Danny's Blog

This week, my Programming Languages class has been covering the fighting queens problem, which is based on queens in chess. In chess, queens can move diagonally, vertically and horizontally as far as they would like. The solution to the problem is to find an arrangement of queens such that no queen can move into the same spot as another queen. Another way to think of this is to have no queens on the potential paths of any other queen. For example, a valid configuration of queens is shown as well as an invalid configuration.    Valid Configuration                                Invalid Configuration The goal of this week is to program a way to find every valid configuration for any size of board. However, we have to accomplish it in two ways. The first way is using an imperative language, in this case C++. Imperative languages require the developer to implement the logic behind how the solution is calculated. The second way is using

Chapter 10 of Charello’s Essentials of Social Media Marketing covers marketing with YouTube. Advertising on YouTube is a huge market that takes advantage of Google’s advertising services. Ads on YouTube can be targeted at broad demographics like age, gender or income. They can also be targeted at narrower demographics like college student or new parent. YouTube also allows you to advertise to specific groups of people through Interests. Interests can be used to advertise to people who are interested in the market of your product but may not know about your product specifically. The Interests targeting method can also allow you to target people going through life events, like marriage or moving. You can also target in-market audiences. In-market audiences are made up of those who are considering purchasing a product in your market. You can also use custom intent audiences to exclusively target those who are actively making a purchase based on their activity on Google. YouTube also prov

Chapter 9 of Charello’s Essentials of Social Media Marketing covers marketing with LinkedIn, a social media platform to connect professionals. The demographics reflect the fact that it is a platform for professionals. 10% of those making less than $30,000, 26% of those making between $30,000 and $75,000 and 49% of those making at least $75,000 are on LinkedIn. 33% of urban and 30% of suburban internet users are on the platform, whereas only 10% of rural internet users are on the platform. The last demographic is education level. Most college graduates use LinkedIn and more than a quarter of those with some college experience use LinkedIn, with 51% and 26% usage rates, respectively. However, only 10% of those with high school or less are on LinkedIn. The demographics indicate that LinkedIn is a lucrative market to sell goods and services. This is true, but not in the same way as other platforms, like Facebook or Snapchat. LinkedIn is better for business-to-business advertising than bus

Today some friends and I went to the Dayton Air Force Museum. The museum has 12 primary exhibits, but I was only able to properly visit six of them while I was there. My favorite part of each exhibit was the engine display. The “Early Years” gallery had some of the early engines used in airplanes. Most of these were inline or rotary, but there were some V engines too. There was even an exhibit of a rotary engine in action which was spinning at a few rotations per minute so visitors could see how it worked. I was surprised to see that what would typically be the block rotated about what would normally be the crankshaft. Instead of having a firing order, the topmost cylinder would fire every other rotation. This was extremely different from engines I am used to working with. The next engine I enjoyed was the King Bugatti U 16. It was two inline eights put together with a gear driving output shaft. I was looking at the front of the engine and was very confused how both banks of cylinders

Last weekend was fall break, which could not have come at a better time! This past week was very busy for me, so being able to pause and relax was incredible. The break was not totally relaxing though. One of my friend’s family has a cabin that we were allowed to use for the weekend. We had five people come out for the weekend. Due to scheduling limitations, we wound up taking three cars out to the cabin. The cabin is about three hours away from campus, so I left around 11:30 a.m. to arrive by 3:00 p.m., after factoring in gas and rest stops. However, the trip took almost five and a half hours! An hour into the drive, I stopped at a Walmart to pick up some items we forgot. I drove another hour and stopped at a gas station. At this point, there was just about an hour left of driving. However, my Google Maps has an issue where, while one destination is displayed, the app will navigate to another. When I restarted navigation after my gas stop, Google Maps directed me back to the Walmart I

Chapter 8 of Charello’s Essentials of Social Media Marketing discusses marketing with Pinterest. I personally have never used Pinterest, so this chapter covered entirely new information to me. A Pinterest post is called a Pin. Each Pin has an image or video, description and a link. Users can create boards to categorize and collect related Pins. Pinterest also offers seven unique Rich Pins for business users. Rich Pins are the same as regular Pins, but with extra features. Product Pins feature price information while Recipe Pins allow formatting the description of the Pin as a recipe instead of plain text. Article Pins allow including a short story, author, and headline. App Pins can be used to install an app directly from Pinterest instead of having to open the App Store manually. In order to include multiple images in a single pin, Carousel Pins are available. In order to bypass the extra step of visiting a company’s website to buy a product, Buyable Pins enable Pinterest users to pu

Student Planning Committee (SPC) scheduled an event offering live music and free jalapeños from 5-7 p.m. on Saturday, October 2, during Homecoming weekend on the Tundra. Two Ohio Northern University (ONU) student bands, Entropy and Rattlesnakes, were planning to provide live music       for the duration of the event. However, it was going to be rainy for the duration of the event, so it was moved inside to Mac Activities. The live music would be unable to play indoors which was unfortunate. I am glad the event still occurred, otherwise I am not sure what event I would be able to cover this weekend! The event itself had a good turnout, but it started late. I assume this is due to the change in location, but I am not sure. It was supposed to start at 5 p.m. but setup did not finish until around 5:15 p.m. Once everything was set up, the fun began. SPC turned on the music and everyone formed a line that stretched all the way from the front of Mac Activities to the hallway leading to the

Chapter 7 of Charello’s Essentials of Social Media Marketing covers marketing with Snapchat. Young people make up Snapchat’s largest market. Around 69% of people aged 13-17 and 62% of people aged 18-29 use Snapchat. However, usage drops off quickly as age increases. Only 25% of people aged 30-49, 9% of people aged 50-64 and 3% of people older than 65 use Snapchat. Those age statistics really narrow down the potential market without needing to specify any demographic requirements. This can be a good or bad thing, depending on your perspective. If you are a company looking to sell house maintenance services, Snapchat is likely not for you. However, if you are a company looking to sell tutorials on how to study better, marketing with Snapchat is a good strategy. In fact, 77% of college students use Snapchat daily so it is very likely that an ad selling information on how to be better at studying will hit a market looking to study sometime soon. This will be very good in terms of finishin