I hate Scheme.

Reason #210: awkward mathematical and comparative grammar. For everyone in the world, basically, the way you do math or compare arguments is argument operator argument (like a+b or a>b), not operator argument argument (like (+ a b) or (< a b)).

Not only is it amazingly illogical and actually a bit inefficent, it also is horribly confusing.

Take my midterm, where I got an 88, losing 6 percent because of this code:

(define valid-word?
(lambda (d)
(and
(< 0 (word-count d))
(> 41 (word-count d)))))

Supposedly, it would always return a value of false because there's no way any number could be greater than 41 and less than 0.

But wait, read that code again folks!

I got it right. The reader messed up, and I spent a week thinking I got a B+ on my midterm when I really should've gotten a 94.

Well, that's changed. Error corrected, score changed, and now I aced the midterm.

And I hate scheme for making me think I didn't >:(.

Orange skies, smiling at me, nothing but orange skies...

Currently in the Greater LA Area, there are a couple of massive wildfires going on. None of them are even close to Irvine, since they are a considerable distance north-by-northwest of here.

One small problem: Winds in that area are 60 mph going south-by-southeast.

Right now, if the sun was out, the massive smoke in the air would dim it considerably. At midday, the sky was orange instead of, well, blue. Right now, everyone's keeping their windows closed to keep the ash and the heat out, and my one trip to the vending machine (for bottled water, thank you very much) really aggravated my cough.

And I kept getting ash stuck in my eye...

Otherwise, things are remarkably boring.

Hey, its UCI on the weekends :).

The Oracle of Bacon

Anyone who finds a bacon number greater than 3 with that thing is amazing.

Anywho, nothing much is going on.

Just posting the intresting link...

Sorry for the lack of updating, internet has been fritzy for the last few days. Looks like its better now...

Anyway, took my first midterm yesterday in ICS H21 (programming) and got an 88%. Not bad, really but here's the annoying part:

I should've gotten worse because I had misspelled a couple items of syntax, including important parts...

I should've done better because I missed 6 percent because of a error that I would've noticed in an initial test. An if tree that had a greater than sign which should've been a less-than sign. And then I did it the other way around.

It translated into this: 41 < n < 0... Should've been 41>n>0...

Eh, an 88 ain't bad, especially considering I've been aceing the homework so far.

About a month till thanksgiving...

Fun link for today!

God, that article made ME feel old.

Have fun dad!

Things are progressing OK here. Nothing much to report.

Yeah. I'm settling in :).

Today, Max Payne 2 comes out for PC. I use a Mac.

I loved the original Max Payne. I beat it in a week. I savored the story of a PO'ed undercover cop, especially since the cops think he's a crook and the crooks know he's a cop.

And the sequel, with the same bullet-time goodness, now with rag-doll physics, and a entire new Film Noir style love story...

Must... get... 1ghz PC... NOW...

Okay, I'm gonna compile all of the reviews for the webcomics in one post, that way its easier for people who wanna find out more about them...

Uhh, this will likely push all of the previous few days posts disappear, so sorry about that...

Its Walky: Sci-Fi/Romantic Comedy really. Centered around an agency which fights extra terrestrial threats, an operation that, until recently, was kept secret. Really good and has some great (and long) archives. Doing a M-Su rotaion for 6-7 years! (10/10)

PvP Online: A Game Comic. Centered around the staff of a gaming magazine called PvP. A great gaming comic and pretty fun to read. Bit of a sell-out though... (9/10)

Funny Farm: Although usually light hearted and fun, this occasionally gets dark and mysterious. Great at both. And, yes, some of the characters are animals... (8/10)

Sinfest: A ... mature comic, to say the least. No nudity or anything, but plenty of talk about sex. Also makes fun of religions! YAY! (8/10)

General Protection Fault: The comic for all software engineers. An excelent storyline, great characters, and tons of geek humor, if you couldn't tell by the title. (9/10)

Tao of Geek: Not quite as great as some others, but has characters devoted to D&D, computer games, Anime, and all other geek stuff. Pretty good, but not the best (7/10)

