Here's a little program (pi_calc.rb) I adapted today from the devdaily blog to calculate the value of pi using the converging series 4/1 - 4/3 + 4/5 - 4/7 + 4/9 .... The original program wasn't interactive so you had to keep editing the code just to see how much more accurate the calculation got as you went farther into the series. I fixed that. You should be able to run the program on Mac OS X or on any other Unix-y system that has Ruby installed in /usr/bin. Just open the Terminal, go to the directory to which you've downloaded the script (by using cd), and type ./pi_calc.rb If it doesn't work for you, try doing a chmod 755 pi_calc.rb in the directory to which you downloaded the script. Beyond that, I can make no guarantees about the performance of my code. It's the first Ruby script I've ever...

So I just had to transfer another $100+ out of my savings account, which is now pretty much wiped out. And I'm not even in school yet. And I need to find either a new roommate or a new place to live in the next 6 weeks. Lord, give me strength. What's really killing me financially, of course, is having to pay for medication out of pocket, then wait weeks for reimbursement (which I haven't received yet). Say what you will about "socialized medicine" but it certainly was better than the fictional health insurance that I'm on now. My position on issues of government social services spending is different than most people's, I think. I'm not categorically opposed to it; in fact, I think it has an important role to play in preserving a halfway-decent quality of life for those near the bottom of the economic ladder. However, I don't...

Meet Port O'Brien - a husband & wife team who spend their summers in Alaska fishing and baking....

Check out Fuji 1546....

(Explanation to come later. Wish that party next door would stop. It makes it hard to even want to sleep.) Command: wget -S -p -Pwebtests/um.org/volunteer http://www.urbanministry.org/volunteer wget : gets web files, non-interactive -S : get server headers -Pdirectory : save to directory -p : gets all necessary files http://www.example.com/page : page to get Copy the output from your terminal window to a file & you have an instant log of how your site performs - a) total time, b) headers sent, and c) any 404 or 3xx errors. Of course, you could use the tee command to pipe the standard error output to a file, but copy-and-paste works OK for me....