Calculus Test #2: 90%
Ah-yeah! Scored a 90% on Test #2!
For those keeping score, my overall grade has risen to 90%.
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Primer
John, Adam, Olessia and I watched
title=”Primer”>Primer last night. Its only showing in Cleveland is
at Cedar Lee Theatre. It was just us in the threatre and right as the
movie started, 2 additional people came in. So we ALMOST had the
threatre to ourselves. We caught the 9pm show which worked out great
for everyone. The added plus was we were able to watch the eclipse of
the moon before and after the movie.
This movie was AWESOME. If you haven’t seen it yet and you plan to see
it, you might wish to skip over this. The Primer web site doesn’t go
into a lot of details about what the “box” is and does. So I’m sitting
in the movie and for some time I’m trying to figure out what this “box”
does. It was fun. Then it becomes clear and the movie explores the
paradox that is time travel. Like, what do you do if you go back? What
happens if you take your cell phone back and it rings? What do you do
with your double that’s living in another time? Does the universe fork
when the machine is started or stopped? The science was awesome.
Olessia identified and verified the fungus and bacteria discussions in
the movie were very accurate (its what she does at work!).
This was definitely a “thinking” movie. You’re left thinking during the
movie and then after the moving you’re thinking “what if?” which is
always a lot of fun. And to know this movie was produced with a budget
of $7000 is really amazing too!
Calculus Test #2 Over
I think I survived this test. I don’t know how well I did, but I’m
pretty sure I’ve done better than the previous 2 or 3 times I’ve taken
it. Hopefully I’ll find out on Thursday.
For those keeping score, there’s just 2 more tests, 2 quizes, and 1
final exam left.
Calculus Test #2 Tonight
Parked at a 89.9% grade at this moment in the calculus class, I’m doing
MUCH better than I have the prevous three times I’ve attempted
calculus. This test #2 is the one that I’d get back and decide it was
time to drop the class.
Time to start drinking water!
Civil Air Patrol to the rescue!
You don’t often hear of Civil Air Patrol (CAP) in the news. When you do, its
usually because something in the avaiation industry went lost (aka:
crashed). Here’s a story that’s a bit more up beat:
href=”http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/TV/10/18/odd.television.reut/index.html”
title=”Flat-screen TV emits international distress signal”>Flat-screen
TV emits international distress signal
On a side note, I thought “civil air patrol” would be capitalized in the
article since it is an official auxiliary of the US Air Force (note here
US Air Force is capitalized). I mean, “civil air patrol” IS the
organization’s name and the last time I checked, organizational names
are capitalized. Although I’m not an English major…
Shuffle up and deal!
A supper busy and supper fun weekend!
Friday night: not fun or exciting. I was busy trying to figure out
rates of change in various calculus word problems.
Saturday was crazy fun. I was way over due to update my clothes.
Olessia joined me this time and we turned it into an adventure. I
needed EVERYTHING. I needed everything because everything was literally
falling apart, torn, dirty, or didn’t fit right anymore. I think we
managed to get just about everything within the first half hour. It was
rather amazing and we were both quite pleased with the results. So we
went to one of Olessia’s favorite restaurants and enjoyed lunch. Note,
this was all done in Parma. After lunch, we sprinted to a little town
that is a few blocks away from Perry nuclear power plant. We stopped at
a farm and picked off the vine and bought some pumpkins. We then
sprinted back home and took care of some minor house chores before Poker
Night.
Poker Night was a blast. Lots of people came over and they brought all
sorts of goodies. We ordered pizza and mingled about. Then we got the
game started. We don’t play for money, just bragging rights and having
the most chips. We played 3 games (up till 2am!) and had various
winners. It was a great time.
