The House of Cy Reb, Jr.

Sat, 31 May 2008 20:32:01 GMT

Since I just turned in a big essay recently, I am very much almost done with school this year. This ought to give me a chance to catch up on my blogging. Here are some things that distracted me up to this finals week.

I really shouldn’t have any reason to know that the Caramelldansen Speedycake remix is sped up by a factor of the 4th root of 2, and is thus three half-steps higher than the original.

Speaking of caramel (almost), Skittles have come out in “Chocolate Mix” in an attempt to horn in on M&Ms’ territory, and one of the flavors is Chocolate Caramel. While I don’t like caramel, it’s actually hard to tell the difference between the different flavors, except by noting they are various shades of brown. Thus the problem of “I don’t like caramel” is supplanted by homogeneity, which is also a problem for Skittles. I expect Chocolate Mix won’t attract either people who don’t like Skittles or people who do like Skittles, just those who are undecided. That's a pretty bad audience to target, at least on a regular basis.

I wonder whether Yahtzee is doing anything for his birthday or his "Zero Punctuation" anniversary. And by "anything," I mean "something in the video." On a related note, I've been thinking of doing some ZP-style video reviews of some things, most likely aimed at the furry fandom. In something like a chord, I might make a tribute video for ZP.

I submitted an entry to Nagfa's March ambigram contest recently. I found out about Nagfa through ceruleanst's journal, and I think this might be a good opportunity for me to get my name out.

This all makes me wonder, though, whether I'll have to decide between ambigrams and webcomics. I doubt it, mostly, since the aforementioned ceruleanst seems to be doing fine with that.

Yeesh, I started writing this entry weeks ago, and I didn't even mention getting hit by a car. I'd better wrap it up and work on another entry. (I'm fine, by the way. The car was turning, so it wasn't going very fast. The driver called 911 and the responders vetted me.)

Happy New Year 4705/4706/4645/whatever

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 02:32:25 GMT

Well, I didn't win the contest. I guess the jokes were too obscure, and using Flash wasn't much of an advantage. Though I can't figure out, if I think Flash is better than Paint, why I keep returning to Paint. I mean, Paint pixelates everything, and redrawing a portion usually involves deleting the offending bit, meaning the... OK, I'll just get to the pictures.

The first is a lateral symbiotogram (to take John Langdon's terminology) of the words "true" and "false."

The subject matter has been used in a rotational symbiotogram and an (embedded) oscillation, but I'm surprised that the lowercase t/f hadn't given rise to this already.

The next one is an experimental 120-degree rotational ambigram. I actually worked on this in Flash, but put it into Paint for some reason. I really should have exported it, and then as a GIF, but it's a jpeg screenshot instead.

It's the title of Sue Grafton's first Kinsey Millhone Mystery, A is for Alibi. She's up to T is for Trespass now. I realize this is hard to read, so it's just an experiment, but I like how the dots on the I's lined up.

This next one is a rotational figure-ground relation set on a gray background. If you're not logged into LJ, try to guess the words in it before opening the lj-cut.

I'll add some extra blank space just for good measure.

Still there?

Good.

Mm-hmm. The super-hairdo on the C is sort of cheating, but the shapes of all the other letters are quite faithful.

All right. This fourth and last idea is something I actually lifted from ceruleanst. However, since today's Chinese New Year, and since he hasn't posted about it yet, I think I can safely post it here without being accused of theft. (Though maybe I shouldn't, since he's just gone through that thing with that other ambigrammist and it only got settled four days ago, but I'm hoping to start up a friendly competition. Hmm, maybe I should wait on this last one.)

UPDATE, FEBRUARY 10: Apparently, I've been given the go-ahead. So I'm going ahead.

This, of course, is a picture of a mouse that includes the Chinese zodiac animal "mouse," which in turn includes the year "2008." (Is it cheating to color the imbedded string? I guess not, since it's all right for the "true/FALSE" oscillation I referred to above.) Doing "mouse" avoided the problem of how to place the T of "rat" into the curvy shapes of "2008" (not that it's too hard--I did 2008/Rat in Paint just now--but this is too much more elegant to take back, and I've already finished this picture.)

In fact, I think I'm only saying what it's supposed to be so it shows up on search engines. Which reminds me: BLACK/WHITE.

Spell-check watch: "pixelates" and "screenshot." But at least it caught "imbedded." FURTHER UPDATE: Which is an accepted variant.

Artistic Submission

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 06:00:48 GMT

I just finished going through my archives and changing the userpics on some of the entries, not to mention removing the links from my Photobucket images. I may do this again with a different userpic. Anyway, this post is an entry to a contest for the comic Saiko and Lavender. And I can't believe I only just realized that the first name is pronounced like "psycho." While not a precise description of the bunny girl, this homophone fits the tone of the comic.

Anyway, here's my entry for the contest. It features a couple of characters that appeared briefly, on pages 18-22 of Issue 1.

I must say, I'm worried this image is overloaded. The scene is a classic: somebody is mixing chemicals, and they accidentally make an explosion or something. Of course, this is a fantasy comic, so the actual mixture is supposed to be a magic potion. The scene contains two jokes, neither of which I think is obvious enough.