Avalon: Romantic Comedy. Its centered around a few Canadian seniors going to school at Avalon High School, although mainly around Celidh (pronounced Kaylee) and Josh (pronounced Josh...). Really good, and although sparatic updates recently, still something I check almost every day for updates. Great Archives. (8/10)

Real Life: Another Gaming comic. Basically a mirror of the artist's real life, involving slightly exagurated people from real life (his friends). Great to read because it often breaks the line between characters and artist. Uber Archives. (9/10)

Instant Classic: A Movie Comic. Similar to Real Life, except its about this guy Brian who is obsessed with movies instead of games. Newer than most of the others in the list, but a great comic nevertheless. (9/10)

D+Pad: Video Game Store Comic. Basically Clerks in a video game store. That's all I really need to say about it :). Pretty good, but updates are rare nowadays. (7/10)

Megatokyo: Gaming comic (yep, another). This is one of the most popular web comics out there. Basic setting is two american gamers, one also an anime artist and another slightly whacked, who are in tokyo trying to get enough money to get back to the US. Excelent, and the comic is going to have book out soon, too! (10/10)

Errant Story: Fantasy comic. This one is very new, but made my the maker of Exploitation Now, another amazing web comic that has recently ended. This one looks to be pretty good. (10/10)

Penny Arcade: Gaming comic. This is THE gaming comic. Possibly the best comic to actually directly talk about video games (Megatokyo is more plot driven, this one ain't). Just Uber. (10/10)

Ctrl + Alt + Del: Gaming Comic (see a pattern?). Basically a comic strip about two gamers. Not sure if they are real, but who cares? Very new and very well done. (9/10)

Queen of Wands: Its another "person's life" comic with some nice humor in it. Main character is female, and tech-savvy, and also just funny and very immature. Also has a good archive. (8/10)

Angels 2200: Sci-Fi comic. Pretty good, about a group of fighter pilots in a universe where no men exist and various colonies of Earth are in revolt. Looks like it will get really good. (8/10)

Bob and NYM: Weird comic. Made by two posters at Infoceptor, it is a web comic of their design. Pretty interesting, and I would suggust it. (7/10)

Stubble: This one is a dramady comic. This comic is good during the fall, and fricking amazing during the spring. The maker of this comic builds everything up during the first half of the year, with excelent plot development and character development, and ends it in one hell of an amazing way every year. Still, not 10/10 due to the meh-ness of the story in the fall... (9/10)

Theater Hopper: Movie Comic. One of the many one-shot comics out there, but still pretty good. Not very old, not beautifully done art work, but still funny. (8/10)

Warbucket: ANOTHER gaming comic, but heavily slanted towards Blizzard games. Usually pretty funny, but I only really read it for the Warcraft comics... (6/10)

Bhag: Low Fantasy: Funny as hell mockery of High Fantasy games. Very funny, and the main character would probably be best characterized as Chaotic Neutral. Great storyline and plenty of jokes (8/10)

Krakow: Good comic where it seems to be based in reality, save for the fact one of the characters is a Succubus. Occasional nudity, btw. Still funny, as the Succubus isn't really evil. (8/10)

Basketcase Comix: These are comics that would feel right at home in any Opinions section of the newspaper. Political comics, and usually very good. BTW: Artist is a member of the Green party, so things tend to slant that way... (8/10)

8-bit Theater: Gaming Comic. A sprite comic doing basically the same thing as RPG World does, only with sprites... Read this one if you like any of the FF games, because its just as good, if not better, than any other strip out there. (10/10)

Movie Comics: THE Movie Comic. Essentially the Penny Arcade of the movie comics. Almost a complete paralell in fact. A must read if you love movies. (9/10)

RPG World: Gaming Comic (what else?). This wonderful comic makes fun of the various FF games. Its beautifully done with a great archive. Another Staple of the Web Comic circle. (10/10)

Sara and David: Very beautifully done Dramedy. Although only 52 strips old, it has the makings of a great comic down the line. (8/10)

Mac Hall: Sorta a Gaming Comic, but its turned into a college life comic. Really funny, and great art work. Oh, and the maker is a Mac user :). (9/10)

Slackers: A college strip about two students who never go to class. Not exactly the best role models for me, duh, but I like it the way I liked Clerks as a video-store clerk... (7/10)

