The game Go

A couple of weeks earlier I found out that I can win the hardest setting of gnugo without too much trouble, so I've been playing go intermittently since then. I switched to a stronger AI program, handtalk, whose latest version is advertised to be as strong as amateur 1d. Well, I'm trying to advance forward right now. Then I'll go online and play with other players since a lot of the online servers are not friendly to newcomers whose strength are on the low side. Another reason is that I can adjust the strength of my opponent and won't feel too crushed if I lose.

However the bad thing is that it took too much time. Although I've been pretty cautious, it just happened that most of my time this evening was eaten by watching game online. Time just flew by. I'd better start working. Really. Okay, one more game and I'm off to work.

Lost + Found

I lost my wallet (again?) yesterday. I went to pearl to shop, and on my way back I found it gone. So I went back to the shop, hoping that I left it at the cashier. Then it'll be safe, I thought. But the store was closed. Just as I was preparing for the worst, I checked my email, and, guu, I received an email saying that my wallet is at the police office. What a pleasant surprise. There are so many good people around here.

Graduate school....

For some reason I received a three-year fellowship offer, and now I'm decided to go to Caltech. The high energy experiment group is in need of manpower, but due to monetary issues, they can only hire two to three more graduate students. And judge from the open house, there are at least 6 people wanting to join the group. But now I think I'm in a good position to join the group, since I will cost them much less money than other students.

Elementary Biology

I thought that I had learned most of the material needed for elementary biology in pieces already. I'm minoring in neuroscience and I'm taking the last class needed for completion of minor. And I took the same biology class until more than halfway before. So I've been pretty laid back about the course.

Last week, there was a homework due on Friday. And I found out on Wednesday that I couldn't understand most of the names. Since when do they have this many new words? Alarmed, I started to mend the hole. The problem set itself is not a problem; the real problem is that there is an exam this coming Monday. I have to do something or I won't graduate.

Luckily it seems that this course will be on opencourseware, and they are filming every lecture we have and put them on the web. I guess you can see what happened. I took a month's worth of lectures in a couple of days. And I finished the problems without too many problems. d: Lucky~.

I'm really surprised at how fast biology is going. Even at this fundamental level (this is one of the first classes a freshman has to take), there are many new things incorporated into lectures.

Safari

Somehow there is Safari installed on my windows XP computer. I have no idea how it got here in the first place. I didn't even know that there is a windows version. So I tried it out, and it's kind of strange. I'm not used to Mac-style key configuration, but there is no way to change that (or I couldn't find it). And there's no way of preventing address list caching. Not my thing, though it looks pretty.