The first joke, made by the (unnamed?) panda girl on the left, is a Japanese pun. See, "Kumo" is (transliterated) Japanese for "spider," so of course the name belongs to the six-armed spider girl in the lab coat. (I had to guess at her coloration, so I guessed brown.) But incredibly, some homophones are present in Japanese, and "kumo" also sounds like the word for "cloud," which they're now standing in.

The other joke is not particularly obscure, but it's hard to see why it's being made. Kumo is holding three different liquids in those beakers, but they are typical chemicals; identically clear and impossible to tell apart. That's how the accident happened; when Kumo mixed one of the components in, she couldn't tell it was the wrong one. (If you're wondering why she that liquid in the first place, rest assured it was supposed to be added in just a little later.)

The thing in the upper right corner is just my signature, sideways; an ambigram of "Cy Reb Jr." It can't be read in this orientation, but if you tilt your head left or right, you can make it out easily.

Recent productivity

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 03:40:50 GMT

I recently cleared off a chair in my room because I never used it for sitting. It has now been taken to the church. I missed the returns of "Monk" and "Psych" yesterday, but I'll get another chance in half an hour and a day, respectively.

Right, you may be wondering about my new userpic. (I plan to change the userpic associated with some of the entries retroactively, so if you've been reading my archives, this is where I first used this one.) It's a design for a five-segment digital display, as compared to the seven-segment displays everybody currently uses. I doubt someone will actually produce it, but one can hope.

Some of you may know that kinkyturtle has created a six-segment display, which he also uses (in two versions) as userpics. One or two of you may even have seen the five-segment display he attempted in the comments to that entry, re-posted below.

The chances that you've seen ceruleanst's design are infinitesimal (partly due to his forced domain name change), so I'll put it here too. The point, of course, is that this idea is not entirely original with me.

Now, the other reason I posted these other designs is so I can compare them against my own. First, the shortfalls of my own design. Of course it's tricky to read, but there are usually more specific reasons for things like that. In this case, there are gaps in most of the digits, and the top of my 6 is misaligned. It looks like a lowercase delta. Here:
δ
This particular delta isn't quite as curvy, but you get the point. I have gaps in my design, whereas the others don't.

My design, however, has advantages too. While it's gappy, at least it's universally gappy; whenever a pair of segments are visible in a digit and it looks like they should be connected, the connection makes sense for all digits with that pair visible.

But this begs the question (not in the sense of raising it; it was implied enough earlier on): Why does this design contain gaps? Well, shortening the segments prevented what I felt were distracting outcroppings. You can see my 6 and 7 are complementary, so note how either would look if the top two segments made a full circle. Admittedly, some 7's are written with a stroke across the center, but I stand by my choice. For contrast, compare the 4's in each design against the 5's. In each case, one segment has a "serif" that should be ignored in the 4, but which is an important part of the five: the bottom one in kinkyturtle's and the top one in ceruleanst's.

But I think the most important advantage of my design is that its shapes are simple. This goes with the previous point, because a simple shape doesn't have fiddly bits to confuse the issue. Furthermore, this means that if one of these three designs were to be selected for production, it would probably be mine. (I know it's unlikely, but like I said, one can hope.)

Just a couple more interesting notes. First, it should be possible to extend this configuration to either hexadecimal or four segments (though not both, since then a blank space would be overburdened), but I won't bother posting those, since they'd be too contrived. Second, my design has one segment which, if it burnt out, would not keep you from remembering which digit was meant to be shown (this is the maximum, since 2^3=8). This claim can't be made about the other designs, as you can see by running through the sequences 2739495 and 459708, respectively. Finally, my design uses less hypothetical electricity compared against 7 of kinkyturtle's digits and 9 of ceruleanst's digits. In the other cases, usage is the same.

Now, to actually finish this entry, I'd like to mention that the userpic? Was created in Flash. Once I'd animated the segments, I exported it to a GIF format using the command under File. (I mention this because some people may find it helpful. Trust me.) The upshot of this is, since I just learned this, you will be seeing more animations here in the near future.

(By the way, since I started this post, I did see "Monk," and it was great. I suspect it was filmed far in advance, or at least I hope so.)

The Sound and the Furry, Chapter 1

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 05:36:41 GMT

The new year has been eventful so far. I solved the GAMES Magazine contest, "Mystery Cross III," so quickly it seemed like an accident. I've made a discovery about incompatible polyomino decompositions, and I hope to write a paper on the topic. I read A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore, and he's really funny (think Dr. McNinja). I'm planning on reading more of his books.

Well, here's the first part of that story I mentioned last time. For now, it is titled with a bad pun. Enjoy.

Mycroft willed his alarm to turn off. When that had failed for two minutes, he reached over to the clock on the bedside table and turned the alarm off manually. Collapsing back on his bed, Mycroft considered how silly the idea would have sounded two years ago if he had seriously thought willing a little slider into the off position would actually move it over. He still couldn’t do that, of course, but there was a telekinetic lizard on campus—a monitor, if memory served—who had refined her talent mainly over the last month or so.

He knew that his alarm was set specifically so that he wouldn’t miss either breakfast or Mr. Chow’s poli-sci class. But with the apathy that comes with waking up in a comfortable bed, Mycroft returned to thinking about that lizard. He’d have to find her name again—maybe it was Shelly?—so he could ask her to teach him. That was when he noticed his breasts, which proved more effective than the alarm clock.

