What's in a name?

___Maybe, this is just me, but I've noticed that my memory, when it comes to specific things like names, numbers, phrases, etc, is pretty much non-existent. It's not that it's intentional, I understand perfectly well the difference it can make in any given conversation how well you know the other individuals names, it's just that they go in one ear and out the other. On the other hand, if I need to memorize a series of hot-keys or a list of command line prompts, I generally don't have to much of an issue.
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___Which brings the logical question, what exactly is so different between a name and an arbitrary sequence of characters?
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___Upon intensive analysis (read massive amounts of non-free time) I've come to the conclusion that what the real source of the issue is that I don't really identify people by name, number or phrase. When I meet someone very rarely will the conversation drift in the general direction of derivation of names or the importance of numbers like age, address or phone, and generally, even when the conversation does drift in those directions, age is avoided, address is largely irrelevant (unless its for e-mail), and phone numbers are generally looked up instead of remembered.
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___With that in mind, why is it that we should really remember names at all? They seem to be a terribly inefficient way of referencing and describing an individual.
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___Note to self: Find new way to reference beings.

Points

___I've always liked the idea behind Google maps, but in the past, I've generally thought of street view as little more than a cute gimmick. However, as I've recently had the opportunity to discover, this cute gimmick, integrated with the rest of Google Maps, can actually be quite useful.
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___In my case, I needed to take public transit from DU to a friends house. Normally, if it's your first time riding a route, it's difficult to know where, exactly you are getting on and getting off, what times to arrange for the buses and movement between routes (RTD's website has the option of creating somewhat obtuse routes for you, which are alright, so long as you know the transit system and the area pretty well, and you don't mind getting a little lost the first time you take a route).
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___With street view, that's not an issue. Street view can show literally every step of the way how you are getting from point a to point b. You can literally know what the bus stop looks like. More than that, since it has the bus/light rail/mall shuttle schedules already programmed in. It can also give times for pick-up and drop-off, along with an estimate of walking speed from getting between routes and end-points. All in all, it means that a trip that would normally be somewhat stressful and slightly complicated, is now completely simple.
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___Points for Google.

Broomball?!?

___Today, (technically night, but anyway) I discovered learned played had fun with a game played locally on campus, between dorms. The name of the game (as one may be able to guess from the post title) is broomball.
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___What is broomball?
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___Broomball is a sport played on ice, while wearing regular shoes, where, with a stick with a small 5" wide flat shovel on the end, you try to knock a tiny, 7" in diameter, soft, ball into small hockey goals (about 5' across and 4' high). This is played on a third of a rink with anything that goes into the other two thirds, past the blue third-line, counting as out, where the ball is then passed back in, from the side-line, by the opposite team of the one that knocked the ball out. Since it is a "co-ed" game at least two girls must be on the ice at any time, and any goal score by a girl counts as two points. The rest of the team is made up of two other players (male or female) and a goalie (also male or female).
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___As one might guess, the game is oddly fast and slow, with everyone going as fast as they can without (hopefully) falling. As one might also guess, this means that falls happen at least once per player (a lot more if you aren't very balanced to begin with) and any challenge being met with either cation or reckless abandon.
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___Sound exciting dangerous interesting silly, you'd be right, but it is also a helluva lot of fun...
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___so long as you don't really value your knees. (who needs knees anyway, walking laying down sitting bending and unbending you knees is really overrated anyway)

Because I Can!

___So, here I am, obviously without enough to fill my time (yeah right) and so I've come to the decision that I need to be able to do things faster, lots faster.
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___How, you might ask? I will need to learn VI and Dvorak.
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___I figure, added to my growing knowledge of UNIX, c and c++, this should allow me to do pretty much anything instantaneously. BTW, For those to whom VI means something along the lines of Virtual Intelligence or some such, VI, in this case is a high powered command line text editor. (As an interesting, albeit complex, side note: the name VI is derived from the abbreviation of the visual command in the EX line editor on which VI is built) As a further explanation to those who do not know about Dvorak, Dvorak is a keyboard layout created to improve typing efficiency by rearranging the positions of the letters on the keyboard. (ie: if you typed an "f" on a QWERTY keyboard, you would type a "u" on a Dvorak keyboard.)
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___What is truly cool about VI is the fact that it is run purely from the terminal. Want to make a new text file? Just type "vi filename" in any terminal window and VI will open in the terminal a new blank file name what ever "filename" you used. Finished editing and want to get back the the terminal? just type ":wq" and VI will write the file and exit, bringing back the terminal it was opened from. Even better, since VI comes standard on any UNIX machine (this would be a good time to note that Apple's OS X is UNIX based) you can use this editor without having to worry about having to install anything, ie. I can go to any school UNIX workstation (ie. any computer in the computer lab) and start using VI. Awesome!
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___Dvorak, on the other hand, puts all of the keys you use the most on the home row. (the row your fingers are resting on) This statistically improves efficiency by 8 to 20 times, and accuracy by 2 to 6 times. Pretty cool!
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___The only downside is the learning time. VI has around 40 different commands to memorize which, admittedly, you really only need to know about 15. And Dvorak takes a decent chunk of time to relearn how to type. The only silly thing is that if I plan on passing all of my classes this quarter this is probably my best bet. :)

