Chris Pitzer

If you’re into puzzles and enjoy some light coding, you should check out Project Euler. It’s a site devoted to problems (mostly mathematical) which require a computer to be solved.

Problem 35

The number, 197, is called a circular prime because all rotations of the digits: 197, 971, and 719, are themselves prime.

There are thirteen such primes below 100: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 31, 37, 71, 73, 79, and 97.

How many circular primes are there below one million?

Sure, you could solve that kind of problem on paper, but it would take you a lifetime. On the other hand, it is pretty simple if you attack it with a computer.

1. Find all the prime numbers under a million.
2. Split each number into a string and recombine it using all possible rotations.
3. Test each rotation, if all are prime, add 1 to the tally.

When you have the answer, you can go back to ProjectEuler.net and punch it in.  The site will keep track of which problems you’ve solved, and if you have lots of time on your hands, you might even make it on to a list of the top 1000 problem solvers.

If you like mulling over a problem in the back of your mind all day, Project Euler is worth a look.

Have fun, and let me know what you think!

Well, that didn’t take long! In my last post I talked about how I didn’t know of any free websites that had good collections of screencast tutorial videos. I just stumbled upon….

wikivid.com – A screencast aggregator

There’s nothing very wiki about it, as the videos are all static content collected from sites all over – but it’s still a great resource. Visit the link, and you will see a list of tutorial categories. When you select a category (for instance, Linux or Flash) you will see tutorial videos within that category organized under subheadings (like Intro or Actionscript).

A nice feature wikivid is that it doesn’t send you off to all those frightening, distant websites to view the screencasts. You get to watch everything without ever leaving wikivid. The interface is simple and quick, and even allows you to give quick feedback on the videos you view.

So – it’s all pretty simple, but that’s what makes it so easy to use. I look forward to seeing where the go from here!

I’m really excited about CamStudio. The video will introduce you to a few of the basic features. If there’s interest, I may even look into putting together a tutorial that goes through all the settings. My bigger concern for the moment, however, is that there are still a lot of issues that need to be ironed out. The most blatant of which are perhaps the ugly flash player interface (which you can see below in the video), and their sloppy website.

Don’t get me wrong though – the program is super useful even in its current form. I’m just holding out hope that it will get even better.

CamStudio is an open source project, so I’ve gotten in contact with them and offered to pitch in where I can. More on that as it develops.

Enjoy the video!