“GAH!”

Mycroft bolted upright and stared at his newly rounded chest for a few seconds. He cautiously probed the protrusions and found there was another, smaller pair closer to his belly. If pressed, he would admit they felt nice, insofar as a third-grade violin concert sounded nice. The sound might not be inherently terrible, but you generally wouldn’t go see it unless one of your children were in the orchestra, and these weren’t his children.

He decided there wasn’t much he could do about it right now, so he took off his pajamas and went into the bathroom. He looked over himself in the mirror briefly, checking for his “huevos”—it was somewhat understandable but nonetheless perplexing how the Spanish euphemism meant “eggs”—and, finding no difference in that area, proceeded to shower.

Fifteen minutes later, Mycroft was toweling off his gray and brown fur instead of using the hot-air dryer. That thing really stung his nipples, and he was already sick and tired of thinking about breasts every two minutes. It wasn’t over yet, because now he had to consider support. His roommate BJ was out right now—probably hadn’t returned from a party Mycroft cared nothing about—and one of BJ’s drawers held brassieres of various sizes. He wondered whether it would bad to go through that drawer, since some of them were probably stolen anyway.

It turned out he didn’t need to, because then he heard BJ’s keycard go through the slot at the door. He turned away quickly out of embarrassment, and before the door slid open he also wrapped the towel around his chest. (He’d already put on pants, so that wouldn’t be a problem.)

“Hey, Mike, I see you’re up!”

“BJ,” Mycroft responded. “Just the herm coyote I was looking for. I need to ask you a favor.”

“Yeah?”

“May I borrow a pair of bras?”

BJ snickered. “Sure thing,” shi said as shi look in hir bra drawer. “Still trying to change English around by yourself?” shi added while tossing a blue brassiere onto the bedside table.

“Not really,” said Mycroft, picking up the unmentionable. “Definitely not that part, since I’m trying to cover two pairs of breasts.” He pressed it against his chest, then tossed it back. “Too big.”

BJ hesitated a bit, then said, “Wait, really? Let me see.”

“No.”

“Come on!”

“Stay off me, BJ!”

“All right. Jeez. Well, you’re definitely acting like a girl.”

“I’m not a girl.”

“No, I mean—“

“No, I mean I checked.”

“Oh,” said BJ, sounding disappointed. Although hir full chosen name, Beamjumper (which was ostensibly about chasing rays of light), demonstrated a failure of name self-selection in the form of female sexual innuendo, BJ expressed a healthy physical attraction toward females, mostly.

“I’m making an appointment to get them removed,” continued Mycroft, turning to glare at BJ, “so don’t get attached.”

“Right.” BJ looked at the piece in hir hand Mycroft had tossed back. “Are you sure it’s too big? ‘Cause this is a C-cup.”

“Then give me a B- and an A-cup. Those are smaller, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, but….” BJ sighed, then rummaged through hir drawer a little further. “Try this,” shi said, handing Mycroft a two-tiered muted green article, which was probably more like teal, but no one else was going to see it anyway.

Mycroft turned the alien piece of clothing over, orienting himself to its several straps. So oriented, he put it on over his towel, and then carefully slid the towel out from under. It felt comfortable—certainly less likely than the towel to fall off—so he turned around and asked, “Does this look like it fits?”

“Unfortunately.”

SLAP!

“Ow! What was that for?”

“That was for your lewd and somewhat insulting attitude.”

“You can’t do that! I’m twice the woman you are, right now!”

“I don’t have time for this.” Mycroft tossed on a sweatshirt and his heavy jacket. “I have a class with an eccentric professor in twenty minutes, and it’ll take me at least that long to get breakfast and find the room.”

The Effects of Prolonged Exposure to the Button

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 07:31:03 GMT

If you're specifically looking for Nucleus, it's probably two entries below. It's annoying, but I'll have to keep redirecting (nonexistent) visitors until Ed edits his entry. (Since I don't want to edit this later, I'll allow that this might have happened.)

I don't generally play video games except for fighters (Super Smash Bros.), and it's not something I excel/exercise at. However, after playing Portal: The Flash Version and seeing my brother had borrowed The Orange Box, I decided to try it. Long story short, I beat it in about nine hours. (I'm sure that has a meaning, which is why I said it.) It was pretty fun, though I won't be investing more time into video games.

Anyway, I just finished reading the fan fiction Dire Peril. If you are a typical human who happens to use the Internet, then I'm sure you don't care. But if you are a typical Internet user (which I swear means something else), you might want more context. The fanfic takes place in the world of Exterminatus Now, a webcomic based in the setting of "Sonic the Hedgehog" with the caveat that none of the characters of the latter appear in the former, thus avoiding issues of copyright infringement between the latter two. (This is, I think, exactly the point where it would have become a run-on sentence.) Potential issues between the former two (EN and DP) are mitigated by the front-page endorsement of the fanfic by the webcartoonist(s). (It might be relevant to point out here that Scott Ransoomair linked to Zero Punctuation, so blame him.) So yes, I think the title is supposed to sound ironically dippy. Anyway, if you think that Mobius would be fun with all of the "Sonic" characters replaced by variously foul-mouthed and abusive Inquisitors and daemon-worshipers, have at 'em.