Everyone loves Excel!

___This is a simple comparison I ran in Excel. Mainly to try to find Molly's secret to success. After intensive study, (read 30min of down time) I have come to the conclusion that Molly is just plain insanely fast when compared to the rest of us mortals. I decide to put it up here though as it does a decent job of displaying people's playing styles.













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___BTW: if you want to be able to actually see the text you might want to open the image in another window, just a thought. ;-/

Oh, of course the program is free.

___While procrastinating on homework today I came across a rather interesting ad for GIMP (an open source (read free) photo editing program). To be more specific it was an ad for GIMP tutorials.
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___By my reckoning there are at least three things wrong with this ad:
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___First, the entire point of using GIMP is that it is pretty much as powerful as Photoshop with the important side note that it's free, Photoshop is around $300 (for the student version, its $700 for anyone else). It might also be the time to note that the tutorial advertised was selling for $300.
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___Second, there are probably over 1,000,000 excellent Photoshop tutorials online that only use basic photo editing functions non-unique to Photoshop (And easy to find in GIMP) just a Google search away, and none of them cost. On top of that GIMP, being the open source program that it is, has a large online support community full of tutorials and forums with helpful people that spend more time that sense showing you how to do anything you could possibly want to do in GIMP.
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___Third, and perhaps most importantly, the ad was advertising for GIMP version 1.4, the current version is 2.6.
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___I have to ask, who in their right mind is actually going to buy this? Maybe it's better just not to ask.

It's like a drug

___I'm proud to say that my editing habit is down to just a couple photos a day. It may be hard to believe, but photo editing is addictive. It's 2 parts control, 6 parts power, 3 parts illusion, and maybe 1 part boredom. I'm pretty sure you can talk to anyone who owns (and uses) a photo editing program, you can't just edit for a couple seconds. You can't just touch-up a couple things and leave the rest of the photo alone. You may start with the objective of just evening out the shadows but, low and behold, four hours later you're still cleaning up the acne off the faces and tweaking that red channel for a little more color in the cheeks.
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___It's not even your fault really, you're just trying to make things right. The tools are in front of you, it would be wrong not to make the poor souls in front of the camera look their best. After all, they are dependent on your abilities to make their permanent presence on your hard drive a pleasant existence. There's almost a code of honor involved in making sure that a bad picture won't lay quietly, hidden deviously, on you computer, waiting for the right moment to bring an awkward social situation to the light.
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___On top of that, there is of course the pressure that is put on the photographer to take the best pictures that they can. Let's face it, sometimes even the best of pictures (or photographers) need a little bit of correction. Worse, it's always possible that the viewers of the images will know that this set of images has rested on your computer, they will ask why, when any of the images isn't perfect. Not one photo editor (amateur or otherwise) wants to face a day when they must choose between shame and keeping an image that has potential for greatness.
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___And that's probably the worst part, you won't know if an image can be great unless and until you start playing around with it. Even then, you need practice to make sure that it isn't you that is bringing the image quality down like bad image compression. In order to do that you need a lot of photos. More than that, they shouldn't all be yours. You can hardly call yourself a photo editor if all you edit is your own stuff! And this, my friends, is where the downhill slope begins.
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___The signs are small at first, an innocent Google search for photo editing lessons or tutorials, a few small side projects from friends and before you know it you're doing mass searches through thousands of images just to find those few that have that potential to be great. By then you're already hooked in and invested, hours of searching later you realize that you have to spend at least that amount of time editing.
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___You find a few images from your massive search, at least a dozen (for variety), and you start with the first. You begin simply, some color correction, evening out the levels, but then you have to ask, Am I really pushing myself? Is this really the best that I can do? From there its only another short step to asking, Why should I stop with the data that's on the image? Why shouldn't I fill in the blanks?
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___And you enter into the world of, not just image editing, but image reconstruction. From there, image construction. Just having one image won't be enough anymore, you need lots of images, and you can only combine the best parts of each one. A picture of a friends face can suddenly be the quest for that one picture with just the right nose, or eyebrows. Reality soon has no bounds. Why, after all, should you stop with just what is real? This is the computer age and in your own private world (on your computer) YOU are GOD! The pixels are yours to command, the channels yours to change at whim, the entire landscape of color, light and texture merely a pallet to display your brilliance!
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___...
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___Sometime, probably weeks later, a friend (former, deities have no friends (only subjects)) will find you passed out, close to death next to your computer. You won't be able to speak beyond the hex codes for the pretty colors that are dancing before your vision (hex codes that extend beyond the boring 128 bit colors that normal people see in). If you're lucky, your friend will take pity on you and, after wiping your hard drive, take you to rehab.
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___After a few weeks you'll start to come back down. The looks you will get from former subjects will be the hardest, but after a while, you can find your way back to normal. Given enough time, you will even be able to look a picture again without loosing control. Usually, after years of counseling, you can go back to your computer. Pixels are just dots of color on a screen again, channel information and histograms only funny words part of a distant, intentionally forgotten, past.
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___Finally, with help, you can start editing again. It won't be the same anymore. The fire, the power that was there before will have been replaced by fear. Fear of losing yourself again. Comments on your pictures will have the sickeningly sweet taste of an adult telling a child that the scribbles on the page do indeed look like a giraffe. It isn't done to hurt you, just to make sure you know they value you as a friend to much to let it go to your head. Maybe someday, twenty years down the road, you will look back on this a tell it as a story to your children. Maybe...

