Fun
Java Applets
These are applets that I wrote either to learn how to do
something in Java or to figure out how to implement some particular type of
algorithm. But mostly they just ended up being fun to write! Some are now quite
old and cranky…
Every time I solved a
cryptogram in the newspaper I realized I followed a pretty consistent approach.
Sounded like something a computer could do better than me! Many cryptograms
that you encounter in the newspaper use puns with alternate spellings of normal
English words. My program attempts to complete as many of the ‘normal’ words as
possible and then uses the uncoded alphabet to
complete the unknown, alternate words. There may of course be more than one
solution in this case; the more words in the cryptogram, the more likely the
resulting solution will be unique. I simply print the first one that is found.
It can get stuck occasionally—please forgive me! To quote a famous GIS
manufacturer, “that’ll be fixed in the next release…”
I used to play Microsoft
Mine Sweeper obsessively. So I had to figure out how it worked. Here’s a much
more exciting version with deadly consequences…
This is an ancient applet
that somehow continues to work in contemporary Java environments. Click letters
on the keyboard to guess. If you can’t get it to work on the first click, try
pushing the New Word button and it usually kicks in after that.
This just makes me happy.
Enjoy.
Before Excel and about a
million web conversion devices did this kind of stuff, I wrote a program to
determine elapsed time between one event and another. I was keeping track of
intern payroll timesheets at the time and got pretty tired of calculating how
much time had passed from 8:45 am to 3:30 pm.