Swiss manager - Name & club issue

I was an arbiter in a tournament these days and I noticed that, after the update in my ranking list, the updated club names had lower letters, while the names had the first capital and the others lower. The ideal was, since there is a problem with the letter 'ς' (a greek character, must be 'ς' when at the end of a word and 'σ' elsewhere, swiss manager decided to put it 'σ' everywhere and this is bad. In capital letters, it is 'Σ' in both cases) the player names to be in latin characters (from the FIDE list) and the club names with greek capital characters.

So I came up with an idea, when it comes that the capitals and lower are mixed up. Here is the options dialog menu of the swiss manager:

In the "converting player names" it converts also the club names. So, if you select "SURNAME FIRST NAME" and click "update", every player AND every club name will be in capital.

Since I have both rating lists (FIDE and GRE) I switched every name with greek characters from the GRE rating list. Then, I made both the player and club names (with the process mentioned above) to capital letters. I switched back to the third option (as shown in the image) but didn't click update, instead I just clicked "OK". Afterwards, I switched again all the names with latin characters from the FIDE list. That way, all the names were changed and the imported names came with the first letter capital and the others lower, the club names were, of course, unaffected. Of course I had to edit manually the players that weren't in both rating lists but the main job was done.

Site updated

It was time to update my webpage. I finished the major update several days ago but I was too lazy to write it on this blog. :P

Anyway, the update was quite big but only programmers will fully understand the true difficulty of this update. I edited both the code of the arcade and the forum so that when someone registers at the forum, automatically registers at the arcade too. So after a long research to understand how the forum code works (the arcade coding was quite simple) I managed to edit it so it updates both the arcade and the forum's user databases. With that knowledge in hand I created a small login feature on the main page of my website. It creates the both the dx cookie (my cookie for future purposes) and the arcade cookie, so if you login though the main page you'll automatically login into the arcade too. Also, I managed to transfer the shoutbox of the arcade to the main page. This will be the main shoutbox as it doesn't have limited features and such.

These updates come with some restrictions though:

• You now can't register in the arcade. If you wish to access the arcade as a registered user, you have to register in the forum and you'll automatically register in the arcade with the same username and password.
• Now the lowest level of password encryption is md5 and sha1 combination. This is because it's the encryption method of the arcade and I think that it's too complicated to try to change that.
• Password reset have been disabled in the forum and of course in the arcade. If you want to reset your password contact dx4 through the contact form. Include your registered e-mail (or send the request from it) otherwise password reset will be impossible. Your new password will be sent to your registered e-mail after a confirmation e-mail.

Finally, the last update is that I made the contact form of my website active. That was pretty simple because I had left only one thing to do to complete the form.

TheDxSite.info created

I've purchased the thedxsite.info domain so my webpage will be there from now on. I'll keep the old website but I won't make any further changes there.

I will add many things in the new website. Most of them will have to do with stuff I learn from the university I go. 95% of the website is transfered already with no mistakes. The new format is xthml, for my own pages at least.

The free hosting website is http://www.000webhost.com/.  I strongly recommend it since it gives you many good stuff for free and has NO ADS. That is superb since ads (except from being annoying as hell) ruined the xthml format I wanted so bad to make.

Feel free to browse my new website and send me mail if you find that something isn't working well. I expect a few bugs at the begging but I know I'll be able to handle them.

Dx Solitaire program completed in Visual Basic 6

I proudly announce the completion of the solitaire I was making. As I have said before I haven't seen a similar solitaire anywhere so I still consider my solitaire unique. I'd like to mention that I made this program using Visual Basic 6 and not the 2010. Although it may be hard to install it on windows 7 I prefer using Visual Basic 6. I have tried VB2010 but I spend some hours trying to find a way to enable the items (the cards) to be dragged and dropped. Eventually I gave up on VB2010 and returned to my favorite VB6 where to enable dragging, all you have to do is a click.

Anyway. let me begin explaining the game:

As you can see, there are nine slots. Of course there is the deck which I didn't include in the screenshot. You are allowed to draw only one card each time, this card will be the card you can use. By this I mean that if you draw an Ace and then you draw another card (a J of hearts) the Ace won't be available until the J of hearts is played. (it works like a stack)

In this solitaire only the numbers count, you don't have to worry about the color (red and blue) or the type (hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades). You can store any card in the 2,4,6 and 8 slots but you can store only 1 card, you can withdraw a card from those slots and use them any time you want. In slots 1,3,7,9 you must place cards from 7 to King in order (7-8-9-10-J-Q-K). In the slot no5 you must place cards from 1 (the Ace counts as 1) to 6 in order, when the top card is 6, then you can place an Ace. For example a correct order would be 1[Ace]-2-3-4-5-6-1[Ace]-2-3...

