I left for school at 11:30 at night. Patrick was working on his networks assignment in one of the second floor computer labs, so I thought i'd join him. It is a little depressing, walking to school so late at night and watching people pass you by as they walk in the other direction, heading home. I am reminded of when I was in second year, working at school late at night with Ju-Lian and Annie on CS 241 (the baby compilers course). We used to spend the whole day in the stankest lab the school had. I'm not sure why we liked that lab the best. A year or so ago, the school renovated the lab and turned it into another PC lab. Such a shame. I digress. This second assignment is still a bitch and a half. It's due tuesday.

This is sippey.com is a sort of index page for this guy with a bunch of really nice sites—I like the layout. The pages are all simple.

A parser will take an input source file and produce a parse tree. The parse tree can then be used to do some context-sensitive analysis of the language, i.e. making sure that variables are declared before they are used, or that break statements occur within loops.

Usually this type of analysis is done by attaching attributes to each of the nodes in the parse tree, and calculating the values of these attributes using information from the lexer, and the structure of the tree.

You can compute some attributes in a bottom-up fashion. That is, the attribute at a particular node is computed using information from its children. Such attributes are said to be synthesized attributes. We can do a bottom-up walk through the tree using a depth-first search type traversal. You can compute some attributes in a top-down fashion. The attribute at a particular node inherits its value from its parent. These attributes are referred to as inherited attributes. We can do a top-down talk through the tree with a breadth-first search type traversal.

Sometimes things get more complicated then that. Sometimes things get much more complicated then that.

Two in the morning, taking a break from programming. Check out these excellent mario brother movies done with flash, pure 8-bit goodness. [1] [2] [3]

I miss my SLR. I do love my digital camera, don't get me wrong. The freedom to take pictures of whatever I want is too good to give up. The instant gratification of seeing how the shot turned out is excellent. Still, I miss my SLR. I think this camera from Leica, the Digilux 2, is what I want.

As many of you know, God hates lots of things. There is a lot of debate about the rights of Gays to marry in the US. Here are 12 good reasons that they should not be allowed to do so.

My compilers class is currently filled with at most 20 people. Of those, 4 of us are typing away on our Macs as the prof speaks. Pretty high ratio considering Macs are supposed to have a 3% market share or something like that.

I don't know if hard is the right word, but compilers is definitely not easy. CS 444 is slowly consuming more and more of my time. The worse part is that it seems like I have so little to show for all my effort. Thankfully Patrick, who joined Kumar and I, seems to be infinitely more productive then the both of us.

What's new with our compiler? Well the one that is working right now is the new and improved error handling. (We use the Burke-Fisher algorithm to catch errors.) You can also perform some very basic analysis of the program.

We have so much left to do it seems. The next few days should be long.

BattleFishies 1.0 Two fishies clash. The Aquarium is too small. There can be only one!

The controversial Grey Album has a website dedicated to protesting EMI's attempts to censor the album. Today is Grey Tuesday, and sites are supposed to change their colour scheme to grey to support the cause.

As I am a student in the Math faculty at Waterloo, I do not get a reading week. Instead, we are given the last two days of what would be the reading week off. I spent the weekend in Waterloo, working on my compilers project. When I wasn't working on compilers, I was participating in the CS graduate studies open-house.

Friday night, I took some time off to go to Crystal Palace, a Chinese restaurant in Waterloo. I've been there before for Dim Sum, which they prepare quite well. Their dinners however are pretty so-so. The meal was free, paid for by the Computer Science department, so I'm not one to complain. I was seated with Professors Jonathan Buss and Chrysanne DiMarco. Although the dinner wasn't that great, the conversation was informative.

The next morning there were talks held by members from the various research groups at the school. Ju-lian had mentioned that his graphics prof, Kaplan, was a funny guy. I would have to agree. In real life, I think he looks like my cousin Mahi, only white. Well, perhaps not, but they do have the same kind of mannerisms and sense of humor.

After the talks, we were invited to the Grad House for drinks, and the UW Club for dinner. I ate and drank as much as I could.

Elections are underway in Iran, and you can read all about them at the BBC. Iranians are apparently boycotting the elections, in the hopes of showing the world their disillusionment with the regime in power (and, for the lack of a real political opposition).

Hossein Derakhshan, a blogger from Toronto, is a good source for news about Iran. Hossein has asked bloggers in Iran not to vote, but to report about the election. If you are interested in what people in Iran have to say about the election, you can read their thoughts here.

DJ Dangermouse - The Grey Album download. DJ Dangermouse has made a remix of Jay-Z's black album. What makes this interesting is that the remixes contain the vocals from the Black Album, but only use samples from the Beatles' White Album. The album is quite good.

Now, you will want to get it while you can, because EMI is not happy. What does Jay-Z think? Well, he released an a cappella 12-inch pressing just so people could "remix the hell out of it."

Chewbacca Defense - Wikipedia. Don't have a real case? Don't worry, you can always use the Chewbacca defense.

I read on metafilter today that someone has made a documentary about Japan's very notorious photographer, Nobuyoshi Araki. I've always thought of Araki as an avant-garde pornographer, but people do consider him to be an excellent photographer. There is definitely a distinct style to his photos. I think the way he lights shots and poses his women is interesting. One thing is for certain, the man does have a real fondness for the pussy; no doubt about that.

Reading week begain for Arts students today. So, today I can sleep in, since my only class today is Marxist Theory. Today I can stay at home, and not walk all the way to the psychology building, which is on the other side of the campus. If only I remembered it was reading week — damn it.

Plastic: Act Like Nothing's Wrong. Stupid Dave has got me hooked on Plastic. It's like Kuro5hin or Slashdot, but with less idiots posting.

