This is the moved version of the http://www195.pair.com/mik3hall site.
It allows me to have a lot more storage than the old legacy site. Future updates are planned that will take
advantage of that increased space.
My apologies to anyone who may have occasionally followed the page and has to find it again. However, there seems to be no way,
without getting into domains, that I can provide a redirect from the old site to the new one.
Hopefully, you find your way here.
The site disappeared for a while following ISP changes. They notified me, but I didn't get around to making the necessary changes.
04/19/25 I was interested by the early Trump Truth Social post on the day he announced the 10% tariff pause. This resulted in Intraday Comparisons against Trump tariff pause day.
02/28/25 Someone mentioned that jpackage has an option for installing runtimes into JavaVirtualMachines. I looked at that here MacOS system JRE in JavaVirtualMachines with jpackage
10/19/24 I have a couple things I've been working on without a whole lot of progress. I decided to do some uploading of the things in progress. I seem to remember that gave me a litte incentive to put effort into things. Probably as GitHub projects and not on my site. The first is qcapp based on a java quantum computing introduction book. I have some chess related using Stockfish. There is considerably more I hoped to do with it but it does do something. That might be next uploaded. I also have some Weka related that doesn't really do anything yet. That needs more work before considering uploading.
08/27/24 More content at politics. Interpret some of the prior numbers and a few random comments
08/07/24 Part 2 of election related content. Recap at politics page New content at PvEC_2
07/20/24 It's been a minute seems to be an expression these days. It's been that. There has been much more drama in the real life presidential campaign. I just heard president Biden has chosen not to continue the campaign. But anyhow, before that, I received a popup notification on my phone, I don't remember from who, that Biden would win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College. I had looked at this for the 2020 election and decided to update it now with the data from that. politics page
01/23/22 HalfPipe added AccuWeather API to scheduler. More details at What's new.
01/09/22 HalfPipe and nd4jcli updates. more details at What's new.
01/02/22 I added a GitHub project with a Python 3 updated version of QuantSoftwareToolkit related to the Coursera course Computational Investing, Part I. I am going through the course again. Also looking back at a couple Coursera discontinued courses as well. Coding The Matrix and Introduction to Computational Finance and Financial Econometrics if you're wondering.
I am considering a little more active trading as opposed to my usual personal buy and hold market strategy. While the tide is still rising maybe. I had problems with the AlphaVantage stock API some time back. Since then HalfPipe hasn't shown current values for stocks I own. Which was one of the first uses I had when I added the scheduling functionality. Sort of oddly, AlphaVantage now seems to still be a going concern if maybe a little more commercial (less free) than I remember. I added the functionality back in with other API's, more details at What's new.
Not much new functionality added to the ND4J cli but starting a side by side HTML page, again more details at What's new.
12/26/21 More updates to the matrix cli. Details at What's new.
12/19/21 Not going after anything real diligently. Looking a little bit at ND4J the matrix library part of Deeplearning4j. Beginning with my usual - a command line interface. Just starting, but have taught it a few simple tricks. More detail at What's new.
11/22/21 HalfPipe additional contents in OS/X dmg and notarized. More detail on additional contents at What's new. On notarization at jpackage
10/31/21 LoggingFSP on GitHub again. Didn't manage WrapperFSP this time. Other things I'm looking at not getting anywhere yet.
10/24/21 Changes are on GitHub this time related to logging the java file system. LoggingFSP and WrapperFSP. Sort of getting the hang of deploying Eclipse projects to GitHub. Except right now no build or even the jar's are included.
10/17/21 HalfPipe prefs command updates including port/update to sync Preferences. More detail at What's new. Updated Mac HalfPipe and Ubuntu jdk18 at HalfPipe downloads.
10/06/21 HalfPipe and a new HalfPipe16 - jdk16 version (OS/X only for now). Corrections to some REPL parsing. More detail at What's new. The updated Mac HalfPipes at HalfPipe downloads.
