december
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12-01-2006:
Today was a slightly above average day for me. Which would probably be below average for everyone else. I only had one class today. My first regularly scheduled class was cancelled, so all I had was Computer Science II today. We had a small quiz, which i think i did well on, then we were basically free to go. After that, I went back to my dorm, and worked on a program that i'm working on. A postfix calculator. Postfix, for those that don't know, is a different way of writing math equations; infix notation is probably the notation that you know best. With post fix, the operation sign goes after the the numbers. Here's a small little chart thing comparing the two: Infix Postfix equals Anyways, it doesn't matter if you understand, I have an algorithm to calculate the problem. The only difficulty I'm having is creatin a GUI (Graphical User Interface). I have most of that worked out and looking decent now. Here's more info if you really want to know about postfix notation. The other nice thing about today was the strange weather. It was pretty warm this morning, which is a little strange seeing how it's December. By lunch time, the wind really picked up. It was gusting all day long, and is still going. And we had some nice thunderstorms. Nothing too big, just some heavy rain off and on for a while. Then later while the sun was nearly down, is was raining, but the rain cloud didn't block out the sun, and so I saw a nice rainbow for a little while. I would've taken a photo if i had a camera. Then later, after the sun had set, there was a small thunderstorm in the distance. It was still light enough so that i could see the cloud fairly well, but dark enough so that i could see the lightning inside the cloud. It was pretty neato. |
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12-02-2006:
If you're going to create a website, you ought to have a good reason for doing so. Or else no one is ever going to visit your website. When i first created this website two summers ago, it was mostly just to experiment with HTML. The main page consisted of mostly just updates that i made to the site. I got like 0.00317 visits per day. In then when school began that year, I decide to post java programs on my website, so that others may "base their code off mine." So then there was a reason for somebody to visit, even if they were classmates. Eventually, by the end of the school year, the main page turned into what could be considered a "blog". Now, if you're going to have a blog, and your not famous and don't have something significant to say, you shouldn't really expect any one to visit, except for maybe some of your friends. But if your famous, it's another story. For example, Cory Barlog averages 85 hits per day because he is the director of God of War 2. However, a co-worker of his, Thomas Miller average about 14 visits per day because he is merely a programmer, and nobody cares about us programmers, right? I'm pretty sure I don't have many regular visitors other than robots. I average about 4 visits per day. Most people come from some forums that i'm active in. A few come from the results pages of some strange searches. |
12-03-2006:
 See that there image? Both of the triangles contain the same shapes, yet when you rearrange them, the second triangle has an extra empty spot (the red square). Why is that? This question had me going crazy last night. Even now, i'm not quite sure of the exact reasoning, but i have made some progress. Upon further analysis of the "triangle," one might notice that it's not a triangle at all. The first evidence of this is that the area of the apparent triangle is different than the sum of the areas of the smaller components. In this larger image of the diagram, you can see the hypotenuse of the "real" triangle compared with the hypenuse of false triangle that they want you to see. It is clear the the real hypotenuse (in red) does not eclipse the false hypotuse, and clearly shows that the false hypotenuse is not even a straight line. So the image shown is basically a quadrilateral that appears to be a triangle.Furthermore, the two smaller triangles within each figure are indeed real triangles; no trickery there. The problem with these triangles lies in the fact that they are not similar in a geometric sense. The triangle don't share similar angles, and so however you arrange them, their hypotenuses will never yeild a straight line. Perhaps this idea is more understandable when the two triangle are clearly not simlar. See the image to the right. The two smaller interior triangles are obviously not similar, and neither are the larger triangles. And the product of the length of one side of the interior triangles and the length of the respective opposite side of the other triangle will never equal the product of the other two sides. That sounds confusing and may not make sense or be true (but i think it is), but thanks for reading. |
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12-06-2006:
Let's say your on a game show, and you must pick your prize. But your prize is behind one of three doors, and you must guess which door it is behind to win it. Let's say that your prize is big pile of money, and the other two doors hold a pile of cheese. Obviously the probability that you choose the correct door is 1/3. But let's say that you choose a door, but the host doesn't open it just yet. Instead, he opens one of the other doors to reveal a pile of cheese. The host then gives you the option to change your choice of doors -- should you do it? While my first thought was that it doesn't matter if you switch, upon further analysis, i realized that it is quite the contrary. Let's start the game over. Your probability of picking the money is 1/3 and your probability of picking the cheese is 2/3. So you're obviously more likely to pick the cheese. Then you know that one of the cheese doors is removed. And since 2 out of 3 times the door you have has cheese, and since the other door with cheese is gone, then two out of three times the other door has the money. Lets do a few trials of this game: The door you pick has the arrow below it and the door with money has an M. _________________________________________________________
