White Matrix @WhiteMatrix@qoto.org

A new #astronomy / #astrophotography photo/composition, featuring the excellent #asterism of Big Dipper #BigDipper, and some photo-editing magic.
Taken with my phone and stacked in a graphics editing suite.
Fans of a particular mod to a particular game will hopefully recognise the effect I was going for.
Also, as always, a test of Mastodon's tags.

I just completed "Monkey in the Middle" - Day 11 - Advent of Code 2022 #AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/2022/day/11

Right, I knew this would come up eventually... I got close to the answer (like 1 billion too low) by doing operation modulo the test condition of each monkey after the operation, but that didn't work (because the modulo later is wrong for the test of the next monkey). Modular exponentiation for just the "old * old" operation also gave the wrong results.
At this point, I had no clue, so I found a stranger on Reddit with a solution.
How can one find the property that's used here? Modular exponentiation has a Wikipedia page, does this one also? Does it even have a name, or does it just appear somewhere in a text book and you should just know it? Because it was my first time seeing it.

I just completed "Cathode-Ray Tube" - Day 10 - Advent of Code 2022 #AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/2022/day/10

Cool, actually. AND took way less time than yesterday's.
Maybe that's a new captcha for all the robots/text models. If they can generate the code and read back the letters, they proved their... equivalent of humanity?

I just completed "Rope Bridge" - Day 9 - Advent of Code 2022 #AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/2022/day/9

No comment.
I was typing the correct solution over and over from scratch for several hours, and it wouldn't work. And after changing *nothing* about my methodology (and not much about the code), it worked. Great.
I saw people on Reddit panic about part 2, but after adding one loop and an array of tuples, it worked on the first run.

I just completed "Treetop Tree House" - Day 8 - Advent of Code 2022 #AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/2022/day/8

This one was somewhat difficult, at least counting the amount of time spent. So much in fact, that I'm going to bed now, without doing the one from yesterday, which I had no time to do immediately for other reasons.
Oh, one more thing: there's a slight bug in my code for part 2 of today's task, but apparently it didn't matter for the input data: my left-searching loop sometimes gives a wrong result. Perfect. But hey, it generated a good solution, so who cares, *right*?

I just completed "Tuning Trouble" - Day 6 - Advent of Code 2022 #AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/2022/day/6

I couldn't get the right answer, and was getting worried, but it turned out to be a off-by-4 error. Great.

I just completed "Supply Stacks" - Day 5 - Advent of Code 2022 #AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/2022/day/5

When I read it on my phone in the morning, I thought I'm not gonna solve it today, but it was interesting, actually. Any ideas on how to import the stacks from the file? I just manually hardcoded them in the code, but that would be far from optimal in a case with 100 stacks.

I just completed "Camp Cleanup" - Day 4 - Advent of Code 2022 #AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/2022/day/4

Wow, truly, there isn't a problem that can't be solved with enough Python sets. But I kinda want to redo this one in C++, just to see what it takes with only simple arrays and (maybe) vectors.

I just completed "Rucksack Reorganization" - Day 3 - Advent of Code 2022 #AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/2022/day/3

Man, these are interesting so far. I did these three in Python, which was convinient here, thanks to the built-in sets. But getting three lines at a time would actually be 30 seconds of consideration faster in C++, so that's that.

I just completed "Rock Paper Scissors" - Day 2 - Advent of Code 2022 #AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/2022/day/2

Surprisingly, today's was also doable, and also quite interesting, too!

I just completed "Calorie Counting" - Day 1 - Advent of Code 2022 #AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/2022/day/1

This was my (and everyone else's) first task this year. It will likely also be *my* last. But hey, they've included a Mastodon sharer, so that's nice.

It's time for some #astronomy / #astrophotography and photos of the #Moon, featuring:
- my phone
- the cheapest binoculars in existence
- high-end graphics editing suite, that I have minimal experience with in the photo editing component (but rather a lot in the DTP one).

And a test of Mastodon's hashtag relevance to anyone seeing this post.

Hello world!
Hello Fediverse!
As everyone nowadays it seems, I'm moving away from Twitter (\@white_matrix) and hoping to connect with STEM and IT people.