Just getting ready for my trip. Should be a good one. I have The Wedding Singer on in the background and it's still pretty good. Adam Sandler movies are so inconsistent. Half of them are pretty great and half of them are terrible.
In reading other blog posts, I realize I should probably mention that we did get some snow here. It snowed pretty much all day yesterday, so there's probably about a foot. I don't know for sure, but it was kind of a lot for somebody with no boots. I spent all day yesterday inside trying to avoid the cold and that worked out, but I needed to get some stuff today so I had no choice but to brave it in sneakers.
No pictures or videos of dogs running around in snow, though.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Possibly the greatest movie ever and if aliens ever land and try to figure out what humans were all about before President Palin blew us all to smithereens, this is the one video they need to pick up.
L&0S20
I just finished catching up on Law & Order season 20, and even though nobody who reads this blog cares, I'm going to talk some more about it. The season isn't over yet, but it has been shaping up nicely. It was satisfying to see the drug cartel's ex-DA mouthpiece get convicted, as well as ICEBURNED by Connie on the stand. Jason Jones's continuing role as a right-wing blowhard talking head is of course hilarious on a meta level. Lupo and Bernard keep on being awesome.
Of course the big storyline is the lieutenant having cancer and having Ernie Hudson (yes, Winston!) as a boyfriend. I'm guessing she'll be leaving the show by the end of the season, either dying or just retiring. Apparently she is the longest running character on the show, which is kind of cool. Actually the medical examiner appeared first, Wikipedia tells me, but has appeared fewer times.
This Lt. is clearly a lot better than Cragen (thumbs down) and has only gotten better as the series has progressed. It was nice to see Curtis return, if only for a few minutes, looking REALLY old and mentioning Lenny (!!!). It makes me wonder if Green will ever return. L & O fans will recall that he just left the force after his return to his gambling addiction, and Jesse L. Martin hasn't died, so a return at some point, even if it is only for an episode or something, is certainly possible. As he is one of my favorite detectives, that would be a real treat. The more pressing question is who will replace Lt. Van Buren if she does in fact leave the show. My guess would be a new character, as it seems unlikely that they would promote one of the detectives that we all know and love, especially since neither of the current detectives are particularly experienced, with only a couple seasons between them. Of course there is the possibility of bringing back a previous detective to replace her, but I have my doubts. Here is a slapdash list:
1. Green - Unlikely due to the circumstances of his departure, plus it's not like the actor probably needs this fairly small role.
2. Fontana - I'm pretty sure he's retired and again I doubt Farina would want a role like that.
3. Cassidy - In the words of Wayne, yeah, right...
4. Falco - Nobody liked him in the first place.
5. Cragen - I guess he could move back from SVU, but I'm pretty sure he was disgraced and all. I would root against this possibility, anyway. SVU just keeps getting worse from what I can tell and drags all its characters down with it.
6. Logan - He left CI and I doubt he'd come back, but who knows? They seem to love his character even though he's sort of bland and was always overshadowed in my mind by Briscoe.
7. New Guy/Gal - I see this as most likely. They should probably get a new woman, or this show will start failing the Bechdel test, although I suppose it failed that test for most of its run.
That's about all I have for now.
Of course the big storyline is the lieutenant having cancer and having Ernie Hudson (yes, Winston!) as a boyfriend. I'm guessing she'll be leaving the show by the end of the season, either dying or just retiring. Apparently she is the longest running character on the show, which is kind of cool. Actually the medical examiner appeared first, Wikipedia tells me, but has appeared fewer times.
This Lt. is clearly a lot better than Cragen (thumbs down) and has only gotten better as the series has progressed. It was nice to see Curtis return, if only for a few minutes, looking REALLY old and mentioning Lenny (!!!). It makes me wonder if Green will ever return. L & O fans will recall that he just left the force after his return to his gambling addiction, and Jesse L. Martin hasn't died, so a return at some point, even if it is only for an episode or something, is certainly possible. As he is one of my favorite detectives, that would be a real treat. The more pressing question is who will replace Lt. Van Buren if she does in fact leave the show. My guess would be a new character, as it seems unlikely that they would promote one of the detectives that we all know and love, especially since neither of the current detectives are particularly experienced, with only a couple seasons between them. Of course there is the possibility of bringing back a previous detective to replace her, but I have my doubts. Here is a slapdash list:
1. Green - Unlikely due to the circumstances of his departure, plus it's not like the actor probably needs this fairly small role.
2. Fontana - I'm pretty sure he's retired and again I doubt Farina would want a role like that.
3. Cassidy - In the words of Wayne, yeah, right...
4. Falco - Nobody liked him in the first place.
5. Cragen - I guess he could move back from SVU, but I'm pretty sure he was disgraced and all. I would root against this possibility, anyway. SVU just keeps getting worse from what I can tell and drags all its characters down with it.
6. Logan - He left CI and I doubt he'd come back, but who knows? They seem to love his character even though he's sort of bland and was always overshadowed in my mind by Briscoe.
7. New Guy/Gal - I see this as most likely. They should probably get a new woman, or this show will start failing the Bechdel test, although I suppose it failed that test for most of its run.
That's about all I have for now.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
L&0S19
As I mentioned in a previous post, one of the things that rocks about time off is time to catch up on tv shows I may have missed. I just finished season 19 of Law & Order, which deals on and off with McCoy's run for DA and the almost comically corrupt governor trying to make deals with him, helping out his opponent, and eventually resigning after his ridiculous scandals catch up with him. It is artfully done all season and I have to hand it to the writers of the show. They may lack some subtlety, but the way they managed to string that story out in bits across the whole season is pretty great.
Lupo and Bernard are quickly becoming my favorite detective pair. It is hard to say that they're better than Brisco and Green, but they're up there. They have great chemistry despite them both being smart mouths. I'm kind of glad that they didn't do too much with Lupo and Rubirosa or a possible romance between Cutter and Rubirosa. She's fantastic and is now either my #1 or #2 favorite ADA. Cutter's alright, what with his ridiculous legal theories that somehow work out, but I have to say they are being very generous with the convictions given the evidence that he uses all the time. Also it kind of annoys me that he was promoted over Rubirosa, who, as I mentioned, is great, and has a very fun name to say, to boot. Alright, that's it. On to season 20 or maybe some zombie movies.
Lupo and Bernard are quickly becoming my favorite detective pair. It is hard to say that they're better than Brisco and Green, but they're up there. They have great chemistry despite them both being smart mouths. I'm kind of glad that they didn't do too much with Lupo and Rubirosa or a possible romance between Cutter and Rubirosa. She's fantastic and is now either my #1 or #2 favorite ADA. Cutter's alright, what with his ridiculous legal theories that somehow work out, but I have to say they are being very generous with the convictions given the evidence that he uses all the time. Also it kind of annoys me that he was promoted over Rubirosa, who, as I mentioned, is great, and has a very fun name to say, to boot. Alright, that's it. On to season 20 or maybe some zombie movies.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Watching TV
One of the good things about break is watching tv. Usually it is terrible, actually, but I just happened upon a rerun of the Monk finale, which I hadn't seen. I have to say that it seems like a cheap way to end the show to suddenly introduce his wife's daughter, and the false suspense of will he survive the poison and all that. Also lame that the killer wasn't a major character, at least, it wasn't anybody that I knew from what little I had watched of the show. The ending song, however, is pretty good. It seems kind of weird in that only one character is actually leaving. When shows end, I think it is customary for the characters to go their separate ways and then their nostalgia makes sense. In this one, though, only the viewers are really aware that it is an ending, so why would the characters get weird? Whatever, I just wanted to find that song.
Star Trek
I wrote that I would get back to talking about Star Trek, so I'll put together a few disorganized thoughts here.
The cast was pretty good all around, and it was pretty cool how they managed to find people who looked something like their respective predecessors. New Spock in particular looked similar. New Sulu is the wrong ethnicity, I guess, but Old Sulu came to our school and talked about how the name Sulu was chosen to represent Asia without being a particular national name, so that's no thing.
Sulu got to swordfight and that was awesome. We never got enough of that. New Chekov was amusing, from not being able to say v's to running down to the transporter room yelling "I can do that!"New Kirk was pretty much exactly what a young Kirk should be, punching people, getting into trouble and in general being ridiculous.
McCoy was my favorite character, so I was glad that the new guy did a good job and they wrote what little he was in pretty much perfectly in keeping with the character. It was nice how they explained without explaining really why his nickname is Bones.
New Spock was alright, but I didn't like the fact that he is with New Uhura. It really doesn't make any sense, but both of them were good. Old Spock was nice, but where is old Kirk, the SHAT, when you need him?
The only one I wasn't a fan of was Scotty. He was supposed to be a comic character, I guess, but he and that little alien dude with him were just kind of annoying. The villain was also kind of so-so and I kept thinking of him as the Hulk the whole time.
The story was alright overall, even if it involved flying spaceships through black holes into alternate universes.
Captain Pike - good reference, as was the brain worm thing, which I took to be an homage to Star Trek II. Anyway, I guess that's enough.
The cast was pretty good all around, and it was pretty cool how they managed to find people who looked something like their respective predecessors. New Spock in particular looked similar. New Sulu is the wrong ethnicity, I guess, but Old Sulu came to our school and talked about how the name Sulu was chosen to represent Asia without being a particular national name, so that's no thing.
Sulu got to swordfight and that was awesome. We never got enough of that. New Chekov was amusing, from not being able to say v's to running down to the transporter room yelling "I can do that!"New Kirk was pretty much exactly what a young Kirk should be, punching people, getting into trouble and in general being ridiculous.
McCoy was my favorite character, so I was glad that the new guy did a good job and they wrote what little he was in pretty much perfectly in keeping with the character. It was nice how they explained without explaining really why his nickname is Bones.
New Spock was alright, but I didn't like the fact that he is with New Uhura. It really doesn't make any sense, but both of them were good. Old Spock was nice, but where is old Kirk, the SHAT, when you need him?
The only one I wasn't a fan of was Scotty. He was supposed to be a comic character, I guess, but he and that little alien dude with him were just kind of annoying. The villain was also kind of so-so and I kept thinking of him as the Hulk the whole time.
The story was alright overall, even if it involved flying spaceships through black holes into alternate universes.
Captain Pike - good reference, as was the brain worm thing, which I took to be an homage to Star Trek II. Anyway, I guess that's enough.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
More to Come
I saw the new Star Trek movie, finally. More to come on that later, though. I'm busing trying to finish a take home exam in the next two days.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Small Event
Michael Cera came to campus to promote his new movie, and they actually showed a screening of it. At least I think they did. I went to see him talk for a few minutes, but apparently they don't know how to run DVDs here and kept messing it up, so I got bored and left to go to a holiday reception just for the purpose of getting free food, which worked out pretty well. Ah, well, almost done for the quarter...
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
The Big Nap
If you are reading The Big Sleep, don't stop reading it for a bit and then pick up reading it again. It's confusing enough even if you don't forget which character is which. DO read it, though, because it is awesome.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Don't Drag Me to Hell
This is why I don't watch good horror movies. Good ones freak me out, and Drag Me to Hell is definitely one of those, even if it has the Mac guy in it. If you do like them, definitely check this one out.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
November
Is anybody writing a novel for novel writing month? Anybody growing a mustache for Movember? I've got no plans right yet, but we'll see.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Updates
I realize that I haven't updated as much here, but grad school is way less interesting than Japan, so I think that makes sense. But that last one took quite a bit of effort and no comments. ???
