AJ's ramblings

Ninja Warrior vs. American Gladiators -- June 22nd 2008

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:57:18 EST

Long time, no update. But anyways...

While in college, we received the G4 TV Network. G4 regularly airs a Japanese game show called Ninja Warrior (originally 'Sasuke' in Japan). The show Ninja Warrior basically consists of 100 competitors, who go through an obstacle course, one at a time. There are four stages in the obstacle course, getting progressively harder as you go on. Three of the four stages are timed. A player is eliminated if don't get through an obstacle, or if they don't get through the stage before the clock reaches zero. Usually, only about 10 people make it through stage one, and the rest of the show focuses on those people attempting to complete the other three stages.

Now that summer is here, I'm away from college, and away from Ninja Warrior, and I need to somehow supplement my addiction to Ninja Warrior. That's where American Gladiators comes in (or should have come in). Ever since they started airing new episodes near the beginning of 2008, I was fairly disappointed. The show pales in comparision to Ninja Warrior, content and entertianment-wise at least.

Here is a comparison of the two:

Ninja Warrior shows 50 competitors per episode	American Gladiators shows 4 competitors per episode
Ninja Warrior has at least eight obstacles in just the first stage	American Gladiators has maybe six obstacles if your lucky
Ninja Warrior has lots of action, with relatively little down time	American Gladiators has action in about 30 second bursts followed (or ususally preceded by) 5 minutes of commercials, talking to the contestants, introducing the gladiators for that obstacle, explaining the obstacle, etc.
Ninja Warrior doesn't have a fancy schmancy arena, with flashing lights and explosions, but rather bare bones metal obstacles with pools of water below for safety.	American Gladiators has tons of superficial lights and flash with their logo plastered everywhere, with everybody in shnazzy uniforms and safety equipment.
Ninja Warrior has reoccuring contestants, who you can root for.	Amercian Gladiator contestants are nobodies, that you don't know and you couldn't care less who wins.
Ninja Warrior is equally difficult for all contestants.	American Gladiators' contestants' success depends largely on the gladiators that they are pitted against (and the errors commited thereby)
Ninja Warrior has a crazy/awsome Japanese announcer who calls the action, and gets all worked up and excited about everything. And you can't understand 99.9% of it because it's in Japanese, which is hilarious. There is, however, and American narrator who explains what's going on.	American Gladiators' play-by-play is announced like that of a baseball game (which is not every enthusiastic).

ABC has a new Ninja Warrior-esque show starting soon. I hope it's not a total rip-off. ABC states that the obstacle course is "designed to create the most spills, face plants and wipeouts ever seen", so it seems like it might be a mix of Ninja Warrior and MXC. I'm not too excited to see it, but we'll see once I see.

Proverbs -- April 10th 2008

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:38:38 EST

Everybody like proverbs. So, a while back, I implemented a random proverb AJAX script that fetches a proverb from a MySQL database that I compiled (as seen on the left-hand side of my blog). Random proverbs are nice, but for those who wish to overdose on proverbs, I created a page that lists all the proverbs in my database. I've only added proverbs that I really like, so the database is that huge (only about 60 of them), but it's about quality, not quantity, right?

Plautus once wrote... -- April 6th 2008

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 00:06:44 EST

"There is something wrong with the one who knows how to accept a kindness and does not know how to return one."

-Plautus, Persa 762

With that in mind, I feel that there may be something wrong with me. I sense that there is some unbalance between my friends and I. My friends are great to me -- they're nice, friendly, funny, and all that good stuff. However, I feel like I am not providing anything in return, other than my company, and friendship shouldn't be a one way road like that.

Unless were doing something active like sports or a game, I it seems as if have nothing to give. I mean, if we're just talking or hanging out, I don't really have much to say or add. I know I'm not Mr. Personality, but even a complete stranger would have more to say. Maybe it's because I don't know them all that well, but my previous statement contradicts that excuse. Regardless, I wish I could be more of a friend.

Maybe there is something wrong with me.

Facebook Statuses again -- March 31st 2008

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:37:24 EST

There seemed to be a substantial amount of interest, in my list of facebook statuses that I posted a few months ago. They seemed to be popular due to their comical/witty/funny/hilarious (okay, maybe not "hilarious") nature. Since then, I have accumulated a few more statuses that are ready to be recycled. So here it goes, with the most recent first:

AJ Marx uses one scoop in every load of laundry to make his whites whiter, his brights brighter!
AJ whistled for a cab, and when it came near, the license plate said "fresh" and had dice on the mirror.
AJ has a PSG-1? He can use that against Sniper Wolf. Hurry up and save Meryl!
AJ is getting to the choppa!
AJ the British are coming!
AJ presses the Action button to drop down.
AJ is armed with five five sixers, and pineapples.
AJ is client #8.
AJ is he is, or is he ain't.
AJ is a secret agent man.
AJ is under the bridge downtown.
AJ is NP-hard.
AJ loads sixteen tons, and what does he get? Another day older and deeper in debt.
AJ said "What about Breakfast at Tiffany's?" He said "I think I remember the film, and as I recall, I think we both kind of liked it."
AJ doesn't do it for his health.
AJ is what makes the world go 'round.
AJ will kick you apart!
AJ + Red Vines = Crazy Delicious.
AJ wonders what the morlocks would do if the chickens could get their own bananas.
AJ killed a sensei in a duel and he never said why.
AJ has a brain for a heart.
AJ is sixty quid, and eight for the fruit-bat.
AJ is not something that you just dump something on. He's not a big truck. He's a series of tubes.
AJ has got no strings to hold him down.
AJ doesn't do it for the money.
AJ is getting too old.
AJ 's resemblence to any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
AJ can do it with his eyes closed.
AJ does it with style.
AJ is back with a vengeance.
AJ feels most alive while he's killing.
AJ sees the light.
AJ wears boots and suit of red; AJ wears a long cap on his head.
AJ is totally pumped that facebook dropped the "is" from the facebook status thing!!!
AJ is not underwear! Do not attempt to put in pants.
AJ is for external use only.
AJ is what Chuck Norris would do.

Dots And Boxes -- March 28th 2008

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 19:56:23 EST

A long time ago, on my Dad's computer, we had this set of games. Despite the mediocre review, and how old they are, there was one game that used to enjoy way back when, and that was Foggy Boxes.

Basically, this is how Foggy Boxes is played:

You have a grid of dots.
You (and an opponent) take turns connecting two dots.
If you complete a square, you get a point, and you are allowed to take another turn.
Once all the dots are connected, whoever completed the most squares wins the game

I enjoyed this playing this game when I was younger, so I created my own version of the game to play. Although, instead of calling it Foggy Boxes (which is probably trademarked or something), I refer to my version by the generic name, Dots and Boxes.

It's still a work in progress, so it's kind of rough around the edges. The AI is pretty decent, I think; if there is an opportunity for it to score points, it will always choose the best move to get it the most possible points on that turn. That's not to say that it always make the best move; The AI trys to get the most possible points on each turn, it doesn't take into account what might happen on its next turn, or where the player might have to move next. It's pretty decent on offense, but it can't play defensively at all; If there is no place for it to score a point, its move is totally random.

To play, just click to place your line. If you complete a box, the box will be filled with an "O", and you get to go again. The AI will take its turn instantly; It's a little difficult to see where it placed its line if you don't watch close because it's real quick (i'll fix this in later versions). When you complete a game, a restart button will appear on the bottom right.

You can either launch the game via Web Start (the left button) or download/open the JAR file (the right button).
Enjoy.

Freemysql.net is a turd -- March 18th 2008

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:48:15 EST

Long time, no update. That's because the host that provided my MySQL database (which stores just about my updates and a few other things) did some "upgrades." Upgrades which made communcation between my web host, www.t35.com and them impossible.

I contacted both parties about the issue. T35's help was great, and very timely. Unfortunately, they said that the problem seems to freemysql.net's side, and there was nothing they could do. I have yet to receive a response from freemysql.net (i contacted them about it more than two weeks ago).

So after more than three weeks of near total downtime of my website, and with no sign of life from freemysql, I decided to switch to a different MySQL host. So, now I am using a database provided by 100webspace.net.

Everything should be functional again.

My name in light -- February 18th 2008

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:39:10 EST

The other weekend, I was playing around with my camera and long exposure times in pitch blackness and with only one light which I could move around in front of the camera.

