Always ask for an extension...

It's the start of the end of the school year. I still haven't started learning Python. It will have to wait until winter break.

Two weeks ago, the 5th project in my Operating Systems class was assigned. Last week was Thanksgiving break. Can you see where this is going yet? I started the project the day it was assigned. And by started, I mean barely did anything. I didn't touch it again until the end of last week. Fortunately, I had two other huge projects that were due yesterday, so I didn't get very much done on it. When I woke up this morning, I decided that there was no way in hell I was going to finish this project, and I gave up...then I saw this in my inbox:

Subject: a little extra time

if you need a little extra time for p5
(it seems to be that time of year),
please let me know. Like I've said before,
I am much more interested in you
finishing the project (or coming close)
than not doing it.
(that is how you learn after all)
R

R stands for Remzi, my professor. So I replied to his e-mail, begging for a couple of extra days, to which he replied:

Subject: Re: a little extra time

sure thing.
R

So the moral of the story is, always ask for an extension, even if it your lateness was caused by irresponsibility, procrastination, and downright laziness. If your dignity is so precious that you can't ask for help when you need it, then you deserve to fail the class. Thanks for the extension Remzi.

Side Project: Failure

Okay, so I haven't learned Python yet, but I have a very good reason. The idea was to learn it on my awesome new hackintosh that I had created out of my resurrected Dell laptop. This was all fine and dandy until the hackintosh refused to boot at all. And this wasn't just a software issue. I couldn't just reinstall the OS and expect it to work. My graphics card is, and has for a long time, been broken. But the results of its brokenness only manifest every once in a while. This just happened to be one of those whiles.

So my dying laptop finally died. I have remedied this problem by purchasing a new laptop, that isn't huge, and definitely isn't broken. I will attempt to learn Python again next week (midterm this week). I will probably also review the laptop after my attempt at Python. So look forward to that.

What a week for learning python

I just finished wasting my entire day (except for going to class), so I figured I can end it by doing something useful...making a blog post!

It turns out that this is the perfect week for me to be learning python. The next project for my OS class has yet to be assigned, the project for my VB class has been assigned, but we have until half way through next month to finish it, and there is no assigned homework for my linear algebra class (NOTE: This is not your basic college algebra. This class comes after calculus) So this is an ideal week to be learning a new programming language. And sure, a week might not seem like a long time, but when I started at Solidworks I only got a week to learn the ins and outs of a new language, and I did fine.

Speaking of Solidworks, I'll be attending the annual CS Job Fair next month, and I will probably discuss working with them again either over winter break and/or next summer. So I will be sure to make a blog entry after I check that out.

Side Project: Python

I'm in Milwaukee using my terribly broken hackintosh to type up this blog post. Why am I choosing to do it now? Because I'm about to start my first side project. In the last post, I recognized that, if I ever want to make it anywhere in the world, I should really do some side projects, and perhaps gain some notoriety. So this weekend I'm learning python. I know, it doesn't sound like much of a side project, but I don't know any loose typed languages.

So why python? There are a lot of people who get overly excited and start holy wars between computer manufacturers, text editors, and yes, even programming languages. With this in mind, I didn't really choose python for any specific reason. It could just have easily been Ruby or Perl...well, maybe not Perl. But the point is not what language I'm learning. It's that I'm learning a new type of programming language. The original reason for learning Python was that I own a book on it, and I don't own a book on Ruby or Perl. But it turns out that Python has a similar release schedule to Java, in that a new version comes out every 10 minutes. So that book is terribly obsolete by now. I will follow The Python Tutorial to start with. Hell, maybe I'll have learned enough to do my next side project in Python.

I'll post again later in the week to success and/or failure. But what can be assured is lots of whining and moaning about unfamiliar syntax (can you believe that VB .NET uses the keyword Nothing instead of NULL? This is madness!) Anyway...

Side Projects During School

I always considered side projects an impossibility during the school year. I have so much to do for my classes, how am I ever supposed to find the time do to a project for myself? Last night I watched Chris Wanstrath's keynote on confreaks.com, and I must say, it really pumped my up for starting some side projects during school. Right now, my time is essentially split, unevenly, three ways. Going to class and doing homework takes up about half of my free time. Don't tell my scholarship advisor that, but it's true. The remaining half is split evenly between tf2 related things, and various other things that I can't really put a name on. "Errands" we'll call them.

Well, if I've learned anything from Paul Graham's paper on procrastination, these errands shouldn't really take up that much time. And if I'm really passionate about my work, errands should be secondary to side projects. Obviously some errands are still important. Personal hygiene for example. After all, I don't want to end up looking like this guy. But I can probably afford to cut my errands in half. And I can probably afford to cut my video game playing in half as well. So this leaves me with half my time still being dedicated to school, which is good. It leaves my video game playing and errand doing time at 1/8th of my time each (1/4th in all). Which leaves the rest of my time (1/4th again) to be spent doing side projects.

