The Week is Over

Well, for all intensive purposes at least. I thought the title was appropriate because I've waited days to say those words. This week was crazy because not only did I have to plow through my Philosophy homework in a few days and prepare for my Latin midterm, which became a quiz in the end, but I had club commitments, a CS project, and a crazy CS test. CS tests always scare me because they're true tests of intelligence with regard to programming because coding is all about creativity. I created a mad crazy cheat sheet that helped me out a lot and I feel guilty for using it, but it's not like I couldn't reproduce everything given a keyboard rather than a pen and in a less pressured environment. The exam covered our puzzlers, a paper we read, the searching and sorting algorithms we learned (in the context of just showing their results though), some comparison stuff, and a couple of wild cards (as is expected on every test). The lesser while card was popping from a circular stack the minimum value element, which was tricky but fun. The bigger wild card was the base conversion problems, which I expected but he provided some extra methods for it that confused me so it took longer than it should've. Unless I screwed up with the counter though, I know for a fact that I got those right (I compiled and ran it). What the Hell, I'll share it also:

public static int parseInt(String s, int base)
   {  int result = 0;
      int stringInd = s.length() - 1;
      while( stringInd >= 0 )
      {   int digit = s.charAt(stringInd) - '0';
      for(int i = 0; i < s.length() - stringInd - 1; i++)
         digit *= base;
      result += digit;
      stringInd--; }
      return result; }

public static String numToString(int num, int base)
   {  StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
      if( num == 0 ) return "0";
      while( num > 0 )
      {  char currChar = (char)(num % base + '0');
         sb.append( currChar + "");
         num /= base; }
      sb.reverse();
      return sb.toString();}

What? You're a straight up nerd and you want more? Well you're in luck because I have some decent articles to share. Lo and behold, the PSP has now launched. I suppose I'm a day late on reporting that, but oh well. They released it at midnight Wednesday night (i.e. Thursday morning) and it turns out that releasing late night is a strange marketing strategy. I'd rather have it delivered. It seems like for the king of the mp3 player industry, Apple, the most obvious next move would be an iPod phone, right? It turns out that cell phone companies are greedy bastards, which is no big surprise, and they're trying to find the best way to squeeze money out of this on this concept. If they raise prices for songs to $3 though and sell an expensive mp3 phone they're going to lose big time. Speaking of mp3s, you can get the refreshing perspective of indie artists here on P2P file sharing. They think it's a great way to get their stuff out and are fighting the RIAA, isn't that funny? I'm glad though that someone isn't calling P2P the devil. Back to being in technology though, there's a great perspective here into how productivity is motivated at Google and it seems like a brilliant model. Not only is there one codebase but it's easy to work on multiple projects! That's something you don't see at many big companies. Any of you who are unfunny like me and want to moonlight in standup may want to check out this device first that is a kareoke machine for stand-up comedy! And lastly, the best alarm clock ever.

Today wasn't a particularly big day in movie news. I'm sorry that I neglected to mention the new trailer for The Island a few days ago but I just watched it and now you all must watch it because it's almost too cool to be true. Speaking of which, P. Diddy thinks he's too cool because he's apparently working with MTV on a black version of Ocean's 11. I'm not even going to dignify that with a comment. It better news, there's a few fresh details out about X3. Angel is definitely a man (no reason why yet, but it's confirmed) and Phoenix will be a developing subplot but not the main star. So who is the big villain? No one knows for sure yet, but apparently it's going to be something even bigger than X2 and supposedly won't be Sinister, Shaw, or Trask. Curiouser and curioser. Even more curious is George, as we all know from those fun children's books, and the movie is looking good.



As you can see, the cast impressively includes Eugene Levy and Will Ferrell, and I believe it will also feature David Cross is two roles. It's always fun to see kid's movies that don't get too peurile. Last and least, there's a new Fantastic Four poster if any hardcore fans are still managing to get excited about that movie. You'd be better off being excited about Tideland.

Now for the Friday Fiver:

1. What kind of toothpaste do you use?
Colgate Tartar Control plus Whitening

2. Do you take vitamins?
I take my HEB Buddy chewable fruit-flavored vitamins every other day because they have a 100% DV of a ton of stuff.

3. Which over-the-counter drug can't you live without?
Any of them pretty much. Thankfully I don't get sick or have headaches much so I'm pretty much good to go as is.

4. What kind of soap do you have in your shower?
I use Dove and I love it. I always smell really good an hour or two afterwards at least and I'll smell my arm every once in a while because it's so cool! Yes, I know I'm weird.

5. What is the most unusual item in your medicine cabinet?
I'd have to say the stuff Linda has up there that I probably shouldn't comment on ;)

Hope the Catholics out there aren't having too hard of a time with the fast today. Just think of the feast on Sunday! Anyway, that's all I have until tomorrow...