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其实不大，除了那句歌词：“想唱就唱，要唱的响亮。就算没人有为我鼓掌，至少我还能够勇敢的自我欣赏……”。一句传播极广的广告词，给创造它的人带来了财富。虽然任何行为加上了商业因素，我总会多少有些抵制，但多少还是影响了。

“想唱就唱”，四个字，就好像要表达的意思一样，简单、明确。本身没有太多的修饰，却给生活带来很多色彩。“想吃就吃”、“想睡就睡”、“想说就说”、“想跑就跑”，甚至连现在这个Blog，我也把它变成了“想写就写”的干柴烈火。不敢谈做人的道理，但是有一点值得肯定的信念，就是“不怕后果，只怕后悔”。很多人，年轻的时候错过了，无论现在如何追悔，都无法弥补无尽的遗憾。曾经一味地在乎别人的想法，在乎别人心里的情绪、意见等如何如何……若干时间后物转星移，在乎你的人在乎了别人，自己却给自己留下一道空白。当发现有人针对你的时候，充其量只能证明两点：

一、他/她只是利用你向周围的人宣传他/她的智慧。他/她想当然地低估了你的智商，同时也高估了他/她自己。他/她其实是想借个机会，改变他/她平常在人们心中的愚昧形象。

二、你的言辞观点，刺痛了他/她的神经。他/她想数落你，想通过这样来引起你的注意。他/她在警示你他/她很不爽，很不开心。他/她绞尽脑汁地在保持自己的斯文高大形象的同时狠狠地“问候”着你。

可是，那又怎样呢？即使你退缩了，妥协了，你能换来什么？只能换来对手的更自大、更自傲。别忘了，对他/她来说。要知道，他/她的对手更加不好应付。何况，做人能有一个或多个对手，那是多么开心的事情！这样的想法，来自很多人和事。王垠、李熬；国事、论坛……人需要朋友，也需要对手。

写到这里，突然发现自己很狂妄。有点不做英雄，就做枭雄的感觉。可能是刚才喝红牛之类的能量饮料喝多了吧。是的，人不能太锋芒毕露。很快，我将认识到上面写的是多么单纯幼稚年少轻狂。不过，无所谓了。大不了过几天变成另外一个我，再写个Blog反驳现在的我。一段60分钟的单面磁带，等你想唱出来的时候，也许下一秒来临的就是转动马达的戈然而止。更加痛苦的是，人生无法倒带。

Spent about an hour to create this panoramic picture:

学 IT 的人，给绝大多数人的形象可能就是左手披萨、右手可乐。而这种印象往往来自于某个软件公司老板的自传。披萨我经常吃──便宜、省时间，ITB 的人没有不喜欢的。不论是校内的 Pizza Pizza，还是校外的 Gino Pizza（右），基本上所有的品种都吃遍了。有时侯看着手中花花绿绿的意大利馅饼，总幻想若干年后某天是不是要写个自传也自我唏嘘一番。

至于可乐，只会在买麦当劳套餐时一不小心忘了叮嘱收银的帅哥美女把饮料换成冰茶的时候才会喝到。我主观上不讨厌可乐，不过被一些朋友灌输一些“可乐有害论”久了，自然而然地多了那么一丁点抗体。相比之下，咖啡对人脑的刺激我相信比可乐更大，据说还会上瘾……分不清这是咖啡的优点还是缺点，不过我记不起从什么时候开始，咖啡成了我的首选；平常除了住所和办公室，最经常去的地方就是附近的 Tim Hortons。

学校西边的 Tim Hortons 不远，走路 5 分钟就到。一个不大的餐厅模样，也不会经常人山人海。人最多的时候，往往是春末和年底。那个时候考试最多，学生们自修都找不到地方，自然会向这类咖啡屋靠拢。以前住在市区，晚上 12 点以后学校那边搭不到回家的巴士，就需要早点回市区。回到市区又不想回家──家里有吃有喝有睡有玩，根本无心学习──可是又没有哪个地方有桌子椅子可以写作业。那时路过 Tim Hortons，就看见学生模样的在里面奋笔疾书，然后有一天就被同化了。头一次在里面复习功课，依着咖啡因的作用一下子熬了一晚上，补回了很多上课听不懂的重点，很是欣喜。对于有人说我小资，我从来都是反对的。这只不过是一个典型的实用主义者找到的一个有效的学习途径。于是就养成了这样的习惯，一直到现在。

很惭愧从小做什么事情都不会有很大的毅力，母亲为了让我完成一件事情，经常需要变着花样来哄我。即使到现在，也经常会变着环境去温习功课，否则就会六神无主人在心不在。所以有时侯路上碰到熟人问我去哪儿，我会说我去TH。因为 Tim Hortons 叫 TH，学校的 Thode Library 也叫 TH，都是能让我坐下学习的地方。安静的地方我呆闷了，就会换去喧闹的环境。我发现，其实有时侯周围人声吵杂的时候，我反而能静下心来看书。因为他们讲的事情跟我所要想的事情是不同的领域。脑子就像一个笼子，放了一只老虎在里面，就会整个笼子蹒跚来回；放了两只或两只以上的老虎，每个老虎就会割据自己的地盘，活动的范围也自然缩小。想法，就像这些老虎一样，当你的脑子是空的时候，就会飞来飞去；当你腾出来一部分注意力去吸收周围街坊的你长我短的时候，大脑能活动的范围已经被其它声音占据，而书本上需要注意的知识要点就会更加明显。中学的时候，老师告诉我马克思为了锻炼自己的注意力，专门跑到声音分贝级很大的地方去看书。现在看来，可能马克思也可能跟我是同流罢了。

