's probably because it is -- for every person in the house (which can range between 10 and 150+), you have to give them a few hours of stuff to do per week, taking into account their personal schedules and their preferences for certain types of jobs. There are some 30+ jobs that need to be done around the house, and each of these need to be done a number of times (i.e. daily, twice a week, etc.), which ultimately adds up to a lot of notes, reassignments, and paper cuts.
(Fortunately, the other part of the job -- checking up on the quality of workshifts completed and beating workers down with a manager messenger bag (tm) -- is a whole lot sexier and makes the entire thing worthwhile)
If you thought that the above problem can be solved by computers, then you're probably psychic and can read my mind. Indeed, I spent a fair amount of time developing an online system, written in PHP, that will let people of a house enter in their schedules and preferences for jobs, then generate a schedule that tries to cram workshifts into it without pissing everybody off. I'm proud to say that the system works...for 8 people doing 8 shifts. Obviously, the litmus test will be deploying the system and seeing what it's able to do, and we're hoping to do that this week.
I'll post results when they're available. A part of me still thinks this will crash the server, but maybe I'll get lucky.
Oh, and I added a few pictures to the Pictures section, shots from my Sony DSC-T1. You should take a look if you have nothing better to do.
Such is the sound uttered by virtual soldiers; those who are familiar with the online multiplayer game Counter-Strike will recognize the discrete yet distinct signal, usually a rallying call for teammates to run into enemy fire and pile up like firewood.
But I'm not referring to that this time; I'm referring to the game of Go, which has been played for a few thousand years in Asia. It's what's been keeping me occupied these past few weeks and why this page hasn't been updated in that span of time -- this, and a project I'm working on for my girlfriend. Ok, to be honest, it wasn't so much the game of Go as it was an anime about Go that got me intrigued.
The anime is called Hikaru no Go, and it details the adventures of a Japanese (of course he's Japanese, and everybody else in the world...all speak Japanese too, as standard in all anime) 6th grader who has the spirit of a 1000-year old master Go player sucked inside him and bugging him nonstop to play Go. I guess for me, the anime was successful in making Go somewhat exciting/dramatic, as well as telling a good story with interesting and developing characters; it wasn't an easy feat to maintain this kind of quality across 75 20-minute episodes (think Friends and the ups-and-downs that show faced).
Anyway, I just wanted to share with those reading this journal something that had my full attention for around a week, as I sat at home wincing at the recent onslaught of rain in California and wishing that I could somehow proceed with my vacation plans down to San Diego without getting drenched along the way. After I finish with my girlfriend's project, I should be posting with greater regularity.
Before I forget, I should let people who read this know that I recently finished the section on pictures (mostly back-end scripting work) and it's up and available for oogling. I hope to be posting more pics as I test out my new camera and go to L.A. + San Diego next week.
Hope it doesn't rain.