I eventually came up with the idea of making shapes and letters with the light, and a short while later, my name was produced. It should be noted though, that the image image above is a combination of two images that I combined with image editing software, and I did a horizontal flip of the J so that it was not backwards.

Just about the only control that I have of my camera's f-stop and exposure time is by adjusting the ISO, so I could only get up to 1 second exposures.

The all-seeing eye -- February 14th 2008

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:30:22 EST

Here is a photo of my eye.
I started taking photos of my eye because I had a big red group of blood vessels due to irritation from my contact lens. But then I took some side-view shots, and I thought the distortion of the iris/pupil caused by the cornea was pretty nifty.

In this photo, you can see the reflection of my head off my eye off the mirror I was looking at.

Viewing the hidden folder -- February 13th 2008

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:25:45 EST

Recently, I made the mistake of upgrading some of my software. I won't say what software it is, but let's just call it Shmindows Media Player. When I found out that some of my 'other software' wouldn't work with this version number, let's say, version 11 of Shmidnows Media Player, I was very upset.

So I decided to do a system restore to the day before I installed it. I don't know if that is the best method, but that's how I did it. I now had Shmindows Media Player 10 again. :)

But all was not well. Shmindows Media Player installed some files on my computer that the system restore didn't take care of, and this 'other software' still didn't work. So I looked around on the internet, and I heard from several sources that I had to delete the 'DRM' folder located here: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\DRM

However when I went and looked in that folder, I did not see a 'DRM' folder. Further investigation told me that I had to have the 'show hidden files and folders' option enabled. I did this, but I still did not see the DRM folder. I figured, that this solution must not work with my operating system. But after some tinkering, I found the solution...

The solution is to make sure that the 'Hide protected operating system files' checkbox is unchecked. To do this, in your file viewer, click 'Tools' from the menu bar, and choose 'Folder Options...'. A dialog box will pop up. Choose the 'View' tab. Scroll down through the settings list, and un-check the 'Hide protected operating system files' checkbox; a warning alert will pop-up saying that deleting these files could mess stuff up, but just click yes to proceed. You should also make sure that the 'Show hidden files and folders' option button, is selected while your here.

click OK to close out of the dialog boxes, and the 'DRM' folder should now be visible in the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users folder.

Prime Killer game -- January 24th 2008

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:55:34 EST

I just finish making a little java game called Prime Killer. The game was originally created by Phillip Dorrell, and is called PrimeShooter. His version was written with javascript and CSS and runs inside your web browser. I merely took his creation and converted it into Java and change a few little things.

The whole concept of the game is this: There are a numbers falling from the top of the screen, and you as the player must shoot these numbers with their prime factors. Shooting the number will reduce the falling number to the quotient of the two numbers. You must shoot the falling numbers until it is reduce to one (1) or until it is prime, in which case you shoot it with a 'P'.

For example, say that the number 28 is falling. You can shoot it with either 7 or 2, because those are the only prime numbers that 28 is divisible by. Let's say that you shoot 28 with a 2; this will turn the falling 28 into a 14, because 28/2 = 14. Now, you can either shoot the 14 with a 7 or a 2. You shoot it with a 7, turning it into a 2. Now you have a falling two; You can either shoot it with a 2 to make it a one and disappear, or shoot it with a 'P' (because 2 is a prime number) to make it disappear. Now that that number is gone, you can focus on the next falling number.

Here are the controls:

Left and Right arrow keys will move you (the little box at the bottom) in their respective directions.
The numbers 2, 3, 5, 7 can be fired by pressing their respective buttons, and the numbers 11, 13, 17, 19 can be fired by pressing the key corresponding to the first letter of that number (so 'E' for eleven, 'T' for thirteen, and so on).
After the game is over, you can restart by pressing the space bar.

Here are the rules:

If a falling number hit the bottom once, it will return to the top of the screen and turn red. If the falling red number hits the bottom, you loose a life.
Everytime you reduce a falling number, your point total increase by the value of the number that you hit it with.
If you make a number disappear, your point total increase by the value of the falling number.
If you shoot a falling number with a number that it is not divisible by, your point total decreased by the value of the number that you fired.
Initally, the numbers will range from 2 to 50, but will slowly increase all the way up to 1,000.
As the game goes on the falling numbers will begin to appear at a slightly faster rate.
The game is over when you have no lives left.

You can launch the game by clicking the 'Java Web Start' button above, and choose 'Open' when prompted to, and the game should open in another window. You can download the game by clicking the 'Download Jar' button, and save it and you can play it later just by double-clicking that file that you save.

The USPS ain't so bad after all -- January 23rd 2008

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:07:03 EST

If you read my last post, you'll know of the distress I've experienced because a package that I ordered from Best Buy was redirected to some seemingly random city in Ohio.

Well actually, it's not so bad. The item was returned to Best Buy. After a quick google search, it seems that there is a Best Buy warehouse in that city, Findlay, Ohio. Yes, so it was returned, and I got my money back.

I assume that it was returned because there may have been a notice on the package that it should not be fowarded to a new address (my PS3 package had this notice). Another possible reason might be because the address that it was fowarded to was a PO box.

The USPS Lost My Package -- January 21st 2008

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 17:32:24 EST

On December 29th, I ordered Assassin's Creed (a video game) from BestBuy.com. It shipped the next day, December 30th, via the United States Postal Service. On January 5th, I was in the post office in my town. However, because my mom recently moved, all mail that comes to my address via USPS, it get's redirected to her new address. However, I still live there, so I figured it would be delivered to my mom's house (about a 20 minute drive away).

So I checked up on the status of the package (using usps.com), and saw that it was forwarded to the new address, and that was fine. I figured I'd just get it from my mom the next time I see here. After an agonizing seven days, the status was updated on usps.com -- it is in FINDLAY, OHIO!!! A notice was left at the address for the package to be picked up at the post office. And it was finally delivered on the 18th.

I don't know how it got to Findlay, Ohio. My mom's address is in a small down about 20 minutes away from my address. If I would have to guess, I'd say that somebody else from my town moved to Findlay, Ohio, and somebody at my post office slapped the wrong redirect sticker on the package, and sent it to Ohio.

So basically, the future of my package rests in the hands of some stranger 400 miles away.

Playstation the Third -- January 11th 2008

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 02:26:24 EST

Over the winter school break, I finally bit the bullet and invested in a Playstation 3. I opted for the 80GB version for the backwards compatibility and the free game. Sonystyle.com also had a pretty sweet free second controller with a PS3, so I got another controller too.

Since I left my normal TV in my dorm room at college, I had to hook it up with my old, ancient television. I had to use an RFU adaptor! AN RFU ADAPTOR!!! Not to mention that the PS3 is about a tall at the television. So, of course, the picture and sound quality was mediocre at best. My usual TV isn't exactly that great either, so I guess I'll have to get used to that, because I don't think I'll be able to afford decent sized HDTV any time soon.

Motorstorm was the game that came with with the playstation. The game isn't too fun from what I've played. It looks pretty good, but I can't really say considering my TV setup. But the thing I don't like is the race setup. In the vast majority of the races, you can only select from a single class of vehicles (e.g. buggies, motorcycles, rally cars, mud pluggers, etc). And about 1/3 of the way through the game, the races get frustrating simply because the track gets crowded and half the time the other vehicles are trying to shove you off the road/track/cliff.

I wasn't expecting Motorstorm to be that great when I ordered it, so I basically stole Assassin's Creed from Best Buy for $37. However, that hasn't arrived yet. I think it got lost in the mail :-(. Hope it get's here soon.

Late Night with Conan Obrien -- January 7th 2008

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:44:55 EST

Starting last week, most late night talk shows have been back on the air, while many of their writers are still on strike. With no writers, the NBC shows have had to come up with new stuff for their little sketches at the top of the show.

Late Night with Conan O'Brien seems to have been impacted the most. Since the new shows started airing without writers, this is what Conan has done at the top of the show after his monologue:

Spin his wedding ring on his desk for as long as he can.

Shown a clip of what he did around his office during the strike, which mostly consisted of Conan walking around playing his guitar with an amp and annoing people.

Shown another clip of things he did around the studio during the strike, which consisted of him spying on/listening to and interrupting tours of his studio.

Spinning his wedding ring on his desk for as long as he can.

Climbed up to the catwalk which over looks his studio.

Went into a fully fledged song with conan playing the guitar and the Max Weinberg Seven backing him.

Not exactly what you would think would be that funny; But Conan makes it funny and entertaining. It sure beats vomiting Kermit and the masturbating bear.

