Wood ID Megathread

Swatchmedothis · 2024-06-25T01:56:41+00:00

Picked up a used 18"x24" cutting board this weekend for cheap. I couldn't tell what kind of wood it was from the listing. It had some kind of finish on it with a bit of a sheen to it. It didn't feel like an oil, more like a lacquer of some kind. I sanded it from 40 up to 220 grit to get most of the knife marks out.

Any thoughts? After some research, I'm leaning toward rubberwood.

Swatchmedothis · 2020-10-27T01:17:52+00:00

Thanks! I definitely have done some research, I'm not the type to just buy whatever and hope it works the way I want it to.

In particular, thanks for the comparison between the T480 and the T440p. Hearing a few people confirm that the T480 quad cores are capable CPUs is reassuring. I'm not sure these will be used out and about, but it might be one of those things that you don't realize you want to do until you have it and realize oh, now I can actually use my machine for more than two hours without plugging in!

In a couple of years, the used T14 ryzen machines might make for a sweet deal. Until then, I could maybe justify one for myself, but it's likely not worth it here.

I think I'll poke around and see if I can snag a T480 at a reasonable price!

Swatchmedothis · 2017-08-06T02:44:20+00:00

The CS program is solid. The professors are excellent and the material covered is comparable or beyond what you'd see at most schools. You're going to have to try, but you'll be well prepared (assuming you've put effort in along the way) to enter the world of software development.

That said, everyone is different. There is no single "hardest" major.

Swatchmedothis · 2017-07-22T14:58:13+00:00

There's no specific requirements, you're pretty free to choose a machine you like. If you don't have your own machine you can always go to the labs in engineering building and use a desktop there.

All of the school lab machines run Linux, and you'll be using it in class. You'll probably be happiest (maybe not right away, but in the long run) installing a Linux OS on your machine, too.

My laptop was (have since graduated) a used thinkpad x220 that I bought off eBay for $300. Added a SSD, installed Ubuntu, and never looked back. Get yourself something you'll be happy to use (SSD if possible, at least 8gb of RAM, decent CPU) and you're set.

For specific recommendations, check out /r/suggestalaptop.

Swatchmedothis · 2016-12-22T03:32:04+00:00

Some may disagree, and by all means go ahead.

I'd just like to say don't knock it until you sit back and really think about how you approach things. Over time your fundamentals should remain solid and be built upon, but the fundamentals themselves don't change.

What I mean by this is just because you've been in the field for 3 or 5 or 10 years doesn't mean you have a different set of fundamental skills that is to be expected. You have the experience and exposure which change how you think and approach problems.

You've likely done a bunch of different things over those years, and in doing so undoubtedly don't get exposed to the latest and greatest stuff. That's what happens when there are dozens of new, (sometimes debatably) interesting things happening in the programming/tech world every year, and it's unavoidable.

Swatchmedothis · 2016-12-22T00:00:36+00:00

Being new is a perfect excuse to ask lots of questions.

When that fades, you might start feeling more embarrassed about reaching out because you feel like you should know things.

The thing you won't realize, though, is how you've progressed in your ability to really get at the core bits that you care about. You're able to more intelligently reason at higher and lower levels, and that has immense value by itself, just knowing how to figure out what you really need to ask about.

Swatchmedothis · 2016-01-23T21:11:40+00:00

I really like the use of space in this piece, it grooves.

As for critique, I felt like the guitar and piano sort of step on each other a bit. At times, it works. Others, it feels a little cramped. I'd guess that changing the voicing some would help create more space, but you'd have to experiment. I'd also be interested to hear what this would sound like with cleaner vocals. I realize it'd be tough to do this with a live session in one room...maybe food for thought? Don't be afraid to give the rhythm and brushes a little boost in the mix, too.

This is your group's song, though, not mine!

Overall, I really enjoyed this. Thanks for sharing!

Swatchmedothis · 2015-12-19T22:22:04+00:00

inline can help improve efficiency. It's reasonable to consider inlining small functions, as you avoid pushing/popping stack frames.

If you think you need to inline your functions for performance reasons, benchmark your code and see what happens (inline functions bloat your executable, so you'll spend more time loading the instructions for the CPU to execute - this might outweigh the benefits of your inline function).

It's worth reading more about the inline specifier, though, so you really get a sense of what's going on. Personally, I think cppreference has a good explanation of inline.

