Out With The Old
Originally published at The JFX. You can comment here or there.
With the recent demise of the old IBrokeTheInter.net portal, I’ve decided to just roll with a standard run-of-the-mill blog. The old portal system was far too complicated for such a simple task. For those who may be wondering, I did attempt to fix it, but it was proving to be somewhat tricky. That, mixed with my desire to have a blog that didnt reside on LJ, Facebook, or any other public blogging service, lead me to convert this domain for this use. I don’t feel like buying another domain when I have such a witty URL sitting right here. I am stuck in a dilemma though; TheJFX.net is a more appropriate domain for my blag, while IBrokeTheInter.net is far superior to host a retarded webcomic. However, JFX apparently has a small following as it is, so I can’t go changing the domains around. Ah well, such is the way of things on these here internets; Irony and Stupidity abound!
Moving on. This semester is on the verge of completion. I took my Algorithms final this morning, and I’m really not sure what to think of it. I honestly cannot tell whether it kicked my ass or I kicked it’s ass. There were a few problems that I cleverly BS’ed my way through, while others I could not possibly conceive of a more appropriate answer than what I put down. I’m a little weak on approximation algorithms; I wasn’t able to construct an algorithm within the bounds the last problem defined, but I managed to come up with one that suitably approximated something. However, I’m fairly certain I cleaned house on a certain scheduling algorithm: Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you have a set S of n jobs where each job j has both a duration d and reward r, then the best way to sort them would be to compare the ratio of reward to duration (r/d). Therefor the order is essentially the individual worth of each time unit. A 2 second job worth 10 points should be completed before a 6 second job worth 12 points, for example. The first job is worth 5 points per second, while the latter is worth more overall it is only worth 2 per second. Simply sorting by reward will not get you an optimal schedule for any limit on total running time.
I think I was in a good place for the exam. I was up all last night studying, and then took a 2 hour nap at around 7am. When I woke up for the exam, I downed a Rockstar (the convenience store was sold out of Full Throttle) energy drink, headed to the exam, and drank another while I was taking it. The result was that my brain was buzzing from the energy and I was thinking like crazy, but I was way too tired to doubt anything that didn’t seem illogical, as I have been known to do on occasion. I wasn’t too worried to begin with though. Is it odd that I enjoy these exams? For both this Algorithms class and Computation last semester the exams were challenging, but Barrington writes them so well that theyre entertaining at the same time. Its like doing a crossword or a really hard sudoku. It can be really hard, but its so satisfying to figure it out.
Ok, it’s about time I wrap up this post. This blag is now official on its maiden voyage. Lets get this party started!