Discovering new Music
Thanks to my “Soft Indie Rock” station on pandora.
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Danny Dawson
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Ayon, browser daw ito!
Jesse Ruderman points out that Firefox is getting some hate for one of its localizations.
In the spirit of last night’s trip to see the One Man Star Wars Trilogy, I’m tempted to make an Ewok-localized Firefox.
Danny Dawson
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A unique and delicate snowflake
Pandora has this statement to make about my music tastes: “Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features pop rock qualities, a subtle use of vocal harmony, repetitive melodic phrasing, a vocal-centric aesthetic and major key tonality.”
My name is Danny and I’m an indiepopoholic.
Thanks to cygnoir for cluing me in to Pandora.fm, which makes Pandora much more interesting to me, even if it does further clutter an already ad-cluttered interface.
Danny Dawson
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Participatory Government
“… is starting a pilot project that will not only post … on the Web and invite comments but also use a community rating system designed to push the most respected comments to the top of the file, for serious consideration by … examiners.”
Sound like slashdot? Nope! It’s the US Patent Office.
Danny Dawson
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Stepped into the SanRio store, walked out with a new pair of bunny slippers and a few pads of cute post-it notes for the office. Neon rectangles were just getting so boring.
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claudine
now if only we had a picture of the cute post-its!
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Danny Dawson
I’m actually using them today (the post-its, not the slippers) as we pack up the office for the move.
Danny Dawson
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Attempting Connectivity
After reading Tantek’s thoughts on HCI usability, I’ve decided to lower the bar to posting on my weblog by setting up easy access to post from my blackberry. If this actually works the way I’d like it to, you’ll be seeing posts from me more often than once every several months.
It also means more noise vs. signal to anyone who might be following my blog for intelligent, well thought-out posts, but really, I’d rather this be an outlet for my public thoughts, whether they are or aren’t fully hashed-out. When I first set up my weblog, a long time ago now, I did so with the idea of making it easy for family and friends to follow me. Over the years I’ve waffled all over on what direction I wanted to take the site, but really I just want a communication tool, not a venue for thesis development or publication-quality material.
So friends: this one’s for you. Let’s see, yet again, if I can actually keep up with myself.
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Halsted
Yay, this one’s for me! I’m glad to read it, and hope to see you and Claudine soon!
Danny Dawson
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Liveperson.net: Support to shoot yourself in the foot with
a.k.a How StartLogic.com Consistently Lets Me Down
// This is a transcript of the second part of my conversation with Rob M. after our initial greeting was followed with a browser crash caused by the Liveperson.net Java Applet.
Please wait for a site operator to respond.
You are now chatting with ‘Rob M.’
Rob M.: Welcome to “Startlogic’s” live chat service. How may I assist you?
Danny: Hi Rob.
Danny: we got cut off.
Rob M.: Please give me the password for email account
Danny: You have my permission to reset it on your end.
Rob M.: No I will need it from your end.
Danny: Sending my password in plain text via http to an unfamiliar URL is not something I’m confident in doing.
Rob M.: Well this chat uses secure URL
Danny: Excuse me..comfortable, not confident
Danny: I don’t know about you but I’m on http, not https
Rob M.: But your connect is directly from your computer within my chat software
Danny: The connection from my computer is insecure because it’s over the http protocol. That said, even if it was over https, the URL I’m looking at is “liveperson.net”, which is not the company I do business with directly. If you are someone authorized to conduct business on behalf of Startlogic, you should have access to a contact at startlogic who can provide you with the necessary information.
Rob M.: Well then you will get a reply for your issue through ticket once the issue is resolved, the ticket is still open
Danny: I’d like to know why I haven’t received a reply yet.
Rob M.: Because the ticket is still open in the support dept.
Danny: And the lack of a receipt acknowledgement email?
Danny: It’s been four days. For an urgent issue, this is unacceptable.
Rob M.: Well the email you got with the ticket id was the acknowledgement email
Danny: That’s an acknowledgement that the server received my email. Not a person.
Danny: Is anyone even looking into the issue?
Rob M.: Yes you will get a reply when the issue is resolved
Danny: When you and I end this chat, you’re going to feel no contractual obligation to look further into this issue. What assurance do I have that I will receive a timely response?
