A Dork to the Nth Degree

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 05:30:39 GMT

B07 Completed

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 08:41:22 GMT

YES! I am FINALLY done as a TA for CSCB07 (Software Design)!! w00t!

Holy shit, I really worked a lot today. Lets do a recap.

5:45 am - Woken up by stupid Alphonse
5:58 am - Woken up by mom
6:00 am - Woken up by alarm clock
6:45 am - Leave house, drive Alphonse/Mom to work
8:00 am - Arrive at work
8:30 am - Searched for Ewen
9:53 am - Found Ewen
12:00 am - Lunch Break
1:00 pm - Back to Work
5:00 pm - Everyone leaves work except for Me and Orlando
7:45 pm - Give up on X.509 Biztalk Certificates and decide to call it a day
8:30 pm - Arrive home, eat dinner, etc...
9:00 pm - Watch Season Premier of Scrubs!
9:30 pm - Start Marking
11:30 pm - Lost Cindee
11:44 pm - Formed Cindee Search Committee
11:45 pm - Found Cindee (It was THAT effective!)
3:30 am - Finished Marking! Officially completed my duties as a B07 TA!
3:40 am - Blog about this momentus occasion
3:41 am - Sleep

There's a huge snow storm tomorrow... fun commute =)

Missing Cindee

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:51:28 GMT

I'm missing Cindee. No no, I don't mean the lovey-dovey kinda missing, although now that I think about it, I do feel a slight tug at my heart. Anyways, I lost her. Yes, I lost her again!

The last time I had contact with her, was while I was driving home from work, at approximately 8:20 pm on the phone. I said good bye as I walked into my house, and promised to call her back. Its now 11:48 pm. Usually, if I don't call her back within 1 hour, she gets mad and calls me back. But she didn't! Worried, I started messaging her on MSN and received no reply! It's now been over 3 hours and still no Cindee contact, so I conclude she is missing.

I've decided to start a Cindee Search Committee, to aid in this time of need. You may get a badge here:

And together we will find her! I used a picture of Cindee hiding her face, so that you could make her out, but not see her... just like how I cannot see her right now since she is missing. I then put question marks to convey her "lostness".

Good luck team!

Work

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:46:36 GMT

Started working at 8. Its now past 7. I'm still at work. Man am I a workaholic =(

Must...find...way...out...!

Damn you X.509/BizTalk/Diffie-Hellman!!

Stomach Volcano

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 09:18:05 GMT

After 2 days of food poisoning, my poor stomach has transformed into a hostile environment, where it suspects everything of being a poison. So what does that mean for me? Imagine a volcano. Constantly rumbling and bubbling. That's what its like. It rumbles and bubbles and just produces a lot of gas, until I become bloated. Then I "erupt" and left the gas out. Needless to say, Bryan isn't having a lot of fun sitting beside me.

xbox 360

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:44:40 GMT

Just got an xbox 360... these are the games I am going to get...

1. Grand Theft Auto IV
2. The Orange Box
3. BioShock
4. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
5. Gears of War
7. Gears of War 2
8. Halo 3
10. Guitar Hero II
12. Rock Band
13. Rock Band 2
16. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2
17. Call of Duty 2
20. NHL 09
21. Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
25. Left 4 Dead
30. FIFA Soccer 09
34. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved
39. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
44. Viva Pinata
45. Soulcalibur IV
49. Guitar Hero World Tour
57. NBA 2K7
66. Prince of Persia

eeepc + eeebuntu = crazy awesome

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 06:13:55 GMT

Xandros was pissing me off, so I ripped it out of my eeepc,and installed eeebuntu (ubuntu, but specifically for eeepc) and I gotta tell you, its SO much better! The power... ad it has compiz setup and installed by default too!

The Curse of the Diet Coke

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 08:39:04 GMT

I was thirsty. I guess that's how most curses start. Boy is thirsty. Boy accidentally offends some idol/grave/supernatural being and becomes cursed. I offended none of them, yet I was still cursed.

