I read through this and was amazed by the OP's approach to the problems even though I could barely understand 10% of the reading. How do I learn to think and code like this? I honestly have no idea where to begin.
Thank you. What you have to keep in mind is that I do databases research for a living so many of the problems involved in each challenge are very familiar to me. My suggestion to you is to get a stronger systems programming background, I figure that's what helped me the most.