10/03/21 HalfPipe starting to look at Rexx for Linux. Quick look at JShell as an REPL needed changes for my DefaultFileSystemProvider. More detail at What's new. The updated Mac HalfPipe and jdk18 for Linux at HalfPipe downloads.
09/26/21 HalfPipe adding in Rexx scripting from bsf4oorexx. A little more detail at What's new The OS/X only download is the current one at HalfPipe downloads.
09/05/21 HalfPipe with a fix to DefaultFileSystemProvider code for a bug that showed in AppleScriptEngine. HalfPipe downloads I also manually synced and pushed the related DefaultFileSystemProvider (trz) code to GitHub, I at least gave that a README.md now too. The active default provider project is on Eclipse, the current source from that is trz_src.zip.
Attempting to add some Rexx support for HalfPipe is also in progress but I haven't done anything on it for a bit
08/22/21 Back to HalfPipe. Early access JDK releases, 18 for sure, fix the DefaultFileSystemProviders problems I had. HalfPipe downloads
08/08/21 More Bitcoin Blockchain related. details at Bitcoin command line interface
08/01/21 Added some of the currency support to the prior Bitcoin code detailed at Bitcoin command line interface
07/26/21 Have the full blockchain. First related coding effort at Bitcoin command line interface
07/04/21 A bit more code restoration effort on my half-baked bitcoin coding project at Bitcoin command line interface I think I might have enough code rejuvenated and things to learn to keep me busy for a while.
06/06/21 jpackage versions of the as-is Election Games application below
05/27/21 Correction to HalfPipe downloads where it appears the issue indicated for the Windows Graal version is not a problem. Updated the page a little more 05/28.
05/22/21 As indicated a new page for the various HalfPipe downloads Maybe enough HalfPipe variants for now.
05/17/21 Add the Unix and GraalVM downloads mentioned yesterday.
Downloads...
halfpipe_1.0-1_amd64.deb Ubuntu
HalfPipeGraal11-1.0.dmg Graal JDK 11 (21.1.0)
jpackage on Windows and Unix is still run roughly as...
jpackage @jpkg.txt @<platform specific.txt>
where platform files are win_jpkg.txt and linux_jpkg.txt.For GraalVM JDK11, currently OS/X only, you can get interactive JavaScript with us.hall.fastr.SimpleTest. I originally wrote that off of example code to try out the R interface. I did install R again. The JavaScript interactive can be accessed the same way.
It works better right now than I remembered. I should find any old issues where it indicate it doesn't work and update them.
Per the engines command the JSR 223 interface appears to be...
Factory class:class com.oracle.truffle.js.scriptengine.GraalJSEngineFactory
As far as I am with that for now. I am planning a separate download page, for now, for HalfPipe as at least temporarily it is sort of a small family of applications to itself.
Maybe after I finish some more of the MacFileSystemProvider related. Currently another unique version.
05/16/21 For now just posting that there are OS/X and Windows versions of HalfPipe with some Nashorn support.
Downloads...
HalfPipe-1.0.dmg OS/X
HalfPipe-1.0.exe Windows 10
This provides the 'jjs' command and shows Nashorn as available ('engines' command) as a JSR 223 interface.
Didn't get to a Unix. Still seeing that GraalVM JavaScript is fairly often mentioned to migrate to for JavaScript. I did get a working GraalVM 11 jpackage application working. I also modularized my MacFileSystemProvider code and have some incomplete changes to the attr command. So more should follow soon but that's it for now.
05/11/21 I mentioned in passing in prior update information (05/09/21) at What's new that Nashorn didn't seem to be readily available for download. I looked again and found openjdk/nashorn . It appears to still be associated with openjdk but is just not included with the runtime. I have no issues with Nashorn I just never tried it. I considered switching to it a couple times but Rhino was doing what I needed and if I remember right had allowed me to change some globals that I wasn't sure Nashorn would permit changing.