One more thing. I'm trying to write a furry story, not based in any particular universe, and I thought I was having a good time at it. However, it seems to be turning into a novella, and my... "pretty boy" brother logged me off of my account (on what's sort of a communal computer) before I could save the first half of the second chapter. I hope to be able to showcase it here, probably starting next entry, but this is a new kind of frustration. I'd like to think I can deal with it, although I have stayed up past midnight to get to this irritating point. This will be a problem, because we're entertaining family friends in a few hours.

Amateur Steganography

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 06:59:50 GMT

If you're looking for Nucleus, it's in the entry chronologically previous to this, which makes it the one below this nine times out of ten. I asked Ed to change the link on his site, but I guess he hasn't checked his mail yet. For now, I'll talk about TV and puzzles in about that order.

I haven't been keeping up with Heroes and Chuck, partly because I can catch up on those easily. Tonight, I was going to watch one of them on the computer and the other on G4, but my family decided to watch home decorating shows, so I just watched both on the computer. I noticed the pinch of the WGA strike in the way Sylar found Suresh's place. Spoiler:

He ended up in the right place. That's about it. If there were details, they got cut. Maybe he looked it up in a phone book, but that would presuppose being in the right city, and they have been separated since New York. If Adam's not specifically pulling the strings, that's a major hole.

Now, NUMB3RS I have kept up on. I started playing Chain Factor almost as soon as I saw that, yes, there was indeed an ARG associated with the episode "Primacy." I uncovered a couple of Error Codes (capitalized because of course they're planted), though I was only chasing my tail on the Key Codes. It's winding down now, what with eleven of twelve Shutdown Keys having been discovered. About the episode "Graphic"...

I wonder why Charlie didn't compare the fake comics to his copy of "Nanopunk" once he started suspecting Seth.

Well, I'd better wrap up before midnight. Here's the name of a president. Decode it.

13 83 86 67 13 25

EDIT: Corrected a probability and added a hint.

Nuclear revision

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 06:36:02 GMT

After seeing the hexagonal Black Box on MathPuzzle.com, I decided to push my hexagonal Magnets-like puzzle, called Nucleus. The groups of three circles are either protons or neutrons, the gray circles are gluons, and the uncolored circles are quarks. Quarks are either red, green, or blue, and though in neutrons they cannot be distinguished, same-colored quarks never touch among protons. Of course, each proton consists of one red, one green, and one blue quark. Given the numbers of distinguishable quarks in some lines, determine the placements of all the protons.

(Oh for crying out loud, why doesn't the spell-check recognize the plural of "gluon"?)

You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 20:22:38 GMT

In case you were wondering, NO I did not get my Halloween costume ready in time. And now, it's time for SPOILERS!

Chuck! Revelation!

Apparently, Bryce had a good reason to get Chuck kicked out: saving him from a job with the CIA. Not only that, but he even had a good reason to send Chuck the Intersect: he knew Chuck would be able to interpret the images with ease. I bring up this second thing because I saw an article where Josh Schwartz said something like, "wouldn't it be funny if an agent accidentally sent information to the wrong person? So we did it." Of course, I didn't know how to square that with the Zork riddle that covered the e-mail, except that maybe Bryce had similarly topical riddles attached to all the people in his address book. Anyway, now we know!

I must say, though, part of that Green segment during the commercial break with Morgan and Casey rubbed me the wrong way. Morgan said he had an eco-friendly vehicle, and Casey responded by pointing out that said vehicle was a bike. It was supposed to be a put-down. What? Oh, come on! Bicycles are a standard alternative to normal cars; lots of people chose to ride bikes instead of cars specifically because they didn't use gas, loooong before things like hybrid cars started popping up. I wouldn't be surprised if NBC had received, let's call it a kickback, from the car companies for putting that crack in there. Phoo....

Heroes! Revelation!

Apparently, Kensei is the person performing the killings, under the name of Adam Monroe. What I find particularly shocking about this theory is not that nobody thought of it, but that somebody did. (URL adjusted so that the relevant post is on top.) Aye-yi-yi. I remember thinking it was silly when I read it, and I thought I also remembered somebody rebutting it, but I don't see the other one. I would guess that Bob's comment about Adam controlling the weather can be explained by Kensei's interactions with Hiro in 1671 combined with a present-day influence on Hiro through his father. I mean, it's possible that he recursively learned how to control the butterfly effect over 300+ years.

Oh, and I hope Caitlin isn't permanently stuck in the alternate future. If the future gets changed "before" she gets pulled out, it could be a fate worse than death. (This is like what happened to Simone. Why do Peter's love interests keep getting killed? Actually, why am I drawing a pattern based on two instances?)

Journeyman! Revelation!

Wait, I don't watch Journeyman.

My chemical romance, as it were

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:43:36 GMT

I recently looked for a minimal greatest-cover of the alphabet using chemical symbols. More specifically, since J and Q are not part of any element's symbol (although Jl was proposed for element 105, dubnium, when it was called "joliotium"), I wanted to find a set of symbols that used each of the other 24 letters (hence "greatest-cover") with as few duplicates as possible (hence "minimal").