Image Resizer -- January 1st 2008

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 22:54:16 EST

After about two weeks in the making, my most recent little project is finished. It is an image resizing and editing application.

I created a similar program about seven or eight months ago, but this one is about a million times better. The old one's functionality was limited to merely resizing images, and even with that, the resulting quality wasn't where I wanted it to be.

This new version can do many more things, including but not limited to:

resizing
rotating
cropping
converting to grayscale and sepia
blurring
inverting color values
adjusting the amount of light
adjusting brightness
image noise reduction (not a superb algorithm, but i'm working on it)
jpeg save quality and size preview
undo the last few operations

I'm fairly proud of this application. I put a lot of work in to it (every single piece of code was written by me (except for the basic java imageio functionality)), and it was a great learning experience; I put to use a lot of things that I had only heard about and/or had never tried or thought of before.

If you have some images that you'd like to resize, or if you just want to play around with my handywork, feel free to download the jar (Java ARchive) file, and the program should start up when you double click that file.
Download the Image Resizer JAR here.

Facebook Statuses -- December 5th 2007

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:49:46 EST

Here is a list of many of my Facebook status updates. The list consists mostly of the witty/funny ones, with the most recent ones first. Feel free to recycle them.

AJ is harmful if swallowed.
AJ is not to be used as a flotation device.
AJ is void where prohibited.
AJ is not designed, licensed or intended for use in the design, construction, operation, or for the maintenance of any nuclear facility.
AJ is slippery when wet. Step with caution.
AJ is too intense for some viewers. Viewer discretion is strongly advised.
AJ is freshest if eaten before date on carton.
AJ is a potential side-effect of sudden death.
AJ is on top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese.
AJ is a turkey slice and a hardcover book.
AJ is waxing the cheese for the baby goose.
AJ is kicking people in the face Jean-Claude Van Damme style.
AJ is composed mostly of nothing.
AJ is pretty sure it's not worth killing 100 million people for toast.
AJ is wondering, why not just play football and eat spaghetti at the same time?
AJ is thinking that he might be able to invent something with: a milk jug, a belt, and some pipes.
AJ is a tossed salad and three cowboy boots.
AJ is the big K�se.
AJ is don't taze me, bro.
AJ is doing the hokey pokey.
AJ is thinking that some of these "astrophysicists" are full of bologna.
AJ is five hundred feet tall.
AJ is juggling chainsaws.
AJ is melting.
AJ is eating nails for breakfast.
AJ is a hero in a half-shell.
AJ is going to be more commonly known as "AJ the Impaler" one day.
AJ is certain that his legs are going to fall off any minute now.
AJ is running away with the spoon.
AJ is bending the fabric of time and space.
AJ is going to have a smorgasbord all this week.
AJ is putting his left foot in, he is putting his left foot out, he is putting his left foot in and is shaking it all about.
AJ is a tool of the government.
AJ is faster than a speeding bullet.
AJ is searching for the meaning of life.
AJ is battling one-armed alien pirates... Arrrgh!
AJ is training monkey zombies to juggle flaming chainsaws.
AJ is amazed when the flying purple stuffed worm in flap-jawed space with a tuning fork does a raw blink on hari kari rock. I need scissors! 61!
AJ is is a cyborg.
AJ is delivering little bundles of love.. in a box.. directly to your door.
AJ is playing one; He is playing knick-knack on his thumb. With a knick-knack, paddy whack, give a dog a bone...
AJ is counting flowers on the wall.
AJ is is bending spoons with his mind.

Using Java Reflection to Emulate C Function Pointers -- November 30th 2007

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 22:20:34 EST

In my computer science class, we used function pointers in C in our projects. Generally, for these projects, we would read in a file that contained instructions like ADD, SUB, AND, OR, and the like, and then we would execute those instructions. In C, we created a structure type called instr_t -- it looked something like this:

typedef struct
{
char *instr; // instruction code e.g. ADD
void (*eval)(int); // evaluation function pointer
} instr_t;

As you can see, there is a string/character array to store the instruction mnemonic (e.g. "ADD", "SUB"), and there is a pointer to the function that would execute that instruction.

More recently, for one of the class projects, my partner wanted to use Java instead of C to do the project. This project is basically the same as the one described above (i'm leaving out irrelavant details for simplicity's sake) -- we read in a file with instructions like ADD, SUB, etc, and then we execute those instructions.

However, Java does not have function pointers like in C, so calling the proper method could be a problem.

One solution might be to create a giant if/else statement to find the right method to call. Something like this:

public void executeInstruction(String instr)
{
if ( instr.equals("ADD") )
Someclass.add();
else if ( instr.equals("SUB") )
Someclass.sub();
else if ( instr.equals("AND") )
Someclass.and();
...
}

However, if you decide to add a new instruction to your set of possible instructions, you have to go into your code and change the if/else statement and then create the new method that executes the instruction. Not only that, but giant if/else statements are ugly, and if you have a bunch of possible instructions, it might take a while to create.

Here is a second, more dynamic solution -- Use Java's Reflection to find the correct method, and then invoke that method.

Here's essentially how I did it:

/**
* Execute the specified instruction.
*
* @param instruction The instruction as a String (e.g. "ADD", "SUB")
*/
public static void executeInstruction(String instruction)
{
// convert the instruction to lower case, because I know that all the
// methods that I'll be using only have lower case letters
instruction = instruction.toLowerCase();
// get a Class object for the class that has the methods
Class c = Evaluator.class;

try
{
// find the method of the same name in the Evaluator class
Method m = c.getMethod(instruction);

// invoke that method with the specified object instance with the specified
// parameters. The methods we'll be using are static, so we'll use null
// for the object, and we're not using any parameters, so we don't need
// to include them.
m.invoke(null);
}
catch (Exception e)
{
e.getCause().printStackTrace();
}
}

This seems to work well. Say, I had a "ADD" instruction, I can simply call Executer.executeInstruction("ADD"), and it that method will:

convert the string to lowercase ("add")

look inside the Evaluator class for an "add" method that has no parameters (because we didn't specify any). If the Evaluator has such a method, it will return a Method object (essentially a function pointer) for that method. If it doesn't have a method like that, it will throw an Exception.

It will then invoke that method on some object (null in this case because the method I'll be using are all static) with some parameters (not included in this case because the methods i'm using dont use parameters.

I haven't tried it, buy I imagine could do the same thing on some Object with some parameters; But there would be a few changes you would need to make. I might go into this later, this post is awfully long as it is.

Facebook Apps -- November 16th 2007

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:12:26 EST

It's great that Facebook has opened up their platform and allowed people to create applications that can be used with Facebook. But now, it's starting to get annoying.

I mean, I like some of the apps, but some of them are just dumb. But worst of all, I can't look at the news feed on the home page without seeing a million different things that my friends have done with their applications. I don't care that my friend got a "Likeness match" with some people that I never heard of; I don't care that another friend lost a "movie triva challenge"; I don't care that another friend just created a snowman; I don't care how big another friend's "entourage" is.

Facebook has a nice "news feed preferences" thing, which has a bunch of sliders to control what kind of stories show up on your home page. There's a slider for status updates, photos, friend changes, wall posts, etc. However, there is no slider to change the amount of application "news" that shows up on the news feed. And with facebook ads, which should be here in no time, the "news feed" will become more or less useless.

Another thing about facebook applications is the people who have to have every single facebook app on their profile page. If all I want to do is look at their "wall" or contact info, I have to parse through a tremendous amount of information just to find it. It's almost as bad as people who "pimp out" thier myspace pages.

Another noteworthy annoyance is the endless invitations I receive to use some silly app that I have no interest in. Within the last week, I'd say that I've been invited to start using 10-15 applications.

When will the madness end?!

Academic Dishonesty Part Two -- November 13th 2007

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 11:05:53 EST

I just got back from my alleged academic dishonesty hearing.

I must say, the "judicial hearing board" didn't seem very empathetic to me towards the end of the meeting. I thought I fought a good fight, but apparently any time you display some sort of itelligence, without citing the person from whom you learned it, it is plagiarism.

Disclaimer: Any or all of the above work may not be entirely created by AJ. Some of the words used, and sentences formed may have been taught by his grade school teachers, and they deserve the credit.

Missing Square Puzzle -- November 2nd 2007

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:56:53 EST

You may have come across a puzzle like this in the past:

You have a triangle consisting of 2 smaller triangles and 2 other shapes.

