February 21: 2002:  From an old ACM Programming Contest, here's a problem I call Slimps, Slumps and Slurpies.   These are strings of characters following certain formation rules. The definitions are recursive, meaning that the rules may include the terms being defined.  The idea is to write a program that recognizes each type.  Kind of a compiler for the "Slurp" language!   

February 15,2002:  What would the Olympics be without rings?  Here's an Olympic Rings puzzle that challenges you to place  one of the digits 1-9 in each of the areas formed by the overlapping rings so that the sum of the digits in each ring is the same.   This is mainly a programming exercise, but you can print a copy of the rings if you want to exercise your brain (and delay Alzheimer's).

February 13, 2002: Here 's the Arithmattack! drill program I mentioned  the other day.   It's a timed drill to see how many basic arithmetic problems can be solved in 60 seconds with user control of the range of values and the operations.   My first thought was that the timing aspect wasn't  good, but I've changed my mind.   We all need to  learn to think under pressure, and this is low-pressure pressure.   Problems can be very simple to start and should build confidence.  See what you think.  

February 10, 2002:  I've been playing with Doodler 2 for several days.  (Doodler 1 was posted about a month ago.)   Printing and rotating drawings is working fine, but kaleidoscope drawing is driving me crazy!

I decided to take a break and work on a few simpler programs.  One is an arithmetic drill program modeled after Arithmattack, a Javascript program  posted at the Argonne National Laboratory website.   My beta tester (aka wife)  complained about my  use of * and / for multiply and divide.   That led to today's posting - a FontViewer written to find those elusive  × and ÷ symbols.  It could also be useful if you need the ™, ©, ®, or  ± symbols which are buried in most fonts.   I used the OnDrawCell event exit to display fonts in a Stringrid, so decided to post it over in Delphi-Techniques as an example of this  Stringgrid drawing technique.