james.fabpedigree.comLessons in Expert Programming

The Home Page of James Dow Allen Computer Programmer I interrupt this home page with a special message from its webmaster. Credible opinions and lawsuits make damaging claims about voting irregularities in an important U.S. election. Why aren't such matters better reported on the news? Both my vocation and avocation are computer programming. Here's a Javascript page to play Mastermind with you. Here's my resumé. I also dabble in recreational mathematics. Here are the RPS-like games when N=7. Here is a fallacious proof of the Four-Color Map Theorem. Here is a boring write-up on the Golden Ratio Scheduling Policy. Once I was involved in the IBM add-on memory industry. Here's an invention I'm proud of ; and here's a detailed discussion of an interesting bug from those days. Here's an even more boring bug , with possible interest since it is arguably a weird IBM Principles violation. I am now preparing a Digital Search Tree (Trie) which uses an especially memory-efficient technique to store pointer information. E-mail me if you're interested. When I was first learning to create html pages, for some reason I chose to build a list of great mathematicians as a practice page, even though I wasn't qualified to make such a list without a lot of advice. Since then I've invested a lot of time reading mathematical histories and biographies and revising the page. I'm proud of it now: please read it! (With 178 mini-biographies, the single page has now grown to over 380 kbytes. With today's fast speeds, I suppose this is not a problem, but please tell me if I'm wrong!) My List of the Greatest Mathematicians I like composing and solving a variety of puzzles: Figure out this Family Tree . Guess what's special about three poems I wrote . Here are some very hard Nurikabe puzzles . A discussion of Four Kings Solitaire . Historical linguistics is fascinating I show why the English words chef, chief, captain, head are not only synonyms, but are cognates. I've become fascinated with the idea of deducing human prehistory from genetic and linguistic evidence. Here are my conclusions about the source of the Vedics . I'm also interested in Games and Gambling. Here are some comments on Connect-Four . Lately, in middle age, I'm finally trying to tune up some miscellaneous computer skills. See the animated gifs in the next section. And of course, how could an American not follow politics? Here's my Wake up call for "liberals" . I love Go, but never found the time to pursue it so I'm just a kyu player. I've prepared animated-gifs of some famous games played by Wu Qingyuan (Go Seigen), one of the very greatest players ever. Select which Game to view: Wang Yunfeng vs. Wu (1926) Fujisawa Kuranosuke vs. Wu (1953) Or one of three games from a very important tournament: In the mid-1950's Go Seigen was at the peak of his powers and never lost as Black, but played White (without komi) in these games. Wu vs. Takagawa Kaku (Honinbo) (1957) Wu vs. Sakata Eio (1957) Wu vs. Kitani Minoru (1957) Don't like Go? Then watch Miss Alla Kushnir dance! Or watch yourself with your webcam! (Select any Go game to turn camera off.) Wang Yunfeng vs. Wu (1926) Twelve-year old Wu played Black against the Champion of China. Wu won the game easily. To get real competition Wu had to emigrate to Japan. Fujisawa Kuranosuke vs. Wu (1953) This game was played between the first two 9-dans ever. Wu attacks multiple White groups in masterful fashion. It has even been called "the greatest Go game ever." It was the final game of a jubango which Wu won 5-1. (Fujisawa had lost a jubango to Wu (7-2) the year before; and losing this game was such a humiliation he retired from Go. This was the third Fujisawa-Wu jubango: Ten years earlier, Wu played his only losing jubango ever against Fujisawa, playing White throughout and losing 4-6.) Wu vs. Takagawa Kaku (1957) The 1st Strongest Player Tournament was held as a competition among the six strongest players in the world: all five 9-dans along with Takagawa 8-dan, who was in the middle of a streak retaining the Honinbo title nine years in a row. Each player played two games against each of the others. In this game, Wu played White (with no komi) against Takagawa. The game was very complicated and very close; Clever moves were made by both players. Wu had to play with utter precision, but prevailed. He was indeed the Strongest Player in the World. Wu vs. Sakata Eio (1957) This game is also from the 1st Strongest Player Tournament. Wu played White against Sakata Eio, who a few years later would wrest the Honinbo title from Takagawa and become first simultaneous Meijin and Honinbo. This game was an exciting and rare masterpiece. Wu vs. Kitani Minoru (1957) This game is also from the 1st Strongest Player Tournament. Wu played White against the great Kitani Minoru, the first time the two top stars had played each other in 13 years. Wu sacrifices a large group on the right to win a Ko fight on the left. (Kitani's subsequent effort to make a living group in the left-center failed. Having used almost all his ten hours, Kitani had to play the last several moves at lightning pace.) Signal Processing on a Hexagon Grid One of my research interests is the hexagon grid to facilitate machine vision and other 2-D signal processing tasks. The advantages of that grid over the standard square grid have been known for a long time, but it is seldom used. (I guess the prevalance of the square grid shouldn't be surprising, considering that the advantages of Unix are even more clearcut, but MicroSoft Windows has overwhelmed the planet.) Here is one of my research papers on the topic of ``Filter Banks for the Hexagon Grid'' . (C Language) I've decided to try my hand at offering software tips. Wish me luck !! Only a few chapters are currently on-line. I'll post more if there's interest. Most of this code was written in the 20th century and will produce oodles of warnings with today's compilers. I am addressing these problems, slowly. Meanwhile, please use the software that I have organized into tarballs. Preface: Programming as Poetry. Lesson 1: Choices for Coding Lesson 2: Simplicity. Lesson 3: Simplicity (cont'd) . Lesson 4: Simplicity (cont'd). Lesson 5: Simplicity (cont'd) . Lesson 6: Working from Specifics. Lesson 7: Processes and Computation Lesson 8: Data Structures. Lesson 9: Control Mechanisms . Lesson 10: Programming tactics. Lesson 11: Focus on Information. Lesson 12: Advanced Exercises. Appendix B: Discussion of Betting Odds . Appendix M: Memory Requirements . Discussion of Oblivious Sorts . Description of "Truffman" Code . The textbook is free. If that makes you feel guilty, contact me for Pay-Pal number. If that makes you feel hilarious, sorry. Eventually I'll create a webpage summarizing comments. For now: > My non-gnu compiler does not accept `long long' Sorry. If you can't think of a work-around, try an easier exercise. > Those who can't, teach. Even pejorative comments are welcome, but please attach your own exercise solutions to verify we're playing in the same league. > I didn't think it was so bad, and parts were almost well-written. Flattery? Yes, that works. Recently (November 2008) I posted some hash table code here, that I hope others will find useful. Since then I've improved this software and believe it to be of "commercial quality." It's no longer available here for download; e-mail me if you have interest. I am organizing some C-language software I've written into files and folders I'm no longer ashamed of. Here is a PARTIAL list of the C files in 6 different tarballs. (Each tarball also contains a 'makefile', a 'Readme' a few '.h' files and so on.) Download jdas_all.tar.gz to get all seven folders at once. jdas_game acquire.c -- Emulate Parker Bros. Acquire Game bridge.c -- solve Bridge gsieve.c -- solve Ginnow's solitaire holdodds.c -- Odds for Hold'em Poker maverick.c -- Simulate Maverick Solitaire risto.c -- Solve certain "magic" puzzle wnim.c -- Solve and play...