New Semester

I have thoroughly forgotten about updating my blog. That's too bad. I'll have to work on remembering to do this more often.

It's Fall Semester! And I am taking a healthy amount of classes. Here's what we've got:

CS 345 -- Operating Systems (because I dropped it and just enjoyed my Summer break)

CS 312 -- Algorithm Analysis

Math 313 -- Linear Algebra

Acc 200 -- Introduction to Accounting

Rel C 234 -- LDS Marriage and Family

It really shouldn't be too bad. Except that I want to do exceedingly well, so I'll be devoting a lot of my time to homework. That's fine though. I enjoy the feeling of success that comes when I complete my homework.

I'm taking LDS Marriage and Family not because I am engaged to be married, but rather because it is the last two credit hours I need to fulfill my religion requirements at BYU. I figured it will be information I can use well someday.

All the new people moved into the apartment complex I'm living in and as such into the ward I attend. We did introductions on Sunday. Some people had really interesting introductions. I want to get to know them but the opportunity has not arisen yet.

Operating Systems and You

Spring Term has come to and end and Summer Term is now starting. I'm done with CS 330 (Concepts of Programming Languages) and starting CS 345 -- Operating Systems Principles. It is so significantly more difficult it is ridiculous. But I'm really looking forward to this.

So throughout the course we're writing an operating system. The projects will build upon each other to eventually form an OS. It's very interesting to learn about the way computers can handle so many things going on at the same time.

I was thinking today about the differences between the way computers multitask and humans multitask. I wonder how similar it really is. As far as I have learned the way a computer works was not built on the way a human works at all. But its interesting to think of it that way. We've learned in my class how computers will put one process on hold and focus their attention and computing power on another task or process for a time. When that other process is complete they can resume the former process without any problems. Or maybe they'll put the second process on hold and go back and forth until one of them is finished. The time between switching processes is generally not noticeable to us as humans. That's why you can have your internet and itunes and solitaire all running at the same time. Anyway the point is that computers have the ability to multitask.

I think that humans use multitasking in a similar way. We at times of heightened activity seem to have multiple thought processes developing at once. In reality we are just switching between the thought processes so fast that we don't even notice the time it takes to do so. It seems to make sense to compare computer processes with human thought processes, but I'm very confident that the human brain is far more complex than any computer. We can teach computers how to speak and act like humans, but we can never give them the gift of moral agency that sets us so uniquely apart.

I think of humans as having the potential to do almost anything. Over time and through their actions they limit those possibilities. Computers on the other hand start being able to do nothing. The better they are built and the better they are programmed the more they are able to do. Computers and humans sort of meet in the middle somewhere there.

Its hard to explain I guess. Maybe I'll write about it again another time.

Percy Jackson vs my homework

So I saw Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief last night at the dollar theater with a friend. It was actually pretty cool. I had read the reviews online where people said "It's basically like Harry Potter: instead of finding out he's a wizard, he finds out he's a demigod (the son of Poseidon), and instead of going to a school for wizards he goes to a camp for demigods."

I don't agree that it was like Harry Potter, mostly because the camp was pretty insignificant. It was all about this story of Percy and his friends going on an adventure to save his mom (rather than go to save the world from a war that only he and he alone can stop). Somehow even though he went on his own personal quest he also managed to stop the war of the Gods in literally the last second possible.

It was a good movie. There were some great effects with swirling water controlled by Percy, the son of Poseidon. There were also some rather nasty looking beasts they had to fight. There was also some great choreography of swordplay throughout the movie.

Now I get to finish my homework that is due in three hours! It shouldn't be a problem though. Computer Science homework can be fun to do. I'm giving a presentation on the programming language Ruby on Rails. Maybe I'll post a link of some webapps I make using it.

Start a Fire

I love stories of political uprising. Except that for the most part I only like them if they aren't based on true stories, or involving actual uprising events (such as the American Revolution or the French Revolution). I guess modern-day political uprising stories would be pretty cool too. The important thing is just pure fiction I think.

Although maybe I should try reading books about historical revolutions.

Right now I am reading 1984. I read about half of it when I was a teenager. I decided I wanted to finish what I started back then and read it all the way through. It's not exactly about starting a revolution, but it's along that same vein. I'm liking it pretty well so far.

Anthem

So I went to the library yesterday and looked for books I might want to read. I came out with a copy of Anthem by Ayn Rand. I started reading it as I embarked on the fifteen minute walk home. I finished reading it that same night (after watching Prince of Persia with some friends, which was awesome). I hadn't expected to read it all in one day. It was just too easy to get pulled into the book.

