Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Random

What is this cryptic Text Message?

MattMangels — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 21:17:44 -0800

"You Hosting Tonight? Got some of the best Faves ever" What could this possibly mean? My friend got this text message from a wrong number, and we were all stumped as to what on earth it could possibly mean. Could you help me out, Hivemind? I'm just very curious about this; it sounds really funny out of context. For the record, it was received at 1am today (Sunday) from a number in our area code.

What retailers offer random surprise boxes of merchandise?

IndigoRain — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:13:03 -0800

What other retailers offer surprise boxes of random merchandise, such as Archie McPhee's Surprise Bag and Jumbo Mystery Box? The only other one I know of is Strapya World's Lucky Bag.

Also, not interested in Woot's Bag of Crap... I'm looking for boxes/bags that are available all the time or else at a certain time of year (like how Strapya's is only available in December.)

Playlists won't stay random after transfer to iPod

friarjohn — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:32:43 -0800

Playlists set to random in iTunes won't stay random on my iPod. How can I fix this? [searched around and didn't see this exact issue addressed]

I've built a couple playlists (one smart, one regular) for my 5th Gen 30GB Video iPod and set them to random in iTunes. After I sync and disconnect my iPod the playlists are no longer in random order. They are in alphabetical order by album. In Settings, Shuffle is currently set to songs.

This hasn't always been a problem. It just cropped up recently, but I don't normally use a lot of playlists as I mostly listen to podcasts and audiobooks and just shuffle all songs when I want music.

What setting am I missing?

I need a list of all the countries

billtron — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:55:49 -0800

I'm looking for a randomized list of every nation state in the world, preferably in spreadsheet column form. Is there anything like this?

Macbook screen dimming, flicker!

spacefire — Sun, 31 May 2009 17:02:39 -0800

My Macbook Core Duo 1.83 GHZ experiences random dimming of the screen, like a flicker, from time to time. I just bought it from my sister in law and installed Leopard on it. She said she'd never had this problem while she was using it, when it had Tiger. I've been reading up on the issue on various Mac forums and some people say it's a screen power inverter issue, which is a hardware issue and would cost money to fix, since the laptop has long been out of warranty.
Others say that the automatic light sensor should be disabled, from somewhere in System Preferences/Display, but I don't have that option.

The dimming and brightening does not occur all the time, but still, it's pretty annoying when it occurs.

Is there a fix for this?

Thanks MeFi!

How do I thank someone who saved my very broke butt from public humiliation?

naoko — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:32:30 -0800

How should I thank a stranger who got me out of a small but embarrassing money jam? Backstory: last month I ran out of money. Completely out, all bank accounts in the negative, not fun, and it totally blindsided me. Lots of lessons were learned (like balance my checkbook from time to time, spend more responsibly, etc.) - not the point of the question.

Anyway, I discovered that I was totally and utterly broke while in the cafeteria line at work - went to ring up my lunch (something like $6.70) and my debit card is declined. So I'm standing there counting change down to the pennies (and knowing I was going to be a few bucks short), and the line behind me is building up, and the food was like a hot pasta dish or something that I couldn't just put back, and the cashier is rolling her eyes at me, and just as I'm wishing a hole would open up in the floor and let me disappear, a girl leans over and swipes her card. She tries to run away but I said, "Wait, what's your name, I have to pay you back!" and she says, "No, don't worry about it" and scampers off.

But she didn't take her receipt. So I took it, and now I have her name, and from there it's easy to find out where in my office complex she works. So, what should I do now? Send her a note and 7 bucks? Should I sign it or leave it anonymous? What should I say that will express my extreme gratitude but not sound totally weird?

Embed Sim City?

grrarrgh00 — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 05:33:00 -0800

Is there an embeddable Flash Sim City game anywhere on the Web?

stochastic hyperlink required

ddaavviidd — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:47:41 -0800

Question about linking pages in a slightly random way with Dreamweaver... I have a basic understanding of html and can make my way around dreamweaver (which I learned by myself, so I am definitely not an advanced user!), but for a multimedia project I'm working on, I'd like to create a specific type of link. I would like to create a hyperlink that points to a group of pages (that would be grouped in a folder, or perhaps there is a tagging system that could be put into place?), but that randomly picks one of these pages (not the one that's currently live). I'm not sure if this is feasible with my poor programing knowledge, but I would hope there's a straightforward way to achieve it!

