Comprehensive Gold Silver Calculator

My newest app – the most comprehensive gold and silver precious metal calculator is now available on the iTunes app store. This calculator is professionally and specifically designed for:

- gold and silver bullion buyers and sellers
- coin buyers and sellers
- investors and collectors
- pawnbrokers, and
- more

Get it from the app store here: Karats and Coins

What you get: 
- up to date spot prices (refreshed every minute)
- conversion of spot prices by measure of weight and in 20 currencies
- conversion of weights in both troy and avoirdupois measures
- gold melt calculator in karats, 20 currencies and different weights, including the ability to input user defined spot prices and exchange rates
- coin calculator to determine face value of gold and silver coins to pay for a given amount in a particular currency at various exchange rates and spot prices
- conversion of a given face value of silver coins into price at various currencies and spot prices, and
- gold and silver trend charts from 30 days to 10 years from the present date

I’m more than happy to consider any enhancements that improve the app.

Coin Purchase Calculator

Up to Date Real Time Spot Rates

Coin Sale Calculator

Let’s not forget the code:

rem Mandelbrot Set *

keyhide

cls 0

cls 1

print 0 “This program plots a graphical”

print 0 “representation of the famous”

print 0 “Mandelbrot set. It takes a while”;

print 0 “to finish so have patience and”

print 0 “dont have too high expectations;”;

print 0 “as the graphics resolution is”

print 0 “not very high on our screen.”

print 0 “”

print 0 “At any time press A to abort.”

for y=0 to 191

line 1 0,y,255,y,2

next

rem maximum iterations to try *

let iter=100

rem loop through screen pixels *

for x=0  to 255

for y=0 to 191

print 0 at 5,12 “x=”+x+”, y=”+y+”   “

let realZ=x/128-1.5

let imagZ=y/96-1

let real2=realZ

let imag2=imagZ

let bail=0

print 0 at 5,13 “          “

print 0 at 5,13 “r=”+realZ

print 0 at 5,14 “          “

print 0 at 5,14 “i=”+imagZ

let k=key()

if k=202

goto fin:

endif

rem Inner iteration loop *

lab inner:

let rx=real2*real2

let ry=imag2*imag2

if rx+ry > 4 or bail>=iter

goto comp:

endif

let imag2=2*real2*imag2+imagZ

let real2=rx-ry+realZ

let bail=bail+1

goto inner:

lab comp:

rem Compute plot color *

if bail < 10

let c=1

else

let bot=bail-10

let top=iter-10

let c=16-((16*bot)/top)

endif

plot 1 x, y, c

next

next

let k=0

while k=0

let k=key()

wend

lab fin:

end

Thanks again Simon. I’m sure we can all learn a lot by studying the code.

All done with graphics. No cheating with images here!

And the code to prove it:

for x=8 to 16
line 1 x,8,x,64,x
line 1 x,8,x+20,40,x
line 1 x+20,40,x+40,8,x
line 1 x+40,8,x+40,64,x
line 1 x+56,8,x+56,64,x
line 1 x+56,x,96,x,x
line 1 x+56,x+24,88,x+24,x
line 1 x+56,x+48,96,x+48,x
line 1 x+96,8,x+96,64,x
line 1 x+96,x,136-(x/2),x,x
line 1 136-(x/2),x,144-x,
8+(x/2),x
line 1 144-x,8+(x/2),
144-x,40-(x/2),x
line 1 144-x,40-(x/2),
136-(x/2),48-x,x
line 1 136-(x/2),48-x,
112,48-x,x
line 1 112+x,41, 120+x,64,x
line 1 x+136,8,x+136,64,x
line 1 x+136,x,176-(x/2),x,x
line 1 176-(x/2),x,
184-x,8+(x/2),x
line 1 184-x,8+(x/2),
184-x,40-(x/2),x
line 1 184-x,40-(x/2),
176-(x/2),48-x,x
line 1 176-(x/2),48-x,
152,48-x,x
line 1 152+x,41,160+x,64,x
line 1 176+x,8,192+x,40,x
line 1 192+x,40,192+x,64,x
line 1 192+x,40,208+x,8,x
line 1 x,100, x+40, 164,x
line 1 x,164, x+40, 100,x
line 1 x+56,100, x+56,164, x
line 1 x+56,100, x+80,140, x
line 1 x+80,140, x+104,100,x
line 1 x+104,100,x+104,164,x
line 1 x+120,164,x+144,100,x
line 1 x+144,100,x+168,164,x
line 1 153-(x/2),124+x,
159+(x/2),124+x,x
line 1 208,92+x,248,92+x,x
line 1 208,92+x,192+x,108,x
line 1 192+x,108,
192+x,144-x,x
line 1 192+x,144-x,
232+x,144-x,x
line 1 232+x,144-x,
232+x,156,x
line 1 232+x,156,
240,148+x,x
line 1 200,148+x,240,148+x,x
next

let k=0
while k=0
let k=key()
wend
end

Thanks Simon from everyone here… which is…me

NB Readers should take care copying the code into their own programs because html from the webpage can screw up some of the characters – even if they look the same.

