158 karma · joined October 20, 2009
Warning: Even speed-reading that post was painful.
It is trivial to write a program to generate word search puzzles, so I decided to make the problem more interesting by adding a difficulty parameter. I could generate puzzles with a range of difficulty by varying the following factors:
* direction -- more difficult puzzles have answers in diagonal and/or reverse directions
* density -- more difficult puzzles do not necessarily have the answers uniformly distributed in the grid but can have dense groupings
* dummy words -- since some students search for any words in the grid, you can fill it with words that are not actually target words to make the task more difficult
* decoys -- you can fill the grid with slight deviations of target words in order to make finding the actual target more difficult
Have a great time, and I will be looking forward to the next one!
I received some information about their idea via the Tokyo Linux Users Group mailing list. You can read the email here: http://lists.tlug.jp/ML/1103/msg00288.html
EDIT: Uh, the page is not rendering well... Here is the relevant info: "Tokyo hackerspace has now come up with a plan for how we are going to help the earthquake victims. In the short term we will be focusing on three areas: light, communications and the mental health of children. Here are three practical examples; we will be making solar-power lanterns and chargers, as well as creating communications networks and providing coloring books for kids. We need donations, publicity and expertise."
Basically, areas are assigned to one of five groups, and the electric company announces when each group will be without power. A given group may be without power for one or two ~3-hour periods between 6:20am and 10:00pm. The schedule is rotated for fairness, as power outages have significant impact on business. Note that south/west Japan is not part of this because they use 60hz AC while north/east Japan uses 50hz AC and the technology to convert on a large scale is not in place.
The power outage schedule has been a bit frustrating, but we cannot really complain when we think of the larger context and the extreme difficulties that people are going through in other parts of Japan. The electric company said that they would post the schedule for a given day by 18:00 of the day before, but I have yet to see that happen. The schedule often changes, and this afternoon was my second time to wait for a power outage that did not come. Japan uses loudspeakers to give out current information, but I live in between two loudspeakers and am unable to make much sense of either one, particularly with the echoes. When the power did not go out this afternoon, I checked the electric company website again and see that it was updated; my power is now scheduled to be out from 3:20pm to 7:00pm. A chart on a recent newspaper article looks like a sane schedule, and I hope they stick with it! http://mainichi.jp/select/weathernews/20110311/news/20110316...
I have not been to downtown Tokyo lately myself, but stories from friends indicate that the atmosphere is very different there as well, despite the fact that they always have power. I would love to go check it out myself, but I refrain from doing so in fear that it may difficult to return home if something happens while I am out. (I was returning from Tokyo on Friday afternoon and enjoyed a long hike home then, after being evacuated from a train.)
Thank you very much for your wishes. Personally, I was very close to the epicenter of a M7.0 earthquake years ago, and with that experience behind me, I remain quite calm and unworried. I quit my job last year and am bootstrapping a lean startup, so I am working at home and do not even need to worry about commuting. :)
Japan is a relatively small country, but the current atmosphere is considerably different in different locations. My experience near Tokyo has been quite interesting, but it is nothing compared to the disaster that has unfolded north of here. For those close to the big earthquake and tsunami, life has been completely changed if they are lucky enough that it was not ended.
Life is nowhere near back to normal where I live. It is surreal: with trains stopped and few cars on the road, the neighborhood has become very quiet, with the exception of public announcements through loudspeakers and "incoming quake" alerts through mobile phones. The rolling blackouts are likely a significant factor of the atmosphere. Some train lines in my area were stopped completely while others are only stopped when the power is out. The queues of people for trains have been very long, so it is difficult to commute. As a result, most stores in my area are completely closed. Some stores open when electricity is on, but many shelves are empty of goods that are in demand. Other stores have special security to allow small groups of shoppers (at a time) through a fence into the entranceway in order to purchase in-demand goods, while entrance to the actual store is blocked. Most apartments require power to pump water, so our water goes out as well when the power is off. With strong earthquakes continuing to roll in and blackouts scheduled for some time, I do not know how long it will take for things to return to normal here.
