News on the Front Page

I've found a way to display RSS feeds on my website. It uses CSS and JavaScript. So now you can see recent post titles from this blog as well as a couple from the United Nations when you visit dupyshon.com.

Big Changes

There are some big changes ahead! I've been very busy over break working on this website. Here are some of the things I've been doing:

• I bought the dupyshon.com domain name. I wanted to get kylan.com or kylanrobinson.com, but they were both taken. Dupyshon.com will be the new home of my website, and I'm already in the process of building the site. Don't worry, most of the stuff on my current site will make the transition over to this new site.
• I wrote a program for the CSOTW page. In C++, I wrote a program which updates the CSOTW list and outputs it in XML. Then I learned how to use XSL to format the XML information into a web page.
• My new website has an iframe sidebar menu. I think this system will work pretty well for updates and page layout.
  
• My blog has a new template, as you might have noticed. I adapted it from one by Douglas Bowman. To do so, I had to learn some CSS. I really like CSS because is it really powerful and reminiscent of object-oriented programming.

I'm most happy that this whole project has forced me to learn/use five different programming languages. It's been a good exercise to prepare for some of my future classes.

The Biggest Little City

I just got back from my roadtrip to Fernley/Reno. After finals, I rode with Rachael from Pullman to her home in Fernley, NV. It was a fun trip, even though it took over 12 hours to get there. We were going to go visit the Tahoe area, but it snowed pretty hard during the first night. That was okay, though, because we just stayed at her house and played pool and darts and sat in her hot tub. Her family's really nice. The next day we took a trip into Reno and saw the sights. There are a lot of casinos there, and we went ice skating at an outdoor rink downtown. You can check out some pictures on my website under the Albums section.

Website Update

I've just posted two new albums to my website. You can view them by selecting the Albums link.

Rtm86 - Home

Cool website, I especially like the Send A Dollar idea. This website won "Best Personal Website" for the 2005 Webby Awards.

Mr. Footbag

Wow, this is really a blast from the past. I was browsing the Internet today and remembered that I had a store at Cafepress.com. I had set up the account to make my own footbag apparel. Each piece of clothing featured a character of my own creation - Mr. Footbag. That was nearly five years ago! I never bought anything from that store, but when I looked at my account I discovered that two items have been purchased with the Mr. Footbag logo on them. I'm practically a famous artist! Somewhere out there, someone is wearing a Mr. Footbag shirt. And they have me to thank for it.

UN Radio News USA Podcast

Here's a page that I've made for my UN Radio News podcast. I found a UN website call UN Radio News USA which provides .mp3 clips to broadcasters. I signed up as a broadcaster so I could string the files together and create a podcast for my website. Takako Nagumo, who works at the UN in New York, called me today and we talked for a while about the website. I gave her a few pointers, and she agreed that a podcast made from these clips would be a good resource. Sadly, though, the UN News Service is already negotiating with another party who wants to produce the podcast. Once they sign an agreement, I might not have the right to continue making these podcasts anymore.

Good Night, and Good Luck

I just watched Good Night, and Good Luck tonight with my family. What a great movie! I really liked it. It made me sad since it seems that journalism today has lost Ed Murrow's vision and dedication. He and his team were able to stand up for their convictions despite and unbelievable amount of pressure. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that Edward R. Murrow graduated from Washington State College in 1930. Go Cougs!

The Results Are In

Steve, Weston, and I measured the circumferences of our heads today. Here are the numbers:

3rd Place: Weston with 58cm.
2nd Place: Steve with 59cm.
1st Place: Me with 60cm.

It was a close one!

Running Around Pullman

Ok, two cool things here. Today I went running for a whole 45 minutes. I ran so far I ran out of Pullman!

Cool Thing #1: I mapped my route using the Google Pedometer I wrote about a while back. I know, 5 miles in 45 minutes is only 9 minutes per mile, but that's okay. I haven't run in a while, okay?

Cool Thing #2: I used TinyURL to post this link. This is a really neat service, and it's free.

More Albums

Ok, so I've finally had a chance to post some pictures from this summer. So far I've posted albums from my Fourth of July and my job at the Edman Company sawmill.

Pictures Posted from the Grambling Game

I've finally posted an update to my photo albums: pictures from the trip to Seattle and the game against Grambling State. Check them out, they're pretty good. Most of the shots were taken by me, although my dad got the pictures of formations on the field.

My iPod

So I finally broke down and bought an iPod, the new iPod nano. It's the black one, and I've had it for about a week now. It's realy cool!

Nothing Is Sound

I just got the new Switchfoot CD in the mail today. Sounds pretty good. It's a little different than their previous stuff, but I think I'll come to like it pretty well. "Stars" is definitely the best song, and "Daisy" is interesting, as well.

Cougar Footbag Club

I've started the Cougar Footbag Club here at WSU this semester. Here's the club homepage. It's pretty bare right now, but I hope to fill it up with photos and videos of us in action.

