geeking out, attempting to philosophize, degenerating to KOMPRESSOR

On the cs4600 prj3, if you're cool, then your genetic algorithms don't do any worse than a nonrandomized hill-climbing... keep track of the best thing you've seen, just in case you get a weird mutation that doesn't end up being helpful. And you do something analogous with simulated annealing.

And then you realize that (as far as we can tell, for the problem sets we've been looking at) simulated annealing kicks the snot out of genetic algorithms, but for solving N Queens, then the C program you wrote a few weeks ago that does minimum-conflicts and treats it like a Constraint Satisfaction Problem instead of a randomized graph search kicks the snot out of your simulated annealing in LISP.

But leading up to all of this, we went out in search of some groceries, and some food at The Majestic, and a pipe for Corey, for Halloween. And it was good. They had a pipe at Walgreens, apparently. So now he gets to be Hugh Hefner. And they had black bean burgers both at Publix and at the Majestic. And I'm supposed to come up with the MIMIC algorithm (this specialized graph-searchy thing that Dr. Isbell invented and wants us to implement) and two more example problem domains before that next midnight that's happening, and there's an OS test tomorrow, but somehow, that's not all that threatening right now.

Things just aren't threatening, which is good. Because I'm having fun :) I was thinking about this earlier, and I'll probably articulate it more deeply later ... but life is just a lot more fun when you're happening to things instead of having things happen to you. If you can force life's hand, then you're doing well -- and being proactive is the first step towards being in control. Or if you're just pleasantly disassociated, then that doesn't matter at all. But when things can make you hurt, then you're not winning... there's a bit in 1984 about that... victory is continual suffering for the populace, ever more subtle, if I recall correctly.

"Capital power... for fish rising up. Fish rising up... to DESTROY MASS MEDIA!"

Dude, I should sleep. Or think of another good test problem domain.

I just need a pipe organ and an abandoned castle...

So I'm working on the 4600 project in the Commons. And a guy behind me turns out to have a voice that sounds exactly like Richard falun's, but he continues not being Richard. I'd guess he's about 35 years older than our Mr. Bailey.

And genetic algorithms work pretty well for a stupid toy problem where you're counting the number of primes in a vector. *maniacal laughter* Which is going to be helpful on that extra credit project. *more maniacal laughter*

Any CS project worth its salt fills up all available time between when you start in on it and when it's due.