Tsaot's Blog

The Nintendo DSi (announced October 2nd 2008) is Nintendo's newest portable device and a bad idea. A new DS itself is not a bad idea, and I've kind of expected one for a little while now. A game-console's lifespan is traditionally 4-5 years as technology is constantly improving. This is partially spurred on by PC games as they are constantly improving as the strength of the platform is constantly growing.

Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer on Twitter) seems to have created a viral type contest. In short, meet him in Times Square on Tuesday with proof you heard about it on Twitter and you and the person who informed you get a New Seagate HD that hasn’t even been announced yet. I know it lowers my chances of winning by blogging it, but this use of twitter is too novel to keep quiet about.

I posted my Language Study Aide without much explanation last time, So I thought I would explain a bit more along with this minor update. I created this Excel file a year and a half ago when I was taking a Japanese course to help me practice my vocabulary. As my vocabulary grew, so did the program's, bringing it up to the current 600 or so words. I then posted it up to this web-site (before the current WordPress version) to little interest. Recently my sister started taking Hebrew and Japanese at her college (yes at the same time, and yes she is crazy) and requested I send her a copy.

I'm posting this up again due to many requests from friends and family. Language Flash Cards: Japanese Configuration This is a flash-card game that quizzes you on Japanese vocabulary and tracks words you have problems with. It also tracks words you have mastered and quizzes you less often on them. It is a .xls file with macros.

I have amazing news everybody. I have won the game. I know amazing isn't it. I have proof of this as well. From xkcd.com: I embed this image in the hope that you too might one day win the game. Also, I'm changing the mind set of this blog.

In grading the midterm and last homework assignment, I've picked up on a few quirks that some people haven't noticed. C++ like any other syntax has some oddities to it that aren't really intuitive but can cause real horror when not paid attention to.

Well, P2 has been graded. the results seem to be pretty good overall. The class average is 85.22 points out of 100. Of what I saw, the two major problems everyone had were a lack of comments in their code, and a general understanding of classes & header files. Let's look at comments first. When I am grading, I'm looking for three major forms of documentation: project or file headers, function headers, and general comments.

I was hoping this post wasn't going to be needed, but the nasty little monster has reared his ugly diminutive head. Allow the following image from xkcd to elaborate on this. Now for the why.