July 2002

We're at Jennie's party, it's nice! Had a very delicious dinner, Chinese of course.

It's nice to see quick internet... can hardly wait!

Didn't buy the any clothes; it was too busy in the city, and we couldn't really be bothered. But we bought a (nice) present for Jennie.

Last week my study advisor told me I need 1 more course than I thought I would. This won't interfere with my internship, but at the other hand I would prefer it if this one is ready before I'll start. It should be a course on theoretical computer science. The one I'm thinking of doing is Term Rewriting Systems; the test will be on August 9th. I'll try to do it, but it depends on how difficult it is. My paper on Human Computer Interaction should be ready the 15th of August.

Saw a book of Hofstadter in the library yesterday, I'm thinking about it all the time. But... first study. So I decided not to become member of the library until my internship starts. This weekend is also quite busy. Today we'll go shopping (I need new pants and a shirt) and tonight Jennie has her birthday party.

Tomorrow I'll see Richard all day; it has been a while so I'm looking forward to it! They'll have a baby soon.

I made it! Indeed, I just came back, the result is a 7! It took 45 minutes, and it was much easier than I thought. It wasn't about all detailed pesky proofs etc, just about general ideas. Subjects were RSA, BCH decoding, and the SAT problem. It went quite well I must say, and the teacher was friendly.

Now... weekend!

Well; in a few hours we'll know it... my test is at 13:30. I feel very comfident about practical things; decoding code, designing code or decompressing. But I have no idea whether that's enough or not. The theory is also quite prominent in the book; and I'm just not fluent enough with it. I understand it, for sure, but reproducing would be quite hard. Anyway.

Yes, it surely was a long night. At the other hand, I expected to have to go to bed at 4, but things went well. Tomorrow I'll sleep in a bit, read some parts again and just hope for the best.

This is going to be a long night.

Data compression is luckely enough not a huge subject (at least not in this course). Read the theory on uniquely decodeable codes and prefix codes, learned the Huffman algorithm... it's probably gonna be late tonight but I think I'll survive tomorrow :)

Only thing I don't like is that I'm not able to wave Daniel & Erika goodbye... they'll be leaving in an hour from Amsterdam, back to Hungary. Funny thing... as always before he leaves, Daniel is now in Coco's, a pub near the station. It seems to be famous Europe-wide, even some Bulgarian friends know about "Lousy food and warm beer"!

Finally (!) finished the assignment for tomorrow... quite a lot of work! But at least I completely understand BCH decoding (and working in GF(2^4) for that matter). Now to the other subjects, Complexity and data compression. And I also would like to have another look at Shannon's Theorem etc.

Definately time to go to sleep.