The last week or so has been kind of hectic. Spent four hours tonight finishing off the discrete mathematics homework for this week, and I stand to work for several hours tomorrow on trying to get ahead in Java programming. What can I say, it’s week 5 — inevitably, that means midterms are lurking. Indeed, I get my discrete mathematics midterm this morning in class. It’s due in a week, but the faculty wasn’t nice enough to completely cancel the homework for next week — instead, he just shortened it and moved the due date to Tuesday. Well, at least it’s better than a full-blown assignment out of the book (that would take another four hours instead of the 8 hours it’ll probably take me to finish the exam and extra hour it’ll take to complete the smaller assignment..)

Life is really fun sometimes.

I was bombed after doing that discrete mathematics assignment, so I took a break. I was reading Linus Torvalds’ Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary, and he talks a little bit about open source software. He indirectly quotes Issac Newton in his discussion, which inspired me to find the actual quote:

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
— Isaac Newton, Letter to Robert Hooke, February 5, 1675

Every invention or idea builds on other ideas and concepts. We truly stand on the shoulders of giants no matter what we do, whether we write novels, invent new technologies, or simply learn about new things in school.Newton got it right the first time.