As it turns out, I found a cover that used exactly 24 letters rather easily by going through the alphabet in order, so I put a couple more constraints on the challenge. I've found several solutions with 13 symbols, for example. Solutions that minimize the sum or product of the corresponding atomic numbers are also preferable, but I've put this under "open" and not "math" because I think you don't need to optimize either of those unless you have both spare time and programming experience.

I'm not pining for Studio 60, really

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 21:55:38 GMT

In an effort to push my previous "Heroes" entry off the front page, I will be making two entries in (preferably) a short amount of time. This one is about TV.

Now, the new season of "Heroes" is plenty engaging, and I have a couple ideas on what's going on.
1. Nathan (seems to have) contracted Jessica Syndrome, so named for obvious reasons.
2. The dystopian fate where Sylar has become President Petrelli could well be right on track, depending on how fixed the date of "Five Years Gone" is.
3. I think the murderer could be one of the dead guys. Why not? It could reveal what their powers actually were.
4. Again with the date retconning! It originally said Hiro had traveled to 1607 (a nice, round 400 years ago), but that was overwritten with 1671. I'd guess the writers didn't want to predate Jamestown or Plymouth Rock.
5. Wikipedia is your friend. It'd be a shame if Monica Dawson (that black girl) could only do things she saw on TV.
6. Finally, we see some powers duplicated! I'm a little bothered that family members were never shown to have similar powers until the twins Maya and Alejandro Herrera came along. (Peter doesn't count.)

I'd like to perform a statistical analysis at the end of the second season, thus: take the number of characters with powers demonstrated in the first season (24), divide by the fraction of such characters that debuted in the second season (6 so far) whose powers have been observed in the first-season characters (2 so far), and the result is an estimate of the number of potential powers in the "Heroes" universe. This estimate is currently 72.

On that note, let's look at "NUMB3RS." The reintroduction of Colby Granger was a little confusing, but not much of a problem. The annoying part is the new cinematic style that accompanies Charlie's explanations. I thought it made a little sense the first time, when Don was distracted, but it got on my nerves when it kept happening. It was nice to see Amita use the old style in the latest episode, "Thirteen." (The change isn't as bad as USA's "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" opening theme remix, though. Ew.)

Now I'd like to turn to the newcomer to my lineup, "Chuck." Produced by Josh Schwartz of "The O.C.," it seems only natural for "Chuck" to run headlong into the tropes of the genre, that genre being spy thriller. (Wikipedia is not your friend. If we called every spy story with questionable technology "science fiction," the genre would nearly have died with "Dr. No.") This enjoyable romp gives "Psych" a run for its money. The only problem I really have (keeping in mind that only four episodes have actually aired) is some overuse of last-second near-misses (and maybe some genre blindness in the episode "Chuck Versus the Helicopter").

Words you'd think spell-check would find acceptable: dystopian, retconning, ew, and Wikipedia.

Roman Digits

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 04:02:00 GMT

I'd rather not check whether I've set a personal record for longest time between posts, thank you very much. I'll give my thoughts on "Heroes," "NUMB3RS," and also "Chuck" later. For now, a puzzle.

The letters that represent Roman numerals are IVXLCDM. In this puzzle, we won't worry about what they mean, just their relative positions in the alphabet. First, notice that C and D are right next to each other, as are L and M. We say each of these pairs of letters defines a difference of 1. If the alphabet is thought to wrap around as in a Caesar cipher, then the various unordered pairs of letters define all integer (of course) distances from 1 to 13.

Fill in the dashes below, one letter per dash, so that the string contains two of each letter and all thirteen distances are defined by neighboring letters. For example, IVXLCDM defines distances of 13, 2, 12, 9, 1, and 9 again, and the repeated 9 is not allowed.

D L _ _ C V _ _ I M _ _ D M

Today's spell-check folly: IVXLCDM => OVERCLOCKED.

Carmen's a witch

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 21:01:15 GMT

I turned 21 yesterday, and it was a good birthday. I had a nice dinner with family and friends, and I got just about everything I asked for. I guess that's a good reason for an update.

Now, the third Jay is Games game design competition had some interesting "replay" games, and I got addicted to Gimme Friction Baby, getting a high score of 22. But I want to talk about the other game I got addicted to, Karma.

Why, I wonder, is a score being kept? The score per round is higher the less time is spent in a life, so one would think the idea is to get a higher score, and cleansing a sin gets more points, but the faster you cleanse the seven sins, the fewer total rounds you have to score points.

So, ignoring points, here's a question based on the mechanics of the game. The mechanics are:
1. In each life, the computer randomly places the player on the edge of a square field and a conch shell on the interior.
2. In each life, the player draws a path from the starting point on the edge to the pyre in the center of the field.
3. After a sixth path has been drawn, the earliest path that was on the field vanishes, leaving five (again).
4. If the new path crosses any path, the game is lost.
5. If the new path crosses a conch, the player washes away one sin.
6. When the player washes away seven sins, the game is won.

Now, assume that a) the conch is a point, b) paths have zero width, c) the player will never cross a path but otherwise always retrieve the conch, and d) the area of a sector defined by two paths and the perimeter is in exact proportion with the section of perimeter defined by the starting points of those paths. In short, assume perfect design and perfect play.

