Optimizations and Meditations - An Unofficial Software Engineering Portfolio in Blog Style

 ( Disclaimer: this entry was posted near April Fool's Day. Level 15 completion is not an online April Fool's Day joke.)  ( Late edit: All of the puzzles can be solved in a day or so, maybe a few hours, if you have no personal errands to run. Further, I am a college adjunct lecturer, but that role has no bearing on the skills tested by all of the puzzles in Google's IO 2024 puzzle challenge. Google, and every other software engineering company, will find a way to test the abilities of any potential applicants before hiring.)  A sample solution to the Level 15 Google io24 puzzle would look like the image shown on the right:      Level 15 has been completed. The puzzles are not difficult, if you have the appropriate education or training or both. See the video below. The video below is what is shown after you solve the Level 15 puzzle. Level 15 is the last puzzle.      There is no formal proof of completion given for completing Level 15. Ho...

  In this scene, bullet should say 'I Love You' or 'Remember Me.'   This is a first draft software design mock-up for the possibility of curving a bullet fired from a gun, in the GTA Six, and GTA Six Online video game. Curving a bullet is not in the GTA Online Spy Satellite DLC. The GTA Online Spy Satellite DLC only has satellite-controlled bullets. These types of "exotic ammunition" are not in any of the Grand Theft Auto franchise video games. Maybe that can change.     Players of GTA Six and GTA Six Online should be able to curve bullets. Curving bullets is an interesting topic of discussion because all major search engines, including Google AI's search results, indicate that it is impossible to curve a bullet upon firing it from a gun, unless some parameters are met, and even then, the curve will not be a genuine curve.       The movie 'Wanted' starring Angelina Jolie did a good job in presenting the bullet-curving concept. Curving bullets...

         The image of a smartphone device attached to a machine gun-type weapon, as shown in the image on the left, is slightly misleading. The image is used in this blog entry related to GTA Online, GTA Six, and GTA Six Online.  The image in question, called System A, is clever marketing, but slightly deceptive.      The setup, as shown in the image, implies a connection of some type, such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, with the actual scope of the weapon, to then stream the video feed to the smartphone device. Further, the smartphone device, as shown in the picture, implies some sort of ability on the software and hardware side, using proprietary algorithms for tracking and targeting of objects with precision, at a great distance.     System B   The image on the right showing System B, is good marketing. System B shows the smartphone device directly connecting the camera of the smartphone device, to the sniper rifle scope. There is...

     An interesting discovery regarding using a smartphone as a sniper rifle attachment has been made (this is actually a very interesting little thing here).            The concept of using a smartphone as a sniper rifle attachment or as an attachment for other weapons, might actually be applicable to Rockstar Games' video game that is due to be released soon - that video game is GTA Six.                  Presumably GTA Six Online will be released after GTA Six, maybe a year or two after. However, a video on the video-sharing site Youtube, has focused on the GTA Six Leaks related to the smartphone device that will be used in GTA Six. That video can be found at this link .           Interestingly enough, the possibility could exist that the smartphone in GTA Six will be very different from GTA Online, and it could even serve as a smartphone sniper rifle...

     The sniper rifle in GTA Six should be different from the sniper rifles found in GTA Online and GTA 5. The sniper rifles in GTA Online do have the abilities to zoom in on targets, use of night vision sniper scopes, and infrared heat detection scopes, none of the sniper rifles in GTA Online are affected by wind, player breathing, and the range of the target.      Controlling these t hree elements is crucial to getting a sniper bullet to travel from the exit poin t of the sniper rifle's barrel, to the perceived and intended point on the target, as the shooter views it through the telescopic sight.     Rain might even be a factor in slowing down or altering the path of a sniper bullet, if the rain is thick enough. Maybe a heavy blizzard would also alter the intended course of the sniper bullet, after it has been fired.       There is speculation that in GTA Six, weather will play a crucial role in shaping the Grand T...

            The MTL Cerebrus from GTA Online is an interesting vehicle from the Arena War DLC update for Grand Theft Auto Online. The MTL Cerebrus has been known to fly through various free roam lobbies in GTA Online. This link will take you directly to the source showing the MTL Cerebrus flying though the air in GTA Online:  GTA Online players discover insane MTL Cerberus flying glitch .      Another interesting "glitch" happened involving the MTL Cerebrus from the Arena War DLC update for GTA Online. The MTL Cerebrus appears to spawn out of nowhere the moment a player enters a certain "marked" vehicle in GTA Online.       What is a "marked" vehicle? Think of an unmarked police car. An unmarked police car is a car that you could or could not suspect is a cop car.            An unmarked police car is a police car that would lack all the necessary equipment to make it easily iden...

(Disclaimer: this is an old blog post. The entry will be "cleaned up" and rewritten. It was originally written for Github formatting in 2019. )           The algorithm below allows GTA Online players to spawn Gold or Silver Dubsta 2s in GTA Online. The algorithm was discovered by me in 2019.        I believe I made the algorithm repeatable, without fail most of the time. However, this algorithm for GTA Online was discovered in 2019, so the algorithm might have changed. Scroll down to the video to see how to farm and spawn Gold or Silver Dubsta 2s in GTA Online. A more thorough play-by-play analysis of the video will be posted at a later time.        The algorithm was discovered from the end-user's perspective, using a video game controller and the Xbox One gaming console. No special attachments or modifications are done to either GTA Online or MicroSoft's Xbox One gaming console.       Only R...