I discovered Google Trends today, all thanks to Valentine’s Day! You see, my local flower shop closed down, so I was researching new ones just in case. Then I thought to myself, “geez whiz Anton, I wonder how many other guys are googling flower shops? If only there was a way to find out!” So I began searching for a way to find out and stumbled upon my answer.

Its quite interesting, every year, there are two big spikes. Why? Well the first one corresponds quite nicely with Valentine’s Day. The other corresponds nicely with Mother’s Day as well. I found this VERY interesting, and you know what? I got hooked.

Here’s some more interesting tidbits I found.

Paris Hilton

Kim Kardashian

Screech (From Saved By The Bell)

The three of them each have a significant spike. Interestingly enough, the spikes occur when news of a “sex tape” came up. Here’s some others:

Math

This one is interesting, because it follows the same trend over and over again. Big sharp drops for Christmas, then 1-2 months of drops in the summer time. Did you guess it? Yup, Christmas Holidays and Summer Vacation. The times when students are least likely to be googling for answers.

Sex

This one didn’t turn up that much of an interesting result (the small spike for christmas isn’t that interesting), what is interesting, however, is where the people who did search for it, are from:

I’m actually quite surprised by this. Vietnam number 2? I seriously thought the Japanese or Americans would be in the top ten!

UTSC

A search for my school, UTSC, were somewhat weird, but interesting. The spikes a 3rd into the year probably corresponds to new university students. Its good to see the number rising. Something more interesting was the languages of the people who searched for UTSC:

The majority of OS are defaulted to english, so it must of taken A LOT of operating systems defaulted to Chinese to make it on the graph.

Computer Science

Unfortunately, computer science is on the decline (enrollment HAS been declining since the dot-com bubble burst), so this is not too surprising.

Another cool feature with google trends, is that it lets you compare data. So I decided to compare Django and Ruby on Rails.

Django (red) Vs. RoR (blue)

You can really see the raising popularity of Django, and how RoR’s popularity is slowly going down. There’s probably more cool trends to be found on Google Trends, but I’m satisfied for now.

When I went to CUSEC, I actually got an interview for Direct Energy’s IS Graduate Program. The interview was surprisingly harder then the Microsoft Interview I had in the past. They asked me questions about software development, software patterns, math riddles, and programming questions.

My programming question was to output the first 10 numbers of the fibonacci sequence. A buddy of mine got the same question on his microsoft interview, so its beginning to look like a fairly common question for tech interviews. With that realization, I decided to try and program each one. Here’s my results:

Iterative Approach

def fib(n):
        first = 0
        second = 1
        for i in range(1, n):
                temp = second
                second = second + first
                first = temp
        return second

Recursive Approach

def fib(n):
        if n == 0:
                return 0
        if n == 1:
                return 1
        return fib(n-1) + fib(n-2)

Dynamic Programming Approach
I just learn this way today! Partly what inspired this post.

val = {0:0, 1:1}
 
def fib(n):
        if n not in val:
                val[n] = fib(n-1) + fib(n-2)
 
        return val[n]

So after I finished each version, I got a bit curious over how fast they were compared to each other. So I started timing each one. (I know, I know, I could just use big-O notation and figure it out easily… but what’s the fun in that?) Here’s my results:

Fibonacci(10)
Iterative: 0.0 seconds
Recursive: 0.0 seconds
Dynamic: 0.0 seconds

They’re pretty much the same. Lets push it harder.

Fibonacci(25)
Iterative: 0.0 seconds
Recursive: 0.15 seconds
Dynamic: 0.0 seconds

And harder…

Fibonacci(30)
Iterative: 0.0 seconds
Recursive: 1.63 seconds
Dynamic: 0.0 seconds

Whoa, only 5 more terms and the recursive version jumps up to 1.63 seconds? That’s some crazy exponential growth! But why does that happen? The recursive version is taken directly from the mathematical definition, which means any number it calculates, its just recalculating each number before it multiple times.

The dynamic version has recursion, but it stores each number, which saves the amount of calculation needed.  Both iterative and dynamic versions seem to be doing pretty good, so lets pit them against one another.

I tried 100, 250, 500, and they’re still the same. At around 700, the iterative version SOMETIMES is faster:

Iterative: 0.0 seconds
Dynamic: 0.01 seconds

However, at 1000, the dynamic version doesn’t work anymore:

RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded

So far, iterative is winning. I don’t like that. The iterative version just does work over and over again needlessly. So I created a loop that runs each one 1000 times, from 1 to 1000. Here’s the results:

Fibinacci(1) to Fibinacci(1000)
Iterative: 0.22 seconds
Dynamic: 0.01 seconds

Which as you can see, the dynamic version wins over time because it saves each answer. So I guess if I go on another interview, I will know which one works best.

I hate iTunes. I have an iPod, so I have to use it. (I know, I know, there’s alternatives out there, but I have been too busy to really explore them all). The thing I hate the most about iTunes, is that its so bloated and slow. I like something lightweight, because all I really need for it to do, is load songs. My old mp3 player, the creative labs nomad muvo was pretty much a USB stick, with a music player attached. So you plug it into your machine, windows explorer pops up and you drag your songs in.

I do like some things about iTunes though. I like how it keeps a play count of all your songs. So I decided to check out which songs I listen to the most:

Wow. I guess it suffices to say I’m a huge Jason Mraz fan. The Top 28 songs are sung by him (that Tristan Prettyman song? Ya, its a duet with Jason). Being the nerd that I am, I felt compelled to actually chart this data. So I did (despite it being so early in the morning!)