It is not that Anthem is the greatest book I've ever read by any means. It was just that the writing style was such that it was easy to continue reading until I finished it.

I don't want to go into a book review or report necessarily as I don't feel qualified to do that since I am not an English major. My opinion of it was that it was a short enough read (only 105 pages) and a good enough read that anyone who is interested in political or philosophical based books should pick it up.

I really love the writing style of Ayn Rand. Earlier this year I read Atlas Shrugged at the suggestion of my roommate. That was one of the best novels I've ever read. It's a bit longer at around 1170 pages but definitely worth reading. I don't agree with all of her views and philosophies, but I do enjoy reading them in the books she writes.

Reception

So today I went to my cousin's wedding reception. It was so great. I am so happy for her. The atmosphere there was so enjoyable. Who can go to a wedding reception and not enjoy themselves?

I invited my roommates to come with me. They all agreed to come, which was great. We had a lot of fun eating cake and being typical guys. That included making jokes about almost hitting on girls who turned out to be in High School, passing off a roommate as an extended relative, and other such things.

I just feel really great right now.

Risk

So I have played Risk about 10 times in the past two years. I've won 9 out of 10 of those games.

This past weekend was one of those winning games. A group of us got together and played on Friday night. There were seven people, so we teamed up having three groups of two and one person on their own. I was on a team with a friend who had never played Risk with other people, but had played it on an ipod touch plenty of times. We rocked.

My general strategy is to start in Africa. Some people like to go for Australia because it is easy to take, but I feel like it makes you too secluded. The only exit point is in Asia, and that is worthless for the first half of the game. Starting in Africa gives you the ability to take over South America.

Here is the coup de grâce of this strategy: Once you have control of Africa and South America you are able to stop anyone else from getting bonuses in their continent. From South America you can hit North America. From Africa you can hit Europe and Asia, removing all of their rights to continent bonuses. If done correctly you are removing 17 potential reinforcements to your enemies. That's power that you can't get from any other position on the board.

One other interesting thing I've noticed is that the one time that I did lose I sat where I wasn't facing the normal top down view of a map of the world. Every other game I've played I've sat specifically so that I could look at the world like a map. It just makes more sense in my plans and schemes for world domination.

Supercomputer

Yesterday my CS 330 professor took our class on a little field trip to see BYU's Supercomputer, Marylou. To be completely correct we only saw one part of Marylou. It is divided up between several different locations on BYU campus but is all the same computer.

It was so awesome. I've never seen anything like it before in my life. The floor was a grate where cooled air was blowing through. There were rows computer parts with wires plugging in everywhere and lights flashing on and off. There was an exhaust area where all the heat generated by hundreds of processors running at the same time was being removed. I immediately fell in love.

Who knew that such a beautiful thing existed in this world? I think I have found my calling in life.

One Missed Call

I just watched the movie One Missed Call at a friend's apartment. It was a scary movie about a girl who died while trying to make a call on her cell phone for help, so her ghost got caught in the cell phone. She then proceeded to call people who would consequently die.

It wasn't that great of a movie. The whole idea that the girl's spirit was in the phone and was killing people was kind of dumb. The first girl that died in the movie died because her cat was meowing at something in the water. When she went to look at whatever it was a gross hand shot out of the water and pulled her in, drowning her. The hand then grabbed the cat and pulled it into the water as well. I laughed at that part and felt comfortable knowing this was going to be a ridiculous movie rather than a super scary movie. As it turned out, I was right. (The youtube video linked there starts right after the girl is completely under the water.)

Afterwards we played Dr. Mario where I once again got my trash kicked. That was a fun way to re-enter reality after watching a semi-scary movie and getting into that mindset.

Reinterpretation

My present job is to find the bugs other people have written in programs and fix them. Today I searched through many lines of C code to find what was causing the program to crash. Every day that the bug isn't found is another day that would-be freshmen cannot apply to BYU (seeing as how the program being debugged is BYU's admissions web pages). It's not exactly the season for students to be applying to BYU though. That comes around October.

Yesterday I programmed all day in the language called Scheme for a project in CS 330. I was up until about 1:40 in the morning (late night) after having been programming since around 10:00 that previous morning. I got it all passed off though.

I discovered that I really like most of the music by Muse. I'd heard a few songs that I liked from them before. I started to listening to some more of their music and really liked it.

I also liked randomly going to a playground and playing tetherball and playing on the swings with friends late at night tonight. That was fun.