去 Tim Hortons 的人，年长一点的，都会买 Whole Black；我这种年轻的，一般都要 Double Double（加糖加奶）的。我们有句成语叫“忆苦思甜”，或许老人家喝了一辈子 “Double Double”，想从纯纯的苦咖啡里弥补人生路漫的沧桑吧。可乐这种纯糖的东西，喝的最多的也只有小孩子吧。一杯咖啡，一个窗口；窗外人来车往，日落月升，难怪有人要说我小资呢。最喜欢喝的是“加糖加奶”，最喜欢坐的地方是窗口，最喜欢吃的甜点当然也需要有同样的感觉。橱柜上那么多品种，我经常点的是 Chocolate Croissant。不想描述那是什么味道，也描述不出来。即使描述出来，吃过的人也不一定会赞同。照片在下面，一图胜千言。

Don’t be surprise if you find this blog somehow read like a mathematical precise proof, just like my other assignments. I had been working on the three assignments, which were all due today, for 2 days. The CAS professors always want to keep we graduate students busy and busier, so I really did not have enough time to update the story I had since I came back from ACM 2005 Day 2.

As we can seen in Pictures, most of the pictures I took during the contest were already uploaded. My team worked out one problem and we were ranked at 45th place, out of more than 130 teams. The 15th place, McMonkeys, another team of us, got three problems correct. The first four places, two from University of Waterloo, two from University of Toronto, had worked out all eight problems. More results can be found here.

The real contest problem set can be downloaded at here, as well as judges’ solutions. The problem we worked out is problem D, as known as “Queens, Knights and Pawns”. We spent less than 2 hours on it, and actually more than 30 minutes were debugging. It turned out that it was a mistake in setting the maximum size of the chess board. For the rest of the time, we worked on 3 other problems but had some problems in designing the algorithms.

To solve this kind of problems in contest, it really needs people to concentrate on the details and be careful on the special cases when testing. Most of the time the speed of coding is more important than skill of designing an algorithm with less running time complexity or more efficient. Programming in a contest and programming in software production are different, but both require a good understanding on the problems you are facing before the coding. Once the idea is correct and the frame of algorithm becomes clear enough, go for it. A good resource for practicing such problems, is http://acm.uva.es/problemset/

After the contest, all contestants were invited to the dinner. I like the food.

Just shaved my beard, for ACM Contest. More than half of my friends believe I was more handsome with beard, rather than shaved. Hmm, need to think bit more about how they define ‘handsome’ in their dictionaries. Anyway, changing the outlook is always good.

pictures taken on the day of ACM Programming Contest for my new outlook. The picture on the left is a webcam picture of me with beard a day before.

刚刚忙完第一天的ACM比赛，晚上回到住所就看见室友摆在客厅的邮包。虽然没有看清上面的字样，但是我很确定这就是我等待已久的HP Photosmart R717。

打开包裹，放入手中，感觉比想像中要轻巧一些。不过，当然不能跟William的那个超薄SONY Cybershot相比了。之所以挑中这款DC，最主要的原因是它的性价比。虽然对摄影摄像并不感冒，但是根据几张照下来的图像来看，效果还是不错的。一直想捕捉生活的影子，现在有工具了，要是再啥都捕捉不到，那就只能骂自己懒了。

夜深了，明天还要继续ACM Day 2，要早点休息去了。从明天开始，开拍！

Just came back from Sheridan College for the first day of 2005 ACM East Central North America Regional Programming Contest. The events started from 5pm today.

We have two teams from McMaster University, and I was with Yinghai and Eugene as McMaster A . The name of another team is McMonkey, consisting of William, Shiqi and Jeff. Note that Shiqi has just won the first place of International Conference on Functional Programming Contest, with another student in the Department of Computing and Software.

After a brief introduction to PC Square, a software that collects codes from contestants and display the result from judge, we were led to the practice session. It was aimed at making contestants more familiar with the contest environment. In the practice contest, we were actually given three problems. It is really helpful to make as many mistakes as possible, as we want to get the feedback from PC Square and the judge, to find out different possible problems which potentially will occur in the real contest tomorrow.

眼皮一闭，世界就消失了；
眼皮一开，世界又回来了。
……
世界就这样被玩弄于眼皮之间。

Since Microsoft started MSN Spaces, which is binding with MSN Messenger, 90% of my friends have started writing blogs. It is good, because we all love writing stuff. Technically, most of these blogs are publicly viewable, but some of them are being used as personal private diaries.

I don’t like writing diary. Instead, I like blogging. But you might be wondering, “Hey, what are the differences?”. I have been blogging for 2 or 3 years, as a newbie – I must have already failed if this is a course =). What make diary and blog different in my opinion, is that blog is a way to communicate, and diary is not. We have post offices, cell phones, internet and many other means to communicate, just because we always have our own opinions on different things or some of us just want to get rid of loneliness due to our human nature. I write to public, and for public.

So far, there are still many issues challenging me. As many of you can see, I am writing my stories in Chinese and English in an interleaved way. The reason I am doing this, is that I want to maximize the number of readers from any corners in this world. Everyday I have many ideas and thoughts, but some times I found that writing a topic, which I can easily wrap around in Chinese, can be very buggy to myself if I want to write it in English. Clearly, the reason for this situation is because of my skill in written English. Thus I’d like to share the comments about how to write good blogs in English, if anyone has any, such as topic choosing, paragraph organizing and etc. In addition, I’d also like to know what I was writing good and wrong in my past blogs.

Any comments are greatly appreciated.