I do not have direct experience of what it is like where patio11 is at, but without the rolling blackouts, I am sure that the atmosphere is very different.
I have more that I would like to say, but this comment is long enough already, and my power is scheduled to turn off in five minutes.
Many global corporations with country-specific sites use different domains for each site and make their primary domain (usually www.companyname.com) a gateway where customers can choose their desired country and language. Each country is handled through a specific domain, and multiple languages (when applicable) are often implemented via URL/GET or cookie selection.
Yes, managing many domains is a hassle. The primary reason to choose such a method is recognition in specific locales. For example, .co.jp domains are only available to registered KK companies in Japan (the Japanese equivalent of a C-Corp), so such a domain is very familiar in Japan and give users a sense of added trust. Whether to go with such domain names or not really depends on your business.
If you need to put each site on a different domain (for some reason that you have not specified) but do not want the hassle of managing many domains, then you could consider subdomains: fi.companyname.com is the Finish site and www.compnayname.com is the gateway.
When using "functional" in a discrete sense, I consider a language functional if it (1) encourages programming with higher-order functions and recursion and (2) provides library functions that are pure.
Ruby and Python, for example, do indeed support functional concepts (first-class and higher-order functions, etc.), but I would not consider them functional because their standard libraries rely on side-effects and iteration.
As for English resources, this page has quite a bit of information: http://www.gdrc.org/ngo/japan-ngo.html
That page contains a list of information centers that you may have luck with. You can find an older yet more complete list of information centers (with icons to indicate which ones can speak English) here: http://www.jnpoc.ne.jp/English/library/localnpocenter/index....
The Destinos videos kept that Spanish course interesting for me, but I tend to learn better by doing than just observing. The most useful language course that I have ever taken was an advanced Spanish translation course that I took in a university in Japan. The course was conducted in Japanese, and every student translated a novel from Spanish to Japanese. The Spanish was easy for me, but that course advanced my Japanese more than any other.
I bet that the cost of producing high quality video is quite high, so that is indeed probably one of the primary reasons that such material is rare.
I recall there being some videos produced by language podcasts (including JapanesePod101, if I remember correctly), if you look for them.
_An Introduction to Database Systems_ (8th Ed.) By C. J. Date http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Database-Systems-8th/dp/0...
The system is text-based with an editor built into the GUI. The downside is that installing it means pulling a number of KDE dependencies as well...
It sounds like the business in question is English speaking, so here are links to two foreigner-owned hosting services that have English sales/support: http://tsukaeru.net/en/ http://www.advantage24.co.jp/
There are a number of payment services as well: http://www.google.co.jp/search?hl=en&q=クレジットカード決済代行
Some provide convenience store payment options (コンビニ決済) such as this one: http://www.pluscome.net/card/jpayment.htm I have never used them, but I have used these two: http://www.cardservice.co.jp/ http://www.cybersource.co.jp/
Note that PayPal is also relatively popular among foreign entrepreneurs here in Tokyo as well.
Instead of having to store a number to regenerate your card, the card is (re)generated from a "master" password that you can memorize and never write down. You do not even need to print out your card, as you can generate your card online at any time.
I have a friend who uses this service; he has a complicated "master" password and simply uses the site domain ("news.ycombinator.com" for example) for the second field in order to generate the password to use on each site (HN).
For those who have personal policies of regularly changing passwords, just regularly change your "master" password and be sure to update your passwords on all affected sites (keeping your second field the same).
The cover price is 314 JPY, though Amazon.co.jp unfortunately sells it for more.
In the back, there is a FAQ, including this:
Q. なにを血迷ってこんな本を作ったんですか？ A. そんなふうに思う人はこの本を買わないと思います。
Which loosely translates to:
Q. Why the %&$# did you write this book? A. I don't think somebody who thinks that way would buy it.
:)