June 29, 2001:  Here's a little geometry/trig problem from an old ACM programming contest.    The FlatLand Piano Movers need a program to determine  if they can deliver a piano of a given size  around the corners at  a destination with hallways of known width.   I found it challenging, and never did find an analytical solution, although I'm sure one exists.  This program uses a "try it and see if it fits"  approach.  

June 26, 2001:  We're  on a one week break between grandkid visits - just enough time to get some lawn mowing and garden work done.  For the past few days I've spent more time than was justified shopping for new PC pieces.   Components are now all ordered - $450 for an 800mhz Celeron.  No mouse, hard drive or monitor, which I already have.  But including 256mb memory, a 9-bay mid-tower case, an 8X CDRW drive, 32mb AGP video card and a multimedia keyboard!   I'll post a page with the details when the pieces arrive and I get them hooked up. 

The TAstronomy component & demo are working!  It turned out to be pretty large though, 4000 or so lines of code, so I guess it'll be a while before I get around to documenting and posting it.  If anyone is really interested in getting a copy "as is", send me a note.       

 June 14, 2001:   As you might guess, I couldn't resist adding planet position prediction to the forthcoming TAstronomy component,  so now everything is there and working.  Well, Pluto isn't there because it's position isn't predictable over the long term using  simple curve fitting.  No big loss - it's the smallest planet, smaller than our moon, about 100 times dimmer than the next dimmest planet, Neptune and it's about 4 billion miles away.   But I do need a program that does more than just display where the rest are at  any point in time.  

 I found a neat, free,  Delphi OpenGL 3D graphics component this week. (Computer Geometry, CGLib,  from Delphi3D).  I came across this while working on the  idea for a 3D planetary model to go with  TAstronomy.     So here's a prototype Planet Viewer based on OpenGL/CGLib.    It's adapted from a demo program I found at the Delphi3D site.  Most of it I don't really understand yet, but it does look cool.  

June 12, 2001:  I wrote this Canvas drawing demo the other day to help someone who needed some help saving and restoring canvas drawings.  It's posted in the Delphi Techniques section.   It also illustrates the starting point to get the little images posted occasionally with these program descriptions.    

June 3, 2001:  I finally got eclipse prediction working, but it was probably more effort than it was worth.  Only stubbornness kept me at it, long past the fun stage.  I'll come back and clean it up and post it in a week or so.  (Unless I recover enough to tackle the planets.)

But here's a river crossing puzzle that was fun.   This is the fox-duck-corn variation of the 1200 year old wolf-goose-cabbage original.     A graphics interface allows the user or the program to solve the puzzle.    A simple puzzle, but I like it.