Today the mighty Cougars were beat by #1 Memphis. It didn’t deter us from attending the game though. It was a great game, even though we lost. At least we were on TV! There are some pictures up on Flickr.
Art in some places is getting quite extravagant. With technology growing exponentially, its only natural to have technologically advanced art. Here’s a good video of Troika “Cloud” in an airport. [Via Gizmodo]
WWE superstar, John Bradshaw Layfield, is getting into the viagra making business with his new product called Mamajuana.
If you don’t want to know what happens this Friday, don’t click the link.
This Saturday is one of the most talked about MMA pay-per-views of the new year. It marks the highly anticipated mma debut of former collegiate and professional wrestling champion Brock Lesnar. Here is the full card and my prediction of who will win in bold.
MAIN CARD FIGHTS:
UFC Interim Heavyweight Title: Tim Sylvia vs. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira
Brock Lesnar vs. Frank Mir
Nate Marquardt vs. Jeremy Horn
Ricardo Almeida vs. Alan Belcher
PRELIMINARY CARD FIGHTS:
Tyson Griffin vs. Gleison Tibau
Chris Lytle vs. Kyle Bradley
Marvin Eastman vs. Terry Martin
David Heath vs. Tim Boetsch
Rob Emerson vs. Keita Nakamura
Tuesday, Oh Dear Tuesday. Today I was able to learn the ways of Hash functions. They are actually quite impressive and might be used when I need to store big sets.
For those who don’t know and actually care, Hashes are used frequently when you need to store tons of information. Lets say you have n elements and n is quite large. In order to find an item in a list (lets assume its unsorted), it takes O(n) time steps (worst case scenario). Harsh! With a Hash Table though, you use a hash function to find the step so it takes O(1 + N/B) time steps (where B is the size of the hash). Obviously, this is quite faster than a regular list. If done properly, the search will be in constant time. Killer! If N approaches B though, the search gets slower. The best case is when N is about 50% of B. You developers should check it out if you haven’t already.
In other news, David once enlightened me by explaining that SKU stands for Stock Keeping Unit. WTF? Anyways, thats not the point. The point is, Google is now using 2D barcodes in newspaper ads. You can take a picture of the barcode with your cell phone and will be redirected (via special software) to a special page online with information on the product/event you requested. Nice right? Well sure, if you feel like going to download software for your phone. That is, if you’re phone’s supported. I imagine they are looking forward to when Android hits the big time. I’m sure this photo barcode software will come with the Google Cell Suite. Novel approach, even though Joel says its been done before. I can’t wait to see if people actually use it. [From Joel, via Techmeme]
More Info From Google on the ads, here.
Without further ado, here is my response to the State of the Union Address. At least the parts I deemed important.
On the Economy:
The President said we are going through a “period of uncertainty.” He also requested there will be no changes to the economic stimulus bill so it won’t “delay or derail” it. He also was quite passionate about not raising taxes, enough so to say he will veto any bill raising taxes. He even threatened to veto any bills with excessive earmarks, as well as banned all committee earmarks from being passed without a full congress vote approval.
My View: I agree with most of this. I don’t see any bills being vetoed for having excessive earmarks though. Excessive, or “More than 50%” as he put it, is such a relative term that it won’t ever be decided on. Also no progress will be made this year if he has to veto every bill.
On Housing:
The President wants to offer tax free bonds to refinance mortgages.
My View: Thats fine and dandy, but it isn’t going to help turn things around.
On Health Care:
The President said he wanted to make health care available to all Americans. He wants to be “expanding consumer choice, not government control.” He asked to end the bias for those who do not get insurance through their employer.
My View: I like this idea, but since I don’t know how much the bias is I won’t know how much this actually helps. I’m assuming through common reasoning this will level out the playing field, but I’ve been wrong before.
On Education:
The President wants to strengthen the “No Child Left Behind” act, and give pale grants to all public school children (as opposed to just college students).
My View: Since I’m in the education field, this is a tad bit personal. I see states cutting down funding to all public schools with no relief in sight. While this does help students, it doesn’t help schools. They need to feel the money love too.
On Energy:
The President wants to reduce dependency on oil by funding new technology including renewable power, nuclear power, and reversing the greenhouse gas effects.
My View: Reversing the greenhouse gas effects? Really!? Quite a bold request there President.
On Immigration:
The President says we will never fully secure the border until there is a lawful way for immigrants to come for work. Also he says we must find a way to humanely treat illegal immigrants.
My View: While I agree with his points, I look forward to see what he actually does about it. I don’t foresee anything major new laws about work visas or illegal status uplifting happening.
On Iraq:
The President plans on bringing 20K troops home, but wants to continue to fight in Iraq.
My View: I agree with staying in Iraq. It was probably a mistake to go there in the first place, but now that we’re there things need to be done right. Hasn’t anyone see Charlie Wilson’s War!? “They f*cked up the end game.” We can’t let that happen again.
Overall:
I think this was a pretty boring address. There wasn’t much change (to coin a term from Obama), just more of the same. I wished he promised to bring some big changes in his last year. I guess he’s just planning to ride things out. Unfortunate.
Oh Monday, here we go! With a new Monday, comes a semi-healthy Will as I made my return to school.
Not much activity went on today. I’ll report on my take of the State of the Union address a tad bit later, so for now here are some quotes from today:
Prof: “Are these two elements the same?”
Student A: “Yes”
Student B: “No!”
Prof: “Well then. I guess this class has all the answers. Now which one is right?”
Prof: “As you can see, the math is basically the same here. So where’s the huge difference? Its quite obvious we’re cheating. Math is all about cheating wholesale.”
NEC Oh, NEC. Why oh why do you play with thee?
NEC plans on releasing (later in ‘08) a liquid powered cell phone. It has a touch screen and is translucent. Its a quite terrible idea to have a translucent touch screen. Its really hard to see (especially in the sun) and obviously can’t have any back lighting effects. Ahh well, the real gem here is the liquid power. My only issue: Is it combustible? Lets hope not. That will cause all sorts of problems. I mean, yhey’d throw it away when you tried to board a plane. AH!
[Found on Gizmodo]
Have you ever seen a midget wrestler soar through the air like an American Bald Eagle???? No!?!?!? It truely is a thing of beauty and hear it is. LOL.
Starting on Monday, people who have medical conditions such as glaucoma, cancer, and the deadly not-stoned-enough virus can start getting the Chronic, and I don’t mean the Dr. Dre cd, from special “AVMs.” These electronic drug dealers won’t be out on the street outside your local grocery store, of course. They’ll be “housed in standalone rooms, abutting two dispensaries and protected by round-the-clock security guards.” To use them, you’ll need to go with a prescription in hand, get fingerprinted and get a prepaid credit card that’s loaded up with your dosage and what strain of weed you want. This is for real. No joke.