However, when you rearrange the shapes to form another triangle, you seem to get a similar triangle, but with a different area. (e.g. there is a missing "block" of area in the second triangle)

How can this be? If the area of each shape stays the same, the sum of their areas should always be the same as well. This doesn't seem to hold true here though. But why?

The solution to the problem:

The shapes that you form when you arrange the pieces is not a triangle. It is actually a quadrilateral (four sided polygon).

In order for the shape as a whole to be a triangle, the two smaller triangles would have to be similar. In other words, the corresponding angles of each triangle must be equal; or you could say that the lengths of the corresponding sides need to be proportional.

In the pictures above, the ratio of length to height of the triangles are as follows:



   triangle     length/height  reduced   =   angle formed with x axis

blue triangle      24 / 9        8/3    2.667    tan^-1(8/3)= 69.44°

green triangle     15 / 6        5/2    2.5      tan^-1(5/2)= 68.20°

whole triangle     39 / 15      13/5    2.6      tan^-1(13/5)=68.96°

As you can see, the blue and green triangles are not similar. When put them together like in the pictures above, the difference in their angles is so subtle, it is almost impossible to see.

In the blown up picture below, you can see the change in their angles, and what it would look like if the whole thing were a triangle. The red line represents where the hypotenuse of the triangle would be.

If you were to rearrange the pieces like in the second picture, the smaller triangles would stick out beyond the red line, where the real hypotenuse should be.

A more exaggerated version of this might look something like this:

When you take two non-similar triangles and position them like so, the area of the rectangle formed will not be equal to the area of the rectangle formed when the triangles are swapped.

So, when presented with this problem, you cannot calculate the area of the whole shape by treating it as if it were a triangle, because it's not a triangle. To calculate the area, you would have to sum up the area of the smaller pieces.

Daniel Tammet Event -- October 25th 2007

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:53:35 EST

Daniel Tammet spoke at my college today.

It was awfully crowded. I didn't expect a whole lot of people to show up, but apparently Daniel is a lot more popular than I thought. The auditorium is right across the street from my dorm, and when I started to see traffic jams out my dorm room window, I figured I better get over there.

When I got there, I first had to buy a ticket to get in. I was just about to pay my $15 or $10 dollars to by a ticket when some woman walked by and asked people if anybody was a student. I was, and she gave me a free ticket. I was glad, because I was the next person in line to buy a ticket; if she showed up a minute later, I would've unnecessarily spent $10, but I probably would've gotten a better seat.

My seat was about 10-20 rows from the back of the auditorium, so I couldn't get a very detailed view of Daniel, but I was there for his speech, not to look at him, so it didn't matter too much. I would have taken some photos of him speaking, but they said that photos/recordings weren't allowed. What kind of crap is that? I could understand why they wouldn't want people filming/recording the whole thing, but still photos? >:-(

After his speech, and answering some questions, they had his book, Born on a Blue Day, for sale, and there was a book signing. I figured, you don't get the opportunity to speak with one of the most brilliant minds alive, so I bought a book, and waited in the endless line to get it signed. After waiting in line for a while/eternity, I finally got the chance to get my copy of his book signed. I've never had anything signed by a famous person before or anything like that, so I was unsure of how the whole process worked, and what I should say to him. Of course I would have liked to talk and shoot the breeze with him for a while, but I figured that his arm is probably about ready to fall off from signing all those books, there were still a few people waiting in line behind me and I didn't want to hold them up, and he almost certainly has no real interest in speaking with me, so I simply said hello, asked for his signature, smiled, thanked him, and I went on my way.

Here are some photos...

My ticket.

His book.

I'm getting close!

I got it!

Thanks Daniel! :-)

Academic Dishonesty -- October 22nd 2007

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 22:54:41 EST

Today should have been a good day. The weekend ended great -- Kimi R�ikk�nen and Ferrari won the Formula 1 world drivers' and constructors' championship, my fantasy football team crushed the opposition, and the weekend generally had a positive vibe.

However things went terribly astray today. The day was going along just fine, but then I checked my email just before my math class and BAM! I see an email stating that I have been accused of academic dishonesty. Of course, such charges are erroneous, but still I am deeply concerned. That math class more or less went in one ear and out the other, as the primary thought running through my mind was the academic dishonesty charge.

Not only that, but the email said I have only 24 hours to sign some form or something like that. The professor who issued the academic dishonesty charge (who shall remain nameless (but his or her name rhymes with "twigs")) only had office hours until 2PM that day, which is about 90 minutes prior to when I first read the email, so the chances that I could meet with the professor to point out the error of his or her ways before the end of the day were slim. But I got lucky, after the math class, I went straight to his or her office and he or she was still there.

The situation was discussed, and the "plagiarized" document was brought up. He or she stated no reason why he or she thought the document was plagiarized. Perhaps he or she thought I lacked the aptitude to created such a document? I don't know. The professor asked me to explain something about the document to prove that I had written it. Keep in mind though, that I had not seen or used the document in question for about 3 weeks, when I had turned it in. Because I went to this professor as quickly as possible, I did not have time to review or look at the document in question, so my explaination of his or her question was ill prepared, not very deep and insufficent to sway his or her opinion. Not to mention that the professor seemed more inclined to begin his or her journey home than to help a student out.

Later, I sent an email to the professor, elaborating on the question he or she asked me about the document. But still, I could not sway the opinion of him or her.

So tomorrow, I'll go look at the form that he or she expects me sign, but don't expect me to admit to plagiarizing, because I didn't do it. I would rather admit defeat, than to cheat my way towards victory. I don't want to sound like I have a "holier than thou" attitude, but I am the most honest person I know. I don't lie (except for when I'm obviously kidding), I don't curse, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't party, as many of my peers do, I don't pirate or steal copyrighted material, I don't have any ill will towards anybody else, I don't expect anybody to sacrifice themself to save me, etc. etc., and I certainly do not cheat.

Anyway, I'm going to fight this. I did not plagiarize, and I'm not going let somebody rub dirt all over my good name, grade, and academic career for something that I did not do.

Daniel Tammet is coming to Shippensburg! -- October 19th 2007

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:42:21 EST

Daniel Tammet will speaking at the Luhrs Center on Thursday, October 25th. I'm a big fan of Daniel Tammet. Lucky for me, the Luhrs center is literally right across the street from my dorm.

In case you don't already know, Daniel Tammet is a savant. He can perform massive calculation in his head. For example, he can calculate 37⁴ in his head; he can do 13/97 to hundreds of decimal places. He can recite Pi to over 20,000 decimal places. He also has a form of synesthesia where he "sees" numbers with shapes, colors, and textures; and the numbers form "landscapes" in his mind. He's an amazing person.

Here's a link to a documentary about Daniel -- The Boy with the Incredible Brain (1 of 5). You can also view his appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman.

Do not put hyphens in your HTML comments -- October 14th 2007

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:26:32 EST

For a long time now, this website has consisted, and has been primarily organized with <div> tags. And when large sections of the website are all within one <div>, it's a good idea to mark the start and end of that div element. To do this, I used html comments formatted like this:

<-- --------------------- start of some element ----------------- -- >

<div>

blah blah blah

</div>

<-- ---------------------- end of some element ------------------ -- >

There seems to be no apparent problem with this. As far as I knew, all HTML comments must go something like this:

less than sign
exclaimation point
two hyphens
white space
whatever text you want
white space
two hyphens
greater than sign

The problem arises with the whatever text you want. When I viewed a recently changed in Firefox, I noticed something weird -- I could see the HTML comment and only see about half the content of my page. After some tinkering I discovered the problem to be the hyphens inside my comment.

I don't know the specifics of the problem, or what the W3 standard is, but getting rid of the hyphens seemed to fix that problem with Firefox.

Moonset -- October 13th 2007

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:18:28 EST

Here's a photo that I took today from my dorm room. I was just sitting at my computer; I glanced out the window and what do I see? An amazing crescent moon about to set. So I picked up my camera, set it to twilight mode, used the windowsill as a pseudo-tripod, and snapped a couple of photos. This is the cropped section of what I thought was the best one. You can view the whole photo by following the link to my flickr page.

Also, disregard the faint grid of lines. That's the unremovable screen in my window. Also, disregard the not-so-superb quality. I used my Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W70, which is not a fancy-schmancy SLR or anything.

I Hate C -- October 10th 2007

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 12:56:58 EST

For my Computer Organization class, we are learning the C programming language.