I guess the reason I like him so much, is that his songs and lyrics actually have substance. The thing that angers me the most about a lot of songs today, is that they are so damn repetitive! They all just try to find a catchy chorus, and then proceed to repeat it as many times as possible. A good (or is it bad?) example is Madonna.  I wrote a small script to read in her song line by line, and count the number of occurances of each line. Here’s the results:

6 – tick tock tick tock tick tock
4 – you gotta get em a heart
4 – yeah
4 – we only got four minutes to save the world
4 – time is waiting
4 – no hesitating
4 – dont be a prima donna
2 – youve already got it
2 – we only got four minutes huh four minutes
2 – thats right keep it up keep it up
2 – so keep it up keep it up
2 – say the word and
2 – it must be real just
2 – it better be what you want
2 – im gonna give you what you want
2 – if you want it
2 – if you thought it
2 – if you feel it
2 – ha ha
2 – grab a boy
2 – go grab your girl
2 – are you ready to go
1 – yeah uh
1 – uh
1 – theres enough room for both
1 – the road to hell is paved with good intentions
1 – tell me how bout you
1 – sometimes i think what i need is a you intervention
1 – oh hey
1 – now dont waste time give me desire tell me how you wanna roll
1 – madonna
1 – ive only got four minutes to save the world
1 – im outta time and all i got is 4 minutes
1 – i want somebody to speed it up for me then take it down slow
1 – hey
1 – girl i can hit you back just gotta show me where its at
1 – fricki fricki
1 – come on boy ive been waiting for somebody to pick up my stroll
1 – come on
1 – by the way that you move
1 – but if i die tonight at least i can say i did what i wanted to do
1 – breakdown come on
1 – breakdown
1 – and i know i can tell that you like it and that its good
1 – 4 minutes eh

That’s interesting. The song was originally 84 lines, now its merely 45 lines. That’s like 47% decrease in lyrical contente. Now lets take a look at a Jason Mraz song. Specifically, my favourite song, “Butterfly”:

14 – youve got it all
3 – your talk is all the talk sister youve got it all
3 – you make the call to make my day
2 – youve got everything you need especially me
2 – sister youve got it all
2 – in your message say my name
2 – im coming to shine on the occasion
2 – but you dont fold you dont fade
1 – youre an open minded lady
1 – youre a sophisticated lady oh youve got it all
1 – you know that fortune favors the brave
1 – you got soul you know what to do to turn me on until i write a song about you
1 – well you float on by
1 – well let me get paid while i make you breakfast
1 – the rest is up to you you make the call
1 – thats if you crash and spend the night
1 – ride your tongue along your bottom lip and bite down
1 – or eskimo your nose real close to mine
1 – oh kiss me with your eyelashes tonight
1 – now i see you perfectly behind closed eyes
1 – lets face the fact here its you thats got it all
1 – let me feel you up side down slide in slide out slide over here
1 – in you message say my name
1 – im your pole and all youre wearing is your shoes
1 – im taking a moment just imaginin that im dancin with you
1 – if im making my own
1 – i wanna fly with you and i dont wanna lie to you
1 – i have my days
1 – doll i need to see you pull your knee socks up
1 – dammit you landed on my ear and then you crawled inside
1 – curl your upper lip up and let me look around
1 – climb in my mouth now child
1 – cause i cause i cant recall a better days
1 – cause i cant recall a better day
1 – butterfly well you landed on my mind
1 – butterfly baby well youve got it all
1 – butterfly
1 – because theyre the perfect jumping off point of getting closer to your
1 – and youve got the knack to vivify
1 – and you make my slacks a little tight you may unfasten them if you like
1 – and you have your own engaging style
1 – and lets mood the lights and finally make it right
1 – and i never forget a face
1 – and bend your back and ask those hips if i can touch

The song was originally 66 lines, now its 44. That’s only a 33% decrease in lyrical content. I started this post, hoping to avoid the nerdiness. Sadly, I could not resist and the inner nerdiness burst through. Regardless, I think I’ve justified to myself at least, why Jason Mraz is so great. Now if only they stop nominating him, and actually give him a grammy!

I’ve finally decided to start up a blog. I’ve blogged on LiveJournal for a number of years now, but I realized it sorta has its limits:

1. I don’t have my own domain.
   
   • I bought my own domain last year, and I havn’t really utilized it to its fullest potential. Its great having a place to host your files, and I used it for a while as a website for all the courses I taught. But with my own domain, it makes it easier for people to actually find me and it helps “market” myself a lot better.
2. Its not professional.
   
   • LiveJournal just didn’t seem professional enough. I mean, I still had the silly username I’ve been carrying around for years. The only people able to find/read it were my friends, and it felt more like a personal diary then anything. My friends have always been posting “diary-like” content, but I’ve always refrained from that.

After going to CUSEC, I realized that most of the speakers had a blog. These were a VERY smart group of people, and by reading their blogs, you learn so much. Some of my favourites include Jeff Atwood, Zed Shaw, Francis Hwang, Leah Culver (Co-founder of Pownce and the girl who got a free laptop by etching ads into her laptop) , Joey Devilla (He has two!)

The final straw, however, was during my interview with Direct Energy. They actually make all their employees (in their Graduate Developement Program) have a blog. Its a great way to keep track of what you’ve been learning and what you’ve been doing.

So there you have it. My first professional blog. Well not “professional” in a stuffy bureaucratic way, but in the sense that it will showcase all my nerdy ambitions, ideas, and adventures, and man do I have a lot of those.