The "How Was Your Day?" Thread

[saldite]

An uninterruptible power supply (UPS), also known as a continuous power supply (CPS) or a battery backup is a device which maintains a continuous supply of electric power to connected equipment by supplying power from a separate source when utility power is not available.

It differs from an auxiliary power supply or standby generator, which does not provide instant protection from a momentary power interruption. A UPS, however, can be used to provide uninterrupted power to equipment for 1–20 minutes until a generator can be turned on or utility power is restored.

Integrated systems that have UPS and standby generator components are often referred to as emergency power systems.

[Mikero]

Worked today in the office. Went by quick. Ontario has a lot of area codes.

I just finished drawing my MM Meme, and a Random MMM Comic. But I'm deciding if I want to go to colour, because that will take a looong time.

[ASR]

Don't colour.

Color.

If you do it with the "U", you're just mucking things up.

[Mikero]

You mean doing it right.

That's the thing with you "Americans". Always taking the easy way out!

HARD WORK. FAIR PLAY.

[ASR]

Eh?

[Vinchenz Rock]

Today has been pretty fun. After the boring Communications class, my friends and I got together and ate some supper. Residence food ain't so bad.

Then we went to Jon's room (yeah, I don't expect you to know who he is) and played some Geometry Wars. Good stuff.

Now I'm just relaxing in my room... playing some Monster Hunter Freedom 2...

[Chron]

You mean doing it right.

That's the thing with you "Americans". Always taking the easy way out!

HARD WORK. FAIR PLAY.

EFFICIENCY. FUN PLAY.

[Mikero]

DEFICIT. CHILD OBESITY. MASS YOUTH APATHY. NEW RECESSION. A STARBUCKS ON EVERY CORNER.

DRIVE-THRU.

And don't even get me started on the fact it's spelled drive-"thru".

[Chron]

MILK IN BAGS.
uhh...
...

... OK.
My country sucks.
Not going to lie.

[NovaMan XP]

I'm actually amazed it's Drive-"thru".

[Chron]

I barf every time I drive by one.

[Mikero]

Canada's not much, if at all, better. Well a bit, I guess. We just sort of... try to learn from you guys. We're still making the same mistakes, but making them the right way. Again, I guess.

This reminds me of something unrelated. Today I was thinking about pre-technology civilizations. How pissed are they gonna be when they get the internet and all the domain names are taken?

[Johncarllos]

That's actually hilarious.

[Chron]

The internet will probably have moved up to UTF-8 and an new web standard or two by then, so no... not all of the domain names will be taken up. We already use IPv6 most of the time now.

It has 3.4×10³⁸ available addresses, and all of the root servers use it (to my knowledge).

For reference there are only about 6.5×10⁹ people on Earth today.

[Mikero]

Yeah, and as new areas get internet there'll be new country/continent-specific adresses.

I just thought of it because I was looking through Ontario township websites at work at one was something like township.com (can't find it now) and I thought "They have the brass to actually claim domain over the name 'township' as if they're the only one in the country? On the planet?!"

[Chron]

Then there's this site.
It's a Mega Man fan site, but it has the specific domain megaman.co.uk

Under stupid laws that should never see the light of day, that's an offense called "squatting".

[ASR]

Today I was thinking about pre-technology civilizations. How pissed are they gonna be when they get the internet and all the domain names are taken?

That would work great as a one-liner and I'd add that to my little joke book if I had thought of it.

[Mikero]

I think it'd need reshaping for that. And you can do that.

[ASR]

It would need better context and more casual wording, yeah. And no, I can't take it because I didn't think of it.

[Vinchenz Rock]

Watching Daily Planet reminds me...

I voted today. Threw my vote away when I voted for NDP.

I chuckled when I saw "Communist" as one of the options.

[Mikero]

They don't even show them on the stats when you watch election coverage. Which I don't, but I just did to check out what it's looking like.