I spent the day at school, studying like I should be. Since I had my laptop, I was reluctant to leave it alone, even for a few minutes to grab a bite to eat. Fortunately, my buddy Alan came about with a giant can of Pringles. How I loved those chips. The minute he opened it up, I ravaged it. I scooped up the can's innards and let it slide down my throat in a symphony of tastiness (yes, I don't chew, which is why Cindee "claims" I eat like a duck).

The beast had finished his fill, now it was thirsty. So I decided to dig up all the change I could find, and buy myself a drink. $1.25, enough for a can of coke. So I happily leave my stuff under the watchful eyes of Alan and gave the vending machine a visit.

It was outrageous! No cans, only bottles, all $2.00 and more! I could not afford it, so I decided to take money out from the ATM. I withdrew $30, and went to the machine to stick in a $10. It was such a crispy $10. As I feed it to the machine, I thought to myself, "wow, its such a crispy ten dollar bill, the machine must love eating it up". Oh, it loved eating it up. It loved it so much, that it wouldn't give any of the change back!

The outrage! I looked down to where the change should of been dispensed, and noticed all kinds of damage and holes. It appeared that I wasn't the machine's first victim. Angrily, I kicked at the machine, but to no avail. My money was gone.

Dejected, I slowly took the long lonely walk back to my seat, knowing that the only satisfaction would be from finally quenching my thirst with a bottle of Coke. It was diet. Oh the horror! I tried to convince myself that it would be delicious. It wasn't.

By then, Tenniel had arrived as well. Alan and Tenniel tried to cheer me up, by pointing out the $1000,000 contest on the "coke" bottle. All I had to do was look under the cap to see if I had won. So I happily spent 5 or so minutes struggling to let the little rubber out. You know what I won? NOTHING! The curse had begun!

First it stole my $10, then it stole my $1000,000! But the worse was yet to come. I had ruined the cap, so I wasn't able to screw it on. While Tenniel was talking to me, I flexed my arms and my gigantic pipes expanded and pushed the bottle over the table (Tenniel said my elbow knocked it over, but that seems implausible) and right into Tenniel's bag! It didn't fall on its side. It didn't fall standing up. It fell upside down, and got stuck like that, pouring ALL the contents into his bag!

Needless to say, it was an interesting hour, taking his bag to the washroom, dumping it out into the toilet, dunking it into the sink, and blow drying the bag. Fortunately, the curse was lifted. You see, I believe the diet coke just wanted to escape back to the ocean where it belonged. That's why it did everything it did. If I hadn't lost my $10 dollars, Tenniel wouldn't of pointed out the $1000,000. If the $1000,000 hadn't been stolen, I wouldn't of instinctively flexed my massive pythons, knocking the bottle over. If it hadn't fallen into Tenniel's bag, it would of ended up on the floor and not the toilet. And if it wasn't for the toilet, it would of never returned to the sea.

I drank some. I hope the cursed coke decides to leave my body naturally...

Fucking Peter....

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 21:28:45 GMT

I leave my laptop alone for ONE second and this is what happens...

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:12:58 GMT

Okay this time for sure!!

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:12:37 GMT

Okay. Ate. Toilet. Showered, Brushed Teeth. Now sleep!!!

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:49:44 GMT

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:07:59 GMT

Finished 1 exam. 2 more to go today. I feel sick to my stomach, like I'm going to vomit.. Need sleep... so badly...

In other news, I just discovered like 10 minutes ago what the format of the Plagues and Peoples exam will be. Multiple choice. Awesome!

This means, I got 2 hours to read it the material, absorb it, and regurgitate it on the exam using the process of elimination! That's the great thing about this course, its like reading 15 articles, which is what I do all day. This is gonna be awesome. I hope (or is this just the sleepiness talking?)

Note to self: Ask Cindee for 15 hugs.

Update 2 down. 1 to go. Man, that plagues exam was EASY! I didn't have to think at all! Coincidentally, I ended choosing C alot. Hrm... I guess any test is easy, if you just guess all the answers! =D

The Story Of How I Voted Today

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 06:09:53 GMT

So as you know, today was the election. Conservatives won, blah blah. Who cares, what matters was, I voted! Most people just went to their register station and voted. Not me.

