Original Thought

Can someone have two default browsers on one operating system?
I wonder......that would be nice to click the browser icon and have it pick randomly whether to start Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. That's what i wanna learn how to do.

You Da Winnah!

9th week of classes, and I'm gonna get screwed. Urg this is getting me bummed.

Btw, last week I found out that I won the GameInformer sweepstakes grad prize. Here's what i won:
I'm much too lazy to save and edit the image, so i'll let it be crazy till i feel motivated to edit it to scale.

So that's good.

Hw time now

What's on my Phone

Since I last posted, I've actually paid for a few iPhone apps.
Here's a list of notable apps that I use a lot on my iPhone.

Facebook - I like the new 3.0 update, can't wait for push notifications (actually would like push notifications on a lot more applications but since I can't say how long it takes to edit/develop an app with push and the service only came out.....like less than 6 months ago, not complaining). Quality app, use it every day, big improvements over the last version. (Free)

Tweetie - Just purchased Tweetie 2.0 and feel it is a wonderfully polished and easy to use application, well worth the money.

Canabalt - Great game, also worth the money. Could use a quick-pause tho, and maybe a small amount of backstory to it (What are the crazy things that fall down right before I run into them? I don't like those things. Are they bits of alien robots?)

Sketchbook Mobile - Just grabbed this last night. Makes me want to sit somewhere quiet and just doodle or actually sketch something. Improve my artist talents or something. Hawk drew an awesome pic on this when he was bored and i wish i could do something that cool.

Minigore - Don't play this as much, but really really nice graphics and, again, wish I had a backstory or something.

Snapture - I honestly think that this was kinda a wasted purchase, as the zoom doesn't zoom just screws with the resolution a bit to make crappy photos. Cool features, just not a default Camera app replacement. I am giving it a try tho.

Ocarina - Smule is a neat company that makes some really high quality apps (like AutoTuning "I am T-Pain") and the Ocarina is one of them. Finally got the hang of playing kinda well, still want to print out some sheet music and try to memorize something (there needs to be more music out there to play for it)

some QuickThoughts -----

Dropbox - GREAT!!! Although small errors in reading some (SOME) .txt files, so i have to save some important documents in .rtf for some reason. I love having access to important files quickly and on my phone is pretty nifty too. Great app

The Weather Channel - Just replaced the default Weather app as my front page weather informer

Shazam - Haven't gotten a chance to use this since driving in the summer. Maybe when i go home next week and am taking the car out a bit. I miss my radio stations (country sucks)!

Rope 'n' Fly Lite - Great game (thanks to Ben at work for introducing Lucy and me to it and causing us to waste a lot of time) and maybe I'll buy the full version. High score = something like 784.4 ft. Go Go Spiderman!!!

Love Discovered

As I've been working through first semester, I've discovered two new passions.

The first is Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.
This game makes me remember that Naughty Dog is an amazing studio and I love every single one of their games. Uncharted is one of my favorite games of all time, and definitely my favorite for the PS3 (Honestly, I only have Bioshock and Motorstorm, and one scares me and the other is just too sparse on features). Looking forward to Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, but will wait till the price drops.

The second thing I've found a love for is NCIS. Watching through from the beginning, and it's really really good. Which is weird cuz my grandpa (whom everybody compares me to) always watched JAG. Huh.

fuelEfficiency.py, v 2.0

I'm a teaching assistant in the ComputerScience&SoftwareEngineering (CSSE) department at my college (Rose-Hulman) and since I only started this quarter without previous TA experience, I get the late-night Monday slot from 9 till 11. Thusly, I don't get a lot of visitors. But yesterday evening, I got two groups of freshmen come in and ask for help on the same programs. I was actually excited and happy to discover that I was able to help them quite well; It felt really good to assist them in their learning. Anyway, the program that I helped them create was a piece of Python code that collects user data on the odometer readings and gas spent over successive legs of a car trip. It spits out the MilesPerGallon per leg and the average mpg over the whole trip.

