Archive for January, 2008
Rubinium Candidate Round-up
Posted by A R Baboon in Uncategorized on January 18, 2008
After hearing Obama and Thompson on NPR All Things Considered last night I felt the need to post some of my observations. You can really tell why Doug and I gravitate toward Thompson and Obama respectively. Both men project a distinct air of honesty about them. The responses to assertions that their lack of spin may be used against them were classic. Referring to the last debate, Obama said jokingly “yeah, maybe I should have answered that my greatest weakness is I help old ladies across the street.” In his interview Thompson jabbed “some people are more interested in style than substance [...] there is plenty of people for them to vote for too.
Obama and Thompson were both asked about a now inevitable economic stimulus package. Oddly enough both of them had a rather similar response which contrasts with their competitors. They said we should consider a one-time infusion of money into the economy by tacking it on to an existing vehicle. Tacking it on to an existing vehicle allows us to avoid potential pork and minimize bureaucratic skimming. Thompson was also prompted to mention not doing anything, which is where I personally lean right now.
I am actually pulling for Romney on the Republican side. It is time for them to know how we Dems felt with Kerry as our nominee. Actually comically enough he is pretty much like Kerry with an R. I did not make this video, but it sums:
DMS to Decimal By Request
Posted by A R Baboon in Code on January 17, 2008
This is a function from my library that can be used to decode a degrees-minutes-seconds (DMS) string to a decimal degrees.
Enjoy.
/* ------------------------------ Function: geo_dms_to_deg Parse a degrees-minutes-seconds (DMS) value string into a double floating point in degrees. Parameters: str - [in] string containing an angle in DMS end_ptr - [out] a pointer to the character following the last in the DMS packed - [in] boolean whether to expect the DMS to lack delimiters value - [out] value in degrees Returns: true on success, false on failure ------------------------------ */ int geo_dms_to_deg( const char *str, const char **endptr, int packed, double *value ) { int d = -1, m = -1, s = -1, pos = 0; char ps[20] = "", *ps_ptr; float p = 0.0, fraction; if( packed ) { char format[64] = ""; pos = strspn( str, "0123456789" ); if( pos < 5 || pos > 7 ) return( 0 ); snprintf( format, 64, "%%%dd%%2d%%2d%%n", pos - 4 ); if( sscanf( str, format, &d, &m, &s, &pos ) != 3 ) return( 0 ); } else if( sscanf( str, "%d:%d:%d.%[0123456789]%n", &d, &m, &s, ps, &pos ) == 4 ) { p = 0.0; fraction = 0.1; for( ps_ptr = ps; *ps_ptr != '\0'; ps_ptr++ ) { p += (*ps_ptr - '0')*fraction; fraction *= 0.1; } } else if( sscanf( str, "%d:%d:%d%n", &d, &m, &s, &pos ) == 3 ) { /* empty */ } else if( sscanf( str, "%d:%d%n", &d, &m, &pos ) == 2 ) { s = 0; } else if( sscanf( str, "%d%n", &d, &pos ) == 1 ) { s = 0; m = 0; } else { return( 0 ); } if (d < 0) return 0; if (m < 0 || m >= 60) return 0; if (s < 0 || s >= 60) return 0; *endptr = &str[pos]; if( value ) *value = d + m/60.0 + (p + (float)s)/3600.0; return( 1 ); }