You win when you have successfully placed all the cards in the 1,3,5,7,9 slots. Of course you lose if you reach to a point where no move is possible.

The chances of winning are very low, I would call it difficulty level dx. I will soon place the program in my site to be available for downloading. Please inform me and give me credit if you'd like to use it in a way other than just playing yourself.\

This entry will be edited as soon as I release a stable version of Dx Solitaire.

Solitaire game in development (Visual Basic)

This is me second big project in Visual Basic. There are many known solitaires but I didn't find my solitaire among them so I think it's unique. That's good because rare programs are unique nowadays. The details of the game will be posted when the program will be completed. The idea was pretty simple so I don't think I'll encounter many bugs. The programmer rule will exist anyway though - 80% of my time spend on this program will be debugging.

I'd also like to announce the possible development of the d&d board game by the d&d team. We haven't found any software on the Internet and we thought of making one. This one will be very complex because the game itself is very complex. The development team will be probably the 5 players (including me) that are playing the d&d so if we divide the work by 5 I don't think it'll be that difficult.

Any further news will be posted, I hope those 2 games will actually be created with 0 bugs. For now the focus will be on the solitaire game, the other project may start in 2012.

SSH problem solved

Some Linux systems have encounter PMA authentication error while they try to connect with SSH. Since the solution isn't very obvious from the internet I decided to create this post.

Make sure you have open the SSH port on your router (port 22). If that's closed then proceeding in the next steps is just a waste of time so make sure it's open.
On the configuration file of ssh (usually /etc/ssh/sshd_conf) you should uncomment the "Password Authentication" and make sure it's on YES.
If you want to enable root SSH connection (which can compromise your Linux security) you should also uncomment the "PermitRootLogin" and make sure it's on YES.

These will solves most of your problems with your SSH connection.

For The Crown, guild web site created.

The "For The Crown" guild is a guild in World of Warcraft European server : Ragnaros.

I've recently created the website for this guild, the link is : For The Crown web page
Join if you are interested. Ingame, we offer free repairs, and reputation bonuses. There are also many ways to earn gold by doing actions that help the guild grow.

My name there is Odisseas, I'm a Night elf hunter. :)

Dx Chess program complete!

Although it's pretty simple and the graphics don't tell much, it's pretty good to create and simulate various chess problems.
It can create files ending in dxchess (*.dxchess) and read them so that you can save and load as many problems you want.
In the setup menu you can place the pieces and the right spots you want your problem have. You can also hide the right count and/or the wrong count. There is space to write the information of the exercise and you may type in how many correct answers the cup will been shown. After you prepare all these, you can name your program however you like and save it. The default and only save path is C:/images/
When you load a problem your role is only clicking spots. If you think you found the spot the exercise asked you for then by clicking it you'll realize if your choice was correct or wrong. If your choice was right, you'll hear a nice sound and the specific spot will become pressed. (if you select the same spot again that will be passed as wrong). If your choice was wrong then you will hear a negative beep and you will see a thump down picture for 2 seconds.
This is the very first version of the program, I may upgrade it if I encounter problems or want to add something more.

1v1 soccer

Here is the link of 1v1 soccer game.
An interesting game to play when you're bored. :P

It's a very simple game where you control a soccer player and your goal is to score. It's pretty fun because the size of the body the player is pretty small compairing to his head and the gravity is low. Have fun playing it. :)

Simon says game completed on logisim

This is the famous Simon says game. You can play it in low graphics here. It's a difficult memory game and interesting to all ages. In the beginning of the game a random button lights. You have to press that button. Then the game gives you - by lighting the buttons - the same sequence of buttons adding 1 random in the end. For example if it gives you yellow blue yellow red and you re-enter them correctly the next will be yellow blue yellow red AND 1 random button (yellow/blue/red/green).
I've made this game using logisim. I used only logic gates (and/or/not/xor) and some splitters, adders and d-flip-flops without editing the clock's path. I also used 4 buttons and some leds to make the game user friendly. The whole project took me nearly 2 days.

Towers of Hanoi on emu8086

The towers of Hanoi can be solved with recursive and no recursive algorithms. In the wiki page I provided you can see both of them. Still, I thought of another no recursive algorithm that solves the puzzle and programmed it on emu8086.