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Fright Fest
Happy November, everybody. I hope your Halloween was as cool as mine was. I went to Fright Fest at Six Flags (Great America?) in New Jersey somewhere. It was pretty great.
Having been to the Six Flags in/near St. Louis a bunch, I had to compare. This one is very nice and I think bigger than St. Louis's, which means more roller coasters. There are some bad sides, though. As you increase the size of the park, I guess you increase the number of people disproportionately or something, because some of the wait times are just ridiculous. We got a "Flash Pass," which lets you reserve a ride an hour in advance, basically, and when you get there, you get to use a different entrance which cuts your wait time down to maybe a couple minutes. It is basically the only way to go in a park where some of the roller coasters have wait times of 2+ hours. So I will talk about the coasters and hopefully other fans will like that.
Kingda Ka - This is their newest one, and it's insanely popular. It is really only one hill, but it is supposedly the highest hill in the world at 456 feet or so. They don't pull you up with a chain or anything like that; they basically use a slingshot at the beginning to rocket you to insane eye-watering speeds. Even then, I guess it fails some times so that the train just rolls back down (safely) to be launched again. The other insane thing about this is the wait time. The average wait-time I think is 150 minutes. I can't imagine it on a summer day, which would be even worse. That is for a ride of about 10 seconds. It is ridiculous. Also, it breaks down all the time. Even with the flash pass, we waited about two hours because it broke down three times. Everyone else was raving about it, but I think it's kind of "meh." It's just one up and down, even if it is very high and fast.
Batman - Very similar to the Batman in St. Louis, so pretty good, but I'm not going to go into more detail, assuming you have ridden that one.
Superman - We didn't ride this till last, when it was dark and raining, but I think that may have helped it. It is sort of gimmicky in that you get in the chair and then it tilts so that you are facing the ground, and the coaster simulates flying. It does sort of make you feel like superman, although fundamentally it's not that good a coaster. There is a part where you are in a loop, facing the sky that is pretty cool. The only other issue is that the restraints are in front of your chest and feet, but not anywhere else, so it is sort of an awkward position. Not bad, though.
Bizarro - Bonus points go to this one for continuing the DC theme with one of the cooler Superman villains, who are on the whole very lame. I guess it used to be called Medusa, but Bizarro is way better. The play strange music/people talking at you the whole time, which is nice, but I couldn't tell what is going on. I like the DC theme and when it is made to feel like the coaster is part of something going on (Superman flying, Batman swinging around) in the DC universe, but I didn't get what Bizarro was doing. Still good. The coaster itself is like inverted Batman, but had some very good loops and whatnot.
Skull Mountain - This was like the little kids' roller coaster that we did on a laugh. It's all inside a building, so it's dark, and there are blacklit skulls and pumpkins and whatnot. It's actually not bad, but maybe I just like rollercoasters where you can't see every drop, etc.
Nitro - Good Lord this one is fast. It's a traditional one that goes insanely high and insanely fast. It was weird for me because there's no belt or anything, just a single lap thing connected to a bar. I don't know why that feels so freaky, but it does. Anyway, lots of fun, especially when it is misty and you can't see very far ahead. Also, the first hill is a crazy steep drop, so if you are in the front, it looks like you are just falling straight down.
El Toro - Very nice wooden coaster. It's very fast, I think one of the biggest, smoothest wooden ones around. We rode it in the rain and it was stinging our faces, but it was still probably my favorite. All of them were pretty great, though.
I think that's it. I'm still waiting on a Green Lantern-themed space coaster.
Having been to the Six Flags in/near St. Louis a bunch, I had to compare. This one is very nice and I think bigger than St. Louis's, which means more roller coasters. There are some bad sides, though. As you increase the size of the park, I guess you increase the number of people disproportionately or something, because some of the wait times are just ridiculous. We got a "Flash Pass," which lets you reserve a ride an hour in advance, basically, and when you get there, you get to use a different entrance which cuts your wait time down to maybe a couple minutes. It is basically the only way to go in a park where some of the roller coasters have wait times of 2+ hours. So I will talk about the coasters and hopefully other fans will like that.
Kingda Ka - This is their newest one, and it's insanely popular. It is really only one hill, but it is supposedly the highest hill in the world at 456 feet or so. They don't pull you up with a chain or anything like that; they basically use a slingshot at the beginning to rocket you to insane eye-watering speeds. Even then, I guess it fails some times so that the train just rolls back down (safely) to be launched again. The other insane thing about this is the wait time. The average wait-time I think is 150 minutes. I can't imagine it on a summer day, which would be even worse. That is for a ride of about 10 seconds. It is ridiculous. Also, it breaks down all the time. Even with the flash pass, we waited about two hours because it broke down three times. Everyone else was raving about it, but I think it's kind of "meh." It's just one up and down, even if it is very high and fast.
Batman - Very similar to the Batman in St. Louis, so pretty good, but I'm not going to go into more detail, assuming you have ridden that one.
Superman - We didn't ride this till last, when it was dark and raining, but I think that may have helped it. It is sort of gimmicky in that you get in the chair and then it tilts so that you are facing the ground, and the coaster simulates flying. It does sort of make you feel like superman, although fundamentally it's not that good a coaster. There is a part where you are in a loop, facing the sky that is pretty cool. The only other issue is that the restraints are in front of your chest and feet, but not anywhere else, so it is sort of an awkward position. Not bad, though.
Bizarro - Bonus points go to this one for continuing the DC theme with one of the cooler Superman villains, who are on the whole very lame. I guess it used to be called Medusa, but Bizarro is way better. The play strange music/people talking at you the whole time, which is nice, but I couldn't tell what is going on. I like the DC theme and when it is made to feel like the coaster is part of something going on (Superman flying, Batman swinging around) in the DC universe, but I didn't get what Bizarro was doing. Still good. The coaster itself is like inverted Batman, but had some very good loops and whatnot.
Skull Mountain - This was like the little kids' roller coaster that we did on a laugh. It's all inside a building, so it's dark, and there are blacklit skulls and pumpkins and whatnot. It's actually not bad, but maybe I just like rollercoasters where you can't see every drop, etc.
Nitro - Good Lord this one is fast. It's a traditional one that goes insanely high and insanely fast. It was weird for me because there's no belt or anything, just a single lap thing connected to a bar. I don't know why that feels so freaky, but it does. Anyway, lots of fun, especially when it is misty and you can't see very far ahead. Also, the first hill is a crazy steep drop, so if you are in the front, it looks like you are just falling straight down.
El Toro - Very nice wooden coaster. It's very fast, I think one of the biggest, smoothest wooden ones around. We rode it in the rain and it was stinging our faces, but it was still probably my favorite. All of them were pretty great, though.
I think that's it. I'm still waiting on a Green Lantern-themed space coaster.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Yankees Fans
I don't get Yankees fans. It's like watching Star Wars and actually rooting for the empire.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Lack of an Update
I suppose I should update, but there's not much to say. It's almost Halloween, I guess. That's pretty neat. It doesn't really smell like fall in the city so you kind of lose touch with that kind of thing. Penn's campus has trees, at least.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
SNL
I haven't watched SNL in years, but since I don't have much else to do except linear algebra homework, I figured I might as well check in and see how it's doing. I have to say that it's pretty alright and that I would probably enjoy it quite a bit if I were still fourteen years old. There are still completely unoriginal talk show skits, but even the best generations of SNL casts did those, so I can hardly count those against this batch.
My only real complaint is Kristin Wiig. She's so painfully unfunny that she managed to be overshadowed by the straight man in a sketch where she was pretty much the whole joke. She seems to be from the Molly Shannon school of weird voice = funny, right guys? I continue to be mystified by critics' love for her since she seems entirely devoid of talent.
On the plus side, Shakira's performances are so horrendous that that they are funny.
Edit: I forgot to mention that either these Bud wheat beer commercials are way off the mark or I am old beyond my years. They are terrible and make me want to drink this new beer less, which is saying quite a bit.
My only real complaint is Kristin Wiig. She's so painfully unfunny that she managed to be overshadowed by the straight man in a sketch where she was pretty much the whole joke. She seems to be from the Molly Shannon school of weird voice = funny, right guys? I continue to be mystified by critics' love for her since she seems entirely devoid of talent.
On the plus side, Shakira's performances are so horrendous that that they are funny.
Edit: I forgot to mention that either these Bud wheat beer commercials are way off the mark or I am old beyond my years. They are terrible and make me want to drink this new beer less, which is saying quite a bit.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Happy Birthday to Me
Happy Birthday to me. Internet identity thieves don't steal this information about me.
Sort of unrelated things that I'd like to post about. I spent 9-5 yesterday grading an exam with the professor of the class. Today I will probably grade some labs. Hooray.
But, when I got back, my roommates and I had taco night and they also bought an ice cream cake, all of which was great. Thanks also to ma for the gifts.
Two days ago, though, was huge. Guess who came to campus? I will tell you since I can't hear your guesses, anyway. George Takei. That's right, Mr. Sulu! He is also on Heroes, I guess. A Japanese person told me I spoke better than he did, though, which is hilarious.
Regardless, he is awesome and it is crazy to see and hear him in person. That voice! He was mostly there talking about the gay marriage thing, but also about his time spent in internment camps as a kid and of course a bit about Star Trek. There was a too-short period for questions, where a few people asked about Obama, etc., but the highlight was a hugely nerdy dude asking about Star Trek who even mentioned a specific episode ("Mirror, Mirror") in his question.
Live long and prosper!
Sort of unrelated things that I'd like to post about. I spent 9-5 yesterday grading an exam with the professor of the class. Today I will probably grade some labs. Hooray.
But, when I got back, my roommates and I had taco night and they also bought an ice cream cake, all of which was great. Thanks also to ma for the gifts.
Two days ago, though, was huge. Guess who came to campus? I will tell you since I can't hear your guesses, anyway. George Takei. That's right, Mr. Sulu! He is also on Heroes, I guess. A Japanese person told me I spoke better than he did, though, which is hilarious.
Regardless, he is awesome and it is crazy to see and hear him in person. That voice! He was mostly there talking about the gay marriage thing, but also about his time spent in internment camps as a kid and of course a bit about Star Trek. There was a too-short period for questions, where a few people asked about Obama, etc., but the highlight was a hugely nerdy dude asking about Star Trek who even mentioned a specific episode ("Mirror, Mirror") in his question.
Live long and prosper!
Monday, October 12, 2009
Columbus Day
No work today because we are honoring Christopher Columbus, a guy who is famous for having the wrong answer to a problem that was solved over a millenium before he was born, and neglecting to convert units NASA style, so that he ended up nowhere near where he was going. Upon arrival, he decided that the peaceful and friendly people "ought to make good and skilled servants" and that he could "conquer the whole of them with 50 men." He instead ended up just killing the lot of them. And for what it's worth, he also probably brought syphilis from the New World, killing a few million more folks in good time. Happy Columbus Day!
Edit: I forgot to mention that Monday was coincidentally a Japanese holiday, taiiku no hi, which a friend reminded me about in an email. It's sports and health day, roughly.
