| 3AM and still coding... | 23/11/2002 |
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Well, its 3AM. I was working on the bot. I have reintegrated the old tech test inside the current version. As the framework progresses, the tech test code will get phased out and eventually disappear. You can grab the source or a binary from the bot page.
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| Not much new... | 20/11/2002 |
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Well, not much to say here today. I made a small mix which is in the DJ section. 日本語の学生ですか。
There was a snowstorm over the province of Québec Monday and Tuesday. 30 centimeters of snow fell on Québec city, 40 centimeters fell on Montréal and 50 centimeters fell over Gaspésie! To give you Americans an idea of how much that is, 30 centimeters is a foot.
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| 'Un pied de marde blanche' | 18/11/2002 |
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According to Le Soleil(a local newspaper which I usually don't read, but since Le Devoir was not delivered today and La Presse was already taken, I had no choice), 30 centimeters(about 1 foot for you Americans) of snow fell during the last two days. Let me explain today's title. "Un pied de" translates to "One foot of", however the expression "marde blanche" is a local(as local as all the province of Quebec can be) expression for snow, which roughly translates to "white shit". You probably wonder why Quebecers(sp?) hate snow so much. After all, snow is pretty and fun, no? Although I agree that snow is pretty and that winter sports are fun, snow is far from being pleasurable, contrary to the idyllic image that movies and TV send.
One should know that snow prevents people and vehicles from moving. Obviously this cannot be allowed to last for a long period, or else the economy would stop to a grinding halt. Therefore, impressive means are deployed to take this snow out of the roads and sidewalks. Every day it snows, an army of workers gets inside the city-funded vehicles to tackle a mission of snow removal. There are three kinds of vehicles used for removing snow from roads and sidewalks. The first kind are called grattes(snow plowers?). These are vehicles with a bulldozer like thingy which pushes snow to the side of the road. The next kind are called souffleuses(snow blowers?). These vehicles operate by taking in snow at the front and blowing it to the side. Sometimes, the snow is blowed into a truck(your generic kind of truck with a large open bin to store earth, dirt and rocks) to be taken to one of the city's dépotoirs à neige(snow dumps?). The last kind is only used to remove snow from sidewalks and are called déneigeuses. Basically they are small grattes on chains.
The most important reason why Quebecers hate snow is because while the city removes snow from the roads, they do not remove it from every entrance. This means that every house MUST remove snow using shovels each and every time it snows or stay stuck inside their houses until the end of winter. Also, if you own a car, you must clear a path sufficient to get it out.
This might seem ridiculous to people who do not live in countries where there is snow. However, it snows every few days and sometimes the rate of snow fall is so important that it requires snow to be removed several times a day! Look here for more information about our winters here in Quebec... I'll be sure to whine some more :P
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| Gaming communities and snow storms | 17/11/2002 |
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Some of you who read this page know that I have played DDR for some time now. It took me a while to realize that some of the previous gaming communities I have been with are much much better than the elitist bastards from DDR. Note that I am pretty sure that there are good people playing DDR, however an important part of the community are people who seem to think that you need to combo over 200 to have fun and that people with less skill should clear the machine for them, seeing as they are the center of the universe. Boo. Previously, I had played Quake III with the AGQx folks and Half-Life:Science and Industry. Both communities made playing games fun and enjoyable. Trash talk was inexistant, except for sarcastic comments such as 'h4x!', 'bot!' or '8===D~~~'. I (foolishly) thought that all gaming communities were the same, with decent people playing for fun. How wrong was I. I'd like to say kudos to both AGQx and the HL:SI community for making games enjoyable. Thank you guys, you know who you are.
There is also a snowstorm outside. Looks like we will have a white xmas.
PS: If there is anybody from the DDR community reading this, I would like to be proven wrong about the DDR community.
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| L'expérience | 16/11/2002 |
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I just got home from the movie theater(it's 1AM). I saw a movie(obviously). In French, it was called L'Expérience. I think the title in English would be something in the lines of "The Experiment". I am speechless. What a disturbing movie. Brilliantly done, flawless acting. Stunning. Disturbing. Very disturbing. I recommend this movie, however, if you are faint of heart, do not go see this movie. Wow. I do not know if I will be able to sleep tonight. Sorry for the poor English. I'm shocked. Shocked is an understatement.
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| Waypoint navigation optimizations | 14/11/2002 |
Further optimizations in my code have made it about two times faster! This is probably as low as it will go though. I just observed first hand the 90/10 rule... about 90% of the execution time is spent in 2 lines!
F:\Projects\botNav>waypoint si_mtg.HPB_wpt
Waypoint analysis system
(c)2002, Jean-Francois "MoonJihad" Im
Loading waypoints for map si_mtg...
