www.BrettDaniel.com

It's late Tuesday night. Lee and I are bent over our keyboards running test cases on the semantic analysis compilers project. The room is dark; Eric went to bed hours earlier. Lit by the glow of two computer screens, we whittle several hundred errors down to a dozen... then two... then one... then none. We double-check everything, then breath a collective sigh of relief. "Anything else you can think of?" I ask. Lee shakes his head. With 10 hours until the noon due date, I type the turnin shell command and sit back in my seat. "We're finally done," I say with a smile. After spending over 45 man-hours fighting with 8,300+ lines of subtle interdependencies and edge cases, the worst week for CS students so far this year draws to a close.

I took a break from programming late last night to put together this drawing of a computer-literate surfer. Here is the original notebook doodle drawn during Algorithms. Caption away.

I feel I must mention that my Compilers professor let slip that he has four research servers named Pestilence, Famine, War, and Death. This in addition to the Romulus and Remus servers upon which students test our projects and the Champion and Mentor web servers. Naming computers is a common computer science pastime, second only to staying up into the wee hours of the morning programming. Coincidentally, this is how I expect to spend my next six nights as Lee and I attempt to bang out the fourth Compilers project.

Social networking websites like Friendster and Orkut seemed like interesting internet toys but not much else. Upload some information, link to your friends, then... what? I didn't really see the point.

It comes as a surprise, then, that I joined The Facebook, a social networking site for college students, and a bigger surprise that I find it entertaining. I can see what interests I share with my friends and classmates (even those from high school); find others with similar interests; or just randomly click a few layers deep in my social network and see who or what I find. Something about gigs of interrelated, hyperlinked, searchable data makes the computer scientist in me quiver with joy.

I am pleased to see that the site is still growing and improving. It only recently came to Purdue, and just today I noticed some additions to the fields it collects. One improvement I'd like to see is an API. I would love to be able to send a request to the site and get back an XML file containing information on my social network. For example, I could have my website request the URLs of all my friends' websites that my site would then link to. Even better, instead of using my local people pictures, I could just code a PHP page that requests the friend's profile picture and creates a dynamic image like I did with the picture thumbnails and stats graphs. Stuff like that would take the interconnectedness inherent to the application one step further. Plus, it would be very, very cool.

I drew this notebook doodle last year during a particularly excruciating computer architecture lecture. Surely everyone has had classes like that.

Ryan was left with a choice: computer science homework or fifty self-inflicted blows to the head. He chose the latter.

Have captions of your own? Leave them in the comments.

Before last night, I had never stayed up past 1 AM doing homework. Weekend revelry, perhaps, but not homework. I was so proud of myself. Most other CS majors will have already pulled several all-nighters by the end of the first week of freshman year.

I started math homework around 3 PM. The plan was to work until dinner around 5, relax a bit, finish around 7 and then move on to algorithms. Math took until 9, but that was after I got distracted by visitors and video games. "No big deal," I thought to myself, "I'll work on algorithms until midnight. It can't take much longer than that." Midnight passed, and I had yet to finish the first problem. Not only that, but I had already thrown out three pages of dead ends and was staring at a blank sheet of notebook paper. I was beginning to feel that distinct feeling of dread that accompanies tests one has forgotten to study for and trips to the principal's office.

Hours passed, and by 4 AM I finally had something written down for each of the four questions. I felt ok about some of it and very bad about the rest, but at least I had answers. With four hours until I had to get up to turn in the assignment, I fell into bed, relieved to be finished.

That assignment ranks among the worst I have ever had. Luckily, from listening to my classmates through the fog of too little sleep, I wasn't the only one who had struggled.

What was your worst assignment?

I have been on fall break since last Friday. It was a welcome vacation from schoolwork and, unintentionally, this weblog. I managed to fit more fun stuff into those four days than a month of summer. I'm still amazed. One doesn't usually think of fall break as a rip-roaring good time.

One of the perks of having an early class on Friday is that I got home earlier than I had expected. The weather was warm enough to drive with the windows down, and the trees were just on the edge of bursing into color. It was a beautiful but uneventful drive.

Dad and Sue were celebrating their tenth anniversary (Happy Anniversary, you two!) so I was left to fend for myself on dinner. I siezed the opportunity and asked Laura if she would like to grab dinner at an unbelievably good noodle restaurant. She did, so we met, ate, and drove around a bit afterward. In an unequalled display of geekyness, we stopped at a comic book store at one point. I explained to Laura that it has become a almost a ritual every time I come home. I'm a fan of an independent comic called Ghost Spy that I haven't been able to find anywhere else.

