April 28, 2004
How do you know?
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T |
But it won’t be. It will be instead my insane ranting about the nasty scheme language and the headaches its giving me.
Actually it wont be that either. Just coding in brand new langauges that dont have ANY of the data structs that you understand can give you a headache. I’m insanely mad at this point, the project is already 3 days late (most people havent finished it yet), I havent even GOTTEN to the second half, the TA’s, while helpful, also speak in tounges… its about ‘hints’ but if you don’t get the underlying reasons, all the hints in the world make no sense unless you randomly combine commands to see what ends up working… which is what I’ve been doing.
My Networking project is pretty QED and I’ve gotten more than half of it done; I shipped it to my partner with a comprehensive psuedocode on what needs to be done next and how to do it… and of course; I haven’t heard from him. I could just finish it on my own (which was my plan for today), but I’m not really flooded with time. I’m just feeling things take over me, and while I’m far from behind, I want to get some of this crap DONE! (My langauges prof, the one with the insane projects (incl the Scheme one) has assigned another doozy … He teaches well but you can’t expect people trained in C++ their entire lives to take to alternative languages like a fish in water!
I’d feel bad complaining publically, except that I usually don’t complain about my coding assignments; and I normally get them done before others. EVERYONE is having a massively difficult time with it, and the time commitment is … phenominal. When it finally clicks, it’ll be eas(ier) but, this one has clicked partially and im still stuck at stupid syntaxical errors … and since its a language that people don’t use that much, the regular resources aren’t available… plus we’ve got stupid corner cases that we ran into, with a function adding in an extra pair of () that have to be parsed (thats where I’m currently stuck), with no obvious reasons WHY it should work that way… (just like corner cases in C++ where you learn, with experience, “it just works that way”).
::forces himself to breathe::
Anyhow, things are good with Sarah. I guess I’ve been saying that a lot. We just like sitting and holding each other and staring into each other eyes and tickling and listening to each other… When we disagree, we do it politely and when one person is bothering the other, we can explain it without going batshit weird… Shes smart … dating her is making me a better student (because I want to set a good example) … I get to be a figure of maturity and offer advice instead of always asking for it…
I don’t recall if I felt this way early on with Serena, (ex-gf2) or (ex-gf1) . I know I worry a lot less about whether I’m in it just for the sex, or just because someone likes me, or just because I’m lonely. This is a strange place to be. Each of those was special in their own way…
I just finished a “JUMBO” Snickers bar… yeah I’m gonna have nightmares.
—- back to school.
So I’m going frantic; and I know that I’m not going to tackle part 2 of this project; its a homework only and I simply can’t afford the delay (Grading Policy, # of days late -1 = N, 2^N pct off) and the vast amount of time I’d need to figure out part B (even harder than A) would quickly turn into a losing proposition.
One random annoying thing, this class has four homeworks and two projects.
Effectively, each homework is 5% of total grade, each project is 10%.
The two projects were supposed to be in python. I was happy for that. Its not totally similar to C++ but they are, at least, in the same Genus of languages, versus the vast strangeness that is Prolog, Scheme (lisp) and ML … Plus, we had to buy about $60 worth of books on Python, and Python is probably the most used of the above, after C++, so it’s useful in the long term too.
Prof : So I realized that homework 3 was too hard, so its now Project 1.
(Why not just make it easier?)
Me : I thought both the projects were to be in python…
Prof : Yeah, they were. I changed it.
Yes its his right and all. Its just a bummer.
If I get too down I think of Dixie and her work load and I feel a bit better. Each to their own ability and stage in life though, High School was difficult then. Now, of course, it’d be pie.
===
Edit, minor continued rant:
Well first I went to wash my face and lost my glasses. Ten minutes burned finding them.
TA emailed back my macro question… (with the project there have been many minor issues linked to one major one; half the time was spent finding out that they were linked, and the other half was trying either to fix the major issue or fix the sub-issues independently) … (I.e. over thinking it).
This is very close. —- A code snippet of mineLooks at this example again:
> (apply somefunction 1 2 ‘(3 4 5))
I can’t say any more or I’ll give it away.
is equivalent to
> (somefuntcion 1 2 3 4 5)
At this point, when you’ve seen evidence of MANY hours worth of work, would it be so wrong to just say, ‘heres what you have to do’… Especially with having gotten so close. I do have to say though, these TA’s rock, they answer emails at 1am in the morning (well sometimes) and hold plenty of extra office hours.
