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Amazon MP3 download service
Has anyone tried it? I just bought Jaymay's Autumn Fallin', mostly on the strength of the single "Gray or Blue." The Amazon download service is kind of weird, they insist you download a (proprietary, but at least one exists for Linux) client to download the songs, and then they won't let you redownload songs you've purchased. But at least you ( Read more... ) -
Travelling salesman, xkcd, and a month old reddit post.
From a reddit post I made a month ago.
There are n! paths in a graph of size n. I can find the optimal TSP solution in O(n^2 2^n) time. Therefore, it is possible to do better than examine every path to find a TSP solution ( Read more... ) -
Hidden public information in board games, you suck
Chess and go are two great games, they have no hidden information. Ingenious is a great game with no hidden public information. Simon is a terrible game. Board game designers, every time you make your games include hidden public information, you make your games less like chess and more like simon. This is clearly a step in the wrong direction ( Read more... ) -
February, month of the 33rd floor walkup?
I am debating whether I should try going the month of February without using an elevator*. I figure it would be a good source of mandatory exercise, and it would create some fun stories. Much like walking 4.5 miles (and 4.5 miles back) from Manhattan to Brooklyn over the Manhattan Bridge just for dinner is both good story and good exercise ( Read more... ) -
The greatest song ever
So my sister complained that I haven't posted in two weeks. This is what you get.
The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song by Jeffrey Lewis. The youtube link has poor audio and will force you to sit through annoying banter for a minute and a half, but you'll see his "low budget video." Here is a link to recording the song, which is much better quality ( Read more... ) -
The right way to understand repeated squaring
So, I wish I could say I was over this, but I am still having bouts of sadness and self-induced frustration. But at least I am having dreams about algorithms, which you know, kind of rocks. Even if my ability to reason in my dreams is laughably bad ( Read more... ) -
Something is wrong with New York
So I log into facebook and see this. There is something wrong with New York when Coldplay is as popular as entire music genres.
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What to do when you can't sleep?
Why not attempt to write proofs about computable numbers? I guess I'll see if I really understood my formal languages class. But anything labeled a paradox is probably pretty tricky, so I am not too confident that I right.
Edit: Apparently, I am good enough to write correct proofs without sleep ;). -
"Ask me a question"
... :( -
A proof I will never forget: An algorithms story
Many moons ago, I was taking computer science 344, Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms at Rutgers. The simplicity and beauty of the subject matter was unmatched by anything else I'd studied except Newtonian mechanics, and algorithms, being based on mathematical formalisms rather than the messy physical universe, actually have the nice ( Read more... )