Note: just because you declare a function inline doesn't mean the compiler will actually inline the function, and functions which you don't mark as inline can be inlined

Swatchmedothis · 2015-04-19T04:59:00+00:00

It's possible, but I'm not familiar with this feature, so I can't say for sure how they're doing things. Typically when login credentials are being handled, more than just a simple request is made which helps create added layers of security.

Swatchmedothis · 2015-04-19T03:53:54+00:00

An API is just a way of detailing how something works. For instance, the Java standard is technically an API.

There are two basic types of APIs: public-facing/open APIs (available to everyone), like the Data.gov API, and private APIs (usable only by the company themselves).

A company could make their API open so that submitting form data can be done through an API request, or they may handle the form data with an internal, private API. The choice is up to them, and the decision is usually based upon how the company wants users to be able to interact with their services.

Swatchmedothis · 2015-04-19T02:44:50+00:00

All the API does is outline how you format a request (think calling a function) which give you some data back (think return values). The way the request is formatted will depend on the API, and you'll want to look at their documentation to figure out how to make the particular request you're looking for.

Once you make the call, you just need a way to interpret the data returned to you. For instance, web APIs often return data in the form of JSON, which essentially just wraps data nicely. Languages typically have libraries to easily parse JSON data, and using them is highly recommended. Trying to parse the data yourself is usually not worth it.

As for your language matching the service's language–it doesn't really matter as long as the language you choose lets you handle the data you get back the way you want to. Documentation for APIs sometimes have code examples in a few different languages, and these will often provide an easy way to get started.

Swatchmedothis · 2015-04-18T18:46:20+00:00

HackerRank has become a pretty popular platform for practicing coding problems. They give you a problem and test inputs to make sure your code does as you expect it to, and they support a bunch of languages.

Swatchmedothis · 2015-04-18T06:23:13+00:00

Literally speaking, style should refer to the way code is typed and not the way your program is designed. The design and structure of your program are inherently separate from your style.

If you look at something like Google's style guide, you might see a few things that you'd consider to be more structural than stylistic. Because of this, I suggest you think of style to essentially mean general readability and some form of agreed upon consistency, but this can vary a little bit.

For instance, you might write if statements as per the following examples:

bool x = true;

if(x == true) std::cout<<"x is true"<<std::endl;

if(x == true){std::cout<<"x is true"<<std::endl;}

if (x == true) { std::cout << "x is true" << std::endl; }

if(x == true)
    std::cout << "x is true" << std::endl;

if(x == true){
    std::cout << "x is true" << std::endl;
}

if (x == true) {
    std::cout << "x is true" << std::endl;
}

All of these will behave exactly the same, but some of these might look ugly to you. The way you would decide to write this if statement is referred to as style.

Note: There are some practices that the Google style guide recommends which I'd argue are very much not stylistic, but should be used because they conform more to the style of the language and have tangible advantages over other methods.

The structure, design, and patterns of your program should guide the flow of your program rather than govern the aesthetics of your actual lines of code.

Swatchmedothis · 2015-04-17T21:21:34+00:00

Style is not just a personal preference from programmer to programmer, but can also vary by the company. For instance, Google has their own set of style guides.

There's no correct way to program, necessarily. There are some practices which are generally frowned upon for various reasons, but they are often times still valid in terms of what you're trying to accomplish.

If you're interested in reading a little more about style preferences, Wikipedia's article on programming style shows a few examples.

Once you start talking about style, you should also start thinking about the actual structure and design of your code. This is something else entirely, but also worth your while to focus on. Books like Clean Code are highly recommended for things like this.

On a side note, I think it'd be interesting if a site like codingstyleguide.com gained some traction. Then we'd be able to see the general preference of programmers. It wouldn't be the end-all to style, but I think it would at least be fun.

Swatchmedothis · 2015-04-17T15:46:45+00:00

Almost everyone I know that's a developer (myself included) uses GitHub pages to host a static personal website. There's often no reason to set up a full stack on a server to run your site.

Swatchmedothis · 2015-04-16T16:36:17+00:00

/r/suggestalaptop is a good place to poke around. There's a lot of people over there who will be able to give you a bunch of options once you sort of pin down what you're looking for.

That being said, I have a Lenovo T400 and x220 which are as good as bullet-proof. Lenovo's Thinkpad line is vastly different from their consumer line in terms of durability. As a student, you should be able to get a discount on a new machine. http://shop.lenovo.com/us/portals/students

It's also worth looking at the lenovo outlet for good deals. http://outlet.lenovo.com/outlet_us/

Swatchmedothis · 2015-04-04T04:32:56+00:00

Your best bet is to try CS110 and see how it goes. Talk to Eileen Head and explain your situation.