[Majikn]

I put in an empty ballet.

'CAUSE I'M SILLY.

EDIT: Ballot. Ballot.

[Chron]

The papers here are saying that the Conservative party won.

Is it just me, or does Stephen Harper look like a Televangelist?

[Fatso]

It's not just you.

[Snare]

I voted for David Popescu.

[Mikero]

I'm just happy it's not a majority government.

[Vinchenz Rock]

You know how you guys sometimes take hours to do something artsy?

Well, I took hours doing the file attached below.

ARRRRGH I HATE HATE HATE IT ASJFLHAFKASJFHASKLFHSAKLFHASK LFHA

Took sooooooo long for something that looked simple... Graaah, and the dice part wasn't even the bad part, nonono, the hard part was making the whole "Do you want to roll again" bit actually work! When I figured out the solution, I slapped myself in the forehead so hard for not realizing it soon. And now I have a bruise on my forehead! Thanks a lot MMM! You're the reason why it took so long for me to do this! DON'T ASK HOW YOU JUST ARE OK

And that's what I get for procrastinating... if all goes well, I'll get another 100% for this assignment.

[Chron]

Welcome to programming.
Enjoy your stay, don't let the null pointer hit you on the way out.

(Did you write that in C++? Just wait until you get to the REAL algorithms and data structures.)

[Vinchenz Rock]

Yeah, C++.

At least the final project might be fun... it might be making a text adventure game.

[Chron]

That's always good fun. MUCH easier to do in an object oriented language, too.

The first one I made was in C.
The only thing you really have to help you there are structs, and... well...
... pointers. Lots and lots of pointers.

[Fatso]

I decided to start at the very beginning (Python ftw!) and receive full training in the suggested order, so no object-oriented languages for me just yet (Java next semester though!)

Still, I think I could quickly mock that up, sans dice borders.

Actually, I think I'm going to go do that for fun right now.

[Chron]

Did you just say that Python isn't an object oriented language?

Get the ##### out of my house.
It is a nice language, but I prefer anything with curly braces over that mess.
Perl is a great language of the Python class, although you can't actually compile the code.
Still runs faster than most interpreted languages, though.

(Personally, starting with OOP will not ruin you; it's actually easier to start with OOP rather than an imperative language since you can introduce core programming concepts without really needing to introduce all of the under-workings).

[Fatso]

Did you just say that Python isn't an object oriented language?

It was not presented to me as an object-oriented language. Since I never bothered to look up the precise definition... yeah.

[Chron]

Well, I've never used it sufficiently, myself.
But every time I encounter it, the language is listed as mostly OOP.
Although it's capable of functional and imperative behavior, or so says Wikipedia.

[Vinchenz Rock]

Speaking more about programming, in class today, our teacher gave us another assignment. However, this time, he's letting us work on it during the last hour of class (usually he gives it to us at the end of class).

Anyway, this time the assignment was 100% easier than that damn dice thing. I couldn't believe how much easier it was. It's a program where you have to guess a number between 1 to 100. The only difference was that this time we had to have used a function because we didn't learn about them yet.

Anyway, I started programming it and didn't test it until everything was done. I was surprised to see that the only errors I got was from putting a semi-colon in places where they shouldn't be. And one time where I didn't put in a semi-colon.

So, I was the third one to finish. And at the end of the class only seven people (out of forty-one) finished.

And it executes beautifully. I'll be expecting yet another 100% from that one.

[Fatso]

Oh, you had to write the dice-rolling program without functions?



Ouch.

[Chron]

I wrote an entire HTML server without using functions once.
It's not hard to, but it's bad practice since it reduces readability.

Speaking more about programming, in class today, our teacher gave us another assignment. However, this time, he's letting us work on it during the last hour of class (usually he gives it to us at the end of class).

Anyway, this time the assignment was 100% easier than that damn dice thing. I couldn't believe how much easier it was. It's a program where you have to guess a number between 1 to 100. The only difference was that this time we had to have used a function because we didn't learn about them yet.

