Thanksgiving break.

It is the second day, so far, of the break and I am stuck here in the dorm. I would go home if I really needed to, but other than that I think it is better that I am here. There’s no one to talk to, but that’s fine. I’ve never really had people to talk to endlessly anyway. As life goes on, I’ll just keep doing my work and piano practice. The guys here wanted to know what would I do around here and I answered “programming”. Programming is the only thing to do in order to advance. Practice? No, I’m making a new website, which is sort of like my old one. Hmm, maybe I should start freelancing. Anyway, it is pretty lonely here. I guess I was technically invited to spend a week in Chicago, which would have saved me 125 bucks, but eh one day there is enough. The invite was shocking because I never expected anyone to invite me to their place. Hmph, it’s awfully nice though. Kind of wish I said yes at the time, ehhhh, oh well.

I couldn’t say I don’t like it here in the dorms though. This place is empty… it’s like a ghost town. Okay, maybe not to that extreme because there are some people here. It is just that the piano rooms are empty meaning I get exclusive access to them. WOOoooOooo!!!! The lounges and the computer room are open. I have a laptop, but no printer. One of the lounges allow me to get foooooooood…. okay junk food…, but any food is food during this point in time when the cafeteria is closed.

Look on the bright side, no classes for a week and no people to distract me from working. I think this is going to be a productive week towards my personal project. I should be studying for finals, but eh that can wait.

12th week of College….

It has been a fun week. Note the sarcasm! College work is so much fun. I’m not too stressed all the time with work because I intend to get my degree while coming out of sane. Some people that I know have more work than I and I say! Good! I’m not going crazy for my first semester as a freshman.

I am only worried about my math grade because I haven’t been up to date with the work that we are doing. I get the gist of what the math teachers are saying, but I don’t progress on those ideas. I only seem to work on problems that I have trouble with, which is beneficial but I don’t practice enough to consider myself an adept math person anymore. Understanding what the professor says in class is pretty boring because he does the problems quickly. I’ve been staying awake in class, but I can’t always follow because I am hungry, tired, or confused. It is usually my fault if I am tired, hungry, or confused. I take responsibility for being confused because I should have read the math topic he was going to lecture on and then try a little bit of problems that I think I can tackle. Afterwards, going to lecture and understanding what he is doing should be a piece of cake. Hopefully… no I will change my habit. My mathematical competence is on the line here.

I have a problem and that is choosing between Math/CS and regular CS. The difference I see is choose a Math focused CS major means I have to take more intensive math courses for the rest of the year, while a regular CS major means I will have to take Physics and Chemistry. The bottom line is I am interested in Math/Physics/Chemistry or at least want to take a Physics and Chemistry course anyway. Chemistry is touted to be a hard course from what I hear, but I do not think the complainers are self motivated enough to pursue the class because it is possible that they do not see any potential use of Chemistry in the future. Charlie, a friend, says he doesn’t see any good use for chemistry anytime in the future, which is why he doesn’t like it, but he still goes to the class. He is motivated to get past the one year of Chemistry even though he doesn’t like it. It is sufficient to be motivated enough to get past the class… sometimes.

GS 102 on Thursday was pretty dramatastic. I couldn’t tell, if some people were being sarcastic or if they were playing along, but I say it was a funny class! I moved away from another girl in my class, but ended up with her anyway. I moved because of 2 reasons.. 1. I wanted to see what she would do and 2. It is funny. She didn’t do what I expected, which surprised me. Anyway, it is not like I dislike anyone in the class. Takes a lot to convince me to dislike or hate you. I guess I should act a little less assholeish though. I’m a blend of being a nice, smart-ass, and serious person.

I haven’t been the most energetic of people this week, but then again when am I? I’m that usually boring || nontalkative || techno geek that you won’t know until you ask questions or understand until you draw sparse connections.

Off to work!

How I spent my Halloween day.

Rewinding to Friday, I asked people where they were going and some didn’t know where they were going still, others were being exclusive, and others were doing nothing. I wanted to be one of the ones going to a party, but anyone who doesn’t know I don’t drink so, I won’t go to a drinking party by myself. It’s my fault entirely for not wanting to drink, but fine, parties aren’t defined by how much drinks are there. Choosing not to drink is the best thing for me right now and besides I am not 21 yet. Sure other people drink before they are 21, but I am not other people so I could careless about drinking at an early age. I probably won’t drink until I’m 30, who knows? Until I am past 21, I am not drinking and that is absolutely final. Being pressure to drink has no effect because I actually stick to my principals. Anyway, I was a little annoyed at the indirect answers I was getting when I asked to tag along with people I asked. Fine, that’s over and done with.