Thanks Mom

These came from Mom's trip to the farm.

Original:
















Edited:
















Original:
















Edited:

Thanks Glen

Glen, thanks for the great profile photo...

Original:

















Basic Color and Levels correction:

















Finishing Manual Touch-up:

Last straw

___Okay, so today I open my mail and, as is a fairly common occurrence, one of the messages is from my grandfather (on my mother's side). This message, like many that he sends me, is fairly religious in nature and in specific it is about the fact that the Christian religion has a large influence on our government. To be precise, it notes that the ten commandments and various bible verses are all over our central government buildings and that according to James Madison (fourth president):

"We have staked the whole of all our political Institutions upon the capacity of mankind for Self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to The Ten Commandments of God."

___Alright, as far as that goes, after all, the general purpose of the ten commandments is to keep an orderly society, the only real thing I have an issue with was toward the end where the e-mail goes on to complain about the fact that, although 86% of Americans believe in god, there seems to be a great deal of complaint about the fact that the ten commandments are displayed so gratuitously throughout our government and "In God We Trust" is printed on our currency and is part of the pledge of allegiance. The writer's purposed solution to this is to just tell the other 14% of the nation to "Sit Down and SHUT UP!!!"
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___Seriously? In a nation founded on the principles of freedom and free speech, you seriously just think we should ignore and/or repress 14% of us some 40 million people just because they don't agree with the majority. I recognize that it may come as a shock in a predominately christian society, used to being told what to do, think and reject out of hand, but I enjoy and benefit from people disagreeing with me, even, and perhaps especially, when I'm certain that I'm right. The entire reason that this nation is as powerful and advanced as it is is due to the fact that unlike almost anywhere else in the entire world, we are free to spout our own opinions and that is a great thing so long as your opinions don't include, as a presupposition, that everyone else must be wrong and you don't even want to hear what they want to say.
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___Honestly, is it that hard to have someone out there that doesn't see your point of view? Even though I disagree with the email there isn't a chance in hell I'd tell the writer just to shut up.
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___The title of the email is "Agree or Delete". I'm sending it back with the title it should have had to begin with, "Agree or Debate", along with the text above.

