Category Archives: Class

Fun times at college.

merge sort, the eater of nodes

I’m so tickled to have completed an assignment for my Linux kernel class. The specification was as follows: Modify the algorithm that allocates a file descriptor for the open() and socket() calls. Implement a per-process variable availableFileDescriptor whose value is always the number of the first available file descriptor. Make sure that when a process [...]
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textbook prices, torch juggling, and a snake breeder

I just had my first day of classes and I’m excited about the semester, but depressed about how much money I just spent on books. This semester hit a lot harder than last semester where the most I think I spent was maybe $60 on a book. Let’s run down a list of [...]
Posted in Class | Tagged | 1 Comment | Current music Royksopp Forever by Royksopp

end of the semester rush

I don’t know how, but I got a B on my last algorithms homework. I rushed through half of it because I ran out of time. For one I straight-up put “I don’t know how I’m supposed to get this from that” and he still gave me half credit on that problem. [...]
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the wily C# shuffle

My programming languages professor is quite the wily one. For our last programming assignment in there, we’re to write a fraction class in both Java and Smalltalk, as part of our coverage of object-oriented languages. I asked if I could do C# and Smalltalk, since I really like C# and, darn it, everyone [...]
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sloppy summing

Ha ha ha, my sucky summation skills suck slightly less than simply sidestepping summation-solving. Let me explain: I had my only midterm last week in algorithms and I thought I did terribly, in part because of how I solved the following summation: . That summation came about when solving the recurrence [...]
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how I made my languages professor twitch

Today in programming languages, the professor started going over Lisp. I was surprised to learn that function names are case insensitive in Lisp, so if you declare a function called incrementAll, you can invoke it by calling INCREMENTALL, incrementall, or any other case variant. I forgot about this because I’m not used to [...]
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proof by failure of imagination

In programming languages today, someone had to answer this question: Prove the contention on page 40 that when a CLU iterator terminates, indicating to its parent for loop that there are no more values, the iterator’s activation record is actually at the top of the stack. — Advanced Programming Language Design by Raphael Finkel, p. 61 The guy’s [...]
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first graduate classes

My first day of graduate classes were Thursday, and I must say having gone through them has made me feel better about this semester overall. Before Thursday, I had been stressing out because this is my first semester of graduate school and I plan on working 20 hours/week. Full-time for graduate students is [...]
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independent study, a death in the family, and my car

Pfhew, so I’m back in school and things are more hectic than I figured. Work at Lexmark has been pretty steady, as I work my 15 hours per week, but the other stuff has been up in the air. I had a meeting with my professor yesterday to discuss work on the Baby [...]
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Netflix and alpha-beta pruning

Nooo, Netflix, why must you torment me?? I got an email from them today saying that Watch Instantly now works fully on Mac, which is good news, even though I was already using the beta, because I figured they’d have a lot more Watch Instantly content. I think they do have a lot [...]
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