Edit: I forgot to mention that Monday was coincidentally a Japanese holiday, taiiku no hi, which a friend reminded me about in an email. It's sports and health day, roughly.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
I was clicking around on a break from homework and found this article about The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and it took me back to reading this book to little Japanese kids so many times that I could recite it from cover to cover. Good times. I can also attest that one of those 47 languages it's been translated into is Japanese. Anyway, it's Thursday, so I've got four strawberries to eat...
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Legendary SVU Episode
This is it! This is the one where the computer guy is on the edge and disobeying orders and whatnot. Hilarious!
Friday, October 2, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Back to the Monday
Today was Monday. I didn't really do much, but I guess that is kind of par for the course. A lot of people here seem to not come in to work unless they have something specific to do at the office. I go in to study a bit, but I had office hours today, which meant I had to be there to do very little since very few people come in this early in the year, so I studied then. I don't know.
One thing I did do was play some Back to the Future for the NES, which is just as terrible as I remember it. It is such a grating game for a few reasons, which I think I will talk about for lack of anything else to say.
A lot of NES games suffer from horrible controls, which render them basically unplayable, and therefore forgettable. You try them once and give up. Back to the Future actually controls just like it is supposed to, so you are constantly under the illusion that you can succeed when you really can't, leading to much frustration.
The problems result from a few enemies/stages. The first is the bees. Why does it have to be bees? You are attacked numerous times each level by bees that are unfairly allowed to essentially home in on you, which is really unfair in what is basically a forced scrolling shooter because you can't move in a reasonable way while they can.
The next problem is the non-running stages. When I played the game almost every day on the actual NES, I managed to get past the first special stage through sheer devotion, but since then I've never been able to get past it. The perspective switches to a sideways shooter where you throw something at bullies who run at you. It looks like you are throwing sandwiches, but I can't tell. The problem is that there's no real visual indication which "slot" the enemies are in, so you sort of have to get very used to slight visual differences just to hit them, and the requirement for success is so absurdly high that only the most dedicated players will beat the stage, and it is only about 1/4 of the way through the game.
I'm not even going to bother mentioning that none of the game makes sense or has anything to do with Back to the Future in anything but the most tenuous sense. Try it on virtualnes.com if you want to see what I am talking about.
One thing I did do was play some Back to the Future for the NES, which is just as terrible as I remember it. It is such a grating game for a few reasons, which I think I will talk about for lack of anything else to say.
A lot of NES games suffer from horrible controls, which render them basically unplayable, and therefore forgettable. You try them once and give up. Back to the Future actually controls just like it is supposed to, so you are constantly under the illusion that you can succeed when you really can't, leading to much frustration.
The problems result from a few enemies/stages. The first is the bees. Why does it have to be bees? You are attacked numerous times each level by bees that are unfairly allowed to essentially home in on you, which is really unfair in what is basically a forced scrolling shooter because you can't move in a reasonable way while they can.
The next problem is the non-running stages. When I played the game almost every day on the actual NES, I managed to get past the first special stage through sheer devotion, but since then I've never been able to get past it. The perspective switches to a sideways shooter where you throw something at bullies who run at you. It looks like you are throwing sandwiches, but I can't tell. The problem is that there's no real visual indication which "slot" the enemies are in, so you sort of have to get very used to slight visual differences just to hit them, and the requirement for success is so absurdly high that only the most dedicated players will beat the stage, and it is only about 1/4 of the way through the game.
I'm not even going to bother mentioning that none of the game makes sense or has anything to do with Back to the Future in anything but the most tenuous sense. Try it on virtualnes.com if you want to see what I am talking about.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Weekend
Eric came up this weekend from D.C. and we had some fun. I don't have pictures of anything, sadly, so I'll just make a short, incomplete list.
-Saw some sort of festival in chinatown.
-Ate Peking duck.
-Drank birch beer, which is like root beer.
-Ate a cheesesteak, with Whiz, of course.
-Various general fun things.
-Saw some sort of festival in chinatown.
-Ate Peking duck.
-Drank birch beer, which is like root beer.
-Ate a cheesesteak, with Whiz, of course.
-Various general fun things.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Ambiguous Pronoun Reference
One of the drawbacks of being part of a culture instead of just on its fringes is that you are constantly exposed to it, which can become grating very quickly. What I mean is that I think the words "if you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it" will never find their way out of my brain. I keep imagining what that could mean out of the intended (but not specified) context. What kind of rings would need to exist to obey this rule in every case? How does one put a ring on abstract concepts?
Monday, September 21, 2009
Monday
I have my first official office hours today. Other than that there's not much going on. There are some welcome events which I think are aimed at undergrads but I might try to get some free food out of one later. Alright, that's it.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Hairpiece
Can someone please point me to something with Kristen Wiig in which she is funny? I have only seen a few things featuring her, and she is always the weakest part. I just saw an imitation of Madonna she did and it was painfully unfunny. I have seen her in a few things that were funny, but not the parts that she did. Her main skill seems to be saying/doing something awkward and staring at the camera or otherwise holding up what we'd like to see from happening. Yet, she is being heralded as the new Tina Fey. What am I missing?
Orientation Day 4
Today was by far the most useful, and also gave me not only a free lunch, but the opportunity at another free lunch later. Today we finally got put into our departments and did some practice teaching, which I think I did pretty well at. I also found out a bit more about the class I am TA'ing for. My hotel card key stopped working today, but they did something to it and it started working again. I guess they are designed to stop working after so long, but I don't know. Seems weird to me.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Orientation Day 3
Today is basically a day off. Apparently it is commuter orientation day, so there are a bunch of local noobs running around, I guess. I had to go in to campus to talk to financial aid about why they sent a letter outlining a different package to me. It turns out that everything is cool, it's just that some stuff is run through the department or doesn't count as financial aid so much as a salary, so once they figured out what it all meant, nothing really had to be done. Other than that, I spent some time reading about eigenvectors and listening to some new freshmen (I guess) talk about the health care reform "debate." Now I'm back enjoying the wonderful hospitality of the microtel. There is a bed-like thing right under/beside the window. I am not sure if it is actually a bed, but it seems designed for people to lie on it. I'm not clear why this is included unless these rooms can be used by three people cramming in here. It is a mystery!
Update: I may be TA'ing for an upper-level stats class now? That could be bad as I only took stats one time, four years ago, and it was both my weakest and least favorite math class. We shall see, I guess.
Update: I may be TA'ing for an upper-level stats class now? That could be bad as I only took stats one time, four years ago, and it was both my weakest and least favorite math class. We shall see, I guess.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Orientation Day 2
My, or rather Microtel's, alarm clock didn't go off today, so I didn't wake up till 8:50, as I'm still on central standard time. There was a free breakfast today for TA orientation 8:30-9:00, but obviously that is optional. The real stuff didn't start until 9:00, and even that was only introduction. The real talks started at 9:35, but since the earliest train I could take in was at 9:17 and takes about 12 minutes to get to the station nearest to campus, I was a couple minutes late, still.
I came in a little after they had started talking about being prepared to teach classes, etc., which doesn't really matter too much to me since A)I have three years of experience as a TA B)I'm not actually teaching a class C)I have actually taught a ton of classes for the last two years, albeit to little kids and mostly in Japanese and D)teaching isn't really that complex, anyway.
Anyway, I craftily got myself a nametag off the table, wrote my name on it, and turned it in with everyone else at the end, so I was there for the purposes of attendance. The talks (classes?) weren't terrible but were fairly general. There was a chemistry professor who now runs some sort of office dealing with student retention, and she actually talked about trends that are somewhat interesting. Other than that, it was mostly stuff that should be common sense, like being prepared and explaining things in different ways.
We got done around noon, and since nobody contacted me from the math department about there being anything else, I just walked around, even around the math building, which was mostly empty, until I got bored and I was close enough to the train station that it was convenient to take the next train back to the hotel.
I'd like to do some math or at least some teaching, and I'd also like it if the university would figure out what financial aid they offered and I accepted, instead of sending letters home about me being approved for loans I never asked for. Anyway, tomorrow is a day off (why is it scheduled like this?), so I will probably go talk to them then.
I came in a little after they had started talking about being prepared to teach classes, etc., which doesn't really matter too much to me since A)I have three years of experience as a TA B)I'm not actually teaching a class C)I have actually taught a ton of classes for the last two years, albeit to little kids and mostly in Japanese and D)teaching isn't really that complex, anyway.
Anyway, I craftily got myself a nametag off the table, wrote my name on it, and turned it in with everyone else at the end, so I was there for the purposes of attendance. The talks (classes?) weren't terrible but were fairly general. There was a chemistry professor who now runs some sort of office dealing with student retention, and she actually talked about trends that are somewhat interesting. Other than that, it was mostly stuff that should be common sense, like being prepared and explaining things in different ways.
We got done around noon, and since nobody contacted me from the math department about there being anything else, I just walked around, even around the math building, which was mostly empty, until I got bored and I was close enough to the train station that it was convenient to take the next train back to the hotel.
I'd like to do some math or at least some teaching, and I'd also like it if the university would figure out what financial aid they offered and I accepted, instead of sending letters home about me being approved for loans I never asked for. Anyway, tomorrow is a day off (why is it scheduled like this?), so I will probably go talk to them then.
Orientation Day 1
I am writing this on day two of orientation for convenience, but I will split it up into two posts unless I just give up after one day.
All the info I had about orientation was wrong, probably from the wrong year, but I don't know for sure. I wandered around campus trying to figure out where to go and what to do for a while, then I went back to the hotel to get some documents which it turned out were (A) wrong and (B) unnecessary. I got an ID card, which only took a couple minutes. Then I just wandered into the building that had a bunch of people in it. You would think there would be signs all over telling you where to go, but no such luck. Also, other people on campus seemed to not know where to go.
Anyway, I got registered for the thing. I wasn't late, but I was one of the last people to arrive, I think, and so the few people that talked to me probably think I am stupid or something. The only bad part is that I think some organization was giving out bags because a lot of people had them, but I couldn't find it, so I think they probably ran out or left.
After a while there were some talks that basically amounted to "be professional and proactive," but took a few hours. Nobody ever accused academics of efficiency. They weren't terrible, but they also weren't particularly interesting. I met a dude from China. There seem to be a lot of new Chinese students, so maybe I should have studied Mandarin, or maybe Cantonese. I don't know where in China they are from, I was just reading their nametags, except for this one guy I already mentioned.
After all was said and done, there was a picnic-like thing for the new students, so I got some free food and Yuengling beer, which is at least a third-tier beer as I see it, so I was happy. Also one of the dudes working gave me an extra can toward the end of the night and he seemed cool. I hung out with some public health students and an electrical engineer and they seemed pretty alright. Fascinating day...
All the info I had about orientation was wrong, probably from the wrong year, but I don't know for sure. I wandered around campus trying to figure out where to go and what to do for a while, then I went back to the hotel to get some documents which it turned out were (A) wrong and (B) unnecessary. I got an ID card, which only took a couple minutes. Then I just wandered into the building that had a bunch of people in it. You would think there would be signs all over telling you where to go, but no such luck. Also, other people on campus seemed to not know where to go.
