Sorry for the absence

Hi all, sorry for the long absence. It's been almost a full month since my last post.

Let's see, what is there to update you all on. The Heartless Siren and I are still getting married, so that's good. Wedding plans have been coming along. We have some test announcements coming from the printing company within the next few days, so we'll be getting those out really soon. Waldorf and Sauron put it together for us, it looks awesome.

My thesis is coming along. The data is getting close to finished, so I'll be working on the actual text of the thesis now. I am happy to say that the results seem to indicate that my work performs better than random guessing. Honestly, that's all I was hoping for. My work is in a very young field doing something that has yet to be done well using a very specific technique which has never before been applied to this field. So, getting better-than-random results is actually quite awesome. Now someone else can pick up my work and improve upon it.

We're still working on finding a place to live when we move in July. I need to call the complexes and see if they know their availability yet. I'd like to get that sorted out sooner rather than later so that we can arrange things with the moving company.

I've spent my nights this past week creating a registry website using the Django web framework built on Python. Let me just say Django/Python allows you to get an incredible amount of work done in very little time. The site looks amazing, is fully XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS 2.1 compliant, and only needs 2 little CSS hacks to make it work in Internet Explorer.

We were using Ourregistry.com myregistry.com, but they require guests to give them an email address in order to view your registry. And harvesting email addresses from my friends and family is not OK. So, now they don't get our pageviews at all. And, I can easily turn my system into a competing product (it's already 90% there). The moral of the story is: Don't annoy a nerd with silly things when you're a website, they just might make their own to spite you.

Sorry, but since including a link here would give away our identities so blatantly I'll forgo. I would guess that with some clever Googling a smart researcher could probably find my identity and the website. So, I leave that task to the reader.

Life Update

I realize that I have not been updating this blog very actively. Mainly it's because most of the things that I've been blogging about fit more aptly on my real-identity blog. So it has been getting a lot of updates.

But, I'll fill you in on some things that have been happening. I've been spending time working on the Board. The future of the Board lies in in the Django-Python web framework. If you happen to know it, or have any interest in learning Python/Django let me know, we can also use an extra coder.

As I will be finishing school in the coming months I've been looking for job opportunities. I've been off interviewing at places and sending out applications and resumes. I may be getting some offers in soon and I'll then have to decide what I want to do with the next stage of my life.

I also have the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Spring Research Conference coming up, and I need to finish revising the paper I had accepted into the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks. Hand in hand with all of that is collecting data for my Master's thesis work and trying to get something useful to happen with my program. Having realized that some of my data was bad, my hopes have risen for the results of the next batch of processing.

That's the bulk of what's been happening in my life without getting in to too many details.

Broadcasting from Trafalgar Square in London

Hello all. I'm just popping in from an internet cafe at Trafalgar Square in London, just outside the National Gallery, which I just finished walking through. I saw such favorites as 'Madonna of the Rocks' by da Vinci, the chair by Monet, as well as one of his Sunflowers, and works by Manet, Boticelli, and many others.

The weather is bright and sunny, perfect for walking about.

Paris was incredible. I don't even know how to say anything else about it right now, I loved it. I much prefer Paris to London. The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame, Crepes, it all is just so amazing. Overall, Paris was cleaner, with many more interesting things to see (in my opinion). I'll provide better accounts of both London and Paris when I return to the states and have the time to review my trip.

Hope all is well in Provo and such.

Swatted Down

After a long delay, and then missing their own extended deadline the people in charge of the Conference Workshop I submitted a paper finally got back to me. Sadly, my paper was not accepted. Oh well, less work for me since now I don't have to put together a presentation. Plus, the paper served as a good starting place for my thesis proposal, of which I have a draft written now. So it wasn't all bad.

In other news:

In one week I will be on a plane to London. Sweet. This week will be rather tedious as attempting to concentrate on anything is short lived.

Doing better

I'm mostly recovered from my bout with death. My throat is still slightly irritated, but at this point it's more of a minor inconvenience than anything else.

I'm not really feeling in the mood to write much. So this is all you'll get at the moment.