This sounds like a pretty good plan to me. School should always be number one, and since I'll never be known as "The Guy Who Wrote X" without starting any side projects, that should probably be next on my priority list. Since I need something to do that required almost no thinking (in order to clear my mind), I'll keep a little game playing in there. And so I don't start to look like rms, I'll spend the rest of the time doing everyday stuff (like taking a shower).

I was already genuinely soaked when I got on the bus

And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

Thank God for UW's strict adherence to the doctrine of "wireless everywhere". I'm sitting in Der Rathskeller right now, drenched from head to toe. When I woke up this morning, I had just enough time to not catch the bus. After missing the bus, I decided that I would take a different bus that I had never taken. The 5. Unfortunately the stop for the 5 doesn't have a bus shelter, and it was raining like a beast this morning, and I had no umbrella. Needless to say, I was already genuinely soaked when I got on the bus. But this is just the beginning.

It turns out that, unlike most busses that go towards campus, the 5 goes nowhere near campus. The closest stop was at the top of state street...which is a long street. So I walked all the way down state street, in the pouring rain, until I eventually cooped up in the Walgreens at the other end. It is here where I purchased an umbrella...the worst umbrella ever created by man or machine alike. I won't go into detail on why this umbrella sucks, it just does. So I hiked the 2 blocks over to the Union so I could sit down at the Rathskeller and blog.

Then I saw it. A large golf umbrella lazily propped up against one of the columns that hold the Rathskeller's roof up. No one was within 5 feet of it. I was seriously debating snagging it up for myself. Surely the owner had gone. But, mainly because I began looking for excerpts from Genesis for the quote at the beginning of this post, I was distracted, and someone else put my intentions into action instead. Oh well. The crappy Walgreens umbrella will do for the rest of the day.

I was supposed to have a scholarship meeting today at 6 o'clock. I may opt out due to my soggy feet. No one wants to smell that.

Blog additions

I did a little work on the blog this weekend. I noticed that I got a lot of hits yesterday, and after checking my stats page it looks like most of them are coming from the forums at facepunch. Hello facepunchers! I hope you all get the Vista lag issue figured out. If you have any problems with what I have posted already, just post a comment and I'll be glad to make revisions.

So here are the changes I made as a result of my increased traffic.

1. I redid the layout, under the same basic principle. Changed fonts for better readability. Made a lame title image and dropshadow effect in gimp. I know, I'm a pretty bad artist. If anyone would like to make a better logo I'd be glad to credit your work.

2. I enabled Google AdSense. This was mostly brought about by a friend of mine letting me know that he made a handy chunk of money when his lowly wiki got posted to some sites with large userbases. Now I didn't really expect to make any money from this weekend's traffic. In fact, I don't really expect to make money at all, but I would feel like a complete ass if my blog all of a sudden became popular for a day and I didn't have AdSense on. So there is a little box on the sidebar now that normally contains links and every now and again contains an image. For anyone who reads this post (which is probably no one), let me know if this seems obtrusive or petty. There are a variety of options for size and content, and changes can be made whenever.

3. Now this isn't something I did, but more something that I should do in the future. I realize that most of my posts are about technology in general, and not so much programming specific. While this isn't a huge deal, I do feel like I should make coding related posts every once in a while (staying true the blog's name). So look forward to more of those.

iTunes is like a jelly doughnut...

iTunes is like a jelly doughnut. The outside is seemingly normal. It looks like any other music playing application. But when you bite into it, there's little surprise inside. Unfortunately, with iTunes, it isn't jelly. It's straight up feces.

I'm going to try as hard as I can to not make this a really long post. So, I happen to be the owner of both a Zune and an iPod touch. Don't ask me why, it just sort of happened that way. Anyway, I got the Zune first, and I was pleasantly surprised upon using the Zune software that comes with it. Everything works correctly and the UI is actually quite pristine (this is not another WMP).

Later on, I got the iPod touch, and I installed iTunes as a result. I had no idea what I was getting into. I just messed around with it a little. I imported my library music and everything. But I didn't pay too close attention, because the iPod was mostly for development purposes. The Zune would be my main music machine.

So last night, I opened up the Zune software and started listening to an album. Ten minutes later, to my surprise, I noticed that a song was missing. "That's weird", I said. I tried to find the culprit. In doing this, I also noticed that there were a few artists in my list of artists that I had never heard of. "Hmm, something strange has happened". So I click on one of the songs of one of the artists that I have never heard of.

Palm. Meet face.

Apparently, if iTunes hasn't 'heard' of a band or CD, it will search its database for the song name and sort of....make one up. So I was blessed with a good chunk of my library being recategorized under random artists, and another chunk being categorized as simply 'unknown artist'. This really pissed me off. The Zune software, by default, will not do anything like this. And even if you set it to find song info automatically, it will only supply information for tracks that are missing some. What ever happened to the Apple fanboy mantra of 'it just works'. It clearly doesn't work. That said, I will no longer be using iTunes for music.