Sunday May 7th
5/7/17 - Day of Rest
Reflection
I spent yesterday taking a break from people, and reading up on BlackJack and the IBM 704.
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The IBM 704 is a fascinating computer. It is known as the “first large-scale, commercially reliable computer to employ fully automatic floating point arithmetic commands.” It does something like up to 12 000 floating point additons per second.
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Ed Thorp used it to do research on probabilities of winning at BlackJack. He’s written quite a few books on the topic. It’s fascinating stuff!
Personal
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My friends from the Haskell group have called me an Extrovert because I like tech raves ie specifically raves at tech conferences :) but I think of myself as more of an Extroverted Introvert aka The Loner Wolf.
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People exhaust me, so after talking to many of them, I’ll just completely withdraw. Sometimes, I’ll just stay at home for an entire day with the lights out.
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I guess it didn’t help, but at DEF CON 24 I went to six parties in one night last year. I still have this glow-stick that the Swedish DJ (who gave me a giant hug at 4 in the morning and told me how drunk he was while 50 of us were having a portable party around the hotel) stole from me during his set… and later returned.
Yeah, DEF CON is pretty wild. It was my first, and so worth it. So many familiar faces. Bear in mind, I didn’t even have a single drink. It’s not required to drink to have fun. Just have great company, and be a geek!
I don’t party (outside of tech raves) and I got home at 5am..for a check-out at 11. :(
DEF CON is fun…more-so if you’re of that hacker/maker mindset and are a good fit. I love the people, I love my hackerspace, and I love DEF CON. It’s tiring, though. I’m only going for two days this year. (Happy 25th!)
History
I was doing this about three years ago.
Schematic in Eagle CAD for breakout board (Eagle CAD was bought by Autodesk, where Matt moved)
Testing the actual board (from a workshop taught by Matt Berggren)
And taking classes on this stuff, and building them
(this is in Express PCB)
….I ended up on a robotics project where I ended up doing the programming in C (because no one else wanted to do it)…and liked it! I quickly figured out I liked programming more than anything else. It was the perfect mix of technical and creative, and I loved the people.
…so…
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I first learned about DEF CON because years ago, I thought I wanted to be an artistic roboticist or something (whatever that means..along with being a poetic rocket scientist and soap-maker lol) so I went all the way to San Francisco to take a free PCB class, and to attend Solid, the O’Reilly conference on hardware and software integration. I missed Astro Teller’s talk by an hour, because of my flight back :( As it turns out, this guy, Matt, who was giving the class had a class of 30 …and a waitlist of 70 people, who were all Googlers, people from Apple, etc.
And they said “You have to go to DEF CON!” Later, I went to SCALE (Southern California Linux Expo..I volunteered this year, too) and I kept seeing those t-shirts, everywhere. And I joined a hacker-space (three, actually, but I’m a member of one) and as it turns out, they have a booth at DEF CON. Those people like family to me, even though I really should be helping them move. I’ll probably help with load-in once they get a new space.
I guess I’m just…a maker/ tinkerer?
This is from a robotics workshop taught by Architecture Grad school students (2013-2014)
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I was learning about woodworking/ welding and machining, and stumbled upon this really neat place that was using 3D modelling software for architecture to make robots out of acrylic. It was a really cool spot (they even had black-smithing next door!) where all these makers were contained (one guy made himself a 6 foot x 6 foot 3D printer), but the building was later sold and bought by the Agassis (yep, the tennis players) to start a school.
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Motor on bottom for side to side motion, and one on arm for up and down.
- Software (Rhino 3D) with Grasshopper plug-in. We used node-based software (kind of like Nuke or Shake) to control it. You could even control it using an iPhone app, etc.
Random one from the Tech Museum in San Jose
This is from a few years ago, when I was on a team….(2014)
We named our robot car “Bad@$$ Mofo 2 aka Charlie”, and won 1st place :)
I also have video footage of an illegal parking-lot race (which we also won). That’s for another time!
Anyways…
I solved this kata in Python. It was fun…
Basically, you have this word “say blah” and you need to compare it with a “bath”, represented graphically between two walls. as
|~~~~~|
of varied lengths given. Can the word fit in the bath?
My solution
def bath(s,x):
a = len(x) - 2
b = len(s)
if a < b:
return True
else:
return False
# s is a word "blah"
# x is a bath in format |~~~~|
Solved this one
Jump length = (mountain height * speed * 9) / 10.
Speed = mountain height * 1.5.
___X_<- you on top of a 5 row mountain!
*****\
******\
*******\
********\
*********\.____/
function skiJump(mountain){
var speed = mountain.length * 1.5
var jump = ((speed * mountain.length * 9) / 10).toFixed(2)
if (jump < 10){
return jump + " metres: He's crap!"
}
else if ((jump > 10) && (jump < 25))
{
return(jump + " metres: He's ok!")
}
else if ((jump > 10) && (jump < 50))
{
return(jump + " metres: He's flying!")