About a week ago, I was working on a project. It wasn't a very complicated project, but the language barrier is what slowed me down. With Java, I could probably write the same project in about a half hour. With C, I constantly got the same cryptic fatal error message at run time. After about an hour of tinkering with the code, I realized my problem -- I forgot a return statement. >:-(

Animated Collapsible Elements with Javascript -- September 29th 2007

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 21:28:52 EST

I just added sliding/collapsible panels to my website. Previously, I did have collapsible panels, but instead of sliding, they would just vanish rather than showing the sliding animation. This old method was achieved with some simple javascript; when some element was clicked, it call the toggle(otherElement) function, and the toggle function would then set otherElement's style.display property to either "none" (which would hide that element), or "" (which would make that element visible).

But non-animated collapsible elements are so web 1.0; I needed animated sliding collapsable elements. So after some research into javascript animation I think I got a pretty good result.

Here is what it looks like now: (if you're viewing/reading this from source other than directly on my website, it won't work, as my javacript functions and CSS are needed).

Click Here

This text will disappear when you click on the div element above!

And the code for that would look something like:

<div class="blog-title" onClick="toggle('test');">Click Here</div>
<div class="blog-item" id="test">This text will disappear when you click on the div element above!</div>

As you can see, the title div calls the toggle(elementId) function. Which then determines if the element's display property is "none" (which would make it not visible). If it is, then it calls the show(element) function which looks like this:

function show(data)
{
var e = document.getElementById(data);
e.style.display=""; // set the style.display to a non-"none" state, making it visible
e.style.height = "auto"; // temporarily set the element's height to be automatically calculated
var h = e.offsetHeight - 5; // get the height of the element.
e.style.height = "0px"; // set the elements height to 0px (not visible)
e.style.overflow = "hidden"; // set the style.overflow property to hidden (hides all text in the...
// ...element that would be taller that the element)
slide(e, 0, h); // call the slide function to animate it sliding from 0px to its destination height
}

Basically, all the show() function does is find out how tall the [currently collapsed] element will be, set its height to zero, set its CSS overflow property to "hidden", and then calls the the slide() function with the parameters being the element object, its current height (zero), and its destination height (how tall it will be). All the slide function does is determine how much to change the height by at each time interval, and determines if it is sliding up (hiding the element) or sliding down (showing the element), and then calls slideHide(), or slideShow() respectively.

Now for the slideShow function:

function slideShow(element, curHeight, maxHeight, interval)
{
var h = curHeight + interval; // calculate the new height
element.style.height = h + "px"; // set the height of the element

if ( h < (maxHeight-interval) ) // determine if we've reach the destination height
{
// if we haven't call this function again with the new height in 20ms
setTimeout(function(){slideShow(element, h, maxHeight, interval);}, 20);
}
else
{
// if we have se the height to auto.
element.style.height = "auto";
}
}

This function is where the magic of animation really happens. It takes four parameters: the element whose height is being changed, that element's current height, that element's destination height (height when the item is fully expanded), and how much to change the height by at each time step. This functon will calculate the height for the next time step (current height + interval), and set element's height. Then it checks to see if we've reached the destination height; if it hasn't, then it calls this function again with the new height parameters.

This isn't all the code that is involved. There are a few functions that i didn't show you. Including toggle(), hide(), slide(), and slideHide(). Most of these are pretty straight foward though, when compared to their correspoding "show" fucntions. You can view all the code here. Feel free to use it however you like, but if you're going to just copy/paste, make sure to give credit by linking back to this site.

My first semi-useful C progam. -- September 17th 2007

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 20:40:10 EST

For my Computer Organization class, we are learning [the progamming language] C. And one of the assignments was to create a Roman Numeral-to-Integer converter and vise versa.

Besides the simple "Hello world!" type programs. This is one of the first C programs that I've written.

If you want to do a roman numeral conversion, you can simply launch the program (the source code and executable file can be found inside this zip file), and you'll be prompted to enter a number or a roman numeral...

Type in the number or roman numeral...

...press enter and viola! it's converted:

Half a million dollars?.. that's nothing -- September 16th 2007

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 00:40:35 EST

In recent times, the NFL New England Patriots were caught videotaping their opponents play signals. As a result, their head coach was fined $500,000 and they lose the opportunity to get a 1st round draft pick next year. Some people think that this punishment is a little harsh.

Well, compared to Formula 1's Vodafone McLaren Mercedes' punishment, that's nothing.

"The WMSC has stripped Vodafone McLaren Mercedes of all constructors' points in the 2007 FIA Formula One World Championship and the team can score no point for the remainder of the season *.

"Furthermore, the team will pay a fine equal to 100 million dollar, less the FOM income lost as a result of the points deduction.

In other words, McLaren, the current leader in the contructors' championship, will lose all their points and have no hope of winning the constructors' champion ship. In addition they'll have to pay $100,000,000.00. That's right; one hundred million, or 1/10th of a billion if you want to make it sound bigger than it already is.

"The penalty follows McLaren�s admission that the team was in breach of the International Sporting Code through their possession of confidential technical data belonging to rivals Ferrari, who are now all but assured of the 2007 constructors� title."

Cicada -- September 11th 2007

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 20:41:28 EST

I went for a walk the other night, and came across this relatively large bug. I later learned that it was a cicada.

Shoes -- September 11th 2007

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:39:31 EST

The other day, during a firedrill, as I was waiting to for the "fire" to be extinguished so that I could return to class, a random girl walked by and said "I like your shoes." I'm not usually the type of person to get comments on my fashion, so I thought I'd share that, and my shoes with everybody.

Shoes aren't an easy thing for my to purchase. I must like the look of the shoe, but it can't be a shoe that everybody and their brother has. Just about all the shoes/t-shirts I buy must be uncommon in some sense. And I don't really buy shoes very often -- before I bought this pair, I wore the same pair of shoes everyday for over a year; so, the shoes must look like they would last me for atleast half a year for me to purchase them.

Alright, here are my shoes. They are "Puma Future Cat Lo Massa"; the Felipe Massa edition of the Future Cat Low. The asymetric lacing give the shoe an extra snug fit. I've had them for over a month now, so they're not quite as pristine as pictured here.

Here is the tag on the inside of the tongue on the right shoe. -- not flameproof equipped.

Robot Detector -- August 29th 2007

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 21:22:24 EST

To stop some of the spam that I've been getting, I've implemented a relatively simple CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). The idea with a captcha is a simple test that humans can easily solve, but computers (spambots) cannot.

For this CAPTCHA, upon clicking the name or message box, an image of an easily identifiable object will appear below the form. Before you submit the form, you must choose from a dropdown box the item pictured. There are only about 10 different images, but about 26 different options to further fluster the robots -- instead of 1/10th chance of guessing the correct item, they have a 1 out of 26 chance.

I have a slightly more advanced (and server intensive) CAPTCHA for blog comments. But you only need to go through that CAPTCHA if your post has a link. That captcha shows a "pseudoimage" (which is actually a grid of super tiny multicolor text) which contains a few random letters; the commenter must type those letters in a text box.

Spambots -- August 23rd 2007

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 21:46:50 EST

I wish the spambots would stop sending my spam via the 'contact me' form. I've gotten like 15 spam messages in the last week. The robots don't seem to understand that 'private messages' will not be publicly viewable.

Although I have a rather hefty and seemingly effective (as i've gotten no spam) CAPTCHA system for blog comments, the personal message form does not have any sort of robot stopping device. I could implement a CAPTCHA for the private message, but i'd rather not.

So, if you're listening spambots, please stop spamming me.

Junkyard Wars -- August 11th 2007

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 23:38:53 EST

The other day, before I had to go to work, I turned on the TV to watch for a little bit. To my surprise, the first thing I saw was Junkyard Wars. I hadn't seen that show for such a long time. It used to be on TLC about 5 or 6 years ago. I used to love that show. Then it got cancelled or something, and it stopped airing.

And now, I'm seeing those re-runs on the Discovery channel. I hope they keep showing Junkyard Wars, at least for a little while.

Beethoven's Symphonies -- August 11th 2007

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 21:40:43 EST

Out of all of Beethoven's symphonies, I'd definately say that his seventh is my favorite. All four movements have something to keep me listening. With some of Ludmaster V's other symphonies, I often find myself wanting to skip to the "good" parts; but this is not the case with #7.