I just had a sudden vision of Marvin complaining about the diodes in his left arm. Gosh, I hope I don’t sound like that.
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April 27, 2004
Not the greatest day
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T |
1. Woke up on time, amazingly, for the recently announced 10am Office Hours with the TA.
2. Made it AT 10:00am sharp as defined in his email
3. Got a lot of insight into the confusing and already due project.
4. Did some work on it.
4a. Found a 200gig hard drive online for only $99.
5. Visited Sarah on campus and shared lemonade.
6. Walked to Best Buy, while chatting idly with my mom and helping her with her new remote office setup.
And then it started.
7. Evil Best Buy tech’s refused to price match Comp USA because I didnt have a printed ad, and they didn’t have replacement headphones for my poor damaged pair in stock.
8. Got home, the room was beyond hot and just lousy feeling
9. Stripped into my underwear and plugged in my iPod to find out that it had crashed and was stuck in an infinite boot cycle.
10. Spent an hour trying to fix pod without formatting it.
11. Mom called with issues on her computer, tack on another hour.
12. Sarah calls during, her shoes self-destructed on campus; and with the super hot day, she asked where on campus she could get shoes. I volunteered to get her (in two hours, post her classes).
13. Finished work with Mom, went back to the self-testing iPod which feels like its going to over-heat.
14. Start to take a nap to calm down when my roommate shows up, breaking my near rest cycle (and forcing me to put on some more clothing)
15. Pick up Sarah after ten minutes of hunting for her on campus and almost running down plenty of people.
16. Bring Sarah to her dorm and try to plan a fun day for Wednesday (since I’m going to have to cancel our plans today, homework!) and find out that she’s busy all day.
17. Park illegally to drop her off and come in so I can get some free dorm food.
18. Show up in her room with her roommate, who’s never really seemed to like me. Offer to help her unjam her printer in an act of good will and instead make things worse (she neglected to show me the other part that was jammed.
19. While Sarah washes her feet, I attempt to apologize to roommate with a total lack of success; I’m permanently in her shit list now.
20. Feel bad about making printer jamming worse.
21. After posting first draft, realizing that blog posting is now broken. Damn.
Yeah, things could be a LOT worse; I know. I’ve just got a massive headache, work to do; movies that I planned to watch cancelled and an apartment thats hot as hell.
On the upside, I’ve been finding myself a lot more focused towards school, and instead of rationalizing why I should have still watched “Fish called Wanda” and the Polish movie in Melnitz today; I reasoned that I have work to do and work > movies.
Have I updated recently? I guess not… things are good. Sarah and me are splendid and this feels great. School is doing well and parents seem alright. They met girl, they liked.
More later.
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April 23, 2004
More Linkage
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What I’m using on UCLA and Lifegonewrong’s servers to download some fun :)
Hollywood’s new lesson for campus file swappers
Hollywood is poised to up the ante in its war against file swappers, with new technology that could make it easier to remove suspected pirates from campus networks, CNET News.com has learned.
Anti piracy about to be installed on UCLA resnet.
Cygwin —- setup a unix enviroment on your pc!
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Discussion
U
CLA has discussions for its classes… 4 hour classes (2×2 hr classes) have a 2hr discussion, 3 hr classes (3×1hr) have a 1 hr discussion; I’ve normally abstained.
Its a way to interact with the TAs, which, often enough, is an utter waste of time. They don’t speak English, they’ve got better things to do, they haven’t prepared, etc. (Now knowing a grad student well, I sympathize a lot more) —- Sometimes they’d be quizzes or attendance, but rarely in upper-div engineering courses; only math and english classes waste time with that.
Today was a good day. I went to discussion. Yeah, I played games on my Treo for most of it. But the TA’s for these classes spoke (decent) English, and handed out hints and tricks for the projects as if they were candy! Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to learn socket programming on my own, but being given a headstart saved me at least 10 hrs (versus the 2hrs invested in attending the discussion.) Normally I’d expect that they’d post the handouts on the websites, but experience has shown that that usually doesn’t happen…
Anyhow, I have the socket programming guide in front of me :)
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catchup
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Q |
I was feeling sick on Thursday until Sarah dragged me out to the outdoor-ness that is Farmers market… sat outside for hours with an LA times and felt significantly better … home (alone, Sung is out) and finished my CS 143 project; then finally realized that I wasn’t going to get anymore work done (I had spent two hours customizing my BASH shell on the ugrad.seas.ucla.edu server and funnelling Bittorrent files through it)… lots of fun btw… I’m going to run bash at home more with cygwin … point being I had west wings and scrubs to catch up with, so I did.
