./codeplexity

The highly productive habits of Alan Turing Matthew Lasar,...

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 06:30:46 -0400

The highly productive habits of Alan Turing
Matthew Lasar, arstechnica.com

June 23 marks the 100th birthday of Alan Turing. If I had to name five people whose personal efforts led to the defeat of Nazi Germany, the English mathematician would surely be on my list. Turing’s genius played a key role in helping…

futurist-foresight: Some fascinating facts on the Voyager...

Thu, 24 May 2012 18:26:49 -0400

futurist-foresight:

Some fascinating facts on the Voyager spacecraft. A quick refresher on the program that launched 2 probes:

“The Voyager program is a U.S program that launched two unmanned space missions, scientific probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable planetary alignment of the late 1970s. Although officially designated to study just Jupiter and Saturn, the probes were able to continue their mission into the outer solar system, and are, as of December 2011, on course to exit the solar system.” - Wikipedia

crookedindifference:

Voyager Spacecraft Facts

A total of 11,000 workyears was devoted to the Voyager project through the Neptune encounter. This is equivalent to one-third the amount of effort estimated to complete the great pyramid at Giza to King Cheops.

A total of five trillion bits of scientific data had been returned to Earth by both Voyager spacecraft at the completion of the Neptune encounter. This represents enough bits to fill more than seven thousand music CDs.

Each Voyager spacecraft comprises 65,000 individual parts. Many of these parts have a large number of “equivalent” smaller parts such as transistors. One computer memory alone contains over one million equivalent electronic parts, with each spacecraft containing some five million equivalent parts. Since a color TV set contains about 2500 equivalent parts, each Voyager has the equivalent electronic circuit complexity of some 2000 color TV sets.

Both Voyagers were specifically designed and protected to withstand the large radiation dosage during the Jupiter swing-by. This was accomplished by selecting radiation-hardened parts and by shielding very sensitive parts. An unprotected human passenger riding aboard Voyager 1 during its Jupiter encounter would have received a radiation dose equal to one thousand times the lethal level.

A set of small thrusters provides Voyager with the capability for attitude control and trajectory correction. Each of these tiny assemblies has a thrust of only three ounces. In the absence of friction, on a level road, it would take nearly six hours to accelerate a large car up to a speed of 48 km/h (30 mph) using one of the thrusters.

Voyager’s fuel efficiency (in terms of mpg) is quite impressive. Even though most of the launch vehicle’s 700 ton weight is due to rocket fuel, Voyager 2’s great travel distance of 7.1 billion km (4.4 billion mi) from launch to Neptune resulted in a fuel economy of about 13,000 km per liter (30,000 mi per gallon).

Barring any serious spacecraft subsystem failures, the Voyagers may survive until the early twenty-first century (~ 2025), when diminishing power and hydrazine levels will prevent further operation. Were it not for these dwindling consumables and the possibility of losing lock on the faint Sun, our tracking antennas could continue to “talk” with the Voyagers for another century or two!

Fun With Java -- What Do You Think Will Happen?

Wed, 23 May 2012 08:29:52 -0400

Let’s see how good of a programmer you are. What do you think will happen when these very...

"I don’t like it, and I’m sorry I ever had anything to do with it."

Tue, 22 May 2012 18:53:00 -0400

““I don’t like it, and I’m sorry I ever had anything to do with...

Rebirth & More!

Tue, 22 May 2012 18:41:18 -0400

Apologies for the last few months of inactivity — as it turns out, getting to graduation was a...

And Now, A Bit On Quantum Computing

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 19:20:00 -0500

Hey everyone! Sorry for the pretty much dead interim. Now that finals are past, I can get back to...

The World's First Ever Computer Bug

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 21:04:00 -0500

Did you ever wonder where the term ‘bug’ came from, in relation to computers? Why do we...

P vs. NP: What does that mean?

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 08:21:00 -0500

So maybe you’ve heard people chattering online sometime about a famous and as of yet unsolved...

A Bit More on Artificial Intelligence & Consciousness

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 09:03:05 -0500

Continuing on the theme of a post from the last couple days, it’s interesting to note that...

"Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to..."

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 15:11:43 -0500

““Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is...

If you can believe it, you’re looking at a portrait of the...

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 08:36:05 -0500

If you can believe it, you’re looking at a portrait of the first known programmer, ever. Her name is Ada Lovelace (b: 1815, d:1852), and she’s known for her work designing algorithms for Charles Babbage’s analytical engine.

Interestingly, though she wrote the first algorithms designed for machines, she never got to see them actually executed (as the analytical engine was never actually created during her life)

(Tutorial) Let's Create A Simple Genetic Algorithm

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:29:00 -0500

So maybe you’ve heard the term tossed around before — genetic algorithms — but...

Join the r/learnprogramming subreddit!

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 08:45:06 -0500

Join the r/learnprogramming subreddit!: r/learnprogramming is a community on Reddit devoted entirely...

ENIAC Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was the...

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 03:12:00 -0500

ENIAC Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was a Turing-complete digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems.

-Wikipedia

Thought it might be refreshing since we’ve been talking about where computer science is headed to take a look back at where we’ve come from. I think I’ll make this type of post every few days.

Also, please bear with me while I work out some CSS kinks. I have a new genetic algorithms tutorial that I’ve finished, and now I’m working on formatting the code to play nice with your browser!

Is True Artificial Intelligence a Possibility?

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 21:44:00 -0500

A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that...

Future Plans

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:38:00 -0500

For the moment, I’m considering this tumblr site to be temporary. I’m planning on...

Welcome Aboard

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 19:58:59 -0500

This is the first post of what I hope will become a long running website, in which I will...