Category Archives: Random Thoughts

Here’s a conversation I seem to be having over and over these days: Someone else: Computers are getting more and more cores. So, we need to thread our software to take advantage of them. Me: But threads (the Dijkstra style … Continue reading →

“A PhD is a big, multi-year project. You really learn self-reliance, how to budget your time, and how to motivate yourself,” says Martin Martin, a senior software engineer with a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University. From Should you … Continue reading →

    Ian Simon Martin-Swader joined our family July 12, 2007 at 1:17 pm 6 pounds 0 ounces 18 inches long Mother doing well Father low on sleep – Martin, Joy, Amber, Miles and Ian #flickr_badge_source_txt {padding:0; font: 11px Arial, … Continue reading →

Does anyone have a good distribution for characterizing the number of ratings per customer? Graphing the histogram log-log (where the vertical axis is density, not count) it’s clearly not the straight line implied by a power law: The red line … Continue reading →

I’ve been giving a talk on game design which has been surprisingly well received. Several people have asked me for a copy of my PowerPoint presentation. The problem was, my PowerPoint file had lots of images, but little text. I … Continue reading →

I’m kicking off a Capture The Flag bot contest at Grey Thumb tomorrow. You can find more details at the breve Capture The Flag page. I’ll post my PowerPoint slides as soon as their done. Update: The slides and simple … Continue reading →

I’ve added two new projects to the Projects page. The first is something my son Miles likes, it plays sounds whenever a key is hit. The second is some notes on creating AI for Sodarace. At the moment, it’s just … Continue reading →