Today I slept past my first discussion (no surprise, I haven’t attended one yet this quarter), but managed to make it to the second one… TA helped me massively with the project and that, plus some really well made to do lists, taking my stimulant meds again after a two day drug holiday and a sense of accomplishment led to me having a very good day today. So thats where I’m at.
I’d like to head over to king’s comics and play some magic.. my cars making weird sounds though, I’m not hip to the latest changes in the metagame… I’m not sure if I’m going to play at regionals or not.. It’d b e fun, but I could use the cash from working it, plus, everyones going to be playing Ravager!
I understand Dixie taking a block off of magic now, with limited time, the time that used to be spent reading brainburst, buying cards, sorting cards, planning decks for FNMs, etc seems kinda wasted. If I wasn’t dating someone, it might be different… the lack of good stores within close reach has a LOT to do with it actually.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll head out for a game… we’ll see. I’ve got lots of work to do… If I stopped watching repeat scrubs and crap like that I’d have SO much more time for fun things + school :)
so yeah, for once, school isn’t totally decomposing on me… I have had some shoddy homeworks turned in, but nothing like past problems.
I love my apartment building , I’ll do just about anyhting to stay here until I’m done with school.
rk
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April 20, 2004
The Curse of Good Television
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Paranoia LARP
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Anyhow it was interesting but disappointing. Dixie suggested I relax - Id like to try it again with a better concieved game.
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Poker baby
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I |
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April 15, 2004
God of Scheduling
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G |
If I go to San Diego, I won’t be able to be here to go to it with Lora. (No word yet if they accepted my credentials). I’ve already committed to work Friday onwards (day or night depending upon midterm schedules), but… yeah its weird.
sigh, damn the gods of scheduling.
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April 14, 2004
Googling for Egomaniacs
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S |
For some reason I hit the student lab and felt like googling (ex-gf1) , my first gf.
Shes gradded by now, did well, really got into the photography aspect (worked at Bruinlike and Bruinwalk) and did some stuff with the UCLA Linux group. I thought about emailing her, but I realized that, to her, Im a transatory guy, who shes dated for just 5 weeks, dumped, and didn’t even sleep with. That part is kind of annoying. I don’t know why it occured to me to google her though. Oh, part of is was a mention of JPL… she used to kinda work there. Cool, no?
Then I googled myself. For the first time in a while, I beat out the Mike and Ben show stuff that isn’t at all positive, so thats nice. Lots of newsgroup postings etc, links to and from my blog. Apparently if you search on blogsearch.com for pretty girls, you get my site.
BlogPulse is an interesting site showing the most referenced topics on blogs all around!
Ran into Helen at the Enigma events… She totally ignored me and I learned to ignore her. Shes decided to go the more feminine route, so longer hair and frilly tops instead of her previous engineer-girl state. She also got hammered as hell. I don’t there beign somone that doesn’t like me and can’t stand me, but I’ll have to grow up and deal, and NOT to try to talk to her and confront/resolve it.. its not going to do any good!
I’d like to find a Friday night magic nearby… I’m going to see They Might Be Giants with a bunch of folks as well… Saturday is also a Mensa test… finally I’m getting around to take it; and I know its not going to be anywhere near the score I got as a young’n and thats going to depress me.
My room situ is working out, I have no idea what to do for summer, nor do I have energy to start looking ;p I need to decide what, if anything, I’m taking…
So my gals doing well and we are totally freaking out, its so good. I’m waiting for the other foot to drop, but its good so far. I worry, at times, that the first few weeks I feel close and whatnot, without ever suspecting underlying problems, I’m thinking of (ex-gf1) and Serena now… I think(?) I felt just as happy with them and just as unolbivous as to possible issues or incompatabilities… Other thing that worries me is that my meds interfere with certain processes and its just embarssing at times.. and thats a subsection of a section of my life that totally scares me… :sigh:
Oh, I have to post how we met later. I wrote it to sis in a letter.. Shes doing fine, by the way.
