chris and david have been bugging me about posting this all evening. last monday toward the end of a very very boring 3-hour long lecture, I sketched this quick portrait of the red research robot and dr. bennet, my cs456 professor.

yeah. like I said. it was a long lecture.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 30 January 2002 at 11:13 PM

My friend Chris is signed on as WUcs431, thinking he can make some easy money by answering cs431 student's question over AIM (a system implemented by the 431 professor). I am FuSoYu, pretending to be the stupidest kid in the class. 431 is the class Chris and I TA, and it covers finite state machines and compilers. Our conversation follows. (Chris remained rather level-headed in the face of amazingly stupid questions, don't you think?)

FuSoYu (10:09:59 PM): how do I do lamda elimination?
FuSoYu (10:14:41 PM): actually, what is lamda?
WUcs431 (10:15:49 PM): lambda is when you can go from one state in a finite state machine to another without consuming any symbol or taking any action
FuSoYu (10:16:01 PM): cool
FuSoYu (10:16:02 PM): thanks
WUcs431 (10:16:11 PM): sure
FuSoYu (10:16:15 PM): why would you want to eliminate that?
WUcs431 (10:17:34 PM): because when you're designing a finite state machine, you want your states to have a purpose. It's easier to map out and understand that on an 'a' you go to state 2 and on a 'b' you go to state 3 than if there was a chance you could be in any number of states.
WUcs431 (10:17:54 PM): a lambda leads to uncertainty about where you are
FuSoYu (10:18:17 PM): so lambda is bad.
WUcs431 (10:18:46 PM): in essence, yes
FuSoYu (10:20:10 PM): can i just replace lambdas with something else?
WUcs431 (10:20:55 PM): not accurately, you have to go through and make the chart that Dr. Cytron talked about in class in order to make sure that the machine you make accepts the same language as the one with lambdas
FuSoYu (10:21:48 PM): can i use finite state machines to translate from a language with lambdas to one without?
WUcs431 (10:23:14 PM): you don't want to use a machine, you want to make a machine. First you have a language that uses lambdas. You can show this language as a finite state machine (FSM). Then you go through the process to eliminate lambdas to get a new FSM, and you can translate this FSM back into a corresponding language that is identical in syntax but without lambdas
FuSoYu (10:23:34 PM): okay that makes sense
FuSoYu (10:23:35 PM): thanks
WUcs431 (10:23:39 PM): sure

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 30 January 2002 at 10:34 PM

wow.

nothingisgood had a whirlwind day today. from midnight last night to midnight tonight it received a total of 77 hits. thats over 15 times the number it usually gets a day. the only explanation is that someone linked to me today. someone with a much more successful website than my own.

I did some investigating, but Ive yet to find out who. I did find one person who linked to me, but she did so over a week ago, and so it couldnt have been her. what this means is that somewhere out there at least two people have seen my website and liked it enough to link to it.

actually, now that I think about it, a lot more than two people have seen my website. that seems kind of strange to me. I mean, I know its on the web for everyone to see, but it still surprises me to learn that people actually do see it. especially since Id almost forgotten about it.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 30 January 2002 at 1:54 AM

Last night, during time I had set aside specifically for working on a custom counter/site statistics program for -273, I instead got distracted by a small programming project michael found in someone's away message. We both implemented solutions, but I think mine won out, mainly because I didn't use any of Java's sorting libraries and michael did. On the other hand, michael's code was one line shorter than mine.

Becasuse of the time I spent working on the code, and the greater amount of time I spent chatting on AIM, I now have to use this afternoon to work on the counter. Fortunately, it's rather dreary and overcast right now, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything by sitting here at my computer. Hopefully I'll get it up and running this afternoon, and we'll get it deployed later this week. With any luck, the new systm will give us a better handle on who our visitors are.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 29 January 2002 at 4:08 PM

something very strange is going on.

in the last hour and forty-five minutes, nothingisgood.com has had 9 unique visitors.

for those of you unfamiliar with the site, nothingisgood serves as an outlet for self expression in my more depressive times, and has thus been abandoned for quite some time. in fact, I believe the last time I updated it was sometime in july. which would explain why, as far as hits go, over the last month the site has averaged about 5 a day.

what has yet to be explained is why anyone would still be checking the site. let alone many people that I do not know. even stranger is that its not just today. over the last couple of days a lot more people have visiting the site that would really be expected (its been getting into the double digits). I am hoping that more time will shed some light onto this mystery. (Im also hoping that this trend continues, since sitemeter tells me that at this rate I will have over 100 unique visitors today. I know its probably just a fluke, but you cant tell me that wouldnt be cool.)