Here, I will rank Beethoven's Symphonies that I've listened to (with my personal favorites at the top, and least favorite last). Note, that I have not yet listened to all of his symphonies (and so they are not listed). I will also rank each movement of each symphony in parenthesis after each symphony (the the "best" first).

Symphony No. 7 (mvt. 2, 1, 4, 3)
Symphony No. 6 (mvt. 3, 1, 4, 5, 2)
Symphony No. 8 (all about equal i'd say)
Symphony No. 9 (mvt. 4, 1, 3) (2nd mvt is MIA)
Symphony No. 5 (mvt. 1) (i've neglected the other mvts)
Symphony No. 4 (nothing too exciting)

I'd recommend that you give Symphonies 6 & 7 a listen. Most people have probably heard portions of Symphony 5, 1st mvt, and Symphony No. 9, 4th mvt as those are his most famous. You may have heard Symphony No. 7, 2nd mvt at a funeral or other melancholy event, but other than that it seems to be relatively unknown. Symphony No. 6 is pretty cheerful with a good rythm for the most part. Symphony No. 7 is fairly upbeat and moves along quickly (except for the second movment). Give them a listen if you like good music, but be prepared, as symphony 5&6 are each about 35-40 minutes long.

Keeping the Change -- August 9th 2007

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 18:37:28 EST

A few weeks ago, I visited my local corner store to buy some milk. While I was there, I also picked up a bag of chips or two. The total cost for this purchase was $2.49; $1.99 for the milk, $0.50 for the chips. I happened to have two one-dollar bills and two quarters on me, so I used them to pay. I gave the cashier $2.50, for my puchase which costs $2.49. You should be able to calculate that $2.50 is 1 cent more than $2.49, and so $0.01 should be given to me in return.

After handing the cashier the money ($2.50), I looked at her as if expecting some thing. Then she put my milk and chips into a plastic bag. Still, I looked at her expectingly. After a breif lapse of awkward silence, she asked, "Do you need your penny?" I smirked/laughed and said "No." and left the store.

What intrigued me the most, was that she assumed that I didn't want my money. Perhaps, even more intriguing/amusing, was how she posed the question -- "Do you need your penny?" Of course, no, I don't need that penny; I have plenty of money to go 'round. But just because I don't need a penny, doesn't mean that i don't want that penny. Need and want are two entirely different things you know.

Long time, no update -- July 27th 2007

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 03:05:28 EST

Not much has happened in the last month. Anyway, here's some of the things that i did.

I had the opportunity to see the 4th of July fireworks up-close this year (last year i had to work). They were pretty exciting to see/hear/feel for the first 5 minutes or so, but then the the "wow" factor starts to wear off.

I went to an amusement park also. I'm a big fan of the rollercoaster; I'm also a big fan of taking photos; coincidentally, this amusement park didn't seem to permit photo taking while aboard rollercoasters (despite the lack of signs stating this "no photo" rule). And whilst ascending the lift hill of the tallest coaster, I whip out my camera to take a photo of their nice park when the lift chain comes to a sudden halt and invokes a bit of panic amongst the riders. Shortly thereafter, a ride operator runs up the stairs running alongside the track, and confiscates my camera; but I made sure I got it back when we returned to the station. So the moral of the story is: if you're going to take pictures while on a roller coaster, wait until you get near the top before you make your camera visible to the ride operators; This way, the ride operator/jerk has to run all the way to the top of the coaster to get the camera -- therefore giving you more time to get the shot.

I also noticed this sign near the bathrooms. The two messages near the sign make sense -- watch out for the wet floor, and no recording images of people while using the restroom. But I find it a bit funny that they need a sign for the "no image recording" thing; and it's also strange how they combined that sign with a wet floor sign.

In more recent times, I've been working like crazy. All my limbs fell off. And I replaced my spectacles with contact lenses.

Staying up all night has its advantages -- June 28th 2007

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 01:29:22 EST

Recently, I've had an erratic sleeping pattern. As a result, I've had the opportunity see the sun rise on several occasions. And because I'm a sentimental type of guy (**sarcasm**), I took some photos.

I took this picture this morning. It was really foggy and humid today, and as a result, the sun was an amazing shade of red.

Also today, a couple of thunderstorms passed by, and I was lucky enough to capture this image of a lightning strike. It's a little bit blurry, but capturing waves of light (which travel 192,000 miles per second (and impossible to predict)) is not easy.

Reality TV show idea -- June 24th 2007

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 23:37:23 EST

A few weeks ago, I was walking to work. As I'm walking along, a man across the street walking the other way says "Hi", and I return the greeting and keep on walking. Then he turns to me and says something to the extent of "I'm homeless and don't have any money; can you help me?" Although, I had to ask him to repeat himself because of the automobile traffic between us. I responded saying that I couldn't help him.

I like to help people when I can, but I'm not quite "economically established" yet and didn't really have any money to spare at the moment. And I was also on my way to work and kind of in a hurry. If he is going to beg for money, the least he could do is make it convenient for the beggee (that is, the reciepient of the beg (from the beggar) ;-) ). Anyways, this got me thinking about how I, or different types of people, would cope with being homeless.

So, in this reality show, they could get different types of people (rich people, middle class people, young people, middle-aged people, current homeless people, etc) and put them in a homeless person's scenario. They would give them like $20, and then just leave them somewhere in different types of cities (small town, medium-sized city, big city, etc.). And have a small camera crew (1 or 2 guys) follow them around Man vs. Wild style; that is, they can only follow and film; they cannot help in any way unless the person's life is in danger. There would also be some rules; like, for example, they cannot ask their friends for special assistance.

The camera crew would follow the now homeless person for a week or so, filming how they eat, sleep, survive and whatnot. They can also, ask the person questions along the way to gain some insight about their experiences and what it's like. Then, after a week or so, if they last that long, they will be rewarded a million dollars or something like that. However, the contestant will be able to call it quits at anytime during the week and be rewarded nothing.

And that's my idea for a reality show.

Resting In Peace -- June 23rd 2007

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 04:41:34 EST

Resting in peace is something that's hard to do around here. All I ask is for 10 or so consecutive hours of peace, but even that seems too difficult to come by. Here are some things that have interrupted my sleep recently...

Jackhammer
Concrete saw
Wood chipper (industrial strength)
Chain saw
Prank telephone callers at 8AM
Neighbor's alarm clock
Diabolical sounding automobiles
Crazy birds chirping
Excessive heat
Excessive cold
The sun
People who think they're cool because other people can hear their car stereo when they're two blocks away
Family members who are incapable of opening doors

The jackhammer was the most recent, and the most sinister thing to disturb my sleep. Yesterday, I was just laying around in bed, sleeping, like I usually do at eight o'clock in the morning, when I hear this horrific noise. It was sound of some mechanical contraption -- of this I was certain -- for no beast could create such a hair-raising racket.

"It's those guys up the street doing construction" I thought. The day before they were at it with a concrete saw, which also woke me. However, this sound was no saw, but a repetitive pounding type of sound -- It was the sound of a jackhammer!

Jackhammers are the noisiest things ever, I'd say. You'd think that as sophisticated human beings capable of sending people to the moon, we ought to at least be able to create a pneumatic hammer which outputs less than 100 decibels. Nothing could drown out the sound. I tried everything -- closing the windows, pillow over the head, pillow+blanket over the head -- but nothing could rid me of that terrible sound.

I hate loud noises. I also hate being woken up when I'm not ready. So being woken up by a loud noise upset me greatly. In my opinion, there is too much noise pollution nowadays.

Welcome Back -- June 16th 2007

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 23:31:00 EST

I just had a Vanilla Coke for the first time in a while. That is because Coca-Cola stopped making it a few years ago, and they just recently brought it back.

For those that don't know, Vanilla Coke is the greatest elixir of water, sugar, caramel, caffieine, vanilla, and who knows what else to ever be conceived. If you've never had it, you should definately try some -- it's the best. :)

Coming Soon, to a Grocery Store Near You. -- June 1st 2007

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 23:37:14 EST

Now, I am officially an employee of Weis Markets.

Unfortunately, I got stuck with the undesirable task of working in the seafood department. Not only to I have to handle and sell seafood, which repulses me, but I must also serve the customer. Now, I don't necessarily have a problem with helping people out, but when it is through human interaction, it is not the most desirable thing for a person who it not very sociable (such as myself).

