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S&P ending '08 around 900, thus... Summer of '97 Thread

2 points by time_management ↗ HN
With the S&P set to close at mid-June 1997 levels, I thought it might be appropriate to reminisce about the summer that was, the summer of '97.

I was between 8th and 9th grade, at CTY (Carlisle first session, Lancaster second). CTY memories include: Don McLean's "American Pie"... Scum: the Masquerade (a card game)... Bleem, the integer between 3 and 4... trying to hook up with a 15-point-7 year-old "no more" (no success; I was only 14.1). Great times.

I was super-bummed about missing out on ARML, having not heard of the contest till national Mathcounts in May, and therefore having learned about the contest too late to register.

Outside of CTY sessions, I spent the summer hacking QBasic text adventures that no one but me wanted to play. :(

I won't post too many songs of the era, because I figure other posters will pick up the slack. Only three stick out as memorable:

Savage Garden - To the Moon and Back. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I9hVzqTbn0

This one I remember only because it was absolutely eerie at 4:00 on a summer morning. (I had to listen to the radio at night, else I couldn't fall asleep.)

Our Lady Peace - Superman's Dead http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOZLSHuDBxY

Great song from around that time from one of the most underrated '90s bands.

White Town - Your Woman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVL-zZnD3VU

Quirky, odd song from an unusually talented, but unpopularizable, one-hit wonder. Vintage '97.

What are your Summer of '97 memories, songs, and (of course) hacking projects?

5 comments

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cperciva
In mid-1997 I was about to enter grade 12, and getting my first experience with C -- writing code to compute the 5 trillionth bit of Pi (yes, I believe in jumping in at the deep end).
time_management
Do you remember what it was?

If I recall correctly, computing hex digits of pi is fairly trivial, but decimal digits are not. Is that right?

cperciva
The 5 trillionth bit of Pi is zero.

computing hex digits of pi is fairly trivial, but decimal digits are not

For some definition of "fairly trivial", yes.

The Nth hexadecimal (or binary) digit of Pi can be computed in O(log N) space and O(N (log N)^2 log log N) time, while the best known algorithm for computing the Nth decimal digit requires O(N) space and O(N (log N)^2) time. This is due to Pi being expressible as a polylogarithm ladder in base 1/2 but not in base 1/10 (as far as we know).

prakash
3rd Eye Blind's Semi-Charmed Life was the song of the summer; and while this doesn't classify as a tech project, it was making Asprin (acetylsalicylic acid) with a friend for my 12th grade chem project.
icey
Hmm... in 1997 I was writing software for a living and cursing having to deal with Internet Explorer issues.