Book Faire

The Book Fair today: A lot of books. At really low prices (and I mean a quarter per book, with hardbacks at 50 cents.)

Additionally the following happened today: Sorting through a lot of books, meeting someone who was the subject of a 1960’s book, buying some books (The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, The DaVinci Code, Angels & Demons) for $1.25, finding three rows of The Baby-Sitters Club books, watching others buy tons of them, and remembering a bit of my past through a ‘Top Secret’ informational book.

Fun Fact: I used to have full subscriptions of Which Way USA and Top Secret Adventures. I only have the maps and guide books now, which they are in some ways useful.

Coding Hell

It's pretty easy to see the concept of the problem, but can you actually code it? That's the question.

NOTE: For computer programming experts, this is Problem B in the ICPC 2009 competition, Northwest division.

It seems the better way to solve this is not determining all of the possible ways the snake would fit in the grid, but work instead in a tree / recursive fashion to determine if each move is valid. When it reaches the end, count the number of moves made.

Signs

Strange find today: The crosswalk sign at Baxter Walkway has wiiiings on it. (Assuming the soda is like a Red Bull can, it makes sense).

Note: It surfaced this year and the crosswalk sign on the other end of the crosswalk doesn’t have him holding the can. The attachments were later removed by next semester.