You see, I live in Brampton during the weekends, and I'm up in Scarborough during the week day. However, I'm only registered to vote in Brampton. To complicate matters, I had forgotten my registration card at home!

So I got to school, determined to have my say. I concocted this elaborate plan, where I would find people who weren't going to vote, and ask them to vote for me. Why? Because they're wasting their vote anyways, why not just vote symbolically in my place? I thought of all the people who weren't voting (yes, my brother and his girlfriend were included in my thoughts), and was ready to commence my grand scheme. However, an article in the Toronto Star caught my eye.

According to the article, homeless people, non-registered persons, etc.. could still vote! All you needed was ID! Oh how happy I was, so I went home, grabbed all my ID, and headed to the voting station in Scarborough.

Guess what? I got DENIED! All my identification had "Brampton" as my address! Meaning, I belonged to the Brampton-Springdale riding, meaning I couldn't vote in the Scarborough-Pickering riding! My friend Jenny was in the same situation, but she had identification of a Scarborough-based address (her school sent mail to this address). She got one step further then me, before getting DENIED by the overzealous indian guy.

I was inspired, so I went back home, looked for a 2006 government paycheck stub, and took it back to the voting station. I was about to be DENIED by the OIG, but I argued with them, "But this is my home, why would the government send a cheque to a place that I don't live at?" The moderator comes by, and chimes in, "His identification (my brampton-based driver's license) identifies him, but the cheque verifies his location...so he can vote!"

Success! I eagerly received my ballot, contemplated GOP, Christian Heritage, but didn't know who the hell they were (Sex Party and Communist wasn't on the ballot), cast my vote, and walked out a proud man.

And they say its hard to get the youth to vote...psft!

That's What She Said

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:44:52 GMT

Microsoft Interview

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 01:50:29 GMT

I feel like I'm studying for an exam. However, my actions are duly warranted; Microsoft interviews are tough!

Let me provide you a subset of the questions I may be asked. They are divided into four catagories: Riddles, Algorithms, Application, Thinkers.

Riddles

Why is a manhole cover round?

Imagine an analog clock set to 12 o'clock. Note that the hour and minute hands overlap. How many times each day do both the hour and minute hands overlap? How would you determine the exact times of the day that this occurs?

Imagine an analog clock set to 12 o'clock. Note that the hour and minute hands overlap. How many times each day do both the hour and minute hands overlap? How would you determine the exact times of the day that this occurs?

If you had an infinite supply of water and a 5 quart and 3 quart pail, how would you measure exactly 4 quarts?

You have a bucket of jelly beans. Some are red, some are blue, and some green. With your eyes closed, pick out 2 of a like color. How many do you have to grab to be sure you have 2 of the same?

Algorithms

What's the difference between a linked list and an array?

Implement an algorithm to reverse a linked list. Now do it without recursion.

Write routines to manage a heap using an existing array.

Write a function to print the Fibonacci numbers.

Applications

How would you redesign an ATM?

How would you go about building a keyboard for 1-handed users?

If you could add any feature to Microsoft Word, what would it be?

Thinkers

You have been assigned to design Bill Gates bathroom. Naturally, cost is not a consideration. You may not speak to Bill.

How would you explain how to use Microsoft Excel to your grandma?

What was the hardest question asked of you so far today?

I'm somewhat nervous, but not really. Microsoft would be awesome! Especially the third interview (I'm on the second one), you get to fly down to Seattle for 2 days of interviews, 1 day of sightseeing. Exciting!

PETA Are Fucking Morons

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:47:11 GMT

Time and time again, PETA insists on saying and doing things that makes me cringe at the thought that a group of people exist, who are such moronic imbeciles. A wise man once said, "never go full retard". PETA always goes full retard. So what is this recent move that has irritated me so much? PETA actually sent a letter to Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream asking them to Substitute Human Milk for Cow Milk in their products.

They love ordering people around to do things just to save a few stupid animals. They're ALL about guerrilla-style publicity stunts. They're just as bad as those Westboro Baptist Church (the God hates fags people). Remember the greyhound bus beheading? They actually released an ad comparing the incident as similar to slaughtering animals. Seeing PETA's antics makes me WANT to eat more eat, just to spite them!

