First, if you think Twitter / Google Buzz / Petstatus.com are silly and just fads, you can go ahead and navigate away from this page.
For those of you who believe that “microblogging” is a new form of communication between people, then listen up. If you have an account on twitter, why do I have to have an account on twitter as well to subscribe to your updates? What about facebook?
If you have a hotmail email account, I don’t have to have hotmail to email you, why should it be the same with microblogging?
What we need is a common protocol, so people on different networks can follow and join the conversation! What we need is a protocol… what we need is…
Yes, Status.net! Status.net is an application that allows you to microblog, and converse with people even if they are different networks. That’s right! Now you can follow your favorite pets on Petstatus.com even though you are on Identi.ca. People on Swisen.com can subscribe to people on WowTweet.net. Amazing!
And guess what, you can actually MOVE and DELETE your status updates. Yes you actually own them. You can move them to another server if you want. Does twitter allow that? Didn’t think so.
If you are using Dreamhost to host a website, installing Status.net is super easy! They have one-click install for status.net. If you have trouble working with their installer, I have some notes that might help.
So when you are ready you can follow me! http://xkyle.com/status/
In the XKCD comic dated 3/4/2010, the Collatz Conjecture presents the following scenario:
Well I don’t know if your friends will stop calling your or not, but I was curious about what the graph would actually look like. The graph in the comic looks like it was created with Graphviz, one of my favorite programs!
So I wrote a quick bash script to generate the approrpiate links for graphviz to interpret:
#!/bin/bash
echo "digraph \"xkcd\" {"
for NUMBER in `seq 1 100`
do
if [ $[$NUMBER % 2] -eq 0 ]; then #We are even
let OUTPUT=$NUMBER/2
else #Odd
let OUTPUT=$NUMBER*3+1
fi
echo "$NUMBER -> $OUTPUT"
done
echo "}"
So what does it really look like? Here:
There are lots of straggling links. This is of course only because I went to 100. Why not 1000? It is a little big… click Here.
Turns out with even more numbers we end up with even more isolated links, no big super chain.
If you would like to run this code for yourself, first make sure you have the graphviz package installed in your linux system. Then copy that code above into a script, say called xkcd.sh. Then run like so:
./xkcd.sh | neato -Tpng | display
Adjust as necessary.
Published on January 24, 2010
in linux.
My girlfriend plays an interesting Wii game called Super Paper Mario where Mario can shift between a 2-dimensional and a 3-dimensional world. Pretty interesting. In chapter 2 section 4 there is a maze of rooms where one must find the last room, room 10. Of course there are walk-throughs all over the internet, but I had her read to me what room she was in, which door she walked through, and what in what room she emerged. Like this:
“Room 9 BR” -> “Room 5 Top”
This means that Room 9′s Bottom Right door drops you into Room 5′s top door. I inputed all the all of the connections, and let one of my favorite programs, graphviz do the rest!
Using the graphviz mediawiki plugin, all I have to do is input the graph text into a page on my wiki, click save, and it will spit out a graphical version (click to see the full size):
It could use some tweaking for the overlaps, but its pretty good as is if you ask me. It certainly gives you an insight into the developers thinking when creating the maze. This would certainly be very difficult to do on paper and have it come out clean.
Here is the link to my actual wiki article. Feel free to edit the graph and click save to see what change happens. (You will have to create an account. Really feel free, I don’t mind, edit away!)
And if you have some suggestions to make the graph look even better, just make them! I watch the recent changes rss feed and I will see it.
Published on November 24, 2009
in linux.
This is mostly for my archival purposes.
When I first arrived at toor camp, I was issued a Hardhat and a kit of electronics to construct my own badge:
What a cool start! Combined with the already cool scenery:
Only one problem: no silo access. We’ll see if that changes for day two…