Sunday was a recoup from Saturday day. I worked on more calculus. Then
removed the tags on all the new clothes from Saturday. Then we went
over to Olessia’s friend’s house to help her with zooming in and out of
her documents. Then went home and cooked dinner. This was sort of
cool: We ran out of milk and our Stove Top box said we needed milk. So
I walked (yup, walked!) down to the corner to Gabor’s and picked up a
gallon. It was cold out, but it wasn’t a big deal. I got back in no
time and we were back to cooking. Then we crashed in front of the TV.
And yes, the resting paid off. I’m feeling really rested right now.
Cat destroys shoe
Murzik (we think) chewed up one of my casual shoes. I notice until I got to work and the right shoe was just covered in claw and teeth marks. We’re pretty sure its Murzik. The night before we watched and thought, “aw! How cute!” as she laid on her side and circled Olessia’s slipper with all 4 paws dug into it. It looked almost like we had a dog in the house or something. Oh well. It means this weekend I get to go clothes/shoes shopping.
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SpaceShipOne completes 2nd flight
align=”left” width=”315″ height=”237″ /> Wow! Burt Rutan and his team
at Scaled Composites complete their
2nd flight to space and win the X
Prize this morning!
They completed their first flight on Thursday, September
30th. And today they completed the required second flight within the
required two weeks.
Also note, today is the 47th anniversary of the
Soviet Union’s launching of Sputnik.
align=”left” width=”240″ height=”179″ />Burt Rutan is one
of the people I consider a hero and would really like to meet. He has
designed and built some amazing aircraft. What’s really amazing is all
his aircraft have been sub-sonic. SpaceShipOne is his first creation
which goes faster than Mach 1. In fact, it reaches Mach 3+ going
straight up! SpaceShipOne also is designed as simple as possible. It’s
flight controls are not the fancy fly-by-wire but the simple cable and
pulley type. The last aircraft to fly faster than the speed of sound
with a cable and pulley setup is said to be the Bell X-1 piloted by
Chuck Yeager. This, to me, means there’s some serious engineering going
on to allow SpaceShipOne to fly with this configuration. Also pretty
neat is the feather system Rutan designed into SpaceShipOne. It allows
the aircraft (or is it a space craft?) to tumble back into the
atmosphere without much stress on the airframe or pilot input (its been
said the pilot can sit back and not touch a thing and it’ll re-enter the
atmosphere on its own). To me, that’s engineering and creativity at work.
Wow!
Murzik is ok
Murzik is back home and doing ok. Whew!
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Murzik is at the vet
She’s getting “fixed” today. Hopefully she’s doing ok.
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1 quiz down, 4 more to go
I got my results back on quiz number 1 in calculus. Scored 19 out of 20 points. I’m pretty happy about that. One point was lost for a silly mistake. Two of the problems freaked me out. One problem just required me to calm down for a moment and then the solution clicked immediately. The other problem required brute force and a good amount of time. But some how I got that one right too. Just 4 more quizes and 4 tests to go.
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Working on nifty web stuff
The other day I finished tweaking m2f (mail two forum) phpBB for Akron Sports Car Club. They have an email list managed by mailman. A large number of the members enjoy the features of the mailing list. But a number of the members prefer a web based forum. So, m2f links the two together. When an email is sent to the list, it automatically gets posted to the forum. Post a message to the forum and it automatically gets sent to the list. Nifty!
I’ve updated the web dev section. It now has the C/C++ code used for MySQL/PostgreSQL to calculate zip code distances. The zip code tool has also been tweaked a bit and you can actually test out the C function versus the SQL approach. Nifty!
I’ve been wondering about the importance of meta tags on this site. How do I do keywords if they’re supposed to be on the site and the site is mostly a blog? Dynamic key word generation to the rescue! Since the blog is template driven, I can actually scope out all the words I’ve used in the stories (and do it dynamically). I then take a count of the words (ignoring the popular English ones) and sort them by the number of times they were found. Then I grab the top 25. To see it in action, do a “view source” on this page. Then look for the keywords metatag. Then go to another blog page (scroll to the bottom to select a page number) and then view its source. The keyword list should be different. Nifty!
