kaioa.com

The hashes match

I just finished a tiny web application. And by tiny I do indeed mean tiny. It's a single file and less than 8kb in size (thanks to GZRepack). You can check it over at riddler.kaioa.com.

It allows you to store the hashes of answers to some question in an URL. If someone clicks on that URL he/she is then asked for the solution. If it matches any of the up to 5 hashes the icon and the border turn green and he/she can then start the next round.

The art of shuffling

What it says on the tin, really

Here you'll get Flash (AS3), haXe, JavaScript, PHP, Perl, and Python ports of my continuous shuffled sequence algorithm. As usual the code is available under a Zero-clause BSD-style license, which means you can use it in any way you like.

All implementations utilize an un-seeded default source of randomness. If determinism is required, you'll only need to hand over a PRNG and use that one instead. Or hand the seed over and initialize the PRNG with that one as the original Java version did it.

The startup time of Java applets isn't all that great. If you place an applet directly on your front page, some users may not like it. Caspian from puppygames.net removed the (awesome) Puppy Invaders game for this very reason. It's a shame, really. So, what can be done about that?

The issue is the direct start of the Java VM without any user interaction or any indication of what will happen. Apparently there are two options:

• a separate page for the game
• adding the applet later