I guess its not their fault. I mean, how would you act if your brain was shrinking?

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 04:56:54 GMT

Bryan Nguyen: I hate babies! They're like fucking monkeys!

Cool Videos

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:04:45 GMT

EepyBird's Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo

Holy Shit

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:29:20 GMT

Holy Shit, I am The Legend's TA.

For those of you not so adverse in Anton mythology, The Legend is the smartest and best computer science student at UTSC. He started the same year as I, and he would be able to compete hand in hand with the professors while the rest of us were confused.

He is called The Legend because his intelligence is Legendary. He makes it seem so easy, plus he's a nice guy, and he's Viet.

So now I am his TA for c09. I think that's pretty neat, he used to help me out back in the day, and I guess I'll be helping him out now... maybe... after all, he is The Legend.

3 Jobs

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:35:40 GMT

I don't know how it happened, but come September, I will have 3 jobs! Dammit! I won't have time for anything!

1) Software Developer @ Berkeley Payment Solutions
I'll be doing mostly maintenance on the software I created in the past.

2) CSCC09 TA
I'll be teaching the Programming on the Web Tutorial. This is my favourite course, so that'll be kinda cool!
Tuesday from 2-4 every week

3) CSCB07 TA
I'll be teaching the Software Design Tutorial. I just got assigned this one today. I didn't even ask for it lol, dammit!
Tuesday from 4-5 or Tuesday from 9-10

This will be pretty cool, so every week I will make like $100, not bad not bad! =D

Monopoly Simulator

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:05:19 GMT

So I was doing one of the euler questions, and it asks:

In the game, Monopoly, the standard board is set up in the following way:

GO	A1	CC1	A2	T1	R1	B1	CH1	B2	B3	JAIL
H2										C1
T2										U1
H1										C2
CH3										C3
R4										R2
G3										D1
CC3										CC2
G2										D2
G1										D3
G2J	F3	U2	F2	F1	R3	E3	E2	CH2	E1	FP

A player starts on the GO square and adds the scores on two 6-sided dice to determine the number of squares they advance in a clockwise direction. Without any further rules we would expect to visit each square with equal probability: 2.5%. However, landing on G2J (Go To Jail), CC (community chest), and CH (chance) changes this distribution.

In addition to G2J, and one card from each of CC and CH, that orders the player to go to directly jail, if a player rolls three consecutive doubles, they do not advance the result of their 3rd roll. Instead they proceed directly to jail.

At the beginning of the game, the CC and CH cards are shuffled. When a player lands on CC or CH they take a card from the top of the respective pile and, after following the instructions, it is returned to the bottom of the pile. There are sixteen cards in each pile, but for the purpose of this problem we are only concerned with cards that order a movement; any instruction not concerned with movement will be ignored and the player will remain on the CC/CH square.

Community Chest (2/16 cards):
1. Advance to GO
2. Go to JAIL

Chance (10/16 cards):
1. Advance to GO
2. Go to JAIL
3. Go to C1
4. Go to E3
5. Go to H2
6. Go to R1
7. Go to next R (railway company)
8. Go to next R
9. Go to next U (utility company)
10. Go back 3 squares.

The heart of this problem concerns the likelihood of visiting a particular square. That is, the probability of finishing at that square after a roll. For this reason it should be clear that, with the exception of G2J for which the probability of finishing on it is zero, the CH squares will have the lowest probabilities, as 5/8 request a movement to another square, and it is the final square that the player finishes at on each roll that we are interested in. We shall make no distinction between "Just Visiting" and being sent to JAIL, and we shall also ignore the rule about requiring a double to "get out of jail", assuming that they pay to get out on their next turn.

By starting at GO and numbering the squares sequentially from 00 to 39 we can concatenate these two-digit numbers to produce strings that correspond with sets of squares.

Statistically it can be shown that the three most popular squares, in order, are JAIL (6.24%) = Square 10, E3 (3.18%) = Square 24, and GO (3.09%) = Square 00. So these three most popular squares can be listed with the six-digit modal string: 102400.

If, instead of using two 6-sided dice, two 4-sided dice are used, find the six-digit modal string.