Late

I haven't gone to sleep earlier than midnight in about six weeks I think. I would like to go to sleep earlier so I could wake up earlier, but that is a difficult thing to do.

What would it be like to have a job where I worked all night and slept during the day? I could get home and be asleep by around 10:00 in the morning rather than going to sleep somewhere near 10:00 at night. I'd wake up at 6:00 - 7:00 that night to start my day. I think I would really like it. It's totally not feasible for college students (although that doesn't stop some people from doing it), but maybe once I graduated college I could do it.

The only job I in Computer Science that I've heard of being an overnight kind of job is penetration testing. Basically a penetration tester's job is to see if there is any way they can hack into a system or website to obtain or modify sensitive data. Some people do it at night and then send reports to the company for them to read the following day. Pretty neat stuff.

Starcraft 2 Beta

So I pre-ordered Starcraft 2 and therefore got invited to play the Beta. I've been pretty excited about it. It felt kind of like being one of the kids chosen to go into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. I used to read the posts players would make on the beta forums, and now I have my own chance to play and make posts on the forums.

So far I have proved that I am a terrible Starcraft 2 player. I wasn't the greatest Starcraft player to begin with, but this is just amazing how much better other players are than I am. There is a league system where you have to play five placement matches to determine your skill. They separate it up into 1v1 and 2v2 leagues. For the 1v1 league I won only one of the five placement matches. That put me in the lowest league there is. I was happy with that though since it meant I could play against players who were also not that great.

Unfortunately for the 2v2 placement matches I happened to have a rather strong player on my team. They helped me win most of the matches, resulting in being placed in a higher league. This now means that I am always the weakest player in any game I play in the 2v2 league. I don't like being forced to play against harder players like this. I wish I could demote myself to the lowest level league somehow.

It is a fun game though. I hope to play it with friends, since that is always more fun than just playing it with random gamers on the internet.

Dodge Ball

Yesterday we had our first dodge ball game this Spring. It started out with only four people there, so we played four square. When more people arrived we played dodge ball itself. It was so fun! I love playing this sport. BYU's dodge ball club is great at encouraging everyone to play. Essentially what I mean by that is every time someone opens the door thinking they will play basketball we all shout "Dodge ball!" or "Come play dodge ball!" at them. It doesn't usually work. It's so fun though.

I invited a few friends to come with me. I got return invites of "I can't go, but you should come to this brownie party" or else "I can't go, but you should come to this cinco de mayo party" in response. My response to this was more like YOU should come to dodge ball!

Because who wouldn't want to have dodge balls thrown at them at high speeds?

May the Fourth

Yesterday some clever people here put on a fun May the Fourth star wars party. I really enjoyed going to it, talking to people, watching star wars, eating chips and m&m's... just having fun really. I hadn't ever heard of / realized that May 4th is star wars day. I certainly agree with and endorse it though.

I'm only taking one class this semester: CS 330 -- Concepts of Programming Languages. It is a good class to take. I'm feeling like it encourages me to work harder to understand these ideas and practices in computer science. We're currently learning Lex and Yacc which are tools allowing us to write, among many other things, our own programming applications. That is so cool.

There are werewolves among us....

Okay, so this definitely has nothing to do with New Moon. Just in case you were wondering.

I moved to a new apartment complex for the Spring / Summer. It's really awesome. There are a lot of great people and it is a great social atmosphere. I feel like this new place has good potential.

Tonight after Ward Prayer I went to some friends' apartment for game night. There were like 15 people there! We played "After the manner of the Adverb" and "Psychiatrist" and "Werewolves." Those were some way fun games.

I'm glad to be here. I'm certainly not saying that my last ward was not social, but it just feels easier to meet new friends now. Maybe it is just because it is Spring term and I'm only taking one class (CS 330 -- Concepts of Programming Languages), so I feel like I have more time to do things like staying up until midnight playing social games.

I wrote a program in Python that calculates factorial numbers. It was my first non-"Hello, World!" program in this language. I'm excited to be learning it. That is, I'm just trying to learn it from online references. We'll see how it goes.

First Post!

Hello, World!

I officially have a blog. Now I can feel special and cool and awesome.

I have to go work on a project. The final project in my Computer Science 240 class here at BYU is to program Chess. It includes making the pieces smart enough to only move to legal positions according to the rules for that piece; finding check, checkmate, and stalemate conditions; implementing a save game and load game function; and implementing an undo button that can go all the way back to the initial positions of the board one click at a time.

It's pretty intense, but can be a lot of fun to work on. Basically I love programming.