Anyway, I got registered for the thing. I wasn't late, but I was one of the last people to arrive, I think, and so the few people that talked to me probably think I am stupid or something. The only bad part is that I think some organization was giving out bags because a lot of people had them, but I couldn't find it, so I think they probably ran out or left.
After a while there were some talks that basically amounted to "be professional and proactive," but took a few hours. Nobody ever accused academics of efficiency. They weren't terrible, but they also weren't particularly interesting. I met a dude from China. There seem to be a lot of new Chinese students, so maybe I should have studied Mandarin, or maybe Cantonese. I don't know where in China they are from, I was just reading their nametags, except for this one guy I already mentioned.
After all was said and done, there was a picnic-like thing for the new students, so I got some free food and Yuengling beer, which is at least a third-tier beer as I see it, so I was happy. Also one of the dudes working gave me an extra can toward the end of the night and he seemed cool. I hung out with some public health students and an electrical engineer and they seemed pretty alright. Fascinating day...
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Microtel
I'm in a microtel, a small hotel whose name is derived from microphone and Rotel, the name of a Japanese electronics company based in the UK. Look it up.
Actually it isn't that small and it's ok, so I put up a couple pictures for your viewing pleasure. The part that sucks is that I have to live here for a week and commute into the city even though my apartment is basically on campus because they won't let me move in for basically no reason at all.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Budget Host
Chillin' in the same Budget Host in western Pennsylvania as on the last trip out to Philly. I see they fixed the Pepsi machine, though, which on the last visit was emblazoned with a sign, now made immortal in my phone, reading
"Pepsi machine is out of ordered. Would you please stop by office for pepsi?"
Good times.
"Pepsi machine is out of ordered. Would you please stop by office for pepsi?"
Good times.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Last Night in Town
Went up to the LCC. Nothing much was happening, spent fifty cents not getting cake. Good times.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Link to the Future
I put a link in the link section to another blog of interest. Mostly it is just that links are free and I like the graph to have a higher connectivity.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
More Boring Risk Commentary
I mentioned the other day that I played a game of Risk with some rule variations and got some abnormal patterns, so I'm going to expand on that. Actually it was only one rule variation. There is a list of rule variations for "advanced" play towards the back of the instructions, and sometimes I play with those. In this case, it was one which altered the value of the sets of cards. If you aren't aware, in Risk, you get one card at the end of each turn on which you have taken at least one territory. Each card has either a soldier, a cannon, or a mounted soldier, in addition to a territory. You get a set of cards if you have three of a kind or one of each kind, and a set can be turned in at the start of a turn for a number of armies that increases as sets are turned in (by anyone). There are also two wild cards, which can be used as any of the three types, and all the cards but the wild card have a territory on them as well. The territory is largely irrelevant except when used as a selection method for initial territories. The only other effect the territories have is that if you have one of the territories on a card in a set that you turn in, you get an additional two armies on that territory.
The value of the sets turned in usually goes 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20, and so on by 5's. The variant rule reduces the number of armies to 4, 5, 6, and so on.
Since the cards are awarded to players who take a territory, they can be seen as an incentive to be aggressive, and we would expect players that are aggressive enough to get sets to do better than those who aren't. Any good RISK player can probably attest to the trend of sets becoming massively important, especially later on in the game, as the value of the set surpasses the value of any territory or even continent rather quickly. To point this out, let's look at the other methods of gaining armies, via territories and via continents.
A player is awarded armies every turn for the number of territories he (forgive my gendered pronouns) has, t. The number of armies awarded is t/3, which is rounded down to the nearest whole number. However, even if he should be awarded fewer armies by this rule, he automatically receives 3 armies at the start of each turn. An interesting result of this minimum adjustment to the rule is that the value of territories drops significantly for players with few territories, that is, players who are probably not doing well.
It is difficult to state exactly this army-value of a territory precisely because the armies aren't awarded until the beginning of the turn, so if a player takes a territory and subsequently loses it before his next turn, it was of no (actually negative) army-value to do so. Also, since territories make up continents, we would have to factor in the value of continents. Overall, this is leading us to an equation for finding the expected value of moves in a given situation, which we could then hopefully use to generalize to good overall strategies.
Regardless, it is safe to say that the value of any given territory (as long as it does not lead to taking a continent) is very little. There are only 42 territories total, so even if you have all the territories, at which point you would have already won, you would only receive 14 armies the next round based on territories alone. Let's say for example that you control half the territories on the board, 21. At this point, you are probably nearly assured victory in any game with more than two players. However, the territories alone only yield 7 armies. Considering that even an opponent controlling only one territory would receive 3 armies, it is fairly clear that territories themselves are not particularly valuable in terms of armies. We draw from this that a strategy of merely taking territories quickly is probably not a good one, which we could expound on further, but is pretty clear.
So, anyway, let's expound. For reasons I will maybe get to later, experienced Risk players often shy away from Asia early in the game despite its high army-value, which often leads to many Asian territories being left with the minimum one army early in the game, so we have at least one real-game scenario in which there are numerous easily taken territories around. If it is our plan take these easily gained territories for the purpose of amassing armies, then we could look at the expected value. Assuming that we have enough armies that we can roll three dice to a defender's one, we have a 95/144 (I have computed this but maybe it is wrong) chance of winning on the first roll in each territory we take.
In a six-player game, every player will start with seven territories. Seven territories yields only 2 armies by the t/3 rule, so we would be awarded three armies at the start of each turn. Since 7=1 (mod 3), we need to take two more territories to step up a rank in territories. However, even if we do so, we will only have 9 territories, which would yield again 3 armies, so we would actually have to take 2+3=5 territories to see any gain in armies. Taking five territories, even if they only have one army defending them, we only have (95/144)^5 likelihood of doing that without losing any armies. I'm not going to do the full calculations here, but it is pretty clear, then, that we are likely to lose at least one army in the process of taking these five territories. So, overall, the expected value of taking these territories is negative. Does this mean that we are better off just sitting and not attacking? No, but that analysis will be much more complicated. That's it for now
The value of the sets turned in usually goes 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20, and so on by 5's. The variant rule reduces the number of armies to 4, 5, 6, and so on.
Since the cards are awarded to players who take a territory, they can be seen as an incentive to be aggressive, and we would expect players that are aggressive enough to get sets to do better than those who aren't. Any good RISK player can probably attest to the trend of sets becoming massively important, especially later on in the game, as the value of the set surpasses the value of any territory or even continent rather quickly. To point this out, let's look at the other methods of gaining armies, via territories and via continents.
A player is awarded armies every turn for the number of territories he (forgive my gendered pronouns) has, t. The number of armies awarded is t/3, which is rounded down to the nearest whole number. However, even if he should be awarded fewer armies by this rule, he automatically receives 3 armies at the start of each turn. An interesting result of this minimum adjustment to the rule is that the value of territories drops significantly for players with few territories, that is, players who are probably not doing well.
It is difficult to state exactly this army-value of a territory precisely because the armies aren't awarded until the beginning of the turn, so if a player takes a territory and subsequently loses it before his next turn, it was of no (actually negative) army-value to do so. Also, since territories make up continents, we would have to factor in the value of continents. Overall, this is leading us to an equation for finding the expected value of moves in a given situation, which we could then hopefully use to generalize to good overall strategies.
Regardless, it is safe to say that the value of any given territory (as long as it does not lead to taking a continent) is very little. There are only 42 territories total, so even if you have all the territories, at which point you would have already won, you would only receive 14 armies the next round based on territories alone. Let's say for example that you control half the territories on the board, 21. At this point, you are probably nearly assured victory in any game with more than two players. However, the territories alone only yield 7 armies. Considering that even an opponent controlling only one territory would receive 3 armies, it is fairly clear that territories themselves are not particularly valuable in terms of armies. We draw from this that a strategy of merely taking territories quickly is probably not a good one, which we could expound on further, but is pretty clear.
So, anyway, let's expound. For reasons I will maybe get to later, experienced Risk players often shy away from Asia early in the game despite its high army-value, which often leads to many Asian territories being left with the minimum one army early in the game, so we have at least one real-game scenario in which there are numerous easily taken territories around. If it is our plan take these easily gained territories for the purpose of amassing armies, then we could look at the expected value. Assuming that we have enough armies that we can roll three dice to a defender's one, we have a 95/144 (I have computed this but maybe it is wrong) chance of winning on the first roll in each territory we take.
In a six-player game, every player will start with seven territories. Seven territories yields only 2 armies by the t/3 rule, so we would be awarded three armies at the start of each turn. Since 7=1 (mod 3), we need to take two more territories to step up a rank in territories. However, even if we do so, we will only have 9 territories, which would yield again 3 armies, so we would actually have to take 2+3=5 territories to see any gain in armies. Taking five territories, even if they only have one army defending them, we only have (95/144)^5 likelihood of doing that without losing any armies. I'm not going to do the full calculations here, but it is pretty clear, then, that we are likely to lose at least one army in the process of taking these five territories. So, overall, the expected value of taking these territories is negative. Does this mean that we are better off just sitting and not attacking? No, but that analysis will be much more complicated. That's it for now
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Law & Order continues its hamfisted social commentary in an episode with Samwise Gamgee as a nutbar pastor running a Christian war training camp. This show is way better than it should be, what with its predictability despite the lack of plausibility in the cases and its hemming and hawing to give lip service to any "valid" viewpoint. Also Olivet is back swinging for the prosecution despite being Cutter'd yesterday. Amazing.
In unrelated news, I played one of the craziest games of Risk ever yesterday. It went on for so long that I had to just give up before there was even a sign of which side would win. I'm not going to post about it now, but I think it shows some interesting patterns which I may get to later.
In unrelated news, I played one of the craziest games of Risk ever yesterday. It went on for so long that I had to just give up before there was even a sign of which side would win. I'm not going to post about it now, but I think it shows some interesting patterns which I may get to later.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Updated
I was doing Risk calculations and got a probability greater than 1, so something was wrong but I don't feel like messing with it now. Also a pretty poor lecture episode of SVU. On the bright side, that country song is almost done.
Update: I got the prob. for 2-2 dice rolls. At least I think so. I think the problem was with the summations I was using, as it involved a double summation, which is notoriously easy to mess up, so I did the summation more or less by hand and got some results that seemed reasonable to me. I could theoretically check my work experimentally, but since the probabilities I found unsurprisingly have denominators of 6^4 (there are four dice involved, after all), checking would be rather tedious.
The real problem is moving on to 3-2. The method can be generalized to any number of dice, which should come as no surprise, but it would be much easier if I could get the summations to work out. Generalization isn't even very hard once you have the mechanism for "choosing" the higher dice, especially if you stick to only the top two dice mattering. Actually, in trying to work out how to do it, I was thinking about dice with fewer sides so that I could check my work along the way. I got to thinking what a two-sided die would look like, and then I realized it is a coin.
So, some notions about that. When I say that the probabilities I found seemed reasonable, I mean that they met with the intuitive (and experimental by playing) notion that the defense has a slight edge (due to ties going to the defender) and that it is most likely to end with winning one and losing one as opposed to winning or losing two, but that none of the probabilities are especially high or low (nothing like 90%).
If we look at our theoretical two-sided dice, we see that each person, defender and attacker, can throw one of four possibilities, equally likely; 1,1; 1,2; 2,1; 2,2. Let's take those to be the defender's dice and look at the likelihood given each of the attacker losing two [this is my method].