187 waypoints(nodes) in file
Initializing adjacency and edge length matrices...done.
Read 187 waypoints(nodes)...
Read 782 edges...
Done loading!
Loading took 0 second(s)
Analyzing node graph...done
WARNING! 1 orphan node(s) found
No trap nodes. Good.
Analysis took 0 second(s)
Building reachability matrix
Step 1 of 187(19472 paths found)
Step 2 of 187(27023 paths found)
Step 3 of 187(27365 paths found)
Built reachability matrix in 3 iterations
27365 out of 34969 node pairs are reachable
Building took 0.07 second(s)
Building pathing block and shortest path matrixStep 0 of 187(85656 paths)
Step 1 of 187(141750 paths)
Step 2 of 187(144237 paths)
Step 3 of 187(144237 paths)
Built pathing cube in 3 iterations
Building took 0.451 second(s)
Shortest path from node 0 to node 5 is 677.553 units long
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| Waypoint navigation... Oh yeah! | 14/11/2002 |
It now has a theoretical maximum of O(n4) and runs a lot quicker! Look at the difference between both versions(177.5 seconds to 0.7!). Well, it's 1AM, so I am going to sleep. *yawn!* Oh yeah, it takes less RAM too now. This probably means that I can get continuous waypoint updating ingame, which means one thing : bots which take different paths based on game events(for example, if a bot gets killed repeteadly by a sniper at a certain waypoint, it will avoid it)! Now I am really going to sleep, before I *thud!* Zzzzzzz...
F:\Projects\botNav>waypoint si_mtg.HPB_wpt
Waypoint analysis system
(c)2002, Jean-Francois "MoonJihad" Im
Loading waypoints for map si_mtg...
187 waypoints(nodes) in file
Initializing adjacency and edge length matrices...done.
Read 187 waypoints(nodes)...
Read 782 edges...
Done loading!
Loading took 0.01 second(s)
Analyzing node graph...done
WARNING! 1 orphan node(s) found
No trap nodes. Good.
Analysis took 0 second(s)
Building reachability matrix
Step 1 of 187(19472 paths found)
Step 2 of 187(27023 paths found)
Step 3 of 187(27365 paths found)
Built reachability matrix in 3 iterations
27365 out of 34969 node pairs are reachable
Building took 0.14 second(s)
Building pathing block and shortest path matrixStep 0 of 187(85066 paths)
Step 1 of 187(140885 paths)
Step 2 of 187(143358 paths)
Step 3 of 187(143358 paths)
Built pathing cube in 3 iterations
Building took 0.701 second(s)
Shortest path from node 0 to node 5 is 677.573 units long
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| Waypoint navigation... ARGH! | 13/11/2002 |
I worked a little on the bot navigation today. What a pain. The pathing cube building algorithm executes in about O(n4) with a theoretical maximum of O(n7) and minimum of O(2n2). Yuck!
F:\Projects\botNav>bcc32 waypoint.cpp
Borland C++ 5.5.1 for Win32 Copyright (c) 1993, 2000 Borland
waypoint.cpp:
Turbo Incremental Link 5.00 Copyright (c) 1997, 2000 Borland
F:\Projects\botNav>waypoint si_overtime.HPB_wpt
Waypoint analysis system
(c)2002, Jean-Francois "MoonJihad" Im
Loading waypoints for map si_overtime...
51 waypoints(nodes) in file
Initializing adjacency and edge length matrices...done.
Read 51 waypoints(nodes)...
Read 136 edges...
Done loading!
Loading took 0.03 second(s)
Analyzing node graph...done
No orphan nodes. Good.
No trap nodes. Good.
Analysis took 0.02 second(s)
Building reachability matrix
Step 1 of 51(1301 paths found)
Step 2 of 51(2601 paths found)
Built reachability matrix in 2 iterations
2601 out of 2601 node pairs are reachable
Building took 0 second(s)
Building pathing cube and shortest path matrix
Step 50 of 2601(1165 mods)
Step 101 of 2601(2614 mods)
Step 152 of 2601(2772 mods)
Step 203 of 2601(2827 mods)
Step 254 of 2601(2831 mods)
Step 305 of 2601(2831 mods)
Built pathing cube in 5 iterations
Building took 0.661 second(s)
Shortest path from node 0 to node 5 is 255.65 units long
Path is : -0-5
F:\Projects\botNav>waypoint si_mtg.HPB_wpt
Waypoint analysis system
(c)2002, Jean-Francois "MoonJihad" Im
Loading waypoints for map si_mtg...
187 waypoints(nodes) in file
Initializing adjacency and edge length matrices...done.
Read 187 waypoints(nodes)...
Read 782 edges...
Done loading!
Loading took 0.03 second(s)
Analyzing node graph...done
WARNING! 1 orphan node(s) found
No trap nodes. Good.