Today was my first day on the job. It was just about as unpleasant as I expected it to be. It involved a lot of gross food, helping a few customers and a lot of standing around doing nothing. I feel as though I can provide adequate performance, although I can not foresee me excelling in seafood like I did in dairy and porch last year. Perhaps one day the managers will see my cart pushing, shelf stocking, dairy rotating potential and move me to the department where I truly belong.

Forum Censorship -- May 24th 2007

Thu, 24 May 2007 18:48:03 EST

I'm a fairly active member of the Playstation.com forums. I think of myself as a rather valuable member of the community, particularly in the God of War boards; I'm renowned for my expertise in the God of War videogame, and always helping people out who get stuck in the game or have a question.

If you've ever participated in a message board, you might know that members have the option of using a "signature", which is basically an image or small bit of text that can be placed after each of your posts. Typically, signatures are usually used as a device to seperate you from the rest of the members, make you stand out, individualize you. Most signatures consist of a spiffy graphic containing the user's forum name.

Yesterday, I logged on to the forums as usual, but today I had a Personal Message; It was from one of the forum moderators, and was titled "Warning". "Warning?", I thought, "what forum rule could I have broken?". The message read "we don't allow blood (fake or real) to be posted on the forum, or in signatures. Please remove it to comply with the rules."

Here is the signature that I was using at the time:

It is the weapon used by the main character of my favorite game, God of War. As you can see, the blade is covered in a red substance that can be construed as blood. And part of my forum name is spelled out with the "blood". I thought it was a pretty clever signature. I've been using this same signature (or variations thereof) on the forums for two years, and they tell me to get rid of it now? Why wasn't it a problem when I first began using it?

Naturally, I'm a bit upset. I really liked my signature, and it was something I had become known for. When someone would see my sig the would recognize it and say "oh yeah, that's the guy who knows everything about God of War". Just as my iconic signature gone, so is my recognition and credibility.

I was thinking about making a comically sensored version of the signature, with the blood parts pixelated or covered with black rectangle, but forum rules said that censoring it is not allowed, that is if you consider blood an "obscenity". Another plan I had to get around the "no blood" rule was to have the blade be puncturing a bottle of ketchup, cranberry juice, or some other red liquid, such that the red substance on the blade would be inferred to be something other than blood. I may still do that, but for now, I've created this new sig that should comply with all rules.

Not much content here -- May 21st 2007

Mon, 21 May 2007 02:27:08 EST

Long time, no update. Sorry to my [non-existent] loyal fans who constantly refresh this page just hoping to see an update and gain some more insight from the great and powerful AJ. To be honest, life has been pretty dull for the last week, and I don't think anyone really cares that I slept in all week, was relatively unproductive, and hardly set foot outside more door for a few days. So this is pretty much just an update for my fans of questionable existence; and also because I hate to let my site stagnate.

So here's what's happening with AJ. I applied for a job at Weis (a grocery store), and my employment is pending. I applied on Tuesday (but I thought it was Monday), but I have yet to receive any response; but I am hopeful, as I worked there last summer, and if I correctly percieved other employees' views on my fulfillment duty, I was a pretty dandy employee.

In other news, AJ ate at Burger King yesterday and won a free "small shake" that will probably never be redeemed. The dial-up internet connection at home is a bummer. Not only does it take 3 minutes to load a basic page, but AJ can no longer listen to his favorite podcasts including [but not limited to] Buzz Out Loud, This Week in Tech (TWIT), The Java Posse, and Cranky Geeks. I was considering going to the library or some other location that might have a wi-fi hotspot where i could download them, but never did 'cause I don't know if it'd be worth it, and because i'm lazy like that.

Back home. -- May 12th 2007

Sat, 12 May 2007 22:15:53 EST

I've recently just moved back home from college. I've also been taking a ton of photos lately, and I thought that some of them were pretty decent, so I created a Flickr account so that others (like you for example), could check out the photos, and leave a comment saying "AJ, you are the greatest photographer in th world!", or something to that extent. ;-)

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Do your work. Don't be stupid. -- May 8th 2007

Tue, 08 May 2007 15:41:27 EST

Here is a motivational wallpaper that I'm currently using to remind myself of the importance of finals. I'm not really too sure if it's working.

Also, here are some more "motivational" posters that you can buy. They have a bunch of them that are just as hilarious. If I had the money, I'd buy like half of them.

Back Pockets -- May 7th 2007

Mon, 07 May 2007 17:59:01 EST

In my opinion, many of today's pants are poorly designed. One of the biggest faults is the back pocket. I'm not a fashion designer or an ergonomics expert, but the backside is a poor place to stow one's belongings.

The first problem with back pockets is their location relative to the intruments which access them. Most human arms naturally seem to reach forward, rather than backwards. Clearly, these pants were not designed with humans in mind.

Secondly, the rear pockets is located in the part of our anatomy in which we commonly rest the weight of our upper bodies, thereby forcing us to sit upon whatever it is we have in said pockets. This could become inherently awkward and/or dangerous if you were store fragile/sharp materials, such as pastries and butcher knives for example, in your pocket. I speculate that such discomfort is the very same reason that the "hammer loop" on carpenters pants is located on the leg rather than the backside. Furthermore, medical maladies, such as a curvature of the spine, are all too common results of sitting on improperly balanced rear pockets.

If I were a clothing designer, I would replace the rear pocket with a pocket located along the leg, similar to the location of the cargo pockets on cargo pants. Not only would this alleviate the discomfort of sitting on your booty (ha, a pun!), but it is also more ergonomical, as one would not have to twist their torso 90° to see the receptacle for which they are reaching. So, in conclusion, I hope that all the clothing designers that read this (i.e. nobody) will reconsider the design of their apparel. If man were meant to stow things on his backside, he'd have been given/evolved to have a pouch (like a kangaroo) there.

CAPTCHAs -- May 6th 2007

Sun, 06 May 2007 19:01:36 EST

On this site, I'd say that I have implemented a rather successful CAPTCHA system. For those that don't know a CAPTCHA is a Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computer and Humans Apart; in other words, it stops robots from posting spam comments on my site.

In my system, a commenter doesn't need to go through the CAPTCHA test unless they have a link in their comment. Since the main goal of spambots is to post links to dubious sites, they'll have to pass the turing test to post their comment. However, spambots have become increasing clever when it comes to looking at an image and deciphering distorted text. But I have a trick up my sleeve: i don't use images. What I do, is take a distorted text image, and on the server side, I convert that to an array of colored text. Here is an example.

This way, there isn't any <img> for the spambots to look at. If there is no image for the bots to analyze, then there is no way they could get the correct text from the "pseudoimage". This of course can be overcome, if the spambot programmers realize that I'm using a false image, but i'm hoping that they don't. But anyways, it's been successful so far.

However, more recently, spambots have been posting spam that does not contain any links. Here is a prime example; the first comment is one of the few legitimate comments i get, but the rest are bots. Without links, the first stage of my spam prevention system will not recognize the comment as potential spam. I'm not to sure what the point of linkless spam is, other than to aggravate webmasters; Perhaps their comments somehow contain subliminal messages that will get viewers to visit their site; maybe not. I don't know.

So with this recent trend, I must somehow stop this linkless spam. There are several options.

I could simply make all comments go through the CAPTCHA. However, I don't like making legitimate commenters go through the CAPTCHA if they don't have to.
I could lock all post after a certain criteria is met (i.e. if it is more than a month old).
A combination of 1&2 -- I could make all commenters, regardless if they have links, go through the CAPTCHA.
I could implement a grammar/spelling filter to stop all comments with poor english. This could work because spammers are notorious for their bad grammer and spelling.

I think I like option #3 the best. The bots don't seem to keep up with my latest posts, and I have yet to see a spambot with links get past my "pseudoimage" captcha.

Site Growth -- May 3rd 2007

Thu, 03 May 2007 21:00:59 EST

Here is a bar chart of the visitors of this site per month. As you can see, there seems to be a relatively steady growth pattern. I'm not quite sure what that means, but it's got to mean something.

The Metaphorical Toe in the Water. -- May 2nd 2007

Wed, 02 May 2007 17:59:14 EST

I have this irrational fear of needless putting myself in some set of circumstances in which I cannot foresee or predict the possible outcomes. I have recently decided to intentionally put myself in such a predicament.

You see, here at my university, as part of our meal plan, each semester we are given $150 worth of "flex", an monetary unit that is electronically accessed by swiping our ID cards that can be used to purchase food at the dining halls and other various locations on campus. We also have a certain number of "meals" as part of our meal plan that we can use to get into dining halls to eat. From the beginning, I've always used my "meals" to eat, for up until recently, I was unaware of this "flex".

