Parentheticals

This weekend we went camping at the loop campground southwest of Grantsville. In order to get there we drove around those mountains that are west of the salt lake valley (on the north side), and then headed south. We got off of Mormon Trail road south of the Grantsville reservoir and traveled west up into the valley. The road changed from a paved road to a rocky dirt road after a while, but out Geo Prizm was able to make it, so it was not too rocky. The campground ended up costing $14 a night (for 2 cars and up to 8 people), which was more than we thought it was, but still pretty reasonable. We were situated right next to a river that ran down the canyon, and there were three camp sites in the immediate vicinity (though they were all vacant save our own.) It was a very beautiful place considering the fact that it was located in Utah (but I guess that in the canyons it can actually be beautiful). The campsite does not allow you to reserve a spot - you just have to drive up and h...

Over the weekend I finally finished assembling the motorized bike. My dad had the muffler bent, and I attached it without much trouble (Though I needed to bend it a little bit more with a improvised mallet to get it to fully clear the pedal arm). After attaching the muffler, I tried to figure out how to start the bike up, but I can't seem to disengage the clutch. In order to start the bike up you have to pedal down the street with the clutch disengaged, and once you are going fairly quickly you engage it and it should push start the engine, but with the engine connected to the drive train all the time, getting up to speed would be impossible. I will fiddle around with it more this upcoming week - There must be something that I missed. We now have a good crop of volunteer trees growing up in our back yard. Soon we will look at their positions and decide which ones to cull and which ones to save. It will be cool to have a shaded back yard. We also bought some butterfly b...

My genetic algorithm for dominion is having problems. On some sets of kingdom cards it works properly, but on others it just fails right out. I am wondering if there is the possibility of a paper scissor rock type situation, where the best guy in one generation is of a strategy that all of the other guys eventually learn how to overcome, and then they are dominant, and then other people develop strategies that overcome all of the 'second generation' winners, and then the third generation winners are weak against the original strategy. If this is the case, then I may need a way to increase genetic variance in the middle of the simulation. We accidentally taught Andrea that if she gets hurt she will be sent to her room. The way that this happened is as follows: When Andrea gets in  trouble for being disobedient or for throwing a tantrum we send her to her room and almost always say "This is so sad" while we pick her up. When Andrea gets hurt we often say "Th...

The Genetic algorithm is working well. It can come up with a buy strategy and test different players with that strategy to see which one is more fit to survive. after about 5 hours (100 generations into the simulation) it came up with the following strategy: Name Priority Min Max Province 9.46 2 9 Witch 6.44 2 5 Silver 6.55 6 ∞ Duchy 5.54 ∞ — Gold 4.99 4 8 Militia 4.97 1 4 Library 3.48 5 — Village 2.23 6 ∞ Copper 0.03 4 — Smithy -1.80 7 — Cellar -3.27 6 7 Laboratory -3.32 5 — Curse -4.58 8 — Chapel -5.35 0 5 Estate -5.92 5 — Moneylender -8.88 2 4 Once a player algorithm purchases up to the minimum desired value, the priority of the card is halved, so once the player has 2 witches he will start buying duchies. Also, if the player has more gold than is required to purchase something, the value of that thing is reduced (if you are 1 over, the value is halved, and if you are 2 over it is cut by 2/3 etc), so with 6 gold this player will buy golds and not sil...