Tag Archives: ithaca

Updates

Personal, , , ,

House

We’ve officially decided to stay in the same house next year. There are some drawbacks (mostly temperature related), but we generally like the place and none of us really wants to deal with moving again. It’s also nice to be in a house as opposed to an apartment. I think we are going to try and plant a vegetable garden in the spring.

Summer

I’m definitely going to be in Ithaca for the summer, continuing to work on the games project. There were a couple of weeks there when I was trying to deal with applying for internships, but I think it will work out better to be at Cornell. It will be nice to have some good quality research time, and I’m looking forward to the chance to explore Ithaca and its environs in more hospitable weather.

Courses

Logic is pretty tough, but I suppose I should have expected as much from a grad level math course. I think I’ll make it through the course just fine, but I’m going to have to revisit my decision to minor in math. I like learning math, and I can certainly find other math courses I would like to take, but I’ll have to balance that with the extra work and stress that they tend to create.

Databases is also tough at the moment, though the work isn’t as intense. We’re starting with some very theoretical material, which is interesting but dense. Still, I’m enjoying the opportunity to work through some of the foundational material in my research area.

(Not Quite) Back in Ithaca

Personal, , ,

I think I’ve discovered a new inverse-square law: The probability of a hassle free trip is proportional to one over the square of the number of planes involved. Since my trip involved three separate aircraft, it was doomed from the start. I got out of Omaha in time, though it was on a plane that was supposed to leave two-and-a-half hours earlier, but Chicago was a different story. They had some bad weather, and my flight to Philadelphia was delayed by two-and-a-half hours. This of course caused me to miss my last-of-the-day connection to Ithaca, and I spent the night in the Philadelphia airport listening to International CNN endlessly looping through the New Hampshire results and British soccer scores. It’s now 6:00am, and I’ve got another four hours before I finally get out of here. I even paid for the ridiculously expensive wireless because I finished my book and the only way to survive airports is to spend money freely on junk food (I hit up Dunkin’ Donuts at 5:00) and entertainment.

Ah well, at least I should accumulate a disproportionally large number of travel stories over the next five years. 

Book Sale

Books, ,

Ithaca Book Sale

Last weekend was the beginning of the biannual Ithaca book sale. It’s run by volunteers, and usually has upwards of 250,000 books. The prices decrease for each of three consecutive weekends, but they start at $4.50 for a hardback, so I though it would be worth it to go early. Apparently everybody else had the same idea, because it was packed on Saturday morning. I was about ready to leave during my two hour wait in line, but I am glad I didn’t as the selection was pretty amazing. I looked exclusively for computer science books and found a number of gems:

  • Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (first edition) by Aho, Sethi, and Ullman — The classic “red dragon book” on compilers. This was actually very well timed as I am in the midst of writing the front end of a simple compiler for my research.
  • Introduction to Algorithms (first edition) by Cormen, Leiserson, and Rivest — Along with the compilers text, this is the book I’m likely to get the most use out of. It’s one of the classic works on algorithms, and it is pretty encyclopedic for results up through the eighties. It’s probably not the best for an introductory algorithms course, but it’s great as a reference.
  • Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation (first edition) by Hopcroft and Ullman — The “Cinderella book.” This is another classic, and I’ve been told that the first edition is better than subsequent editions.
  • Operating System Concepts (sixth edition) by Silberschatz, Galvin, and Gagne — The “Dinosaur book.”  I think this is the textbook for the Cornell OS class, so I will need it at some point.
  • The C Programming Language (second edition) by Kernighan and Ritchie — I need to brush up on my C/C++, and who better to read than the creators of C themselves. I’ve read part of the first edition but it’s been a while
  • Agile Web Development with Rails by Dave Thomas and David Heinemeier Hansson — Rails is a popular web application framework for the Ruby language. I’m probably unlikely to use it in the near future, but I’m a sucker for web development.
  • GNU Emacs Pocket Reference – I’m also a sucker for Emacs. I know most of the stuff in here, but it never hurts to have a reference.
  • C Pocket Reference – Likewise for C.

Not too bad for $35. I hope to go back at some point and take a look at their fiction.