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. ( Protracted analysis you may or may not want to skip )

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.)

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.
( Review )

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.

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!

(Edit: Figures. Three days after I posted an essay, not only have the comics moved, invalidating thirteen of my links, but for more than a week after, I can't be bothered to change the links. Well, at least deleting one of those included parenthetically isn't too hard. Edit 2: The links should now direct correctly.)

Ah, politics. A subject I don't particularly like talking about. And yet it's practically unavoidable when talking about the work of one rhjunior.

Mr. Hayes, as you may know, has three webcomics: Nip & Tuck, Goblin Hollow (formerly "Under the Lemon Tree"), and Tales of the Questor. The first two are frequently conservative in their view; the third, not so much. I bring this up because the current story in "Nip & Tuck" has a somewhat different direction.

A bit of background: about a year ago, Nip (the brother without the hat) was hired to be the lead of a movie nearly sight unseen (on both ends-- the director didn't put much thought into the selection, and the actors don't see more than a few pages at a time). Some weeks into the filming, Nip gets his hands on a director's copy of the script and discovers the movie is an offensively, flamingly liberal piece of garbage.

(An aside here: this movie idea is obviously based off of "Syriana," the only movie I truly regret not walking out on. I have managed to walk out on "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "What the Bleep Do We Know!?" because I didn't care for the central concepts. As for "Syriana," the plot didn't make any sense. Hey Mr. Gaghan! You're supposed to connect everything before it's more than the audience can handle! I mean, "You're the Canadian"? What the #$*!!?)

Anyway, unable to escape the movie, he hatches a cunning scheme to completely hijack it. The result is a movie poised at the opposite political extreme that parallels George W.'s war in Iraq rather nicely. So, politics.

In fast-forwarding to today (mid-July 2006, actually), we see that Purloined Letter, the guys credited with that revamped film, has a new movie out-- sci-fi, hyperdrive, evil empire, and such. The premise is that a resistance against the oppressive Interstellar Federation has just lost a war thereagainst, and the rebels have been taken back into the IF in an uncomfortable manner (also click next). Among the space battles, we see that plenty of just-plain-folks have been unfairly affected by the war. It's clear, by the way, that we're supposed to sympathize with these characters, the lead and the kiddie sidekick.

"Rebel Cry" strikes me as considerably more liberal than "Man on the Border" for coming out against that war, but then, something similar has been said about "The Phantom Menace." So what's going on here? Is the story (an unabashed B-movie) generic enough that it slipped under Ralph's radar? Does he have some twists that will drive me away? Do I just not understand politics? What?

Let me discuss, for a moment, some comments I have come across during my Internet rounds. While I won't rule out the possibility of a sideways reference, I promise to not directly talk about my own LiveJournal's lack of comments.

First, while "Heroes" is taking a break, here's an excerpt from Wikipedia about Eden McCain:
"... Eden attempts to use her power of persuasion to have Sylar kill himself. Instead, he telekinetically pulls her through the glass window to his cell and attempts to take her power. Unable to use her gun to kill him, she turns it on herself to prevent him from taking her powers." --Wikipedia, "List of characters in Heroes," accessed Dec. 19, 2006

I must say, this is not how I interpreted that few seconds of the episode. I thought that the gunshot was Sylar trying an easier way of opening Eden's skull; she didn't strike me as the type to sacrifice herself. On the other hand, it's possible I missed a bit of dialogue that made this clear, and it also doesn't quite make sense for Sylar to scatter her brains across the walls. In any case, I'm keeping my interpretation in the back of my mind. (Also, I thought Eden was already in the cell and Sylar pushed her through the glass. (Also, I'm relieved that Sylar isn't the black guy ("the Haitian").))

Next, over at "The Order of the Stick"'s forum (where, by the way, the no-commenting-on-which-page-you-posted-on rule is not being enforced quite so strongly anymore), there have been comments about Elan's flashback and new prestige class level in Dashing Swordsman. This discussion is partly about whether Elan will return to his old self. To wit:
"Sabine has an energy drain attack. So Elan kicks Nale's butt, rescues Haley, but gets tagged by Sabine and loses a level. He has to make a Fort save 24 hours later, and fails miserably. Back to the lovable but useless Elan we all know." --Giant in the Playground Forums, "OOTS #390 - The Discussion Thread," robinmotion, December 16, 3:52 AM (EST)

Now, I'm of the (prevailing) opinion that Elan will, in fact, retain his new prestige class. The above possibility would, perhaps, be a good fake-out, but the Giant has a multi-year story-line planned out, and most of the characters have already evolved quite a bit, so chances are Elan is not turning back any time soon. As Nightmarenny says in the same thread, at 6:25 PM on the same day:
"[I] find it disturbing that a bunch of you want OotS to be a sitcom. Where's the fun in static char[a]cters?"

Finally, Eric Burns at Websnark has been getting on Aaron Sorkin's case for using "Studio 60" to air his dirty laundry. (I doubt you don't already know this, but still, I've got to set the stage.) He's interesting to read and brings up good points as always, but even though he's not focusing on this to the exclusion of all else, I want Eric to write about another TV show. Don't worry yourselves (ahem), though; I'm already composing an e-mail to that effect.

Hmm. If I were to say I had a point here, it would be that one should keep in mind these two nonexclusive, non-exhaustive possibilities: first, that one's ideas might be at odds with the general population, and second, that one's ideas might be wrong.

"Heroes," if for any reason you're wondering (living under a rock, premature cancellation, etc.), is a new show on NBC just before "Studio 60" (another terrific show, but that's off-topic) that my mom describes as "X-Men, Generation Zero." (Or was it "one"? Anyway.) Many of the characters have superpowers: flight, teleportation, mind-reading, and such. I described one character to my mom as "channeling Wolverine, whose mutant power is super-healing." Then my brother said I was lying, because Wolverine isn't technically a "mutant" since he doesn't have the "mutant gene," but rather an evolutionary throwback. Discounting for now the embarrassingly pseudoscientific claim that evolution has definable direction...

Where was I? Oh yes: off-topic. In the last episode, Hiro (yes, there was a pun made, and that's the only reason I remember his name) was shown a newspaper dated November 5 to make a point. (Spoiling as little as I want.) The headline said something about some election. (I have real trouble with names. It was years before I knew Goren and Eames's names on "Law & Order: CI.") But November 5 is Sunday this year, and Election Day is the 7th! I have no idea how important this is.

The thing I wanted to talk about, though, stems from Mom's high-concept description "X-Men, Generation Zero." If you've seen "Heroes," you'll agree this is accurate, and the series has clear influence from X-Men. It occurred to me that I could think of it aa a fanfic!

Er, a high-quality fanfic. Which, importantly, is on TV. The point is that it's a little more derivative than other shows, but it's still TERRIFIC- er, fun- uh, good? Feels professional? Well, the point of the point is that derivative works needn't feel that way, and I in particular should not be shy to post a sequel to "Being John Malkovich."

There. I announced it, and now I'm committed to write it. But maybe later, when I have an audience.