Anyway, this was worrisome to me because that was one program that I had difficulty getting right, because I stubbornly wanted to get it perfect. Ended up being 300 lines of code, with documentation. Now, due to my further experience with code and helping the freshmen with the same program, I felt I could take another shot at the fuel efficiency code and get it more perfect and more efficient. So here is my fuelEfficiency.py program, v 2.0 ----

# fuelEfficiency.py
# by Douglas Selby, on 9-29-09
# Program will compute the fuel efficiency of a multi-leg journey
# First prompt for starting odometer reading (distance, in miles)
# Get information about series of legs
# For each leg:
# User enters current odometer reading and amount of gas used
# User signals end of the trip with a blank line
# Returns out miles per gallon for each leg and total miles per gallon for whole trip


## ----Start converting program components of main definitions---- ##

# Asks for what the odometer reading is for the current leg
def ask():
data = raw_input("What is the odometer reading (miles) and the gas that has been used (gallons)? Seperate with a space. ")
return data

# calls ask, only called if user inputted data incorrectly
def askAgain():
print "The information that you entered was incorrect. Please try again.\n"
data = ask()
return data

# Converts string 'number' into an integer value
def efloat(number):
number = eval(number)
number = float(number)
# print type(number)
# number is now 'float'
return number

## ----End sub-program components of main---- ##


## ----Start main definition---- ##

def main():

# Initialization
blankline = ""
data = ""
oList = []
mpgList = []
sumGas = 0
odom = 0
gas = 0
leg = 0

# Spacer to recognize program start
print "-- Trip start --\n"
# Prompt for starting odometer reading (starto)
odom = raw_input("What is the starting odometer reading (miles)? ")
# If user does not enter a value, prompts again
while odom == blankline:
odom = raw_input("You must enter a starting odometer reading: ")
# If user enters an invalid entry (any negative number), prompts again
while odom < "0":
print "Your odometer cannot have a negative setting."
odom = raw_input("Please check that you are not driving a future or alien vehicle and re-enter the starting odometer reading: ")

# Convert odom to an float value
odom = efloat(odom)
oList.append(odom)
# Start leg 1 prompt (leg 1 only required leg)
print "\n-- First Leg (or final destination) --"
data = ask()

while data != blankline:
leg += 1
temp = data.split()
while len(temp) != 2:
data = askAgain()
temp = data.split()
odom = temp[0]
gas = temp[1]
odom = efloat(odom)
gas = efloat(gas)
oList.append(odom)
sumGas += gas
mpg = (odom - oList[leg-1]) / gas
mpgList.append(mpg)
print "\n-- Next Leg (or final destination) --"
data = ask()

# Spacer to recognize program start
print "-- Trip end -\n"
if leg != 0:
# Get total average mpg
fmpg = (oList[leg-1]-oList[0])/sumGas
# Print final answers
print "-- Final fuel efficiency results (in miles per gallon, or mpg) --\n"
for i in range(leg):
print "Leg %0d - %0.2f mpg\n" % (i+1, mpgList[i])
print "The fuel efficiency for the entire trip is %0.2f mpg" % (fmpg)
else:
print "No leg data was entered; did you go anywhere? Restart the program when you actually want to track your journey mileage."

## ----End main definition---- ##


## ----Start program---- ##

## ----Run main function run---- ##
main()
## ----End main function run---- ##

## ----End program---- ##

Finals, Day 1

Took Software 220 exam early, thought it went pretty well. Probably got some of the more abstract bigO stuff wrong but whatever.

