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Makoto_the_Phoenix

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Blog Entries posted by Makoto_the_Phoenix

  1. Makoto_the_Phoenix
    Ready for the Experience Weekend
     
    (erroneously called "Double Exp Weekend"):
     

     
    Taking a good look at that...30.2M. What I had bought were some of the seconds, all of the shards, and some of the Summoning reagents. That's it. I didn't directly spend a single GP on any of those herbs; proof that MTK pays big dividends.
     
    (Not listed: The sharks involved getting Bunyips, nor the counts of the charms.)
     
    All told, this stack of stuff in normal times would get me about:
     
    333,857,5 exp in Herblore (+2 levels),
    281,456 exp in Summoning (+2 levels),
    105,000 exp in Runecrafting, (+2 levels),
    No less than 35,820 exp in Crafting, (+0 levels)
    and un-computable amounts of experience in Magic/Agility/Thieving.
     
     
    It's not nearly as insane as you think - it's not likely I can get those values in an hour (with the exception of Crafting - that's probably dead easy), so the experience rate I get, while substantially high, isn't going to go nuts on the world.
     
    ---
     
    A Formal Proof for Unique/Rare RuneScape Names
    (The proof to end all debate about rare names)
     
    For those that have seen logic notation before, or know set notation, this should come as a bit of a laugh to you.
     

     
    What does it state?
     
    Basically, we create a universe denoted by the script U of all the usernames that exist in RuneScape. Then, we state as a given fact that your name is in that universe.
     
    We create another variable n to represent universal and existential quantifiers to demonstrate the proof (your name only occurs once, remember?).
     
    The proof reads, starting from the 'upside-down' A:
     
    "For all n (in the set U), there exists one and only one x (in the set U) such that x is not equal to n."
     
    Quod Erat Demonsratum (and thus, is proven).
     
    For those that are actually doing proof-based logic or First-Order Predicate Calculus, please let me know what mistakes I've made at 5:30 in the morning.
    Okay, I realize my goof - the "there exists" should be in front of the "for all", so it would read like this:
     
    "There exists one and only one x (in the set U) such that, for all n (in the set U), x is not equal to n."
     
    I'll edit it out later. Sleep now.
     
    ---
     
    Before I forget:
     

    TK>> stats <Makoto_D> Level: 131.700 [122.700 F2P] (Melee-based) | Overall: 2019 | Attack: 98 | Defence: 98 | Strength: 98 | Hitpoints: 99 | Ranged: 93 | Prayer: 78 | Magic: 86 | Cooking: 88 | Woodcutting: 85 | Fletching: 85 | Fishing: 88 | Firemaking: 87 | Crafting: 80 | Smithing: 92 | Mining: 86 | Herblore: 76 | Agility: 76 | Thieving: 82 | Slayer: 91 | Farming: 72 | Runecrafting: 64 | Hunter: 80 | Construction: 65 | Summoning: 72 | Duel Tournament: N/A | Bounty Hunters: N/A | Bounty Hunter Rogues: N/A | Fist of Guthix: 1037 TK>> skill Summoning <Makoto_D> [summoning] | Level: 72 | Rank: 81,266 | Experience: 900,432 | Amount of experience to go to 73: 92,463 TK>> skill Crafting <Makoto_D> [Crafting] | Level: 80 | Rank: 56,952 | Experience: 1,990,383 | Amount of experience to go to 81: 202,435 TK>> skill Magic <Makoto_D> [Magic] | Level: 86 | Rank: 171,582 | Experience: 3,664,021 | Amount of experience to go to 87: 308,273 TK>> skill Herblore <Makoto_D> [Herblore] | Level: 76 | Rank: 46,586 | Experience: 1,352,152 | Amount of experience to go to 77: 123,429 TK>> skill Runecrafting <Makoto_D> [Runecrafting] | Level: 64 | Rank: 115,140 | Experience: 420,472 | Amount of experience to go to 65: 28,956 TK>> skill Agility <Makoto_D> [Agility] | Level: 76 | Rank: 35,705 | Experience: 1,369,736 | Amount of experience to go to 77: 105,845 TK>> skill Thieving <Makoto_D> [Thieving] | Level: 82 | Rank: 31,716 | Experience: 2,479,308 | Amount of experience to go to 83: 193,806
     
     
    A little output from a script I wrote to extract my stats from the high scores. I want to do a comparison of these at the end of the weekend.
  2. Makoto_the_Phoenix
    Alright, so this is nothing new, since most everyone here has seen a snapshot of some dude standing around in RuneScape, holding a funky-looking camera, but this one is special.
     

