Comment by buu700 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by buu700 | Hacker News Reader

That's a fun idea. Sounds a bit like the chuunin exams.

From experience, just memorizing the numbers would be way easier (I did 250 in middle school), but here's my idea:

* Wear pants

* Wire up 10 coin-button-type vibrating motors to a mobile device (with a USB hub and USB-DC adapters, or something to that effect)

* Tape one motor under each of your toes

* Tape the mobile device somewhere inside your clothes that won't be too visible or affect your comfort/posture too much

* Run the wires through your clothes

* Have a program play the digits of pi through the motors with each toe mapped to a different digit

* Ideally you would also be able to start, stop, restart, and rewind at will; maybe this could be handled through buttons behind/under your heels with each action mapped to a short press or long press

I had a similar idea, but I think you've overengineered it slightly:

- Learn morse code for numbers 0 to 9

- Build simple app to run phone vibrate for each number

Personally, I think this would be better with a teammate, who would be able to start/stop/rewind the sequence by having the app listen to a websocket, if the pi-rememberer is asked any questions over Zoom.

We had a similar initial thought, but I was concerned about something like morse code being both too slow and vulnerable to "timing attacks" (professor noticing that the amount of time it takes to recite any digit is directly correlated with what that digit is).

I also assumed that this would be an interactive exercise wherein the professor might stop you to chat midway through and/or drop a few "your audio broke up there; can you back up and repeat the last N digits?"s to throw you off.

That, and it's more interesting if the solution also has a shot of working in person, which is why I didn't go for anything like "hang the numbers around the room".

I'm not convinced that I'd be able to deternine which toe the sensation would be on. If I just use the sensation of touching my toes I have no clue which it is except by knowing where my finger is. Maybe this would improve with practice, but I'd be lost if I had that setup now and went for it

Are you from Houston?

Nope, so far the only time I've spent in Houston has been at the airport. Why?

Sorry just saw this, that was a joke about the Houston Astros using buzzers allegedly to çheat :)

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