I’m looking forward to seeing Lora for E3, and I have no idea how thats going to evolve. We have potential to be good friends, and she seems like it ?might? be getting serious with Steve.
Ok, so much for a mini blog entry. I’m going to go eat Panda and groove to Electric Light Orchestra.
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April 11, 2004
What a difference a day makes!
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S |
On a weird note, I’ve started talking with some really cool people on Friendster.. two in particular.
I think too much.
Lora doesn’t sound like things are going to well for her :( Shes been on my mind recently, but I can’t get a hold of her. I’m worried that the above might make her unhappy… I know I was jealous of Steve. I think it’ll have to be one of those wait and see things.
I’m worried about timing with having someone to see down here and school and my own distractions. I just hid the UT2004 cd. Again.
Girls got opposite schedule of me, so the only co-incidental non-weekend free time is pretty restricted, so that good, I guess. Its important to me to not suddenly give up all social obligations, so I’m forcing myself to go to the Enigma party (which she was invited to by another method) even though I’m a bit worried about studying, but I’m arriving late and leaving early… but I’m here for another year, I need to rebuild a social network, and its too easy to get comfortable with the, like, three people I’ve added and forget to go further.
OH MY GOD, the Ira Glass/Chris Ware thing rocked. Meeting Ira rocked even more. I have a very poor picture of the two of us I’ll upload later. (uploads it)
Please ignore the posterizing, in order for it to even be decipherable, I had to pshop it.
EDIT:
Theres something for me to sit and think about. I’m feeling more and more physically ill when I’m worried recently, and I’m sure its psycho-somatic. I’m not saying, Oh, I’ve got another problem, I’m just saying its a weird trend. I haven’t been out on a date for the last seven weeks without getting v. bad stomach pains, for instance.
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April 10, 2004
Online Music
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D |
“All five of the major music companies are discussing ways to boost the price of single-song downloads on hot releases - to anywhere from $1.25 to as much as $2.49. It isn’t clear how or when such a price hike would take place, and it could still be months away. Sales of such singles - prices have remained at 99 cents - still account for the majority of online music sales.
The industry is also mulling other ways to charge more for online singles. One option under consideration is bundling hit songs with less-desirable tracks. Another possibility is charging more for a single track if it is available online before the broader release of the entire album from which it is taken. There is also talk of lowering the price on some individual tracks from older albums.”
:: sigh ::
Can ANYONE come up with any rational reason why an online album should cost MORE than the actual CD in a store? I understand not selling an entire album for $9.99, instead charging $13.99… but $17?
In other news, Walmart is rolling out an online music service… Well thats great… the market leader in music tools.. no wait.. Maybe the market leader in distribtuing music… no, thats not them either?
Oh yeah, the market leader in CDs stolen via shoplifting has opened an online store. Its good that they entire the market and improve the quality of the competetion by market forces, God knows that Apple and Napster need to hire more technical talent to compete with … Walmart.
Yeah, they charge $.88. The extra dime and penny wont do it for me.
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When it rains, It pours
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Heres whats interesting … Yesterday, while driving to a play, I was thinking how, for the first time in a while, I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh I hope theres a cute girl there…’ … mostly because I’ve had a few good emails with someone on Friendster and that satisfied my ‘I’m doing something about it’ part of me. Just like Robin, as long as theres something other than destitute alone-ness, I can rationalize the rest away. And I’m not being demeaning to anyone, or instituting false hope; I’m just saying that if theres any minor potential with someone nice, I’m happy.
And of course, I met someone super cool at the play. I do mean supercool, by the way.
Now, of course, neither interpersonal exchange is of any age, or in any particular direction, and etc. Excessively premature to say anything, and I have no particular hopes etc.
But, wouldn’t you know. When it rains, it pours.
Another thing I need to work on : I should finally learn to stop automatically putting girls that I like in the ‘potential for dating’ bin instead of the ‘friends’ bin, or at least ‘wait and see, stop rushing it!’ bin.
Dixie would be so proud of me.
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April 08, 2004
Great, even more palmpilot games.
