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Monthly Archives: February 2009

My Path from Microsoft to Apple

2004-2006:  I see several friends of mine carrying around these really slick devices called iPods.  One of them even lets me play with it.  I’m amazed at how easy to use it was.  I begin to see the value of carrying your entire music collection in the palm of your hand.

mid 2007: I buy a competing mp3 player (SanDisk Sansa), thinking, “oh this has to be just as good.”  It wasn’t.  Apple releases the iPhone.  I have jealous thoughts, and bought a phone I thought was better.  It wasn’t.

late 2007: I ask my parents for an iPod for Christmas.  My Dad buys me a Zune, thinking, “oh this has to be better.”  I remember him saying, verbatim, “I just can’t see myself ever buying anything made by Apple.”

early 2008: I give the Zune a good, honest try, for several weeks.  I actually like the interface on the device, but didn’t like the Zune software.  The thing crashes multiple times.  One time it crashed so bad, a hard reset wouldn’t even phase it.  The advice I got from MS support was to let the battery drain completely, until it turns itself off due to battery power loss.  Then charge completely, and turn it on.  Fed up, I trade it in for an 80 GB iPod Classic.

mid 2008: iPhone 3G comes out: bigger, better, faster, cheaper.  Now I’m convinced my next phone will either be an iPhone or an Android phone.  I might have gone the Android route, but Apple beat everyone to the “App Store” concept, which really sold me on the iPhone.

early 2009: my iPod Classic is still going strong, having never crashed, not once.  The battery still lasts for 12 hours of continuous playback, at least.  Sprint changes their administrative fee, releasing me from my 2-year contract.  I change cellular service providers, buying the iPhone 3G.  I decide I want to become an iPhone developer.  I look into downloading the iPhone SDK, and find out it is only available for Macs.  Apple, in their infinite wisdom, decided to limit the iPhone development community to those owning one of their computers.  At first glance, this seemed rude, inconsiderate, and mean.  I wanted to buy a Pystar system out of spite, just to get back at Apple.  ”That’ll teach ‘em.”

I spoke to the people I knew that were Mac users.  They all were convinced that Apple products just work better, more intuitively, and can really do anything any PC can do, and more.  I was awed by the amount of software that Mac OS X comes with, all for free.  A video editor??  A music studio??  These types of  products aren’t simply given away.  And then it dawned on me, this is why Apple can charge so much for their hardware.  The software included is more than worth the price difference.  I decide to save my money, enough to buy a Mac.

My PC, two years old, breaks down.  I think the hard disk (or SATA) controller decided to die on me.  It was probably a long time coming, as I’ve had quite a lot of hard disk problems in the past year.  But my computer breaking was all the excuse I needed.  I drove to Best Buy and bought a MacBook, liking the idea that it could serve as a desktop replacement, and a portable.

Do I miss the windows button, the start menu, the task bar, the task list, the control panel, the delete/backspace distinction?  Maybe a little, but only because I’m like a computer newbie again, trying to learn all the Mac equivalents.

For those of you that have helped me, I thank you.  I’m sure I’ll be calling you again soon.

PC is Dead

So last night my computer completely crashed. Nothing was responding, even after several minutes of waiting. I performed a hard reboot. It had to be restarted several times. When it finally came up, I wasn’t worried. But after a few minutes it froze yet again, and I began to worry. I rebooted it and went to bed.

I’m writing this from my iPhone. My PC I built two years ago has died. I might be able to fix it by reinstalling windows, but if I have to start over, I would rather start with a new Mac.

Really, I’m sad about this and happy at the same time. Sad because I’ll be leaving the familiar world of windows. Happy because I’ve been wanting a mac for a while. Also sad because I’ll have to use credit. I haven’t used a credit card to buy anything in like a year.

It started with my desire to build applications for my iPhone. I have ideas for apps that don’t exist in the app store. Even if they don’t sell, I’d want them on my own phone. But, it seems the only way to build iPhone apps is on a computer with OS X Leopard on it. My attempts at installing OS X on my current hardware have failed. But I think I’d rather have a legitimate Mac anyway.

I’ll be going today to purchase one.

New Blog Features

If you’re paying attention you’ll notice a couple of new features to my blog.  I’ve added some content from other websites I have something to do with.

On the right nav bar, you’ll find my Google Reader Shared Items as always, but below that is something new: my Twitter feed.  I post to Twitter somewhat regularly, about various things.  My twitter home page is here.