My idea is that if the audience enjoy a text (or an image for that matter), they could click on it and be directed to another related page, but not in a linear or predictive way.

Additionnal infos: the project is for an installation, so everything is going to be local (ie on the computer that runs the installation, in safari with mega zoomer). I can use good old dreamweaver 8 and/or flash mx to complete this simple task. I thought for a while that a cms might be easier to deal with to achieve that effect, but I already have a lot of pages already created and know nothing about css.

Can I get there whenever?

mcarthey — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:34:41 -0800

Can I search for the best price for an airline ticket to a specific destination for some random unknown future date? I'd like to fly to a location, but I don't care what the date is. I know I'd like to stay for X number of days, but other than that, I just want the best price. The problem is that all sites I've found require a window of time. Is there a good site for this?

Random Acts of Kindness you have done?

greenish — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 03:19:02 -0800

What "random act of kindness" have you done recently? I'm looking for ideas! I've been getting kicks out of doing things for the neighbours in my block recently like taking round half a pie, or babysitting for nothing.

I now want new ideas of what i can do, not just for them, for the guys who clean the street outside and the bus drivers - everyone.

What did you do recently for a stranger which brightened their day?

ipod touch going crazy?

special-k — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 13:10:40 -0800

Why does my ipod touch keep rebooting automatically? My ipod touch is 3 months old. Over the last two weeks, I find that it just reboots randomly several times in a row. The only way to make it stop is to do a hard reboot and then restart.
The trigger most of the time is when I hit the sleep button. What should I do? Update the software or take it back to an Apple store?

C++ and rand()

Ziggy Zaga — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 10:55:51 -0800

C++ and the rand() function. Please explain why this piece of code works the way it does: cout << rand() % 20 << endl; srand(time(0));
cout << rand() % 20 << endl;

This returns a random number between 0 and 20, as promised by the book I'm reading as well as internet tutorials.

If I remove "% 20" from the code and am left with

srand(time(0));
cout << rand() << endl;

This returns a really big number like 1847292034.

Looking at the code, I would think that adding "% 20" should do nothing more than divide a random number like 1847292034 by 20 and return the integer portion (92364601). But instead the compiler parses it in a different way that says not to generate a random number larger than 20.

Am I interpreting this wrong? Why does the compiler interpret this as something other than a mathematical operation? Is this type of thing common in C++?

Thanks!

(I'm using g++ to compile on a Ubuntu system.)

Is there a word for when you look weird to yourself in the mirror after shaving?

tumbleweedjack — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 13:51:24 -0800

You know when you haven't shaved your face for about a week, and then when you do finally shave, you look weird to yourself in the mirror? Is there a word for that (in English or any language?)

Code Execution has been interrupted

johnstein — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:00:41 -0800

Code Execution has been interrupted:
Continue - End - Debug - Help
*Click Continue*

*Repeat Indefinitely*
Help?! Hopefully this error will resonate with someone else out there. It sounds hard to believe, but I experience it everyday.

In Excel VBA, you can hit ctrl+break to interrupt your code execution. When you do so, you get a window with the options:
Continue, End, Debug, and Help.

This is useful when you WANT to jump into your code to debug, but I've noticed something odd. If I ctrl-break, then immediately click 'continue' or 'end', 9 times out of 10 (though usually 100% of the time) the code will enter a mode where it will randomly throw the "Code Execution has been interrupted" window as if I hit ctrl-break, even though I didn't.

Clicking Debug to see where it's stopped shows it halting at different lines everytime. Ending then restarting the code doesn't reset anything. Even restarting Excel won't fix it. It's like once that 'mode' gets activated, I'm stuck with it until I restart windows. (which so far is my only sure-fire solution)

I've found 2 workarounds:
1. if the 'mode' hasn't begun and I ctrl-break but then hit the F8 button several times(which advances the code execution by several lines), BEFORE clicking 'end' or 'continue', it doesn't seem to activate the 'weird' mode. (Conversely, if I ctrl-break and then immediately click on END or Continue, without advancing, it will start misbehaving)

2. If I put in the line:
Application.EnableCancelKey = xlDisabled
then this will shut off the Debug window Entirely, allowing the code to finish running without interruption, but it also has the side-effect of preventing ME the ability to ctrl-break, which isn't useful when I'm trying to debug.