Repository of Dangerous Things: Rather funny strip about a warehouse stores dangerous and usually magical things. Main character is a new employee of the place, and he is very curious... (8/10)

Sacred Pie: Sci-fi strip that is more like a comic-book than a comic-strip. It shows the voyages of three friends who come into the possesion of powerful magic items and go into the future to fullfil a destiny things. Very good and should be read by ANY lover of comics. (9/10)

Fallen: A comic that is still fairly young. Seems to be about a former angel and such. Hasn't really taken off yet, but seems to look good. (6/10)

Strings of Fate: Another Comic-book style comic. About a kid who finds out he's a god (sorta...). Really good, but hard to read week to week. I suggust read it either chapter-by-chapter or month-by-month. Still, VERY VERY good. (9/10)

Apple Geeks. Another version of Machall. Good, and great art, but nothing to yell and scream about. (7/10)

Movie Comics joking about Kill Bill (no spoilers, Dad)

Yes, I realize that half of what I do here is point you to funny web-comics, but they ARE funneh :).

Anyway, not too much happening here. Got an ICS and a math assignment due this week, just like last week, and got some lectures today, just like last week, and I'm busy playing Neverwinter Nights during my free time, just like last week.

Well, not in ALL of my free time :). I'm actually doing more socializing in College than I did in High School.

I like college :).

Groan. Got a lecture in 30 minutes with Kirk...

Hmm, Time to tell you about my lecture professors!

ICS 6a (discret math): Not bad. The professor does a lot of relevant stuff, a lot of stuff where I'm actually taking notes (gasp!) and it ain't bad. Ain't to fun, but still intresting.

Pol Sci 21A (american gov't): Pretty good. The professor has a rather cynical view of the gov't, which is fairly apparant. Not a ton of jokes, but occasionally funneh and always very intresting. And I take a fair amount of notes here too!

ICS H21 (Comp Sci): Zzzzzz. I got a teacher who talks like Kirk at various intervals. And raises his voice occasionally, for NO APPARANT REASON! ARRRGH! AND IT ISN'T INTRESTING STUFF IN THE FIRST PLACE! He drones on and on and on about the stuff and it takes him forever and a day to get to the relevancy of anything, when he talks about something relevant in the first place! Not too many notes here, and the few I've taken have been useful...

I'm will stay awake, I will stay awake...

Oh, and there was D&D yesterday. DM pitted our 8 man lvl 1 party, with two people missing, against 2 small Blue dragons (probably about 30-40 hp a piece). After killing off three of our party members (two were eaten by the dragons, only one DM-controlled NPC) we finally managed to kill them (I did 13 dmg in magic missiles and another 10 with real weapons), and then the other NPC, a chaotic evil doppelganger, backstabbed us and we killed him.

Yeah. We lost half of our party but the survivors are now level 2! YAY!

The maker of Real Life, one of the best webcomics out there, is a devout PC user. Not to the point where he thinks all mac users are idiots (like most PC users on the internet...), its just that he can't imagine using a Mac.

Currently he's running a theme on his windows machine that mimics the OS X desktop.

Dock and all.

Real Life

Look at the news post below it :).

(note: tomorrow the link will be: Real Life)

Oh, as for here, saw Kill Bill on friday.

Very Bloody. Those of weak (or average) constitutions should think twice before seeing this. This ain't the clean kind of sword-fighting. This is the kind where limbs go flying and blood sprays from wounds under absurdly high pressure.

Otherwise, very fun :).

CHANGES TO THE SIDEBAR:

Added my girlfriend's blog: Green is Good.

Now modified the Webcomics list. Added a couple...

Lets see... I had 19 before changing, now I have...

35.

Only 16 more...