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 29 January 2002 at 2:02 AM

so that presentation I was telling you all about went pretty well. I wont tell you it was the most polished presentation ever given (or even the most polished one given that day), but what I do know is this: it wasnt graded, and its over now. and thats good enough for me.

as for my nerves, I experienced the same hands-shakiness that seems to happen any time I have to talk in front of the class. oh well. I kind of wish that didnt happen. its weird. but its not too debilitating so long as I dont have to write anything, so I guess Im not too worried.

in other news, I want a laptop. I also want a tablet. or maybe the two combined. Ive been telling myself lately that one of these days (probably many years from now) Im going to get myself one of those new tablet pcs. if you dont know what Im talking about, theyre essentially laptops with precise touch sensitive screens that can flip around and fold back down over the keyboard so that only the screen is showing. you then use a stylus to write directly on the screen. they are good for note-taking and very good for image editing, too. theyre coming out this year, and by the time I can afford one theyll probably be pretty damn cool.

sigh.. now we play the waiting game.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 28 January 2002 at 5:00 PM

I meant to post earlier this weekend, but I have this bad habit of waiting until the end of the day to post, and surprisingly, by the end of the day Im often so sleepy that I dont really feel like writing anything.

thats sort of the case today. but remember that fervor I was talking about before? well Im determined not to let a little sleepiness get in my way tonight. because tonight I have important news.

what news, you ask? new gloompuppy. (finally.) yes, I know you had all written me off, but Im not finished yet. Ive got at least another semester in me, especially since Ive got someone to keep me motivated. (not to mention new competition. theres a couple of new comics coming out in both papers I publish in, and Ive got to represent, yo.)

so go check it out. and look forward to weekly strips (more or less) every monday or tuesday for as long as I can keep it up. but dont yell at me if I miss a week. its going to be a really busy semester.

speaking of which, I have a presentation in 456 tomorrow, so I really need to get some sleep. Ill try to remember to tell you all about it tomorrow.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 28 January 2002 at 1:54 AM

Alright, the Rams played pretty poorly today, but it did make for a good game. And Rams v. Patriots in the Superbowl will be excellent. Especially when the Rams stomp on the Pats. (New England is going down, Chris.) The best thing about the Superbowl being on Fox? Not having to see Jerry Glanville for another year.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 27 January 2002 at 11:12 PM

Why are "skinnable" applications all the rage these days? Have you ever browsed the skins available at winamp.com? 99.9% of them are prime examples of why skins suck. And the other .1% are simply skins designed to make winamp look like a normal application. I just can't imagine someone wanting to use many of these skins. I suspect people just like making the skins, not using them.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 26 January 2002 at 1:15 AM

I've been using my laptop as my primary computer for more than a month now. One by product of this is that I no longer like low screen resolutions. My laptop runs at 1400X1050 on a 14.1" screen, and 1024x768 on a 17" screen looks huge in comparison. So now I run my monitor at 1280x1024. The increased space means my browser no longer needs to take up the whole screen, which is awesome.

I saw First Monday tonight on CBS. Actually, I only saw about 30 minutes of it, as that was all I could take. I don't think I've ever seen a crappier, more pretentious show. I'm sure the real Supreme Court justices cringe every time they hear mention of it.

As many of you moted, we had server troubles earlier this week, and unknown to most of you they persisted even after the site came back up. There are many things I like about phpwebhosting, and even though they eventually got everything straightened out, I wasn't very impressed with their service. I don't know if this should really bother me, but the following chain of events still upsets me:

1) My credit card is billed for the following 30 days of web hosting.

2) The following day, with no warning, phpwebhosting shuts down our site, resulting in the "Forbidden" errors that many of you saw.

3) michael and I notice the outage and email the tech support people to find out what was going on.

4) 36 hours pass without any response from phpwebhosting.

It continued from there, and full service wasn't restored until today. And none of it our fault really. Anyway, everything's back to normal so I'm going to put this behind me. phpwebhosting is still one of the best bargains in web hosting around, so I should just be happy that this was the first time in more than 6 months that I've had to deal with the tech support people.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 25 January 2002 at 10:20 PM

I had a couple of things I wanted to post about, but I cant exactly remember what they were now. lets see.. I remember one of them, at least.