Rob M.: Well the issue is still open in the support dept and it will not be closed unless replied to you.
Danny: That’s not reassuring.
Danny: If your car breaks down and you bring it into the shop, how long do you expect to wait around until they let you know what’s going on and give you a time estimate?
Rob M.: Well this issue is with level 2 techs and once they get it resolved, they will get back to you.
Danny: aha! So it has been assigned to a technician?
Rob M.: Yes a level 2 tech
Danny: does the technician have a name?
Rob M.: No
Danny: if you would like to help debug this issue, you could try sending an email to [email removed]
Rob M.: Sure
Danny: You’ll get a bounce message describing the problem.
Rob M.: May I help you with anything else?
Danny: Did you get the bounce message?
// The next several messages came in very quick succession.
Rob M.: Well it will take some time
Rob M.: May I help you with anything else?
Rob M.: May I help you with anything else?
Rob M.: Please contact us if you face problems.
Rob M.: We’re available 24/7 via chat, email, or phone.
Rob M.: Take care and thank you for choosing StartLogic, Good Bye !
Chat session has been terminated by the site operator.If you could change something regarding our service and/or products, what would you change?
I would change the entire concept of subcontracted support. Your drones are completely powerless to *actually* help me with my problems, and they either don’t have the ability or they outright refuse to contact someone at the company with whom I’m *actually* doing business in order to resolve an issue when they are unable. I’d suggest you find a different line of work before the market for your services crashes entirely.
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picardo
Hi, I came across your post on Wordpress forum about the error handling fix.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/54505
You wrote that you would check with the wp hackers to see if there was anything forthcoming from them.
(A quick check showed, this blog also exhibits the same error. You’d be the first to implement the fix no? Does that mean there isn’t anything??)
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Danny Dawson
The wp-hackers list pointed me to this bug report:
http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/1786which appears to have been resolved by using wp_die() instead of die() in the wp-comments-post.php file. I suppose wp_die() must be hookable.
These changes made it into the wordpress trunk on July 5th, but somehow didn’t make it into the 2.0.5 release on October 27th. It looks like they still haven’t made it into the 2.0 branch, and thus probably won’t make it into the 2.0.6 tag, which was apparently due 5 days ago.
Looking further into this, the wp_die() function is slated for the 2.1 release, which does not yet have a date on the official roadmap.
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Barbie
You can find a lot of reviews about StartLogic on the website http://www.hothosting.info/en. Also, StartLogic is trusted by many of its customers. Obviously, there can not be a very perfect host, since these hosts are of many different features.
The clients should buy a host which meets their needs perfectly. For example, if a person has some experiences with Linux, he or she may choose the host which supports ssh so that it can achieve its perfect performances. Moreover, the e-shop host users can choose a kind production which could provides more after-services.
Go to http://www.hothosting.info/en and have a look, there must be some suitable methods for you in choosing the right hosts. You will know more about the web hosting!Enjoy!
Danny Dawson
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Perplex City and Magic Squares
I vaguely remember hearing about Perplex City when it was first launched, but I was too caught up in just about everything else to take too much notice. I do remember thinking that a worldwide puzzle/scavenger hunt game with an online component sounded right up my alley, but I was disappointed that the “crossover into real-life” events were centered in a country I had never set foot in.
A number of times since then, I’ve been reminded of the game’s existence, most recently when I heard that Perplex City would be having its first official U.S. event right here in San Francisco…on a day when I already had obligations. In spite of my inability to attend the event, there’s been a resurgence in my interest, and last Friday while in Berkeley for a concert I picked up a few packs of “PC” cards from Games of Berkeley.
Whoo boy, the good times are a-startin’. I love myself a good mental workout, and the Perplex City cards provide just that in diverse forms and at varying intensity. From pattern-matching to pop-culture knowledge, logic puzzles, physics problems, political trivia all abound.
Probably my favorite aspect of Perplex City problem-solving so far is scripting solutions to some of the more complicated puzzles. When I was working on a solution for card #098 ‘Magic Square’, I came up with a script which can be used to solve any 4 by 4 magic square, where the rows, columns, and diagonals all add to the same number.
