Philosophy, Technology and Math

A local paper needed a web site. After two calls to set up a face-to-face meeting (and we met today for just one hour), I got all the business requirements. The same day they had their site: The Louisburg Journal. Here is the story.

Business Requirements:
They needed a server, a user management system (able to add admin, editors, authors, subscribers and readers), a content management system — a newspaper is content based! — with the ability to create dynamic articles, posts, pages, images, menus and all the rest, and a way for ads to be sold (papers generally make their core income from ads). So there was the challenge, but with two important constraints:

Constraint 1. Cost:
Small-town papers are business with budgets. How much would such a thing cost? The newspaper owner had shopped around, contacted some developers, got bids, and the prices were unreasonablly high.

Constraint 2. Speed:
The site needs to be up pretty quickly. The sooner it goes up, the sooner ad space can be sold.

Solution:
In one day they got all they wanted. They are great hearted people and friends, and they have a wonderful philosophy, so it was easy to do the work gratis — besides, one of the editors has served so many people for so long, I think they deserved a break.

How?
Easy. Here are the steps:

1. Get space on GoDaddy (this is not free, so there is some cost to this venture)
2. Use GoDaddy to get email address and a MySQL database (need that database to store the content)
3. Install WordPress as the root of the site
Note: I use Firefox’s FirtFTP to get the files up to the GoDaddy site
4. Get a Newspaper theme (installing WordPress themes is an enjoyable process, so do some shopping).

Done.

It was that easy. We then created some basic newspaper categories (WordPress runs off of Categories), and now the system is up and ready for the staff to add content. And they don’t need me. They can manage it on their own. So a bonus in all of this is that they are not tied to a development staff or a developer.

Some people use the word ‘Capitalism’ so easily, that I wonder, Do we even have a good working definition? The reason I ask is because I have a good many friends who are sincerely suspicious of the idea (often pointing to greedy people getting more money for themselves to spend on themselves…). I am starting to think I have as many friends who question the principles of Capitalism as who prefer the idea of a pure democracy over and against a Republic. So, what is Capitalism? Check out this really old video to see some pretty relevant ideas:

Does the right to bear arms amendment restrict Federal authority only, or does it also restrict States? One State argued that the 2nd amendment does not trump their local laws — the right to bear arms clause limits the Federal government, but it does not limit what they themselves can rule. I am sketching this information from reading the Supreme Court case itself. Read especially pages 1 – 2 for a sense of the case, but note pages 27-29 for some well rehearsed history facts.

What struck me was the narrow vote. The court ruling today was 5 to 4 in favor of the Federal amendments having the force of State law.
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In my previous posts on this subject, I have show how to use a 6-sided dice to create a 2-sided, a 3-sided, an 8-sided or even create a 12-sided dice. Today I will show how to use a 6-sided dice to create a 4-sided or 5-sided dice.

Turn a 6-sided dice as a 5-sided dice:
Roll the 6-sided dice, and if you roll a 6, roll again. Do this till you roll a value between 1 and 5. Pretty simple.

Turn a 6-sided dice as a 4-sided dice:
Method 1:
Roll the 6-sided dice, and if you roll a 5 or 6, roll again. Do this till you roll a value between 1 and 4. Pretty simple.

Method 2:
Roll a 6-sided dice. The top of the dice will be ignored — we care about the four sides, not the top. On the four sides there are four values. The lowest value maps to 1, the second lowest value maps to 2, the next highest value is 3 and finally, the highest of the four values is 4. Whichever is facing you is the roll (just map it to the range 1..4). Rank the side facing you among the four sides, and you have created a four sided dice from a six-sided one. Note: If a side is not facing you squarely, turn the dice to the left so that the that side is facing you squarely.

For example, let’s say you roll a 6-sided dice, and the top face showing is the 5. That means that the four sides are { 1, 3, 4, 6 } — and the value of 2 is on the bottom. Of the four sides, one is most facing you. If it is the 6 most facing you, then your answer is 4 because 6 is the 4th of the four numbers on the four sides; it is the largest of the four side values, which are: {1, 3, 4, 6}.