Saturday started out as a usual day except I decided to wear my military costume to lunch because I thought I looked funny in it. I went into Charlie’s(floormate/friend) room to whine about the whole “I want to experience college parties” belief I have…. so Brandon(floormate/friend) comes in to the room and decides to ask Charlie to play Age of the Empires. Hmph, I went into my room thinking about why couldn’t I go to parties or why can’t people just say no directly. Whatever… later on I came out of my room and saw a 4 person lan party. It is pretty fun to watch who is losing since you see the actions they take in order to get themselves out of a tight spot in the game. It makes sense to see how the other people are dominating, but I’m a beginner and want to learn how other people get out of problematic situations. The game ends with Brandon winning (I believe), so we decide to go to lunch. 8 person lan party topic pops up and we talk about how to do it. My solution works on the first try, yeah! Anyway, we started at 8 o’clock with 7 people with teams of 2 except Brandon being by himself. Brandon is really good at this game, so it is logical that he is by himself. During the game we were all attacked by Brandon’s forces one by one, but I pleaded and he spared me to the end. Apparently, I had no chance of winning because I had no real military to fight with, which isn’t a logical strategy. I had a good economy going, but no “standing” military to protect it. When Brandon’s forces came into my base, he ravaged it and I had no chance of survival. That’s the end of the first game. To fast forward this, I lost all the games I played throughout 4am with me being the lowest scorer. Of course, there were jokes, sarcasm, and people giving us candies. We were even offered free pizza.

To end this, well I thought this day would be the usual, but I had fun even though no parties. It is ironic that I was welcome to come to a Haunted House party while we were getting the LAN stuff rolling. After all of the whining, it is funny because I didn’t want to go anymore. Sure the Haunted House stuff would have been fun, but there was no way I could miss out on the LAN party we had going. My inner nerdiness took over for the rest of the night. Heck yeah, glad I stayed here. That is pretty much my day.

Lack of sleep…

For the past three days I have slept for about 10 hours and I feel wide awake. The main reason? Learning the piano. I really want to improve at it and therefore have taken the liberty of taking part of my night’s worth of sleep to improving at piano. My last post has my reasons for playing piano, so from those reasons I feel I want to learn it while the thought of it lasts and while time avails. The side effect is that I don’t have the energy to suppress my urges to talk and control myself and I think that is a good thing. I can’t say for sure if lack of sleep is the reason for my new found interactivity since there are several other factors. Maybe a composition of all of the factors have led to my expression. I feel pretty good right about now and I will take advantage of it while it lasts.

2 groups of people at separate instances in two days talked about drinking to me saying that it is a good way to loosen up and socialize. Hah! It probably is, but I will not do it just because other people say so or from indirect pressure. When I feel it is time to try a drink it will be when I am not in college. Stress can be dealt with in many ways and I feel there are better ways to deal with it than drinking. That probably sounds like I’m putting people down for dealing with stress by drinking, to which I explicitly say “I am not.” Drinking is the easy way and I am opposed to it. Blow off peer pressure like it is dust. I won’t be pressured into drinking, maybe a soda (huh!), but not alcohol. Pressssssuuuuurrrreeeeeee is nothing when you really think about it, but submit to it and it is something. Your friends won’t abandon you because you won’t do something you don’t want.

Get the urge to do something today and stay awake all night!

Learning Piano

I declared on October 9th that I would learn how to play the piano. It seems that I am progressing right along quicker than expected. Am I really a fast learner? Dang… then I am being lazy when I don’t understand some things or it is just that my head is pretty empty. Nevertheless, it has been effectively 2 weeks since I’ve said I would learn piano and I can play 4 songs satisfactorily.

The four songs I’ve learned, so far, are Mario Overworld Theme(30 seconds), Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Happy Birthday, and Jingle Bells. I can say I am not happy with these results, but I can’t say that I am overly happy. I want to learn more songs and learn how to play chords. Chords make the songs sound more lively and emotional. Hmmm, that will be my goal for the next week. Learn how to play chords, Mary had a Little Lamb, and maybe Zelda Theme(30 seconds).

Anyway, I got into learning how to play piano because I’d like to play these songs to someone some day, write my own songs to or about someone some day, or even teach it to someone some day. I am interested in learning new things as well as thinking of the possibilities in the future, but I guess wanting to play songs to a certain people is a good motivator as well. Since I am a programmer and since piano is pretty repetitive, so I guess they go hand in hand.

P.S. A friend who knows how to play is nice to have, as well. I was going at it alone at first, but hey any help is good help.

Analysis of my life, so far.

I think it is about time I wrote this post. Reminiscing about what I did in the past really adds up and motivates me for the future. I don’t do it much, which is why I believe I must keep on trying. I believe in hard work, motivation, effort.

