Tom 7 Radar: Minor victories

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Minor victories (10 Oct 2006 at 21:57)

Here are some minor victories:

The Portland Race for the Cure finally posted their results and I came in 49^th out of 3022 (8^th in my age group). Not bad. I still yearn to run an official sub-20:00 time.

I was a semifinalist in the (admittedly tiny) 2006 Underhanded C Contest. The purpose is to write innocent-looking code that fails at its apparent purpose: in this case, it must be code that runs mysteriously slowly on one platform but not another. My code (README and tom7.c) is available if you want to try to figure it out, it's a fun little puzzle. I encourage you to look a little. (Or maybe you think you can find bugs in code just by looking!) If you give up or want to confirm your answer, check out the annotated version of the code. The underhanded c contest page has a spoiler-laden summary of the other semifinalists and the winner.

Also, Kansas was fun! Pictures from that trip soon.

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nothings (adsl-70-231-157-86.dsl.snfc21.sbcglobal.net) – 10.11.06 03:37:09

Should have ROL()d hc instead of c; that might not have set off their suspicions.

(I didn't find the bug by just reading the source, but I did once find a bug by reading an LJ source file when they had a crash bug in it and offered a free permanent account to anyone who found it.)

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Tom 7 (h-72-244-65-81.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 10.11.06 11:29:25

(SPOILERS)
Yeah, in retrospect I should have hidden that better. ROLing hc won't work, because whatever is rotated needs to have type wchar_t. I think XORing word[i] to set the high bit would have been more innocent-looking.

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Adhesion (adhesion.rh.rit.edu) – 10.15.06 15:21:54

Speaking of coding, whatever happened to the new DFX plugin & AAD rewrite?

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Tom 7 (h-72-244-65-221.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 10.15.06 17:05:52

Good question. The Destroy FX plugin didn't sound quite right (probably because of a bug I couldn't find) which was discouraging. I may give it another shot because I think it's a good idea, but I didn't make the contest deadline. The AAD rewrite is still on deck...

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Sophia (c-24-218-59-245.hsd1.ma.comcast.net) – 10.16.06 10:47:30

Regarding the bug in the Destroy FX plugin, did you try looking at the source code to find it?

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Tom 7 (gs82.sp.cs.cmu.edu) – 10.16.06 10:57:55

heh, yes...
It's hard when I don't even know whether it's a bug or not, just that it doesn't sound how I think it should, you know?

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Adhesion (adhesion.rh.rit.edu) – 10.16.06 22:46:57

What exactly is it? Rather, what SHOULD it sound like?

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Anonymous (adsl-75-33-124-178.dsl.stlsmo.sbcglobal.net) – 10.16.06 23:28:09

this place is so retarted i hate it. they need to find a better place for stuff like this

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cutie poe101 (adsl-75-33-124-178.dsl.stlsmo.sbcglobal.net) – 10.16.06 23:29:20

if any one is on here please place a comment about this place.

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Sophia (c-24-218-59-245.hsd1.ma.comcast.net) – 10.17.06 09:56:41

this place is so st00pid lol I totals liked it until yesterday but now it is so where loosers hang out bye

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Adhesion (adhesion.rh.rit.edu) – 10.17.06 11:09:17

yah dude dis place is totals crap place.

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Anonymous (server403.dyn.cs.washington.edu) – 10.19.06 17:58:10

lol wut?

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Cortney (h-72-244-70-236.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 01.01.07 20:42:51

Hmm ... you still haven't posted photos from your Kansas trip. Those would be nice to see!

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