I wanted to say happy anniversary to my girlfriend rachel. not that our readers really care, but I just like an excuse to drop her link every once and awhile. so go check her site out; shes been posting like a madwoman lately.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 24 January 2002 at 10:16 PM

as many of our readers may have noticed, negative273 was down yesterday and part of the day before. the reasons behind this are complicated and still a little unresolved, so I wont get into it right now. plus its a story I think Id rather let dave tell.

but anyway, the point is, were back. and I couldnt be happier. you see, not having negative273 for those couple of days changed something in me. I think I realized how precious this website really is to me. and Im determined not to let it slip through my grasp any longer.

thus, with renewed ferver, I intend to post.

unfortunately, my machine learning lab last night kept me up well into the early morning, and I had a meeting at 11:00 ayem today, so Im kind of running on like 4 hours of sleep right now.

thus, perhaps after a very long nap, I will post again. with renewed ferver.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 23 January 2002 at 7:20 PM

I'm somewhat relcutant to admit this, for fear of being branded a super-conservative, but I have found myself agreeing with a lot of the articles on OpinionJournal (the Wall Street Journal's op/ed website) recently. Particularly this piece about the losses that Enron employees are suffering. The Enron management deservedly is being blamed for the 401(k) meltdown, but employees who had more than 40% of their retirement savings in Enron stock desreve a bit of blame too. No matter how good you feel about the company you work for, you should never put that much of your wealth into one stock. The government is preparing action to help these folks at Enron, I believe, but everyone else should take a lesson from this and diversify their portfolio, because Uncle Sam won't always be there to help out.

There are some other articles at OpinionJournal that I've enjoyed recently, especially this one about parents' actions at their kid's sporting event. But you would probably be best served just browsing their site yourself. Oh, and they may ask for your email address before they let you view some articles. I don't think I've gotten any more spam after providing it, but who can tell? Check their privacy policy out and decide for yourself if you're comfortable with them (at best) logging what you read.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 21 January 2002 at 11:43 AM

Go see Orange County. Despite the ads you've seen on TV, Jack Black is not the main character, he's merely one member of an ensemble cast that includes Harold Ramis, John Lithgow, Chevy Chase, Lily Tomlin, Kevin Kline, and Ben Stiller. And Colin Hanks and Schuyler Fisk are excellent in the lead roles.

Yes, Orange County is a teen movie, but it seems a bit more realistic than most movies in that genre. And the laughs are less grotesque than most from movies of this type. I would put Orange County on the same level as The Royal Tennebaums, another excellent comedy.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 19 January 2002 at 6:08 PM

I've written before about deadaim, a program that removes the ads from AOL Instant Messenger, and I've more recently told you about my flirtation with trillian, an AIM replacement program with no ads and support for multiple messenger clients. The problem with deadaim is that it hasn't been updated for almost a year, it crashes under XP, and the site's webpage at www.jdennis.net seems to have disappeared. My problems with trillian are related to the fact that it doesn't support all of AIM's features in favor of supporting the basics of many chat programs, none of which I use.

Since neither deadaim nor trillian worked as well as I had hoped, and AIM's flashing ads were a big distraction, I set out to find a program that accomplished one small task: remove AIM's ads without crashing the program. There were a variety of solutions that removed the ads but left the space where the ads were supposed to be, which looked a bit crappy. Then I found AIM+. It removes the ads and has a message history where it keeps track of all your old conversations (if you turn it on). It also has transparency support and the ability to remove the buttons at the bottom of the buddy list. Everyone who currently uses deadaim or wants to get rid of AIM's ads should download AIM+.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 18 January 2002 at 4:41 PM

I installed Trillian today. It seems pretty nice, and a lot more stable than AIM running on XP (well, DeadAim, actually, which may be part of my problem). But Trillian has a few interface quirks that I'm not too fond of. It's designed to work for multiple chat systems, but I only use AIM, so the compromises they had to make for multiple systems bother me a bit. I wish there was a simple AIM replacement that got rid of AOL's ads and had a few advanced features like being able to give all the people on your list real names (i.e., disguise nothingtobedone by renaming it michael).

Last week our sticker order from stickerguy.com came in. So if you're interested in getting a black -273 sticker with white writing, send me an email. Assuming we don't get too many requests, I'll mail out stickers to everyone who requests one. (The sticker is 5.5" x 1.42".)

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 16 January 2002 at 11:53 PM

I was going to bore you with all the details about what I did today, but I think it might be a bit more entertaining if I list some of the things I didn't do. I didn't go turn in the cable request form, although I did find the copy of the form I printed out on Monday sitting next to the printer, so that was a plus. I didn't request a room for ACM's first Movie Night of the semester, even though it's only nine days away. I didn't work on my CS527 homework, even though it is due in next Wednesday. I didn't pay much attention during the CS507 lecture (I've seen regular expressions before, but thanks for asking). I didn't eat dinner (unless you count that meal I had at 4pm, but since it was my first meal of the day, I consider it lunch, if not breakfast).