It seems… Not even.. I know I have been losing belief in the last two. Has this been accepted by me before? Yeah sure, but I have not done much to prove to myself that I can regain those two beliefs. It must be the fear of losing belief in hard work if I am to fail at something else so I try to stay strong strong by keeping myself busy. Keeping busy is how I deal with current events no matter what happens because there is always something to do.

There is always something to do in the computer and art world, but to stay motivated is challenging because if you put too much effort into something and it doesn’t come out the way you want it, then you are less likely to put as much effort into your next creation and the cycle continues. I’ve been trying to break this cycle for some time and see some improvement. I haven’t done any digital art since I left for college, but have been dong some programming and drawings on paper. Maybe… I have too many aspirations and expectations, which is why I cannot continue to go through this cycle of putting too much effort and time into something and end up trashing it later. Ever since my first website, I’ve wanted to improve at PHP and when I took it down, I wanted to create a new and improved one. My first site had its problems, but they were usually fixed. I know if my next site is like the first one, then I will lose my beliefs in hard work, high motivation, and enough effort.

Actually, I was supposedly supposed to have this site up last year(2008), but that didn’t happen because of procrastination. Boy, putting things off until another time is pretty damaging to yourself. I say that because it begins another problem of piling up work and then putting pressure on yourself. When you feel the pressure, things will happen. Ever watch Hell’s Kitchen? People who are supposed to be good at cooking food are put under pressure from the master chef, teammates, and themselves. Putting yourself in those situations should be avoided, but how? How is that possible when it can be second nature to procrastinate?

It is time for me to realize facts and face my future. I need to start organizing myself accordingly. Keeping a personal journal is a good idea, but not writing in it makes it useless. Keeping a bunch of papers around you because of the next big idea isn’t a bad diea, but it is useless if you don’t have brainstorming times. Keeping working in your sights because you know you want to complete it is fine, but if you never get to it then what was the point? See my point? As this list grows, I am on the road to being disorganized and keeping my cycle of procrastination current. Why don’t I just pick up a pen and start doing something that pertains to the work or reminds me of the work. Going head on with work is probably a bad idea, since I might just drop it somewhere and say “yeah.. uh huh do it later.” Writing in a journal about the work and how bad it is can have an effect of wanting to do the work now that you have expressed yourself. Now you want to get over with it, but it can have an opposite effect as well. I need to keep myself motivated to do something (getting over with work can keep people motivated to do work) and then my other two beliefs will follow through. This certainly relates to why different states try to pay students to pass tests. Using money as a motivator works to a certain extent, but I think trying to be self motivated is desirable.

Well, I am in college now and am trying to have fun at the same time keep hard at working on whatever work that is assigned. Wanting to have fun is a good motivator, I hope I can do so since there are many people who have done this. Time in college is not all fun and games although I wish. I must ask, what is the point of all of this?

It is about time I started figuring out the big picture right now and then start to narrow the scope. College is just one part of the future, but figuring out my potentialities and life details is a better idea. I haven’t been paying attention to my past details and I think writing about them will give me an idea of what I want to do.

My current typical week.

Since it is the start of classes I do not expect much from the first week. Before that was a bunch of parties and such. I am currently in the Division of General Studies therefore I am undeclared at this point in time.

Anyway, my current days in class are pretty boring and the reason why is stated above. I have math 221 four days a week, heh. Lecture, discussion, lecture, discussion. I guess that’s fine considering discussion is for practical problems. I’ve only had CS once, so I cannot judge this class in this point in time. I picked psychology because Sigmund Freud is pretty interesting from what I’ve read so far. I am currently in the introduction of psychology and expect something from this class. There is one class that is still TBA, which is unbelievable at this point in time.

Thursday is the worst day for me since I am pretty much in class from 9:30 to like 3:20PM. This is a 40 minute difference from the second class to the third class, but I do not feel like coming back to the dorm for those 40 minutes. Next class is somewhere away, so what the heck I rather walk there then walk to my dorm and back the same road. I think it is pretty good that there is a 40 minute break between the 2 groups of 2 classes.

Friday is the most relaxed day I have on schedule. Only one class and that is Computer Science 125, thank youuuuuuu.

Personally I think my schedule is pretty balanced, since my week of classes graphed is practically zig-zag. There is one class still missing though…..

Attempting a new programming language.

I’ve been looking at assembly for sometime and I felt yesterday that it was the time to learn it. Yeah! Finally! I am not expecting to do something useful with it yet. I think the reason why is self explanatory, this is assembly man or woman!

