Two Myths of Sorting Complexity

Let’s begin with an easy question: You have a list of n random floating point numbers, how quickly can you sort them? O(n log(n))? Wrong, you can do better. How about a list of n random strings? O(n log(n))? Actually you’ve probably missed something important there too. How can I say this? Didn’t you learn … Read more

Tune that Noisy Black-Box

Do you have a noisy black-box with a number of parameters that need to be tuned? Then you might just be in luck! The newest paper of the well-known researcher, RĂ©mi Coulom, might be just what you are looking for. In “CLOP: Confident Local Optimization for Noisy Black-Box Parameter Tuning” he describes a new method … Read more

Documenting Like a Mad Man for Other Mad Men

I just finished the initial round of documenting my open source project, Oakfoam. Initially there were little to no comments, but I decided that this was unacceptable, so over the past couple of weeks, I have been slowly documenting my code. Now, every class and all its public methods have at least a brief line … Read more

Vim – King of My Terminal

It’s been a few weeks now since I lasted used gedit as my code editor. I used to only use it, but now I’ve become a converted Vim user. I was pretty efficient with my setup – my src folder open in the background, gedit to one side and a terminal on the other. However, … Read more

Achievement Unlocked

So today I got the degree of BEng (Electronic and Electrical with Computer Science) Cum Laude. It feels good to finish off four years of studies with a ceremonious event. Next year I will be starting with MSc (Computer Science). More on that to come later…

Switch to WordPress

So I was using tumblr for my website (custom domain), but I have decided to switch to WordPress. I’m doing this mostly for more control. I make zero promises of regular blog posts, and I have adjusted my website layout accordingly. My old tumblr posts are available at francoisvn.tumblr.com. If you really want to know … Read more