I may still look at Nashorn. I have considered my HalfPipe application potentially a good desktop platform/framework, or whatever, for including scripting. I am not sure that it is where a lot of the interest in Java/JavaScript is at. I think from discussions at about macosx port time server side or some other use seemed to be what people wanted. But, I have tried to include scripting related into the HalfPipe app.
HalfPipe use of javascript, if of interest, includes (on OS/X) if you look at the resources active task list the java tasks show as links. Selecting one brings up a page with JMX information obtained with javascript. If I remember correctly this was based on some old jdk runtime demo code where it was used against the Notepad application? I extended it to pid attach to any java task. I think these days pid attach is more of a standard feature.
If my prior comments seemed dismissive to anyone I am sorry.
05/09/21 A separate version of the HalfPipe application that includes some OS/X specific file attributes. More info at What's new
04/25/21 I got as far as updating the jpackage page. Not really proof read. Go for a version with the Mac nio FSP this week. That should have a little additional coding done anyhow. Maybe more than a little. Again, that will need to be a separate application download from the jpackage page one as it needs changes to the completed application for an exploded classpath directory that will break any signing. This is currently the only way I know how to get this to work but it should be possible without doing this if I include some modular. My understanding. See if any progress this week.
04/23/21 Updated status's on prior jpackage related bugs and RFE's. My current intention is to also include something on getting AppleScript working for HalfPipe again. This touched on a couple jpackage related concerns. Also, as well, to finally include something making use of the Mac attributes nio FileSystemProvider. That will need to be separate as it currently requires an exploded directory in classpath. I need to learn some modular. Hopefully, this weekend for both.
03/10/21 Giving issues related to jpackage on OSX it's own page.
03/03/21 New jpackage (15.0.2) built versions of a couple apps. See What's new for HalfPipe and SSS for Sunday Sudoku Solver
08/28/20 Extended the election related simulations to look at Electoral College upsets in more detail. politics page
04/25/20 Set up a Graal based Weka application and did some memory related comparsions. New page wekagraal.html
03/29/20 More related to FastR and GraalVM and integrating into the HalfPipe application. As usual, more detail on What's new
03/15/20 HalfPipe concerning R interfacing and plugins. More detail on What's new
03/03/20 OS X only development updates to the HalfPipe application. More detail on What's new
12/04/19 preferences command for HalfPipe to port java.util.prefs.Preferences. More detail on What's new
12/01/19 jpackage Linux version of HalfPipe. More detail on What's new
11/28/19 jpackge Windows version of HalfPIpe. More details on What's new
11/22/19 More HalfPipe related changes details on What's new
11/05/19 Somewhat pick up where I left off. Working on HalfPipe and the experimental jpackage command to create cross-platform
application images. For now, this is a download of the OS X HalfPipe application produced by jpackage. Hopefully, I will make improvements
to that and downloads for Windows and Unix will also be provided.
HalfPipe-1.0
The build script I am currently using is...
jpackage.sh
A couple things to note. A dmg now appears to always be created for application images. It includes a alias, I think, to the Applications folder to drag to as is typical for OS X applications. Nice touch. However, it is a read only dmg. There is no way to modify it. Say, add a pdf user guide, or to include source, or licenses, or javadoc. Also I was using the --verbose option which is apparently passed on to hdiutil or whatever is used to create the disk image. I didn't notice any additional messages from jpackage but a large volume of messages came out of the disk creation. I turned off --verbose.
The OS X application Java directory has become the app directory. I'm not sure why unless it's to be more consistent with other platforms. Since the last time I was using this user.dir has been changed from the application's path to '/'. It does now allow --java-options to include the $APPROOT variable. So internal references to files can still be resolved. I think this is actually more consistent with how later Apple Java applications worked.