Look at this report from Engadget: Baby Steps??.  Nintendo is clearly trying to begin its ascent from the dark ages, but with baby steps?? (Engadget’s attempt at humour).   Nintendo is clearly a toddler in an industry moving at light speed.

You know how many ipod touch apps my kids can download for the cost of a single DS or 3DS game? Hey Nintendo, did you know that there are also free games?  It’s pretty low risk too.  If my kids don’t like a game, it’s only 99c or a couple of dollars wasted NOT $60-$100.  Come one.

Nintendo, your 3DS gives me a headache and doesn’t add much to game play.  Your audience is sick of paying over and over again for the same games they played ten years ago on a different console, or for rehashes of the same titles with slightly better graphics.  Sure, they’re iconic, but fuck playing Mario Kart and Zelda all over again, especially a revision of the N64 version.  Pleeeeeease.

Word of advice Nintendo – stop being stubborn and change your business model.  Put out an sdk and start getting a percent of revenue from games and apps developed by the same people that made the iphone app store such a success.  Then you’ll have a chance.  Maybe you can make your store even better.  No guarantees, because each day that goes by your probability of success is diminishing.

By the way Sony, your gaming business is going to live or die by the Vita.  Let’s hope that the public prefers power over everything else, like your stupid proprietary hardware bullshit and what we can only assume will be your ongoing attempt to lock everything down to maintain your own outdated business model.

Oh wait.  The PSP failed because processing and graphics power weren’t the things that everybody wanted! I really hope it works out for you Sony.  I really do.

I would love to develop for a console with a legitimate app store.  The big boys can always learn again from the hobbyists.  I like this one as you know: Open Pandora, but you’ll have to wait until next year before production continues.

EDIT: Yay, I was wrong, in part, about Sony – or so it seems: Playstation SDK. Boy, I love to be wrong. Welcome to the party pal!

This post is deprecated. The app is now for sale - Karats and Coins

Link to latest wee basic

Link to latest wee editor

Latest Wee Editor

When news stories can show explicit and real violence and death at prime time but boobies can only be seen after 9.30pm.  Hey, every baby’s seen a boobie but not many should have to see a person’s head in all its deathly yellow rotting muddy grimace at dinner time…

That politicians can answer every question except the one they’ve been asked.  It’s a combination of low IQ, wilful blindness and self promotion, all of which add up to running a country…

That a corporation maximises the money to be received by its shareholders while at the same time poisoning them with pollution, killing them with design flaws and destroying the planet thereby guaranteeing the death of their children.  It’s all about the math…

When all it takes to succeed are narcissism and sociopathy. Well, there are checks and balances comprising boards and committees run by sociopaths and narcissists…

The video above is of an open pandora handheld running Civilization 2 on windows 3.1. Why should you care? Windows doesn’t run natively on an arm processor – okay so you’re bored already.

Brief how to (working off memory):

1. download my compiled arm qemu:  (change ppt extension to zip) qemu

2. take our your old dos disks (not tested with freedos).

3. take out your old win 3.1 disks.

4. create a disk image with qemu-img, eg qemu-image create /media/sd/c.img 100M

5. start qemu.  I put all of my dos files etc in an iso image eg qemu -cdrom dos.iso -hda c.img -boot d

6. let dos create a partition and install dos onto the hard disk.

7. then windows in the same manner.  If you’re having trouble with the ‘:’ key eg cd d: from the dos prompt (pandora colon is not recognised) just create a batch file to install windows and use winimage to inject the batch file into the image.

8. thus far you don’t have the correct resolution, so you have to install svga.drv (if not already in windows directory) and then patch it with vgapatch (google is your friend).  If you don’t have svga.drv then download svga.exe (it will unpack all of the vga drivers).

9. now start qemu with the -vga std option and install the driver via setup.exe in the windows directory.  In the monitors menu go to “other” – browse to the folder with svga/vga patch. Choose your desired resolution.  Then restart windows.

10.  Now copy civ2 files from you original disks and inject into a folder in your disk image (c.img) using winimage.  Make sure this is the ORIGINAL 1996 version of civ2 for win 3.1 (other versions won’t work)

11. launch qemu, launch win 3.1 and setup civ 2.  Setup will say that it installed correctly but it hasn’t.

12. the original civ 2 fails to launch without a sound driver (it will start okay but then crash soon after).  You can try to install a sound driver as qemu can emulate sound cards via the -soundhw option.  I couldn’t be bothered to do this yet – I tried a sb16 driver and launched qemu with the -soundhw sb16 option but windows wouldn’t launch so I gave up.

13.  to get over the sound issue you need to patch civ2 with the civ242 patch.  It can be found on the civfanatics website.

Now you’re good to go!  Enjoy.