My algorithm still solves the puzzle in the minimum required moves. To use the algorithm you need to remember just one think, left or right (let's call it abc) and has one and only rule: Move the disk that can be moved and wasn't moved in the last round. The disk should be moved according to what abc says, if that's impossible move the disk to the other way. After the move chance the abc. The first value of abc must be left if you have odd number of disks or right if you don't.

I've also made an add-on in the program. I used Visual Basic to create a program that reads whatever the emu8086's program sends to some specific ports. This program just displays the current position and the number of moves made so far.

Emu 8086's robot program complete!

The emu 8086's robot can be seen in the image on the left. The map is 9x6 and you can make any map using the tools provided (see Tool Box). The robot recieve commands from the command line, and gives you information from the data and status line.

I was assigned to create a program which operates the robot to do the following things:
1) Do what human want. (move forward, turn right/left, see what is in front of it, switch on/off lamp)
2) Move forward until he hits, analize what it hit and if it's a lamp in turn it on, then turns randomly right or left tries to move forward again and continues this loop. (I've put a limit of 50 loops)
3) The robot have to find all close lamps in a map and turn them on, all by it self.

After some days (3 or 4), I managed to make this program. The first 2 sub programs took me only a day or less, the third took me some time to complete because it is much more difficult that the others too. I managed to solve some of emu 8086's bugs delayed me. The program took me about 850 lines but works perfectly. I haven't found (yet) any kind of bug in my program.

Double Edge Films

I found the Double Edge Films on youtube and decided that I should tell you some info about them because I like their work very much.

Double Edge Films has made some advertisments, short movies and a movie (ink).

Here are 2 short movies made by them:

Uncle Jack

This video presents a guy who is having serious trouble. His phone rings, he answers, the call is from his brother's house. Surprisingly his brother's daughter was on the phone telling him that she cannot sleep and she wants him to tell her a story to sleep. He can't reveal the truth to her so he describes what's happening like he's telling a fairy tail. Well, that's the intro, watch the video to see what happened next. :)

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Spin

This could also have the title "god is a dj". "God" is watching an accident and tries to undo what happened by adjusting his dj equipment. It is very good, especially the end!

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Here are 2 advertisements made by them:

Go fast and Santa Swarm

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About ink:

Ink is a movie that has to do with dreams and time manipulation. The main roles are the father, a business man with high risk in his job, his daughter and Ink. I cannot describe you ink or give you any more informations or you'll blame me for spoilers, watch the movie. :P

More info about Double Edge Films can be found at their website:
http://www.doubleedgefilms.com/

Assembly usefull info no1

When you type the following commands:

MOV AH,8
INT 21H

and the user types "enter", then the AL=10.
But, if you want to type this text:

ABC
DEF

then you have to type

LEA DX,MSG*
MOV AH,9
INT 21H

*MSG DB "ABC",10,13"DEF","$"

^ note that "enter" in this case is both 10 and 13.

Good students

Take a look at those pictures. They are scanned documents of tests and exercises with some funny solutions.

NetworkedBlogs

I added NetworkedBlogs application in the right column of this blog. You can see the persons who are following this blog there. If you are a facebook member I'd be happy if you followed this blog.

New skin

I changed this blog's skin with this black one. The black one had some problems with some of the features, that's the reason I changed it. This skin may be better too, I like black. I also may edit this skin to make it even better.

I hope you like it. :)

Ueuo problem (solved?)

Ueuo - the free web host had a serious problem. The server didn't always work so the users where unavailable to see the web page.

This problem may have been solved as I don't encounter this problem anymore. Hope it won't appear again.

This post will be updated if the problem appears again.

Super Mario's music remixes

Here are 3 very good remixes, enjoy.

Super Mario bros 3 battle remix

Mario allstars what the funk? remix

S.S.H - Super Mario Bros Theme Remix

I hope you like them. :)

Ubuntu kernel update major problem

I updated my Ubuntu and kernel to version 2.6.32-22. At restart when I tried to boot the updated package the error returned was :
kernel must be loaded first

Also, when I tried to boot with the previous kernel, my NVIDIA driver (screen) didn't work properly - it said that it didn't recognize the screen.

In case you have encountered the same problem here is what I did and solved the problem:

Go to software center and then search for kernel 2.6.32-22.
There should be an available download named initrd.img-2.6.32-22-generic-pae

Download this and load it in the restart. That's what I did and it worked! Lol, I hate this kind of bugs when the system corrupts.