CS 373 Fall 2020: Jonathan Randall

Welcome, welcome, welcome! This here is my blog for: Week of 9 Nov — 15 Nov.

What did you do this past week?

For some reason, this is the hardest question for me to answer! Maybe it’s stress from school or quarantine, but I’m struggling with a little memory loss.

Okay. I know I did homework for my quantum information science class. I went to a few meetings. I thought about next semester. I learned a little SQL. I went for a few walks.

What’s in your way?

I still have to finish an essay for my “Space Opera” class.

In addition, I have to fix my dishwasher. My landlord got both an appliance repairer and a plumber to come to my house and prod around with the dishwasher, but neither of them was able to figure it out. The appliance repairman (ponytail) said that a plumber was needed to unclog something in the basement. The plumber (bald) said there may be an electrical issue with the dishwasher. Our country is as divided as ever.

What will you do next week?

I will go to class and hopefully get more sleep! I will complete my project for my data science class. I will go home for Thanksgiving Break. I will avoid contracting Covid-19.

If you read it, what did you think of The New Methodology?

I’m interested in who the target audience of this paper is. It seems very targeted towards management; I have trouble focusing when I read anything too business-oriented. It was additionally somewhat degrading towards factory workers at one point? As always, I (like many people) hope the job of software engineer even exists in 10 years!

What was your experience of SQL? (this question will vary, week to week)

It’s mostly new to me, and I’m excited to use what we learned in class. I struggled with the HackerRank we completed on Friday; I need to review some concepts from class before our next exam!

What made you happy this week?

I enjoyed learning about my pick-of-the-week. I watched the movie Interview with the Vampire, which was really bizarre. It’s no Twilight!

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My pick-of-the-week would definitely be VoroCrust, which is the “first provably correct algorithm for conforming Voronoi meshing of non-convex and non-manifold domains with guarantees on the quality of both surface and volume elements.” Polyhedral meshes seem to be useful for a number of tasks, from simulations in biology to geology.

I had never considered the need for meshes besides polygonal surface meshes (for boundary detection, computer graphics, etc.). Having sample points on the inside of a 3-dimensional object means we can look at things like internal stress, heat, or whatever physical property we wish to simulate through careful sampling.

Computational geometry is one of those fields that even outsiders can appreciate without necessarily fully grasping the math behind it.