So I decided to build a monopoly simulator. I did it at first at work, but it didn't give me good results. Damn VB's randomizer did not like mt too much I'm guessing. So before I went to bed, I redid the entire simulator in Java. Its pretty sick, I now know the probability of landing on any square, so listen up to know which property you should buy!

If you were to number the squares from 0 to 39, here's the number of times you'd land on each square, assuming you rolled the two dice 10 million times.

Jail - 622228
Illinois Ave - 318336
New York Ave - 309739
GO - 308705
B&O Railroad - 307718
Reading Railroad - 297163
Tennessee Ave - 293212
Pennsylvania Railroad - 291143
Free Parking - 287501
Kentucky Ave - 283870
Water Works - 279720
St. James Place - 279563
Indiana Ave - 273179
Atlantic Ave - 269697
St Charles Place - 269678
Pacific Ave - 268251
Ventnor Ave - 267982
Boardwalk - 262216
North Carolina Ave - 261937
Electric Company - 259929
Marvin Gardens - 258568
Community Chest 2 - 258082
Pennsylvania Ave - 250309
Virginia Avenue - 246854
Short line - 242476
Community Chest 3 - 238379
States Ave - 237184
Vermont Ave - 232893
Income Tax 1 - 231599
Connecticut Ave - 230336
Oriental Ave - 226835
Park Place - 219057
Luxury Tax - 218509
Baltic Ave - 216265
Mediterranean Ave - 213695
Community Chest 1 - 189488
Chance 2 - 103436
Chance 1 - 87370
Chance 3 - 86898
Go To Jail - 0

Rock Me Sexy Jesus

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:02:57 GMT

House – September 16, 2008
How I Met Your Mother – September 22, 2008
Heroes – September 22, 2008
The Office – September 25, 2008

Prime Numbers

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 04:57:56 GMT

I've spent a few years now, thinking about how to generate prime numbers. Nothing too serious, just considering the run-time of a brute force algorithm. My algorithm pretty much went like this:

1) Get all odd numbers (since 2 is the only even prime)
2) Remove all multiples of 5
3) You're now left with numbers that end in 3, 7, 9. Test those guys for prime-ness.

So you go from 3 to n, checking for primes by using the mod function. Today, I discovered this SWEET algorithm called "Sieve of Eratosthenes". It's so cool. Here's how it goes:

1) Make a list A of all numbers 1 to n.
2) Make a list B to hold all the primes you find. The first item will be 2.
3) Remove ALL multiples of 2 from list A.
4) The first remaining number will be a prime. Add this to B.
5) Grab that number and remove all multiples of it from list A.
6) Repeat 4) and 5) until no numbers are left in List A.

This algorithm is so incredibly slick and sexy. Here's a poem I found dedicated to it:

Sift the Two's and sift the Three's,
The Sieve of Eratosthenes.
When the multiples sublime,
The numbers that remain are Prime.

In other news. I'm working on a monopoly problem. Using statistics, find the 3 most popular squares I would land on if I had a 4-sided dice. On a 6-sided dice, its Jail (6.24%), Illinois Avenue (3.18%), and GO (3.09%).

I tried doing it in VB, but VB doesn't seem powerful enough, or its just really troublesome to do things like "global variables". Argh.

Programming Challenges

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:56:40 GMT

So I found this REALLY neat site, called Project Euler. I want to see how many of the problems I can solve. Its all math-based ones, but its incredibly complicated to do by hand. Why? Because you need to develop an algorithm with a computer to solve it. Here's a sample of questions:

"Find the sum of all the multiples of 3 or 5 below 1000."
233168

"Find the largest palindrome made from the product of two 3-digit numbers."
906609

"What is the smallest number that is evenly divisible by all of the numbers from 1 to 20?"
232792560

"What is the first term in the Fibonacci sequence to contain 1000 digits?"

"How many circular primes are there below one million?"

"Which prime, below one-million, can be written as the sum of the most consecutive primes?"

They're all solvable, by using brute-force. But brute-forcing them all would take forever. So you really gotta think it out. Looks like I found something to keep me busy.