I've done a lot of searching on this error over the past couple years (culminating in workaround 2 above), but there doesn't seem to be any useful help for this exact error. I'd love to know what is going on so I can stop it. Having to restart umpteen times a day or disabling code interruption is not making my life very efficient.

Most 'helpers' refuse to even help unless the user posts code, which in this particular error isn't helpful since there is no pattern. In addition, my coworkers aren't able to recreate the error on their computers unless I'm logged in. (indicating to me, it's a profile issue or even a template problem; see 1. below)

There are a few general tips I've found and tried to no avail.
1. VBA bloated templates But I'm not using any templates, unless it's the default one, but I always close "Book1" when I start Excel.

2. third-party add-in(s). I had a couple that were continually trying to load up, but I've disabled them and it doesn't seem to help

3. Export all code and re-import it. This didn't help at all.

So, I'm hoping someone else out there has either experienced this or maybe has some insight on what's going on here.

Thanks

Number Generation Question

Rock Steady — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:06:35 -0800

I need to generate the complete series of 5 digit numbers. The catch? Can only use even digits (0,2,4,6,8). I'd like to accomplish this in Excel, if possible.

Are random acts of kindness not appreciated anymore?

joshrholloway — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 14:04:52 -0800

Would it be inappropriate to perform so-called "random acts of kindness" to strangers or the people around me without asking? What about with permission? We live in an apartment complex, and we're supposed to have our trash in our apartment or in the compactor. It's not supposed to sit on our doorstep for any period of time. But we have one neighbor who leaves trash on his second-story doorstep all the time. So when I was leaving to take out the trash the other day, I saw that once again our neighbors had left their trash on the doorstep. I stopped for a moment and started to go over and get the trash bag (without asking permission) to take it with me since I was on my way anyway.

This was not out of trying to make the apartment look nicer, or trying to get a point across to our neighbors, it was simply going to be a kind act since I was already going to the compactor anyway. But I stopped myself before I did it and wondered if it would really be appropriate. I don't know these people, and aside from giving a smile from time to time when we catch each other going in or out of our apartments, I have never formally met or talked to them.

Another recent occurrence was seeing a woman sitting in her car early one morning in the parking lot, with the windows iced over, apparently waiting for her defrosters to kick in. I was just finishing scraping my own windows, so I considered going over to ask the woman if she wanted me to scrape hers as well since I was early for work anyway. But the same sense of possible inappropriateness stopped me. Again, this was a woman who lived in my complex but I did not know and had not met.

So I guess the question is, are "acts of kindness" like this appropriate? I know everyone will take them differently, but in our society, would I be considered "that weirdo across the hall" if I did stuff like this? What have you experienced in similar instances, being either the giver or receiver of such acts that might help me decide how to feel?

Windows Batch script to pick a random section of text from a source file?

John Kenneth Fisher — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:43:52 -0800

What's the easiest way to make a Windows Batch file that will randomly choose one section from a file and copy it to a new file? Basically, I want to be able to add sections to one file, ideally being able to put some kind of delimiter between sections, and have a Windows batch file (XP-era, if that matters) pull one of those sections out at random and place it into a separate file, replacing what was there from the last run.

Side notes:
I know "random" isn't all that random on a computer. If it's pretty close, that's fine.

I'd prefer being able to have some kind of delimiter separate them rather than have it go by line breaks, as I'd like to use line breaks inside sections.

I don't mind if I have to update the batch file to explicitly say how many sections are in the source file. If I don't have to, that'd be shiny, but it won't change often enough for me to care too much.

Does anyone know how I could find a broken-down looking bus on short notice?

willie11 — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:58:53 -0800

I need a broken down looking bus in Raleigh NC. How can I find one of those? To make a long story short, I'm looking to find a dilapidated old bus to serve as a background for a media event I'm putting together.