1,1. If the attacker throws 1,1, he loses two by tying, but other cases yield at least one win.
1,2. If the attacker throws 1,1; 1,2;or 2,1 he loses two since we pair the highest dice and ties go to the defender.
2,1. This is the same as the previous case, 3/4 cases mean a loss of 2.
2,2. In all cases, the attacker loses two.
As I mentioned, each of the defender's throws are equally likely, so we can say the probability of losing two is
P(lose 2) = 1/4 (1/4 + 3/4 + 3/4 + 1) = 11/16.
An astute reader might note that since P(lose 2|(n,m)) = P(lose 2|(m,n)). One might also note that then we can simplify the process by combining the cases (n,m) and (m,n) by assuming n is greater than or equal to m and double its probability of occurring. This only works for when n != m since, for example, there are two ways of throwing (5,3), that is, a five and then a three or a three and then a five, but only one way of throwing a (4,4). Those probabilities work out to 2/N^2 and 1/N^2 respectively if N is the number of sides on the die.
Anyway, what I wanted to talk about was that in the case of N = 2, we see the defense has a huge advantage. You can work out that P(win 2) = 1/16, so P(win 1) = 1/4. The probabilities aren't so skewed if you use standard six-sided dice. It would seem that if you increase N, you lessen the defender's advantage, which makes sense if you think about it, because the advantage only comes into play given a tie. If people are throwing 20 sided dice, for example, the chance of a tie is pretty low, so the advantage is basically negated. We wouldn't expect it to change much though, that the most likely event is a "tie" of win 1, lose 1 because even if we stretch out the number of possible rolls, the probability of both being high or low is low. You can think of it like an area problem, I suppose. It's kind of hard to explain the mental picture here.
Update: I got the prob. for 2-2 dice rolls. At least I think so. I think the problem was with the summations I was using, as it involved a double summation, which is notoriously easy to mess up, so I did the summation more or less by hand and got some results that seemed reasonable to me. I could theoretically check my work experimentally, but since the probabilities I found unsurprisingly have denominators of 6^4 (there are four dice involved, after all), checking would be rather tedious.
The real problem is moving on to 3-2. The method can be generalized to any number of dice, which should come as no surprise, but it would be much easier if I could get the summations to work out. Generalization isn't even very hard once you have the mechanism for "choosing" the higher dice, especially if you stick to only the top two dice mattering. Actually, in trying to work out how to do it, I was thinking about dice with fewer sides so that I could check my work along the way. I got to thinking what a two-sided die would look like, and then I realized it is a coin.
So, some notions about that. When I say that the probabilities I found seemed reasonable, I mean that they met with the intuitive (and experimental by playing) notion that the defense has a slight edge (due to ties going to the defender) and that it is most likely to end with winning one and losing one as opposed to winning or losing two, but that none of the probabilities are especially high or low (nothing like 90%).
If we look at our theoretical two-sided dice, we see that each person, defender and attacker, can throw one of four possibilities, equally likely; 1,1; 1,2; 2,1; 2,2. Let's take those to be the defender's dice and look at the likelihood given each of the attacker losing two [this is my method].
1,1. If the attacker throws 1,1, he loses two by tying, but other cases yield at least one win.
1,2. If the attacker throws 1,1; 1,2;or 2,1 he loses two since we pair the highest dice and ties go to the defender.
2,1. This is the same as the previous case, 3/4 cases mean a loss of 2.
2,2. In all cases, the attacker loses two.
As I mentioned, each of the defender's throws are equally likely, so we can say the probability of losing two is
P(lose 2) = 1/4 (1/4 + 3/4 + 3/4 + 1) = 11/16.
An astute reader might note that since P(lose 2|(n,m)) = P(lose 2|(m,n)). One might also note that then we can simplify the process by combining the cases (n,m) and (m,n) by assuming n is greater than or equal to m and double its probability of occurring. This only works for when n != m since, for example, there are two ways of throwing (5,3), that is, a five and then a three or a three and then a five, but only one way of throwing a (4,4). Those probabilities work out to 2/N^2 and 1/N^2 respectively if N is the number of sides on the die.
Anyway, what I wanted to talk about was that in the case of N = 2, we see the defense has a huge advantage. You can work out that P(win 2) = 1/16, so P(win 1) = 1/4. The probabilities aren't so skewed if you use standard six-sided dice. It would seem that if you increase N, you lessen the defender's advantage, which makes sense if you think about it, because the advantage only comes into play given a tie. If people are throwing 20 sided dice, for example, the chance of a tie is pretty low, so the advantage is basically negated. We wouldn't expect it to change much though, that the most likely event is a "tie" of win 1, lose 1 because even if we stretch out the number of possible rolls, the probability of both being high or low is low. You can think of it like an area problem, I suppose. It's kind of hard to explain the mental picture here.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
A Small Bobby D Post
Here's a new article about Mr. Dylan that has a short audio clip of him talking. Apparently he might be doing the voice of a GPS device for some car company. Or, maybe he's just messing around. Who knows?
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Risky Business
I am going to talk more about Risk, so stop reading now if that bores you.
In the last post, I talked about coming up with some specific general principles for playing the game, and I probably have some 'splainin' to do about that. So, here goes.
Risk is not a solvable game. What I mean by a solvable game is a game for which there exists an algorithm that guarantees winning (or at least not losing) in any case. Tic-tac-toe, for example, is solvable in the sense that there is an algorithm that would look something like this
put X in center square
if O in ... square, put X in ... square
else ...
and so on and so forth. I am sort of appropriating and abbreviating some CompSci terminology here. It should be pretty clear, then, that for a solvable game, one should be able to write a computer program (which is an algorithm of sorts) to win at the game.
Not all games are solvable. For example, games of chance are by definition not solvable because they involve chance. There's nothing you can do in a fair game of craps to win every time; you depend on the dice. But not even all games of skill are solvable. A game such as poker is unsolvable because it depends on determining what an opponent will do in a given situation, which can't really be sussed out by an algorithm. I'm just handwaving my proofs here, but these are just some introductory comments anyway.
Risk is actually somewhat similar to poker in the respect that a large part of it is determined by what an opponent does. It is actually even further from solvable (note that this term is technically useless, but makes sense intuitively to an extent) because while both games involve an element of chance, in poker, even if chance is against you to some practically impossible degree, such as always dealing you the lowest possible hand, you can at least bluff your way out of it (assuming your opponent is unaware of your reality-bending bad luck). In Risk, if you lose all your dice rolls, you just lose, no matter how wisely you chose them in the first place.
That said, an experienced Risk player (or strategy game player in particular) will know that there are certain strategies that are more likely than others to yield positive returns. A simple example is to build up the territories that border opponents' territories, rather than ones that border one's own territories exclusively. The reason for this should be obvious, so I don't plan on investigating too thoroughly this principle, though one certainly could.
I thought I would just list some general principles and discuss how I am thinking about addressing them.
1. Be conservative in attacking.
In working with the probabilities of dice rolling, I am already taking the first step in mathematically grounding this vague principle. By just determining the probabilities for the various outcomes of various dice matchups, we can see the rather obvious idea that it is better to attack with more dice rather than fewer, and when your opponent can use fewer rather than more. The next step in this analysis is to extend from single dice roll to an analysis of an entire territory versus another, until one side loses all armies. This really just means applying the already known dice roll probabilities over and over again, which would hopefully lead to a convenient probability distribution, and thus expected value for the end state, but this is really a job for a computer. Already with just the dice rolls, computation is a pain for more than the fewest of dice, so iteration is going to be a huge headache.
There is another aspect to being conservative in attacking that is related but much harder to analyze. That is the aspect of how long a campaign should be. By campaign, I mean series of attacks, usually in a chain. It is clear without working out the probabilities that one's chances of success (retaining ones armies) decrease the more times one uses the armies to attack, and is further stretched on a campaign by the fact that at least one army must be left behind when taking a new territory. That alone is not a full order of difficulty harder than the previous problems, but when one considers defending territories after the turn, we find that we are really considering a different kind of problem, one that involves graph theory. I'll get back to this later.
2. Take at least one territory per turn.
This may not be so obvious to people who haven't played in a while because they may have forgotten about sets. When a player takes at least one territory in a turn, that player earns the right to take one card at the end of the turn (only one card, regardless of how many territories are taken). The cards have one of three symbols on them, and there are two wild cards. A set of either three of a kind or one of each yields armies when turned in at the beginning of a turn, with the number of armies yielded increasing with each set turned in (by anyone, not just said player). The increase in armies is quite rapid, meaning that sets (and thus cards) become valuable rapidly. For instance, the third set is worth 8 armies, which is more than the entire continent of Asia is, though, of course, each set is one-time-deal.
This seems a fairly straightforward proposal, but we could, of course, analyze it a bit with some probability. It would not be too difficult to determine the value in terms of armies of getting a card by determining the likelihood of completing a set with each card. A computation annoyance rather than difficulty arises in that the total number of cards is 44, that is, 42 territory cards plus 2 wildcards. Also, since other players are also getting cards, which we cannot see, we can only guess as to the distribution of cards left in the stack. Since this forces our guess at a probability to imprecision anyway, we might as well ignore wild cards and presume our likelihood of any given symbol is 1/3. We've now simplified the computations quite a bit, on the plus side.
One interesting thing to note is that the value of a card will change, not only based on the number of sets already turned in (we might actually want to suppose how many will be turned in by the time we complete the set, once our models are getting better), but also based on the number of cards we currently own. See, first let's suppose that nobody else is turning in any sets; that is, the number of armies our set is worth is constant, A. If we have two cards, either they are the same or they are different. In either case, only one of the three symbols will complete our set, so the probability of getting a set is the probability of getting that card (assumed 1/3 before for simplicity, but more on this later). Then the value of getting a card is A/3 armies. However, if we have three cards, we must have two of one kind and one of another (left to the reader to verify). Then either the card that we don't have or the card that we already have two of will complete the set, so the value of a card is now 2A/3. Along the same line, if we have four cards and no set, the value of a card is A, as any card will complete the set.
Since this post is already long, I will get to some more points in a later post. Remind me about continents, specifically the Australia-first theory, border minimization, and army inflation if you are interested and I forget to post. Also remind me to continue numbering from 3.
In the last post, I talked about coming up with some specific general principles for playing the game, and I probably have some 'splainin' to do about that. So, here goes.
Risk is not a solvable game. What I mean by a solvable game is a game for which there exists an algorithm that guarantees winning (or at least not losing) in any case. Tic-tac-toe, for example, is solvable in the sense that there is an algorithm that would look something like this
put X in center square
if O in ... square, put X in ... square
else ...
and so on and so forth. I am sort of appropriating and abbreviating some CompSci terminology here. It should be pretty clear, then, that for a solvable game, one should be able to write a computer program (which is an algorithm of sorts) to win at the game.
Not all games are solvable. For example, games of chance are by definition not solvable because they involve chance. There's nothing you can do in a fair game of craps to win every time; you depend on the dice. But not even all games of skill are solvable. A game such as poker is unsolvable because it depends on determining what an opponent will do in a given situation, which can't really be sussed out by an algorithm. I'm just handwaving my proofs here, but these are just some introductory comments anyway.
