Random Encounter: Blink 182 Concert

So I was sitting at home bored last night when suddenly my phone starts to ring! It's my friend inviting me to a Blink 182 concert since he has an extra ticket. I think for a moment... I'm not a big Blink 182 fan, and the other bands that were opening for them were All-American Rejects and Fallout Boy... which I am really not a fan of... 

Anyways after being assured that we would arrive precisely after Fallout Boy ended and that it was completely free on my part, I decided, eh, what the heck... I might as well go since I'd otherwise be sitting doing nothing in a very lonely fashion.

As we got there it became apparent that everyone else had the same idea we did- that Fallout Boy sucks. I have never seen that many people come in after a concert has been going for an hour already. Anyways our timing was just right, and it turned out that my friend had Pit tickets, so we got to be right up front in the mosh.

...yay?
It wasn't too bad, and there was even someone in a banana suit.

They played some songs that I recognized from middle school... and the highlight of the night was when the lead singer (I don't know his name... Matt maybe?) drooled on himself and someone next to me screamed, "THAT'S SO METAL!"
Ohhhhh, I laughed!

It was a good show, even if it wasn't my favorite band ever... or really at all... but I had a fun time and got my troubles off my mind, and I guess that's what counts.

Well my girlfriend is coming into town for a few days soon for her fall semester break, so it should be a good weekend.
That's all for today's post! Peace.

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Magic 8 Ball Time

Alright folks, I haven't updated the ol' blog in a while, so in a pathetic effort to write about something I'm going to ask my Magic 8 Ball a few questions and post the answers I get. It's pathetic because this is the most interesting thing in my life right now.

Here we go:

"Magic 8 Ball, will I win the lottery someday?"
- 'Concentrate and ask again'.
I can't be bothered with concentrating.

"Magic 8 ball, am I the coolest person on Earth?"
- 'You may rely on it'.
Yes!

"Magic 8 Ball, are you lying to me?"
- 'Signs point to yes'.
CURSE YOU!!!!

"Magic 8 Ball, in 100 years will we have flying cars?"
- 'Don't count on it'.
I knew it. When I was in third grade I read in a magazine that we would have microwaves in our cars' gloveboxes by the year 2000. I waited for that moment with eager anticipation, and now, almost a decade later we have nothing to show for that prediction.

"Magic 8 Ball, will I get an iPhone for Christmas?"
- 'As I see it, yes.'
Woohoo!

"Magic 8 Ball, are you lying to me again?"
- 'It is decidedly so'.
A THOUSAND PLAGUES UPON YOU, 8 BALL!!!!

"Magic 8 Ball, why do you shatter my hopes and dreams?"
- 'Outlook Good'.

"So my outlook on life is good?"
- 'Outlook not so good'.
AAARRGH!!!!!

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Currently Listening to: Muse: The Resistance

When I bought Batman: Arkham Asylum a while back Best Buy gave me a $10 gift card, so I used it today to pick up the latest Muse album, "The Resistance". It's definitely on par with their other works, though I think "Absolution" remains my favorite of theirs. The songs all pop with that slightly electronic sound that reminds me of robots, along with their signature harmonies. This album is what would happen if Rush's 2112 album got together and had a baby with Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, and that baby got together with an awesome robot and had a baby. Yes, its truly that good.

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Indie Gaming: Canabalt

So last night during my travels across the internet, I came upon a fantastically addictive browser game called Canabalt. Its a great indie project that was created for the Experimental Gameplay Project's monthly theme, "Bare Minimum". The game was made in less than a week, displays all its graphics in only six colors, and only uses one button to play.
The game is set during an alien invasion, and you play as a businessman making a daring escape from the city, running and leaping from rooftop to rooftop. Its super addicting, and the music is pretty awesome too, a techno track that was also created to fit the minimalist approach.

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Fall Semester, Batman, Mastering Olypmus

Well fall semester has started, and I've been enjoying my classes for the most part so far. My favorite is Intro to Oceanography, which looks like it will be a really easy one. I'm also taking Chemistry, although I couldn't get into a lab so I'm only doing the lecture this semester. It is really interesting but it looks like it will come to some hard work eventually, as memorizing the molecules and stuff might be complicated.

For those of you wondering about the results of my summer precalc class, I'm sorry to say that I did not put enough effort into it and I will have to retake it this semester. The fast pace of summer was something I just couldn't keep up with, and it especially didn't help that I am a huge slacker in the first place.

Classes take up most of my time nowadays but I got my hands on a copy of Batman: Arkham Asylum , and I must say that it is one of the best games I've played this year, and its definitely got my vote for game of the year 2009... although I'll wait to cast a final verdict until I've played Dragon Age: Origins (I'm a huge Bioware fan if you didn't know) and The Beatles Rockband (also a HUGE Beatles fan).