}
else {
return(jump + " metres: Gold!!")
}
return
}
Remove rotten fruit (leave only good fruits in array)
This one had a None in one of the arrays, which was why it didn’t pass before.
def remove_rotten(bag_of_fruits):
a = bag_of_fruits
arr = []
if a == None:
return []
else:
for i in a:
if i[:6] == "rotten":
b = arr.append(i[6:].lower())
else:
b = arr.append(i)
return arr
Solved this one…one of the inputs wasn’t a string…that’s why it didn’t pass before :)
Palindrome checker where you had to remove non-alpha chars and spaces
function isPalindrome(stringToTest) {
if (typeof(stringToTest) != 'string'){ // this line passed my kata!
return false // and this...
}
else{
var stringToTest1 = stringToTest.toString().replace(/[^0-9a-z]/gi, '')
return (stringToTest1.toLowerCase() == stringToTest1.split('').reverse().join('').toLowerCase());
}
}
They fixed the BMI kata (so I solved that one)…
function bmi(weight, height) {
var bmi = (weight / (height * height));
if (bmi <= 18.5){
return "Underweight"
}
else if (bmi <= 25.0){
return "Normal"
}
else if (bmi <= 30.0){
return "Overweight"
}
else if (bmi > 30){
return "Obese"
}
else{
return "No weight"
}
}
..And this one…
If you can find in the array ascii that is lower case letter, change it to the lower-case vowel associated with that ascii code.
def is_vow(inp):
arr = []
for i in inp:
if ((i == 97) or (i == 101) or (i == 105) or (i == 111) or (i == 117)):
arr.append(chr(i))
else:
arr.append(i)
return arr
This is another one I’m working on.
It passes the test case, but not the general tests. Plus, it’s long.
var color2grey = function (image) {
var total = 0;
var total1 = 0;
var total2 = 0;
var total3 = 0;
var a1 = []
var b1 = []
var c1 = []
var d1 = []
var a = image[0][0]
var b = image[0][1]
var c = image[1][0]
var d = image[1][1]
//a
for (var i =0 ; i < a.length; i++)
{
total = total + a[i]
}
avg1 = total / 3
a1.push(avg1)
for (var i = 1; i < a.length; i++)
{
a1.push(avg1)
}
//b
for (var i =0 ; i < b.length; i++)
{
total1 = total1 + b[i]
}
avg2 = parseInt(total1 / 3)
b1.push(avg2)
for (var i = 1; i < b.length; i++)
{
b1.push(parseInt(avg2))
}
//c
for (var i =0 ; i < c.length; i++)
{
total2 = total2 + c[i]
}
avg3 = parseInt(total2 / 3)
c1.push(avg3)
for (var i = 1; i < c.length; i++)
{
c1.push(parseInt(avg3))
}
//d
for (var i =0 ; i < d.length; i++)
{
total3 = total3 + d[i]
}
avg4 = parseInt(total3 / 3)
d1.push(avg4)
for (var i = 1; i < d.length; i++)
{
d1.push(parseInt(avg4))
}
first = []
second = []
super1 = []
first.push(a1)
first.push(b1)
second.push(c1)
second.push(d1)
super1.push(first)
super1.push(second)
return(super1)
}
Oh, and solved this one (I could have had a shorter solution, but…)
Regular fruits = 5 == banana, orange, apple, lemon, grapes
Special fruits = 7 == avocado, strawberry, mango
Other fruits = 9
Return the average of the array of fruits given
round up (so 0.8 is rounded up to 1)
function mixFruit (arr) {
total = 0;
var a = arr.toLocaleString().toLowerCase().split(',');
for (var i = 0; i < a.length; i++){
if (a[i] == 'banana'){
total = total + 5;
}
else if (a[i] == 'orange'){
total = total + 5;
}
else if (a[i] == 'apple'){
total = total + 5;
}
else if (a[i] == 'lemon'){
total = total + 5;
}
else if (a[i] == 'grapes')
{
total = total + 5;
}
else if (a[i] == 'avocado'){
total = total + 7;
}
else if (a[i] == 'strawberry'){
total = total + 7;
}
else if (a[i] == 'mango'){
total = total + 7;
}
else{
total = total + 9;
}
}
var avg = total / arr.length;
return(Math.round(avg))
}
Something about different computers easy Kata
function express(x, device){
if (device == 'iPhone'){
return("Damn")
}
else if (device == 'Desktop'){
return("Sent")
}
else if ((device == "Laptop") && (x.length !== 22)){
return("Damn")
}
else if ((device == "Laptop") && (x.length === 22)){
return("Sent")
}
else if ((device == "Macbook") && (x.length !== 22)){
return("Sent")
}
else if ((device == "Laptop") && (x.length === 22)){
return("Damn")
}
else{
return("Damn")
}
}
Things to do:
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Last Bit of Programming for Correctness assignment (due 5/8 pm)
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C++ lab polish up and send away (due 5/15)