Funny IT stories

If, like me, you like funny stories in the IT world, you’ll definitely enjoy thedailywtf.com. For instance, this story and this one are pretty awesome.

Top 10 Flash Tower Defense Games

Here is a Top 10 of the best flash tower defense games around. Each one has something special which makes it fun and original amongst the genre.

1. Desktop Tower Defense 1.5
2. Flash Circle TD
3. Gem Craft
4. Protector 2: Reclaiming the throne
5. Vector TD
6. Immortal Defense
7. Onslaught TD
8. Turret Wars TD
9. Bloons 3 TD
10. Canyon Defense

If you like tower defense games, you can find more on towerdefence.net and on flashtowerdefence.com .

Desktop Tower Defense 1.5 Tips

Tower Defense games became popular with Warcraft 3 custom maps. Today, there is a rising number of tower defense games online. One of the most successful is Desktop Tower Defense 1.5 but it is quite difficult.

So I will give you some tips on how to reach a good score (more than 6000 points) in the medium mode.

• Build a cheap maze with pellet towers before spending money in more powerful towers
• Buy a Dart tower and upgrade it asap to take care of the ground creeps (Dart towers have a splash effect but only attack ground)
• Build a Swarm tower and upgrade it asap to take care of the air levels (the first air level is so weak it can be killed completely using only pellet towers)
• Continue building fully upgraded Dart and Swarm towers, having 3 of each should be enough to finish medium mode
• Build one or two Frost towers well placed (at the center of your maze, around the Swarm towers so that these frost towers will hit some air units).
• Send the creep waves as soon as possible. Usually, you can send normal waves without waiting. But you should clear the maze before sending swarm creeps or boss creeps if possible.
• When reaching for the last 3 levels, send them altogether. The Air Bosses will arrive at the center first, hopefully killed by the swarm towers, then the last wave and the ground bosses will travel your maze.
• Learn to juggle, at least for the last levels. You should wait for the creeps to reach the center of the maze, then sell a pellet tower to make an hopening way behind them. Then you should block their normal route to force them to use the other exit. Then you can repeat this procedure to have an almost infinite time to kill these last creeps.

I hope that those tips help you. If that’s not enough, have a look at all the good videos on youtube showing maze building and upgrading with actual timing.

Did you know that…

Did you know that Qt from the Qt library by Trolltech should be spelled “cute” and not “cutie” ? It’s because the “t” is in lowercase.

Personnally I find that a bit disappointing to have libraries or software products named after a common word. They should have more uniqueness in their names. For instance, I named my first software POVAMA and it is still the first result in google when you search for POVAMA.

Tell me what do you think about that.

Anime

Here is a list of anime i really liked:

1. Naruto
2. Bleach
3. Hikaru No Go
4. Berserk
5. Beck

Here is a list of anime I should watch

1. Elfen Lied
2. Hack Roots
3. One Piece

If you want to watch them for free, just go to http://aniwatch.com

New Games to Try

Here is a list of great video games I’d like to try when I will have some time:

• Spore
• Starcraft 2
• GTA 4
• Call of Duty 4
• Halo 3
• Crysis
• Diablo 3
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
• Gears of War 2
• Empire Total War
• Mirror’s Edge
• PES 2009

Article of Revelations (2/12)

According to a study, children with a name beginning near the start of the alphabet have better scholar results. They might be more intelligent just because of the first letter of their name. Here is a list to help you find a suitable name for a smart child.

• AnHeO
• Aré
• Astan
• Alterac
• Altaïr
• Aurora
• Aude
• Aréno
• Aneo
• Aurel
• Alvine
• Aspi
• Arin
• Aline
• Astase
• Aléone
• Antho
• Aspok
• Auster
• Amul
• Ades
• Acana
• Akiru
• AoliTa
• Aya
• Abol
• Adice
• Aleon
• Ahéléon
• Apoly
• Alil

Online Comic Strips: VG Cats

I love online comic strips and I feel like I should share a bit of the most funny ones with my small crew of casual readers.

Here is a funny anecdote about justice and violence.

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=257

It strikes numerous cords in me, first, it tells me that justice is blind and that you should’nt ask it anything unless you’re ready to get struck by a bear…

ProjectEuler.net

I have a dream that one day, students in maths and computer science from all over the world will unite to solve the greatest mathematical problems of all times.

Indeed, this day has almost come. ProjectEuler.net is a great learning tool which focuses on solving maths problems with the aid of some programming. The choice of the language and the method is left to the participant, only the answer is recorded. However, methods used are discussed in a specific thread for each problem (there are more than 160 problems).

I started using C++ but quickly noticed how simpler and shorter the ruby solutions were. So I went with Ruby and it went very smoothly even through I didn’t know the API.

I’m surprised at how many people keep submitting solutions using assembler language, I hope it’s just for the fun of showing their insanity.

For the record, here is an excerpt of my ruby solutions (warning spoiler ahead):

ex4: Find the largest palindrome made from the product of two 3-digit numbers.


# x, y 3-digits
# z=x*y
# 100*100 < z < 999*999
def isPalindrom(n)
if (n.to_s==n.to_s.reverse())
return true
else
return false
end
end
def f()
max=0
for x in 100..999
for y in 100..999
z=x*y
if isPalindrom(z)
#puts z
if (z>max)
max=z
end
end
end
end
return max
end
puts f()


ex6: Find the difference between the sum of the squares of the first one hundred natural numbers and the square of the sum.


def diff(n)
return n*n*(n+1)*(n+1)/4-n*(n+1)*(2*n+1)/6
end
puts diff(ARGV[0].to_i)


ex7: What is the 10001^st prime number?


require 'mathn'
f = 0
primes = Prime.new
for i in 1..10001
f = primes.next
end
puts f


ex9: There exists exactly one Pythagorean triplet for which a + b + c = 1000.
Find the product abc.


def f(n)
for a in 1..n
for b in a+1..n
for c in b+1..n
if (a*a+b*b==c*c)
if (a+b+c==1000)
return a*b*c
end
end
end
end
end
return 1
end
puts f(ARGV[0].to_i)


I now have completed more than 16 problems. The difficulty increases gradually. On problems 12 and 15, my first scripts were too long to execute (more than 1 week), as I expected, I add to rewrite my beautiful bi-recursive function to something much more iterative. The results were astonishingly better, in less than one second, I had accomplished much more calculations than in one week with the previous method.

Top 10 Geeks TV Series

If “top geeks TV series” doesn’t make sense to you, more precisely, I’d like to list the most successful TV series that are obviously adressed to geeks. The serie takes bonus points if it features geeks.

1. The Office
2. Dilbert
3. Battlestar Gallactica
4. Futurama
5. Babylon V
6. Red Dwarf
7. The IT Crowd
8. The Big Bang Theory
9. Chuck
10. Stargate

Honourable mention goes to:

• Quantum Leap
• South Park
• Star Trek