Coffee, Red Bean and Lab Antics

- Today's displeasing discovery: a tall americano (or a substantial breakfast?) in the morning increases productivity during the day...in both coding and sketching (shhh)! edit: mild heart palpitations have prompted me to quit caffeine (yet again) since then. Stimulants are bad...



+ I came back from a smoothie-procuring trip to find this artistic chair pile-up:



+ HeyStaks abuse amuses us. Pro search queries: ant reproduction, scorpion reproduction, incidence of early onset of Alzheimer's disease in child prodigies...

~ Recently I've been worried about my laptop's health, I think I should really open it up to get rid of the dust inside. I've resorted to ghetto laptop-cooling by placing a fan directly behind it!

+ Now for today's happy discovery: Korean red bean cake for 75c and made with agar agar instead of gelatin! Very filling! Though with this very un-Irish weather, I wish I could get a red bean ice instead...

+ My very own command centre:

Today

- Firefox 3.6.4:


"[...] Plus, hundreds of memory leaks have been remedied."

So that means...3.5 and everything before had "hundreds of memory leaks? ):

~ Worked with regex again...it's kind of like writing secret code...

+ I love writing methods for specific purposes...it feels like I'm doing something useful! This must be my favourite thing about coding (least favourite: debugging).

Microsoft visit and Kryder's Law illustrated

On the 15th, we all visited Microsoft in Sandyford Industrial Estate as part of the ODCSSS experience. We were given a brief tour during which we saw lots of orange balloons (to celebrate the Office 2010 launch), the shop (software packages for >€20!! And Sweet Factory...), gym, canteen (with champagne glasses ready for the launch celebration) and an office (accompanied by a story to explain the numerous Mac-adorned desks).


Note: many pictures were taken before I noticed a sign saying PHOTOGRAPHY PROHIBITED peeking out from behind a bush...oops!

We were the first ones of the day to see the Kinect video which was show at E3 2010, which frankly made me squirm with embarrassment for the poor arm-flinging folks onscreen combined with the games featured, especially the driving one and the one where you get to pet tigers and giggle (presuming you're a preteen girl). Our 'tour guide' also spoke to us about ~*The Cloud*~ (sorry), how Microsoft adapts to its competitors and interview tips. At the end we were given bing stickers and Office 2010 transfers.


Inside the auditorium

Moving on, the fast pace at which technology improves is one of the reasons I'm interested in Computer Science. Hence my hxc documentation of Kryder's Law! ...not really...

Memory Leaks and Ants

No, not Ant, ants!!



Thankfully we're clearing off to Microsoft tomorrow. Who can give me some tips to detect memory leaks/assign more VM to Eclipse?

Things I Learned Today

- Having the right JARs set up properly in Eclipse is really important!
- Despite having exalted the helpfulness of Google in the previous post, it's important to check through a couple of things before running to Larry and Sergey's wonderful masterpiece: all in your code! Take note of the console messages, exceptions, and trace all of your variables and objects with Ctrl+click for any null pointers. Sometimes it can be a simple thing which doesn't necessitate hitting up your favourite search engine.
- For UCD-CSI people only: WaveLAN is evil!!!! I spent hours trying to debug what I thought were faulty SQL queries, but when I connected to eduroam, everything worked!


Since we, the interns, have been populating this lab for two weeks now, we've naturally been rearranging our workspaces (no, not Eclipse)...


Setting up Alvis' command centre


The stack of computers Mark has amassed...


Mark's mess desk

Day...something

Had my second meeting yesterday, came out with a more concrete task for next week. I'm working with SQL, which once again makes me feel guilty for being less than enthusiastic about my Databases and Information Systems I class in second year. Working with remote data is confusingly scary at first, but I definitely appreciate the way this programme is pushing me to learn at a quicker rate.

Good resources for any type of self-guided research:
- Google: The power of Google saved my ass during my search engine implementation project, as well as a number of (initially) impossible assignments. There are definitely techniques to searching, but practice makes perfect. Don't just look at the first page of results!
- Forums: Again found via Google, hopefully there's a thread of more learned users who are discussing the exact same problem you're stuck on. Hooray for the web!
- Other people: Simply by discussing and/or your problem out loud, details/solutions you hadn't though of before may suddenly occur to you, even if your listeners cannot offer any enlightenment. Seek out classmates, friends, demonstrators, lecturers and any other people related to the field. With the ubiquity of social networks enforcing the concept of six degrees of separation, there's no excuse for not being able to find a suitable person to talk to.


CSI ant farm update: at first we didn't see any so we were sad, but they seem to move to different locations throughout the day...

Day 2

By the way, my project for the duration of my internship involves Twitter, elements of social search, ranking by reputation and the recommendation of reputable users. I'm pleased about the real-time relevance and potential degree of usefulness implied.

+ Thinking of giving the family desktop at home an Ubuntulicious makeover.
~ Spent most of the day doing some background reading...academic papers galore!
- However, said reading was done at a disappointingly slow pace...


the Computer Science ant-farm-in-a-wall?