Geek IQ Test
My score is 75%. What’s yours? http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/the-2010-infoworld-geek-iq-test-597
Loving V838 Monocerotis
V838 Monocerotis is a previously unknown star system that erupted in a “red” nova in 2002 and briefly became the brightest star in the Milky Way.
One of the most impressive features of this particular nova was its light echo. A sequence of images taken over time that appears to be a shell of expanding illuminated gas, is actually the light from the nova travelling through its surrounding space and illuminating dark clouds of gas as it passes.
An image tour is available at http://hubblesite.org/gallery/tours/tour-v838/
The story doesn’t end there. It appears that this nova was the result of a merger between contact binaries. Contact binaries are two stars in a system orbiting each other so closely that they actually touch. In this system’s case the 2 stars eventually collapsed into a single star, resulting in the impressive nova. Check out this story at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=dancing-stars-turn-on-the-red-light for more.
On a slightly less scientific note, someone noticed a correlation between the Firefox logo and V838 Monocerotis - http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2010/09/24/the-origin-of-the-firefox-logo-v838-monocerotis/
Ducati M1200S - insane!
An adventure bike with a supersport engine in it. This beast puts out 112kW! In comparison its competitors from BMW and KTM put out 80-85kW.
It would be an awesome all-rounder if it weren’t for suspicious reliability.
Problem 41
Spent ages writing the fastest solution to Problem 41 (and learning Python) that I could think of. It took ages to resolve when I started with a 9-digit pandigital. I never knew of the Divisibility Rule for 3 (if the sum of digits is divisible by 3, then the number is divisible by 3). This cancels out both 9- and 8-digit pandigitals. Once I set the test up for 7-digit pandigitals the solution was found in milliseconds!
0! = 1 dammit
Problem 34 (http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems&id=34) had me over a barrel for hours until I realised my assumption that 0! = 0 was wrong. 0! is in fact equal to 1. Will not make that mistake any time soon.
Project Euler: Problem 26
My quickest solution to Problem 26) uses some interesting maths gleaned from Math forum. I used the observation that the maximum number of repeating digits for any n is n-1. And, the left half of a repeating sequence equals the 9’s complement of the right half.
Project Euler: Problem 23
My solution to Problem 23 took 1960ms. Used sieves to solve by elimination. A much faster implementation solved it in 121ms.
