DB && Android

The last three days I've been doing nothing but studying for database and programming android, and I played a gig with my student orchestra.

Studying for database has been awesome. I've been studying small chunks of the course with a friend for like the last week. We feel really confident going into the final tomorrow.

A few days ago I started making a "Rock Paper Scissor" Android App. I can't believe I'm already finished. It's so awesome implementing the things I've been reading about: passing variables between activities with intents, calling the finish() lifecycle method so the app doesn't make a huge chain of activities, and the last part was dealing all with the animations between slides.

I really wanted there to be a little pause after the selection to build anticipation for the result. HCI eat your heart out  >.< It's been so much fun I cant wait to get it on the market and start working on the next.

Recovery Magic

After reading an article on data recovery, I downloaded some software to try it out for myself. Oh my gosh! I recovered a flash drive that I thought I had deleted everything from. I recovered files from three years ago!!! Pictures, files, documents everything was there. So amazing and so scary. Needless to say I'm now waiting on a 35-pass zero out on all of my flash drives.

Going Twice to Disk?

So in comp architecture today I learned that when using a data cache and a table look aside buffer to fetch instructions and data you could actually have to go to disk twice if you miss in the TBL and the cache. How crazy is that, like 100,000 cycles for one instruction... so much stalling.

Circuit Design

This circuit design lab is so freakin awesome. Playing around with all the gates and MUXes and splitters.  I'm making an ALU that supports, add/sub and comparisons. Between dealing with the overflow and dealing with negative comparisons I am definitely earning my grade on this one.

The Stack Pointer From Hell

After two hours of trying to debug MIPS assembly code I finally found out how to push the return address into the stack before over writing it so that I could jump to another function.. ahhh....

It's awesome learning computer architecture, but programming in assembly is like trying to chop down a tree with a pocket knife >:{

Memory Training

Absolutely awesome TED talk on memory. Take away: We remember when we pay attention.

http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_can_do.html

Classes Starting

So my first week of classes went really well. Data base, HCI and I'm really looking forward to Comp Arch. The lectures are all online videos and all the classes are problem solving sessions. I think it's gonna be a really good way to take the course.

Encrypted Texting

So I spent all yesterday working on a java project that does RSA encryption for messages and today I followed a tutorial for how to make an android texting app. Now I'm trying to see if I can combine them so that a user can send another user their public key and they can send encrypted msgs back and fourth.

Loving it here in Germnay

Done with Classes

I just finished my Networking final. So much studying. Did alright except for one question on Cyclic Redundancy Checks I think I missed. As far as the stack goes though, with frames going across the wire, being taken in by the NAT at the Link layer, getting repackaged into a different frame to the next MAC address and routed to the Dest IP address where the datagram is shed at the transport layer and the message is pushed (through a socket) up to the application layer. I think I did pretty darn good. :D

First Exam Down

I just finished my first exam in in Sweden, Algorithms and Data Structures. It was about a two hour test, lots of heaps and BSTs and Ordos and graphs and stuff. I know I didn't get a hundred but I'm sure I did well.

One question: "Whats the max levels for a BST?" You would think log(n) but in the worst case it's n, but if it's n then it's not a BST (in theory). lol