Archive for category Life
Unplugged in G
Posted by Manfredas Zabarauskas in Education, Life, Music on January 8th, 2010
Another vacation, another video – as usual, apologies for the sound, webcam and playing quality. Three days left ’till the journey back to Cambridge.
Gel electrophoresis of Senecio vulgaris, S. squalidus and S. cambrensis DNA strands.
Post-vacation status update: apparently I did have to discuss plant evolution through polyploidy in my exam! What were the odds…
Anyway, here’s the video. Oh, yes, and while we’re at it – happy New Year to you all. Eric Clapton - Wonderful Tonight (0:00/3:50),
Guns N' Roses - Wild Horses (3:54/6:16).
It Literally Pays Off to Do Homework in Cambridge
Posted by Manfredas Zabarauskas in Development, Education, Life on November 24th, 2009
"Well done! - joint shortest traditional (and practical :-) sort for the OS1a prize tick". Cambridge, 2009.
45 minutes, 28 MIPS instructions and £25.
Computer Science FTW.
# Copyright Manfredas Zabarauskas, 2009.
# MIPS routine that reads an array of ten integers
# and prints the sorted array to console.
.text
main: sub $t7, $sp, 40
l_read: li $v0, 5
syscall
sw $v0, 0($t7)
add $t7, $t7, 4
bne $t7, $sp, l_read
l_out: sub $t8, $sp, 36
sub $t7, 40
l_inn: add $t8, $t8, 4
lw $t2, -8($t8)
lw $t3, -4($t8)
ble $t2, $t3, no_swp
sw $t2, -4($t8)
sw $t3, -8($t8)
move $t7, $sp
no_swp: bne $t8, $sp, l_inn
beq $t7, $sp, l_out
l_prnt: li $v0, 11
li $a0, 10
syscall
li $v0, 1
lw $a0, 0($t7)
syscall
add $t7, $t7, 4
bne $t7, $sp, l_prnt
li $v0, 10
syscall
White Man’s Blues
Posted by Manfredas Zabarauskas in Life, Music on September 24th, 2009
Due to the fact that I have found time to record these videos, I’m starting to suspect that my vacations have prolonged quite a bit… And I still have more than a week left.
A status update: apparently I have been awarded the Simon Gray prize by the Department of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. That, a KAL industrial scholarship, a couple of other prizes… I almost regret having to leave.
Anyway, here’s the video. Try to figure out which is worse: my playing or my webcam’s video quality.
Diversity Visa
Posted by Manfredas Zabarauskas in Life on June 25th, 2009
"Green Card"
It all comes at once.
A couple of days ago I received a call from Lithuania – there was a letter from U.S. waiting for me at home. After some discussion it became clear that I was one of the 100 000 selected to compete for 55 000 DV’s (”Green Cards”).
After some short initial joy, problems and worries started to creep in: one has to cross the U.S. border in six months after getting a DV – something which I’m not keen doing at all, because I’ll be studying in Cambridge University at that time, and since I’ve worked quite hard to get there, it’s priority #1 in the list.
One possible solution would be to go to U.S. for the summer and then comeback for a school year, but… we’ll see how that goes, it might introduce some additional problems (about which I’m not fully aware at the moment). It would be nice to visit some old friends though…
Anyway, I’ll try to keep the whole process documented here as well – it might give someone a good estimate of trouble involved in getting a DV (and help me to track the overall progress as well).
Thanks for reading and stay tuned – there will be more.
Boston, U.S.A. (09/2007)