An awesome game

Continuing my retro gaming that started with FFVIII (which has unfortunately taken a backseat to Batman at the moment), I've been sinking quite a bit of time into an old favorite: Zeus- Master of Olympus, a city builder from Impressions Games, which is now Tilted Mill. Its your basic city-builder where you conquer the mythical  world of ancient Greece. Its really cool to play now that I've actually been to Greece though, and seen the ruins of some of the cities that I've built in the game.

A picture I took of the ruins of Mycenae

What else has gone on in my life since my last update ages ago... hm, oh yes, I've learned a new song on my acoustic: Norwegian Wood, off of the Beatles' Rubber Soul album. Such a great song.

I'll try to keep this blog updated fairly frequently even though I'm pretty sure that nobody reads it...
Until next time, peace.

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Math is Hard

So remember that "Mersenne Prime Number Finder" that I talked about in my last post? Well as some of you have noticed it does not find Mersenne primes at all. It just finds regular old Mersenne numbers, which are of the form 2^n-1. Being a Mersenne number does not guarantee primality obviously, as the program returned results such as 15.

Thanks to the help of CRGreathouse, a moderator at Math Forum, I've realized these mistakes.

So, my goal is to find Mersenne Primes. I'm half-way there by finding regular Mrsn numbers... and luckily there is a thing known as the Lucas-Lehmer Primality Test, which applies only to Mrsn numbers. So now I have to find a way to implement this test into my program and I should be finding primes in no time!

CRGreathouse also introduced me to a programming language that is more suitable for numbers and mathematical operations than Java: Pari/GP. It is actually quite similar to Java in respect to syntax, but it handles numbers much more easily. Hopefully I'll be able to write my program soon! I have quite a bit to do today though and I'm working for most of the weekend, sadly.

Next week I'll have plenty of free time though, since I'm officially and finally done with summer classes. I'm not 100% sure that I passed Pre-calc... I did less than average on most of the quizzes and tests. I have no one to blame but myself, but this is just wrong. Here I am doing a math project in my spare time and yet I can't put forth the effort to pass a class? I don't lack the ability to understand the concepts, and I have an interest in math, but... I guess my fault lies in that I don't have an interest in doing homework. Oh well, as of now I'm still scheduled to take Calc I in fall semester, so hopefully that doesn't fall through even if I don't pass. I do NOT want to retake precalc and sit through 15 weeks of the same stuff I just learned.

Haha, well here's to slacking off and getting nowhere!

-Cheers!

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Prime Numbers

Have you ever had one of those days when you wake up thinking about prime numbers?

Of course you have! Everyone has! Today, that was me. I rolled out of bed and stumbled over to my computer to find out about prime numbers.

For those of you unacquainted with theoretical mathematics, a prime number is a natural number that can only be divided by itself and 1. Here's more information about prime numbers if you are interested.

Anyways, its theorized that there are an infinite number of primes. When they start getting larger, you run into numbers known as Mersenne Primes. These are prime numbers that can be expressed in the form (2^n)-1. It was these prime numbers that grabbed my attention this morning. I wondered just what some of these numbers were, and the fact that there are lots of people trying to find larger and larger Mersenne Primes intruiged me. I thought to myself, "Why, if they can do it, so can I!"

So I set about writing a simple program in Java. It asks the user how many Mersenne Primes they would like to find and then spits out all the numbers of the form (2^n)-1. The problem is that in Java, there is a limit to how big a number value can be, and when dealing with java's basic exponent function (java.lang.Math.pow(x,y);) this peaks at the value limit for integers. Therfore the most Mersenne Primes you can find with my program is 30.

So here are the first 30 Mersenne Primes (1 is on the list but I don't count it because I know its not a prime number):

1

3

7

15

31

63

127

255

511

1023

2047

4095

8191

16383

32767

65535

131071

262143

524287

1048575

2097151

4194303

8388607

16777215

33554431

67108863

134217727

268435455

536870911

1073741823

2147483647

My code:

/* Prime Number Finder

* Created by Tyler Ash

* (c) August 12 2009

* --------------------

* Searches for prime numbers within a user defined amount of numbers starting at 1.

*/

import java.util.Scanner;

public class PrimeFinder

{

public static void main(String args [])

{

int a = 1;

double k;

int n;

Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);

System.out.println("Welcome to Mersenne Prime Number Finder. This program searches for Mersenne primes within a given amount of numbers, starting at 1.\nHow many numbers do you want to search?\n");

n = input.nextInt();

if (n<1)

{

System.out.println("Please enter a number greater than 1.\n");

n= input.nextInt();

}

while(a<=n)

{

k= java.lang.Math.pow(2,a)-1;

System.out.println((int)k);

a++;

}

System.out.println("\nSearch for the first " + n +" Mersenne Prime Numbers competed.");

}

}

Oh, and I got a haircut today.

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