While I have many interests from computers to canoing, to philosophy and reading, one thing that I love across the board is music. I’ve been keeping track of my musical tastes for a while using Last.fm, and I’m very fascinated by how my tastes have matured and shifted, and how music I couldn’t stand before I now embrace. In high school, I was very into pretty mainstream hard rock and metal, bands like Godsmack, Killswitch Engage and Lamb of God. While I still enjoy them from time to time, I have found myself growing tired of the genre as while each song is a very multidimensional sonic journey, the variations between individual songs and albums are slight and rather lacking. I was then shown Porcupine Tree by my friend Jon Rossi. I immediately feel in love with the difference between each song, and between the different albums, I could listen to album after album without growing weary of it. Using Last.fm to branch out from Porcupine Tree, I found Blackfield, Sigur Ros, rediscovered Alan Parsons Project, Marillion and Pink Floyd. Still, I was looking for something more off the wall and varying, looking into The Prize Fighter Inferno and moving my way into electronic music. Today however, I think I have hit the nail on the head, finding a whole genre of off-beat, strange yet oddly musical delights: avant-progressive rock, with bands like Kayo Dot and The Mars Volta. From there, Max pointed me at Sound Tribe Sector 9 and I found Tstewart, an electronic post-jazz musician. So I have many new artists to listen to (thanks Amazon MP3 download) and more places to search.

It should be said that even as my tastes have evolved, I still really enjoy hardcore trance ala Clubland X-Treme and other hardcore eurotrance.

Peace and chow,

Ranok

While walking back from COSI today, I came up with a sweet idea for my website, make it a Xterm window that can display information about me and my projects. I was debating about whether to make it an interactive shell that lets users navigate around my site with their keyboard (and bash knowledge) but figured it would be too difficult for non-*NIX users. I instead decided to make it more point and click. Using some JavaScript and a few hours of my Sunday, I put together my new design and I’m quite proud of it. Please check out the old version and the new version and let me know what you think!

Peace and chow,

Ranok

Yes, I remember the day well, when it came to light that John Edwards’ campaign spent $400 on a haircut, and the scandal that ensued. Well, it seems it’s time for the republicans to have a taste of their own medicine, after spending almost $150,000 dressing up and putting lipstick on their pit bull. The campaign finance reports that the RNC spent an amazing $4,716.49 on hair styling and make up for Palin during the month of September. I don’t care how much you pamper your pit bull, there is no way that only a coat of lipstick separates it from Palin.

Seems like they are trying too hard to make her pretty, and should spend more time making her better educated on the issues and how to run a country.

Source: Boston.com

Peace and Chow,

Ranok

Yesterday I went to the ACM programming contest, where our team placed 3rd. However, prior to the contest, subs from Subway were provided. Being absolutly starving, I figured I should eat one regardless of what fun ingredients it had. It turned out to be chock full of mayo and salami and I’m sure white flour. After eating, I immediatly could feel my body going into shock, what is this stuff!?! I felt pretty lethargic and sick after eating it, so I’m going to avoid getting in situations like that again (keeping some snacks in my car).

Peace and chow,

Ranok

One of the reasons I fell in love with Clarkson when I first came to the Clarkson School was because it offered a challenge that I couldn’t find at my high school. When I came into high school (after skipping 8th grade), it was great, I was surrounded by older classmates and there were 4 years of classes ahead of me that I hadn’t taken. However, even though starting out in the junior and senior classes as a freshman made my first two years a blast, once I reached my junior year, I had exhausted all the challenging classes, and could no longer talk with upperclassmen in a learning role. This is when I began looking for alternatives, and the Clarkson School seemed to be perfect, my first year was fantastic, even though there were some easy classes (CS142 and UNIV190), I knew they’d get more exciting after I finished the pre-reqs.

Last year was probably my best year ever, taking some of my favorite classes to date: automata theory, compilers, and formal methods. They were my favorites because for once in my life, I was in a position where I actually had to work for a good grade, and I was inspired to do so both because the professors were excellent, but also I could see the value in excelling in these classes.

Now fast forward to now, while I’m taking a few interesting classes: CS547, CS456 and CS659, I’m worried that I’ve reached that ceiling and I won’t be able to find a challenging class that inspires me to put in the effort to succeed. I’ve been taking some classes (ANTH330 & COMM310) this semester that remind me of my high school days which I find very worrisome, they require next to no effort to skate by and get an A, yet I am required to go through the formality of taking them.

So, now that everyone is getting sick on my whining, I’m going to list some options to resolve my problem, if people could comment giving their input or feedback, it’d make this decision quite a bit easier.

• Transfer to another school, which should provide more challenging classes and more peers to learn from.
• Stick it out at Clarkson, doing directed studies for the next 2 years or trying to find classes outside the realm of computer science
• Go on co-op to hopefully see how my knowledge is useful in the real world, and interact with some of the brightest minds in the industry

Just for people’s information, I have started working on my masters and should be done with it in May ‘10, which is when I was going to graduate with my B.S. To fufill this goal, I’ve been taking graduate classes along side of my undergraduate requirements. My tentitive thesis topic is: “Quorum Sensing and Cellular Automaton in Game Playing Systems”, which is going to look at game theory from a systems biology/alife standpoint to see if a more biological system can play better than a more algorithmical one.

Peace and chow,

Ranok