     
    Reason: It was taken on 64-bit Linux.
     
    Yes, that's right - for the first time since RSHD came out, those that choose to use a 64-bit platform (and install 64-bit Java) can finally make use of RuneScape in all of its HD glory. What a fantastic update.
     
    (Now I don't have to worry about exorbitant amounts of lag, since the processor only does a share of the work now. My GPU on the other hand just finally got something to do.)
  3. Makoto_the_Phoenix
    I keep promising that I'll get my super-secret open-source program outlined here, and rest assured, I will this week. I just need a scanner to get some things to a digital format, first.
     
    Anyways, on to the nature of this blog's post: Three reasons each why CS is fun and frustrating.
     
    Why CS is fun:

    You get to do nifty projects with things that you've never tinkered with before. Who'd think that I could write my own programming language at the end of a semester? You get to look into interesting subject matters, and explore the cutting edge of software languages. Google Go is a prime example of that - check it out at www.golang.org . You can look back on your projects and say that you truly enjoyed creating them. Let me tell you, LISP was tons of fun. Writing my own lexer for this language is fun, too.
    Why CS is frustrating:

    Insomnia. Need I elaborate on this? It'll be 3AM when I post this, and I would like to wake up before 10:30AM. Yeah, that's gonna happen. Complexity of programs. Defining things so that they're nice and neat can get tedious. Especially when you're both 1) pressed for time and 2) slightly sleep depraved. Amount of extra time spent outside of class learning things. I still owe myself 144 hours of free time from last year learning the complexity of about a dozen different sorts.
     
    For those that are interested in the subject matter, be prepared to spend a lot of time working at it. And I mean working hard. Some of the things may come to you as second nature, and others may come to you as about as easy to understand as Sanskrit, but be prepared.
     
     
    Totally unrelated: Ubuntu One is a very effective cloud-based storage system. 2GB free and 50GB for $120/yr. I would sooner drop the cash on a portable drive (with 5 or 6 times more storage), but 2GB for free to keep my code synchronized between my tower and my laptop is quite nice. Now only if the damn thing would let me synchronize individual folders instead of being isolated to the "Ubuntu One" directory...
  4. Makoto_the_Phoenix

    Moral Victory

    By Makoto_the_Phoenix,

    Today, my Linux Tech Help guide has been officially sticked on the forums. This is actually really good news - I'm rather excited that it's available in a ready-to-get-to fashion, and it saves me the trouble of bringing it back from page 10 or 12 or even 27 (imagine a giant server error and the populace floods the Tech Forum - yeah, that thread would disappear in a second). This also means that the legion of 64-bit users having trouble going into HD (myself included) can find a common ground to work problems and errors out.
     
    Errors on my hit list: Sound won't wrap in Karmic, RS sometimes crashes, and of course, no HD for 64-bit systems. Looks like it's going to be really fun debugging what's going on.
     
    Not much else to say today, but I'm pretty glad that this happened. I've got to look into extending support to more distros, namely the top four distros according to Distrowatch (Fedora, Mint, and OpenSUSE - I already support Ubuntu).
  5. Makoto_the_Phoenix
    It's a wonderful thing to get surprised with something new. I mean, I love surprises. The excitement of not knowing is better than having a ballpark several weeks in advance.
     
    That being said, that carefree side of me only shows up when it's something totally innocuous. It doesn't show up when it's really wondering about classes or grades.
     
    I'm not wrestling with grades right now or anything - I have at least a B in all of my classes - but I don't know whether or not I'll get a final exam out of my required multicultural course. Talk about a waste of life, that course... worst part is probably the literal lack of attention that my class has been getting for the last month. It's an online course so I could justify not seeing it for 2 or 3 days, but thirty-six days and counting? Get real.
     
    Anyway, I probably won't be able to post what I wanted to later since I actually have to complete the mock-up. I've got three projects to finish (in three different paradigms and four different languages, five if I count the one I'm actually writing), and I also have to study for two major class final exams.
     
    Pray for me, if you are so inclined.
  6. Makoto_the_Phoenix
    Okay. You're probably not going to understand the entry title. But this will also (partly) explain where the heck I've been for the past week.
     
