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Past News items:Yes (2007-03-24)“Only with the complicity of Congress have we become a nation of pre-emptive war, secret military tribunals, torture, rejection of habeas corpus, warrantless searches, undue government secrecy, extraordinary renditions, and uncontrollable spying on the American people. The greatest danger we face is ourselves: what we are doing in the name of providing security for a people made fearful by distortions of facts. Fighting over there has nothing to do with preserving freedoms here at home. More likely the opposite is true.” — United States Representative Ron Paul, 14th District of Texas The full speech: http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2007/cr032007.htm More Shame (2007-03-05)When did the United States of America stop caring about Justice?
Avoid Sacrificing Yourself for the Next Phase of Life (2006-3-7)If you always "Keep Your Options Open" then you'll have a normal life and probably be miserable. I want to have the fullest life possible. I will try to rank my decisions on the scale: "Keeping One's Options Open" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "Doing what I want right now" Neurogenesis & Stress (2006-3-4)The Reinvention of the Self traces the discovery of neurogenesis. About 10 years ago, scientists believed that the adult brain does not produce neurons. But recent research shows that healthy brains constantly produce more brain cells. Experiments indicate that stress can stop this neuron production. Other evidence suggests that clinical depression is caused by a lack of brain cell production. There is also the implication that learning and playing stimulates neuron growth and counteracts the negative effects of stress and depression. Maybe this is why I have to learn so much every day to keep from feeling depressed? I read for hours every evening. For example, tonight I read from a textbook for about 3 hours. Then I read online for about 4 hours. And now it is 3:43 A.M. Often times I feel that the stress of exams is bad for my brain. Is there any educational basis for the practice of administering large exams? Could not exams be replaced by small weekly tests? Since beginning university, five years ago, my longest period of holidays was 2 months. I have taken classes every summer session. I have endured the excruciating stress of final exams sixteen times. Is it worth it? I used to have new ideas every day. In the last 2 years it seems that I have new ideas only during holidays from school. It takes several weeks after finals before I start to feel excited about things again. Maybe that is the time required for my brain to recover from the stress and start producing new neurons? This is my last semester and I'm taking too many classes. It's the middle of midterm exams, which are almost as bad as final exams. It feels like final exams. I hate it. I can't wait to graduate and get out of the cycles of exam stress. I want to have ideas again. I want to be excited about life again. :( Added Course Work (2006-2-25)I've created a page to showcase my class projects. Ashamed (2006-2-21)I want to be proud of my country. Why does the government make it so hard? >:-(
Dreams (2006-2-13)"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." -- Thomas E. Lawrence a.k.a. Lawrence of Arabia I dream with my eyes open. Do you? I can't wait to graduate and stop wasting time on meaningless busywork. I feel ready to act on my dreams. Only 6 more months! Living Without Television (2006-2-4)How is your life influenced by television? I gave up television gradually since beginning university. Now it is annoying to be with friends or family and have to compete with the television. I enjoy watching a movie occasionally. But when you're with friends, is eating a meal while watching a movie any different from eating by yourself and watching? Talking is the most important part of hanging out with friends. Don't let the TV take that away. A man writes about the benefits to his family of Living Without Television Aaron Matthew Leonhard (2006-1-17)I'm an uncle a third time! Aaron Matthew Leonhard was born today. He is the third child of my brother, Ken, and his wife, Christy. Thomas Jefferson and Using Your Computer (2005-12-16)"… mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." —Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence of the United States of America America is great because of the courage to find better ways of doing things. Our government was a radically new way of organizing a nation in the 1700s. The quality of life we have today is a result of "abolishing the forms to which we were accustomed" and finding new and better ways. This concept also applies to computer use. You can find new and better ways to use your computer and reap the rewards of a better work life: increased productivity and reduced stress. Privileged (2005-12-13)I was homeschooled throughout my childhood. Until entering university, the only time I spent in a classroom was a single semester of highschool chemistry. I am grateful to my parents for sparing me the Six Lessons of School. Back in Chicago (2005-11-26)I'm back in Chicago, finishing my degree at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Fall semester is nearly