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c |
CaSTaway/Palm for Palm OS
CaSTaway/Palm is a port of my CaSTaway/GP32 work, which is in turn a port of CastCE for Pocket PC, which is in turn a port of CaSTaway for SDL/Windows. Quite a lineage :)
EDIT : This is an Atari ST emulator :)
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Just damn good phrase.
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A quality or attribute that is difficult to describe or express.
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April 07, 2004
Late Delivery
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T |
The life of a male
So, I’m going to go grab some coffee… would you like some?
Nah, I’m just going to head home.
I’ve gotten used to asking, gotten used to being told no, gotten used to beating myself up for asking too soon, gotten used to justifying that I can ask some other time.
And it no longer bashes my self esteem, or my flirting skills…
But it still hurts a bit.
Now its: Dummy its 6pm and this is only the second class… you should have offered to study with her week 3 or so, she’s exhausted, as are you; but unlike you, most other people don’t drop every obligation when a social invitation comes up.
It isn’t the rejection that bothers, its minor, not final, and easy to deal with. Its the self doubt.
::soon to be more here about ‘caring less’ ::
I already know I’m going to spend the majority of the night on HotOrNot and Makeoutclub.
Alfred Nobel
A quick thought, as the database professor tells us about the Turing award… the ‘Nobel prize’ of Computer Science.
The man discovered TNT, helped usher in a new age of warfare… and the only knowledge that non-history buffs (or chemists) have of him is that he was a humanitarian, and that there is a world class award series with his name.
Not that I disagree with his change of politics or his good deeds but… man, thats some good PR work.
EDIT: Dixie points out, correctly, that Nobel meant to blast railroad tunnels, not people.
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Firefox
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M |
One problem… my site looks like shit in it :( The TAL header is too large and the dropcap is double sized… and whats sad is that, knowing the companies invovled, its probably because the IE engine misinterprets the HTML/CSS involved.
Oh, if you aren’t using one of the two, you should be. Seriously. Tabbed browsing rocks, even for an old fan of Alt-Tab like myself, plus keeping open pages persistant across sessions is a godsend, esp when your system crashes a lot.
Some alternates and discussion about some other browsers as well. More. Plugins. Even more!
Did you know that Opera allows you to use mouse GESTURES?
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The way education should be...
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I |
Prolog is pure logic with a splash of control instead of the standard reverse that we learn.
Sadly, being fascinated by a class DOESNT gaurantee that ill attend it properly... Sociology of Mass Communication and Formal Languages being excellent examples.
But its nice to have :)
Its a reasonable point to consider, this professor was rated highly on uclaprofessors.com, the rest werent... Could it be the teaching has as much of a role as the material? or the more likely case that good teachers thrive with good material, but its hard to salvage boring stuff.
Also worth noting, unfamiliar yet relevant material is most likely to fall in this category (for me)�
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Staying Awake
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April 05, 2004
Few Randoms
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S |
Meeting with Counselors went well, signed another Academic Agreement, and talked to Lila about transferring my classes back into UCLA.
Class one stats… I’m not ‘in’ yet, so I have to get a PTE # … Reasonably boring, had to leave early to get They Might Be Giants tickets for some friends (last day and I have solid classes till 6)…
Class two, Network programming. Whats scary is that I couldn’t find the building or the classroom… I actually FORGOT where Knudsen was, this class in which I had slept through SO many physics classes. It went ok, boring as hell, I really don’t think the professor should have to explain that the ‘Internet is growing’. I get it. Rest was expl. of different communication systems, packet relaying, etc… until he got into some strange probability statistics that didn’t make much sense to any of us, it seems. I doubt hes going to test it. Professors should avoid following long complicated steps to prove something that doesn’t need to be proved, and that you don’t expect your students to prove, (or even fully understand the proof) … a lot of Math and Physics professors do that.
Class three, Programming Languages. Def. the shining star of the quarter. As we walk in Prof asks us to code the following…
INPUT : A text file with sentances. OUTPUT : A sorted list (decreasing numerically) of word frequencies.
DEFINITIONS : Word = [A-Za-z]+ and case is significant.
I knew as soon as he handed it that he would provide us with a one line answer after we spent ten minutes scrambling to write code.
I designed mine as such (psuedo code, and I didnt finish in time (no one did) anyhow, but I feel like sharing)
struct key { string word; int index; }; class container {
public :
void init();
void add(string);
void print();
private:
key db1024;
int next = 0;
}
Init set all the key values to 0.
