jon@jon-desktop:~/greptest$ echo “test” > blah
jon@jon-desktop:~/greptest$ echo “foo” > “-v”
jon@jon-desktop:~/greptest$ grep foo *
test
jon@jon-desktop:~/greptest$ grep test *
jon@jon-desktop:~/greptest$ echo “foo” > bar
jon@jon-desktop:~/greptest$ grep test *
bar:foo
jon@jon-desktop:~/greptest$ grep foo *
blah:test
Now try fixing it. -v is the verbose flag for pretty much anything.
I found this receipt today:
I have no memory of buying any of this, but I think it is the most amusing receipt I have ever seen.
Tonight Hal suggested I make a Pandora station of nothing but artists with foods in their names. Here is the result: Food Radio
The bands:
A Taste Of Honey
An Emotional Fish
Artichoke
Black Grape
Blind Lemon Jefferson
Blue Oyster Cult
Bowling For Soup
Bread
Cake
Casper & The Cookies
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies
Chuck Berry
Cookie Galore
Cream
Electric Prunes
Fiona Apple
Goldie & the Gingerbreads
Green Jelly
Hall & Oates
Headless Chickens
Hot Tuna
Humble Pie
Jello
Jimmie’s Chicken Shack
Lamb
Lambchop
Lemon Jelly
Lemonheads
Marc Almond
Meat Loaf
Mint Royale
Moby Grape
My Friend The Chocolate Cake
Orange Juice
Papas Fritas
Peach
Peaches
Peaches & Herb
Potato Eaters
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Red Red Meat
Skankin’ Pickle
Smashing Pumpkins
Strawberry Alarm Clock
String Cheese Incident
The Apples In Stereo
The Appleseed Cast
The Chocolate Watchband
The Cranberries
The Flying Burrito Brothers
The Gourds
The Jam
The Lemon Drops
The Lemon Pipers
The Mighty Lemon Drops
The Notorious Cherry Bombs
The Pietasters
The Salads
The Soup Dragons
The Sugarcubes
Ultimate Spinach
Vanilla Fudge
Vanilla Ice
Virgin Prunes
Whole Wheat Bread
I read XKCD, a brilliant web comic, regularly. Recently I decided to write a simple simulation based on one of his older comics. Here is an excerpt showing exactly what I simulated:
I threw the simulation together in JavaScript rather quickly, so it isn’t at all elegant and nice looking. However, it is still a lot of fun to play with. Your character runs towards the mouse, and the simulation stops when you are caught. Refresh with F5 to start again.
Version 1 has momentum, and feels strange to control. It is possible to get the raptors to constantly circle around you, since they can’t turn fast enough once to get you they are up to speed.
Version 2 has much more agile raptors. They can turn and stop instantly, but still need to accelerate to get to speed in a new direction. This one proves for certain that RAPTORS ARE SCARY! My best time so far is 2.8 seconds.
Eventually, I would love to implement a version with floorplans using the rules from the last problem in the linked comic, but I doubt I’ll get around to playing with that for a long time.
There’s a place in Kalamazoo we like to go to. I used to describe it to people by saying: “It’s like a bunch of computer students built a little shop for themselves to chill out in. Electrical outlets all around the walls, wired in stereo system, tables all over, arcade machines in the back, all of that. Then art students swooped in and took over, painting it green, covering the walls in art, and making it a coffee shop.” While I doubt that particular origin story is true, the result is the same, and what you have is the Rocketstar, a small coffee shop and hangout for students across Kalamazoo.
One of the coolest things about the Rocketstar, aside from the atmosphere, is the selection of things to do that they offer. Arcade machines in the back, a pool table, a stash of games in the front, and a collection of interesting ‘zines to flip through when you’re bored. Not to mention the people.
My friends and I used to visit all the time just to hang out and chat over milkshakes. Recently though, we often just go to hang out and play Scrabble. Scrabble at the Rocketstar, however, is more of an art than a game.
Originally the Scrabble set they possessed was as normal as any to start off with. Of course, over time in a place where it’s used fairly often, the occasional tile is lost. Now and then, a new tile is found. Sometimes someone would bring in extra tiles from home, and they got mixed in. Sometimes someone would take a sharpie to a tile to change what letter it was. This new tile set we started calling Rocket Scrabble.
Eventually the Rocket Scrabble tile set was tossed and a new set bought for the Rocketstar. It lasted for all of a month, or something like that. Jon and I were there a while back to play scrabble, and discovered we were short on tiles. Quite short. In fact, while a normal Scrabble tile set contains 100 tiles, this one contained only 58. We played an entire game before we realized just how short we were. One thing we realized at the end was, it was e-less Scrabble. Not a single E tile existed in the set.
It was surprisingly fun.
As an aside, here’s the tile set as it was after our game.
AAAA
B
DDD
FF
GGG
HH
IIIIIII
LLLL
NNNNN
OOOOOOOO
PP
Q
SSS
TTT
UUUU
VV
WW
X
Z