Anyway, I started programming it and didn't test it until everything was done. I was surprised to see that the only errors I got was from putting a semi-colon in places where they shouldn't be. And one time where I didn't put in a semi-colon.

So, I was the third one to finish. And at the end of the class only seven people (out of forty-one) finished.

And it executes beautifully. I'll be expecting yet another 100% from that one.

Good job on that. Functions are the bread an butter of basic programming skills. They're technically called "procedures" since they deal with variables, but eh.

When you learn to associate them with objects, things get even cooler.

[Mikero]

Who writes the programming that let's you guys program? And how does THAT work?

[Fatso]

Someone with madder skillz than me, obviously.

[Vinchenz Rock]

Who writes the programming that let's you guys program? And how does THAT work?

Magic.

[Mikero]

What kind?

You better give the right answer, gypsy.

[Vinchenz Rock]

The special kind.

You know, THAT kind.

[Mikero]

Wrong answer. You will be sold if you do not give me the answers I seek.

[Vinchenz Rock]

Noooo they be stealin' my magics!

[Snare]

THIS IS MY IMPRESSION OF YOU GUYS

BLUH BLUH BLUH WE ARE SO SMART, GUESS WHAT??? WHAT??? 0101001010100101 LOL!

[ASR]

There's a building on campus here where there are windows and no-windows on one side of the building, where the spots with windows = 1, and the spots without windows = 0, so the whole side of the building is binary code for "WELCOME TO WESTERN."

[Johncarllos]

It is a nice language, but I prefer anything with curly braces over that mess.

Cave Story?

[Mikero]

Nerd school.

[Ikeoko]

I'm in school! But it's normal school. Actually....I take that back. It's far from normal. Anyway ya I'm in class and I'm listening to my iTouch and we have like 25 minutes left in here. XP

[Chron]

It is a nice language, but I prefer anything with curly braces over that mess.

Cave Story?

... mmm. Curly Brace.

Who writes the programming that let's you guys program? And how does THAT work?

*opens a new can of worms*

WARNING! SCIENCE CONTENT
[spoiler]
OK, so first of all we have to build a machine capable of accepting/rejecting Turing-level languages. The most common type uses binary input/output and is structured according to the architecture described by John von Neumann. This is one type of computer, and it's generally programmable. In addition, programs and data are stored in the same location.

Thus, programs are just data, and data can be "looked at" as a program.

The machine's processor contains circuits that can perform basic logical comparisons, arithmetic functions and some basic I/O functions (such as getting input from a keyboard or sending things to RAM or what have you). Generally there is a way to store information in the long term on these machines, and most of them will read from a specific set of permanent data stored in ROM (sometimes a bootstrapping program will also load an operating system). This will set up the machine for use by humans.

Once a human can use the computer, they can input machine code to have it perform functions. If machine code is stored on the machine's temporary or permanent memory, it can be recalled and run automatically by the machine as if it was a series of input commands by the user. This is a program.

Some programs, especially useful in an environment controlled by an OS, use a complex series of algorithms to read in words typed by a human and translate them into something understandable by the computer. These are complex programs that employ lexical analyzers, parsers and translators to read a specifically defined set of words and convert them into a specifically defined set of machine code. They are called compilers.

There are also programs that go the extra step and will execute code immediately after compiling portions of it, and these are called interpreters.

When one of these programs exists, someone can then type a program into the machine that can be converted by the compiler/interpreter and then run on the machine.

The skill required to write a compiler is fairly great, and typically reserved for Master level courses, but Bachelor level courses generally run through lexical analysis and text parsing, since it is a fundamental tool used to understand computer theory. However, anyone with enough patience can learn the skill on their own, as with anything.
[/spoiler]

tl;dr
Programmers write the programming that lets us program, and it works because the machines are built that way.