From: William_J_G Overington (wjgo_10009@btinternet.com)
Date: Sat Jan 09 2010 - 03:02:16 CST
Asmus Freytag <asmusf@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Just saw this little snippet go by on
> a blog somewhere:
>
> ⚃⚀ rolling unicode dice in javascript:
> String.fromCharCode(0x2680+Math.floor(Math.random()*6))
> ⚄⚁
>
I found using SC UniPad from http://www.unipad.org/main/ to be of great usefulness in analysing the dice symbols.
I copied two dice onto the clipboard and then pasted into SC UniPad. I then highlighted them and used Edit Convert and then selected A \u... and that showed the code point values.
I then copied the other two dice onto the clipboard and repeated the pasting, highlighting and conversion process.
Does the line of code just produce a string one character long consisting of just one die face character?
I looked at the code chart.
http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2600.pdf
I noticed the recycling symbols for seven types of plastics, starting at U+2673.
So, maybe a new board game or computerized version of a board game could be devised whereby the pieces are trucks that are moved by rolling dice and need to deliver different types of plastic from the recycling sorting centre to the various places where they will be processed. If the game designers had information from experts about the various ways of using recycled plastics then the game could have an educational value as well as being fun to play.
Using a computer to generate random throws of a 6-sided die is a replacement for using a physical 6-sided die.
Using a computer to generate random throws of a 7-sided die for choosing the type of plastic would be just as easy for the computer to do, yet a physical 7-sided die might be a much more difficult object to obtain. I have seen 10-sided, 12-sided and 20-sided dice, so I suppose that one could roll, say, a 12-sided die and roll again if a value of 8 or more is rolled and then if necessary repeat the roll again until a value in the range 1 through to 7 were produced.
Yet a physical 7-sided die as such, with equal chances of each number being displayed? Is that possible?
William Overington
9 January 2010
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Jan 09 2010 - 03:08:40 CST