My first attempt was far less than ideal: it randomly arranged the 16 numbers and then tested to see if everything added up properly (i.e. bogosort). When I let it run for ten minutes at a time, it would run through about 12-13 million combinations and not come up with a single solution.
My second attempt used iteration to go through possibilites in a fixed order and guaranteed me a solution eventually…within the next 56 years (seriously, I calculated), if I let the script run constantly, it would check every possible arrangement of numbers for ‘magic squareness’.
My third attempt is the one I finally found success with. Essentially, it’s a modified version of the second script where I run validity tests incrementally instead of all at once after a square is constructed. The spaces within a square are filled in a spiral pattern and rows, columns, and diagonals are tested the moment they’re testable, which results in maximum efficiency.
Where the first script would have required hundreds or possibly thousands of years, and the second script nearly a lifetime, my third script only took about 23 minutes and 35 seconds to find all 924 possible solutions for a 4×4 magic square.
As it turns out, there are 54 unique solutions to the Perplex City Magic Square card.
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Oliver
Hi, I’m a software engineer, and I find your approach interesting. I wrote a small code as an exercise to solve N x N squares on my spare time. My results for the 4 x 4 were different. I got 7040 solutions in 466 seconds. What i did was I iterated over all the possible permutations. I truncated the trees that will never arrive a solution checking only the partial array as necessary. I believe that you have ommitted a lot of the possible solutions. :)
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Matt
Hey I am also a software engineer and I noticed that you are missing quiet a few answers one being the magic square of
7 2 11 14
12 13 8 1
6 3 10 15
9 16 5 4Else very interesting and good attempt
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Marcel
Hi,
nice that you are also interested in magic squares and a nice attempt to find solutions.
I see that your program finds 924 solutions for a 4×4 magic square. However, in reality there are lots more.
But there are 880 unique solutions (a unique solution cannot be obtained by rotating and/or mirroring another solution).
I wrote a program in Fortran which can find all solutions for magic squares of any length.
It can be run under DOS or Windows.
You can download it freely at download.com (the name is magic square generator 1.0).
For 4×4 it will find all 880 solutions in about 5 minutes. My approach is comparable with yours by incrementing numbers and testing rows, columns and rows as soon as possible.
However the order I incremented numbers was different (e.g. for 4×4, for other sizes similar):a b c d
e h i j
f k m n
g l o pI hope you enjoy the program.
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doggy
Ummm….. I think its stupid because it didn’t really help me.
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Chandrashekhar Joshi
Hi:
I was checking a magic square with following conditions:
x x x 10
x x 9 x
x 8 x x
7 x x x
However I did not get any sucess using the formula given by you. Is there any solution which exists using this combination? -
joshua meadows
I found one you missed
1st row: 1,15,14,4
2nd row: 12,6,7,9
3rd row: 8,10,11,5
4th row: 13,3,12,16
Thanks though, i like what your doing with this. -
Søren Blaabjerg
I believe, that I myself (not using any formulas or with help of a computer) to have found (so far) no less than 1248 unique “perfect” 4×4 magic squares. The number of unique sets of 8 magic squares, where all the variants can be derived from each other by mirroring and rotation I have found to be 156. (156 x 8=1248)
By perfect 4×4 magic squares I mean squeres where not only do both of the diagonals add up to 34, but so do the numbers in each of the small 2×2 squares at each of the corners, the central 2×2 square, and the sums of the 2 numbers in the middle of the top and the bottom row as well as the sums of the 2 numbers in the middle of the leftmost and rightmost columns.
By the way, I am thinking of writing a small book displaying all of these solution (not dwelving into theories and methods though because it is meant primarily for enjoyment. Do you think, that might have any interest?
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Jhansi
hi i found one more solution which is not available in your list of solutions..
1 14 13 4
12 6 7 9
8 10 11 5
13 3 2 16Thanks,
Jhansi. -
Søren Blaabjerg
Since my comment above, I have myself found a lot more unique magic squares. I have not yet checked, if all of them are on your list. They might well be.
