Got Kindle

I received my Kindle today. Just needed to plug it for power supply, and it just works. Cool

There are two things I'm not used to it is the number of buttons. Lately I use iPhone a lot, so it feels like there are way too many hardware buttons on Kindle. The other thing is how you purchase a book on Kindle. It seems that your personal info is set up on your Kindle (on shipping?) and you don't have to type your password or anything. No warning about it on the screen. You can cancel your purchase if you accidentally buy a book, and the content will be removed later if you do so.

I should take a look at the cancellation policy in detail. I wonder if someone bought a book on my Kindle without intention, opened it, and cancellation would be valid or invalid.


I reviewed little basic about imaginary numbers. Tomorrow I need to spend much more time to study math for my exam this weekend.

Trigonometric Function

There was no morning study session today.

I woke up late and reviewed some theorems before I went to work...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigonometric_function

It's getting colder, but hope the morning study thing continues. I need to wake up early regularly to work on many things.

My Kindle seems to have reached to Japan, so maybe tomorrow I can actually use it.

morning study session (Oct 27, 2009)

Today's M's turn to lead a study session, and it was about brainstorming how to explain poi to beginners. He plans to write an article on poi, so he's going to explain me about it as sort of a test case. No concrete outline yet.

Later on, I went to a cafe alone and studied elementary combinatorics, to get ready for an exam scheduled on coming Sunday. I probably need to review trigonometry and geometry.

morning study session (Oct 26, 2009)

It was my turn to organize the session today. My friend M didn't have much time, so it was a short one.

I explained to M how programming contests (coding) goes, and today I suggested him to solve a problem. I use the "Programming Challenges" book by Steven S. Skiena and Miguel A. Revilla (from Springer). I picked the problem "Minesweeper" from sect. 1.6.2 (PC/UVa IDs: 110102/10189). He works as a programmer and he's played Minesweeper (which allegedly used to be the most frequently used application on some OS...) before.

It's a basic problem, so he got rough idea of what needs to be done pretty quickly. So next time we're going to discuss how to implement his solution

Ordered a New Kindle

Got an e-mail message notification telling me that Amazon started to ship Kindle internationally, so I ordered one (I live in Japan).
I don't know the detailed info on new kindles, but I've wanted to get one.
I like printed books, but they take much space and takes time to have one shipped.
My Kindle hasn't been shipped yet. Can't wait to actually use it.

Binomial Coefficients and a Thick Slice of Toast

A few things I learned (reviewed) today... study meeting was cancelled and it's a self study.

Data alignment of C structure values.

Binomial coefficients (for it's related to dynamic programming, which I'm working on).

Graph of functions. Determine min and max values for f(x) with derivatives.

Basics of lambda calculus. From what I learned so far, it's about rewriting expressions, and it's about languages.

Numbers, sets, addition. The value of 1 + 1 depends on its definition of elements.

To do: design a library of functions as a tool to practice programming and solve combinatorics problems.

morning study session #2 (Oct 22, 2009)

So I and M had another study session in the morning.

Topics for Today:
- poi
- ntp-like sample program logic

There wasn't a solid agenda for today (if any it was supposed to be about poi).

Discussed how to learn about the apache poi project. There's a well written reference on the project site, so probably intermediate or above developers should have little difficulty to get started. M's planning on implementing some application with it.

Then M brought up something about conversion between time in seconds to date. I partly got what M was talking about, but I need more detail (or at least I need it written down) to see what was the particular technique he addressed. He knows how it's implemented but not the underlying theory. Maybe tomorrow he'll show me the actual piece of code.

It's my turn tomorrow (hopefully, or in the nearest convenience not so far...), and I probably pick a problem about a familiar topic, like games, and work on it.

morning study session(Oct 21, 2009)

First official morning study session with M.

We are going to take turns leading sessions (only two of us though) in the mornings. It's my turn today to bring up a topic and I suggested for us to study about dynamic programming.

T: Let's learn how to make use of dynamic programming.

M: Why bother?

T: If applied to a right kind of problem, it can be very useful, especially for calculating layout, allocating tasks, ... I think we can work on problems from programming contests and see how we can do well w/o dynamic programming (maybe brute force search), then see how dynamic programming can help.

M: It seems hard to start working on such problems right away.

T: I see. By my next turn, I'll pick a simple problem from a contest that can be solved in a straight forward way.


So anyway I'm going to stick with dynamic programming for a while. M will work on poi, and he'll explain it to me next time.