Maayan just put it perfectly…

It’s been a long two months. I… need a vacation. Sleep will do for now.


Posted in Maayan, No Category, Practice, School, Thinking Out Loud by with comments disabled.

The U.S. Government Shutdown

The United States government has shut down, sending what is probably thousands of people on unpaid leave and grinding to a halt many services that, I guess, many Americans take for granted. So far, which is a few days until now, nothing has been resolved and there will be no “unnecessary” government workers doing their jobs (such as rangers and probably museum employees and stuff like that) until it is resolved. The debt ceiling is expected to be hit some time before this month is over. Meaning, the USA will not be able to borrow more money if they don’t fix that too, in a law. No such law was able to reach the top of the food chain for quite a while now. If they won’t be able to borrow more, the United States will default on its debts which, as I understand it, is a form of declaring bankruptcy. Which could lead to a total collapse of the US governmental and financial systems. (I know, I’m exaggerating, it’s probably less grim than I make it sound) And when the biggest superpower in the world is going down the toilet… I care about the fact that I can’t get my Astronomy Picture of the Day! You can get it here, by the way.


Posted in Humanity, IT, Less Interesting News, Thinking Out Loud, Weird by with comments disabled.

Happy Birthday to Website

Though the first real post was made on the 24th, the very first post (post number 3, don’t ask) was made eight years ago to this day. So, happy birth day blog. Eight years is a heck of a long time on the internet. And still, with all the tons of social networks around, I still like having my own place to do with as I wish. And as always, a thank you goes to my brother for hosting The Less Interesting Times for all this time. I hope to keep it for a while longer.


Posted in No Category, Thinking Out Loud by with comments disabled.

אז יום כיפור היום, הא?

אתם יודעים מה יש לי להגיד על זה? יש לי תרגיל להגיש.


Posted in Less Interesting News, No Category, Practice, Religion, Thinking Out Loud by with comments disabled.

The Humble Bundle’s Weekly Sale is up

You can find it here. You know that in physics there’s the idea of multiple universes and that every choice we have splits the multiverse further according to our options? Well, I don’t think this can happen here. I don’t think there is a universe in which this option is presented to me and I choose anything other than the obvious.


Posted in Gaming, Humanity, Less Interesting News, No Category, Thinking Out Loud by with comments disabled.

מחמאות

לפני כמה ימים קיבלתי בקשת חיבור ב-LinkedIn. עכשיו, כשהסתכלתי עליה מקרוב יותר גיליתי שהיא הגיעה מאחד הילדים היותר בוגרים שפגשתי ב-Camp Echo Lake בקיץ 2006. הנה תזכורת למי שרוצה. אז ההודעה הקטנה הזאת גרמה לי לחיוך מאוזן לאוזן. למה? כי זאת מחמאה אדירה שהילד הזה, שאינו כבר ממש ילד בגיל 23, שעכשיו מסיים בית ספר לעסקים, שבע שנים אחרי שהתראינו לאחרונה, עדיין זוכר את המפגש שלנו כל כך טוב וכל כך חזק בשביל למצוא אותי ולבקש קשר. בהצלחה ראסל. לך ולכל חבריך מהמחנה. אני מקווה שמה שהשפעתי עליכם יהיה רק לטובה.


Posted in Humanity, No Category, Thinking Out Loud by with comments disabled.

Interview Question: Reduced String

A reduced string is a string with all repeating letters condensed into one. The exercise was writing a function that compares two strings and returns true if their reduced string is the same. What I did for this was… have a pointer to the start of each string compare the two letters if they’re not the same, return false for each string, advance the pointer until it lands on a different character. repeat steps 2-3 until null terminated. if only one was terminated and the other hasn’t, return false return true And that’s it. Better ideas? Corrections (I might have mistyped, it’s early)?


Posted in No Category, Programming, Thinking Out Loud by with 2 comments.

Interview Question: Shifted Array

Today I went to interview for Koren Tec. I was expecting more of an interview and less of a test but I got what I got. It stressed UML twice which I can’t simply pull out of my head so I decided not to even insult them with a poor attempt but to explain it. I hope I got some points for that. They asked a lot of basic questions like what’s the difference between a Value or a Reference, between a Structure and a Class or what’s a Virtual Table. But one of the more interesting question is this: A Shifted Array is a sorted array whose elements has been shifted forward round-robin style. Write a function that receives an array and its size and determines how much it has been shifted. The code is quite redundant but my idea for it was to scan the array and look for the point where an element is larger than the element after it. This marks the spot where the elements from the end of the array are bumping the elements from the start. The number of elements before this demarcation point is you shift value. This gives you a nice O(n) complexity and should be good enough, in my opinion. If you have a better idea, I would love to hear about it down in the comments.


Posted in No Category, Programming, Thinking Out Loud by with 1 comment.

לכבוד נהגים שמנסים לצאת מחיפה דרומה

הכביש שאתם משתלבים אליו מכיל שני מסלולים. השמאלי יוצא לכיוון תל אביב והימני מהר מאוד מתאחד איתו ומוחלף על ידי יציאה למת”מ. אם אתם מכירים את המקום אז אתם צריכים לדעת שבשביל לצאת לתל אביב צריך לעמוד בצד שמאל. אם אתם לא מכירים את המקום אז מהר מאוד תשימו לב שצריך להשתלב שמאלה ותעשו את זה בנחמדות. אם אתם מנסים להידחף רגע לפני שנגמר לכם הכביש אז אתם חארות ואני לא אהיה נחמד אליכם. ועוד משהו, לבעלי הכלבים, לא כל פעם שכלב זכר פוגש כלב זכר אז יש מהומה. לפעמים הם פשוט ירחרחו אחד את השני וינסו לשחק. לא תדעו אם לא תנסו.


Posted in Humanity, No Category, Thinking Out Loud by with comments disabled.

Of Owls and Gerbils

A friend of mine sent me snippets of a conversation she had and is still having with a young girl from across the ocean. The reason she shared this with me and the reason I am sharing this with you is because of this remarkable girl. She is only ten years old and is already deeply enthralled with science. And it doesn’t look like a passing fad but a serious curiosity. And I love that. I love to see young people, young adults and kids, starting to take themselves seriously. It fills me with hope that we might have a bright future after all and inspires me, every time. To be able to share this conversation, I promised I will anonymise it. So, all names have been changed, locations have been redressed and several of the images have been dropped to protect those involved who wish to keep their privacy in their own hands. And another thing, this is a bit long.


Posted in Geekdom, Humanity, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by with 1 comment.