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++ ATOT official NEF thread part IV ++

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M

MotF Bane

No Lifer
Dec 22, 2006
60,801
10
0
I don't have an archive of it anymore, that has been lost to the ravages of time, but I think it was closer to 8500.

After about a year of letting that beast continue, I pulled it back into Windows, and over the span of a vacation week, tore it apart, and rebuilt it. MATH emerged in its final version, dated to November 11, 2003, v1.1. It was locked for editing, so nobody could see what was under the hood. Only I and a handful of others got a copy of MATH2, the unlocked edition.

Among those ended up being two guys who took calculators further than me. I once tried to clone XSnake4 manually, just to teach myself the idea of calculator games, but the program design concepts evaded me. Neither of them managed to improve upon MATH, nor did they have my troubleshooting skill.

Anyways, MATH was 6126 bytes. The program lost nearly 30% of its size just by retyping some messy code, and reorganizing things. Before, it grew organically, pieces appended on the end. Now it was a single logical build, menus at the front, sub subscripts trailing in order of their display. Just this made an enormous difference to the program size.
 
M

MotF Bane

No Lifer
Dec 22, 2006
60,801
10
0
The TI-84+ silver edition was released, and I became a clearinghouse for games. A couple people, names that I never got, downloaded games from the Web, and released them into the school. Everybody who asked me for calculator help, I pillaged their calc for files I didn't have.

And "help" meant giving them MATH, clearing up memory space, figuring out why a graph didn't work, explaining how to do something, or fixing any myriad errors. I could fix anything short of hardware failure, and I never saw a hardware failure.

But it meant ultimately I gathered a staggering collection of games. I wiped out my silver's vast factory set of applications, and still have used much of the memory, just to hold games. I probably have forty levels for Mario. I even made my own.
 
M

MotF Bane

No Lifer
Dec 22, 2006
60,801
10
0
And then at the end of sophomore year, someone asked to borrow it, I lent it out... and it never returned.

Well, except, it did, but more on that in a minute.

I searched my house high and low. It wasn't there. The borrower claimed he gave it to a friend of mine to give to me. That friend said no, I believed him, and bugged the borrower about it.

He turned out to be a good man about it, and a week later, handed me a brand-new 84 silver. The loss of the content bothered me far more than the loss of the physical calculator, and I never returned to the games, and never returned to building programs. I got MATH back from someone, and that was the end.

Well, somehow, that calculator ended up in my attic. I have no idea how it ever got back to my house, nor up into the attic.

If I ever see that guy again, which is unlikely, I owe him $120.
 
M

MotF Bane

No Lifer
Dec 22, 2006
60,801
10
0
This makes me want to get into C now.

It's surprised me, and a lot of people I know, that I never got into programming.
 
M

MotF Bane

No Lifer
Dec 22, 2006
60,801
10
0
I had three problems with getting into programming.

1) I needed a worked sample. A program, something bigger than Hello World, listed in detail as to how and why it worked.
2) I needed a target. A goal, something to make, something reasonable, something to see a visual result at the end.
3) The biggest stopping point, I needed an environment. Something I could code in safely, and execute programs within.
 
M

MotF Bane

No Lifer
Dec 22, 2006
60,801
10
0
Well, if I truly have lost calculus and circuits this semester, I shall set forth three goals:

1) Continue with the every other day workout sequence
2) Clean my room and workshop
3) Learn C
 
Locut0s

Locut0s

Lifer
Nov 28, 2001
22,205
44
91
MotF Bane said:
Well, if I truly have lost calculus and circuits this semester, I shall set forth three goals:

1) Continue with the every other day workout sequence
2) Clean my room and workshop
3) Learn C
Click to expand...

Learn an Object Oriented programming language!
 
M

MotF Bane

No Lifer
Dec 22, 2006
60,801
10
0
Ooo, this is a fun problem.

he 2+ ions moving north at 2e6 m/s, at a density of 2.8e12 per m^3.
in the same space, (o2)- ions moving south at 6.2e6 m/s, density 7e11 per m^3.
what's the current density charge and direction

Very interesting, although the book doesn't say how to add charged vectors like that.
 
M

MotF Bane

No Lifer
Dec 22, 2006
60,801
10
0
Trying to find comparisons of the Xi2 versus WS-50.

The WS-50 is something like 4-6 years old, the Xi2 is only 0-2 years old.
 
M

MotF Bane

No Lifer
Dec 22, 2006
60,801
10
0
I suspect the Xi3 will come out next year, but I need snows this year. Similarly, Conti EWC's will come back in stock, but I need snows before then. So really, it's WS-70 versus Xi2.

My previous tires are WS-50's, so I'm looking to see if Xi2's can exceed the WS-50's in all aspects. If they do, then I'm okay with it, because I've survived fine with WS-50's, but the Xi2's are better for dry road, which is honestly the majority of winter.

The WS-70 has better snow ability, a bit better ice. Everything else is totally secondary in their design. Noise, dry, rain, slush, treadwear... nothing matters to Bridgestone on the WS series design.

The Xi2 is a more balanced solution.
 
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