I found this transcription of Marthin Luther King, Jr's famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. There is also an MP3 of King giving the speech.

I've changed the links to the CSS and XHTML validation programs to links to the CSS and XHTML specifications. I got a bookmarklet that will validate any page that is open in your browser, so I thought it was time to say goodbye to the links at the bottom of my page. I was using those links to quickly check that my site was made using valid XHTML. A lot of web sites post these links, but I'm not sure who clicks on them. Besides the site's author, who would really care if the site is actually valid XHTML or not? Also, if there is a link to the validation program, wouldn't you already suspect the site is valid? Actually sending people off to the program seems like a stupid idea. Although, I guess it does advertise the fact such a facility exists.

The layout at the not so immaculate conception has changed again. I think this is close to how it will look from now on. I need to fix some problems with how the individual entries are displayed, but I expect the page to look like this for some time to come.

A good source for CSS layout information is the CSS Vault, which showcases sites made using CSS. You can find out how people hobble together nice sites with CSS. This page is a good place to look for people who want to make pretty standard webpage. It contains simple templates for some common layouts.

I wish there was a better way to lay out pages. Doing stuff with CSS always seems like such a hack. Even when you sit and think about the CSS box model, and work things out in your head all nice and perfect, your web browser will munge it all up.

Just got back from watching Big Fish. The film is about a man that talks a lot of shit. (It's like they made it just for me.) The film was excellent. I think perhaps I say that too often, but this truly was a great film. Shima, Ju-lian and Steph all agree with me, I am quite sure. Go and watch this movie.

Firefox was a name that Roni Size used to put out some jungle jungle jungle jungle jungle. What I linked to was the new release of Mozilla's standalone web browser, once known as Phoenix, then as Firebird, and now finally as Firefox.

Today Shima and I watched two documentaries. The first, which I had seen before, Startup.com, was a film about the rise and fall of a dot-com startup. The second was Helen's War, a documentary about the current work of anti-war activist Helen Caldicott. Both films are quite good.

This week there are lots of interesting documentaries being shown on CBC Newsworld, and I recomend you check them out. Rough Cuts usually shows some great stuff.

I've had broadband access for years, but it has been disappointingly slow for most of those years. Finally, living in Waterloo, connected to a DSL line that must be alligator-clipped right into Waterloo's backbone, I am able to enjoy some good internet radio.

For those of you with fast connections, check out the statations at SomaFM. They have something for every type of listener, even for Mezan [Cliqhop].

An article over at Salon, written by Courtney Love, discusses the state of the music industry. In particular, she talks about how the record industry is basically set up to rip off artists. It is a pretty interesting read.

This past wednesday we went to the bomber. Cathy had come up from Toronto and the plan was to party it up that night. I had a Statistics Quiz the next day but I figured, 'what the hell'. All the girls came out, Doris, Ah-sun, Cathy, Cat, Flora and one of their friends whose name I still don't know. Gary, Yang and I got there early, and loitered about for a bit, waiting for the girls. There are lots of entertaining tidbits to share, though not on the internet. Gary documented the entire night on his digital camera. I think I have like 117 of his pictures and movies on my laptop now. It was quite the evening I must say. I've decided that it is time to switch it up and start going out more often. And the Statistics test was easy, bonus.

I've been ripping my CD collection for the past little while, bit my bit. I'm disappointed because I don't think I can get my entire CD collection on my iPod at 192 ACC. (Yes, I ended up switching down from 224. Most of of my electronica and my super-favourite albums are in at 224 ACC, the rest have been going in at 192.)

Today I ripped some of the singles I bought while in London and Sydney. There are some interesting songs on them I didn't know I owned. For example, I bought the Go Deep single by Janet Jackson when I was in Sydney during the summer after grade 12. It features remixes of the song by Roni Size and Masters at Work. I have a very bizarre remix by the Mad Professor of Tear Drop. I bought two Natalie Imbruglia singles when I was in OZ as well, one was Big Mistake, the other was Wish I was There They both have some cool B-Sides and a few good live performances of her big hits.

Reading this over, I realize that this post, like many that have come before it, has no real point. One day I will figure out some purpose for this page, well, besides keeping every one up to date on the day to day boredom that is my life.

Just got back from watching 21 Grams with Steph, Gary and Ju-lian. The film is excellent. Gary and Ju-lian found it long, though I didn't notice so much. I recommend the film whole heartedly. I won't say anymore, lest I give away something.

I arrive at school to be told the compilers class has been cancelled. Normally I wouldn't care, but at 8:30 in the morning that is some cold shit. I emailed Kumar telling him not to come to class, printed out our documenatation, gave it to the angry CS secretary, and am now sitting in the computer lab. I'm apparently supposed to read four papers on error recovery and detection when you are parsing. What a dis.

I've made some small changes to the funkaoshi.com home page. The page now has links to blogs I read. Others may enjoy not having to go to second page as well.

Kumar is putting the final touches on the document we need to submit for compilers. The afternoon was spent hacking together a symbol table that we hope works well enough for the assignment. I'm hoping everything works! For the next assignment we have to do the serious semantic analysis, and the symbol table stuff we did for this assignment will probably be scrapped.

Our assignment is due in two days. We are quite close to completion, though there are still two components we need to get working. First, we need to make a symbol table. This shouldn't be too difficult, and I think Kumar is almost finished implementing one. The second task, which will be trickier to do, is error recovery. Right now, when an error occurs, the program prints an error message and terminates. Ideally, the behaviour our compiler should exhibit is some sort of recovery strategy that allows it to keep parsing, looking for more errors. I hope we can get everything done in time.