over, with only one more week of classes. It's hard to find motivation to work on Java and C++ projects for class when I have Erlang Projects that are so interesting. Yes, I'm in Japan! (27 Jan 2005)I've been in Japan for nearly four months! My Japanese speaking ability has increased dramatically. For a side job, I created the English version of a restaurant's website. Natoritei is a high class restaurant located near the famous Naritasan temple. This was my first experience translating. The Japanese pages are written very artistically and were rather difficult to understand. Hopefully it turned out alright and they got their money's worth. Study Abroad in Japan (26 Aug 2004)I have been accepted to the J-PAC exchange student program with Chiba University in Japan. I will spend the 2004-2005 school year studying there. I leave on 30 Sep 2004! Summer Research (26 Aug 2004)This summer I had the opportunity to be an undergraduate research assistant to Dr. A. Prasad Sistla. I worked in the Concurrent Software Systems Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I learned about formal methods and researched the applicability of the Prototype Verification System to Dr. Sistla's next project. Summer Session Ends (26 Aug 2004)The summer session at UIC ended nearly a month ago. I took one class, Discrete Mathematics and Data Structures II (CS 202). The instructor was Professor Robert Sloan. He did a really great job of making the class interesting and keeping us all awake on those warm summer afternoons when the lecture hall airconditioning was inexplicably turned off. The TA, Bart Siecka, graded my programs very fairly and offered useful feedback. I learned a lot in the class. Spring Semester Ends (8 May 2004)The spring semester at UIC has finished. Now I have three weeks before the summer session begins. Michael changes his major (17 Jan 2004 2:06pm)With the start of the Spring semester, I have changed my major from Electrical Engineering to Computer Science. I am now taking classes with such interesting topics as: logic, linear maps, and digital systems. Fortune Cookie Message (Sep 09, 03 7:03pm)You stand in your own light. Make it shine. Fall 2003 Semester Begins (Sep 05, 03 10:13am)The UIC Fall semester began about 2 weeks ago. I am living 20 miles away from the school, in the suburbs. The commute is 1.5 hours by train, bus, and feet. At least on the train I can study. This semester I am taking Modern Physics, Circuit Analysis, Intermediate Japanese, Engineering Orientation, and Introduction to Computer Programming. This comprises 14 credit hours. The Physics and Circuit Analysis classes appear to be the only challenging courses for me this semester. Evolution of Electronic Lifeforms (Sep 05, 03 10:18am)My latest programming project is an attempt to evolve electronic lifeforms. The program is titled BlueDogs and is written in C++. It simulates a field with plants that grow and animals that move around, eat the plants, and reproduce. Each animal has a unique sequence of data, called a genotype. The genotype acts as a computer program for the animal, determining its behavior (or lack thereof). The first version of the program, written in C, was more of a genetic algorithm implementation. The animals did not reproduce, but there was always a constant number of them in the simulation. When an animal died, a new one was created with the genes of a long-lived predecessor. Slight variations of the genotype (mutations) were introduced in each child. This model was successful in evolving animals that ate a lot and stayed out of each other's way. Unfortunately the animals would often collide with the walls of the simulation and remain there, motionless. Thus the suitability of the genotypes reached a plateau. The plataue of the genetic-algorithm implementation led me to pursue another model for the reproduction of the creatures. I chose to implement a sexual model, with male and female creatures. At the same time, I began studying object oriented programming in my Introduction to Computer Programming class. I decided to convert my C program to a fully object oriented C++ program. BlueDogs is written in C++. It uses SDL and SDL_image. My development environment is Linux, using gcc. If you would like a copy of my source code, please email me. If I acheive success with this project, I will post a downloadable program on my website. Admitted To University! (Jul 29, 03 5:45pm)I have been admitted into the Electrical Engineering undergraduate program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I will begin as a Junior there in late August. I'm excited about taking classes in Modern Physics, Circuit Analysis, Electromagnetism, and Computer Programming. Good Chinese Restaurant Victim of Click-Thief (Jul 13, 03 12:44pm)I recently used Google to look up the phone number of a local Chinese restaurant. I typed "Emperor's Kitchen IL" into the search field and then clicked on the first result, "The Emperor's Kitchen". Unfortunately the page had a big pornographic advertisement above the restaurant's home page. The restaurant is a victim of click-thieves. Click-thieves make a website that has the same title as their victim. They put a big advertisement at the top and then include a frame which points to the legitimate website. The result