The 'app' directory is now included in java.library.path. There seems to be no really good way to use the MacOS directory for jnilib's anymore. Unless you extract the app from the produced dmg and then copy in the jnilib's. This is of course a no-go if you are signing the application as part of the build. Currently the best thing to do for any files you want to include internally seems to be to put them in your --input directory and let them get dumped into the 'app' directory.
I haven't really looked into how it might be accomplished but I am noticing no decrease in the size of the application. This version seems slightly larger than my last coming in at about 110M.
It is currently included with a jdk 14 sandbox version so I assume that is it's current possible target release. It will be interesting to see where it is going and to become more familiar with it. Hopefully, coming up with code that I can distribute to other platforms as well. Whether I will spring for signing abilities on my hobbyist code for any of those platforms remains questionable.
As always. My 2 cents.
04/01/19 Older change summaries moved to a change history page.
03/24/19 Election related, something for popular vote vs. the electoral college. Hanging it off a
09/01/14 To avoid page bloat I'm moving What's new? to it's own page
10 Years After
That was a band wasn't it?
Michael Steele appeared on MSNBC's "The Beat" with Ari Melber and mentioned county level Republican red maps. This is currently still mentioned on his twitter page as of 6/6/21. This reminded me of my Election Games app which showed maps just like that. I made minimal changes to get it to currently run and jpackage'd it into new app's. I think this may actually of been a work in progress development version, but it has been almost 10 years since I've looked at it so I don't remember that much.
With no election pending and no intention of retroactively providing some of the back election simulation related. But, maybe bring the code more generally current. Also, results could be brought up to date. That used to be a lot of manual data entry but this is the age of data and I think it could be more easily found in a way that could be worked with - and who knows? maybe some changes looking forward to the next election.
Downloads...
Election Games-1.0.dmg OS/X
Election Games-1.0.exe Windows 10
election-games_1.0-1_amd64.deb Linux (Ubuntu)
Not long between the program available and the election being over. It went more or less as expected. The Swing state simulation favoring Obama looked like it will probably be off four states. Assuming Obama gets Fl>orida which may never be decided. The simulation gave New Hampshire, Nevada, Colorado and Virginia to Romney and these all went to Obama. Going into this simulation and giving Obama the "Women's rights" scenario and then "Deficit" gives a result 100% matching the election outcome. You have to add "Deficit" to take away North Carolina which I think he was competitive in but didn't carry. I have replaced the pre-election Swing simulation with this, assuming Fl., accurate simulation of the election called "Swing Sweep - exact match".
It is my current plan to definitely come out with a improved post-election version of the application. Thanks for the interest.
On a limited basis ony at this point in time. The OS X dmg includes the new version as a Apple Java 6 JVM application. I planned on going with Java Web Start for all platforms but haven't got that deploying the new databases. A lot of the data is now in Java Derby SQL database tables, there will probably be a separate download for that at some point as the data could be useful standalone outside of the application.
Links A couple directly related to this program as it is for the 2012 version
David Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections 2008 version used data from here, 2012 may use current for the same eventually
Vote Ratings 2011 - NationalJournal.com
Includes some related use of the National Journal data. Demonstrates how the data could be used separately from the program.
Hotelling.dmg
Inspired by the DNC convention I decided to blog Whatever
This is the Presidential election simulation software that the media and the politicians don't want you to know about.
Bringing Sunday Sudoku Solver into the new millenium. It probably hasn't been quite that long. It should be signed so who knows I might still try submitting it to the Mac App Store. By using jpackage there are application versions for Windows, Ubuntu was the tested Unix, and OS X.
I find a couple things clunky now that could be worked on. I have used it once or twice when I was stuck to solve Sudokus from my phone app. Just by using the setup mode to enter them in and then 'Finish'. The Kirk Kobayashi Maru solution for those into Star Trek. It has lived up to following sort of corny tag line I must of added. If anyone wants to see if the Paypal donations still work that would be ok with me.
When the puzzles get tough, the tough get the Sunday Sudoku Solver