Since I always use my meals and have never really used my flex, I have a ton of flex; about $300 worth. Three hundred dollars is no small sum of money, so of course I want to use it, or else I'd lose it. However, since I have never used it before, I didn't really know how to use it. And like I said, I don't like to put myself into unfamiliar situations. So recently I've been scoping out the CUB (Ceddia Union Building) where this flex can be spent and checking out how other people go about their business. It's just as if you would want to investigate some murky body of water before you dive in; you might dip your toe in to check the temperature, maybe slowly submerge yourself to see how deep it is, maybe throw in some chum to make sure that it isn't filled with piranhas. However, considering the trivial nature of spending flex, I feel a bit ridiculous getting so anxious and worked up over nothing.

So today, I gathered up my courage and dipped my toe in the water. That is, I purchased something from the CUB with flex. When I did it, I was certain to make sure I didn't end up being the first person in a line. My plan was to simply imitate what the people in front of me did. So I picked up a container of chocolate milk that I would purchase and got in the checkout line thing behind two girls. All was going according to plan, but then, the people in front of me decided to use cash to pay! And so I uncertainly handed my ID card (from which the flex can be accessed) to the cashier, and she said "meal or flex?", and I responded "flex", and everything worked out.

And that's about the end of my little story. Maybe next time I'll go in up to my knees, before I ultimately spend as much money as I can in the next week.

SpringFest -- April 28th 2007

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 19:43:00 EST

Everyday, for the past two or three months or so, I've eaten dinner at the same place and time. At about six o'clock everynight, I would head over to Reisner dining hall to eat dinner. I had a nice streak going, and then the Activities Programming Board had to go and ruin it.

So today, I went over to Reisner at 6:00 as usual. When I got there, a sign on the door read: "Reisner dining hall will be closed from 3:30-7:00 for springfest. You can eat on the CUB lawn." or something to that extent. And I thought, "SpringFest? What is this heresy?!"

So I turn back, and return to my dorm room to grab my hoodie; for the weather was not very spring-like on this day. It was 13°C, overcast, and windy. "Why?," i thought, "Why would they celebrate spring on a melancholy day such at this?"

After retrieving my sweatshirt, I headed towards the CUB (Ceddia Union Building) lawn, where I could see some gatherings of people and a few tents. This "SpringFest" seemed to be something reminiscent of a "block party". Except that it is fenced off and you can't get in to scope out the selection of food before you pay. Since food is essential to my survival, I asserted that they would surely have some food that I like and paid with my mean plan to gain entrance.

They didn't have much of a selection. First, I had a few bites of a soft pretzel that wasn't very soft and had barely any salt. Then I had a few pieces of chicken smothered in BBQ sauce, and that was pretty good. Then, I was about to have some cotton candy, but they shut down the machine before I had a chance. Feeling betrayed, and seeking vengeance, I grabbed an Itzakadoozie (popsicle) from the cooler just before they manage to take it out of my (and everyone else's) reach. Then I grabbed a can of soda from another cooler just as they were running out. Feeling as if I had somehow gotten the better of the dining services, I left the premises with my popsicle in hand and the soda smuggled in my sweatshirt pocket.

And that's about as exciting as dinner can get for AJ.

Procrastination -- April 26th 2007

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:49:55 EST

Procrastination is not good.

Tomorrow, I must give a 6 minute presentation for communications class. I haven't because to work on this. I don't even know what the subject is going to be. It has to a persuasive speech. Any suggestions.

I also have to read most of a 180ish page book for history class, and then write a paper on it for next Thursday. I've read about thirty pages so far, but i'm dreading the rest.

But on the bright side of things, Reisner [dining hall] had granny smith apples today. Granny smiths are my favorite. =)

Image Resizing Application -- April 24th 2007

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:24:36 EST

I recently added an update to my image resizing application. Some of the new features include, but are not limited to:

Resulting, resized images retain the metadata of the original image (e.g. camera used, exposure time, f-stop, author, etc).
Upon saving, the default directory will be the same directory as the original image.
When saving, the name of the resized image will be the name of the original image with "copy" before the extension. For example, if the original image was DSC0123.JPG, the resulting image name by default will be DSC0123copy.JPG.
I added a nifty checkered background like all the fancy image editors use.

You can download the executable .jar file here. More info on the program can be found here. Also, read the disclaimer.

Solving a Rubik's Cube -- April 22nd 2007

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 23:03:29 EST

Here is a video of AJ (or atleast his hands) solving a Rubik's Cube. Approximate time: 1 minute, 30 seconds. Using the Singmaster method.

...about that suspicious package. -- April 20th 2007

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 14:33:04 EST

About that suspicious package that I spoke of yesterday which caused evacuations, the cancellation of classes, and a bomb squad; it turns out that it was nothing more than a box of paper.

Rumor has it that the box was not suspicious at all, but it was the man who had left the box that was suspicious, for he was "a man of Middle Eastern descent". In fact, he was not of middle eastern descent but Indian; In fact, he was not acting suspiciously either -- just dropping off some recyclables. In fact, the man was Kazim Ali, a professor here at Shippensburg University.

He has a good write up about the incident and his side of the story on his website.

"...These are the days of orange alert, school lock-downs, and endless war. We are preparing for it, training for it, looking for it, and so of course, in the most innocuous of places--a professor wanting to hurry home, hefting his box of discarded poetry--we find it.

That man in the parking lot didn't even see me. He saw my darkness. He saw my Middle Eastern descent. Ironic because though my grandfathers came from Egypt, I am Indian, a South Asian, and could never be mistaken for a Middle Eastern man by anyone whod ever met one..."

Also, his essay can also be found here; for when Kazim changes his homepage.

Suspicious Package... -- April 19th 2007

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 18:49:26 EST

I just checked my email a few minutes ago. Among the new emails was one regarding a "Suspicious package being investigated"...

"Shippensburg University has cancelled classes for the remainder of the day due to a suspicious package that was found in front of Wright Hall. University Police are currently investigating the package and have cordoned off the area around the package. We have called for assistance from off-campus investigators and are waiting for them to arrive. Information on the package was e-mailed to all members of the campus shortly after the package was found. We will provide further information when possible." - 4:43PM

Naturally, curiosity compells me to go see the suspicious package. Although, suspicious packages aren't to be taken flippantly, especially in light of recent events.

Chat with the Upcoming Event! -- April 17th 2007

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 22:59:38 EST

Here is a flyer thing that was sitting on the table while I was eating dinner. I think they may have misplaced the word "president" in there. I was slightly amused by the fact that when you read it from top to bottom, it reads "chat with the upcoming event!..."; as far as I know, events don't have a materialized form, are inanimated, and not capable of chatting. But maybe i'm wrong.

Taste the Rainbow -- April 14th 2007

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 17:16:00 EST

There was this awsome rainbow right outside my window on Thursday. Unfortunately, there is an unremovable screen in my window, so that pretty much ruined the photo. :-(

Java File Right-Clicks -- April 12th 2007

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 22:53:09 EST

For all those java programming fans out there, here are a few useful shortcuts if you ever do any editing outside of your IDE (Integrated Development Environment). By simply right-clicking a .java file, you can compile or print it, among other things.

To compile a .java file via a right click, here's what you need to do:

Open windows explorer (i.e. My Documents)
On the menu bar click Tools, and choose Folder Options...
In the new dialog box, click the File Types tab
In the list of file types, find and select JAVA File
At the bottom-right, click the Advanced... button
Next to the list of actions, click New...
In the Action text field, type in "compile" (quotes not needed) or something similar
In the Application used to perform action text field, type the following:
"C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_07\bin\javac.exe" "%1"
(quotes included)
(the location of your javac.exe file may vary, but the path should be similar)
Click a couple of OK buttons to exit everything
Find a .java file, right click it, and compile should be one of the options.

To print a java file by right clicking it, follow steps 1-5 and do the following:

In the list of actions, select print (if it exists) and click edit. If print is not in the list of actions click New...
In the Application used to perform action text field, type the following:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\write.exe /p "%1"
(quotes included)
Click a couple of OK buttons to exit everything
Find a .java file that you want to print, right click, and "print" should be in the list of actions.

This will print the text using Wordpad. You should print using Wordpad instead of Notepad because Notepad will leave an ugly page count on the bottom of every page.