Personal Stuff
It all started on a dark and stormy night. Well, no, not really. I was
born in Winnipeg, of (partly) Sturdy
Icelandic Stock. I did my undergraduate work at the University of
Manitoba, and got involved in artificial intelligence just before I
graduated. I ended up going to grad school to further my interest in it
and started teaching when I was still a graduate student. Eventually
this led to a Ph.D. and the rest is pretty much history.
If you're currently on this route somewhere and want any advice, go ahead
and ask away. There's also lots of
professional information available under my research section
and on our lab website if
you're interested in my AI work.
Personally, I've always tried to buck the stereotype in computer scientists and try to stay a well rounded person. Sports are interesting from more than just a robotic perspective, and I work out pretty much every day. I'm also interested in Art, Science, Philosophy, Pop Culture, and Human Nature (and I guess that doesn't leave out much). I like to tinker and bang things together, and try to have as self-sufficient a skill set as I can. I have a lot to be thankful for, but just as with most people, that doesn't stop me whining on occasion. But it should.
If for some reason you want to get in touch with me, e-mail is always good. If you want secure email, my PGP public key is here. If on the other hand you actually want a facial view, you can generally find me in my office in room E2-476 in the Engineering and Information Technology Complex. If I'm not in, you might want to try my Lab (504 of the same building), or just leave me a voicemail message at 204 474 8839.
Not enough? Then a few other personal tidbits:
Mundane Random Likes:
- Good Coffee. I am still a Starbucks guy (though Caribou is decent too, which is probably why they bought them up). These days this makes me appear elitist, but I'm sorry, I'm not going to Tim Hortons-of-the-missing-apostrophe and drinking the bitterest coffee on the planet just to appear down-to-earth
- Good Chocolate (needs no further explanation)
- European Crime TV: Romanzo Criminale, Forbrydelsen, Ørnen, Bron/Broen. I love my subtitles.
- The Grand Canyon (Some of my own stuff related to this is here)
- Kolner Dom
- Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche
- jazzradio.net
- Hearts of Space
- Rome
- Amsterdam
- T. D. Mischke
- Old Computer Junk (whoops, I mean Computational Antiques)
- Wheat Fields with Reaper at Sunrise (I've never seen better than a washed out version online, but it's amazing in person)
- Gratuitous Use of Capitalization
- Highway Driving
- Express Checkout Lines
- Mayan Architecture
- 1940-1965 films
- The Food Network used to belong solidly on this list, until like every other cable channel in the world, they ceased concentrating on their core competency and bled over into decorating, restaurant makovers, weddings, and the crap they show today (no link for you!)
Mundane Random Dislikes:
- Spammers
- HTML email (just give me the information, thanks, if I want something formatted I'll go to your webpage)
- People who don't use turn signals
- People who don't vote, but love complaining about the government
- Able-bodied people who take elevators one floor (one floor down is truly evil)
- Stickers on fruit - now that there's so many self-checkouts, I see the advantage, but getting a mouthful of paper is still disgusting
- People who cruise a parking lot for 20 minutes looking for a close space (yes, I'm the guy at the back)
- People who yap during movies
- People who go through express checkout lines in groups of N, with N * the maximum number of items in one basket. Just because you have 8 friends with you doesn't mean it's an 96 items or less line, folks. And by this point you can probably see a common thread through many of these, which is people who don't give a whack about anybody besides themselves
- Humourectomy survivors
