Ravings of an Undead Cheese Minion

Take a look at the view  Embrace this magic place, as you can have anything you want to.  The brightest lights of the skyline surrounding you; The colors bursting in a warm oceanic hue.  Your dreams are docking in a world designed to make them all come true.  ~ Panda Island, "Marina Lights"  What a concept. Imagine riding on a boat through a warm tropical sea that takes you to another world. Imagine the breeze, the warm feeling of the water as you reach over and trail your hand in it, imagine looking at the sky and seeing dragons flying through a sunlit tropical morning. Imagine a world where you can have everything you've ever wanted, where everything you've ever dreamed of is possible. A world full of magic, technology, love, romance, exploration, discovery, and adventure.  A world where you finally have enough time to do everything you love. A world where your favorite characters and worlds are a part of reality, just a teleporter or a spaceflight away. Where you c

Here's an easy one for today. I think I spent more time opening the book than solving the problem. ;)  This is super simple. The only algorithmically significant component is the for  loop that iterates b  times. The addition completed in the for loop isn't significant. So, the runtime complexity is O(b) .  I should probably put this on Github but maybe I'll just link these posts when I'm done, IDK. 

I just finished the Haunted Half (1:48:28.7). Not a PR by any means, but pretty good for this year — next year I’ll focus on beating my old high school PR of 1:35. And today I have a decision to make.  This is the last weekend Lagoon is open, before everything in this miserable, cold and wintry state turns to crap. Then it will be a long, dark, and cold wait until March when it opens again. I love Lagoon, and I haven’t been once since Labor Day Weekend, despite promising myself I’d go every Saturday in the fall. I just want to go for an hour in the afternoon, but it’s also a 45-minute drive each way. Plus, I’m crazy sore.  I’m also really behind in CS 655 still. And I have homework for CS 650 and I need to do animation and math. But it’s the 655 that is REALLY tripping me out. I have SO MUCH to do.  I just never know what to do. I’ve sacrificed every Saturday and I just want to be at my happy place again before the dark winter takes it away from me. But then again, I’m going to IAAPA f

I generally am very appreciative of IntelliJ's linter. However, I do not appreciate this:  I am going to be modifying subspaces inside of the medianSplit  function. And the function returns that variable. Modifying the variable inside of the function doesn't make the error go away. Java cannot pass by reference, only by value, so I'm not sure why IntelliJ is getting so pissy here. 

I’ve always found these interesting. I’ve read the lists of traits for my personality types on Similarminds, and they’re interesting, but obviously not completely accurate. So I made a list on my own, with both the good and the bad. It’s important to be honest about what your strengths and weaknesses are. These are also definitely based at least loosely on Similarminds’ descriptions.  moody, creative, smart, quiet, romantic, caring, morbid, brainstormer, avoidant, not outgoing, often late, does not think things work out for the best, discontent, negative, not usually happy, anxious, skeptical, fearful, lonely, focuses on fantasies instead of reality, easily hurt, often sad, depressed, irritable, bad-tempered, defensive, compassionate, cares about others, concerned about the problems of others, does not like the rain, interested in intellectual pursuits, imaginative, artistic, idealist, loner, often angry, socially unskilled, pessimistic, worrying, has trouble focusing, attracted to sad

From Cracking the Coding Interview:  I had to peek at the solution for this one, but it makes sense now. This may not be the best explanation but I'm sure I'll get better as I go along. Also, when I get to the true exercises (instead of just the examples) I will probably put them on my GitHub as well. But not for the examples.  In this algorithm, we will be repeatedly dividing by 2. We will keep recursing until we can't divide by 2 anymore. And when we have an algorithm in which we keep diving by 2, this is a pretty clear indicator of O(log n) runtime. Why? Because if we kept multiplying by 2 repeatedly, that would be an exponential runtime. Logarithms are the opposite of powers, we are diving here, and multiplication is the opposite of division. Ergo, logarithmic runtime. 

I was going through a bit of the Software Testing course on Guru99 today for lunch. And one thing that really stuck out to me was that exhaustive testing of a system is impossible.  With most software, there is a near-infinite amount of possible scenarios to test and it is better to just test a reasonable amount of test cases that are likely to be reached in reality.  My CS 655 labs are super, crazy hard. I spent over a week writing the algorithm for median split by hand in order to get the math right, plus walking through an entire recursive example, and I'm only just now beginning to code it. I'm so far behind, but I will catch up by the end of the week (or next week at the absolute latest) and it will be amazing. Regardless, there's always a risk of my hand-tests and unit tests being too closely coupled to that particular scene file. But it shouldn't matter. You get as close as you can, and say a little prayer for the rest.  Test what you can, but don't be obsess