How does one find such a thing? A junkyard? A school?

As an aside, I often find myself with location specific local questions like this that I feel silly asking metafilter about. Is there some way to localize ask metafilter? Maybe create a listserve? Anyone want to help me put together a NC one?

How to DIY distribute an album on the internet?

Mali — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:00:24 -0800

Is there any sort of code available / software / how would I design a digital download distribution model for an independant band? My band is releasing our first full length this month, and we're keeping everything as DIY as possible (we recorded / mastered the thing, we did the art, and we're going to be doing the promotion / pressing of it for the most part). We are going to have physical copies available for purchase at shows, but we want to have people be able to buy and download the FLACs and JPGs of the album art from our website. We don't want to use iTunes or any other established solution, because we're going to sell the thing for cheap (3 bucks) and any sort of profit we'd make from it would probably go right back into paying for iTunes and such. We'd just set up a Paypal donation thing and then send people to a download link, but we're afraid that people will just send the download link to their friends (we're aware that all music on the internets gets shared, and we're fine with that, but we don't want to make it THAT) easy.

Is there any solution that we can use where people can Paypal us 3 bucks and then somehow be directed to a unique download link or site, without us having to manually send it every time someone buys the thing? Or any better solution / existing infrastructure we haven't thought of?

Excel-Filter - How do I randomly reorder an array?

qldaddy — Tue, 13 May 2008 11:24:39 -0800

Someone asked me if I could use Excel to take a table of information and put it into a new table randomly. Without thinking about it too hard I said "Yeah, I bet I could do that." Turns out I spoke too soon. Assume a 10 X 10 array, filled with data (for my test runs, I've been using the cell addresses as the data, so A1 has "A1" in it, B2 has "B2", etc.) The task is to populate a new 10 X 10 array with the same data, but in random order.

I'm not having any trouble with the randomness part, I've got a couple of solutions working for generating random cell references. I am having trouble making sure that every reference is generated at least once and only once. Thinking about it another way, I want to generate the numbers 1-100 in random order without any number repeating.

I have come up with a really cludgy solution where I generate enough random numbers to make sure that every number comes up at least once and then filter that list to remove repeats. (thanks to this thread)

But, I was hoping for something a little more elegant that that. I'd also like it to work automatically and I haven't been able to create a Macro that will automate that filtering operation. Oh, and I also don't know how many data elements will be in the table that needs to be randomized, and, while stats was a long time ago, I bet I'd need a lot of random numbers to be sure of generating every number from 1-1000, for example.

So, any ideas?

Computerized "Job Jar"?

penciltopper — Tue, 06 May 2008 16:35:11 -0800

I would like randomly selected items from a To-Do list to "float to the top" on a regular basis. Ideas? Ok, so growing up, we had chores to do and things that needed doing around the house. Trying to assign them or claim them permanently never worked out very well, so we wrote anything that needed doing on slips of paper, put them in a jar. Every Sunday you took one item out of the jar and were stuck doing whatever was on the paper. Sometimes it was quick and easy, sometimes it was a real pain. But the luck of the draw made it easier to tolerate.

I have a Tasks list in Outlook that when printed out is several pages long, full of 4-hour or 8-hour projects. Guh. Obviously, it's too big to help me get it all done, and there's always some other needs-doing item I'd prefer to do that can push a more unpleasant task out of the way. I'd like to cut everything but this week's absolutely necessary "next action" items from my Tasks list, and have the rest somewhere else.

What I would like to do is block out a day or half-day each week for the "Job Jar". By some sort of magic, that big list of items would have one or two projects percolate to the top somehow, and notify me. They'd go in that week's block of time as Must-Dos, rather than languishing away on a Someday list as they do now.

I've seen a lot of productivity hacks go by on MeFi - does anyone have ideas?

I doubt Outlook would be able to do this for me, so any other tool that would do this is worth it. Gimme whatever you got.