By the way, I have found, that on your otherwise quite impresive complete list of 4×4 magic square solutions there are in fact repetitions (assuming of course, that magic squares, that can be derived from other magic squares by mirroring and rotation are only counted first time, they occur). At least I have found, that solution
#388: is in fact identical to solution #120:
14 1 8 11 7 6 10 11
15 4 5 10 12 9 5 8
3 16 9 6 13 16 4 1
2 13 12 7 2 3 15 14 -
Søren Blaabjerg
In the above comment I by mistake read the numbers underneath instead of the numbers above. Sorry? However I have just discovered another example of duplication. Please take a look at solution #30 and then solution #37!
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Danny Dawson
The 924 solutions I listed are indeed unique, but not rotationally or reflexively so.
Also, as several commenters have pointed out, it seems that my list is not comprehensive. I haven’t taken the time yet to look back at my old code and determine why this is so, but at some point, I certainly should do so.
Thanks to all of you for your comments, and especially to Søren for continuing to work on this puzzle. Even though I haven’t done any work on this myself in a long time, it’s still quite fun to think about. :)
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Søren Blaabjerg
Dear Danny
I have just studied your list further and can confirm, that your list is far from comprehensive and indeed also contain quite a number of duplications (i.e. solutions that can be derived through reflexion and/or rotation of other solutions on the list). I you are interested, I might myself have a look on your code :-)
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Lawid
Hi,
I have set of 100 integers organized in 10*10 table. Only the sums of two rows are different by +1 and -1 compared to the sum required for the magic square. Can you help me in checking if we can get with these numbers a magic square table?
Thanks
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Søren Blaabjerg
Dear Danny
I have studied your list a bit further and found quite a number of omissions and duplicates
as well. In the end I decided to write a small computer program myself in order to find the complete list, and I have just succeeded doing so. As expected the conclusion was, that there are indeed all in all 880 unique solutions or 880 x 8 solutions if you count all rotations and reflexions. I made the program in such a way, that you can choose either and step through all the solutions displayed one by one.Most of the solutions are not particularly interesting though. For instance I find those, where both the 2 x 2 subsquares at the corners and the subsquare at the center add up to the same sum as the rows, columns and two diagonals particularly pleasing. There are quite a number of those, around 350 unique ones I believe.
Danny Dawson
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Usufructuary: Hide and Seek in San Francisco
Come play my new game! In Usufructuary, you earn points by finding hidden objects around San Francisco. If you’ve ever played Guess Where SF, wanted to try geocaching, or just want a reason to become intimately familiar with San Francisco, then you’ll enjoy Usufru.
I know I won’t always be able to keep up with the one-a-day posting on Usufru forever, so if you’re already a friend of mine or are willing to become one and you think this project sounds interesting, consider becoming a Challenge contributor. You only need a digital camera (preferably with the ability to take short videos) and a little time and motivation. I’d prefer that contributors are willing to commit to at least one challenge per week, but that’s not set in stone. If you’re interested, please send me an email or leave a comment below.
If you just want to start playing the game, look at the Open Challenges page. There are three unsolved challenges as of this posting.
Danny Dawson
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Sanitizing MySpace
Note: This solution is outdated! I strongly suggest using this greasemonkey script instead.
Everyone’s got gripes about MySpace. I’m no exception. Here are the things I loathe most:
- Embedded audio, especially when it plays automatically. If you’ve got a song you want me to hear, link to it and tell me why you like it. I’ll decide whether or not I want to listen, thanks.
- Background images that interfere with the foreground text or are otherwise distracting. I hate not being able to read things that I’m meant to.
- Giant images that screw with the page layout. Can’t you create a thumbnail? In addition to the borked layouts, I hate having big distracting images on my screen that other people can see from across the room. If I want to see the original size, I can Right Click > View Image.
- Ads of all shapes and sizes. I hate banner ads, large and small, whether they’re little animated gifs that dance on my screen or big flash banners that make noise when I accidentally move my mouse cursor over them.
- Wantonly “dimmed” text and images. So you discovered -moz-opacity, eh? Don’t abuse it.
So I did what I always do before I write a blog post – I fixed it. Now, there’s already a greasemonkey script out there that does some of this things, and more, in some cases, but to be honest: I don’t like it. Maybe it’s just the “Flash of Unstyled Content” that happens while the page is still loading and before the script triggers; maybe I think the script goes too far in what it takes out; maybe, in some areas, it doesn’t do enough.