I couldn’t find any articles on this, via googling. So, I spitballed this one while stretching and eating breakfast.  I know how frustrated you feel. You tried to get up at 5 AM, but you were so exhausted that you couldn’t get yourself out of bed until 5:45 and got distracted once awake so you didn’t start lifting until almost 6:30. Then you had to cut both your lifting and running workouts in half. You wanted to keep running past 7:30, but you couldn’t, because you’d be late to class and lose your parking spot if you did. And half the time you’re still late to class anyway. And then after the workout comes the day, with all its other commitments and stresses and passions and longings and frustrations. I know how frustrating it is, to see yourself in the mirror and be overwhelmed with anger that you’re not looking the way you want to. You’re not the one who skips workouts. But you are the one who keeps having to cut them short. Filled with irritation and discontent, always chasing a dr

“You’ve wasted all that you have been given Still hoping to find a way to make life worth living.” ~ Rivers of Nihil, “Where Owls Know My Name” 

Because I'm tired of having to google it every time. Note that this will be in military time: new Date (). toISOString (). replace ( /T/ , ' ' ). replace ( / \. . + / , '' );

"You know what inspires me? Fearlessness, drive. I hate lazy people. Stay in school, don't you ever be lazy…don't you ever complain about hard work. Work hard. It pays off." - Nicki Minaj Lazy people drive me nuts, and I don’t mean the occasional moment of disorganization or taking time to relax. I mean people who easily give up on their dreams. Drives me insane. Don’t do it. 

The only way to achieve my "First Day of June" goal of achieving core competency  is by setting deadlines to finish tutorials, etc. I will try to update progress on this each week.  The art schedule is a little bit hardcore. As a result, I am allowing the "scripting for animation, CSANM 354 rehash" sections to be moved into the summer/fall of 2022 if needed. I hope that after completing these tutorials, my arsenal will be greatly improved for these two bigger projects. My CS 455 video game, Carnivile, will be redone at some point, but I don't know when.  Due to the intensity of my art, coding, and math schedule, I am going a little bit easier on myself for writing. I will try to get ahead on all fronts if possible.  I haven't figured out how to start incorporating regular Leetcode practice. But I won't worry about that until Cracking the Coding Interview is finished.  I'm still working on deadlines for math, physics, and coding, and will update this

This is something I’ve always been frustrated by, but I wasn’t really cognizant of it until recently.  When someone goes around asserting their frustration with how immoral other people are, they are inherently implying that they consider themselves to be morally superior to others. Ergo, hypocrisy. This is irritating. Nobody likes to be talked down to.  Similarly, when someone goes around accusing those around them of lacking empathy for not adhering to the same values as they do, it is almost universally true that they themselves are lacking empathy. They are not willing to see things from others’ points of view, or to consider the emotions and feelings of others, and instead move straight into attacking them.  Furthermore, people who boast online about their hyper-rationality are almost universally blind to their own irrational biological impulses and emotions, which play a major role in the decision-making processes of all humans — whether we like it or not, we are carbon-based ske

Made on Inkarnate. I really need to get back to my work now. Most of Carnivile takes place in the cities around the Rattlesnake Mountains.  Definitely will make future iterations of this, and it's far from depicting the entire planet, but this looks like a good start. 

I’ve been listening to “First Day of June” by Linus from the Stars over these past few days. It’s helped me get through these early snows and cold, rainy days that we’ve been having here. It’s weird to think that exactly a month ago I was still riding waterslides, outdoors, and now I’m freezing and all bundled up.  As I’ve listened to the song, I’ve been thinking, I should make this my most productive fall and winter season on record. My most productive “dark time” of the year. That way, when that beloved first day of June does arrive, I’ll greet it with a sense of accomplishment. I will allow myself a few spring months, too, as a buffer.  So, what do I want to accomplish by the first day of June — or, more specifically, by the Thursday before Memorial Day Weekend?  Physique. I want to be toned. I want to be at least 155 pounds, but ideally 145. At this zone of weights, my jawline will slim out. Then, coupled with continual acne treatment, hopefully a complete lift of mask mandates (wh

...But you should. Because you can do all the hard things you've set out to do, even if others don't think you can. Do it, and prove them all wrong.  This will be the day we've waited for. 

I usually follow these steps: 1. Click “Resolve Conflicts” 2. Use Gitlab’s online editor to fix them 3. Do a git pull  4. Go into my IDE and make a minor change (deleting an erroneous space, for example) 5. Do git add . , git commit -m “fixing merge conflict” , git push 6. This should resolve it If I find a cleaner way to do this, I’ll update it here. But this is what works right now. 

 

Because I need to get that atrocious Nemo parody off the top of my blog lol.   As always, I just chuck whatever memes etc. I want up here, with no regards as to whether or not I’ve already posted it. 

Therapist: Finding Evil isn’t real, it can’t hurt you  Finding Evil: The original image:  As you can see, I've gotten the hang of pencil sketches...but not colored pencil  sketches. Like oof, this hurts, and I haven't even really gotten into digital painting yet, either, which is my end goal (alongside 3D visual effects)... I feel like my strokes were too light which doesn't give the piece a particularly strong visual presence. Also, though the intent was to create a jarring color scheme, I think it was maybe a little bit too  jarring. Nonetheless, I need to step up my art tutorial game, so I won't be lingering on this sketch any longer -- it's served its purpose, effectively.