At work the other day there was a defect filed in which an extremely long (but simple) equation was causing an expression evaluator to crash. The equation was just a really long string like “6+5+1-3-7+3+6...“. The end result of that equation wasn’t really important, but I was curious.

My normal train of thought is to first decide that I’d have to type each number, one by one, into Microsoft’s Calculator. Next I’ll think “I should just write a quick script to add those up”. But that day, something else occurred to me: “I wonder if I can just paste it right in”?

And you know what? You can!

Try it out:

4 + 2 / 3 = 4.6666666666666666666666666666667

Oops. Can I adjust the order of operation?

(4 + 2) / 3 = 2

Yep!

Kind of ridiculous, I know. But sooner or later you’ll come across some scenario where you’ve got a string full of pluses and minuses and really, all you need is the result. And when that day arrives, you’ll thank me for this nugget.

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Pasting the Equation into Microsoft’s Calculator

Gi-Fi = 5Gbits/sec at up to 32 feet

Unfortunately, you’d have to pay to read A New Wi-Fi for Peer-to-Peer Communications online ($19?!?! For realz?!?!). I’ll summarize for you:

Australians professor Stan Skafidas and his band of sidekicks have designed a Gi-Fi chip that can be built using well established manufacturing techniques. The chips believe in isolationism and have therefore bundled themselves into lonely little packages without needing external antennas. The hermit lifestyle and read-to-go manufacturing equals an item that is muy affordable. The only current drawback is the power consumption, a problem that the Aussies are currently tackling and expect to solve within the year.

Maybe Nintendo will do something cool with this. And yes, this post’s title rocks.

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Gi-Fi Flies at Five Gigabytes

(He’s one of those guys who can repair a tube-based amp without schematics, but only figured out that you could minimize an application window without losing all the data last year.)

I finally cajoled him into getting an iMac, primarily because I was tired of trying to troubleshoot his problems over the phone. I figured a Mac would be less prone to strange cruft and crashes in the first place and easier to use overall once he got over the initial operating system shock. And so far so good, although I think he’s just as impressed by the iMac’s looks as he is its performance.

I think I sometimes take for granted just how computer savvy my parents are. I get a decent amount of support calls from my dad for his office computers, but it’s all pretty understandable. My mom (as far as I know) sticks to the basics (email and shopping) and has pretty much honed those particular skills.

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Mac for the Aged