to produce
equally simple web quizzes. You edit the text in a file and you get an HTML
file that shows questions and answers. If a user clicks on a correct answer, a
green checkmark is shown; if the answer is incorrect, a red cross is shown.
Converting a movie for an iphone
Even after all this time, converting a DVD movie into a form suitable for an
iphone or ipod touch is still not easy. Handbrake is quite good. But despite a
somewhat daunting set of parameters and options, the most versatile tool for
creating good looking video files is mencoder, part of the MPlayer package. I have done a bit of
experimenting and come up with a bash script that
generates a suitable call to mencoder for an iphone. An mencoder compiled
with the x264 and faac libraries must already be installed for this to
work. For those on a Mac with MacPorts
installed, mencoder can be installed in one step with "sudo port install
mplayer-devel +x264 +faac".
There are a still a few options left in this script worth knowing about,
notably one to adjust the frame rate for non-progressive scan movies, and one
to leave the given brightness and contrast of the DVD as is. (A movie on the
iphone looks better with the brightness and contrast adjusted.)
A simulated world
This archive contains the code and
documentation for a simulated world inhabited by four squirrels (squirrel-like
software agents). Squirrels have both effectors (to do things in the world)
and sensors (to gather information). Everything is known to the squirrels at
the outset except for the locations of some acorns and wall obstacles. This
can be thought of as a game where the goal is to be the first squirrel to
gather 5 acorns.
The world was implemented in PLT Scheme which is now called Racket Scheme,
and so references in the documentation to "mred" and "mzscheme" should be
replaced by "racket". Although the server is written in Scheme (which needs
to be installed for it to run), programs to control the behaviour of the
squirrels can be written in any language (like Python or Prolog) that supports
TCP communication.
Research software: Generating plans with loops
This paper
describes a planner that is able to generate plans that contain loops. A
version of the planner written in Eclipse Prolog with a few examples was
posted here. A
more recent port to the freely available SWI Prolog is here.
A much better implementation in SWI Prolog based on finite-state automata
is here.