_ _ _
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|_| |M| |_| ... now remove the other door
^
_ _
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|_| |M| ... if you switch, you win
_________________________________________________________
_ _ _
| | | | | |
|_| |M| |_| ... now remove one of the other doors
^
_ _
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|_| |M| ... if you switch, you lose
_________________________________________________________
_ _ _
| | | | | |
|_| |M| |_| ... now remove the other door
^
_ _
| | | |
|M| |_| ... if you switch, you win
^
_________________________________________________________
notice how two out of three times, you win if you switch. The only time you don't win is when you originally choose the winning door. I also ran a computer simulation of this problem 100,000 times. And on average the results equaled 2/3's of the time you win if you switch. And only 1/3 of the time you win if you dont switch. more info. |
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12-13-2006:
Here's an interesting news story. It basically says that a mother called the cops on her twelve-year-old son because he opened his christmas present (a GameBoy Advance) early. The mother says that the boy is basically out of control and is contantly misbehaving. The boy was charged with petty larceny. I think calling the cops is a little extreme. First of all, I would've hidden the gift better, and not let it's presence be known. Secondly, there are certainly other means of punishment. |
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12-14-2006:
The end is near! Finals are nearly over! I have one more final tomorrow at 8:00AM. It's my Computer Science II final. It should be the easiest of all my finals. I started packing up my clothes and whatnot today. I have to disassemble this computer tomorrow, and do some minor room cleaning, and i'll be good to go. I just got done eating an orange and was just about to go to bed, and then my iTunes decides to play Beethoven's ninth symphony, fourth movement. And since it's practically a sin to turn off Ludmaster's ninth, I decided to stay up 25 more minutes until it's over, and during that time, i am writing this. Beethoven's 9th is undoubtedly my favorite of his symphonies, especially the 4th movement; The first three movements don't really hold my attention to well. My second favorite of his symphonies (that i've heard) would be a tie between the 5th and 6th symphony. The fifth symphony's first movement is probably one Beethoven's most famous works. In the sixth symphony, i particularly like the 1st and 3rd movements, but i still like the other parts. The 6th symphony is one of the few that i listen to in its entirety, rather than just listening to particular sections. |
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12-21-2006:
Recently i've been doing more math in my head. Particularly long division. I'll think up of two random numbers out of the blue and divide them in my head and later check the answer with a calculator to see how accurate I am. It's extra fun when both of the numbers are prime. My sister was amazed the other day because i could find percentages of numbers in my head. She would say like "What's twenty percent of eighty?" and i would reply a moment later saying "sixteen" and everyone would be amazed. I don't really think it's that impressive. I mean that's simple. To find 20% of 80, all you need to do is take 10% of 80 and double it; and 10% of anything is easy to find because all you need to do is move the decimal point. If i could quicky find like 37.25 percent of 234.37 in my head, then i might agree that's a little impressive. Daniel Tammet, on the other hand, is really impressive. He can do extreme mental calculations in his head like square roots and whatnot. He can also learn a new language in about a week. He holds the european record for memorizing some twenty-thousand digits of pi. I know a mere 50 digits of pi. |
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12-25-2006:
If it seems like I've let the website fall by the wayside, it's probably because I have. Earlier this month, I was super busy with finals. And after the semester was over and I returned home, i was sort of busy with shopping and other random events. And here at my mom's house (aka: home), I only have a dial-up internet connection, so that doesn't help too much. I've been forced to go podcast-free since I came home. Well, whatever, I plan to rejuvinate the website soon. ;-) Happy holidays. =) |
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12-30-2006:
I plan to give this here website a makeover, as well as some needed redesign. It should be slightly faster loading, more dynamic, and less server intensive. I hope to get everything done by the start of the new year, which may be a little ambitious, considering the fact the I don't have a very deep knowledge of the technologies i plan to implement. I plan to use some javascript and ajax (Asynchronous Javascript And XML), and I never really used much Javascript before so that's a bit of a challenge. I decided to learn that stuff a few weeks ago, and i think i have the basics of that down, and that'll all that i'll really need. I also want to use a mysql (Standard Query Language) data base to store things. That'll all happen behind the scenes, so no one should ever notice that. And the mysql syntax is basically all i have to learn. I decided to learn the very basics today, so tomorrow, i'll see if i can put the basic to something useful. |
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