Lab 7

This week in the lab, WH and I spent way too much time on a single problem because we were over-thinking it so much. It kinda comparatively kicked our asses, to be honest. Our Trick Master helped us simplify it a lot. We were still able to finish the entire lab, so that's good. Actual post to follow.

Lecture (Oct. 18)

Today, we basically learned that you can make a bunch of references to the same object (say, a HashMap or an ArrayList) and if you change anything about the object through any reference, all of the others see it too. This is probably going to trip us up somewhere anyway, but at least it's in our notes so we can maybe find it at some point.

Other Stuff:

Pokedex!
I am making a Pokedex of sorts using a large TreeMap with string keys and long string data entries in Java. It's gonna be super awesome, but it'll take for-frakking-ever.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal!
Heh. Boob joke.

Trial of the Clone!
So, Zach Weiner, of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, made a super nerdy choose-your-own-adventure book called Trial of the Clone. I'm not entirely sure what the main story is, but I backed it on Kickstarter and I'm getting a signed paperback copy of the book, a signed postcard with art from the book, a flowchart poster of the whole book and an audiobook narrated by Wil Wheaton!

Lab 6

Today, I had the sixth CS1121 lab, not including the lab quiz. It was dealing with ArrayLists, which are so much easier than Arrays. They're both essentially lists of stuff (could be any primitive type), but the amount of elements in an Array is set in stone once you create one. With ArrayLists, you can add elements and take elements out with no hassle at all, which is wonderful. WH and I pretty much did four of the five problems this week in ten minutes or less. Problem number three was where we ran into issues. We had to mush two ArrayLists together, keeping them in ascending order while eliminating duplicates. Once we figured it out, Trick Master showed us that there was a function within Java that sorts any list you throw at it. Awesome.
Anyway, still victorious!

The HashMap Epiphany

Today in class, we learned about this Java object called HashMaps. This allows you to build a database of any size and call upon specific entries using specific keys. This is probably useful in practical applications, but it inspired me to do something extremely nerdy. I'm planning on building a huge Pokémon database that, when inquired, will give you a Pokédex entry, types, type advantages, and evolutions, maybe more. I AM EXCITED. I'll keep you updated!

Homework Problem 2: Finished!

I posted a few days ago that I thought I had finished the homework problem on my own, but my partner and I took it to the lab and tested it and a few of our sample cases broke it. I had taken about an hour to flesh out the basic program thus far. We worked for about one and a half more hours before we figured out why we kept getting out of bounds errors. A quick addition fixed the problem and we promptly celebrated with a spinning chair high five.

Victorious!

Lecture (Oct. 11)

Today we learned about array lists, which would have made the lab so much easier, but the point was to do the problems with arrays. We also can't use array lists on our homework problem either, but more on that later. Array lists are basically arrays (a list of numbers) that can change length any time you want them to (whereas arrays cannot). THAT WOULD MAKE THINGS SO MUCH EASIER.

Anyway...
The homework problem!
I might have accidentally finished the homework problem already... It is working when used with the sample data and I'm afraid to use any other tests... This is a good thing in that it shows that I'm AWESOME, but could be a fluke that only works with the sample... I'll report back on that later, when I test more.

And lastly, something I StumbledUpon that I think is pretty cool: 64 Things Every Geek Should Know!

Lab 5

Lab five has just come and passed and my partner (WH) and I overcame it! The first five problems took us about an hour and fifteen minutes, and the last one took us forty-five minutes. Right after we finished, we consulted our lab's Trick Master and found out that we could have defeated it in a much easier way than we did, so that kinda sucked. I also got my grades for my first lab quiz and homework program one and got 100s on both, so yay! Lecture post to come after the lecture.

Homework Problem 2

On Tuesday, Pops revealed the second big homework problem of the semester, and it's a partner program! The basic problem this time around is this: each test case consists of an array of heights of a "package" and the width and height of a box. The program must be able to pick out where the box can fit (without rotating it) and return an array containing the valid starting positions. For this assignment, I'll be working with BS, my best CS buddy, and we're going to dominate it.

In the meantime, stuff I StumbledUpon!

FrozenCPU! (It's like Newegg)

Pricewatch!

Lego Printer!

And finally, an SMBC comic about robots!

Quiz 1

-Thursday, Oct. 4-
I just took the first lab quiz, and honestly it was pretty easy. My normal lab partner and I were both done within the first hour, and now we're chillin' in Fisher waiting for the lecture to start. If it were harder, maybe I would have gotten a more interesting post out of it...

-Wednesday, Oct. 10-
Well, I certainly meant to post this earlier, but I guess I got sidetracked pretty hard. More actual content to come soon!

Lab 4

Last Thursday, we didn't have a lecture. This was because during second semester, the class has a day off because of Winter Carnival, so he decided we should get one off too. So that was nice.
We did still have our lab, however, which was fine by me because I actually enjoy it. I met up with my lab partner and we sat down and started doing our stuff. The first two problems took us approximately an hour, which was mostly figuring out how to format our outputs. One of the student helper guys came up to us and said something like, "Oh, that looks nice... Now that you've made it all pretty, I'm gonna tell you something that might make you mad: the actual formatting of it doesn't really matter. It just looks to make sure there's whitespace between each number." That sucked. We burned through all but two problems during the last hour, staying slightly after to figure out our last problem of the day, but it was so very rewarding to do so. There were others still in the lab, and I noticed that they weren't able to get nearly as far as we could. This fact made me happy about my skills.
Other CS-related Activities:
These will only be loosely CS related, as they're nerdy and involve another CS major, who's becoming a good friend. I will refer to him from here out as BS, as those are actually his initials.
Borderlands 2 has been dominating my life for a while, and it's amazing. I've been playing through as the Maya half of a Maya/Zero team, and it's been working pretty well for us. If BS gets done with his homework in a timely fashion, we'll be jumping back in.
I've also been playing ping pong with BS, which has also been fun. Last night, we discovered that we play better if we're not concentrating too hard and we're just talking. Weird.
Lastly, I'll leave you with a CS-themed SMBC. I love Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, and you should too!