Annoyance

Well I decided that this year I would like to keep better track of what I listen to, so that when I make the "Best of 2009" post the numbers will be more accurate. Only problem is that I can't for the love of me enable the Last.fm scrobbling program while using Ubuntu. Well that's not entirely true. I've gotten it so that it recognizes the song, the only problem is that when I get it to do this I am unable to actually play the song with my media player. I've looked around and have a general idea of what is causing this problem. Only thing is that I haven't been able to find a solution, well I'm sure I could but right now it's not at the top of my priority list. In addition to this I use pandora quite a bit, and I'm not sure if it keeps track of your listening trends the say way Last.fm does. Oh well.

So I'm using my Windows XP computer for the first time in a few months. One thing I will say is that I miss having a gcc compiler. I have Dev-C++ which usually pretty close to being the same but it's just not the same. I looked around and found a way to get the compiler I want for XP but don't really feel like doing all the necessary work right now, I'll probably end up doing it around the time of finals. The only reason this is a bother is because when I submit solutions to SPOJ problems there is a small chance that there might be a compilation error. It would be really cool if there was an online "compiler" so that I could check before submitting (this is when I'm not writing the program under Ubuntu of course).

One last thing, for those of you who continually ask "What are you going to do with a math degree?" or "Why math?" Here is an answer I'm sure you'll like. Notice how the top rated jobs are mostly math/science related.

Best of 2008

Well yes I know this is a little late but I don't care. I'm going to list the top 10 artist, albums, and songs I listened to in 2008 according to Last.fm Note that when I get to tracks I will only list each artist once. Thus if they actually appear more than once I will only list their top ranking track (just to add some variety) I will however say how many tracks they had in the top 10 and if they actually were in the "official" top 10.

Artist:
1- Lil' Wayne (1444 plays)
2- Linkin Park (902 plays)
3- Yngwie Malmsteen (838 plays)
4- Maroon 5 (817 plays)
5- Alter Bridge (768 plays)
6- AFI (700 plays)
7- Stratovarious (687 plays)
8- Nada Surf (681 plays)
9- Kanye West (680 plays)
10- Muse (471 plays)

Songs:
1- Far Beyond the Sun(95 plays) [Yngwie Malmsteen] (also in real top 10: Black Star)
2- A Milli(91 plays) [Lil' Wayne] (also in real top 10: La La, Got Money, Phone Home, 3Peat, Lollipop, You Ain't Got Nuthin')
3- See These Bones(84 plays) [Nada Surf]
4- Blackbird(73 plays) [Alter Bridge] (actually at position 11)
5- Put On(70 plays) [Young Jezzy]
6- Prayer of the Refugee(62 plays) [Rise Against]
7- Papercut(61 plays) [Linkin Park]
8- Prelude 12/21(60 plays) [AFI]
9- A Beautiful Lie(58 plays) [30 Seconds to Mars]
10- Shiver(55 plays) [Maroon 5]

Albums:
1- The Carter 3 (804 plays) [Lil' Wayne] (was there really any doubt?)
2- Lucky (655 plays) [Nada Surf]
3- Songs About Jane (453 plays) [Maroon 5]
4- Hybrid Theory (401 plays) [Linkin Park]
5(t)- Absolution (364 plays) [Muse]
5(t)- Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (346 plays) [My Chemical Romance]
7- Late Registration (350) [Kanye West]
8- Concerto Suite for Electric Guitar and Orchestra in E flat (319 plays) [Yngwie Malmsteen]
9- Rising Force (314 plays) [Yngwie Malmsteen]
10- Like Vines (303 plays) [The Hush Sound]

*IMPORTANT: The numbers displayed might not (and most likely are not) be correct. This is due to the fact that I often have music playing and for some reason or another Last.fm is not keeping track of this. This is not Last.fm's fault, but mine since I either choose not to log in or am on a computer that doesn't have (or doesn't support) the software necessary to keep track of played music.

Efficient Finals

Well I was reading an algorithms book and here is something that was pointed out that I never considered before.

Assigning times for Final Exams is equivalent to coloring a map.

How so? Well assume that we only have the following restriction, two finals can not be at the same time if they share at least one student. Now let the classes be the vertices of the graph, and place an edge between any two vertices if they share a student. So basically you assign colors (or times) in a way such that no edge has vertices of the same color.

Obviously the four color theorem does not apply when coloring this graph. Just consider the case where a student is taking 5 classes. (go and look up to see how this breaks the necessary assumptions for the theorem). None the less it is still an interesting connection, though I am sure Universities do not use this method to schedule their finals (for some obvious reasons).