Goose Poop and What to Do About it

"One Canada goose produces about 2 pounds of dung a day. That's nearly 600 pounds a week from a flock of just 40 birds."

That's a lot of guano.

"'It's difficult to putt a ball through 100 geese on the green,' said Larry Gillette, wildlife manager for the suburban Three Rivers Park District."

The Testing Grounds

I found a new host for free web space: Deluxe Host. They give you 100 Mb of storage to start, and even more later if you request it.

So what will I do with all of this space? I've started a new section of my website called "On the Horizon." Now everyone will be able to see what I'm experimenting with for the future. At the moment I have a page regarding Google's Map API and another with a forum I'm testing out. I also want to host a podcast on this space and start a homepage for my new band, The Sprinklers (more about them later).

The moral of this post - keep an eye on my website, because there's new content and an exciting future in store!

Google Maps API

I really want to do something cool with this - here are my ideas so far:

1) Map the incidents reported in the Daily Evergreen's Police Blotter, with links to the story.

2) Use the Polylines feature to map out forest fires. The problem here is that I need a source of lat/lng coordinates to work with... probably in an XML format.

Wikipedia

Man! I like the idea here. An open source encyclopedia. I wonder... is this an acceptable source to cite in a paper?

Church Softball

My church softball team just finished up its regular season schedule, posting an impressive 10-2 record. The tournament is next weekend!

Spread Firefox - Igniting the web

Firefox is my browser of choice these days. It's championed to be smaller, faster, safer, and more extendable than Internet Explorer.

PhoneSpelling.com

Well, it looks like this blog is becoming just a place where I post my favorite websites. But that's okay, I like it like that.

If you want to get ahold of me, just dial 531-BAND or 531-CAMEL. This site takes your phone number and finds words that the numbers can spell with the number pad. You might notice that 531-CAMEL has one too many digits. That's not a problem, though, because you'll still reach the correct number.

Google Maps Pedometer

Now this is a pretty cool web app. I like how Google Maps can be adapted to do different things. It'd be fun to write a program like this.

World Jump Day

Mike showed me this earlier this year. Hmm, don't think it'll work.

The Electronic Scrolling LED Belt Buckle

Wow, now this is pretty cool. Maybe a little too "flashy" for me, though.

All done!

The KHQ story was great! It was fun watching myself on TV. They made me look like such a nerd, which is what I was going for.

I finished my last final, so now the summer begins. I'll miss Pullman, but I'm also ready to leave.

KHQ News

Today I was interviewed by KHQ News (Channel 6, Spokane) about my RPS tournament. They said that the story should air at 5 or 6 o'clock this evening.

Chaos in Learning a Simple Two Person Game

Here's the link to that paper:

Chaos in Learning a Simple Two Person Game

Throwing for The Gold - Forbes.com

"'The mainstream view is that people ought to play the Nash Equilibrium,' says J. Doyne Farmer, McKinsey Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Named after the protagonist of A Beautiful Mind, the Nash Equilibrium is the best possible strategy for any game where both players are completely rational. Nash proved that idealized opponents will eventually play a single best strategy in any game-it's what he won the Nobel Prize for. Pit two non-emotional, omniscient 'people' against each other to play RPS, and they will eventually converge on this best strategy. In the case of Rock, Paper, Scissors, it's simple: Choose each throw randomly, which means playing each throw exactly a third of the time, but without any pattern. In essence, for RPS, the best strategy is no strategy.

Game theorists have long assumed that the lowly human-a less than perfectly rational animal, but one capable of learning-will also settle into this best strategy after a few rounds. But the fact is that if you want to beat someone who isn't perfectly rational, then the strategy that's best against pure rationality is no longer the best strategy. In a paper he co-authored, 'Chaos in Learning a Simple Two-Person Game,' Farmer proves that, rather than lock into some perfect theoretical play, two less than perfectly rational opponents will constantly change their strategy as they begin to detect their opponent's strategy. 'It's as if each player has a biased three-sided coin, but the bias of that coin is tracking around in some slowly changing way.' People don't play RPS randomly (in fact it would be difficult to do so if you wanted to-how would you generate a random decision?), so the random play that was perfect against random play is no longer perfect, Farmer argues."

This is the best discussion of RPS strategy that I've seen yet. I'm really interested in reading this guy's paper.

My Daily Evergreen article was the third hit on Google News for Rock Paper Scissors.

Arizona Daily Wildcat - UA student places 8th in rock, paper, scissors tournament - Tuesday, April 19, 2005

"One player from Washington State University would wear different costumes for every showing, Washut said.

'His face was just blank,' he said. 'He never cracked a smile, nothing.'"

This guy from Arizona was in the RPS tournament. He mentions me in his interview with his school newspaper!

High Stakes 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' in NY

See!? RPS skills are just as important as nunchuck, crossbow, and computer hacking skills.

Chi Alpha Picnic

Today we went to the Chi Alpha year-end picnic at Boyer Park on the Snake River. There were three baptisms, two of which were Matt and Jenny. We ate burgers and played ultimate frisbee. The weather was great!