My Wednesday Classes as Code

public class Day{
___String dayOfWeek;
___int seconds;
___int minutes;
___int hours;
___boolean awake;
___
___public static void main(String[] args){
______Day nd = new Day("Wednesday");
______int[] wakeUp = {8, 30, 0};
______int[] gotoSleep = {22, 0, 0};
______int[][][] classTimes = {{{10, 0, 0}, {11, 50, 0}},
_________{{13, 0, 0}, {13, 50, 0}},
_________{{16, 0, 0}, {17, 50, 0}}};
______int classNum = 0;
______int inClass = 0;
______while(nd.hours < 24){
_________while(nd.minutes < 60){
____________while(nd.seconds < 60){
_______________if(nd.hours >= gotoSleep[0] &&
_______________nd.minutes >= gotoSleep[1] &&
_______________nd.seconds >= gotoSleep[2]){
__________________awake = false;
_______________}else{
__________________if(nd.hours >= wakeUp[0] &&
__________________nd.minutes >= wakeUp[1] &&
__________________nd.seconds >= wakeUp[2]){
_____________________awake = true;
__________________}
_______________}
_______________if(awake && classNum < classTimes.length &&
_______________classTimes[classNum][inClass][0] == nd.hours &&
_______________classTimes[classNum][inClass][1] == nd.minutes &&
_______________classTimes[classNum][inClass][2] == nd.seconds){
__________________if(inClass == 0){
_____________________inClass = 1;
__________________}else{
_____________________classNum++;
_____________________inClass = 0;
__________________}
_______________}
_______________nd.seconds++;
____________}
____________nd.minutes++;
____________nd.seconds = 0;
_________}
_________nd.hours++;
_________nd.minutes = 0;
______}
___}
___
___public Day(String day){
______dayOfWeek = day;
______seconds = 0;
______minutes = 0;
______hours = 0;
______awake = false;
___}
}

Thanks Ian

___So, Ian took an absolutely fabulous picture (actually he has taken a lot) and I decided that I could resist the urge to edit it. Here is the original:

















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___Then I did the basic color and levels correction:

















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__And finally I cleaned up the rest of the image by hand:

















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___Enjoy!

I knew algebra had to come in handy somewhere!

___I have officially decided that I need to derive a formula for the amount of time gained or lost by using a new technology or methodology. Why? Because with such a formula I will be able to tell ahead of time whether learning something new is a worthwhile effort or just something to do for fun.
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___To that end, I first define the primitive parts of the equation:
C: current time spent on a task in hours/day (total time spent)
M: minimum time spent on a task in hours/day (time spent working)
A: available time in hrs/day (free time)
E: percent efficiency increase of new method (benefit of the new method)
L: time to proficiency in hours (learning time)
N: time until the new method needs to be mastered in days (deadline to completion)
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___With those I can then find:
W = C - M: time not spent on work (wasted time)
R = W + A: total free time (the real amount of free time)
G = M * E: efficiency increase in hours (time gained)
P = L / N: the number of hours per day needed for learning (practice time)
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___And once I have that I just compare:
G > W: Do you gain more time than you are wasting?
P < R: Do you have the time to practice?

Hooray for C!

___So, as part of my ongoing foray into the world of Ubuntu (the version of Linux I'm currently using) I spent most of yesterday getting a simple C program to work. This might be the best time to note that, while Java (the programming language I'm fluent in) was built with the motto, "We can do anything that every other computer can do." C seems to have been built with the motto, "We can do anything your computer can do." As a result a Java manual has a very specific list of function and a very strict protocol as to how those functions are called and what they will return. Any C manual I've found, however, reads something like a list of things that it might be capable of. For example: (In Java) Calling the Integer.parseInt(String):int will return a 32bit signed integer to the program. (In C) Calling Math.parseInt(String):int can return anything from a 32 to 64 bit number that can be either signed or unsigned based on your processor, operating system and your computers implementation of C. As one might imagine, the difference between a nice 32bit signed integer and a 64bit unsigned integer is somewhat extreme. As a result, while making this "simple" program yesterday, the greater part of the day was spent finding out how any of the functions I used actually worked on my system, but I digress.
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___The simple program works something like this. It's purpose is to guess the number that you are thinking of. It first asks you for the top most number in the range of numbers to guess from by making you choose the next highest power of two for that number. ie. if you want the computer to guess between 0 and 100 you would type seven for the next highest power of 2. 2^7 = 128 The computer then guesses at the middle of your chosen range and asks you if that was the number that you are thinking of. If it is the right number the computer wins, if it wasn't, the computer asks whether your number is higher or lower than that number (thereby cutting the range of numbers to guess from in half.) The computer then guesses at the middle of this new range and asks it that number is your number and so on until the computer finds your number.
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___In theory, this program is very simple it really only needs 5 basic functions and two data types: a function to get input from the user(Q for question), a function to send output to the user(P for print), a looping function(L for loop), a function to test the user's response(T for test), a function to jump around the code(J for jump), a number data type(N for number) and an alphabetical character data type(C for character). The program then works like this:

