Clete’s Blog

So, I was bored today and I decided to write some programs. The first program is actually a program that I drastically changed from one of the sample programs in Computer Science I. The second program is a spin-off of a more simple program that I wrote when I was 11 or so. Sadly, I don’t have the original program, which was written in PHP.

The first program simply asks the user how many repetitions it should run. Then, it runs as many repetitions as the user specifies and prints its output along the way. Basically, what the program does is create a bunch of random numbers and adds them all up. It is a simulation of rolling a die 6,000,000 times per instance. (Note the numbers 1 through 6) If the dice were to be 100% fair, each number would be rolled 1,000,000 times. At the end of the program, it shows the average number of rolls for all of the tests. So, give it a whirl:

rolldice.exe

Now the second (and best) program. It’s a bit harder to program than it looks, but is still relatively simple. Basically, the user inputs a phrase (e.g. CAT). Then, the user inputs a repetition number. The computer then converts the phrase into upper case (if necessary). Then, the computer begins to create a bunch of random phrases in an attempt to find the phrase CAT. Once it finds it, it tells the user how many tries it took. It then repeats for the number of repetitions that the user specifies. Once it completes, it prints out how many tries, on average, that the computer took. (sorry, it’s a bad explanation. Just run it; it’s a bit more simple than that).

WARNING: Due to the nature of the program, phrases longer than four characters will take a while. If you insist on using a long phrase, keep the repetitions low or the program may take a VERY long time to complete. This is essentially a brute forcing application.

catfinder.exe

The source is currently unavailable because catfinder.exe is currently extremely sloppy and must be cleaned up and renamed.

A few days ago, we received some flurries. Last night, we actually received some snow that accumulated a little (it’s almost all gone now). This morning, when I was still half asleep, I snapped a photo of the mountains. I used bracketing to get a bit of a better picture, because it was still pretty dark outside.

Picasa Album.

Maybe we’ll get more soon :D.

I found this article to be hilarious. Just check it out.

Elephants on acid

Slashdot Link

Today, I noticed that my laptop was getting a bit dusty inside. Naturally, I walked over to the local Radio Shack and picked up one of these (click to enlarge):

No big deal, right? Everyone buys compressed air. Wrong. I spent $6 on one can of compressed air! I used to buy four or more of them for $6! It’s outrageous. I bought the cheaper one. There was another (smaller) can of air for $7.

That is completely ridiculous.

Well, as the title suggests, not much is happening right now. I’ve had a couple of exams. I took one yesterday in statistics, one today in accounting, and I have one tomorrow in computer science. According to my estimations, I did pretty well in both statistics in accounting, but I will know for sure next week. I’m not even worried about the computer science exam, because I have the material down. The chapter was pretty easy, so it’s no big deal.

I’ve been studying hard, hanging out, and playing games. The weather is cooling down here. We’ve had a couple of days where the high is 40F. Right now, it’s averaging in the lower 50s and the upper 40s. I noticed that the average high for November 2nd in Mansfield is equal to that of the coldest day of the year (on average) in Columbia, SC. So, I imagine this winter will be cold. I won’t be missing the cold weather, as I return from winter break on January 10th.

Right now, I’m testing out Kubuntu 7.10 (as I’m a KDE fan) and I have mixed feelings about it. I may post a review on it sometime in the future. Here’s a quick overview:

As I suspected, everything is geared towards the very inexperienced end-user. The install is far too simple to be functional for a power-user. Everything has been dumbed down. The apt-get graphical interface is fairly nice and pretty easy to use. However, it wanted me to upgrade to Ubuntu 7.10 (um, didn’t I just download Kubuntu 7.10?). When I went to upgrade, it idled and would not complete the upgrade, no matter how many times I restarted it. Due to the lack of feedback from the application, I was never able to ‘upgrade’ to the version that I already have. Additionally, Amarok refused to install MP3 support. No matter how many times it went through the MP3 support installer and no matter how many times I restarted Amarok when it told me to, MP3 support still would not work. Also, not many applications are installed by default. I have played with Fedora for a few years now and it comes with a boatload of applications, while Kubuntu/Ubuntu is a very minimal install by default.
On the plus side, ACPI works well right out of the box. I was (and am) having quite a difficult time getting ACPI to work properly with Gentoo. I haven’t tested out the hibernate or suspend features in Kubuntu, but they are options on the menu. I still don’t have proper suspend and hibernate support from Gentoo’s suspend2-sources.

Well, there’s my periodic update. If there are a lot of grammatical errors, it’s because I’m tired.