Sudoku FUCK YEAH!

Posted on 2007-11-28 by Nigel VH

Allright, so maybe I’m a little excited. So what. Thats what you get when I’ve just finished creating a php page that solves simple sudoku puzzles. Also I’ve been listening to the Team America : World Police soundtrack. Maybe that has something to do with it. But, By any means, I’m pretty proud of my puzzle solver! Check it out on the projects page. Also, you’ll notice a new link in the nav bar for a Webcam. Yes, I’ve added a webcam page for a camera that is updated every 5 seconds and looks out my dorm room window. Hope it might be mildly entertaining! Sudoku Solve On!

EDIT 2011-12-07: Sudoku solver and webcam are no longer available. Sorry!

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Sudoku

Posted on 2007-11-19 by Nigel VH

You ever like to solve Sudoku puzzles, but they just take too damn long!? Well, I’ve nearly got the solution for you! Yes, in fact I am presently working on a php based, logic based sudoku puzzle solver.

After several hours of coding I have the input system, and the possibilities system. That means, you can put in the starting numbers, and the page will feed back all the possible numbers for each space. Which is half the battle. Now, all that is really left is to make the system compare each possible value of each box with the other possible values of the other boxes and whence finding a value that is unique in it’s relative location, moving that possible value to a defined value, and restarting the process by finding the new possible values including the updated defined values.

Yes, thats all there is to it! Then I need to figure out a way to stop the program when it finishes. That will come later though, who really wants the program to stop anyways?

It isn’t presently at a stage appropriate for public viewing, but I think I should have something soon!

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Creativity at it’s finest!

Posted on 2007-11-05 by Nigel VH

So, there I was, sitting in Comparative Literature watching a dumb movie from like 1921 or something and I get the brilliant idea to start a sentence by sentence story with my friend sitting next to me. Here it is, brought to life by the wonders of the interweb!

The Man, The Amoeba, The References

Once upon a time there was a small cottage in in this cottage lived a man. In this man, there lived a very small, very self-concious yet intelligent amoeba. Being very self-conscious and intelligent she concerned herself greatly with her health and thus the man’s health. Unfortunately, his health had been failing these days, what with all the pollution about. Pollution always got the man depressed and as such he began to eat worse and worse as well. That is until he met the amoeba’s third cousin twice removed – a red haired potato salesman from Norther Idaho by the name of Richard Lucas.

The man and Richard became good friends. Soon Richard invited him to have dinner. What the man didn’t know was that Richard really planned to kill him with a deadly neuro-toxin. As they sat down to eat, the amoeba suddenly got a strange tingle – maybe it was intuition, or the hack saw on the wall behind them, but something told her something was very wrong. Since she didn’t have a gut, she normally didn’t follow it’s advice, but she did this time none the less and got all of her amoeba friends together and told them to be on the lookout for anything suspicious. At the first sign of danger, just as Richard was serving the soup laced with neuro-toxins, the amoebas leapt into action – and promptly died due to exposure to open air and the sudden drop in temperature.

Our friend the man, was suddenly unprotected from the coming danger! Or was he? Unbeknownst to the man or Richard, he had been bombarded by alpha particles as a child while playing near a nuclear power plant and had thus mutated to the point where Richard’s neuro-toxin was rendered ineffective. In fact, when combined with his genetic mutations, the neuro-toxin enhanced the man’s hearing – suddenly, he could hear the shrill, rasping final words of his amoeba friend: “Richard, you bastard!” she cried, “You’ve killed me!”

At first not understanding where the shrill voice had come from he sat for a moment confused and trying to figure out what was going on. Then he realized the truth, and quickly leapt for the window to escape – realizing belatedly that he was on the tenth floor. Plummeting to his doom he fell, faster and faster! 9…8…7…6…5…4…3… He could imagine the painful “Splat!” that lay before him when suddenly he was distracted by the one-breasted prostitute “taking a leak” in the alley.

Yes! He had forgotten about gravity and thus gravity forgot about him! He was flying! Suddenly, a lawyer with a briefcase appeared before him, shaking his head. “Mr. Man,” he said, “I’m afraid that you have violated copyright laws. Mr. Adams is pressing charges.” “Do you think that I could speak to him about this? I seem to have developed the most curious genetic mutation. It might go over well in a new book!?” Stated the man. “By the way, how did you get here so fast anyways?” Quickly the lawyer replied, “The magic of Murphy’s Law. Us bearers of bad new operate on it, you know.” Thinking for a moment, the man thoughtfully said back, “Didn’t Mr. Adams also write about the power of bad news? Therefore you should go press charges on yourself!” “Oh dear,” said the lawyer, “I hadn’t thought of that!” and he promptly vanished in a puff of logic.

Just then the pen suffered a fatal heart attack – and the ridiculous story was no more.

Fin.

Enjoy!

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Portal & TF2

Posted on 2007-10-10 by Nigel VH

Well, Once again, I have returned, and this time I am victorious. Today “The Orange Box” was released. It’s a video-game combo pack that includes some pretty cool stuff. I pre-ordered this pack a while ago, and the games have just been released today. Two that I am by far most interested in are “Portal” and “Team Fortress 2.” I’ll lay out the basic concepts of both, so don’t worry if you’ve never heard of them. If you have and feel like you need to explanation on the concept of these two gems, then please feel free to skip this next paragraph.