I’m thinking of keeping track of my calculus grades online. Haven’t figured out how I’ll organize them though. Hmm. It could be “nifty” though…
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Zip Codes with a Kick
I’ve continued playing with my collection of zip data files. I’ve now merged some 1999 data with 2000 data and I think I have a nice mix now. The 2000 data has (in my opinion) more realistic location data. While the 1999 data links up the zip code to the city, county, and state.
The kicker? Now you can look up zips and get population, housing, land area, and water area included in the results.
You can find it all here: http://www.rsbauer.com/zip/
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4 Years Ago
Four years ago, I registered rsbauer.com and staked out my corner on the web. I would have gotten it MUCH sooner, but back then a domain had costed about $80 for 2 years and a crazy amount of money for monthly hosting.
Back then I could have been found on junior.apk.net/~rsbauer and gozips.uakron.edu/~rsbauer. With rsbauer.com, I’ve been able to play with all sorts of nifty technology as well as providing a means of accessing my home computers.
I just noticed: It was one year ago today I tossed this
“blog” (if you want to call it that) code together and started posting. Its worked out really well.
For those who are wondering, this is what happened last year.
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Zip Code Fun
Did a bit of fiddling and I’ve got PostgreSQL doing zip code tricks. You can get the distance of one zip code with another. Or you can get a list of zip codes by radius.
All this works by a magic C function. It was originally writen for MySQL, but I was able to port it over to PostgreSQL with some effort (and much learning). If time allows, I’ll post the code and instructions in the webdev section. This cool is especially cool since it now includes location data which I didn’t have in the MySQL version.
Performance isn’t too bad for a query that has to hit 3 table to collect the data. The MySQL version goes supper fast, but it brings back a very limited amount of data (zip and distance).
Classic disclaimer: The zips are not 100% accurate, but close enough for most needs.
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All systems go for calculus
Books – check
Calculators (plural!) – check
Notebook paper – check
Pens & #2 pencils – check
Payment plan – check
Sleep – not enough
Time to go back to school…
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Grrr – U. Akron loses my payment plan application
I worked late the day before. I checked with my boss if the schedule allowed. I then took the 45 minute drive to the University of Akron and got my stuff in order for fall 2004. This meant I stopped to get my books and pay for class. I made it to the cashier’s line. I filled out my application for the payment plan right there and then handed them the first installment payment. I did this way back in July. Now my account is on hold because they lost the payment application. Grrr. A phone call to a few people at the university seems to have the ball rolling in the right direction. I’ll have to wait and see what happens…
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Powder survived the vet trip
Murzik and Powder both visited the vet yesterday. Powder went first since he got nervous and pee-ed in the carrier on the way over. Murzik just cried for the entire drive while Powder was very quiet.
Powder had a slight temperature, but he didn’t have enough urine to allow the vet to take a sample (it all went in the carrier!). The vet thinks it could be a urinary track infection. Hopefully its an infection and not Powder being ornery. Powder got an antibiotic shot which really got him upset.
This freaked Murzik out and she huddled as small as she could in her carrier. Her turn came and she got a booster shot. Her shot wasn’t as bad and it was in a better location than where Powder had his. She was declared very healthy.
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Tree
The oak tree out in the backyard has a broken trunk. I get to figure out how to cut it down. Its just high enough to be a little too high for me and a ladder. Although my dad recommended some tools. I think this will be a a next weekend project.
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PostgreSQL
Just installed PostgreSQL on our web server. Now our web sites can use MySQL or PostgreSQL their database storage needs. I’ve been checking out phpPgAdmin which is a web front end to managing your PostgreSQL databases. Its pretty impressive! I’m liking it. Triggers, views, functions and all sorts of other nifty goodies not available to MySQL. I think I’m going to need to develop a few apps under PostgreSQL. I think its going to run circles around MySQL.
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