Saturday was the relaxation day. I surfed, played some video games, and read a bit. I finished Sue's copy of The DaVinci Code that I had started reading when I was home the previous weekend. Great story, but I found the writing annoying and grating in places. Flashback, explanation, flashback, explanation, etc...

I also made a run to the video game store to pick up Katamari Damacy. The online buzz about the game has been unbelievable, so I wanted to try it out. I like it. The game plays like a internet Flash game on steroids: simple premise, simple controls, addictive gameplay, and— as evidenced by its spread online— it lends itself to becoming a meme. Eric and I have already logged an hour or two now that we have returned from break.

Sunday was the Big Day. Eric, Mel, Laura, and I saw Shark Tale around midafternoon. We all agreed Finding Nemo was far, far better. I hated how the fish in Shark Tale were basically humans with fins swimming through a disturbingly human cityscape. The characters in Nemo actually seemed like they could be fish.

After the movie and a quick stop at Eric's, we played some mini golf. Grand fun. Laura got a hole-in-one (again!) and I seemed go get nothing but 3s. Despite that, Eric won. Italian dinner, then the four of us hung out at Eric's for a while. Laura and I finished off the evening by watching an anime called Trigun back at my house.

Monday was uneventful with one exception: Michael invited Doug, Jason, and me to go indoor rock climbing. As usual, Jason and Doug were completely unreliable and decided not to climb. Mike and I did, though, and we stayed for almost two hours. I had never climbed, but I found it was both more fun and more tiring than I had expected. We tried almost every wall. One overhang got the best of both of us. I managed to get halfway over the first stairstep, Michael, just shy of the second. We left with dead arms and hands raw from holding on to the tiny handholds. I can't wait to try it again.

Like Sunday night, I finished my last full day of break hanging out with Laura and watching anime. She has a huge collection of Japanese DVDs and we chose to watch an unbelievably bizarre film whose title was an oddly-chosen swear word. It was a low-key but thorougly enjoyable way to finish off break. I wish it had lasted longer.

I made this notebook doodle sometime last year. I can't remember what class I did it in.

Day 12 of the "Reading A Piece of Paper Championships" and the reigning master is off to a great start. Such form! Such finesse! Just look at him go!

Feel free to leave your captions in the comments.

Another list o' links:

• The Evolution of Mario Sprites – I, too, noticed the quality of sprite graphics began to decline with Super Mario RPG. I believe Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island is not only the best game on the SNES, it also has some of the best sprites. (via)
• Cutaway Illustration of a Cruise Ship – I am amazed by the sheer scale of this illustration and the technical skill required to make it. It's like Stephen Biesty's cross-sections, but more detailed. I wish there was some way to order prints.
• The Flash Page of Eric Lin – Awesome samples and tutorials on how to make 3D flash animations. (via)
• Rob Gonsalves' Art – Very surreal, dreamlike paintings. Look closely at this one.
• How to be a Programmer
• How Calculators Calculate, How Calculators Calculate Trigonometric Functions, and a simpler explanation – Most people think calculators calculate mathematical functions using series expansions. Not so. They use an algorithm called CORDIC that only requires a table of base values, addition, and multiplication.
• Animated Engines – Animated CAD illustrations of all sorts of mechanical engines. I think it would be cool if he expanded to other types of machines. (via)

I was going to use the original of this guy in a notebook doodle post, but ended up coloring him instead. You'll notice the line art is different from the usual. For most of my finished pictures, I trace the original with Illustrator's brush tool and my drawing tablet, then color and shade in Photoshop. On the B Guy, meanwhile, I used Flash's trace bitmap command to convert my pen original into high-resolution black and white line art. The results are decent, but not ideal. Adobe has a similar bitmap tracing product called Streamline that works a little better but is a $129 standalone product. Oddly, Illustrator's bundled auto trace tool is a steaming pile of crap. It might work well for creating multiple layers of color, but it chokes on complex line art.

I was experimenting with automatic tracing mainly because my drawing tablet doesn't play well with dual monitors. It thinks I have a single 2,304 by 1,024 pixel monitor, which messes up the aspect ratio of the drawing area in relation to the screen. Circles turn into squashed ovals. When I try to revert to a single monitor, my video card complains loudly for some reason. The main monitor resolution goes all screwy and the bottom quarter of the screen turns to random static. It even stays that way between reconfigurations and reboots. Odd. I wish there was some way to trick the tablet into using only the main screen.

