Matt's Cool and Interesting Blog of The New Millennium 

Finals Start Tomorrow

Wish me luck! Tomorrow is ECE, Friday is programming, and Tuesday is 3d-Calc. Then I'm home-free!

Cool Online Game: GunBound

GunBound is a great online game that resebles the turn-based, strategical-artillery (kind of) game Worms. As you win battles you get gold and can than use it to buy clothing and stuff to upgrade your avatar. Best of all it's free.

Core Warriors

For the most pure, most intense programming experience that you probably will ever face, check out Core Warrior. In this game you write a program in a pretend assembly-like language. The program (and your opponents) is expressed in a grid. As the programs execute, they attempt to overwrite each other's commands. It's an interesting concept, unfortunately the learning curve is a bit steep. Try it.

A tear for MP3.com

MP3.com has been "acquired" by CNET downloads. This move has stopped all the poor indpendent musicians who used this to showcase themselves to an audience appropriate to them. I don't really do music (make or listen to), but for those who actively used the site this is a big blow. Quite a shame.

Random Game that Looks Kind of Cool: XIII

XIII, the cel-shaded first person shooter looks kind of cool. I saw someone playing this cool game today. It had cool graphics, and a cool comic book style. If you're cool you should check it out. Or, not; whatever, it's cool.

Christmas is coming soon...

Christmas is coming soon, and that means only one thing, the conclusion to the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, the Return of the King. Lots of people aren't quite sure about it. They aren't certain that it will live up to the legacy of the other two films. Others are worried that it will cut out before the end of the novel. I'm certain that it will be fine, and this certainty leaves me only one question:

Who owns the film rights for The Hobbit?

It seems to me that this would be a cash cow for anyone who even attempts to put together a weak, terrible movie. Everyone who enjoyed the trilogy will see it anyway. Much like The Matrix Revolutions. Everyone saw it, no one really loved it. If no one wants to take this "challenge", I'll do it. I'm up for some easy money.

Well, until someone accepts, or I get my chance, I'll have to be content with the animated version. I liked that, especially the music. I know this song is from The Lord of The Rings, animated trilogy, but it doesn't get much better than "Where there's a whip, there's a way" and "Frodo of the nine fingers". Those were catchy tunes!

Anyone out there know Esperanto?

I'm attempting to learn this "international" language. If you don't know much about it's history read this page http://www.cursodeesperanto.com.br/en/index.html They have a good learning program that I downloaded, if you want to join me in learning the language. It seems quite easy. I can guess at the meaning of 90% of the vocabulary from my English and Latin knowledge. Try it out. Give me some motivation.

Happy Thanksgiving All

Hi everyone. Have safe travels and a Happy Thanksgiving! I'll be home for the next 5 days, so I probably won't be able to update.

Keep it real,
~Matt

Cultural Food Review: Italian Food

Tonight I ate at the restaraunt Joe Mommas (no relation to previous blog). This restaurant was awarded the Best Italian Food by Pitt News, The University of Pittsburgh Newspaper, for 2002. Here I will rate the food of the Italian culture, and through implication, the entire culture, itself.

First of all, this is going to be quite biased. I haven't had real food here for about 2 months. Plus I had not eaten since about 12:30 this afternoon, and I got dinner there around 11:30 at night. That tends to make any food taste pretty good.

I ordered lasagna. I consider myself a lasagna afficionado. I've sampled lasagna from everywhere from Epcot to Niagara Falls. Sure, that's only one side the North American Continent, but it's closer to Italy than anywhere else in the Western Hemisphere; and as we all know, food gets better the closer one approaches its origin. As a result, I've sampled the best version of Italian food without going to Europe. Anyway, the lasagna at Joe Mommas was pretty average. Sorry, but I've had better. However, since we ate there after eleven, the food was half price. Bonus points must be awarded for such an offer. The lasagna gets 8 bay leaves out of 10.

The ranking of Italy's culture deserves to be higher though. I know, I know, the whole idea behind this is that I judge and entire culture from one food. But Italy is a country based on food. How can one type of food determing the ranking for all of it? I mean think about it, Italy invented the the SoC of Caesar salad (see previous entry about its origin), pizza, and pasta in general. Plus, Latin was once spoken there. That's like a zajillion bonus points in itself. So I think Italy deserves 9 benes out of 10.

Mathematical Your Mama Jokes

This evening I was inspired by one of Sridhar's jokes to make the following "Your Mama" joke. It's really dorky. Following it are a bunch of other mathematical "Your Mama" jokes. Enjoy!

Your Mama is so fat that if you took her weight, and rounded it to the nearest natural number, there would be more natural numbers below it than above it.

If you took the double derivative test over the surface of Your Mama, the whole surface would be a maximum.

Your mama > the limit x->0 of (1+x)/x