My First Investment Analysis Program

Several months ago I decided I should educate myself about investing (of which I knew nothing about at the time). After digging around online, reading several websites, books, etc. I stumbled across a book by Phil Town titled Rule #1, which provides a straightforward, seemingly simple introduction to value investing. The rest of this post outlines my experiences and lessons learned while writing program to automate the stock valuation techniques described in this book. (read more...)

ROS Installation Pains

I recently learned about ROS and decided I would like to learn more about it. Having found myself with a bit of free time during the holidays I thought I would try to install the latest version ("Electric Emys") and give it a go. Here's what happened... (read more...)

New Years Resolutions

Happy New Year, I hope 2012 is off to a great start for you!

I recently returned from a long trip and had some time to think about some projects I would like to work on this year. In no particular order, I would like to:

• Take some more free online classes from Stanford.
• Learn how to program robots using ROS.
• Learn Erlang.
• Find a way to put my new AI knowledge to some practical use.
• Generally spend more time using Linux.

(read more...)

AI Class Completed!

Last weekend I completed the advanced track of Stanford's first free online Intro to Artificial Intelligence class. Thank you very much to the professors Peter Norvig & Sebastian Thrun as well as their assistants. This class was awesome and I'm glad I was able to participate - even if it did eat up all of my Saturdays for two months (grin). (read more...)

AI Class: Probability & Bayes Networks

I recently finished the section on Probability, Bayes Theorem, and Bayes Networks. These concepts are used extensively in the field of AI to deal with uncertainty. I found this material interesting and very challenging - so much that I went through all of the lectures and examples several times until I understood it all (i.e. pretty much all weekend). The effort was worth it though - I got the answers to the section's homework 100% correct and I'm pretty happy about it! I hope I can keep up with the rest of the course - it's tough doing this while working full time. (read more...)

Project Updates

Just a quick update - I have moved on to lead a new project based on the Universal Monsters IP. This project should be a lot of fun - I really like monsters (especially the Universal Studios variety). (read more...)

Free Stanford AI Class

Interesting news: Stanford is offering a free Introduction to Artificial Intelligence class online this October. It will be taught by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig (who also wrote the textbook used to teach the class, Artificial Intelligence, a Modern Approach). I have registered for the class and intend to follow along as best I can given my work schedule. I am pretty excited about this course. (read more...)

Tips for Effective Team Work

I was recently asked to provide a list of best practices to help software engineers learn to work effectively as part of a team. In an effort to exchange knowledge with other engineers I thought I would draft the list as a blog post first. Please feel free to comment with your own suggestions, happy reading! (read more...)

Ruined is Online!

For the past nine months I have been working in San Francisco with Bigpoint Inc. on an online title by the name of Ruined. We finally launched it into open beta this week and I am extremely happy. It looks and sounds great and is performing very well. Many thanks to everyone who helped make this project possible. I hope everyone reading will play the game and support us as we continue to fix bugs and add new features.

See you online!

Project Updates

Hello! As you may have previously read, several months ago I moved from Hamburg Germany to San Francisco California. It's pretty exciting to be back in The States and to be working on a new project. I find myself now working as a project manager at Bigpoint Inc. on this game. Can't wait until this one goes live!