Well, it’s certainly been a minute since I blogged… just a minute, or many thousands.
But I have my reasons! Sort of. I had a very busy couple weeks, the first couple I skipped, helping family with their business during a holiday rush (which was partly a disaster) and after that was a combination of shutting down and prior engagements which led to my forgetting I got a blog in the first place. So yes. A run-on sentence of excuses!
Since the gap is pretty big, there’s more than I can cover in one blog post without rambling into greater detail than intended. Therefore, here’s an overly simplified list!
Helping family business
GAMES
Helping my friend who got into streaming/vtubing
More coding interview studying
Github repositories cleanup/setup
Resume creation
For now, I just wanted to make sure I don’t continue to neglect my blog so this post will be kept fairly short, but I can possibly expand on things later if I get motivated.
Wow. Just started blogging and I already went missing for almost a week. Sometimes my own ability to fail at making new habits surprises even me. But, I have been somewhat productive during that time.
As usual, I’ve been working through my coding interview book like I mentioned in my last post (which I should streamline since doing every single problem while writing down my analysis takes longer than I thought), but I’ve also been doing a couple other things. As described in the title, I’ve been messing with Notion and playing a couple of games that recently came out.
Notion is an app that makes life organization easy. Using a block system that allows easy customization of pages that you can use for pretty much anything (note taking, database work, scheduling, etc), it’s a lot of power for keeping track of a lot of things for free! Well, free if you keep things personal. I think there’s a paid program available for working on Notion pages in a group setting? I’m not entirely sure how that works, I’m new to the whole thing too.
The two main things I’ve worked on in Notion so far is a Genshin Impact database, the template of which I got off reddit somewhere, and a database to keep track of my notes and work on “Cracking the Coding Interview”. Since the Genshin work isn’t mine, I won’t show that but I’m kind of proud of what I’ve done with the note taking so far.
The main page of this section, made in Notion.
The head page keeps a table that holds the different pages tied with each chapter I’ve worked on in the book. One cool feature of Notion is the way I can make a template of the pages themselves, and if I press hit the new button at the bottom, it’ll automatically generate the page with that template and I can work on a new page right away without having to worry about formatting.
An example of my page template.
Don’t mind my lazy clipping but this is essentially what each chapter page looks like. Each field for the table database (located on the head page) is available at the top to adjust as needed and below is how I set up the note taking body of my page. It’s much longer than this but I think this is enough to show how convenient the application is in organizing what you need and want in an appealing manner.
So, yes. That took up a lot of my free time, messing with features for fun. I plan on making my own database for another gatcha game I play (Arknights) and maybe some scheduling though my schedule is never really set in stone.
Aside from Notion, two games have sucked up a lot of my free time: Pokemon Arceus and Dying Light 2. I’d love to write a review or something but honestly, I’m not that far in either game as I easily got side tracked with the more miscellaneous tasks. 🤦 It’s fun so far though, despite the grind. Maybe I’ll go into more detail in another post, we’ll see~
The shape my mouth makes as I slowly read code and try to calculate that ‘O‘. And apparently there’s also a big omega and theta if you wanna get technical with it?? My brain…
Before I continue, I should probably mention that I’m prepping for my big job hunt using Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell. It was recommended by several people and although I’m not far in yet, I can see why. It’s well written and there’s a level of confidence you get from the author that hopefully I can eventually achieve in my own writing and coding. Fingers crossed.
Going back to the Big O concept with brothers omega and theta, I’m happy to read that apparently the industry is a bit more ambiguous with its usage of the term big O. That means the finer details you’d find from studying big omega and theta (and what big O should actually define within the bounds of runtime) is most likely something I won’t need to know off the top of my head. I should probably review it anyway when I have a chance, but first comes mastering the basics of big O calculation.
With an oversimplification of the subject, calculating Big O doesn’t seem that difficult. Read through a piece of coding, jot down and section together the time complexity of chunks of the code, then simplify by dropping constants and more insignificant additions to the time calculation (or space if you’re doing Big O for space complexity).
For example: O(2n2+n) =simplifies to=> O(n2)
Yet my mind still manages to make pretzels out of my train of thought as I read code and try to piece together the correct big O. I supposed my bullheaded attempts to understand the code and calculate the time at the same time is not helping.
Well at least I think I got some pointers to keep in mind as I try to master the concept of big O.
Practice, practice, practice.
Memorizing concepts like two loops of n length nested is n2 and not nested is n+n isn’t enough and I should make sure I understand the principle by explaining my reasoning either out loud or on paper. (Helpful if you want someone else to understand too)
Not every variable length is n and two variables of (potentially) different length should get their own variable.
Learn the typical big O of frequently used data structures and algorithms.
Oh and always think about that Big O for time and space when writing my own code. Even if I’m not some algo/math expert, it’s useful to know if either complexity is horrendous and if there’s space for improvement in the future.
I mean… it would suck if some pigeon was faster than my runtime, right?
Side note. I found a Big-O Cheat Sheet and a place to quiz my Big O knowledge. Time to dust off my coding resources/references folder!
There we go. A scope of audience that my crippling social awkwardness can handle where I don’t have to keep in mind the overwhelming potential of anyone reading this and the bleak potential of no one reading this.
Now here we are. My first post ever on this new venture. My first ever post on anything for quite some time actually, if I think about it. Wow. Hope I don’t babble too much.
Okay, now what? I guess next on the list is…
Getting started on making my own (super simple) WordPress theme.
Organizing my Github and setting it up for more personal projects.
Work on the list of Python projects that the program recommended.
Setting up reminders to keep up frequent posting on this blog..
Setting up my Notion page for personal life organization and gaming…
Getting ready for Dying Light 2 and getting further in Pokemon cause gaming…..
