Back to coding...

So I finished more benchmarking over the weekend (it is honestly my favorite part of any project, so I tend to finish it faster), and so it is now back to coding.

I cleaned up the binary tree implementation of the M*ary tree decomposition a bit. It is almost ready. I need to write the traversal code, but it is honestly pretty straightforward. i also have a function that will give me all the leaves in the tree, which is a big deal. Which leads me to the supertree method that I'm going to use. Below is a pretty picture showing how the M*ary tree can be represented in binary form. You should now have no doubt of my utter dedication to you, reader. I used MS Paint, for Pete's Sake!



I'm planning to grab all the leaf nodes of my guide tree and then put them linearly into a list. Each of the nodes will then be converted into a subtree (a linear time operation). The new problem is merging these subtrees together in a manner that will still respect the structure of the guide tree. I call this new problem the numbering problem:

"Give an enumeration, e, to a set of subtrees, S, such that it will be intuitive to deduce the structure of the whole tree (with respect to the guide tree)."

So I created an enumeration; while it is intuitive, I don't think it's simple. So I've been staring at this thing for a while now, seeing if I can simplify it.

The appeal of spending ten hours in the office a day to tackle this project has started to grow on me significantly. Not only do I feel like I'm getting more done (when you subtract the hours spent staring blankly at the screen), but I also know that early evening is when I'm more productive. And, now I'm bored less ^-^

I feel some of my old fire coming back for this project. The problem with working on a problem constantly for a long period of time is that you start noting chips in what you had perceived to be a flawless design. And soon these chips become cracks, and the cracks grow wider until they look as large as canyons... but then you blink and shake your head once and look again. And there it is: a flawless design. I really thought that I was going the wrong way, because this and this and that was not perfect. But then I went back and read some of the research papers I'm using as a reference and read a Paul Graham Essay for inspirational purposes. You're being ridiculous. I told myself, and got back to work with greater zeal.

*sigh* I still haven't started studying for my quals (in other news). I probably should buy that book eventually, so I can start preparing. That's all the news for today. I'm probably going to get back to work now.