Food for thought from TheHuey » General Posts

How many books will fit in a box?

huey — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:03:57 +0000

Our marketing department at Chegg.com will be posing a challenge question at an event later this month. Since I know pretty much none of my readers (all 2 of them) will be there to participate, I wanted to put this question to the general public.

How many Campbell Biology textbooks (11.2″ x 9.3″ x 2″) can you fit in a cardboard box (46′ x 22′ x 9′) ?

Note: There is 1 answer, but many approximations.

I’m looking for your answer and the way you solved for the answer.

-Huey

NYT Double-click annoyance

huey — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:49:26 +0000

Dear NYT,

I thank you for making your excellent articles available for free and I get a majority of my news from you. I don’t even mind paying a bit for archived articles. However, in your eagerness to boost pageviews and revenue, you created a bastard child called altClickSearch.js. This little bugger has caused me untold grief as I like to highlight as I read, double-clicking becomes an instinctual action. I can’t deal with the pop-ups that even Firefox 3 won’t block.

As I write this, I would like to put a little more room between us. I feel smothered with your constant attention to what I highlight. My other friend Greasemonkey has shown me a wonderful relationship modifier that is allowing me to proceed with my sanity intact, appropriately called “New York Times (NYT) Sanity”.

Thanks and please keep up the excellent articles.

Sudoku, Fad or Fun?

huey — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 07:09:38 +0000

It’s been more than 2 years since the number game sudoku started spreading internationally. During that time, it has popped up in many daily publications and numerous websites have created their own dedications to the game. A subset of latin squares (or magic squares), it is logic based and purports to help sharpen one’s mind. Nintendo has used it (very successfully) to market their DS game platform [B000EGELP0]. Palm also has multiple publishers of sudoku games. My question is “How long will people play Sudoku?”

When I first found the game, it was Websudoku.com that provided an easy and addictive introduction to the game. I spent numerous free hours trying to improve my solving skills. However, after writing a javascript sudoku solver in 2006, I’ve found that only very occasionally will I even think about it anymore. Is this common? How many of you are/were addicted to sudoku?

Seems like I can’t even goto the grocery store anymore without having sudoku puzzle books taking up valuable checkout line shelf space. Unlike crossword puzzles, sudoku does not expand your vocabulary. It also doesn’t help with making word associations and re-enforce current events. Is it just the biggest productivity sapper ever created?

Well, for me anyway, it’s helped me polish up some javascript coding. I recently finished revamping my solver to allow actual game play. Still needs some more TLC and some sticky features, but some features are fairly unique to the online sudoku games. For instance, my implementation allows you to take a snapshot of your work so you can go back if it gets hopelessly messy. I should allow you to save the progress and come back, but that’s for a future release. My best Sudoku puzzle game can be found at http://www.numbercrazy.com/.

Microsoft Club Live Games Solved. Flexicon, Clink, CrossWire, and Dingbats solutions search

huey — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 23:27:30 +0000

This is a follow-up post to my last post Microsoft is desperate. After writing up a quick Anagram solver for Chicktionary, I’ve fixed up the script to handle some other games as well. Now the new GreaseMonkey script can help with Flexicon, Clink, CrossWire and Dingbats. To get the most out of them (for Club Live), you should

follow these instructions.

The Easy Way

If you are not using FireFox, or you are not running the GreaseMonkey plug-in, you can direct navigate to http://www.anagramssolved.com . The tools are all present there in the same form and function. However, you will have to switch between multiple windows if you’re trying to gather points quickly.

The Best Way

For those of you using IE, you should probably install Firefox.
. Once you install that, get GreaseMonkey, then the new script for Microsoft Club Live Helper. The script works by replacing the Live Search with http://www.anagramssolved.com/. The site makes available an Anagram Solver, and searchable solutions for Clink, CrossWire, Dingbats, and Flexicon. For the searchable solutions, you can also use the available Google Search box to search for individual clues if you’d rather solve the puzzles yourself.

Watch this demo clip of how to use it for Flexicon.

Desperate Microsoft Trying to Boost Search Volume

huey — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 00:05:29 +0000

While reading the business news on NYTimes today I noticed an appealing ad for an anagram game at Microsoft’s new club.live.com offering. After clicking over and playing their little game, I realized that they are trying to artificially boost their search volume. Most of the games are somewhat intellectual and requires some searching to come up with answers, this is fine and all, but the game Chicktionary fires off a search for every word attempt. This and the fact that they are awarding ‘points’ for the play seems to point at a desperate grab by MS to increase their daily search volume. The implied value of their points is rather high, you can get a Xbox 360 game machine for 35,000 points. Seems to peg 100 points at over $1. Games award between 10 to 20 points from what I have seen so far.

They must have just launched this because I played 1 game of Clink and actually made their high score list! Seems like the existing scores are all random inserts.

I wonder how long before this hits the news? You can find more at Microsoft is Desperate

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Rays — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 23:39:13 +0000

A year and a day to remember

huey — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 01:48:45 +0000

What a wonderful year and a day it’s been! Since June 14th, 2005, I have married a wonderful wife, learned that I will be having a baby girl this year, and found a beautiful house in a great neighborhood. Even though I haven’t quite made it yet in my career, my outlook on life has been only getting rosier. From my awesome parents, a loving wife, great relatives, and stellar friends, it’s hard to find a gripe.

As some of you may know, we entered into a contract earlier in the year to purchase a house in Santa Clara. Unknown to us at the time was that the seller had taken out a second and a third loan/loc against their equity and needed a cash infusion to close the deal. Since we were unwilling/unable to give them more money, (It was already priced at the high end of our price range) the deal fell thru (and the unsavory characters are still refusing to release our earnest money) and we had to go thru quite some hassle to secure new housing (We lost our lease and had to find a new apartment within a very short amount of time). Fortunately, we did find a very nice apartment complex (Arioso apartments) in Cupertino that appealed to both Yun and I. It’s been quite nice to be there in a new and bright environment.

So the trigger for that debacle was Yun and I learning that we were going to be parents. We were a little hasty and should have done a little more due diligence regarding the seller’s finances, but how are we supposed to know that? The good thing is that we learned and bided our time until we found the perfect house. It is an old house but the original owners (!!) took good care of it and it is in very good shape. Lots of mature bushes keep the yard quite private but I’m probably going to remove some of them for a garden.

On top everything, at 5:24 AM on my birthday, I got a gentle wake up call in the form of a magnitude 4.7 earthquake. It was 44km (28 mi) away so I only felt the bed shake a bit and the room creak. I was awake already so knew right away that it was an earthquake. Funny enough, it was the first one I’ve ever conciously felt. I’ve been thru a few 3 point quakes over the past 6 years.

So while I hope my next year will be just as exciting, I’m going to be just fine with a less eventful one.

Best wishes to everyone and hope your next year is as wonderful as mine last.

-Huey

Baby Huey is a Girl!!

Rays — Fri, 05 May 2006 03:41:29 +0000

Caved in to peer pressure

huey — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 20:09:51 +0000

Due to the overwhelming popularity of blogs and the need to maintain some history, I’ve caved in to the pressure and am starting this blog.

Initial categories are just current events that I feel deserve their own categories.Ã‚Â Those will most likely change.Ã‚Â One other thing I will be adding will be a coding section for fun and new things on the web.

Please feel free to register and visit us weekly.

-Huey