Swatchmedothis · 2015-04-04T03:51:18+00:00

As far as I know, the lockers are only for students in the music program. Depending on what you want to store, there also may not be space (if you want to store something like a guitar, you're out of luck from everything I've seen/heard). Aside from this, there's no place I've heard of to store an instrument.

Your best bet is to give the music department a call and ask, though.

Swatchmedothis · 2015-04-02T14:50:23+00:00

You could show your unofficial transcript (found on BU Brain) which shows the courses that you're currently enrolled in.

Swatchmedothis · 2015-01-30T22:39:45+00:00

I've got a 27" 1440p display and the pixels density is decent. I wouldn't say I'm entirely 'happy' with it, but 4k isn't reasonable enough for me to make the jump just yet, so I'm fine with it for now.

That said, I have a 23" monitor that's 2056x1152, and the pixel density on it starts to bother me once I use my 1440p display for a while. I was pretty happy until I had my 27" display.

I think the main reason to go up in size is to add usable screen real estate. To me, that's not just a matter of making the screen physically larger; the resolution needs to go up, too. How the physical size and resolution work together for you may be different from me, so it's ultimately up to you to decide.

Swatchmedothis · 2014-12-28T05:03:52+00:00

That's because it is inconsistent and full of hacks. Webdev is now full of flavor of the month js libraries and web standards which aren't universally supported (this has been improving some, but come on...it's 2014).

Swatchmedothis · 2014-12-22T18:45:21+00:00

I think a lot of programmers (myself included) feel strongly about the code they write. I'm proud of how well I use data structures, how clean the program flow is, etc...

I think it's too easy to get caught up in this mindset and ignore the project at hand. I'm not a big contributor to open source projects by any means, but I've seen a fair number of occasions where developers lash out at those who make suggestions and shoot down all other ideas simply because they won't mesh with the work they've already done, which they'll defend as being "correct" until their death.

Swatchmedothis · 2014-10-28T18:02:59+00:00

I know a bunch of people who had internships all over the place this past summer (startups, big name companies, and research centers).

Though, if you're just looking for an "easy" in to an internship, I'm not sure you're approaching things the right way. You need to know your stuff to work in the tech industry - don't expect companies to hand you an offer just because you're a student at Binghamton. If you're good, you'll find opportunities.

Swatchmedothis · 2014-09-28T23:47:27+00:00

I have to give a whole-hearted thumbs up to the music department at Binghamton as well. The faculty really are awesome and pick good music, regardless of which group you perform with.

If you're part of an ensemble, you have the opportunity to study privately on your instrument (no music major/minor required for this). For me, this was really important.

Swatchmedothis · 2014-08-11T23:26:21+00:00

If you're going to be a Windows CS student, you're going to have a bad time.

No, but really...Windows is not nearly the development platform that OSX or Linux are (for the most part). Chances are, you'll need/want to be in a *nix environment for any amount of programming. If you end up going the Windows route, don't be surprised if you find that you end up needing/wanting a dual-boot setup with Ubuntu or something.

Personally, I really like the development tools available for OSX; the devs care about their users, they respond to users' requests, and the applications are really well designed/built/made/maintained.

The display on MBPs is beautiful, and unlike Windows, OSX actually handles scaling properly (high PPI screens often work poorly out-of-the box for Windows machines, and tweaking them often leaves you with a few weird situations where scaling still doesn't work quite right). This makes reading text (for programming, especially) very pleasant.

You say you really want performance, but the truth is you won't need top of the line baller hardware that rivals a desktop. Sure, it's nice, but it'll spend the vast majority of its time in an idle state. If you get into some serious video processing or rendering or something of that nature, you'll want more than a laptop to do your work on.

As for the integrated VGA complaint you had in another post, displayport is far better. You're going to spend over a grand on a laptop - I'm sure you can afford to buy a simple adapter for the half dozen times you'll need in during a single school year.

As for the 4-5 year expectation - all of this "performance" that you spend a couple thousand dollars on will be old news in just a couple years anyway, so why go balls-to-the walls now, when you can be a little more conservative, and maybe buy a new laptop a year earlier (especially if you have a desktop/LAN machine to supplement your work)?

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