Stanford Lecture: Don Knuth – Twintrees, Baxter Permutations, and Floorplans (2022)

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the last couple years Donald Knuth professor emeritus at Stanford University was not able to generate/present The Annual Christmas Lectures. For this past year (today is January 01, 2023 – Happy New Year!) he generated Stanford Lecture: Don Knuth – Twintrees, Baxter Permutations, and Floor Plans (2022). When you read the title it is hard to imagine how the three topics could be connected. My suggestion is to watch the video in which the topics are presented. Towards the end of the video the relationships are discovered. Not only that, but a set of four C programs are provided so one may experiment with the concepts. Continue reading “Stanford Lecture: Don Knuth – Twintrees, Baxter Permutations, and Floorplans (2022)”

Direct Recursion

Good day software developers and software engineers. The forecast for today Thursday in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul calls for rain and thunderstorms. As usual the forecast changed at least a couple times in the past few days. Today the storm is forecasted for the evening hours. So far I have not heard thunder. I do not like to have my computers on during a thunderstorm. A couple times I have lost some equipment. Continue reading “Direct Recursion”

Database Sharding

Good day software developers and engineers. Today is Wednesday and it seems it is going to be a sunny day in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Hope the weather cooperates in your neck of the woods.

I continue to read and experiment with the contents presented in the on-line course Introduction to Python Fundamentals: Lesson 02 by Paul Deitel published by Pearson Education, Inc. As a matter of fact, tomorrow I will start with lesson 03. So far I am pleased to be reviewing and learning new things during the process. Continue reading “Database Sharding”

Count Construct

This short week after Memorial Day seems to be flying by. I have not been outside today yet, but the day looks quite nice. The high for today is 87F. Somewhat low when comparing to what is expected for the next three days: 92F, 94F and 91F.

The cleaning lady typically comes on Fridays. She will be here today Thursday around 09:30 AM. Not sure if the nice weekend has affected her plans.

As I have previously mentioned, I move to the dark side when I decided to get an iPhone instead of an Android cell phone. My Google Pixel 4 phone died with less than two years of service. The actual phone looks like I just purchased it. I like to keep my cell phones in good shape so they are as reliable as possible. A day or two before my Pixel phone dies, the Pixel 4 phone of my daughter in law dies in a similar way. My son lives in a different city about five miles from us. What a coincidence!!!

So far I like my new phone and watch. I can do a lot of things from the watch without having to access the phone. The watch displays a lot of information that I like to have readily available (i.e., temperature, heart rate and to top it off it has access to Siri).I spoke with my wife a few minutes ago. It seems that the cleaning lady will not be coming today or tomorrow due to personal issues. Wonder if the nice weather had something to do with it.

One last thing, while getting ready to publish this post I found out that this blog has reached 8,000 subscribers. Thank you a lot, I appreciate your support. I am targeting 10,000 subscribers in order to make a switch from WordPress to YouTube. If you wish to express your opinion please leave a message bellow. I will take it into account!

Continue reading “Count Construct”

Can Construct

It is Wednesday on a nice and warm day in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. To be honest with you, it does not matter much if the day is nice or not. I have not been outside today. On the other hand the forecast for Friday, Saturday and Sunday is calling for temperatures in the low 90’s. Hopefully my wife and I will be able to enjoy the days. In particular we are planning on walking early morning so we can avoid the high temperatures. We are planning on grilling and consuming some adult beverages. I believe we are almost out of beer so we might stop by Friday evening after work by the liquor store. Continue reading “Can Construct”

Best Sum

It is the first Tuesday after the Memorial Day 2021. As I mentioned in a previous post I have been experiencing problems with my Pixel 4 phone. Apparently I purchased the phone less than two years ago. About a week ago the phone was working fine and suddenly it died. I tried restarting it but the phone was completely unresponsive. My wife and I ended taking it to the T-Mobile store where we purchased the unit. After a few minutes of tinkering and a reset the phone came up. BTW the service at T-Mobile is quite good.

After a couple days, while visiting our son in Madison, WI the phone died once again. Tried reviving it but the phone did not come up. On Sunday we returned to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. We decided to wait until Monday to take the phone back to T-Mobile.