What is the expected number of lifetimes in this player's game?

Late puzzle, puzzle update

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 06:14:43 GMT

Darn. I should have posted on Friday the 13th, because I have this puzzle that would have been germane then. Oh well.

It is somewhat well-known that all years have a Friday the 13th in them. Less well-known is that regardless of the year, one group of seven consecutive months is guaranteed to have a Friday the 13th. What are those seven months? Bonus question: what is the longest period between consecutive Fridays 13?

Nothing much else to report. Someone on the rec.puzzles Google Group independently found the intended answer to one of my puzzles, and others found longer words. However, I like the ones that don't use the same inflection of words of the same part of speech twice, and those seem to top out at 6.

"Code Monkeys" review

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 19:49:26 GMT

I watched the premier of Code Monkeys on G4 yesterday. This was probably mostly because I recognized the theme song from this video, as flimsy a reason as any, but whatever. It deserved a shot.

Now, the thing that sticks out most in my mind is that of the two episodes shown last night, both include visible phalluses* as joke points.** This says something about the target audience: namely, they need to enjoy shock-humor. Given that the G4 audience is skewed toward those who might understand the E.T. game debacle reference, I figure that a large part of the target audience bought "Conker"* for the Sega Saturn***.

On the other hand, the visual style was a genius decision. Not only was it thematically relevant, it allowed some unique ways to emphasize certain jokes. A health meter at the top of the screen was occasionally replaced by other meters for anger, insincerity, insanity, what have you. Along the bottom of the screen, the title was often replaced with a small reaction to a joke, a la "The Wørd" from The Colbert Report (although less as an extra punchline than to just repeat the punchline incredulously). The scene transitions were fun and useful, and while the first pause screen for commercial break added no real suspense (as it might have under different circumstances), the debut of that mechanic was placed perfectly.

Of course, there's something creator Adam de la Peña said just a few minutes before the debut (during G4's E3 '07 spectacular) that worried me a little. He said he made this show so that his life wouldn't be a waste. While this was almost certainly tongue-in-cheek, the similarity of Code Monkeys to South Park puts me in a position to make some awkward comments. Then again, he already has a sizable IMDb entry, even without this show (yet), so my secondary fear seems completely unfounded.

*Look it up.
**I thought one of them was a fig leaf, if that tells you anything.
***It was the last game Sega made for its own console, probably because the game was targeted toward a near-nonexistent maturing segment of Sega buyers.

Ambigram Stylin's

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 05:56:20 GMT

It just occurred to me that I haven't posted any traditional ambigrams here yet. By which I mean neither of the two already here is symmetrical in the purely visual sense. Well, here's where I shall remedy that, at least with tonight's first sample.

In case you don't recognize this name, here's the entry on him. (EDIT: Drat, had to change from a fan-site that defaulted. Oh well.)

I'm proud that this ambigram could practically represent a typeface, the way ceruleanst does in almost all of his ambigrams. The part that gave me the biggest problem was the LG/M glyph; until I realized I could put that bottom stroke on the G, I couldn't figure out how to make the M not look like a lowercase N.

Well, now that that's settled, here's my other ambigram for tonight. You almost certainly won't recognize this, so here's a link about that mathematical paradox.

I created this one by working my way forward from the beginning, and the upper-/lower-case inversion just suggested itself as a way to differentiate the two reading frames. I theoretically had a lot of leeway on this one, considering that the dot at the end could absorb as many letters as I needed, but I managed to limit myself to three. I'm amazed how distinct the large letters are from a distance.

Good night, and good luck.

I will make a direct apology soon.

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 21:36:28 GMT

I just participated in the Google U.S. Puzzle Championship and boy are my arms tired. Ha! But seriously, folks, I need to apologize to whomever made puzzle 7, Circuit Maze. Here, let me start at the beginning.

A few months ago (March 23, apparently), I was browsing the Google group at http://groups.google.com/group/rec.puzzles/topics and saw this post by one Mark Steere. His puzzle seemed interesting, but it was too big for anyone to contemplate. That post spawned a 60-post thread of arguments with Mr. Steere about why he refused to make a smaller maze, finally concluding with Walter D. Pullen using his program Daedalus to find the solution path.

To me and many posters (to be sure, I'm not a member of that group), this refusal was absurd, or at least expressed absurdly. (The attraction of trolls was inevitable, and of course not helpful.) These two paragraphs from this post best describe the two sides of the argument:

MARK STEERE: I'm just getting tired of all the baby complaints. I heard them all already before posting. "I want a smaller one." "I want a colored one." "I can't fill in the dead ends with a pencil." This is like saying that you want to run in the marathon, but only if you can hop on a moped at some point and cut across town. It's cheating.

SIMON TATHAM: Well, hold on there; not all of those are alike. 'I want a smaller one' is like saying that you want to run in the marathon, but only if you can practise on shorter courses first- which is an eminently sensible thing to do if you want to run a marathon and have no previous running experience!

In retrospect, I could have checked this maze again before starting the test, but it slipped my mind. What I want to apologize for is this comment I submitted with my answers:
Whoever designed "Circuit Maze" is an insufferable blowhard. He should be told that while Marathons don't come in graduated sizes, races do, and so should his mazes.