range(N) = "What power of 2 would you like to guess to?"(Q)
currentGuess(N) = range / 2
as long as the computer hasn't guessed the right number(L)
   response(C) = "Is currentGuess your number? (y/n)"(Q)
   if response = y(T)
      exit the loop(J)
   if response = n(T)
      range = range / 2
      response = "Is your number higher or lower? (h/l)"(Q)
      if response = h(T)
         currentGuess = currentGuess + range
      if response = l(T)
         currentGuess = currentGuess - range
loop
"I win! Your number is currentGuess."(P)
response = "Would you like to play again? (y/n)"(Q)
if response = y(T)
   goto the start of the program(J)
if response = n(T)
   exit the program

___In Java this might take me five minutes to code. In C it took me over four hours, during which I had four different bowser windows open for reference, one text editor open for coding, one terminal window open to run the code, and one file browser open to make sure all of the files were in the right place.
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___At the end of that period in time, sitting satisfied with the laptop perched on my legs I took to the time to revel in the finished product and then made the easy mistake of thinking about what I had actually accomplished. The entirety of this story can effectively be compressed down to:
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___I coded for four hours and made a computer guess the number I was thinking of.
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___Hooray for me?

Just don't get a D

___So... there I am on the first day of classes, still not registered, when I walk into the registrar's office. First of all, the place is packed; I don't know about the thirty other students in line, but for me it was impossible for me to register sooner than that morning. Second, while all each student needs to do (in theory) is give the office one slip of paper, for some reason each person take about three minutes to accomplish this task. When I finally got to the front of the line with my slip of paper, some thirty minutes later, I realized why. Instead of just handing in a slip of paper, they have to go through their computer system to check if you can, in fact, register for the class that you have on your slip of paper. Fine, that makes sense, except that when I tried to register for a class I didn't pass the first time, the system won't let me. Why? Because I got a D in the class instead of an F...
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___Wait, what? No, it is in fact true, if you fail a class you can retake it without anyone complaining, but if you only get a D you must get the instructors permission to register for said class. More than that, if you got an F in a class, retaking the class will and passing will replace the F on your transcript whereas retaking and passing with a D will just average out the grades on your final GPA.
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___Fine, lesson learned. If I'm struggling with a class in the future I won't even try to get to the C, it's a much better idea to fail it completely and try again next time.

It's only one class, what harm could it do?

____This quarter I decided (am required) to take a course called "Introduction to Systems Programming." The goal of this course is to learn C and C++. At first this may seem AWESOME, until you realize why the course is called systems programming. The entirety of the course is to be conducted on the Linux operating system, where the language C is, in fact, the language in which the operating system is written. This might be the best time to mention that I know nothing about Linux, C or C++. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm as eager to finally learn how Linux works as I am to learn C and C++, I'm just not wild about the idea of learning all three at the same time to reach a certain level of proficiency in 10 weeks or less while my GPA hangs in the balance.
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____So... to ace pass prevent a D from appearing on my transcript for this course, I decided to do something that I have always resisted in the past: get a tutor work with my peers learn from the textbook spend ungodly hours insane days absolutely anything I have vaguely resembles "free" or otherwise "wasted" time programing and using the Linux operating system.
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____Now some of you who know me may say, "How exactly is that different from what you normally do?" To which I might reply, "Ummm... murmle fzbtzs brainz" due to a lack of sleep and caffeine. In truth, the only real difference between this and my normal routine will be that, if I pass the course, I'll probably never be able to go back to either Windows or OS X and, more likely than not, I will be so hopelessly glued to my computer that my hands won't be able to leave the keys for any reason short of switching to a newer computer and I will have become so sensitive to light that I will have to wear sunglasses just to look at my computer screen.

Blog

SO, in a random act of desperation creativity boredom curiosity, I decided that what I really need in my life is a blog. Why? (one might ask) Because I figure this will be a fun way to add something silly to my list of things to do. On this blog I intend to keep a jumbled collection of various ideas which will usually take the form of anything from pieces of creative writing to rants on whatever happens to be on my mind. With that in mind I expect this blog to be updated on the regular schedule of whenever I feel like it; and to be enjoyed commented on entertaining read by anyone who gets a random urge to find out what is on my mind at the moment but are afraid unsure how not quite curious enough to ask.