The best Todd Hester fan site!!
About me:
I have a degree in computer engineering from Northeastern University in Boston. I am currently attending graduate school at the University of Texas in Austin to study artificial intelligence. Intelligence and learning fascinate me and I am researching reinforcement learning and robotics, specifically looking to make reinforcement learning more open-ended and applying it to make curious robots. For more info on my research interests, check out this page. I was born in Chicago and grew up in Wrentham, Massachusetts. My sister Holly is also starting her PhD this year at Columbia University in New York City studying chemical engineering.
I have been going to New England Patriots games since I was 11 and I am a huge fan. I also enjoy playing ultimate frisbee and bowling. My favorite band is Talking Heads and I think "Stop Making Sense" has to be the best concert movie ever. Although Talking Heads no longer exists, David Byrne still puts on a great show. My other favorite artists are Primus, Herbie Hancock, and Gomez. I'm also a big fan of Seinfeld, I have a page on here ranking all the episodes and listing my favorites.
This website:
This is a website I first designed in college in 2000. There is a lot of old content on here such as random photos, stories, quotes, and projects. The parts that get frequently updated now are the rantings and Patriots blogs and the photo gallery. My rantings has any random thoughts of mine on various topics and the Patriots blog has my thoughts on the New England Patriots. I also have worked on lots of various projects of my own including an online chatbot, designing my own robot from scratch, writing a program to play a 3D version of the classic game Connect Four, writing a program to predict the scores of NFL football games, and trying to write a program to play poker. The sections below highlight some of the better parts of the website. Enjoy!!
RantingsOn this site, I have always maintained pages containing my rantings. These include random thoughts and musings of mine on topics including technology, the meaning of life, politics, and the future. I currently have a blog where I post my rantings and I have transferred my old rantings from 2001-2004 to the blog as well. Here is the link to the blog: Here is the latest entry from my rantings blog: As a grad student studying artificial intelligence, it might be useful to know what exactly intelligence is. No one can really define it. We know that we have it. We know that tables and chairs do not. Everything in between is up for grabs. I’m going to discuss what some historical views on intelligence are and what I think it might be. |
PatriotsI am a huge fan of the New England Patriots. I went to every home game but one from 1993-2005. I currently keep a blog of my thoughts and opinions on the Patriots. In addition to that, there are pictures from when I went to the Patriots first Super Bowl victory over the Rams in February 2002 and other games. I also have scores from my NFL Predictor software. Here are the links: Here is the latest entry from my Patriots blog: The NFL draft was two weeks ago and the Patriots did pretty well. In the first round they traded down from 7 to 10 and got LB Jerod Mayo from Tennessee. They drafted lots of linebackers and defensive backs, which is exactly what they need. I’ve been waiting for them to draft some linebackers for years and they finally did it. And it looks like Mayo has a chance to be an impact player this year, which would be great. Overall, the Patriots have very solid and young offensive and defensive lines. Obviously a great quarterback, and good wide receivers. The running backs are decent. But the linebackers are old and slow and possibly retiring (Bruschi, Seau) or leaving (Colvin) so we need to get younger and faster there. And the same at defensive back with Asante Samuel and Randall Gay leaving and Rodney Harrison getting up there in age. Overall, the Patriots drafted 3 linebackers, 2 cornerbacks, a safety, and a quarterback. Here is the draft: |
Pictures I have plenty of photographs on my site, dating from when I got my first digital camera in 2000. I have lots of photos of my friends and stuff, but also photos of places I've been and things that I thought would make cool pictures. Photos from 2005 onward are in the new gallery, and any photos from before that are in the old gallery. Enjoy! |
Projects
I am constantly working on various projects. Most of the projects involve some kind of artificial intelligence, either controlling a robot, predicting NFL football scores, or game-playing AI. The highlight of these projects is a 3D Connect Four game I designed where the computer will look up to 6 moves ahead. This game is available for download here on the website. My robot diary contains every step of the process of designing and building my own robot from scratch. I also wrote a program to try to predict scores of NFL football games based on previous week's stats. Enjoy! |