Textual Pornography : denuding words in the name of science

Software Engineering project, Part II

Important implementation information!

“Write a program that find a near optimal solution to the Rubic’s cube.”

Dodgy grammar and spelling aside, this makes my plan of attack much narrower in scope. Now I don’t have to figure out whether he wanted a program, or a printed mathematical algorithm, or a machine that physically solves a Rubik’s Cube, etc. Also, someone else in the class has a related project that I can use as part of my own to make things much easier:

“Wire a program that displays a 3 dimensional representation of the Rubic’s cube and an API for manipulating it.”

Since the hard part of creating an encapsulation of a Rubik’s Cube will be done by someone else, all I have to do is figure out a way of procedurally solving a general Cube and program it. This won’t take very long at all.

Software Engineering project, Part I

“Find a near-optimal solution to the Rubik’s Cube.”

More as I figure out exactly what that means and how to do it.

“Boredom, lack of productivity, and unambiguous newspaper headlines”

Carnac the Magnificent holding an envelope to his head

“Reasons for the dearth of recent updates.”

I’m back to college next week, so maybe things’ll pick up then.

2006-08-14 identity
reflexive Comments (0) Permalink

An excerpt from chapter 3 of my memoirs

Cards formed a significant, if not substantial, portion of ASSETS recreational life. Particularly popular was the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering; my small collection of common and uncommon cards from Revised and 4th Edition attest to this. I received my first set of cards, a 4th Edition starter deck, at a classmate’s birthday party (Scott Hathaway; thanks r4) in either fourth or fifth grade, and was subsequently bilked out of an Aladdin’s Ring; at the time, how could I possibly have known about its rarity, especially when confronted with the impeccable logic of “it costs EIGHT whole mana to cast”? I’ve lost other rare cards to the Nether Void over the years, like Titania’s Song and Kormus Bell, but I believe I’m fortunate enough never to have lost anything especially valuable, never having had anything especially valuable to lose.

2006-07-12 identity Comments (2) Permalink

I’m never playing Endless mode on Tetris DS again

close-up of the top screen, showing 99,999,999 points

This is the result of playing the same game for nine consecutive days. Never again. If you want a poorly illustrated map of my performance, I also took photos after days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.

2006-06-12 dynamic Comments (1) Permalink

So, I’m currently in Fernley, NV

I don’t feel like reporting anything else substantial right now, so here’s a picture of a ten pound chocolate bar:

2006-06-02 identity Comments (2) Permalink

Natural Beauty

Here are some photos of miscellaneous pretty things I’ve encountered on the trip.

2006-06-01 identity Comments (1) Permalink

Dazzling Solvangian Wordplay

While going through the pictures I’ve taken so far, I noticed quite a few involved signs or messages that amused me for some reason or another. Since I’m currently one picture short of the mini-album I really wanted to post today, here are a few of those pictures, captioned snarkily.

2006-05-31 identity Comments (1) Permalink