So, I’ll start with Portal. Portal is a game based on the principal that you have a gun, but instead of firing bullets, it fires a portal through physical space. You fire one portal, and then another to complete the circuit. You may enter one, and exit the other. This allows you to do any number of various craaaazy things. For instance if you created a portal in the ceiling directly above you, and one in the floor directly below you, you could theoretically “fall” indefinitely through the room you were previously standing in. Another instance is say that you have an object that you need, but have no way to reach it. Simply place a portal under the object and another in a wall near you, your desired object will fall out of the wall in an easily accessible location. Based on this principal Portal is a puzzle game in that you have to do any one of a number of things to get yourself/object through the course. Remember that the rules of gravity and momentum still apply. So, the speed and relative direction you have entering a portal is equivalent to the relative speed and direction you have coming out of the other portal. By this means you can reach previously unattainable heights and distances by placing a portal for instance at the bottom of a tall ledge, and one facing the direction you want to travel, then by merely falling into the portal at the bottom of the ledge your momentum is maintained through the other side, and carries to you interesting new places. Thats the gist of Portal. TF2 is altogether a much simpler affair in that it is simply a multi-player team based shoot-em-up. With a twist of sorts. Most games allow you to be one team or the other. Most games allow a variation of weapons. TF2 allows you to be different parts of a team, for instance, a sniper, a demolitions guy, a spy, a scout, a medic, etc. This adds an enormously interesting dynamic to the game by bringing all these skills together. It also allows players who aren’t good at conventional shoot-em-ups to excel in a style of their choosing! And that my friends is Portal and TF2.

Now, As I said, today was the day they released this barrage of magnificent gaming experience, and I being a dedicated gamer, and having pre-ordered the games, sat down this afternoon after classes ended at 3:30 and played to my heart’s content. I played and I played. Then I played some more. Stopping for a short time around 6 or so to get food. Then continuing this barrage of graphic godliness until about 9 when I had finished Portal, Yes, I finished the game on the first day it came out. Then, I spent a bit of time tinkering with TF2. What I am waiting for is when I get together with the rest of the gang. Because then is when TF2 will shine. It was originally and still is a magnificent LAN party game. I am waiting for that to really judge TF2.

Well, Dazed, Confused, Hungry, Slightly Dizzy, but most of all Pleased,

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How to attach an LCD to your computer case. A DigitalNigel.com production.

Posted on 2007-09-11 by Nigel VH

Ever dreamed of having the ultimate portable system? Now you can! Take your standard pc, add an LCD screen, there you go! Here are the steps.

Step 1. Acquire an LCD panel. Make sure that it runs on either 12 or 5 volts, and that it doesn’t need more than, I dunno, say 6 Amps. Mine was listed at 4.45 Amps, and seems to run fine. Also, make sure you don’t care deeply about this screen, there is a chance you may break it. I got mine for free at a yard sale.

Step 2. Remove all the casing from the screen. There should be a bunch of needless plastic casing on your screen. Take it off. LCDs like to be naked just as much as you do. Make sure to keep the metal mounting hardware though, it may come in handy later. Also, be sure it is unplugged. Don’t be stupid. These screens carry high voltages, no matter how low the input is.

Step 3. Solder some wire to the power input of the screen. Either that or use the cable that came with it. By any means, you need to get a molex power connector so that you can power the screen off the system PSU. MAKE SURE YOU GET THE RIGHT POLARITY AND THE RIGHT WIRES IN THE RIGHT PLACES! You can fry your whole damn setup if you aren’t careful here.

Step 4. Organize and glue all the circuit boards to the back of the screen, I used hot glue. Make sure that none of the contacts on the boards touch the screen casing. It could short out.

Step 5. Now a trip to your local hardware store. I recommend actually taking the screen and the case panel to the store so you can see just what nuts, bolts and washers will be required to mount the screen securely to the case, while still leaving breathing space between the case and the circuit boards on the back of the screen. Make sure you have the proper tools for attachment. You may need a drill, screwdrivers, tin snips, and possibly a variety of other tools, but I only needed, some pliers, a drill, tin snips, soldering iron, hot glue gun.

Step 6. Frankenstein time! Start attaching the screen to the panel with the hardware you got. Once it is all attached, go ahead and try to fit it to the case. The bolts on mine conflicted with some needless extra metal in my case, so I had to cut that out. Once that was done, it slid on quite nicely.

Step 7. Hook up the power and the video input. Make sure you got all the connections right. Make sure nothing is shorting out on anything else.

Step 8. Cross your fingers, cover your genetailia, and hit the system power button. If you’re lucky, IF YOU’RE LUCKY! It won’t explode in a fireball of screaming death. If it does, at least you protected your naughty bits. Anyways, Hopefully, the screen has powered on, the system is booting, and you have a beautiful new addition to your case that even you in your hopeless meaningless shitty existence can be proud of.

Step 9. Post the pictures somewhere! Hey, you gotta show off your masterpiece somehow. The internet is a good place to start. After all, that’s what I’m doing!

Here’s my page o’ pics!

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