When did humans start sitting down for 9 hours a day to work? For thousands of years humans were hunters, gathers, farmers, carpenters, and so forth. Then the industrial age hit, and then the advanced computer technology era came, and now many of us find out that we sit all day long. And we may sense that all is normal. So please ponder with me, were humans designed to sit all day at work? An April 29, 2010 article from Bloomberg Businessweek makes the case for standing at work.

Maybe this is true: the idea of “comfortable sitting has come from the chair industry.”

Many years ago, I found that I focused better if I stood to read a book. This seems to apply to all my activities. An early Egyptian scribe famously complained of the pain of writing and the bent over sitting position. Perhaps standing would have helped! The picture here shows how I stand while writing software. This is an expensive desk — if I can call it a desk — but it pays for itself in various ways (one example being, it allows one to stand on a balance board while working).

I bought the Axis and Allies starter kit (the exact one shown here).

I wanted to play with my younger kids, but I found that the dice rolling was too time consuming and cumbersome. So I wrote a Ti-83 / Ti-84 program to manage all the vehicles and soldiers and their damage, dice and speed. That is, I took everything about each tank and soldier (as defined on their corresponding cards) and I put them into the calculator. I then put all the attack / casualty and defensive fire rules into little programs that use the data. In this way, you can play the starter game with your youngest kids. They only need to think about the objective of the game, movement and what they want to fire upon during each phase.
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I have some friends who play RISK regularly enough that they decided to write a C# program that speeds up the game for dice rolling. Just enter the number attacking and the number defending, and the laptop tells you who won. Great idea! So, I thought it would be great to write the same kind of app for a TI-84. That way, the calculator can be passed around to each player, and they can manage the dice.

I wrote this on the TI-84 Plus Silver edition, but it should work on the TI 83. I copied the code over to my computer through the USB link. I spent a few hours writing it, and I didn’t want my son to delete it as he is programming the same device — so I backed it up to my computer and I thought that other people may derive some pleasure from it. So here is the binary version. And following is the text version:

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In the past two articles, I explained deployment of a 2010 RIA application and my upgrade from Silverlight 3, VS 2008 to Silverlight 4 on VS 2010. Here is a gotcha: When you upgrade to VS 2010, you also get the latest free (Express) SQL Server 2008 — which will replace your earlier SQL Express Server 2005. In this case (in the case you had an earlier 2005 edition), you need to go back and uninstall SQL Express Server 2005 and download and reinstall SQL Express Server 2008 (that is, if you want to run the SQL Server Management Studio / Management Console — used to view your databases).

Now this all sounds very easy… but there are two steps you need to take:

1) Install Windows Power Shell (the Express SQL Server 2008 installation program requires it).

2. Manually do extra steps to uninstall SQL Express Server 2005. There is a trick you need to know about to fully uninstall the Express SQL Server 2005. And that is why I am writing. Namely, you need to remove the registry key at: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90

Hope this helps!

This is my conversion experience. I hope it is of some assistance to you — and, I must say, the link to the DOCx file is essential for your efforts.

Scenario:
I have a Silverlight 3 RIA application built with VS 2008. A few weeks ago (I think it was April 14, 2010) Microsoft released the next official version of Visual Studio (2010) and with it, .NET 4 and Silverlight 4.
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Install Visual Studio 2010 and the Silverlight 4 Tool RC2. Create a new project (Silverlight Business Application). Build the application.

Buy space on an ASP.NET 4 enabled IIS7 server (I used two providers, and it was only through Discount ASP.NET that I had success getting my new Silverlight app installed and running).

So far so good. Right?

Well, not exactly. You will get an error complaining about LocalSqlServer (this is where Fiddler — see below — helped me the most, but more on that later). I won’t explain the error, I want to explore the solution.

Using everything out of the box (as I have described here) is not sufficient. And there are two reasons: 1) Software Problem: The Web.Config file you have (which was added to your project for you) won’t work; and, 2) Server Problem: Your IIS7 server is not properly configured.

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