So there's more than one problem with this. Not only did I not specifically target Mark Steere (due to not remembering his name (also, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't wanted to target him)), but puzzle 7 actually is much smaller than the original maze. So even ignoring the (comparatively levelheaded) rough tone, my comment was likely undeserved.

So to whomever I insulted, I'm sorry. Once I find out whether it was Mark Steere or someone else who created this particular maze, I'll apologize again.

BELATED EDIT: Turns out Mark did make that other maze. I'll just be standing by my comment.

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 04:31:32 GMT

I saw "Kill Bill Vol. 1" yesterday, an activity which bled into today. Figuratively speaking, of course. I find it odd, though, that I can tolerate movies with so much violence, as I don't tend to seek those out.

Speaking of Bill, I finished Bill Clinton's NYT crossword a while ago after maybe a week and a half. (No, I'm not posting the solution.) As sort of a celebration, I created this ambigram (which has nothing to do with Bill Clinton).

Two things (and a puzzle)

Mon, 28 May 2007 06:35:04 GMT

I just realized that "Do you support the troops?" is a loaded question. The trick is that if you support the people, the question is phrased so that it sounds like you have to support their trooplike activities. Of course, many if not most soldiers would rather not fight. If you hear this in an argument, there's no way to guarantee a "win"; just point out the loadedness and say "yes, but not as troops."

Tom Tomorrow (among others, I'm sure) has compared the current Bush presidency to the Nixon presidency. The current Gulf War obviously corresponds to Vietnam, and the current wiretap scandal suggests Watergate. So I was trying to think up a third analogic similarity, but I came up with a disparity instead; if Baudy Dubya resigns or gets impeached, Tricky Dick Cheney would be next in line, and would likely be seen as more competent than the man he's replacing. I'm sure this is why the Democrats have been sitting on their hands.
(Note: First, I'm sort of joking. Second, I've misspelled "bawdy" above, but it's otherwise a nice anagram. Third, "bawdy" may not be an accurate description, but see the second point.)

Now, I know I suggested I'd talk about the Colorado Math Olympiad, but I was going to give two math exercises, and I figured that would be rather dull. So instead, here's an alphametic/cryptarithm which answers a question skipped over in "Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School."

  APPLES
+ORANGES
 NOGRAPE

Timeline mucking

Tue, 08 May 2007 21:41:24 GMT

All right, it's later. Apparently, I don't have class today. So let's get started.

The most problematic part of the "Heroes" timeline (at least in my mind) is whether "save the cheerleader" was carried out. Future-Suresh certainly remembers that Peter received the prophecy, but future-Peter's scar implies he never met Claire. (Actually, there might be something embedded in his skull, causing a cyst, but I'm trying to prevent a single closed time-loop from arising in this analysis.) Therefore, I claim that Claire would have escaped without Peter's help, and Sylar would have been captured anyway from Isaac's paintings.

But that leaves unanswered why Peter didn't arrive to save Claire. My candidate answer is that Ando is a wildcard, able to alter events as I suggested in my last entry. This is an ill-defined premise, but it may be refined so as to allow Ando's two intervening interactions with Peter to steer him away from Claire.

Whether there is more than one timeline is probably a matter of contention on the forums, but this has a simple answer. In the second episode, Hiro called Ando in Japan from America, but Ando at least has to be in New York around the (proposed) time of the explosion. This cannot reasonably be a single timeline; if it is, it would certainly require a lot of unsatisfactory finagling. (Also, the gunshot in the episode I think is called "Unexpected" both happened and did not happen.)

Now, what about Sylar? Did/will Hiro kill him or not? How did/does he survive future-Hiro's sword without Claire's ability? I have two short answers which rely on information not yet available.
FIRST POSSIBILITY: Linderman revives him. This makes no sense, but he did order that Sylar be kept alive (for a while) for unknown reasons. Perhaps Sylar is going to be a backup bomb, though Sylar will only thank him by slitting his forehead.
SECOND POSSIBILITY: Sylar meets Candice before Hiro tries to kill him again. It's not important to this theory whether she survives this encounter, since her power can fool all six common senses (where I count the sense of balance along with the other five). If she somehow survives, then she might be impersonating Sylar herself when she gets killed, for reasons not yet known.

Other things I've been thinking include that there are now three possible bombs (Peter, Sylar, & Ted), that I should cross-check my day-of-the-week comparison with the "two days after the election" figure, and that my next entry should relate to the Colorado Math Olympiad.

Edit: P.P.S. (because this whole entry is like a P.S.) "Heroes" was originally about "ordinary people with extraordinary abilities." No way are the writers throwing that away for an immutable dystopian future.
Also, I call retcon! I wrote that the date on the newspaper was November 5, whereas Election Day 2006 was November 7... and the date of the election was just shown to be November 7! ...Ha!

Quick speculation

Mon, 07 May 2007 20:33:19 GMT

This is just something I want to get in before the final episode of "Heroes." Nothing profound (unfortunately).

If they stop the bomb, it's because Ando can change the past (witness: they didn't get shot in that one episode). I'm guessing the blast is replaced with an EMP.

