Month: January 2017

Derivatives Explained (Part 1)

A couple of weeks ago, I posted the intro to this series. This is part 1 of this series, where I will throw light upon the basic rules of derivatives. But before you continue, make sure that you understand the concept(s) explained in the intro post. Then you may continue on to this post.

We know that taking a derivative is easy with simple functions, and sometimes linear functions. But when it is almost impossible to calculate without guides, you have to refer to rules. The basic rules are: (Note: $c$ refers to any constant, and $f(x)$ and $g(x)$ refer to functions.)

$(c \times f(x))' = c \times f(x)'$

$f(x) = g(x) + c$ $f(x)' = g(x)'$ or in other words, $(c)' = 0$

and lastly (for now) $f(x) = n^m$ $f(x)' = mn^{m-1}$

If you combine this knowledge with algebraic rules such as $n^an^b = n^{a+b}$ or $x^{-1} = \frac{1}{x}$

Sidenote:

$\frac{d}{dx} f(x)$ is the same as $f(x)'$. I use the notation with the apostrophe because it is shorter and simpler. If the first notation is used anywhere, know that that is a derivative. End Sidenote

With this information, you can (and will) solve almost all functions excluding ones that use the exponential function, logarithms, trig, etc. To test your knowledge, I recommend you solve some tests on this topic. One of the resources available on this topic are MAT 270 calculus tests. I don’t exactly know the origin, but I think these resources are provided by Arizona State University, but I’m not sure.

This is it for this blog post, I hope I explained it well. As I said, I highly recommend practicing derivatives to have learned the topic. Take care!

My dual boot attempt and adventure (and misery)

We all know that dual-booting is not an easy task to do. But if you do it right, it’s a walk in the park. But if you do it wrong, all of your data and your system is in complete danger. I was trying to dual boot Windows 10 and Fedora 25 Workstation on a Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Series and I completely botched it.

So, here is the story from the beginning. I was trying to set up a fast virtual machine that I could code on, but it was just too slow and laggy to use, even to code. So, I opted for dual booting. I shrunk D: drive, and I left 50 gigs of unallocated space. Then, I burnt the Fedora 25 ISO file to a USB flash drive via Rufus, then I booted it from UEFI settings, but it just didn’t work. I had tried everything, I was out of solutions. Then my dad recognized the drive label was different. He told me that it had to be specific, not just anything you want. We re-labeled the drive and booted again. Still didn’t work, it was stuck at the loading screen at about half. We rebooted and this time we went into text view so that we could see what was going on. It was stuck on some sort of WPA applicant thingy. We, once more, tried everything, but one thing worked. We booted from legacy mode settings, and it worked! Then we finally installed Fedora 25 on my hard drive.

But, when we tried to boot, it passed the WPA applicant part but it got stuck on “creating user something something UID 1000”. Rebooting somehow solved the problem, and voila! I am able to log- Oh no. It is now stuck on the grey screen that comes up after you enter the password. It doesn’t let me go into text mode either. “Dangit!” I shouted out. Why wouldn’t it work. I decided to take a break and boot to windows- Windows boot manager is gone. Oops.

So, I gave up on fedora, and I tried to get windows working again. I had a copy of it on a USB drive, so I used that too try and restore windows without my data being wiped, but it didn’t do anything at all. I try to get a fresh installation, doesn’t work. It was at that point that I decided that I will sacrifice the data on C: to get my PC working again. Did the same steps, nothing worked. Then, I, bravely decided to sacrifice the 600 GBs of games, movies, music, videos, etc., to restore my PC. We deleted EVERYTHING, and installed windows like new, then it decided to work. For success, I had to make the biggest sacrifice of my life (literally).

Conclusion; research before doing anything with a risk that you do not want to take. If you make a mistake and botch up everything, you have to make a sacrifice to get it working. This applies even on computers.

Don’t be like me and dive in blind into a pool of danger and risk, be wise and do research first. Take care (of your computer)!

EDIT: I was supposed to post this on Sunday, but as I said I pulled a fatality on my computer 😛

Video games and education

Video games are thought to be the opposite of education, because it is thought that it kills time and brain cells, and has no useful feature at all. I call incorrect on this one, and I strongly believe otherwise.

So how can video games improve education? They already are, by enhancing problem solving capabilities. This has been proved in countless studies. Also, some games are built for education, and on education topics. Not only that, but good and fun games about education are doubly effective because it presents educational topics coated with video games. Maybe, popular games can be redone to fit educational needs!

But, one of the problems are that video game companies only care about the money, and since it would be hard to make a good game and incorporate it with education flawlessly. And hard things mean more cash lost to companies. The companies do not want that. And the small devs can’t do much on their own, so most games are really small, and sometimes bad quality. I guess this is a dead end.

I have run out of ideas on this topic, and I believe that it has potential. Maybe, if I have time, I will try to fix this on my own. But before that, I need to do some important things that will benefit me, maybe then I can start working on this topic. Who knows?

That is all for this blog post, stay tuned for my next post, because it will be on Sunday. Take care!

Thumbnail; Controllers photo: Huffington Post, book image: Picovico, education button: Mpece

The procrastination problem

Procrastination is a big factor in productivity, and life in general. For those of you who don’t know, procrastination is to put a task off to do some other meaningless stuff instead. Basically wasting your time when you have a task at hand. And it’s really bad, so you should stop it immediately.

Unreal Engine 4: Moving platforms V2

I said that I was going to write a bonus post containing 5 bonuses. Here they are:

1. Changeable timeline curve
2. Making other objects be able to hit the button
3. Chained lifts & lifts stopping when blocked
4. Lift shooting projectile when it stops
5. Rock smashing through the wall we made in the material instances post

Unreal Engine 4: Lifts and moving platforms

Lifts and moving platforms are an essential part in making platformer games, or any game at all. And, it is really important because a game with just static objects would be really boring, so you definitely need moving objects, platforms, etc.

Derivatives Explained (Intro)

A derivative is a function $f'(x)$, that gives the slope of the function $f(x)$. To signify a derivative, an apostrophe is put in front of the function name, for example $tax(x) \rightarrow tax'(x)$

Ionic bonding in molecules

When you look at some molecules you might say “Those atoms are not connected, how are they molecules?”. Because of ionic bonding. In ionic bonding, the atoms are not connected by a pair of electrons like in covalent bonding, they are connected by magnetic forces. One of the atoms are negatively charged, the other is positively charged. It doesn’t have to be single atoms too, they can be two different charged structures as well.

Triple post next week (Happy New Year!)

I have been busy, so I couldn’t post too much. I missed two weeks. For that I will post Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to make up for that. But now I will always allocate time every Wednesday. Also, I will make higher quality posts, some of my posts were just rushed so they aren’t too high quality. That is all for now. Stay tuned for the upcoming triple post!

Also, happy new year! I hope 2016 went well for you, and I wish everyone the best in 2017!