Took Western Civ exam, think i need a new right hand.

i don't pay for iPhone apps. I have yet to find a 100% quality app for it besides:

• Remote


• Facebook


• TwitterFon


• Mint.com


• The Weather Channel


• ICanHazCheezburger

so yeah

Standard Deviation of the Mean, v 1.0

A week ago, I was writing a physics lab and had to calculate Standard Deviation of the Mean for like 5 different sets of 7 data points, so I was feeling lazy. So i probably took more time in doing it, but I coded up a standardDeviation.py file to do it for me. here's version 1 right now ----

# Standard Deviation of the Mean calculator
# Created 5.17.2009, by Douglas W. Selby (selby.douglas@gmail.com)
# Version 1.0

from math import *
def main():
n = input("How many entries? ")
i = 1
average = 0
entryList = []
while(i<=n):
entry = input("entry? ")
entryList.append(entry)
print entryList
average = average + entry
i = i+1

average = average/n
i=0
sum = 0
while(i<=n-1):
sum = sum + (entryList[i]-average)**2
i = i+1

deviation = sqrt(sum/(n-1))
print "Standard Deviation of the Mean = ", deviation

main()

Better Days Ahead

Finals coming up next week. This is my last week to spend with Mees, which makes me sad. It also throws into sharp relief my lack of exercising or quality time with the hall, and my big lack of close close friends whom I can depend on (save a few, gf included). I'll have to make it count.

I have also run out of water and all manner of beverages. :(

Went camping last night. Steak, eggs for breakfast (i'm not that good at it yet), boat rides out on the water (got better at paddling), laser shows at night, losing baseballs in the lake, fireside jokes.
First time I've been camping. was very very fun.

Um......going home in...6 days.. wow.
Work starts on Monday after. yay (hahaha)

Been playing more TeamFortress2 lately, having an okay time. I kinda like the way they've been working in getting the items. Since i'm not an achievement hog, I think this is good.

Rose-Hulman Flickr group has been kinda cool. I was the first major contributor, but my pics are not nearly as good as some of the others.

Prob should be studying.
i think i'll go do that now.

A long while

Sitting in math class, not very interested. My teacher, I do not like.
I did find a good deal for a hard drive for my gf (here), and we're planning on ordering it soon. I'm planning on chipping in as a bday present.

I have plans to build a computer, and did some research on what parts to buy or at least what process I should go through. But recently, after typing a good chunk of my Western Civ paper (Iron Men: A Comparison of the Composition of a Superior Military Force in the Hellenic and Roman World) on a Mac, I was thinking that i would be able to get a quality/speedy system which a good storage solution with a Mac desktop. But then I would miss out on a killer hard-drive with a good graphics card, plus the experience and pleasure of completing the project myself. I would probably install the Windows 7 Release Client on my build, so there's the inevitable debate over which operating system (Apple or Microsoft) I would rather have on my desktop comp.

I've been on slow internet for a week. I am checking my internet data usage twice daily and recording it in a spreadsheet.

My sister called me today (while I was in the middle of an intense Diff.Eq. hw to be turned in within an hour) and was upset cuz she was fighting with my dad and she kinda yelled at me for a couple seconds before I hung up. Nice to know everything is okay at home.
I feel bad. Kinda.

Other than that....it's 8th week, so I only have a little more time here for freshman year. I am trying to finalize my rooming solution. Tony is an awesome guy, but apparently we're going to have to share a 2-rooom suite with 100% biggest creep in the world and whomever he chose to live with. Wonderful. I think I'm going to have to lock the door every minute of every day.

Finals again

Yeah, i have finals again. Not too worried about Logic and Software (which is just gonna be like any other of the exams we've had), but Physics and Calc are going to be hard. And I'm pretty sure I have those first so yeah. Study overload.

Maura is getting a C in calc, so I am happy she doesn't have to retake it.
Software is fun sometimes, but a real *jerk in other situations
The CSSE lab is almost my favorite place on campus.

Been hanging at the library at times this semester. I always grab a window seat. And I think I can predict what the lobby people of Mees will be playing based on what video game tournaments are approaching.

Will update later on how studying is going.

Musical Inspiration

Okay, here's a little artsy thing i thought of.

I like listening to the music during the credits at the ends of movies.

That is all.