    LISP is a functional programming language centered around processing lists, hence, List Processing. The primary thing you work with are lists, which are structured in parenthesis. Everything is a list.
     
    So I have a cool project (which, with technical difficulties, I wasn't able to submit on time), regarding LISP - English Sentence Generation. Basically, what it does is take several lists of different types of words (nouns, pronouns, conjunctions, adverbs, adjectives, etc), and builds sentences around it.
     
    Admittedly it's rough around the edges, but since it's not quite ready yet, this one I did find amusing:
     
    [26]> (GENONE)
    (THE FRANTIC MICE FRANTICALLY WATCH ON THE EXHAUSTED DESKS)
     
    And no, it's not set up to do that automatically. Quite frankly, it's a good spot of luck (since it's actually pseudo-randomly determined as to what value comes out of the list).
     
    If you're curious, the cardinality (the number of potential combinations of each sentence) is well over 9 billion - I'll get a real number to give you guys later, but I have a feeling it'd overflow Java longs.
     
    There's other stuff to do with LISP - namely it's used heavily in the field of Artificial Intelligence, which makes sense - it can be taught to rewrite itself (EVAL)*. If you're curious about this, look it up.
     
    ...Other stuff has happened to me this week, but it's less interesting than programming projects. Perhaps next time, I'll outline my larger, private, open-source project. Wait, those last two are an oxymoron, right? Well, we'll see, won't we? ;)
     
    *: Technically, anything that has the ability to execute code either generated or parsed on the fly can be used in A.I., but LISP is probably the best (and most venerable) for the job, anyway.
     
    Midnight edit:
     
    Break 1 [3]> (genone)
    (THE THREE DEVIOUS DOGS ANGELICALLY DRINK ON THE SAXOPHONES)
     
    God, I love pseudo-random number generators.
  7. Makoto_the_Phoenix
    I'm trying to get in the habit of blogging once every three days or so, but a lot of stuff can happen in 72 hours. So, depending on my time, and depending on how much actually went on that week, I'll probably do a quick recap of the past week's events every Sunday.
     
    Wall of text ahead -ye be warned.
     
    RuneScape - The Decision to Remove Extreme Potions from PvP
     
    This was an old issue, but ironically it's still got a lot of steam on the RSOF. The potion update, as many of you remember, was intended to give extensive boosts and bonuses to combatants, provided that they could make these potions (since they're untradable). On update day, it seemed too good to be true - a high level update that could possibly stick around for a lot longer! I was actually happy for the new incentive to train Herblore, and I looked forward to getting 92 for Extreme Magic potions (so I could do my insane RS goal of maxing out without trimming my HP cape).
     
    I think it was less than two days before the potions were removed from all PvP. Kind of silly, really - and I debated enthusiastically and adamantly against the decision. It didn't seem right that the players that had the high Herblore potion could now no longer use them where they would be of most use. Admittedly a lot of the skillers that I've known and met do tons more PvE more than PvP, so you'd think that this decision wouldn't have affected them as much. That's really not the case - had this update stuck, I'd have probably gotten into the [PvP] fray myself, and had some fun while doing it.
     
    It took Jagex around 48-72 hours to revert the changes, and over two weeks to come up with more player feedback about what to do with the potions. I'm not being mean towards Jagex or anything, but what kind of feedback could've been collected in 2 or 3 days that couldn't have been in 14-17 days? The disconnect there kind of seemed very, very odd to me.
     
    Then the announcement came last Tuesday that they would not be placed into PvP, due to the nature of the combat system and how it unbalanced combat in favor of those with the potions. I can respect that Jagex wants to strike balance in their combat system, but I haven't been in a PvP fight which would be considered to be 'fair' - pures, hybrids, PJers, all manners of things - put me, as a moderately high level (let's say 97 before Pest Control) at a gross disadvantage against someone with 99 Strength.
     
    Ironically, I can live with the decision. It's one that I can see now in hindsight that was the right decision. I was ranting and fuming and all manners of other things at their decision to remove them at first, but it's probably for the best - the potions highlighted key flaws within the combat system, and I hope these flaws are addressed very, very soon.
     
    What I can't live with are the people who are hellbent on complaining/demanding the potions back into PvP situations. It's probably better for us to move on than it is to sit here and whine about how we would have preferred things. The place to start would be to suggest potions that can be used in PvP that don't unbalance the triangle the same way these potions did.
     