Risk is actually somewhat similar to poker in the respect that a large part of it is determined by what an opponent does. It is actually even further from solvable (note that this term is technically useless, but makes sense intuitively to an extent) because while both games involve an element of chance, in poker, even if chance is against you to some practically impossible degree, such as always dealing you the lowest possible hand, you can at least bluff your way out of it (assuming your opponent is unaware of your reality-bending bad luck). In Risk, if you lose all your dice rolls, you just lose, no matter how wisely you chose them in the first place.
That said, an experienced Risk player (or strategy game player in particular) will know that there are certain strategies that are more likely than others to yield positive returns. A simple example is to build up the territories that border opponents' territories, rather than ones that border one's own territories exclusively. The reason for this should be obvious, so I don't plan on investigating too thoroughly this principle, though one certainly could.
I thought I would just list some general principles and discuss how I am thinking about addressing them.
1. Be conservative in attacking.
In working with the probabilities of dice rolling, I am already taking the first step in mathematically grounding this vague principle. By just determining the probabilities for the various outcomes of various dice matchups, we can see the rather obvious idea that it is better to attack with more dice rather than fewer, and when your opponent can use fewer rather than more. The next step in this analysis is to extend from single dice roll to an analysis of an entire territory versus another, until one side loses all armies. This really just means applying the already known dice roll probabilities over and over again, which would hopefully lead to a convenient probability distribution, and thus expected value for the end state, but this is really a job for a computer. Already with just the dice rolls, computation is a pain for more than the fewest of dice, so iteration is going to be a huge headache.
There is another aspect to being conservative in attacking that is related but much harder to analyze. That is the aspect of how long a campaign should be. By campaign, I mean series of attacks, usually in a chain. It is clear without working out the probabilities that one's chances of success (retaining ones armies) decrease the more times one uses the armies to attack, and is further stretched on a campaign by the fact that at least one army must be left behind when taking a new territory. That alone is not a full order of difficulty harder than the previous problems, but when one considers defending territories after the turn, we find that we are really considering a different kind of problem, one that involves graph theory. I'll get back to this later.
2. Take at least one territory per turn.
This may not be so obvious to people who haven't played in a while because they may have forgotten about sets. When a player takes at least one territory in a turn, that player earns the right to take one card at the end of the turn (only one card, regardless of how many territories are taken). The cards have one of three symbols on them, and there are two wild cards. A set of either three of a kind or one of each yields armies when turned in at the beginning of a turn, with the number of armies yielded increasing with each set turned in (by anyone, not just said player). The increase in armies is quite rapid, meaning that sets (and thus cards) become valuable rapidly. For instance, the third set is worth 8 armies, which is more than the entire continent of Asia is, though, of course, each set is one-time-deal.
This seems a fairly straightforward proposal, but we could, of course, analyze it a bit with some probability. It would not be too difficult to determine the value in terms of armies of getting a card by determining the likelihood of completing a set with each card. A computation annoyance rather than difficulty arises in that the total number of cards is 44, that is, 42 territory cards plus 2 wildcards. Also, since other players are also getting cards, which we cannot see, we can only guess as to the distribution of cards left in the stack. Since this forces our guess at a probability to imprecision anyway, we might as well ignore wild cards and presume our likelihood of any given symbol is 1/3. We've now simplified the computations quite a bit, on the plus side.
One interesting thing to note is that the value of a card will change, not only based on the number of sets already turned in (we might actually want to suppose how many will be turned in by the time we complete the set, once our models are getting better), but also based on the number of cards we currently own. See, first let's suppose that nobody else is turning in any sets; that is, the number of armies our set is worth is constant, A. If we have two cards, either they are the same or they are different. In either case, only one of the three symbols will complete our set, so the probability of getting a set is the probability of getting that card (assumed 1/3 before for simplicity, but more on this later). Then the value of getting a card is A/3 armies. However, if we have three cards, we must have two of one kind and one of another (left to the reader to verify). Then either the card that we don't have or the card that we already have two of will complete the set, so the value of a card is now 2A/3. Along the same line, if we have four cards and no set, the value of a card is A, as any card will complete the set.
Since this post is already long, I will get to some more points in a later post. Remind me about continents, specifically the Australia-first theory, border minimization, and army inflation if you are interested and I forget to post. Also remind me to continue numbering from 3.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Anybody Want to Play Some Risk?
So, I like the board game Risk but nobody else seems to, or well, nobody who is around at the moment. This means I have to play it on my own if I want to play it at all, which is actually ok because while I am pretty good at it, I have been wondering if I could come up with some specific general principles for playing the game. It is kind of hard to explain what I mean by "specific general principles," but what it amounts to is finding a good way of modeling the game mathematically. If you are not familiar with the game, I would suggest looking it up on Wikipedia or something because I don't feel like explaining it and probably you aren't interested, anyway.
It is intriguing mathematically because it seems as though it can be modeled partly through graph theory and partly through probability. Since battles are decided in the game by dice rolls (not just a simple 1-1 roll; it is a bit more complex, if you are not familiar), and dice rolls are in generally pretty easy to figure probabilities on, that seems like a reasonable starting point. If you have played the game, you know that it is unwise to attack territories when you have few armies, not just because you need to conserve armies in general, but also because the number of dice you can roll is dependent on the number of armies you are using to attack or defend. So, one general principle that Risk players would be familiar with is the principle of deciding whether or not to attack using the number of dice available (it is complicated by the move-at-least-as-many-armies-as-dice-rule, but that is sort of a minor consideration, and the number of dice one should use is not determined only by the probability; I am merely figuring part of the principle here). In finding the probability, I can determine better exactly how many dice one should use, rather than just a general principle.
As I said, probability with dice is generally not too hard, but there are a couple things to keep in mind here.
1. Ties go to defenders. This point is pretty easily compensated for when computing probabilities, as it just means changing a greater than to a greater than or equal to.
2. When someone uses more than one die, the highest attacker's and defender's respective die are compared, then the next highest. This complicates computation considerably. I will try to explain. I will notate P[x](y) to mean the probability of rolling a value of y with x dice. Note that that is probably not good notation, since what does it mean to roll y with 2 die? Does that mean one y? At least one y? All y? A quick and natural way of thinking is let y be a of the form (y1, y2, y3) for x = 3, (y1, y2) for x = 2 etc. Anyway, that will suffice for the moment.
With one die versus one die, we can figure that
P(attacker wins) = [SUMn=1|6](P1(n)*P1(n; that is 5/12+5/12+1/6=1. If you didn't follow all that notation, don't worry. The point is that this calculation is easy and requires at most a linear sum, which is easy enough that Gauss did it at eight years old. I know I have mentioned that before.
Now, let's consider a more difficult problem. What are my probabilities for winning with two dice versus two dice? If we would like to follow or previous solution's path, then we could say what is P2(n) and what is P2(
SA>SD, IA>ID -> win 2
SA>SD, IA win 1, lose 1
SAID -> win 1, lose 1
SA lose 2
What I mean here is S = higher of the two dice (S from superior) I = lower of the two dice (I from inferior). The case I=S is allowed, actually. A and D stand for attacker and defender respectively. "Win" and "lose" are from the attackers point of view, arbitrarily.
The advantage of approaching the problem from this direction seems to be that finding P2(S=n) is actually very simple. It turns out to be (2n-1)/36. To get this result, I just drew a grid of coordinate pairs and found which one had the higher die as n. If you do this, you will notice you get an L-shape (possibly rotated depending on where you start numbering) of length n. That means there are 2(n-1)+1=2n-1 squares in the grid with n as the higher of the pair, and clearly 36 total pairs. From there we can figure probabilities for SA>SD and SD>SA, give or take some equal signs, but hopefully you can fill in the blanks. Of course, if we want to know in general
P(SA>SD), we need to use a sum with n ranging from 1 to 6 as before. That is still only half the battle, since we have to figure the I's into our probability. That is, we are at a median step. It's not entirely useless, one might note, to note P(SA>SD) on its own. It does at least provide an upper bound for P(win 2) and a lower bound for P(win at least 1). Anyway, I haven't worked out much more, but that is merely because I don't like computing things too much.
You might notice I skipped the 1-2 and 2-1 cases here. They are actually fairly simple and you can derive them relatively quickly since you don't really have to worry about pairing dice, just figure P1(n)P2(
There remains the cases 3-2 and 3-1. If you figured 2-1, then 3-1 should be easy enough since only the first factor is changing. 3-2 is similar to 2-2, and all that should change is figuring P3(S=n) and P3(I=m|S=n). Don't worry about this notation, either. If you work out the problem, you will see what I am talking about, no doubt.
I will probably get to talking about some graph theory thoughts I have had about the game, but they are currently even less organized than these on probability.
It is intriguing mathematically because it seems as though it can be modeled partly through graph theory and partly through probability. Since battles are decided in the game by dice rolls (not just a simple 1-1 roll; it is a bit more complex, if you are not familiar), and dice rolls are in generally pretty easy to figure probabilities on, that seems like a reasonable starting point. If you have played the game, you know that it is unwise to attack territories when you have few armies, not just because you need to conserve armies in general, but also because the number of dice you can roll is dependent on the number of armies you are using to attack or defend. So, one general principle that Risk players would be familiar with is the principle of deciding whether or not to attack using the number of dice available (it is complicated by the move-at-least-as-many-armies-as-dice-rule, but that is sort of a minor consideration, and the number of dice one should use is not determined only by the probability; I am merely figuring part of the principle here). In finding the probability, I can determine better exactly how many dice one should use, rather than just a general principle.
As I said, probability with dice is generally not too hard, but there are a couple things to keep in mind here.
1. Ties go to defenders. This point is pretty easily compensated for when computing probabilities, as it just means changing a greater than to a greater than or equal to.
2. When someone uses more than one die, the highest attacker's and defender's respective die are compared, then the next highest. This complicates computation considerably. I will try to explain. I will notate P[x](y) to mean the probability of rolling a value of y with x dice. Note that that is probably not good notation, since what does it mean to roll y with 2 die? Does that mean one y? At least one y? All y? A quick and natural way of thinking is let y be a of the form (y1, y2, y3) for x = 3, (y1, y2) for x = 2 etc. Anyway, that will suffice for the moment.
With one die versus one die, we can figure that
P(attacker wins) = [SUMn=1|6](P1(n)*P1(
Now, let's consider a more difficult problem. What are my probabilities for winning with two dice versus two dice? If we would like to follow or previous solution's path, then we could say what is P2(n) and what is P2(
SA>SD, IA>ID -> win 2
SA>SD, IA
SA
SA
What I mean here is S = higher of the two dice (S from superior) I = lower of the two dice (I from inferior). The case I=S is allowed, actually. A and D stand for attacker and defender respectively. "Win" and "lose" are from the attackers point of view, arbitrarily.
The advantage of approaching the problem from this direction seems to be that finding P2(S=n) is actually very simple. It turns out to be (2n-1)/36. To get this result, I just drew a grid of coordinate pairs and found which one had the higher die as n. If you do this, you will notice you get an L-shape (possibly rotated depending on where you start numbering) of length n. That means there are 2(n-1)+1=2n-1 squares in the grid with n as the higher of the pair, and clearly 36 total pairs. From there we can figure probabilities for SA>SD and SD>SA, give or take some equal signs, but hopefully you can fill in the blanks. Of course, if we want to know in general
P(SA>SD), we need to use a sum with n ranging from 1 to 6 as before. That is still only half the battle, since we have to figure the I's into our probability. That is, we are at a median step. It's not entirely useless, one might note, to note P(SA>SD) on its own. It does at least provide an upper bound for P(win 2) and a lower bound for P(win at least 1). Anyway, I haven't worked out much more, but that is merely because I don't like computing things too much.