UPDATE, TUESDAY: First of all, my mistake. There are two more episodes for the season, and probably several more seasons. I made a mistake.

Second, this episode was weak, IMHO. The lack of thinking at the end might be explained by a flood of emotions, but that's sort of hand-wavy. Speaking of which, Dr. Suresh's biobabble struck me as very hand-wavy.

Third, I don't think Peter's scar in the episode "Five Years Gone" should come about, since he has Claire's healing factor, but that raises serious questions about the timeline. I'll outline them later.

Word of the Day

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 06:37:51 GMT

It is 12:30 in the morning, and the Word of the Day is dysphemism. Merriam-Webster defines it as

the substitution of a disagreeable, offensive, or disparaging expression for an agreeable or inoffensive one; also: an expression so substituted.

For example, somebody may say "This is some great s***!" Clearly, the speaker thinks highly of whatever was referred to as "s***," despite referring to it as such.
Let's see what spell-check says!

Edit: Hmm. That's never happened before. Spell-check picked up only on "dysphemism," but didn't have any suggestions for fixing the word.
Edit 2: Ha! For "Hmm," it has the suggestions HM, Hm, MM, Mm, HMO, Ham, H'm, Hem, Him, Hum, HMS, and Hm's.

Lists

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 20:12:06 GMT

I have among my bookmarks some puzzle pages I don't visit frequently. One of those belongs to Bob Kraus, who has a taste for puzzles that involve long lists of numbers. I don't share this taste, since there is often very little to suggest that the solver is making progress in the right direction. However, since his site has not updated in a long time, I randomly felt like experimenting with lists and came up with these two puzzles.

1) I have separated the integers 1-8 into four ordered pairs, with the larger number coming first, and performed a different operation on each of those pairs: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The result of each of those operations is called the "index." Each index happens to appear in one of those ordered pairs, but no two indices appear in the same pair, and none appears in the pair it was derived from.
Now, since each index appears in an ordered pair with an associated operation, each index can be said to point to that operation. When I perform the indicated operation on each ordered pair, the average of the results is an integer. What are the pairs, and what is the integer?

2) This puzzle is open. The method I'm using to calculate quartiles comes from Wikipedia, and runs as follows: "Use the median to divide the ordered data set into two halves. Do not include the median into the halves. The lower quartile value is the median of the lower half of the data. The upper quartile value is the median of the upper half of the data." (The second quartile is, of course, the median of the original list.)
Now, I've come up with a list of positive whole numbers, all distinct, and calculated the first, second, and third quartiles. These three numbers aren't necessarily in the list, or even integers, but the following six numbers (all different) relating to the terms on the list actually do appear on it:
a) The number of terms
b) The sum of the terms less than the first quartile
c) The product of the terms greater than the first quartile and less than the median
d) The difference of the terms greater than the median and less than the third quartile
e) The quotient of the terms greater than the third quartile
f) The average of all the terms
Your challenge: to find such a list while minimizing (with any priority) the number of terms, the sum of the terms, and the largest term. For example, my list has fewer than 10 terms, its sum is less than 100, and the largest term is under 25.

April Fool's day...

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 18:06:31 GMT

... and no one to share it with. *sigh*

I don't have much for you today, folks. I've just finished a puzzle hunt (our team came in third), but the puzzle I have for you is not fully written yet. I can't even give you a prank, really, since I know the effort would be completely wasted.

I will, however let you know something about me. Once in a while, I check my own LiveJournal to see if it was updated.

I'm not depressed, just so you know.

Webcomic Crossover Graph: Done with D

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 07:26:12 GMT

I may be getting a periodic aversion to writing. See, I'm currently taking a writing class in college, and that means I have to "set aside" a lot of time for essays I don't really enjoy.

Anyway, here's another update to my webcomic crossover graph. I know, it's later than I said, but gimme a break. February and March were short this year. (Did you know that April used to be the next-shortest month after February? Stupid Bush, depriving us of a little bit of trivia.) Anyway, to make up for that, I've updated the graph through D. (That's like two letters, since D itself did not require alterations.) I've also moved the small unconnected parts of the graph out of the main section, so it looks nicer.

  HOSERS  Absurd Notions  Help Desk
   |  |         |          |
   | General Protection Fault--Kevin
   |          |                & Kell
   |    Joe   |  The Suburban
   |  Average |     Jungle
   |     |    |        |
Life at  |    |   The Class Menagerie
Bayside--+    |    |*        |
         |  Funny Farm---Newshounds
         |  |
Knights  CRfH!---Clan of---+---Alice
of the   ||     the Cats   |
Dinner--Fans!             Elf
Table    |                Life
         |
   It’s Walky!--Melonpool--Zortic

Magick  Beyond   Parallel  Sit &
   |    Reality  Dementia   Spin
Anarchy    |        |        |
         Emergency Exit   Avalon

The Wotch--The Accidental Centaurs

3rd Party--Charby the--Elijah
 Fantasy    Vampire    & Azuu

Adventurers--RPG World        

Guðrún--Alcydia    PvP--Dork Tower

A World like--The Devil’s
   My Own       Panties

 UC Rats   Bassetville  ConScrew
    |              ||   |
The Call           Fragile
of Whatever        Gravity

Goats--Bobbins--Waiting for Bob