    ------
     
    Windows 7 and Ubuntu Karmic - A Weekend with Both
     
    I finally got around to redoing my tower and laptop this weekend; the tower has always been a Windows/Linux dual-boot system (due to academic requirements), and the laptop has always been a pure Linux system. So, this past Friday, I had made the decision to perform the backups necessary and prepare my machines for the wipe and reinstall.
     
    Would you believe me if I told you I had forgotten I had 125GB worth of data I wanted to move back and forth on a 100Mb line? I did. And the back-up part took about twelve hours.
     
    First, I had installed Windows 7 on my machine, to avoid any messes with GRUB and Ubuntu Karmic later on. It had taken about an hour for the install (not just figuring out how it would work), and it had done partitioning in a way that I didn't want it to - 3 primary partitions, one of which was infuriating - a 100MB boot partition. C'mon now...
     
    Second, I must say again that I am impressed with what I've got with this 64-bit system so far. It seems to be solid and responsive, and I like it. My only hope is that it runs the programs I have to run.
     
    Ubuntu Karmic wasn't a nightmare, but it was frustrating not being able to set up the partitions the way I wanted to. I got around that limitation (extended partitioning), and things have been going smoothly since. It didn't take long for it to install (about 45 minutes), and when it came back up, things worked fine.
     
    Just a word of caution for those that are Linux enthusiasts - get an NVIDIA card. Your life will be so much more pleasant. Take it from me, a guy that didn't get an NVIDIA card. But will when he gets the cash for it.
     
    Overall I'm pleased with Karmic as well, but the one thing is that Java sound won't wrap around PulseAudio anymore, which is to say "padsp firefox" no longer works. I'll figure a workaround for that later, but it hasn't been as gruesome as it was in the past - if I close Firefox/Prism/Google Chrome entirely, then I get my sound card back.
     
    I'll report more on these two things as I go along.
     
    ------
     
    Five-Day Weekend
     
    A freak snowstorm hit Denver on Wednesday, and it turned from a nice, pleasant day to a white-out. I was contemplating actually going in for classes on Wednesday, but I had received an email prior from one of my professors saying that the 7PM class was cancelled, and the latest one from another saying the campus was closed at 1PM. My campus happened to be closed for both Wednesday and Thursday, and that put me behind in not only the amount of time spent on the job (I lost $20 from that storm), but in the amount of homework/classwork we'll need to do.
     
    Anyway, on this weekend, I actually knew I had more time than normal - typically I do more work than play on any given Wednesday - but here I was, digging out a RS Membership card I had bought two weeks back, and I was playing RS again. I'm glad I could sit down and unwind with a few games - I hadn't done this for ages.
     
    Now the weekend's over, and I have to go back in tomorrow. It sure was relaxing while it lasted. I didn't get much done, as far as classwork is concerned, but I'm not worried about it - my LISP project isn't due until Saturday, and I'm sure that my math professor will give us an extension for the Mathematica work we have to finish.
  8. Makoto_the_Phoenix
    Another autumn, another round of operating systems. For those that are in the Linux loop, we're used to getting the full onslaught here - Ubuntu 9.10 and OpenSuSE are due by the end of this week, whereas Fedora and Linux Mint are anticipated sometime in November. There's a lot of promising stuff coming down the pipeline, and it seems like it's going to definitely be a good release refresh - new X Server, new previews of GNOME Shell (which I happen to like), new kernel, and more stability than ever before.
     
    My distribution of choice is Ubuntu, and I plan to be moving my machines to 64-bit operating systems soon. Admittedly, there may seem like there aren't many more advantages than being able to address 264-1-1 bytes of memory, but I've actually felt that the system was more stable than in 32-bit. Not to mention, we should be moving to a 64-bit architecture soon - it's probably going to happen well before the end of 2020.
     
    I've been running Ubuntu 9.10 RC for about a week now, and for what it's worth, it's rock solid. For the first time in about a year, I don't have to compile my own drivers for wireless anymore. Graphics card works nice, too. I'm still a bit upset with the new Java plugin, since it doesn't seem to like working with RuneScape without eventually crashing. I'll have to file bug reports about it later.
     
    Even if RuneScape still won't go into full HD mode in 64-bit, that's kind of irrelevant right now. Jagex just needs to get their act together and ship 64-bit ELFs for Linux, that's all. Same thing applies to any other application out there - if your software won't work with 64-bit systems, then you're already way behind the curve. How many years has it been since AMD launched 64-bit instructions again?...
     