You might notice I skipped the 1-2 and 2-1 cases here. They are actually fairly simple and you can derive them relatively quickly since you don't really have to worry about pairing dice, just figure P1(n)P2(
There remains the cases 3-2 and 3-1. If you figured 2-1, then 3-1 should be easy enough since only the first factor is changing. 3-2 is similar to 2-2, and all that should change is figuring P3(S=n) and P3(I=m|S=n). Don't worry about this notation, either. If you work out the problem, you will see what I am talking about, no doubt.
I will probably get to talking about some graph theory thoughts I have had about the game, but they are currently even less organized than these on probability.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
More Law & Order Commentary
Watched awesome episode of Law & Order today. Jeffrey Tambor was an incompetent judge presiding over the case of a senator, played by somebody I should recognize but forgot. The defending lawyer was the guy who now plays scruffy cop on the current season. It was like a wormhole in the L & O timeline.
I have been thinking about it, and I think there are a few reasons I actually like Law & Order and can't stand other dramas.
1) Each episode manages to tell a whole story, so I don't have to wait forever for the conclusion of plotlines I don't care about.
2) The characters are not universally irritating. The motivations for the recurring cast are almost irrelevant because they are just doing their jobs, and the motivations for the suspects, etc., just make sense.
That I guess leads to
3) The writing is just better. Usually the second half of each episode centers on some sort of interesting (some readers might say "gimmicky") legal argument, so it's not wholly dependent on "what happens to so-and-so" type stories, which depend on you liking, or at least caring about, the character. The first half of the show is generally just pretty solid mystery-ing.
To expand on my points in a rambling and unstructured way, I'd like to mention that we do get to see more details about the main characters (that is, DAs and detectives) rolled out over the course of many episodes, but it's not generally essential to the plot, and I think the characters are actually more endearing because we are seeing them work and trying to figure out stuff along with them rather than just having their stories shoved at us. Maybe it is a Japanese way of thinking, but I feel a greater connection with the ADAs, whose lives we see very little of outside of the office than with people on other tv dramas who spend their time talking about their messed up childhoods or lost loves and the like.
Law & Order is clearly the best brand of the three that are still on (it is also better to Trial by Jury, I think, but I didn't see much of its lone season), and I think the reasons I talked about before show why. SVU focuses far too much on each of the detectives' overwrought backstories. For example, the episode I watched last night was just a story about Eliot's daughter and his mother who both have some sort of mental illness. It was the kind of story that if it happened to someone in real life would be tragic, but as it was, was just kind of a boring hour of poorly lighted emoting. That is another strike against SVU, which is sort of unrelated to my previous points. It's way too dark, not in subject matter, but in the sense that it looks like the whole show is shot using only a flashlight for lighting. This helps obscure Mariska Hargitay's face, though, so that is a plus (she is ugly and looks like a dude).
Criminal Intent is really a different kind of show. It's pretty much like Sherlock Holmes if Holmes were living in present day Manhattan and also basically a mental patient. The real selling point of the show is watching Gorin twist up his face and body, then own some suspect through psychology or pick out some bizarre clue. It's in no way realistic, but pretty great. Eames makes a great Watson, too. I've only seen one episode with Jeff Goldblum, but he seems pretty great thus far. The Chris Noth episodes were meh, but mostly due to none of his partners having any personality whatsoever. I don't know if that was mostly a writing thing or if they just look shabby compared to D'Onofrio, who is just plain awesome.
I have been thinking about it, and I think there are a few reasons I actually like Law & Order and can't stand other dramas.
1) Each episode manages to tell a whole story, so I don't have to wait forever for the conclusion of plotlines I don't care about.
2) The characters are not universally irritating. The motivations for the recurring cast are almost irrelevant because they are just doing their jobs, and the motivations for the suspects, etc., just make sense.
That I guess leads to
3) The writing is just better. Usually the second half of each episode centers on some sort of interesting (some readers might say "gimmicky") legal argument, so it's not wholly dependent on "what happens to so-and-so" type stories, which depend on you liking, or at least caring about, the character. The first half of the show is generally just pretty solid mystery-ing.
To expand on my points in a rambling and unstructured way, I'd like to mention that we do get to see more details about the main characters (that is, DAs and detectives) rolled out over the course of many episodes, but it's not generally essential to the plot, and I think the characters are actually more endearing because we are seeing them work and trying to figure out stuff along with them rather than just having their stories shoved at us. Maybe it is a Japanese way of thinking, but I feel a greater connection with the ADAs, whose lives we see very little of outside of the office than with people on other tv dramas who spend their time talking about their messed up childhoods or lost loves and the like.
Law & Order is clearly the best brand of the three that are still on (it is also better to Trial by Jury, I think, but I didn't see much of its lone season), and I think the reasons I talked about before show why. SVU focuses far too much on each of the detectives' overwrought backstories. For example, the episode I watched last night was just a story about Eliot's daughter and his mother who both have some sort of mental illness. It was the kind of story that if it happened to someone in real life would be tragic, but as it was, was just kind of a boring hour of poorly lighted emoting. That is another strike against SVU, which is sort of unrelated to my previous points. It's way too dark, not in subject matter, but in the sense that it looks like the whole show is shot using only a flashlight for lighting. This helps obscure Mariska Hargitay's face, though, so that is a plus (she is ugly and looks like a dude).
Criminal Intent is really a different kind of show. It's pretty much like Sherlock Holmes if Holmes were living in present day Manhattan and also basically a mental patient. The real selling point of the show is watching Gorin twist up his face and body, then own some suspect through psychology or pick out some bizarre clue. It's in no way realistic, but pretty great. Eames makes a great Watson, too. I've only seen one episode with Jeff Goldblum, but he seems pretty great thus far. The Chris Noth episodes were meh, but mostly due to none of his partners having any personality whatsoever. I don't know if that was mostly a writing thing or if they just look shabby compared to D'Onofrio, who is just plain awesome.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Happy Jack
I just watched an episode of Law & Order, original recipe, which ended with Jack McCoy meeting his daughter (?) for dinner, and then he smiled. That is the only time I think that has ever happened on that show. Amazing.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
"Live" blogging
For some reason it is funny to me to liveblog a rerun of a show. That show is SVU, which USA likes to show in huge blocks, leading to me having seen pretty much all of them.
7:05 - They are looking for someone named Anika (sp?) using cell phones. Stabler got in a plug for some kind of 911 thing with cell phones. SVU loves putting public services anouncements in their dialogue as clunkily as possible.
7:08 - Oh noes! She was pregnant! I didn't see the beginning of this episode, so I have no idea what's up.
7:09 - Benson brushes off somebody's question like always. Amazing police work. By police work, I mean being a jerk and making a big show of being offended by crimes.
7:10 - Circle camera!
7:11 - This may be the legendary episode where the Asian tech guy gets to flip out. I've seen it, but I forget which one is which. I just remember thinking it hilarious that the writers decided this minor character should get his own spotlight episode. Usually we get nonsense about Stabler's marriage or Benson not being able to find a relationship because of her job [actually it is because she looks like a dude]. The fact that this guy who basically just runs audio programs on a laptop gets so attached to a case is just hilarious.
7:12 - Really I am just annoyed with Miller and Bud commercials now because they keep trying to convince us that they are good beer. They should really just say, "You will buy this because it is fairly cheap but doesn't taste like Steel Reserve." I would respect them a lot more if they were honest about it being pretty bad but still alright if you don't really care about how it tastes. Beats the Beast any day.
7:16 - I really hate Ben Stein now, too. He keep advertising for one of these "free" credit score sites that is no doubt a scam, though I haven't figured out how yet because I don't care. If you didn't know, he is a vocal creationist, which should tell you that he is a conman or an idiot or both, so I wouldn't suggest using whatever crap he is trying to shill.
7:20 - The budget at SVU must be really tight. They don't seem to be able to afford to turning on the lights EVER.
7:22 - Cragen is always under pressure from the brass. That must really ruin his otherwise cushy job of standing around in his office and telling the detectives that he "wants this guy."
7:25 - Looking inconspicuous in your long coats and black sunglasses, ENTIRE POLICE DEPARTMENT.
7:27 - So that guy is also dead. I'm thinking it is all an overly complicated conspiracy. Commercial break.
7:29 - How many times can they redesign this Nasonex bee without ever making him endearing or not creepy?
7:30 - Finn: "Prints on the dead guy came back!" Ha ha
7:37 - Sorry for the lack of updates. Firefox stopped cooperating for a few minutes. In the meantime, they've managed to arrest the guy who apparently had a guy kidnap his ex-girlfriend and then push a "kidnapper" into a moving car during a payoff. Paula Dean is telling me how easy it is to cook tenderloins in a bag.
7:40 - "I didn't kidnap Anika (?)" A likely story. They found BROCHURES in your HOUSE, dude. Lock him up.
7:42 - Benson: "Baby, baby, baby, baby..." I am paraphrasing. Stabler: "I am going to punch someone I am so angry."
7:44 - Stabler: "She's definitely going to put her money where her mouth is." A joke is too easy here because he is talking about a rather large woman.
7:47 - I'm tired of commercials bossing me around. No, TV, I won't "chill out with Coke products." Please phrase your shtick in the form of a question.
7:50 - Coming this fall, Stabler and Finn are Law & Order: Beach Patrol.
7:51 - I don't think I've seen a single episode of this show where Stabler has failed to mention that he has four kids. I can't help noticing he doesn't seem to own a single World's #1 Dad T-shirt, though. hmm...
7:52 - On TV they always make a big deal of how hard it is to deliver a baby, and then they end up doing it in about 30 seconds by the power of saying "push!"
7:55 - I take back my comments that Mariska Hargitay is a dude. I now believe she is some sort of alien sent to earth to "act with her eyes" by moving them back and forth as if there were a permanent fly in front of the camera.
7:58 - Another hour of police work wasted. I could have told you who did it at the beginning: stodgy, fat, rich lady.
Well, that was fun. Saturday, Saturday, Saturday night's alright!
7:05 - They are looking for someone named Anika (sp?) using cell phones. Stabler got in a plug for some kind of 911 thing with cell phones. SVU loves putting public services anouncements in their dialogue as clunkily as possible.
7:08 - Oh noes! She was pregnant! I didn't see the beginning of this episode, so I have no idea what's up.
7:09 - Benson brushes off somebody's question like always. Amazing police work. By police work, I mean being a jerk and making a big show of being offended by crimes.
7:10 - Circle camera!
7:11 - This may be the legendary episode where the Asian tech guy gets to flip out. I've seen it, but I forget which one is which. I just remember thinking it hilarious that the writers decided this minor character should get his own spotlight episode. Usually we get nonsense about Stabler's marriage or Benson not being able to find a relationship because of her job [actually it is because she looks like a dude]. The fact that this guy who basically just runs audio programs on a laptop gets so attached to a case is just hilarious.