I decided to take a different route towards fixing the problem. Instead of a javascript solution, I opted for a pure CSS solution in the form of site-specific rules within a user stylesheet. My final version takes care of all of the things that bug me most, making MySpace usable again.
It’s a cinch to install it yourself (requires Mozilla Firefox, of course):
- Download the MySpace Sanitizer Stylesheet and save it into your Firefox chrome directory in your user profile. Don’t know where that is? Mine is in
C:\Documents and Settings\Danny Dawson\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\gobbledygook.default\chrome\. Yours is likely in almost the same place. If not, checkC:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\. I have faith in you. - Restart Firefox.
Keep in mind that this solution isn’t meant to remove all of the custom styles that people use within their profiles – just the ones that annoy me. That said, if you run into something really annoying, let me know about it and I’ll look into it if I have the time.
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claudine
Hmmm…
Can’t seem to get it working yet. I’m wondering whether it conflicts with Greasemonkey, though I’ve disabled gm for the moment… -
Danny Dawson
Make sure to look first in Documents and Settings\*\Application Data\. Chances are good you’ll have multiple chrome folders, but the ones in Docs & Settings seem to be the more commonly-used ones.
I aslo updated the .css file to get rid of <marquee> and <blink> elements, which I had forgotten about because, well, I guess I thought people knew better.
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Melvin
Amen, my man! ‘Stumbled’ on your blogs from links on Flickr.
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Stewf
Sweet on. Haven’t tried it because I am not running Firefox daily until they are fully OS X savvy, but I applaud the effort to clean the MySpace mess.
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Leo of BORG
This is sweet! It probably works much better with the Firefox extension ‘Stylish’…
I use this with multiple GM scripts to totally KILL all MyS crud. On Mac OS X. So, y’all should try this. Links:
At userscripts.org: http://userstyles.org/style/show/185
My blog entry on killing MyS crud: http://expat-leo.blogspot.com/2006/04/geek-monkey-is-not-happy-with-myspace.html
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Mike Grabowski
Hey, thanks for this great tip. I’m writing a small tutorial on how to use the firefox extension Stylish. And I’d like to use your CSS for myspace as a great example of how to use stylish to fix a webpage. The thing I like about stylish is you can easily turn it on and off, where putting it in the chrome is a little more of an always on solution. So with this, when you come across a bad myspace layout, you can click on your stylish icon and turn it into something that you can actually read. Thanks again, and let me know if you have any problems with me using your CSS.
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Scott
You sir, are a godsend. This is just the type of thing I’ve wanted for ages. Thank you!
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Justin
Thought about adding lines to disable the changing of the mouse cursor?
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OWN-the-NWO
Hey man I found one problem with the sheet, It kills the links to leave someone a comment. If you ever end up fixing that in the style sheet let me know so I can come get a new one.
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Chad
This disables the link to post comments and view all comments.
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Danny Dawson
Hmm…I’m pretty sure it didn’t used to do that, but to be honest, myspace comments are a feature I don’t use very often, if ever, so it’s possible this is something I overlooked.
To be perfectly honest, there are now a number of things that annoy me about the specific userstyles I chose, and I haven’t taken the time to tweak them. In addition, I’ve come to believe that this might be a job more suited to greasemonkey, which can easily traverse the DOM to remove extra style tags from places they don’t belong. When I get around to it, I’ll contact those of you who posted a comment using a real email address, and I will certainly update the blog.
Don’t hold your breath, though. Personal projects don’t usually get pushed high on my priority list.
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Danny Dawson
Ha! Someone else did a perfectly fine job already. I highly recommend their script over my solution. Greasemonkey is without a doubt the right way to do this.
Danny Dawson
Barbie, 
picardo are discussing. 
Søren Blaabjerg, 
Lawid, 
claudine 12:54 pm on Wednesday, March 21, 2007 Permalink
For a moment, I thought this post title was in reaction to the movie we saw last night. But it appears to have been posted waaay before we saw “Ang Panama.”
Ayon = “there”
daw = “supposedly”
Ito = “this”
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Taglish! Whee!