What my boredom has created

As you might have guessed I’m quite bored and therefor I’m blogging. While I was thinking about what to blog about the idea just appeared in front of me: blog about not knowing what to blog about! And here it is:
Stuff that I’ve created:

  • Lolikins
  • The quote database
  • This list >:D

And since I can’t seem to find anything else to do right now I’ll continue writing on this one till I get bored :3

On another note Reimu and Marisa even though I have to say that the Reimu one is superior.
And while I’m linking I might as well link a few music videos, even though YouTube’s quality sucks >_>

Matrix 東方 Touhou Techno/Classic 7
Yay, U.N Owen was her.
Devil’s 東方 Metal/Prog Rock 666 lol broken links

Uh… I’m out of stuff to write about… for now <_<
Scratch that, I can’t resist. Moe~ Moe~ Kyun~
Mio is mine.

Note: This post isn’t supposed to make sense.

Exploding Rats and the C++ Standard Vector

Rats are small, cheap, easy to maintain and transport.

Mine-sniffing ratsAs many are aware, land mines present a significant danger in many war-ravaged countries around the world. Numerous innovative techniques have been developed to clear mine fields, rendering the land once again usable and preventing tragic injuries and deaths. A Belgian non-profit organization, APOPO, began a unique program to develop a new method — using Giant Pouched Rats (Nesomyidae Cricetomyinae) to detect mines — dubbed HeroRATS in 2004, and has now deployed the intrepid rodents in Mozambique.

The rats are too light to set off mines, so disappointingly they are not destroyed in the process (sorry, I lied). Instead, the rats are attached to guide lines and trained to scratch at the ground when they sniff out explosives. The mine is then flagged for removal using more appropriate tools.

A zebra is a horse designed by a committee.

I’ll be the first to admit that I am not an expert with the C++ language. In fact, I can use all the practice I can get. I’ve been using the Standard Template Library on and off for almost 3 years now, but know embarrassingly little about it’s full capabilities. In that vein, I will (hopefully) be posting a series of snippets and short programs about the STL. I plan to start simple, and work my way up. Without further ado, the very basics of the STL vector and it’s iterator.

#include 
#include 
#include 
 
int main()
{
   // Define a vector, which is an array-like container of items.
   // Unlike std::set, vectors can contain the same element any
   // number of times.
   std::vector<std::string> strings;
 
   // Add some strings to the vector.
   strings.push_back("foo");
   strings.push_back("bar");
 
   // Insert a string at a specific point in the vector.  Here "baz"
   // is appended to the vector.
   strings.insert(strings.end(), "baz");
 
   // STL containers (such as vector, set, hash, etc) can be iterated
   // in a manner almost like foreach some in other languages.  First
   // an iterator must be declared.
   std::vector<std::string>::iterator iter = strings.begin();
 
   // The iterator can be used to access each element of the vector.
   for(;
       iter != strings.end(); /* Don't iterate past the end. */
       iter++) /* iters overload the increment (++) operator. */
   {
      // To retrieve the value at the index represented by the
      // iterator, some more STL syntactical sugar makes it a
      // simply matter of using the dereference (*) operator.
      std::cout << *iter;
      std::cout << std::endl;
   }
}
$ g++ vector.cpp -o vector && ./vector
foo
bar
baz
$

Let me know if I’ve made obvious mistakes, which I tend to do frequently!

Trout

I’m here today to talk a bit about fish.

No not really, I’m here to talk a bit about a media player called “Trout”.

Trout is a lightweight media player written in AutoHotkey.

It’s described by the author as:

a simple “load’n’play” type of player.”
– Skwire

Which is exactly what it is, it’s simple and you can quickly add a smaller (or larger) list of songs to play in it.

String formating Dialog

As you can see it’s a quite nice GUI that both looks good and is easy to use.

Trout currently supports the following file formats: AIFF, AIF, AIFC, MP1, MP2, MP3, OGA, OGG, WAV, MO3, XM, MOD, S3M, IT, MTM, FLAC, WMA, WMP, WMV, ASF, MID, MIDI, RMI, KAR, WV, WVC, AAC, MP4, M4A, M4B, M4P, APE, AC3, SPX, TTA, OFR, MPC, ALAC. Which makes it a pretty useful player

Trout features some quite neat stuff including but not limited to:

  • Ballontip on track change
  • Toaster popup on track change
  • Easily customized hotkeys
  • Output formatting for: The title bar, the seek bar, the copy to clipboard function and last but not the least the toaster pop-up and the balloon-tip
  • Last.FM support

It’s a small yet feature-filled media player 🙂

Go try it out now!