How your computer actually runs

There is actually a Russian inside every computer flipping bits to make everything happen, and since this computer had been used so much the coating was wearing thin so you can see the Russian phantom inside the machine.

In other news, an informatics camp is probably one of the few places I could be away from home and still have enough stuff around me to fix a dead laptop.

Also, I would like to draw your attention to line 8 of the code in the above image.

In other news, we fly out to Thailand in another 11 hours. It’s really quite exciting, it just about makes the prospect of getting up at 6am worthwhile!

A Sydney Morning Herald photographer got a few shots of me for an article by Kim Arlington that should be out in a few days. So keep an eye out for that.

Syndicated on my blog.

Mind bending scenario

We had our first practice exam today, and on the whole it was quite an enjoyable experience. However, getting up at 7am wasn't. Since everyone was still dreary from getting up it was a bit of a happy accident that the café wasn't open for breakfast on time, giving us an extra half hour to wake up.

The exam itself was really quite pleasant, the solution to question one was quite straightforward (I promise) and everyone got it out. Question two wasn't as nice though, but with a bit of maths and STL magic I got it out. Unfortunately the third and final question was quite painful, and even though I had the solution in my head it was quite ugly and I may not have been able to code it in time, so I coded up a correct but slow solution for partial marks then spent the remainder of the exam thinking about a nice way to code up the solution but didn't get anywhere.

This picture is from the problem session that ensued after lunch. We went through the exam problems and then got onto a problem that we were given in the lead up to camp. This problem is an exercise in "case bashing", which is where you come up with different input data for the problem and find patterns in it which leads you to a solution. Coding it was also an exercise in case bashing (and orac debugging, which is where you fix a bug and resubmit to the training site hoping and praying that you get 100 this time), and as of now no one has scored 100% on it. I'm on 95% though and will hopefully get the last few marks before the end of camp.

This post is syndicated on the official Robert Newey photoblog! (and will be posted at 00:01 July 17th)

Off to sleep now (or code, whatever takes my fancy). Until tomorrow!