Good Evening, Matthew

Hello, my name is Leo de Castro. No, Leo is not short for anything, yes my last name is Cuban, and no, I am not related to Fidel Castro. You have no idea how many people have introduced themselves to me with those questions. I rarely become friends with them. Just kidding. I usually try to be nice to people and am a generally friendly person.

My academic goals for this year are to get straight “A”s and all 5s and all of the generic school based goals that you’ve probably read several dozen times. Outside of school, I hope to pass the Sun Certified Java Programmer test, which will officially allow me to get a job as a programmer.

This flows into what geeks me out: computer science. I love everything about it, from software design with algorithms and data structure to the hardware with the infinitely complex motherboards and an immense road network of electron channels. I have always thought computers were exciting and mysterious, but my actual study of computer programming began in March. It was slow to start, but I learned Java syntax and am now reviewing for the test, which I hope to take by the end of October, depending on the dates the test is offered.

My short term goal for this skill is to be able to develop some form of 3D graphics (I enjoy video games. Favorites include BioShock, Assassin’s Creed, and God of War. Skyrim is awesome too.), medium term goal is to learn C and/or C++ by the end of junior year, and long term goal is to do something impressive so that I get in to Cal Berkley or MIT, the top two computer science departments in the country (the reason I said Berkley in class is because I haven’t actually visited MIT yet, but I plan to go during fall break).

Reading everyone else’s blogs, I seems they’re all picking a superpower. To conform, I will select super smarts as my power of choice because then I could build all of my other powers.

To understand my favorite website requires a bit of background knowledge. Not long after my entry into the world of computer science, I came across the concept of the NP-complete problems. These are problems in computer science that nobody has written an algorithm that can produce the best solution every time, but nobody has proved that no best solution exists either. An example would be the delivery company problem, which requires an algorithm that takes number of trucks, destinations, and a road map as input and produces a system of routes based on priority of time and gas efficiency. No such algorithm exists, but it has never been proven that such an algorithm cannot exist. Many algorithms come close, but none will give the best answer every time. A long but by no means complete list of these problems is on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NP-complete_problems and I hope to remove one of these from the list one day. I’ve also been spending a lot of time lately on https://www.coursera.org/ which is free online classes provided by universities that I have found to be an excellent resource for additional information on any topic.

Another interesting fact about me is that I love to travel. One of my favorite places I have ever been is Venice, Italy, which is one of the most beautiful memories of my life. I love this picture of Venice because it is completely digital and one of my favorite characters of all time is hidden in it.