Analysis took 0 second(s)
Building reachability matrix
Step 1 of 187(19472 paths found)
Step 2 of 187(27023 paths found)
Step 3 of 187(27365 paths found)
Built reachability matrix in 3 iterations
27365 out of 34969 node pairs are reachable
Building took 0.1 second(s)
Building pathing cube and shortest path matrix
Step 186 of 34969(18690 mods)
Step 373 of 34969(32817 mods)
Step 560 of 34969(36542 mods)
Step 747 of 34969(38328 mods)
Step 934 of 34969(38893 mods)
Step 1121 of 34969(39104 mods)
Step 1308 of 34969(39177 mods)
Step 1495 of 34969(39180 mods)
Step 1682 of 34969(39184 mods)
Step 1869 of 34969(39184 mods)
Built pathing cube in 9 iterations
Building took 177.565 second(s)
Shortest path from node 0 to node 5 is 677.573 units long
Path is : -0-4-5
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| The underground corridors of Laval University | 12/11/2002 |
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I passed through the underground corridors of Laval University again tonight. It is strange to read all kinds of graffiti(when looking up graffiti in the dictionary, I remarked that graffiti is plural and that its singular is graffito. Strange, eh? Actually not, seeing as the word is of Italian origin and that nouns that finish by -o in Italian are pluralized by changing -o to -i, eg. soprano becomes soprani, alto becomes alti. Also, Italians have Italianized the euro by pluralizing it as euri rather than euros. Anyway, I digress.) next to each other. While one might say "Marie-Claude ne suce pas, merde."(Marie-Claude does not give head, damn.), it could be beside one with nonsense such as "Pépin est une croquette"(Pépin is a croquette) or Sol-like(Sol is a comedian from Québec who criticizes society through well placed play on words and puns) commentary like "Interdit d'interdire"(It is forbidden to forbid). Unfortunately, most of the graffiti inside the corridors seem to bear some phallic, mammary or vulval connotation or reference. Apparently it is the primary concern of some of these students. However, there are some great ones, such as "Est-ce qu'il y a une sortie de feu ici?"(Is there a fire exit around here?) in the middle of a 100 meter long concrete corridor with no exits anywhere near. Somebody replied to that graffito by writing "Non, le feu est prisonnier des corridors pour l'éternité."(No, the fire is captive of the corridors forever.), a clever play on fire exit. Another good one is "Si tu te lèves avec une envie de travailler, assis toi, ça va passer."(If you ever wake up with an urge to work, sit, it will pass).
Since I am sitting next to Mr. Oxford dictionary, I feel an urge to write sesquipedalian words. For example, did you know that I am part of the legion of onychophagists which exists on this planet? However, I am neither an ecdysiast or a floccinaucinihilipilisiast.
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| The birth of a DJ | 11/11/2002 |
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Oh yes! I managed to DJ... for 83 minutes! I could've lasted longer, but I ran out of songs near 140BPM. I'm currently recording my mixing session to MP3. Ask me sometime if you want the MP3(obviously it is going to be quite big).
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| Learning kana | 10/11/2002 |
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Learning kana through rote memorization is really boring. Learning them through reading vocabulary lists is a little less boring, but it's still a far cry from being entertaining. So what is my solution? Code a game to learn them, obviously :) So here are my ideas for kanagame. Also, I made a SM file for No nagging anymore.
In case you have not noticed, I have changed the encoding for my website, which is now broadcasted in UTF-8, 24 hours a day. Wow! Basically this means that I can type things like 日本 easily.
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| A strange dream | 09/11/2002 |
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I barely slept last night. Something is bothering me. I kept hearing the songs from DDR tokimeki over and over again in my last dream, even though I haven't played that mix for over a month. I do not know if hearing strange japanese lyrics over and over again while grasping a few words here and there, such as あなた(anata, you), ありがとう([don/dom? probably domo] arigatoo?, thank you), ときめき(tokimeki, palpitation/throbbing) and ふたり(futari, two persons/couple) makes that dream a nightmare. How strange. So what is the first thing I do when I wake up? I fire up DWI and go play the entire mix(except for hero(both the japanese and english version)).
Looks like this weekend will consist of english homework #6, english homework #7 and english essay. Oh joy!(can you feel the sarcasm?) This will probably leave me some time to go at the arcade, study, read Les fleurs du mal(I read it on my own, not for school), practice my DJing skills(I almost had 50 minutes of smooth and seamless beat, but no, I had to screw up at about 48 minutes) and doodle.
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| Bot names... | 07/11/2002 |
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If you look at my desktop, you can see that there are many bots with names other than ONO, (1)ONO, (2)ONO and so on. However, I seem to be unable to come with a list of decent names(they're all crummy names IMHO) to put in *crap!* my bowl of soup fell on the floor *cleans up mess* I need a list of random names for the bot, basically.