Add did a for loop through the db until a matching string was found, if not, add it in key ‘next’ and incr next.
I got that far in 8 minutes before my hand started to cramp… what was missed was the print algo (not too hard, find the highest value for index, do a for from index_high to 1 and then for inside the entire loop. The loaders pretty easy, get_line with delimiter of space (doesn’t deal with ‘.’ sadly) and put it in with add(string).
Now let me mention that we were told Quick and Dirty. If I cared at all about … well given more time, I’d have used a hash table…
Anyhow, of course, he had the miracle solution.
Turns out its an old story of two leading CS folks in the 60’s (one of which went on to write some amazing book… the details are in my notes, but I don’t feel like transcribing)… the student wrote a very elegant solution using hash tries … no, not trees. Yeah, no one in class had heard of a ‘trie’ either. The person who asked the question (worked at Bell Labs) gave this (theres some syntax missing but whatever)
tr -c-s ‘A-Za-z’ ‘\012’ | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr
Now, a very good argument can be made for the students case, because this solution uses UNIX libraries and commands and can’t really be considered coding… that being said, his way of approaching it is what was amazing…. Actually, I feel like writing more in detail about what I learned about notations/langauges… more on this later.
Oh wow, I still haven’t blogged my Columbus trip, crap.
Last class… yeah I was late for it. I came into a computer lab and vegged for a while, I had a migrane coming on. Bad habit I know… I arrived to a boring class on Databasing systems that might have potential, but at the moment was a snorefest… took him half an hour to get through half of the syllabus ;p Sat next to a cute girl named Yasmin which was nice… we chatted slightly.
People get really uncomfortable when I talk to them… :sigh:
So yeah, thats my day…
Some interesting stuff…
New utility strips DRM from iTunes Music Store tracks
So what will playfair do for you? The playfair program is quite simple. It takes one of the iTMS Protected AAC Audio Files, decodes it using a key obtained from your iPod or Microsoft Windows system and then writes the new, decoded version to disk as a regular AAC Audio File. It then optionally copies the metadata tags that describe the song, including the cover art, to the new file.
Thats really bad for the iTunes store… by the way I FINALLY won a free song! ;p
Turns out you could do it in Windows for months ;p
I’m almost against such a project… I love free media and all, don’t get me wrong, and I’m quoted in Newsweek for saying that no consumer encryption schema will ever pass muster, but … this is a paradigm shift folks… this is the change in the music industry, give them some time to stabilize!
According to C|Net News, Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA, is now the richest man with an estimated worth of about $53 billion. Poor Billy, he’s only worth $47 billion
The latest version of PC Gamer indicates that EverQuest II will have actual speech from NPC characters. So far no MMORPG has done this; it has all been text you have to read in on your screen. It is expecting there will be over 130 hours of talking dialogue from NPC’s.
According to this Slashdot article, Homestarr Runner the RPG for the Atari console is near completion. Check out the demo here and the official website here. (Wow, thats … cool… or scary).. no wait, its for the Atari console alright… the 2600! Yes, thats def. cool.
It drives me nuts how long I can surf the web and still find interesting stuff to read.
A MCV study shows that 60% of hardcore Xbox gamers have chipped (or modded) consoles. They also say most go a step further and download games and emulators off the internet.
Electric Light Orchestra rocks, I’ve been listening to them constantly…
From Dandelion Wine :
I’m a sucker for a story with a happy ending, and both of these stories have happy endings.
To catch a cell phone thief
So some high school student in Ohio had her phone stolen, but rather than just give up, she decided to call the phone and see who answered, and in the process managed to help bust up a ring of thieves who had been breaking into cars all over that part of the state.
I fought the scammer … and I wonHe asks them what the problem is and is told to step away from the computer. He doesn’t seem too happy about this, but does so. He’s asked his name and is told that he might like to come down for a chat in the local station. He says his wallet and ID are in the booth, so he walks in, rips a USB memory stick from the side of his laptop, tries to swallow it and makes a run for it.
Probably one of my favorite posts from Dixie:
Noam Chomsky has started blogging. Now, whenever I read something offensive from someone on the other side of the political spectrum, I can just link over to Noam and remember why it is some people become so militantly conservative.