Even if the tablet was working correctly, it still takes a long time to trace a drawing by hand. I want to resume doing colored weblog illustrations, but to do so, I need to turn my drawings out more quickly. The centurion, for example, took about eight hours to complete; way too much for an ephemeral weblog entry. On the other hand, the B Guy with its simpler line art and subject matter took only about two and a half. That's still a bit much, but it's getting closer. I can see spending an hour on a drawing to accompany longer posts like Monday's.

By last Thursday, I had completed the third CS project, my first exam of the semester, and all the homework for the week. This left me with a rare, homework-free weekend containing the best Saturday I have had in a long time. With a bit of culture, a touch of adventure, and some suspense at the end, it was the kind of Saturday that would make a Hollywood writer proud.

I had driven home Friday after my midday history class. It felt like the first real autumn day of the year: cool and the trees with just a touch of color. Saturday began around 11 when I set off to pick up Laura. We were going to lunch at a wonderful Italian restaurant downtown and then to the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

While no sports events were scheduled downtown that afternoon, there did seem to be a parade, block party, barbecue, and religious revival instead. Traffic was crazy. We fought our way through with minimal random lane changes and strange looks. "Don't mind us," we tried to indicate, "We just look like we're tourists." To our mutual amazement, we found a parking spot less than a block away from the restaurant.

It has been weeks since I have eaten good, non-dorm food and months since I have had food as good as the restaurant where we ate. The dorms have nothing on its plush, wood-paneled ambiance, either. We sat in a replica train car raised on a platform a few feet above the rest of the tables. It sounds strange, but it was actually quite nice. It was as if we had a private room all to ourselves.

After a leisurely meal (unlike the one before Stomp), we drove a few streets up and a few over to the art museum. It was heavily under construction, but we managed to find a parking spot and the entrance with little trouble. The museum itself is centered around a small central hall modeled, it seemed, after the inside of a medieval cathedral. Pillars bordered the walls, and behind them several galleries branched off in all directions. We chose one which led us through several rooms of classical renaissance (I am probably using that term incorrectly) paintings grouped by nationality. Many caught our attention. Laura especially liked those which told a story, and I, the detailed architectural pieces. The latter rooms progressed chronologically from what I would (probably incorrectly) call classical realism, through impressionist, and ending at pointillism. The other wings off of the main hall contained older, almost medieval artwork. There was also a section on pigments and how early artists trained under a master artist. Very interesting stuff. Unfortunately, the museum closed before we had time to thoroughly explore the upper floors or additional wings. Maybe next time.

Several things surprised me about the museum. First, I was amazed how many pieces it had from artists I recognized. Rembrandt, Seraut, Gaugin, and even a Van Gogh. The museum was also promoting Degas' Little Dancer which we came across in the impressionist room. Not bad for Indiana. Second, I was utterly blown away at how old some of the paintings were. The earliest I found was from 1310. That's almost seven hundred years ago. That is older than any man-made item I have ever come across, and yet there it was, still full of color, right in front of me. Amazing. Finally, many of the paintings brought home how incredibly influential religion was over the course of history. It seemed every other painting illustrated a story from the Bible or contained obviously religious elements. It's hard for me, living in a (we can hope) secular, scientific society to imagine a world in which religion governs nearly every aspect of life.

A burly staff member had to all but kick us out once the museum closed. Luckily the gardens surrounding the museum remained open, so Laura and I wandered for another hour or so. Through the woods, up through the formal gardens, around a disused fountain, and back again. With fall rapidly approaching, the plants were beginning to fade, but I, always with my camera, was able to capture some of the remaining beauty.

Eventually we worked our way back to the car and from there made our way back home. We were both parched from a long afternoon of walking, so stopped for drinks at one point.

"You know what would be good?" I asked as we exited the convenience store, juice drinks in hand, "Smoothies."

"Yeah!" Laura replied.

I was shocked when five minutes down the road we passed a smoothie shop. Of course we had to stop. Not long after that we stopped again for a quick dinner.

When we got back to Laura's house, we found her mom collapsed on the living room couch. She couldn't talk, couldn't focus, and was hallucinating that the dogs were getting out of their pen and running away. Laura, panicked, explained that her mom is diabetic and must have forgotten to eat, causing her blood sugar to fall catastrophically. While Laura fed her mom some orange soda, I called the paramedics who arrived a few minutes later. The six of them gathered around the couch and ran a bunch of tests. Mrs. S's blood sugar was 25, lower than Laura had ever seen. The paramedics then started an IV and pumped Mrs. S. full of glucose. She recovered rapidly and was soon sitting up and talking normally. Both Laura and I are incredibly grateful that we came back when we did.

"We must do this again." I said with a smile as I left.

"Definitely. Except for... well... the obvious," Laura replied.