My 50th Post

Happy 50th to me! I have now made 50 posts and this will be the last one...just kidding. I'll keep going for at least another 50 if people still like it. The big news today is that I'm a hero! Ok, maybe that's a little extreme, but I saved some people today. I figured out the grader's mistake on my CS exam to get me enough credit for an A! But more importantly, I figured out a mistake she made on all the tests in that non static members of a class can access all of the outer class's private variables directly. So most of the class will now get points back. I also saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last night. That movie is like the new precedent for all romance movie hereafter. It has a lot of humanity and heart and it does it all without being corny. Of course it's relatively predictable, but the style was amazing and I adored the acting. The writer, Charlie Kaufman, also wrote Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and he seems to never run out of great dialogue. I reccomend the movie to everyone (I asume you all know that it's about having someone erased from your mind).




I have some mediocre technological articles today so I won't dwell on them too much. The tech Oscars were yesterday, which is cool because the winners are cheap bastards like me who are just more innovative. The winners included a dude who invented a telescoping camera crane! Firefox 1.0 has finally reached 25 million downloads, which is cool because it means that people are starting to become more open minded. I personally use both Firefox and IE for different purposes, but I really like the tabbed UI. A private altercation between two computer scientists over the security of a Windows-based web server and a Linux-based one found that the Windows 2003 one was more secure! Red Hat actually has more than double the number of days of risk that Windows has. I'm glad to not have to worry about all this web server mumbo jumbo for a while. And lastly, I dug up an article about the high-tech toys kids are getting nowadays. The most advanecd thing I had when I was little was a GI Joe where you could press a button on his back and he'd say one of a few different phrases. Now kids have mini-Blackberries and digital Etch-a-Sketches! My only concern is that with so much selection parents will feel more inclined to cave and spoil their kids, particularly with video games systems. Then, they'll never really want to study! Oh, the tangled web we weave.

Unfortunately not a ton of movie news either. An international trailer for Fantastic Four was released, and I actually recommend giving it a look if you're interested in this movie because it's much better than the domestic one. My hopes for this movie still arent very high though. What do you know, I also have Constantine news! JoBlo put up his review of the movie and while he doesn't give it a flattering score, he praises a lot of the movie's core elements. He also put up an interview with Keanu Reeves and around the same time FilmForce put up theirs. They're both well conducted interviews so if you're a fan then be sure to check those out. It's unfortunate that the Constantine game blows though, and it was gimmicky as expected. Filmforce also up up some new pictures from the upcoming Star Wars flick with some miscellaneous information. Who knows, maybe it'll turn out alright. This image is the only one I cared for:



The only other movie bit I wanted to mention was that Will Smith is considering the lead role in an interesting superhero flick called Tonight, He Comes. There has been a lot of interest in the unmade script for the movie for a while, so it may bring Smith from B action movies (except Ali of course) to actual A flicks.

I have a couple of other things I wanted to mention before I close out. There's recently been a lawsuit against Take-Two, Wal-mart, and Gamespot for a kid shooting somebody (supposedly based off the game). The stores are involved because he bought the first two instllments when he was under age. I'm not sure how much trouble the developer will get in, but the stores could potentially get in some trouble for selling to him when he was underage. It's more a liability of the kid and his parents though; it's not like the game gave him a gun and told him to shoot two cops. On a completely unrelated note, stocks took a tumble today, partially as a result of the Greenspan statement I mentioned yesterday. I find it a bit strange, but the thing with the stock market is that it's very delicate and can be extremely hard to predict.

Today I'm going to try a Thursday Thinker from the Daily Haiku:

When things get tough in your life, what do you like to do (or where do you like to go) to escape? Fantasies or other things that you can't actually do are fair game.

I play some music
I go and rent a movie
I visit a friend

Sorry it isn't more exciting! Feel free to comment with your own if you can come up with something better. Oh, and the answer to yesterday's CS brain teaser was that you actually allocate two more arrays, both of them involved in tracking what elements have already been set or get so that new ones can be filled with the fill value. If you want the whole explanation, drop me a line.