Many people seem to think newbies want to learn a programming language in seconds or days. Maybe some do… My take on the matter is that newbies just want to do something in a programming language, which is one of the reasons why many newbies resort to copy and paste methods. There are simple things that newbies can do and some are be patient, read, write, learn, and stop looking for instant gratification. When you program something useful then you can look for all the gratification in the world. Until then, sit put and learn. From what I’ve seen, tutorials seem to throw things at the newbies because it is assumed that the person reading the tutorial knows this stuff. I think it should be a universal truth that most people will not start from the beginning of a programming language until they see they can do something useful with the programming language. That CONTRADICTS the reason of learning a programming language then. Learning a programming language in an attempt to do something useful with it, yet doing something useful now means you will have done something useful, therefore there is no point in starting from the beginning! Of couse, there are many different takes on this matter, but this is just my view.

I remember those days of looking at ‘How to create win32 windows’ tutorials and being overwhelmed with code and explanation of things I never seen. The code wasn’t esoteric; all of it was readable. I could not understand some of the explantations because I had no idea what some of the basics were. I asked myself questions like ‘wtf is a HANDLE?’, ‘wtf is a word, DWORD’, ‘what is an _stdcall?’ or even ‘what is all of this’. Sure a HANDLE could be explained as being an object that refers to an address in computer memory, but what would I have understood from that? I wanted to know how do I use it rather than what it was. That is a symptom of no patience!

Today, I look at assembly and say: “I know some of this stuff” because I’ve looked at assembly code time to time and read explanations on what the code did and meant rather than read from a book. Books at helpful in ways, but do not usually have good styles to adapt to.

So my advice for attempting a new programming language is to look at other people’s code from time to time. See if anything can be redone in a simpler way, or if there are apparent bugs. The most important thing when looking at something you do not understand is to LOOK IT UP. I mean seriously, what is so hard about looking things up? GOOGLE IT. BING IT! They work just fine. Sure, there are certain things that are ambigious, but usually there are so many apparent references to look at that there are no questions asked! Unless, the question being asked is about efficency, common use, or something of the like. To me, asking ‘what is print’ or ‘how to make cout or cin work?’(many examples show how to use them!!) are stupid and should be avoided. More advice: Read articles, write code, write thoughts on a book, practice design. It really depends on preference, whether you are learning a language to read and write or just to read. If you are looking to read another programming language, write minimal code… at least.

Anywho. Just my thoughts. Many experienced programmers are correct that newbies ask many stupid questions and i agree! Who says there is no such thing as a stupid question? The patience of some of these programmers is astounding. <— see keyword patience.

PHP OO thinking in a flash!

I’ve been dong some extensive PHP OOP lately and found that it is easier to discard many principles of OOP such as the Single Responsibility Pirnciple. Single Responsibility (in a nutshell)  is every object / function has one main responsiblity. It is challenging to break the usual thoughts of procedural programming where everything is programmed from top down. Essentially, having a procedural style of programming means you are thinking like a computer.

Well, how can one start thinking about objects as people? So far, I’ve found PHPFreaks OOP (3 parts to it), Object Thinking, Code Complete 2, and Pragmatic Programmers: Journeyman to Master very good resources.

I think of every object as some type of room, person, or other metaphor. Some objects will be books (Data aggregators, structs), People (Managers, workers, etc.), and rooms (Lists, arrays, stacks, etc.). The point is if you think of an object as different materials, then you tend to see the classes, functions, and properties you need to write onto paper. Example is: I have a room full of books. I need this person to retrieve a book from a room and tell me what is the author’s name. Book has the authors name, room has the book, person need to search the list to retrieve the book and finally ‘gimme’ the author’ name. It is one way of looking at OO thinking, so you can come up with different associations and bound together.

You are using the real world as a model and attempting to replicate it, always remember that.

Testing application spreading.

Ahhh, fresh Vista install called for one thing: Application Spreading. I was thinking about buying a whole new hard drive, then install Win Vista/7/XP and Fedora, but Vista had a little problem and I figured I would reinstall (some say reformat) anyway. I took the liberty to backup any files I thought were important, which includes browser favorites, documents, art, music, videos, and etc.

Once I was finshed backing up,I formatted the partition immediately and then shrunk it. So my three boot partitions are as follows: Vista(50GB), XP(45GB), and Win7(50GB). I am not going to install as many programs on any one OS as I did before. I will use portable and any open source programs that operate without installing. I found that installing can slow down the system.

I question the need for an application to write to the registry. I mean how many applications need access to write to registry? I think the information of some, if not most, programs are more useful in a configuration file of some sort. I think there are very few applications that actually need registry access.

Anyways, I installed Vista and was happy how fast it started up. I’ve installed several programs, but thats about it. I’ve designated what I would do mainly on each operating system and installed a tiny bit of programs that I considered useful.

As far as I’ve seen so far, I am just fine with booting up and shutting down in all the OSes on my computer. This ordeal has made me a little more flexible in switching between operating systems. One more thing, I actually shut down instead of hiberate.

Tags: Windows+7, XP, Vista, application+spreading, fast+bootup