tascrafts.com
Innovation when you least expect it.
The Hardest Logic Puzzle in the World
Jul 1st
A group of people with assorted eye colors live on an island. They are all perfect logicians — if a conclusion can be logically deduced, they will do it instantly. No one knows the color of their eyes. Every night at midnight, a ferry stops at the island. Any islanders who have figured out the color of their own eyes then leave the island, and the rest stay. Everyone can see everyone else at all times and keeps a count of the number of people they see with each eye color (excluding themselves), but they cannot otherwise communicate. Everyone on the island knows all the rules in this paragraph.
On this island there are 100 blue-eyed people, 100 brown-eyed people, and the Guru (she happens to have green eyes). So any given blue-eyed person can see 100 people with brown eyes and 99 people with blue eyes (and one with green), but that does not tell him his own eye color; as far as he knows the totals could be 101 brown and 99 blue. Or 100 brown, 99 blue, and he could have red eyes.
The Guru is allowed to speak once (let’s say at noon), on one day in all their endless years on the island. Standing before the islanders, she says the following:
“I can see someone who has blue eyes.”
Who leaves the island, and on what night?
There are no mirrors or reflecting surfaces, nothing dumb. It is not a trick question, and the answer is logical. It doesn’t depend on tricky wording or anyone lying or guessing, and it doesn’t involve people doing something silly like creating a sign language or doing genetics. The Guru is not making eye contact with anyone in particular; she’s simply saying “I count at least one blue-eyed person on this island who isn’t me.”
The answer is not “no one leaves.” Much care has been taken to make the wording as precise and unambiguous as possible. If you’re confused about anything, please let me know. A word of warning: The answer is not simple. This is an exercise in serious logic, not a lateral thinking riddle. There is not a quick-and-easy answer, and really understanding it takes some effort.
I’m in the progress of making a clone of the popular Flood-It game, by 
Way to go Dell.
Jun 20th
So I called Dell yesterday and after an…
Wait, let me start over. So I text/chatted with them yesterday asking about the Windows 7 CD that came with my laptop. The computer shipped with 7 Home Premium on it, but they sent a Windows 7 Started Edition CD by mistake. So I want to reinstall the OS, but not via the recovery partition. I look at the CD and say “Oh dear, wrong CD”. So I chatted up tech support where a nice lady (Whom I had to explain the problem three times) said she would send me a copy of the Windows 7 Home Premium CD AS WELL AS a completely new hard drive with it preinstalled. I told her that the CD would suffice, but she was insistent that I took the hard drive as well. (Maybe I’m not smart enough to install it from a CD).
So anyway, the CD is being delivered, as well as a new 320 GB hard drive. This isn’t the first time Dell’s been so giving, by the way. Over the course of the four years I had my old desktop, they replaced the motherboard, CPU, and monitor for free. Its near impossible to get to tech support, but once you’re there, its all good.
Thanks Dell.
Computer Haiku’s
Jun 19th
Software writers are considering replacing the impersonal and unhelpful error messages with Haiku poetry.
_____________________________________________________________
Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
Your file was so big.
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
The Website you seek
Cannot be located, but
Countless more exist.
With searching comes loss
And the presence of absence:
“My Novel” not found.
A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.
Three things are certain:
Death, taxes and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
This page is not here.
Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.
Having been erased,
The document you’re seeking
Must now be retyped.
WordPress 3. It’s so nice.
Jun 18th
It installs with one click from the WordPress 2 interface and I didn’t have to change themes or anything.
Niceness.
PS:
Game-Monitor.com PHP serialized query
Jun 9th
If you’ve ever wanted to display your own server status on your team or clans web page, you can do it using game-monitor.com and a lucky bit of PHP.
I wrote the code below a while ago to use on my own website. It already does all the hard stuff for you. All you need to do is supply it with an IP and the query you want returned. For example: query.php?ip=216.245.195.44:27016&var=maxplayers
query.php $ip = $_GET['ip']; $link = "http://module.game-monitor.com/" . $ip . "/data/server.php"; if ($var == "ip") { echo $raw->$var; } if ($var == "port") { echo $raw->$var; } if ($var == "player") { echo $raw->$var; } if ($var == "maxplayer") { echo $raw->$var; } if ($var == "name") { echo $raw->$var; } if ($var == "premium") { echo $raw->$var; } if ($var == "error") { echo $raw->$var; } if ($var == "query_time") { echo $raw->$var; } /*
$var = $_GET['var'];
$raw = unserialize(file_get_contents($link));
QUERY VARIABLES
ip
port
player
maxplayer
name
premium
error
query_time
*/
?>
How to make a homemade POE
Jun 7th
I was just about to make my own power over ethernet (POE) adapter for my Ubiquiti Bullet and decided to make a tutorial about it.
What we are trying to do:
Make our own power supply for a Ubiquity product. This isn’t a general POE injector, so don’t try use it on a router.
What we need:
1. An ethernet wirebox. (Like $2)
2. An old ethernet cable (Free)
3. An old (or new) power adapter. Anything between 12 and 25 volts will work. (Free-$30)
4. A Ubiquiti product. I have the Bullet ($40-90)
What to do:
First, start by cutting the ends of the power supply cable and near the end of the ethernet cable.
Next, crimp the wires onto the ethernet cable box. We are only going to use the orange and green wires, as they are the only ones that carry data. Orange-White to pin 3. Orange to pin 6. Green-White to pin 1. Green to pin 2.
Double check the power polarity on your power supply. The positive is usually on the inside. Ubiquiti devices do their power supplies a bit different, so here’s what we are going to do. Put the positive wire onto pins 4 and 5 (The blue ones) and the negative end onto pins 7 and 8 (The brown ones). See pic.
Once this is done, plug in a regular ethernet cable from the box to the bullet and then plug in the power supply.
IT SHOULD WORK!
Once the bullet comes on and you make sure their’s no smoke coming out of it, you can plug the other ethernet cable into your computer. Note that no power goes into the computer. The box combines the cable from the computer with the power supply and sends them both to the bullet.
On the bullet, you need to set a static address of 192.168.1.1. Once you’ve done that, you should be able to ping and log into the bullet.
You’re done!
Posting
Jun 5th
I know, I haven’t posted in a while. It’s not that I’ve been doing nothing, it’s that I’ve been too busy lately to even sit down at my computer, let alone make a post! In fact, there was a whole week where I didn’t even turn it on! I couldn’t believe it either. 200 e-mails much?
Since I posted last, I took a trip up to the states to deliver a new boat (Details on Facebook). The trip back to the Bahamas was both long and short. It only took 20 hours, but when you are on shift from 3AM to 12PM, it can mess with your head. Suffice it to say, I had a nice long sleep that day when I got back.
So, whats new on the interwebs…?
I made a few changes to www.ngclan.net (New homepage) and made some changes to this site (beta.tascrafts.com coming soon!)
My GeoIP database has over 2500 entries now! w00t! (Click)
Oh, I fiddled around and came up with a new site idea! It’s an image uploading and exchange site. Upload an image, and you get a random one back uploaded by someone else. I’m gonna put a few more features on it in the next few days. www.imgswp.com
Still have quesions about LOST?
Jun 3rd
If you’re one of those die-hard LOST fans, maybe you should get in touch with the producers and find out the answers to the following: