What a week...

So, as I wrote a couple of days ago, I had three assignments due last week, and a test, so from the outset, it was going to be an intense week, but that turned out to be a bit of an understatement.

First things first, the assignments: they are done, and I am starting on the next round (six of them this time). I ended up having all of my assignments done ever so slightly ahead of time, but I also ended up not sleeping a whole lot, so I am now rather tired, and I still have five assignments to do...

On Thursday, I discovered an algorithm which solves a problem which we were given in an assignment, and it solves it rather fast. Its worst-case runtime is still quadratic, but this worst-case is fairly unusual, and the rest of the time it runs linearly, which makes me kinda excited. Danu and I have been trying to sort out a way to prevent it from running in quadratic time, but I don't think we'll be able to; still it has been quite interesting to see why its not possible to guarantee a linear runtime.

The other thing that happened on Thursday was the release of the Apple iPod Video. The interesting thing about this new iPod is that they won't be selling non-video ones (except for shuffle, mini and nano), so it won't be like the photo where you could get a photo, or a plain old G4. I guess they have to make sure that the video iPod is a success, but it could well stop some people (like me) from buying an iPod because I would only consider buying an iPod with a large capacity disk, but I don't think I would pay the extra for video, thus I won't be buying one now. It would make a great portable video player though, especially since you can connect it to your TV. I bet there'll be loads of applications crop up to allow you to rip your DVD's to your iPod video.

On Friday my bicycle was stolen from the front of my house, which is rather annoying, especially since I have spent quite a lot of time, and a bit of money reparing it, so now instead of falling apart on whoever stole it, they have actually stolen a reasonably solid bike, with lights and all! I guess I am back to doing stuff on foot until I can get my hands on a new bike. I think I might try and get a road bike this time, they are so much easier to ride than mountain bikes.

I got a new school bag on Friday, bought it from swift direct, pretty good bag, loads of pockets, takes a laptop (pity I don't have one), and it takes up heaps less room than my last one, which is nice (If you know me, you will know the mini-pack that I usually carry around with me). I have to say though, the great outdoors bag I have had for the last few years is fantastic, it has lasted me four years thus far, which is about 8 times longer than any of my previous school bags, and it is still going. I remember my mother being slightly un-impressed at me buying and $80 schoolbag, but I think it has easily paid for itself.

I also bought a new cellphone on Friday morning, which should arrive during the week. I think it will be good to have a phone that i can carry around with me again, although I haven't missed my cellphone, just several important phonecalls and text messages!

Yesterday I finished one of my assignments which is due this week, and I installed the latest Debian linux. I have to say, I am quite impressed. Obviously , the versions of Firefox and the like that it ships with are a little out of date, but thats not really a problem because I can just download the updates. The thing that I am most stoked about is VisualTcl, a lovely little UI editor for Tcl/Tk, which is going to be very useful for my project! It allows you to drag and drop all the standard Tk widgets into a window, but they have also created a bunch of composite widgets which mimick some of the MFC controls!

Ciao.