On the left nav bar, all the way at the bottom, you’ll see a box.net file sharing widget.  I’ve placed a few mp3s I’ve recorded over the years in a box.net account to share here.  I’m not quite sure I understand how to fully customize this widget.  I wish I could order the items properly.  But for now, we’re left with Box’s haphazard method.  It’s not alphabetical, or by date.  I don’t understand.  Oh well.

Project Euler – Problem 96

Problem 96 asks you to write an algorithm to solve 50 sudoku puzzles.  I decided early on to make the problem slightly more difficult for myself by not using any backtracking (guess and check) in my algorithm.  Forcing myself to write logical algorithms only made the solution both more difficult and more efficient.  I probably spent 16 hours total writing and rewriting my solution, over a period of nearly two months.  The first version of my problem didn’t save clues, only numbers that had been filled in.  I only got the first 40 solved without saving the clues.

When discussing my solution to problem 96, I’ll be using terms from sudocue.net’s solving guide.  A grid is made up of rows, columns, boxes (collectively: houses).  A puzzle starts with givens.  Possible numbers for a square are called candidates.

The first three methods I wrote were to find all candidates, fill in naked singles, and fill in hidden singles.  The method to find all candidates eliminates the givens and other filled-in squares from the local box, the row and the column (peers).  The method to fill in naked singles fills in the square if there is only one candidate in that square.  The method to fill in hidden singles examines each house and fills a number in if it can only go in one place in that house, using squeezing and cross-hatching.

These three methods alone solved the easy/medium problems, 40 to be exact.  But still 10 remained.  I consulted with my mom heavily at this point, needing to understand what types of logic could be used to fill in other numbers in the un-solved puzzles.  With her help I wrote my fourth algorihm, which looks for naked pairs.  If two squares in a house have the same two candidates, no other square in that house can use those candidates, which can be eliminated.  This helped me solve 4 more, so I was up to 44.

After further consultation, I wrote my fifth method.  This method looks for locked candidates in a box, and eliminates that candidate from other squares in the same row or column.  I had solved two more with this method.  46!  The sixth method looks for something not completely described on the sudocue guide page.  It looks for a third type of locked candidate, where two adjacent boxes have a candidate confined to the same two lines.  Because that candidate is locked to those two lines, the third box can have the candidate only in the third line.  I was now up to 48 solved, leaving 2 difficult puzzles left.

At this point, Mom was getting frustrated and so was I.  I decided to do some Internet research to help out.  I found a technique called the x-wing, and implemented it.  It was enough to solve all 50 puzzles.  So I had solved the Project Euler problem.

While doing my research I came across a set of puzzles that have been proven to have only one solution each, but only have 17 givens.  I took ten of those and gave them to my program… it solved all but one in less than a few seconds!  I was very proud of this.  17 givens is considered the minimum amount of clues, i.e., the most difficult of puzzles.  Perhaps soon, I’ll figure out how to solve the one it did not complete.

If anyone is interested in my code, contact me with the answer to problem 96 (the sum of the first three numbers of each grid), and I’ll send my code.  Do not post the answer as a comment.  Email me, using the contact info on the left sidebar.

Recession != Depression

People have been calling these the worst economic times since the depression.  Even the president last night said so.  I took a look at the numbers, and Mr. President, you have some explaining to do.  Stop creating panic where none is due.

Current unemployment is 7.6%.  I’d like to point out that in the early eighties the unemployment rate was much higher, over 9%.  I’d like to point out that during the depression the jobless rate peaked at near 25%.

Going into the depression, domestic production was down annually 9.4% and 8.5% in 1930 and 1931 respectively.  Never have we seen numbers like that since.  In the fourth quarter of 2008, GDP was down 3.8%.  Much more dramatic numbers can be found in the early 80s: second quarter of 80 was -7.8%, first quarter of 82 was -6.4%.

So not only is this no where near the depression, it doesn’t even compare to the recession in the early 80s.

Don’t call it a depression, and don’t say it’s the worst in 60 years.  I hate hype.  And yes, hate is the right word.  25 years is the correct figure.

Other countries are suffering much worse economic conditions right now.  Some even have problems like inflation.  Some stock exchanges have lost twice the value ours has.  Count yourself lucky.  What if the little money you did have was worth 1/10 what it is now?  What if the Dow dropped below 4000?

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