Comments and Ratings

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

@Alan: Admittedly, I may have broken with the spirit of the competition slightly by creating an interactive GUI as opposed to one or more functions to be used from the command line. This obviously made it hard to make a published m-file which could generate its own images. I probably could have hijacked the GUI from the command line (setting hidden handles to visible, using FINDOBJ to get handles for the GUI components, and forcibly setting the GUI state), but this seemed kloogy an inelegant. It was easier and cleaner to capture screen shots and include the images with the submission.

None of my images in the published tutorial seem to be showing up. I'll try to correct it and update soon.

Why post a whole new entry? Wouldn't it make more sense to update your existing one, especially if all you're adding is a published html file?

Xu, I can only guess that you have very little experience with MATLAB and even less knowledge of whom you are criticizing.

Well, Marco, I guess neither you nor Alexia nor "C" were paying any attention over a week ago when I tried to teach you how units work. You should all review my comments on your MOV submission.

That must be one of those American pigeons, seeing as how it's so obese! =) Cute function, though.

If you are using "s" as a variable, then the formula s=s^2 is true when s=0 or when s=1. But if you are using s as a UNIT OF MEASURE representing "seconds", then your formula is wrong. You need to understand that there is a difference between the "number" of things you have and the "units" of things. 1 second or 1 kilogram or 1 Newton are all 1 of "something", but that doesn't mean that those UNITS are all equal. The following equation is true:

1 = 1

...because there are no units. However, if I add the following units:

1 second = 1 kilogram

...the equation is now WRONG. The units on either side of the equal sign for any formula must agree. For example, this formula is correct:

1 Newton = 1 kilogram*meter/second^2

...because that is what a Newton is defined as. However, this formula is wrong:

1 Newton = 10 kilogram*meter/second^2

because 1 Newton can't equal 10 Newtons. You have to pay attention to your units!

Marco, of all the equations you've written above, not a single one of them is correct.

First, a measure of time (seconds) is not equal to a measure of mass (kilograms). They are completely different units.

Second, you have used the term "Weight" when you should have used the term "Mass".

Third, you have written these two equations for Force:

Force = Weight*Altitude/Time^2
Force = Time/(Weight*Altitude)

Setting these equations equal to each other yields:

Weight^2 = Time^3/Altitude^2

...which is utterly meaningless. If you substitute the second equation into the first equation, it yields:

Force^2 = 1/Time

...which implies that the square of a force somehow gives you a measure of frequency. Again, utterly meaningless.

Fourth, your math contradicts itself. You say that [s = Kg] twice, but then later say that [s^2 = Kg]. Well, which is it? It can't be both!

Please review some physics references before posting more patently false statements.

Marco, I'll repeat what Husam told you, because I just tried the code myself. The default values (gravity set to 9.81, the initial vertical velocity set to 0, and the initial horizontal velocity set to 500) cause the ball to fall downward and rightward, bouncing a few times before coming to rest on the ground. If you don't get this result, check your version of MATLAB. I'm running 7.1 and didn't see any animation problems.

Looks interesting... I'll give it a try when I get a chance. I've had the idea for a while to make something similar, not for uicontrols, but for the camera or the axes to shake the rendered camera view. I eventually want to add it to my game whenever an explosion goes off.

@Marco,

The utility of this program should be very clear. I don't know why you are unable to understand it. This function allows you to pause a running program to wait for a yes ('y' press) or no ('n' press) keyboard input from the user. The example Jos gives in his description shows one possible use for it: the piece of code above generates a random number every time the user chooses 'y', and stops when they choose 'n'.

Your comment makes absolutely no sense. Yet again, it appears that you have somehow missed the point and are trying to punish the author with a bad rating even though it is you who has misinterpreted things. Your mention of a "half instant" and a "mechanic instant" is gibberish. Your review is quite poor.

@Marco,

You appear to have completely missed the point of this function. It is designed to REMOVE NaNs appearing in a matrix, overwriting those values with interpolated values obtained from neighboring entries. You seem to think that John is arbitrarily redefining what NaN is... he is not, because that would be a silly waste of time. The numbers he computes to REPLACE the NaNs are approximated from the surrounding values with a number of different methods.

As far as some of the errors you got, John could probably place error checks in the function to allow for a more graceful and informative exit. However, there's no reason you would/should ever enter some of those arguments in the first place. For example, entering a scalar NaN is silly, since the program has no nearby non-NaN elements to use for extrapolating replacement values.

This submission certainly doesn't deserve the low rating you gave it, especially since the misunderstanding lies with your own misinterpretation of what it does.

===ANNOUNCEMENT===

As pointed out in the previous couple of comments, Staker (beta) requires the Image Processing toolbox. I have been looking into some things over the weekend and think that I will actually be able to remove this dependency for the next version. It appears that many of the functions I was using (IMFILTER, IMERODE, IMDILATE, etc.) can be easily replaced by using CONV2 to do the things I want.

So, for version 1.0 (hopefully to be completed within the next few months) you won't have to worry about needing any toolboxes; just standard MATLAB.

Ken

@Marco,

Did you fail to notice that this was a Pick of the Week? It would seem to make you look bad to give it such a poor rating, especially with no explanation why. John at least tried it out and had good critiques, which the author then incorporated into his code (to his credit).

The number of downloads is not a real measure of the QUALITY of the submission, merely the amount of CURIOSITY users have regarding your submission. Remember, many people can't help but stare at a car wreck.

You should heed the advice of the other commenters. Your statement that "comments do more harm than good" is incredibly foolish. You should look at how typical MATLAB files are written and modify your submission accordingly.

There is already a Rubik's cube program on the FEX. It has been there for years, and it is substantially better than this submission:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/8461

I hadn't ever happened upon DMPERM before. Thanks for pointing out something new, Tim.

I use RealPlayer and had to download and install the ICM.tscc codec to view this. After a google search I came across this page:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070517225319AA9A7Co

download and install this codec and it should work.