NEW COMICS:

Funny Farm: Although usually light hearted and fun, this occasionally gets dark and mysterious. Great at both. And, yes, some of the characters are animals... (8/10)

Sinfest: A ... mature comic, to say the least. No nudity or anything, but plenty of talk about sex. Also makes fun of religions! YAY! (8/10)

General Protection Fault: The comic for all software engineers. An excelent storyline, great characters, and tons of geek humor, if you couldn't tell by the title. (9/10)

Tao of Geek: Not quite as great as some others, but has characters devoted to D&D, computer games, Anime, and all other geek stuff. Pretty good, but not the best (7/10)

Residence Life: Pretty good at making fun of college and dorms. Guess why I like it :). The main characters also have a pet squirrel named Beer... (8/10)

Queen of Wands: Its another "person's life" comic with some nice humor in it. Main character is female, and tech-savvy, and also just funny and very immature. Also has a good archive. (8/10)

Warbucket: ANOTHER gaming comic, but heavily slanted towards Blizzard games. Usually pretty funny, but I only really read it for the Warcraft comics... (6/10)

Bhag: Low Fantasy: Funny as hell mockery of High Fantasy games. Very funny, and the main character would probably be best characterized as Chaotic Neutral. Great storyline and plenty of jokes (8/10)

Krakow: Good comic where it seems to be based in reality, save for the fact one of the characters is a Succubus. Occasional nudity, btw. Still funny, as the Succubus isn't really evil. (8/10)

Basketcase Comix: These are comics that would feel right at home in any Opinions section of the newspaper. Political comics, and usually very good. BTW: Artist is a member of the Green party, so things tend to slant that way... (8/10)

Slackers: A college strip about two students who never go to class. Not exactly the best role models for me, duh, but I like it the way I liked Clerks as a video-store clerk... (7/10)

Repository of Dangerous Things: Rather funny strip about a warehouse stores dangerous and usually magical things. Main character is a new employee of the place, and he is very curious... (8/10)

Sacred Pie: Sci-fi strip that is more like a comic-book than a comic-strip. It shows the voyages of three friends who come into the possesion of powerful magic items and go into the future to fullfil a destiny things. Very good and should be read by ANY lover of comics. (9/10)

Fallen: A comic that is still fairly young. Seems to be about a former angel and such. Hasn't really taken off yet, but seems to look good. (6/10)

Strings of Fate: Another Comic-book style comic. About a kid who finds out he's a god (sorta...). Really good, but hard to read week to week. I suggust read it either chapter-by-chapter or month-by-month. Still, VERY VERY good. (9/10

Apple Geeks. Another version of Machall. Good, and great art, but nothing to yell and scream about.

Geez, I didn't know I added so many...

Second ICS homework was due today.

15 frickin pages of printout...

Anyway, before my discussion session on Wednesday, I showed up early, and got around to talking about the class with some other students. Here's what I found out:

*Almost everyone has programmed in a Object-Oriented-Language (aka C++ or Java)
*Almost everyone misses for loops and hates recursion.
*Almost everyone has made at least a dozen mistakes with the mathematical grammer (in Scheme its (+ 2 2) instead of 2+2).

Good to know everyone else is so frustrated.

Oh, btw: ASCII Matrix

Brand New Beauty Product: Regenerate!

Heh. Great teaser.

(This post brought to you by the Umbrella Corporation)

Clicky!

Several things of note (aka I'm lazy and I don't want to write a full blog entry)

Friday a good number of UCI's TA's were on strike.

The TA's are part of the UAW (Union of Auto Workers)...

ANYWAY, this is apparantly a yearly thing, and it didn't affect any of my classes, so no problem.

In American Gov't we got told a bit about the four branches of the US Gov't: The Legislative, which makes the laws, the Executive, which enforces the laws, the Judicial, which checks the constitutionality of the laws, and the Media, which criticizes the laws as being ineffective or immoral.

Heh, only being a bit cynical.

Did more programming in scheme, and cursed the language for being a complete mess in the mathematical sense (you write 2+2+3 as (+ 2 2 3).

Was driver for a bunch of people who wanted to go to a local mall. 7 passenger cars are fun :).

Blew off my ICS lab for three reasons: The TA wasn't there to help us, I can do the programming at my room just as well as anywhere, and the Giants were tied with the Marlins going into the 9th.

Yeah, that's about it. Want more info? Ask for it in a comment.

Oh, yeah, Valve was robbed this week.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/452/452844p1.html

BTW: Valve is the maker of Half-Life, one of the best FPS games ever. They're making Half-Life 2. The source was stolen...