June 2006 - Posts

Wrestling <==> SciFi?

As a friend of mine so eloquently put it: "ECW?  WTF?"

The SciFi channel... let me repeat that... The SciFi channel shows F-ING WRESTLING!!!!

I was looking for something cool to watch and saw "ECW" advertised with a bunch of roid-ridden actor/wrestlers on it.  I thought there was a screwup, but there is ECW (owned by WWE, by the way) WRESTLING on the F-ING SCIENCE FICTION channel... ridiculous!

Here's my email to their feedback address:
One Question:

Why is there wrestling on the sci-fi channel?

I am looking for some cool new shows to record and I go to "www.scifi.com/onair" and I was horrified to see the ECW banner so prominently displayed.

I looked for some indication that these were androids or aliens in some goofy new series, but, to my dismay, this wasn't the case..

What the heck does wrestling have to do with science fiction?????

I always though SciFi was such a great channel for sticking to a niche like Science Fiction / Fantasy.  It was a tough first few years.  Now, you're making some of the best shows on TV, but, frankly, I have lost a tremendous amount of respect for this channel for airing such garbage.

Please, Please, Please get this crap off of your channel and stick to real Sci Fi shows!

A concerned viewer,

Tom McKearney
posted by admin with 0 Comments

leave it to a VB programmer...

OK, I've always been an admitted snob when it comes to Visual Basic.  To me, Visual Basic has always represented the blocks-with-letters-on-them version of languages.  Basically, most of the people who are really big fans of VB fall solidly under the category of "Don't Want Him/Her on My Team".  I know, this will upset some people, but anyone who knows me knows that I don't really care :)

Here's what made me say the title:

I was google searching for an algorithm to give me the intersecting point of two Line Segments.  For those non-math weenies out there, a "line" is an infinite thing.  So, when you ask for the intersection of two lines, you may get a point extremely far away from your area of interest.  A "line segment" on the other hand is what you generally consider a line: the connection of two points. 

In looking around, I found this code which, by the way, doesn't solve what I want.  It solves the "line" intersection:

    'Returns the point that the lines cross and stores into LinesCross if the lines do in fact cross
    Public Function Intersect(ByRef Ln As geoLine, ByRef LinesCross As Boolean) As geoPoint
        Try
            'Calculate Denominator
            Dim Det As Double = Ln.m_A * m_B - Ln.m_B * m_A
            Dim Res As geoPoint = New geoPoint((Ln.m_C * m_B - Ln.m_B * m_C) / Det, (Ln.m_A * m_C - m_A * Ln.m_C) / Det)
            LinesCross = True
            Return Res
        Catch
            'Lines are parallel (or do not intersect within the range of a double)
            LinesCross = False
            Return New geoPoint()
        End Try

    End Function

OK, this is a Cardinal Sin of exception handling.  (S)he's using exception handling for logic flow!  That's 30 lashes with a cat o' nine tails to me.  Of course a VB person may applaud his/her ingenuity...

T

posted by Tom with 0 Comments