She says I do something that a lot of others do, I don’t blog a lot for a while then I super blog for a while. I need to become more consistent :)
I need a fellow coder:
UCLA IEEE is going to have the IEEE Programming Contest on Tuesday, April 13th. We welcome you all to participate in the competition and walk away with our great prizes, which include Gamecubes, MP3 players and etc. All you need is to use some basic programming skills that you learn in your freshman year and solve a given program within a limited time. A two-person team is strongly recommended.
That’d be AWESOME!
One random UCLA class I just stumbled on ‘P2P Computing Fundamentals’…
They’ve changed their summer offerings… it looks like they’ll have plenty of courses I can take for the summer, so I can’t really justify to myself any desire to go to New York or Nor cal and work at a radio station when I could be getting closer to graduating….
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April 03, 2004
Moving Day!
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S |
I had soem issues, but I’m past those now, and I’ll deal. That being said, there is a time in EVERY relationship of mine (sans one) that this sentiment is expressed:
im tired of thinkin of others.this time its for me! im gonna be selfish. im gonna think about what i want for once.
sorry if youre gonna get hurt, this time its for me. im gonna do what i want.
One thing I really liked about Lora, and something we discussed, is the fact that she wasn’t selfish to me. I try to open myself fully and give myself fully to the person I’m dating (sadly, again, with one exception); and I’ve always hated the ‘I’m going to be selfish’ sentiment, and Lora knew that too. And agreed with it.
What do I do now? Nothing… I’ll deal. I’m be happy with a phone friend and someone who comes to visit me on occasion… We’ve both said how much we wish we lived near each other and how we could take advantage of the potential of our chemistry, and who knows for the future… but for now, c’est la vie. One (sad?) thing about growing up is that I give up ( stopping the constant pining) on people a lot easier… makes splitting up harder, but what about when the ‘One’ comes?
Dad committed a major Faux Pas yesterday, saying one of the things that NO parent should ever say to their child… and its even harder in the context that my parents aren’t doing well at all. I was going to dish and freak out and berate him, but he actually apologized just now, a record (18 hours!); so I think I’ll give him some slack.
MOVING DAY! Thanks to some incompetence by the old tenant, I have no key, so its time to rely on the grace of the Landlord to let me in. Back to UCLA, its scary. Brian and Nichole were genuinely sad to see me go, its touching how close we’ve gotten and I’m really going to try to keep it up. Two guys at FNM, Josue (pronouced, stunningly, as Josh) and Tony; I’ve gotten reasonably clsoe to them too.. they are about my age and realize how much FNM was about blowing off steam and acting like a child, as much as it was about kicking some Magic ass.
Target time, for last minute supplies.
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April 01, 2004
Damned April Fools
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S |
Lora and I talked on occasion during the day, one long conversation with her at the park was interuppted with my mom calling, annoyed that my dad doesnt’ want to take her to the airport. Here’s the thing… shes going on about something that is, in the overall state, a small thing. I don’t know why she lets it bug her so much… any how, Lora hung up after being on hold for a while, and later on, she mentioned that ‘she’d never have a long distance relationship’…. One of her other boys is coming back to the country and she said ‘I haven’t told him about Steve (someone whos pursuing her in RL) yet…’ I’m like, what about me? … She never stated that she wasn’t willing to try it, she said that she didnt like it, but that OAK to LAX wasn’t so far as to make it untenable… we part as I need to think… when I get back up, she starts telling me how shes been weird and out of sorts for the past few weeks…
She tells me to read her blog and I do. She’s pregnant. Not with my baby, and she doesn’t know who the father is. I’m freaking out. What is she doing, why didnt she tell me, how does she not know the father… Then she reminds me its April 1. What a mean ass joke, esp when I was hurting as I was. In retrospect, it was funny as hell, but the timing was poor…. I contacted Dixie immediately and was like ‘OMG, what do I do?’ and it turns out to be a funny. We part for a while as I de fume… after a few scattered conversations, we establish that we’d both really like if we lived near each other, but it isn’t to be so… so we are… whatever we are. We’ll still talk and hang out and do whatever… it just wont go anywhere, and that makes me sad, but it makes sense. anyhow, that’ll play out, but things will work out, so whatever.
