Back in August I said goodbye to the place I've called home for the past five years. Slippery Rock is a wonderful place and I would love to call it home again in the future. But for now, home is Pittsburgh.
I'm now living in a two apartment house in the Dormont neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The house formerly belonged to my grandmother who lived there for almost 60 years. During that time, her and my grandfather performed minor repairs but never major renovations. The only exception is the garage which they built. Because of this, the house (construction, furnishings, etc.) is in almost exactly the same state it was when my grandparents moved into it. Most of the construction is still the original from whenever it was built. The wiring is mostly original, which makes three prong outlets scarce. Living rooms are organized so that a fireplace is the focus as opposed to the modern custom of a TV. The cellar is leaky and contains no ventilation whatsoever. And the internet is a far far away place which requires substantial travel to venture even remotely close to it.
Some of these issues have been resolved. Communication utilities (i.e. TV, phone, and internet) have been combined into one, cheaper provider. Accessible wiring has been updated to follow modern building codes. Fireplaces are difficult to change so those will remain the same. All these changes got me thinking about what the house would be like if it were not split into two apartments. Either I have a really good imagination or it's damn nice. It has a master bedroom, 2 regular bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, full kitchen, dining room, living room, entrance, bonus room, cellar, and attic. The bonus room has a wonderful view with ample natural light making it perfect for a reading room or study.
In between all this fixing of the house my time has been spent working on programming challenges. At the moment I am working on Packing Your Dropbox. I was very eager to try this one because of how well I can pack things efficiently. The thing is I never really analyzed what algorithm I was using. Upon thinking about it I found the crucial part is finding the largest sides which fit together perfectly. However the challenge is different as it does not provide the boundaries, instead asking that they be calculated. More on this when I have a final working solution.
The other challenge is finding a new host for my Facebook app, My Nickname. Since I first created the app I have been able to use free hosting providers. Facebook recently updated its developer platform to have more features and be more secure. Unfortunately, my current provider doesn't support Facebook's new API at my current cost of free. I had a hard enough time finding any provider which supported the old API. There don't seem to be any providers which freely support the new API. Now I'm faced with a choice: host it myself or pay for hosting.
