MVES 3

Saturday, February 26, 2005

MVES (Multi-Variable Equation Solver) is a program that can solve any number of mathematical linear equations.

I've coded this version in about 2 hours the day before my economics final exam. Making it was really refreshing, because this version came to be much better than previous ones, and I did make it in a time am feeling my coding powers are fading.

Go download it if you have time, and please read the documentation file included in the setup package, it's really interesting!

Download Here (2.0 MB)

My Car Accidents

Saturday, February 19, 2005

I have a lovely Honda Accord 1982 Sport, and I've been driving it for long enough to take part in more than one car accident. These accidents are wonderful incidents that always happen in the most suitable time. Below is a list of the accidents I've been part of (so far) with a description of each.

  • Accident 1 : "Nothing worth mentioning"

    It happened in the first few days of the last Ramadan, it was the first day I decided to pray Salat Al Taraweeh. I was driving three guys to Masjed Al Kaloti in the Rabyeh. Just at the entrance of the car park, a cop (who's commanding traffic in the area) pointed me to drive the car in. I instantly responded and turned quickly to make a little "touch" with the back bumper of a near car. I was shocked, yet then relieved to see that the bumper of the other car was barely touched. Thought nothing happened to my car, yet later when I parked I noticed that the body was a little damaged.
    No need to say that I never prayed Salat al Taraweeh again that Ramadan.
  • Accident 2 : "Performing a drift slide at a high speed"

    I was hanging out with a group of friends at the night preceding Eid Al Feter. We were driving somewhere when, coming down an inclined street, I had to turn a corner and take some narrow street to the right at a really high speed (something around 50 Km/h), and thought I could make it together with a drift slide :D
    The car drifted a little and ran straight into the block in the middle of the street. One of the front wheels hit the block; the car then drifted and hit the back wheel with the block again. Hopefully the body wasn't even touched, but the axis, wheels, braking system and steering system were all severely damaged!
    Minutes later, I left the deformed street with clouds of dust filling the area. The scene gave the impression that whoever caused this, couldn't have possibly survived it, yet so I did.
  • Accident 3 : "Bumpers together"

    This happened just two days ago!
    I was on the main road, on the way to visit our school. A bus at the front suddenly braked, and traffic stopped. All cars managed to stop safely, yet because I had those super brakes (upgraded from accident #2, remember?) and I was driving (as usual) at high speed, I failed to stop and bumped a taxi car.
    I went down examining both cars, nothing really happened except for a small hit. Both bumpers were just as fine as before the impact. The taxi driver however claimed that the hit caused a small curvature in part of the inside body of his car.
    We called the police. The police officer, coming 10 minutes later, mocked both of us for stopping for such a small incidence. The taxi driver, however, insisted that his car was damaged and had a fight with the cop.
    So what started as a visit to the school, ended as a visit to the police department. I really enjoyed all of it, together with having my first ticket!

A Little Puzzle

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Just few days ago, I was working on some sort of a puzzle published by the chess club in our university, the puzzle was:

"How can you place 8 pawns on a chess board such that none intersect vertically, horizontally, or diagonally?"

Sitting down working on it, some friends passed by and asked for what I was doing, and knowing that it was a puzzle they immediately joined trying to get it solved.

We spent about 20 minutes trying arrangements, but none succeeded, so I decided to code a program to solve it. I left the guys with the puzzle and went to the computer lab and started making a program to solve it, yet five minutes later one of the guys called and told me he did solve it finally! I quitted the program and went to check the so-wanted solution. It was great!

One further question was to be answered: "How many different solutions do we have?".

What we thought of is that you can rotate the solution 3 times to get 4 different arrangements while still not breaking the rules, so the answer would probably be 4 possible arrangements.

Anyway, 2 days later I finished the program and started the search, the program came out with 92 different solutions!!!
That means, neglecting rotated copies of arrangements, we have 23 possible solutions for the puzzle!!

Try doing the puzzle yourself, and if you have time, download my little Chess Puzzle Solver utility (14 Kb).