I'm not interested in the obvious choice of assigning due dates beforehand to these projects and getting notified that way. If I am allowed to make choices about what's due when, then the whole element of random assignment I'm looking for is lost. I'm lousy at making deals with myself (I practice active procrastination), but can keep a Job-Jar-like pact; so I'm looking for something that can randomize listed items and deliver one or two a week.

Super double special rainbow pony bonus points for something that's smart enough to give me one item listed as All-Day or two listed as Half-Day.

What is a good sample size for determining whether dice are truly random?

Bugbread — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:41:41 -0800

How many times would I have to roll a standard 6-sided die to get a statistically representative view of whether it was truly random or not? I have a bunch of dice that I haven't used in years. The other day, I was playing with one, and I noticed that the 5 came up fairly often. I started rolling the die and writing down the results, to see if it was just a short term statistical fluke, or observer bias, or if the die really favored the 5.

I think I ended up rolling it around 200 times, and 5 definitely had a significant edge.

Now, I'd like to check my other dice. However, I'm not a statistician. I understand that, obviously, the larger your data set (the more times you roll each die and write down the results), the better your analysis of non-randomness will be. However, I know that it isn't necessary to roll the die 1 billion times to check for randomness, that there is some generally accepted statistical minimum, below which the margin of error is too large, and above which the margin of error is generally considered acceptable.

How many die rolls is that point?

Code For A Random Blog Post?

Jaybo — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 08:31:13 -0800

I have a blog and would like to add a "Random Post" button. I'm hosted with a company called Blogware which, unlike Blogger and WordPress, seems to have no no way to add a "random post" button.

I'm not a programmer but suspect this should be fairly easy to do. I'd like advice on how to go about this - do I try to do it in JavaScript? PHP? Something else? Whatever's the easiest solution is best for me. (Major bonus points if someone provides the code itself that would do this, either as a text link or a button I can add.)

All posts on my blog have the basic format of: http://blog.jason.hammond.net/blog/_archives/yyyy/m/dd/

...so if I can define the start date of my blog (Feb 28, 2006) and occasionally update the script with the most recent date of a post as an end point, that would be close enough for what I want. (I try to post daily but don't mind if users end up on a blank day or don't have every single recent post I've made in the range.)

I should also mention that I'm not able to get to the "guts" of the site but can add third-party widgets and other bits of code.

To do this, I think I need to:
- define the start date of the range (2006/2/26)
- define the end date (for now, say 2008/4/26) and be able to easily change this monthly or whenever I get a chance
- generate a random date in the format yyyy/m/dd
- append that to the URL: "http://blog.jason.hammond.net/blog/_archives/"
- go to that URL

Thanks very much in advance for your help!

My iPod Touch wants to be a Shuffle.

prinado — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:16:14 -0800

My new iPod Touch will not sequence an album in the proper order. I cue an album, push play, and it shuffles randomly from song to song. Any ideas to get me back on track? Yes, I'm sure it's not in shuffle mode. Yes, I double and triple checked. Yes, I use standard file naming that has worked flawlessly for my iPod Classic and Nano (i.e. 01_songname) and have populated the Track field, too (i.e. 1 of 10). And yup, I've cleared the drive and re-uploaded the files, updated the iTunes and Touch firmware, googled, yahooed, asked other Touch owners and so on to no avail.

I tried living with it for a week, but, you know, Dark Side of the Moon just isn't the same all discombobulated.

Anyone else experienced/fixed this issue?

Help me play with my image collection!

apetpsychic — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:30:08 -0800

I have a large image collection that I use for illustration reference. Are there any programs (I have a mac, but could get access to a PC if there's something cool) that can play with large collections of images in unexpected ways? Here are two examples of something I'd like to play with. Since the collection is so large that I can never get an overview, one thing that I could use is something that can pull "X" number of images from a folder, and I can just hit refresh, pulling up unexpected combinations for inspiration. Another thing is something that uses math to maybe pull images and slice or rearrange, flip, make a rorsach, a mandala, etc. Basically I'm not looking for something to make art (I don't really have an interest on sorting things by dominant colors or anything like that) so much as something to use to view my images in new ways with very little manual input from me. Just slamming them together. The more random and simpler to modify variables, the better. Maybe I need to learn to make something myself?

Thanks!