    Also, about a week back, Windows 7 was released. Alright, I know that many people don't like Vista, and Microsoft has probably lost some of its personal customers with Vista's poor showing forever (myself included), but let's be fair and give the demons company another try.
     
    I happen to be in the Microsoft Developers Network Academic Alliance (MSDNAA), and as a student, I am privy to receiving Windows 7 (and Vista and Win XP SP3) for $0. Even if I don't like the company much, academia relies more on Windows than one would like to believe, so I have no choice but to use it. I am a bit wary of any new OS, even the Linux OSes, but I will say that I am impressed with Windows 7 so far. I haven't done a full install of it on my main machine yet, only tinkered with it in VirtualBox, but I am indeed pleased with it. And it's not often that I'm pleased enough with Windows to consider wiping XP again for it.
     
    Anyway, I'm going to probably play with Karmic a bit more, and wait until I'm ready to back up 125GB worth of data to redo my tower. Perhaps next time I'll post something I've been working on in my spare time.
  9. Makoto_the_Phoenix
    It's been a long, long two weeks.
     
    Right now, I'm halfway through my Principles of Programming Languages class, and one of the assignments involves writing a Tentaizu puzzle solver.
     
    For those that are unfamiliar with it, Tentaizu (Celestial Map) is a numbers' game with a 7 by 7 grid of numbers dotted around it, and the objective is to fill the map with ten stars that satisfy the rules of its boundary. For instance, a number 0 denotes that 0 stars are allowed in the eight or so squares around it, and so on.
     
    This sounds like a moderately difficult project, right? I mean, put in about two-hundred lines of Java and it's a cakewalk, right? Well, here's the kicker.
     
    Since we're learning about different paradigms, we have to write the entire puzzle in Prolog. For those of you that have never heard of it, Prolog is a unique, logic-based language, in which you simply tell it what is true about your world. It has a lot to do with First Order Predicate Calculus. For logicians, this language is ideal. For those of us used to C, C++, Python, Java, and pretty much every other object-oriented/procedural language, this language will eat you alive.
     
    Simply the way you have to think about problems has to change, since you can no longer rely on an algorithm to solve problems.
     
    In summation, I was able to make some strong headway as far as getting the thing to work, but it doesn't look like it will work properly. I can't tell it what's true about Tentaizu that makes any canonical sense to myself or Prolog - I had a plan to set up boundaries, in which if it ran into a 'border', it would ignore it, but otherwise, look to find all valid places to place a star within it. Getting the border to work properly took the better part of a 3 day weekend; getting a single predicate (that's what they call statements of fact - predicates) to work to reflect that is still painful.
     
    I've come a long, long way with my Prolog, but I'll be honest - if the assignment is something you genuinely can't understand, and the professor didn't go over it as well as you'd have enjoyed, then what else can you do? I've asked most everyone in my class to lend me a hand, and I've given what advice I could on the project, but the fact of the matter is that I did my best, and I can't solve it. There are two or three others in the class that could do Prolog, and they offered me their source, but since I'm more concerned with concepts than code, I declined for two weeks. It does me no good to have the answers without any foundation.
     
    I'm the kind of guy that doesn't like to quit or give up, so I'm going to still keep at it. I'll learn Prolog here and there, and figure out how it's done.
     
    So anyway, that's that, I suppose. I think I might try to unwind and tinker a bit with Ubuntu Karmic.
  10. Makoto_the_Phoenix
    I've been pretty busy IRL over the past month, and whenever I wasn't really busy, I did a lot of Mining. I'm now level 85 in the skill after staying a month in the LRC.
     
    My programming study group kind of fell apart (as no one showed up at the meeting), so I folded on it. I've got some better things to do in my spare time after all, like learn how to program GTK+ windows.
     
    Also, the news is all good from my Principles class - somehow I pulled a B in there (and some other classes got high grades too), so I walk out with a 3.02. I finally qualify for that internship over at VMWare...
     
    Anyway, that's all I've got for now. I'm trying not to run late for classes on the first day, and so far, so good. :)
     
    [EDIT] I know I promised to outline my open-source project here one day, but it got put on hold - I've got to do some research and figure out how ID3/Vorbis tags work first. Then I've got to register as a developer on Last.fm. Lastly, I have to figure out how to program in GTK+.
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