Gaelic Storm

I have a new favorite Irish band. Gaelic Storm absolutely rocked The Birchmere last night with a blend of their own songs and high-energy renditions of classic Irish folk music.

I had listened to some of their CDs before and enjoyed them, but these guys have to be seen live to be appreciated. While introducing songs, singer Patrick Murphy delivers stand-up lines and short stories with a mischievous Irish wit. (Think of a singing Graham Norton.) The entire group obviously has lots of fun on stage and puts on an amazing show.

Also, Ellery, the lass pictured here with the fiddle, is my new girlfriend. Although that might come as a bit of a surprise to her...

Edit: Had to change the picture since Gaelic Storm redid their web site a week after I posted this.

San Diego

I've spent the week out in San Diego on business. I was supposed to fly back this morning but was asked to stay an extra day. Sadly, that meant I missed WMZQ night at Nick's. On the other hand, I got a chance to explore the San Diego harbor. It's a tough life.

1/4/2007: Changed link to point to PicassaWeb album.

Play Othello

Welcome to my new website. Eventually I'll put some of the pictures and other stuff from my old website back online. For now, the only thing of note is the Java version of my Othello game.

I originally wrote this as part of a graduate level Artificial Intelligence class at George Mason University in 1989. That version was written in C for the Atari ST. Around 1993 I ported it to DOS on an IBM PC and later to Windows 95 using Visual C++. I rewrote it in Java in 1998 as a way to learn the language. I updated the Java version to use Swing in 2000.

Unfortunately, the program does not play very well. It can beat most people just because most people also don't play Othello very well. But any competent Othello player can beat it, and there are far better Othello programs available.

If you would like an excellent Othello program, I highly recommend Gunnar Andersson's Zebra. In addition to being one of the best Othello programs in the world, it is free!