Hotashi - Jack’s Blog

I am an undergrad no more! I finished my last exam on Friday and came back home to Thornhill that night. I don’t feel any different from when I finished exams in my previous terms. I think the fact that my undergrad career is actually over hasn’t sunk in yet. Overall, I had a pretty enjoyable term. The courses that I took were pretty interesting. Well, most of them anyway. The two courses I enjoyed the most were SOC 101 (Intro to Sociology) and CS 486 (Artificial Intelligence).

Sociology allowed me more insight into what is happening with the Canadian society, as well as brief discussions on societies in the global scale. I never really understood why Ams liked sociology that much, but now I have come to appreciate this field of study as well. The turning point for me is when we looked at myths that are widespread in our society, but are in fact all false. For example, people tend to have the belief that homeless people are lazy and have only themselves to blame for their situation. However, this belief is generally not true. We are socialized to be very individualistic, and the capitalist society awards individual achievements. So when we see people with problems, or if we ourselves have problems, we have a tendency to blame it on the individuals — but in actuality the problem is most likely a social problem.

My favourite course this term is AI. I’ve always had an interesting, or fascination, with AI. I think the challenge of having machines performing complex tasks that are usually done by humans is very interesting. It was cool to see the different techniques that AI researchers use to solve different problems. I enjoy computer science not for its practical values, but I love the theories behind everything. If I had to choose between a situation where I am in a situation similar to Bill Gates of Microsoft or Steve Jobs of Apple, or a situation where I’m just a researcher (in computer science) getting paid 60K, I’d take the research position without hesitation. I’m not faulting anyone for wanting money, but personally I just want enough to get by. I find more satisfaction in doing work that I find interesting than getting paid a six figure salary working a job I’m not very interested in. I’ve always enjoyed problem solving and puzzles. The feeling I get when I complete a proof or solve a very hard problem/puzzle is one of the most rewarding feelings I get.

Anyway, I still waiting for all my marks to come in. I have a good feeling about this term, and I’ll see if my good feeling is justified or not. :P

I just came back from the demo of my AI (CS 486) project for my prof. I’m really glad I was able to get my program to play go at a decent level. Go is one of the hardest problems in computer game-playing due to many factors. For a while I thought I might have been too ambitious when I proposed to create an agent that can play go. I made a lot of progress when I first started the project back in February, but then I realized the approach I was using was not very good. Then the following weeks after that I hadn’t had the time to work on my AI project very much, so it just sat there taunting me until I finally resumed work just under 2 weeks ago. In th end I found a combination of using an influence function for determining good moves and a linear evaluation function for determining the best move to work well for my very simple go playing agent.

My demo went well today, and my prof liked what I have done so I’m very happy about that. She also told me that if I’m considering grad school I should let her know. So now it seems fairly likely I will be going to grad school sometime in the very near future.

I finished all my classes on Tuesday, which means I’m done classes for my undergrad career. It’s a bittersweet feeling. In a way I won’t really miss all the late-nights and all-nighters, but I will miss school. Being in school I’ve been kept sheltered from the real world — with the exception of co-op terms. It’s going to be very different to step into the work environment for a much longer period of time. In the academic environment you’re able to try out so many new things, but in the work environment there are so many constraints on what you can do. Not that I don’t enjoy work — there are many things you can learn at work as well — but I don’t think it’s as exciting as things you do in school.

Anyway, I got a call back from Workbrain, and they want me to start work with them in June. However, because they recently got acquired by Infor, they cannot officially give me an offer until the whole acquisition process is done. Hopefully everything will go smoothly and I’ll start work in two months so I don’t have to do any more job hunting… I hate job hunting.

The next few weeks for me will just be studying, and finishing my AI project. It’s going to be pretty busy, but it’s nothing I haven’t been through before. =P

Last night I went to watch 300 with Peter, Geoff and Joyce. I ordered the tickets before my CS 343 midterm, which was from 7-9 PM — and the midterm was horribly long. The movie was at 10 PM, and we didn’t get there until 9:30 PM. Joyce had gone to the mall before with her roommates, so she was there first. What I should have done is gave her the tickets beforehand so she could have gone in the theater and reserved seats. We ended up having to sit in the very first row, except for Geoff who was able to find a normal seat.

So, aside from the neck cramps it was a great movie! The battle scene were very well done, and narration was excellent. Man, I wished they would just keep fighting because it was so cool! I loved the ending too… so epic! But I won’t give it away for those of you who hasn’t watched 300 yet. Although, if you knew enough about Greek history you would know how 300 turns out. =P

I’m sitting in front of my laptop trying to code, but my head hurts. I gave my Advil bottle to Peter because he hyper-extended his right shoulder. Drinking water hasn’t really helped, so maybe I should just make some coffee. It shouldn’t be caffeine withdrawal though, since I don’t really drink that much coffee.