This is me burning rubber around the International circuit at Silverstone in a Ferrari 360.
Sadly, this isn’t my car, as you can no doubt tell from the owner’s name written all over it. However, thanks to my brother generously buying me a Ferrari Driving Experience for my birthday I was able to take it for a couple of laps before I had to hand the keys back.
So, what’s it like to drive?
This is German heavy metal band, Rammstein. I took this picture at last night’s concert at The O2 with the crummy camera on my old iPhone. It makes the band look further away than they actually were:
Yes, I was about six feet away from one of the biggest metal bands on the planet in one of the largest music venues in the country. Beat that, posh people in corporate boxes!
Read on to find out how I ended up getting so close and personal with Rammstein …
This is an unedited photograph of me showing my reflection in a moving distorting mirror. I took it at this year’s Kinetica Art Fair.
The light wasn’t great for taking pictures, and there were crowds of people there, too, so I only took a couple …
Following immediately on from the previous challenges, I had hoped to redeem my rather miserable performance on Challenge 3.
Read on to see how I did with Challenges 4 - 6.
I downloaded a copy of Skiena and Revilla’s book Programming Challenges from here. I wasn’t hugely taken by the book as it is mostly about coding in C, rather than C++ which I prefer, so I’ve only really skim-read it. However, I did take the time to solve some of the challenges after the first chapter, which was a far more valuable learning experience.
I decided that as the first few challenges looked fairly straightforward that I would make it my goal to solve each one 100% correctly on the first go. Unlike the Ancient Messages challenge where comprehensive test data was supplied, this time each challenge only came with one or two examples. This means that coming up with a good way to test the program is essential if one wants to pass the judge’s tests first time. In a programming competition failure to pass tests means a time or score penalty. But I’m more concerned with real life where a programming error could mean death, financial loss, or worse, the wrong coloured background on a dialog box!
So, how did I do?
Earlier this year I wrote about Project Euler. I’ve kept up my problem solving, with an additional 23 Project Euler problems solved in the four months since I wrote that article. I’ve also tackled some problems from other sources that don’t have restrictions on me writing about them.
First up, I had a bash at one of the easier looking problems from this year’s ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest. You can see a description of the problem here on the UVA Online Judging website which provides automatic verification of submitted solutions.
The solver’s task for the problem I chose is to decode some “Ancient Messages”. So, how exactly did I do that?
Yesterday I went to Future Cinema Presents California Classics - Top Gun.
This wasn’t simply a case of showing up at a cinema to watch a film, though …
I’ve just spent a very pleasant forty minutes listening to Deep Purple’s classic rock album, Machine Head. Exciting on a good day, but today it sounds extra special as I’ve been listening to a brand new high quality re-release of the album in 24 bit / 96 kHz download format.
So, why is this so exciting?
Project Euler is an internet-based mathematical and programming challenge that has been running for the last ten years. Problems set on the site range from incredibly easy to (mostly) very difficult. I’m currently at “Level 3″, having solved 110 of the problems, including some of the more recent difficult ones.
It’s a bit tricky to write about this little hobby of mine as one of the conditions of taking part is that one doesn’t give away the answers.
Unquestionably the most exciting thing I have done so far this year - this is the audience I sang for earlier today:
The picture shows a capacity crowd of ten thousand people (mostly women) filling Wembley Arena for this afternoon’s Rock Choir Live event.
Plus, there’s breaking a Guinness World Record, recording a track to be released on a deluxe version of the existing Rock Choir: Vol1
So, what’s the story? How did I come to end up on stage in front of that many people?