At the T-Mobile store they tried reviving the phone once again. This time the phone did not respond. We decided to get a replacement. Since we did not purchase an extended warranty we would not get a dime for our phone. It is hard to believe that you can buy a cell phone, use it for less than two years and with the phone looking like new, it would be worth nothing. We decided that we would no longer get an Android phone or a unit by Google. So my new phone is a IOS Apple phone. I also got an Apple watch since my Ionic Fitbit had been slowly dying. When I purchased it a few years ago it could communicate with my android phones. I was able to screen incoming calls. With time my Fitbit would just count steps. The new Apple watch is not only able to count steps but I can answer incoming calls and hold a conversation without needing to have with me the actual Apple phone. Not only that, but the watch looks much better than the Fitbit.

I have been using Android phones for a long time, so now I need to get used to the Apple Store and the different ways things work. In a few weeks will let you know my initial opinion on this combo. Continue reading “Best Sum”

Grid Traveler or Unique Paths

The weather is acting somewhat erratic. Today the forecasted high in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul will be 20F lower than yesterday. Tomorrow it should be 10F lower than today and should be raining. The water level in pond in my backyard is very low. Some rain should help. I noticed that a couple of cranes have made their home for summer the pond. Not sure if they are the same that return every year or they are an offspring of the ones from last year. I do not know much about cranes.

Since the weather will be nice today; my wife and I will go for a walk after the end of the workday. Not sure what we will do tomorrow. Perhaps we will go to the Mall of America.

On a different note, as you might know, I work in 2-hour blocks. After each block I go up and get something to drink. A few minutes later I head back to work. A few weeks ago I moved a stationary bike from a utility room and set it up in the lower level living room. I started biking for 5 minutes after completing a 2-hour block. That is working very well. I get between 20 to 25 minutes biking each workday. Since the bike is indoors I can do it year round. Continue reading “Grid Traveler or Unique Paths”

Sort the Matrix Diagonally in Java

Good morning. It is Sunday again. I woke up around 05:00 AM and the outside temperature was -17 F. We are finally experiencing cold winter days in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. An added bonus for football fans is that today is Super Bowl LV. My wife and I are not sports fans. We like to bike and walk and occasionally scuba dive. Up to a couple years ago we would watch the half time show. We so not watch TV any more. Perhaps we will find the half time show on YouTube. Continue reading “Sort the Matrix Diagonally in Java”

Shuffle the Array

This morning talking with one of my sons on Skype, I mentioned an article which I rewetted titled “China’s push to control Americans’ health care future”. My wife and I used to watch 60 Minutes every Sunday evening. About a couple years ago we stopped watching TV. It appeared to us that there was not much to watch. I liked the article. I agree with the points presented. To me the best part is the moneys offered to several states in the USA for a Chinese company to be allowed to offer COVID-19 services. My question is:  Where are the funds coming from? Stop for a moment and think about it… OK, now let’s move to a different subject.

Then the pandemic came. With it we started watching more content from Amazon Prime, Netflix and YouTube. In the past year it seems that two or three times Netflix has increased the price for their base tier by $1 each time. Yesterday I read the article “Why I’m canceling Netflix in 2021” which provides some reasons why you should be dropping Netflix. My wife and I seem to always watch YouTube and in addition Netflix or Amazon Prime. In these days we are favoring movies from Amazon Prime. They seem to have a larger and better selection and the service is part of Amazon Prime. Continue reading “Shuffle the Array”

Java Functional Programming – 2 of n

Today I woke up a little earlier than usual. I have my alarm set for 06:00 AM, but I was up around 04:45 AM. Read for a while, prepared breakfast and woke up my wife. After breakfast showered and was in my home office by 06:00 AM. I typically work in 2-hour blocks. Break for about 15 minutes and then repeat. For lunch I break for about an hour depending if I need to help my wife with lunch. Typically I help grilling on the deck, but the temperature has dropped and there is snow so I think there will be no more outdoor cooking until next spring.

I have a lot of things planned for the workday. Hopefully I will be able to get most of them done by 06:00 PM. Continue reading “Java Functional Programming – 2 of n”