Serena’s seeing someone, as confirmed in comments… its bugging me slightly and I have NO idea why, but I hope she’s happy.
By the way, why do we freak out at gas prices at $2.10? Its much more expensive elsewhere… and we rarely get told WHY they are going up… Turns out that Bush is considering giving Calif a waiver from the Clean Air Act… thats BAD.
I really respect McCain, reading about his recent pushes towards enviromentalisim… also Jerry Springer… listen to details about his history as a politiction before the show… A wonderful This American Life episode. Ira Glass is speaking at UCLA :) I should look into interning there for this summer, or find some other radio job… call my friends at StarFM or ClearChannel…
Dixie has a treatise on blog rules … its quite good. That being said, she didn’t follow them before… but she def does now. She just doesn’t post comments :annoy:
Have I mentioned how much I apprecaite her? I think I undervalue her… she calls me on my shit, and is one of the people on the planet that I think is just massively smarter than I am … and you all know how hard that is for me to say.
Family sat down and talked about plans for school… early sleep for more packing tomorrow.. the computers all packed up so no random fun :( FNM tomorrow though :) Maybe a draft with Brian and Nichole too…
There are plans to encircle the Capitol building with a fence for security reasons, restricting access to security checked people, but would give even more access now than there was before. That being said, it would cost FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS … why does every public project in this nation cost so much?
One random thing, whenever I was at CSUpomona going up the elevator, when I reach for the ‘close door button’ and I remember a Douglas Adams thing from one of his books where he theorized of a disease that would strike only Class-A’s … and the only transmission vectors would be the close door button.
I don’t know if prision guard unions have too much power… I hate unions that block any reform… i.e. all of them. Or large corps either.
One thing I’m thinking about politics… kinda inspired by a West Wing episode where two Supreme court justices were nominated, a far right and a far left judge, and everyone (granted, this was manufactured) was happy about it… I’ve noticed, I get really into people that are … well enthused. The crowds behind Dean should say something… we want invested statesmen, not middle of the line, compromising politions… Anyhow, bed time.
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Head Shrinking
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J |
Day was a … regular one. My appts with my academic counselor got cancelled yesterday :grr: so I just had my two shrink appts. On my way to my first one, I hit microsleep and side-ended a brand new 2004 PT Cruiser… :sigh: … Everyone was fine, minor scratches, but my first accident in a long while … made it to my first appt and discussed meds… we are trying out Stratera, a new non-stim ADHD drug, as well as moving some stimulants around the day to see if we can even out my energy a bit more (i.e. those sleep periods)… drove by my new apartment on Tiverton, then went to Bel Air camera to drop off some film…. 6 rolls, 4 slides. Asked them if they had any job openings (which I later did at the new EB Games) and signed up for a ‘Art of the Pin up’ tutorial. Got some Spikes’ Teriyaki (yum), and thought a bit about Helen and how much I screwed that up, and how a friend would be nice down here… also a bit about her stubbornness. Went to Sprint, hee-hawed and after a manager that was overworked ignored me and other customers to serve his friends, they gave me the past promoised discount (the manager that offered it to me had since left). Made it to Klaskin’s late due to the stupid drivers on Wilshire, the lame setup of the intersection light at Wilshire and Santa Monica and the slowness of the Sprint Manager… talked about traffic, Lora, moving back down, but the big thing… my ‘rents.
Things are getting worse, and I’m really unaware of what to do… I’m glad I’m out of the house in many ways, and hopefully it will inspire them to fix/talk about whats going on (not likely).
After that, long delayed drive to Pasadena, where Jersey Girl was watched and Ice-cream had. We talked for a while and then hung out in her flat, which was a blast… HeatherW is the I cannot accurately predict at all, ever. Its weird how much she knows and how much she thinks I need to learn and … well shes annoying as hell and I love her for it.
I’m thinking about hitting up VVHS, my old high school tomorrow to visit some teachers as I move back. Would be fun… Of course I really DO need to pack. CnC Generals, Zero Hour isn’t helping that… Setting up my new Treo 600 wont help either, maybe I’ll just install the base apps needed.
Turns out Serena is seeing someone; or something. HeatherW gave me the skinny on her blog and updates, I found it incredilby odd that she was updating me on my ex’s situ.
:looks at the list of stuff to blog:
I’ll do it, I swear ;p
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