is that the visitor thinks he is going to the website, but instead is presented with the advertisement. Click-Theft is made possible by the search engines. The thieves exploit the search engines to get their link at the top of the list. I will help the real Emperor's Kitchen website get to the top of the list by posting this link: Eat at The Emperor's Kitchen [site defunct as of Feb 2006]. I like their Szechwan chicken fried rice. The large serving is $6.70 and is big enough for two meals (or a meal for two). PyGame Chat Client (Jul 09, 03 8:48am)This summer I've had a bit of time for programming. My latest project is a chat client written in Python. The program's interface uses a GUI widget library that uses PyGame. I suppose I should think of a better name than "Client", so if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. Happy New Year! (Jan 13, 03 17:12pm)This year my Japanese language professor is taking a group of students to Japan for a summer study abroad program. I've studied Japanese for about a year and a half. I need to be immersed in it for a couple of months so I can improve my speech and comprehension level. Fight Spam (Sep 18, 02 11:42am)This link goes to a page that contains over 10,000 randomly generated email addresses. The idea is that email address harvesters will collect all the incorrect addresses and add them to their databases. Then spammers will have to spend more money and time sending to the fake addresses. Hopefully the added bogus addresses will generate more traffic and cause their ISP to take notice and cancel the spammer's Internet account. Here is another page [defunct as of Feb 2006]with fake randomly generated email addresses. Every spammer deserves to be flogged. PyAnim (Sep 4, 02 2:35am)Pyanim is a python module that provides the functionality of SDL_anim to python programs. It requires PyGame. SDL_anim (Sep 4, 02 2:33am)SDL_anim is a simple library to load and display animations. It requires SDL. Sebae (Nov 10, 01 3:41pm)Sebae is my current project. Sebae Files Shaboozy v0.1 (May 6, 01 8:01pm)Shaboozy will be a python applet viewer. It requires Python 2.0, SDL 1.2, and PyGame 1.0. GUI is about 50% done. Shaboozy Files [removed Nov 2005] Filer Protocol v1 Draft 1 (May 3, 01 12:02am)Filer protocol is the first useful protocol to be built on Market4. You can read the Filer v1 Draft 1. The reference implemenation may be found in the filer directory. [removed Nov 2005] Market v4 (Apr 29, 01 1:28am)Market3 had a major flaw. This flaw is now fixed in Market4. The reference implementation is also greatly improved. See market4.txt for details. Here is a link to the Market files. [removed Nov 2005] Market v3 (Apr 28, 01 7:31 pm)The Market protocol is designed to be a base specification on which to build useful protocols. The protocol is asyncronous and employs text messages with optional binary payloads. Complex negotiations with multiple levels of conditions may be performed. market3.tar.gz is 6k. [removed Nov 2005] Leiopel (March 4, 99 9:06 pm)Leiopel is a Linux console client for ChatPad. It is now stable and very functional. It lacks an interface right now. I am learning how to make an interface similar to ircII. Leiopel.tar.gz is 29k. [removed Nov 2005] PadClient (March 4, 99 8:11 pm)PadClient is a Win32 client for ChatPad. It has a simple but very functional user interface. New version works with new ChatPad build 226. PadClient runs nicely under Wine. PadClient.zip is 35k. [removed Nov 2005] ChatPad (March 4, 99 3:24 pm)ChatPad is an Internet chat server for Linux. It uses a flexible scripting language which allows new commands to be dynamically loaded from dll's. The latest build is 225. It is very stable. ChatPad.tar.gz is 54k. [removed Nov 2005] bipx (Feb 25, 99 4:06 pm)bipx is an ipx bridge daemon for Linux. You may download bipx.tar.gz, it is 46k. dosplip.zip has all the files needed to connect a DOS or Windows computer with a parallel cable. You may connect to Linux and DOS computers. dosplip.zip is 111k. [removed Nov 2005] ChatPad (Feb 20, 99 2:59 am)Chat server for Linux is coming along nicely. I originally made it for Win32 but it was too difficult so I converted it to Linux. ChatPad.tar.gz is 36k. There is a Windows client, PadClient. You may telnet into PadProxy, which does line buffering nicely. I might have the server running now. You can telnet to tamale.net 12347. [ancient code removed Nov 2005] RunThis (Jan 29, 99 12:19pm)Today I finished a program called RunThis. It is a Win32 frontend for command line programs. RunThis can associate itself with .run files. I made it for someone who runs a CCMail server which uses command line utilities. For this project I learned how to parse text files, dynamically create windows, and write to the registry to create file types and associations. RunThis.zip is 36k and has the exe [removed Nov 2005] New NT Workstation (Jan 1, 99 10:57pm)Built a 486 DX2 50Mhz. Installing NT4 Workstation on it. MS Network Client for DOS [defunct as of Feb 2006] is very nice. Booted DOS6.22 and started NT4 installation from the shared cdrom drive of my PII. New website layout (Jan 1, 99 10:50pm)Happy new year! Fun party last night at our neighbor's house. I am finally updating this website.
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