I will mention one thing that has happened since I last posted. On Monday night michael, Chris, Nick, and were informed that we had advanced to the semi-finalist stage of Microsoft's Web Services contest. Our odds are now 4 out of 100 of getting some kind of prize. (We're creating an online grade database where students can go to view all of their assignment grades, plus a few other neat features.)

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 16 January 2002 at 1:01 AM

ESPN is making a made-for-TV movie called "A Season on the Brink." I assume it's based on the book of the same name by John Feinstein. Regardless, it's about Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers. But all of that is just background, really. Guess who they cast to play Knight? Brian Dennehy.

For comparison, here's a picture of the real Bob Knight, and here's a picture of Dennehy as Knight.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 14 January 2002 at 11:59 PM

I just read a weblog entry where someone complained about Java, and I feel like I have to stick up for it. First, the relevant portions of the post:

Tonight we went over why Java is such a nice language:

1) no operator overloading.

2) single inheritance.

3) no pointers.

4) platform independence.

Here are my thoughts:

1) Overloading operators in C++ is one of the best features of the language itself.

2) I don't use inheritance. I write all my code from scratch each and every time, writing specific non-reusable (except to me as reference) code that is optimized for whatever the situation is.

3) Pointers are what makes dynamic memory allocation possible. I fell in love with pointers last semester, after I was forced to use double-indirection in many of my programs. Single indirection even used to be a serial killer, but now it's my housepet.

4) Platform independence is perhaps the only good feature of this language. However, it's also its major downfall. For one, variable types have the same size (depending on their declaration) across all platforms, not just whatever word-length is the most efficient to store an int (as is the case with C++) Platform independence makes it a lot easier to debug, as anyone can come up to me with a problem, and I can instantly trace how they got that error to begin with. However, seeing as how Java needs a virtual machine to to run its bloated bytecode, and how most of these VMs are built in C++, it's both a step in the right direction, but its major downfall.

And now my response to each of these points.

1) Operator Overloading. A nice feature, but a frequently misused one. For every time I've wanted to use operator overloading in Java, there have been time when I'd wished someone else hadn't used operator overloading in C++. They often just make working with someone else's code a nightmare.

2) Inheritance. I don't really even know how to respond to this. There are so many reasons that inheritance makes sense, that I don't have the space to list them. All your response tells me is that you don't really understand inheritance or its benefits. Because code optimized for a specific task should often include base classes and sub-classes. I really don't understand how someone could advocate not using inheritance in an OO language. I so overwhelmed by this that I can't even formulate legitimate arguments right now. I'll expand on this point in the morning.

3) Pointers are useful on occasion, but the developers of Java made a (totally justified in my mind) decision to abstract away from memory management. Poor memory management is the single largest cause for errors in programs these days, so Java does garbage collection and doesn't allow you to do pointer manipulation. The issue here is that Java wasn't designed with your strengths in mind, but was designed to be most beneficial to the largest group of people. If you like pointers and memory management, more power to you, I guess, but Java is giving you a gift in not requiring you to muck with it.

4) I'm a bit sleepy, but I couldn't really understand you on this point. Java's platform independence is one of it's major selling points ("Write once, run anywhere"), and a justified one. Because of this platform independence, it is becoming the dominant programming language. And because of its virtual machine, it is well-suited to embedded systems. And I don't really think its byte-code is all that bloated. It's slow because the use of the virtual machine basically makes it into an interpreted language, but the Java compilers (I like Jikes a lot) are quite efficient at producing byte-code. I would wager that they byte-code spit out by javac is just as efficient as machine code output by a C++ compiler like gcc. The speed issue comes when the virtual machine has to convert the byte-code to machine code in real time, just like other interpreted languages.

I have a feeling that I didn't articulate these points very well, as I'm about to fall asleep. I might post on this topic again in the morning in order to make my points clearer.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 11 January 2002 at 1:51 AM

Click here, look at the picture, and come back.

Now, aside from the craziness of the image, what was wrong with that pamphlet? Now, I could be mistaken, but I have this strange feeling that most of the al Qaeda fighters don't speak English.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 7 January 2002 at 7:36 PM

As if there weren't enough reasons to be wary of Star Wars Episode II, LucasFilm has announced that the members of *NSync will be making cameo appearances in the film. I feel sorry for the people who have already started waiting in line for this movie; I'm afraid it won't be very good.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 6 January 2002 at 10:50 AM