Lesson of the day : Never put things on a slanted surface, especially calculus books.
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| Snow, homework and back news. | 06/11/2002 |
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It snows outside. The landscape is white now. I do not own a digital camera, so I cannot post pictures here. Sorry. Also, the
snow falling makes the visible distance much shorter(like fog), so I cannot see the Pepsi warehouse(distribution center?)
anymore.
I'm writing this while eating breakfast, since for today and tomorrow I have to do lots of homework, so it will be
cram time.
Since this page started to get quite long, I have archived back issues of the logs/news on another page. Also, I'd like to
say a warm and fuzzy hello to visitors for reading this! Feel free to email me(suscribing me to spam lists does not count as
emailing me). I also noticed that my site is the first one when I searched for 'moonjihad' yesterday on google. Finally!
Since some people keep on asking me when the bot will be ready, I might have a half-decent version out in February. Don't
expect anything before, since there are about 5 weeks left in the semester and they will all be dedicated to school.
Well, it seems my breakfast Kraft Dinner(I think they call it macaroni and cheese in the US, or whatever they call that
low quality pasta smothered in orange goo which is supposed to contain cheese) is finished. Bleh! I don't like Kraft Dinner!
But I do like spam(the kind you can eat with a fork). I'll be going to work on my homework. Later!
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| It's getting cold... | 03/11/2002 |
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Winter is here. There are both snow and ice on the ground(not much, but still). Last few days have been sub-zero degrees
Celcius. I hope this winter won't be too cold here in Quebec!
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| Fight club | 28/10/2002 |
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Watched Fight club on TV yesterday. I had forgotten how much of a great movie it was... even if the french translation was
so-so.
Also, Master of Orion III is coming out soon. I can't wait to play!
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| Bot progress | 26/10/2002 |
It spawns! ( ) I'll finish milestone 1 then upload the source and binary up here. There will also be doxygen-generated docs.
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| The after-LAN | 21/10/2002 |
The LAN finished yesterday. It was fun, but after 16 hours or so it turned into a copy party. In retrospect, here is what
I should remember to do next LAN party :
- Clean up hard drive BEFORE the LAN
- Bring more food(and not forget the popcorn)
- Bring more CD-Rs
- Bring my DDR pad
- Remember to bring my %@#$!*( power supply cable(fortunately there were some spare ones)
- Buy a burner, a bigger hard drive, a better vid card, an optical mouse and a box of 100 CD-Rs
- Bring the laptop and set it up as a party server(DHCP, HTTP and IRC)
- Fill the room with beat(ie. DJ) at the beginning of the LAN when everybody is setting up
- Get there early to get the good chairs
I have not had any time to work on my projects, sorry.
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| Snow? | 19/10/2002 |
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It snows outside. The landscape is slowly turning to white. LAN party in a few hours! Not much else new.
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| The phone call | 18/10/2002 |
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Got a phone call today. It was the cegep's library. "On a reçu ton livre de japonais, tu peux venir le prendre
lundi."(We have received your japanese book, you can pick it up Monday.) WOOHOO!
I won't have much time to work on my projects during the weekend, since there's a LAN party and I have tons of homework
to do. Oh well.
I am also looking for an internship(preferrably in Quebec city, since I can't afford paying rent somewhere
else, unless the internship pays for it), so if you know a nice computer science related place where I could get in,
please tell me.
I also started freestyling in DDR. I know most of 17(san?) basic by heart. Now I just have to
find some cool moves, since 7 handslaps is far too repetitive.
Hm, I just noticed this started to look like a weblog. Boo. Guess I'll just stop writing now.
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| Updates! | 17/10/2002 |
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Updated information on the MoonEngine and updated the page for the bot project. Also added a PDF of the book I'm writing on
the bot page.
Updated the script that builds the page to automatically write the update date. Now updates should be as simple as editing
the source files, starting the batch job and uploading everything.
Also updated the CSS file, so the page looks about the same in Mozilla and IE.
On other notes, I'm going to a LAN party this weekend. Woohoo!
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| New design! | 14/10/2002 |
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The design is new and should be even easier for me to maintain(check the meta section as to why).
It looks fairly similar to the old one though.
Now the only thing left for me is to find a good webhost(ie. not geocities).
I removed most of the files here, since nobody used them. Also, the old drawings are gone(they sucked).
This week is our reading week(ie. no school). Woohoo! I will probably go to Granby Tuesday for two or three days.
Of course, I'll probably play some DDR there. Also, I will probably get my paycheck from the cegep(they owe me 650$).
Email me with your comments and suggestions!
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Last update : 9/12/2002
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