7:12 - Really I am just annoyed with Miller and Bud commercials now because they keep trying to convince us that they are good beer. They should really just say, "You will buy this because it is fairly cheap but doesn't taste like Steel Reserve." I would respect them a lot more if they were honest about it being pretty bad but still alright if you don't really care about how it tastes. Beats the Beast any day.
7:16 - I really hate Ben Stein now, too. He keep advertising for one of these "free" credit score sites that is no doubt a scam, though I haven't figured out how yet because I don't care. If you didn't know, he is a vocal creationist, which should tell you that he is a conman or an idiot or both, so I wouldn't suggest using whatever crap he is trying to shill.
7:20 - The budget at SVU must be really tight. They don't seem to be able to afford to turning on the lights EVER.
7:22 - Cragen is always under pressure from the brass. That must really ruin his otherwise cushy job of standing around in his office and telling the detectives that he "wants this guy."
7:25 - Looking inconspicuous in your long coats and black sunglasses, ENTIRE POLICE DEPARTMENT.
7:27 - So that guy is also dead. I'm thinking it is all an overly complicated conspiracy. Commercial break.
7:29 - How many times can they redesign this Nasonex bee without ever making him endearing or not creepy?
7:30 - Finn: "Prints on the dead guy came back!" Ha ha
7:37 - Sorry for the lack of updates. Firefox stopped cooperating for a few minutes. In the meantime, they've managed to arrest the guy who apparently had a guy kidnap his ex-girlfriend and then push a "kidnapper" into a moving car during a payoff. Paula Dean is telling me how easy it is to cook tenderloins in a bag.
7:40 - "I didn't kidnap Anika (?)" A likely story. They found BROCHURES in your HOUSE, dude. Lock him up.
7:42 - Benson: "Baby, baby, baby, baby..." I am paraphrasing. Stabler: "I am going to punch someone I am so angry."
7:44 - Stabler: "She's definitely going to put her money where her mouth is." A joke is too easy here because he is talking about a rather large woman.
7:47 - I'm tired of commercials bossing me around. No, TV, I won't "chill out with Coke products." Please phrase your shtick in the form of a question.
7:50 - Coming this fall, Stabler and Finn are Law & Order: Beach Patrol.
7:51 - I don't think I've seen a single episode of this show where Stabler has failed to mention that he has four kids. I can't help noticing he doesn't seem to own a single World's #1 Dad T-shirt, though. hmm...
7:52 - On TV they always make a big deal of how hard it is to deliver a baby, and then they end up doing it in about 30 seconds by the power of saying "push!"
7:55 - I take back my comments that Mariska Hargitay is a dude. I now believe she is some sort of alien sent to earth to "act with her eyes" by moving them back and forth as if there were a permanent fly in front of the camera.
7:58 - Another hour of police work wasted. I could have told you who did it at the beginning: stodgy, fat, rich lady.
Well, that was fun. Saturday, Saturday, Saturday night's alright!
Friday, August 14, 2009
Stripes
I am watching Stripes. It's a pretty good movie. I think the cherries in the kitchen are attracting little flies. Biteface is sleeping on the couch, getting his blanket all covered with hair. A fascinating day, indeed.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
TV post
Again I was going to liveblog a rerun of Law & Order, but TNT decided to show golf instead this afternoon, so I didn't get to. Then I forgot to do it for one from last season. Since Dan was posting about TV, though, I will, too.
Law & Order is great and pretty much always has been. Tonight's episode was lame because the motivation was really far fetched and there's no way that people would remember minor incidents from twenty years ago, but the plot hinged on them doing just that. Also, the guy who took Jack's place continues to be a shallow imitation of Jack. Also also it is sexist that his assistant DA wasn't promoted ahead of him. But, whatever, fat black cop and scraggly white cop make a good detective pair. I don't always remember the characters' names on that show, but if you watch it, you can probably tell who I mean.
Law & Order is great and pretty much always has been. Tonight's episode was lame because the motivation was really far fetched and there's no way that people would remember minor incidents from twenty years ago, but the plot hinged on them doing just that. Also, the guy who took Jack's place continues to be a shallow imitation of Jack. Also also it is sexist that his assistant DA wasn't promoted ahead of him. But, whatever, fat black cop and scraggly white cop make a good detective pair. I don't always remember the characters' names on that show, but if you watch it, you can probably tell who I mean.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
First Post in a While
I was going to "live" blog a rerun of Law & Order today, but blogger was not cooperating, so I couldn't. It is too bad. Because this was an episode with Alana De La Garza who is very cute even though she has kind of an alien face, and now you are all missing out on my insights. My heart belongs to this No! Drug girl, however. That poster was up in the BOE and I looked at it a lot over my last week or so because I had nothing to do and she is mesmerizing.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Maze Problem
Have you ever read a Games Magazine? I guess "read" is not the proper word. It's a magazine of puzzles, like crossword puzzles and whatnot, so just reading through it wouldn't be very enjoyable. If you are a member of my family, and since you are reading this blog, the odds are pretty good you are, you have at least tried some of the puzzles. Today I am going to talk about a puzzle that I liked doing because it's a math-y thing and I'm pleased with myself for having solved it. If Will Shores or whoever wants to complain, then he can email me and I'll take this down. I sort of doubt that will happen.
Anyway, on the cover of this latest issue, there is a puzzle entitled "Lost in the Pyramid." It is a 7 x 7 grid of squares in different colors. The object is to get from the center square to one of the edges, with the path touching one and only one of each color square along the way. The last square, then, has to be one of the edge squares, but not one of the four corner squares. I have translated the colors into letters so as to make this possible to blog. Hopefully the formatting works out, but if not, you should at least be able to follow along by making your own representation. Here's what the puzzle looks like (the letters-color correspondence is obviously arbitrary):
ADDLLLT
AEJMTTT
AFJNOSU
BBJVQSU
CGKKQRU
CHIPQRR
CHIPPPR
Obviously not quite square when I type it like that (I think J's are too thin), but hopefully you get the idea. You start at the V, and have to draw a path touching one of each letter and end at an edge. I am going to refer to each square with a redundant nomenclature of X(y, z) where X is the letter and y and z the row and column number, starting from the top left [A(1,1)] and proceeding to the bottom right [R(7,7)].
I'll get to the solution, but since you might want to figure it out yourself, I'll include a picture break here.
Mmm, Stag. I'm not sure why this beer brewed in Milwaukee is the local beer of choice, but it seems to be.
My method for solving this was to turn it into a graph theory problem. That is, each square is a vertex, and adjacent squares are connected by edges. We proceed by removing edges and vertices until only one path remains. So, initially, the graph should look like a big grid [I would be a poor explainer of graph theory to note that you can draw the graph in any shape you'd like as long as you preserve the relationship between vertices and edges], which is what it is. The obvious first move would be to remove all edges between two letters of the same kind, since no path could contain two of the same letters. There are too many to list here specifically and anyone should be able to do this step on their own. Another convenient preliminary step is to mark all squares which are the only ones with their corresponding letters. That may be confusing wording. If there is only one of a letter in the grid, mark it, as the path necessarily contains that square. That is E(2,2); F(3,2); M(2,4); N(3,4); O(3,5); G(5,2); V(4,4). I am using bold here to represent a vertex we know (or are showing) to be in the path. I will try to keep that notation going throughout.
Note that some of the squares we have marked as included in the path are adjacent. One might be tempted to suppose the path runs from one marked square to the next, but take heed that this is not necessarily true. Note that N(3,4) is adjacent to both M(2,4) and O(3,5). We can't distinguish which of these it will be, if it is even one of these at all. The path could even pass through J(3,3); we don't know if it is in the path or not. Now, onto the parts that require a bit more reasoning. I am going to label my steps so that I can refer to them like a real mathematician might.
1. If we look at A(1,1), we can see that there is only one edge for us to use [we already eliminated the A-A edge]. Then A(1,1) must be the final vertex on our path. However, it is a corner vertex, and, thus, cannot be final. So, we may eliminate A(1,1) and the corresponding edge. The same process can be used to remove T(1,7); C(7,1); and R(7,7), all our corner vertices.
2. Examine R(6,7). Only one edge remains, to U(5,7). From that vertex, only one other edge remains, to R(5,6). Then any path through R(6,7) contains two R's; we may eliminate R(6,7). I won't mention eliminating the edges from an eliminated vertex anymore, this should be obvious.
3. This is really a key step, so if you are paying attention, pay attention. U(4,7) and U(5,7) have only one edge and are possible final vertices. U(3,7) has only two, one of which leads to T(2,5), which similarly can only be final. Thus, if a U is contained in the path, either that U is final, or T(2,5) is final. Since a U is necessarily contained in the path, we have determined that our final vertex is one of these four vertices [a U or T(2,5)]. Then obviously, no other vertex can be final.
4. By applying (3), we may now remove any vertex along the edge of the grid (sorry for the edge/edge) confusion with only one edge. That is A(2,1); H(7,2); P(7,6); D(1,2); C(6,1); L(1,6).
5. Another application of (3) yields I(7,3); L(1,5); and P(7,5) out.
6. Another application yields P(7, 4) out.
7. R(6,6) now has only one remaining edge but can't be final, as it is not along an edge, so we may eliminate it, as well.
8. We have removed vertices, so we may mark some others as in the path as in our preliminary step. D(1,3); L(1,4); A(3,1); C(5,1); H(6,2); I(6,3); R(5,6); P(6,4).
9. Since A(3,1) has only two edges, B(4,1).
10. Then B(4,2) is out.
11. E(2,2) has only two edges, so J(2,3).
12. Then J(3,3) and J(4,3) are out.
13. As in (6), Q(6,5) is out.
14. We know C(5,1)-G(5,2) is in our path. Assume G(5,2)-K(5,3). Then K(5,3)-I(6,3). If we continue to P(6,4), then the path contains no H (it is impossible to get to). If, instead, we suppose I(6,3)-H(6,2), we have essentially cut ourselves off and must end at H, which is impossible. Thus G-K is impossible, so we must have G(5,2)-H(6,2)-I(6,3)-P(6,4).
15. Then K(5,4).
16. Since each vertex in the obvious path E(2,2)-...-P(6,4) has only two edges, we can confirm our suspicions that J(2,3)-E(2,2)-...-P(6,4)-K(5,4) is part of our path (a sub-path, I suppose). Note, we don't yet know the order, that is, which end connects to the V, and which to the edge.
17. From J(2,3), we have two options, D(1,3) or M(2,4). If we assume the latter, we have cut off our only D and L, so we must have J(2,3)-D(1,3)-L(1,4)-M(2,4).
At this point, the solution is close enough that one could probably guess one's way to the end, but I have my reasons for wanting to continue in this fashion, despite the next two steps being quite involved in terms of logic trees. Regardless of where we look, we are going to have to start using more complicated logic trees to find contradictions, etc., so let's just start at the beginning, that is V, and try each of the wrong first steps. By eliminating them, we leave ourselves with only the correct solution.
18. Assume V(4,4)-Q(4,5). Then either Q(4,5)-S(4,6) or Q(4,5)-O(3,5). The former yields two short (they leave out letters) paths, both to U's, so we must have Q(4,5)-O(3,5). Passing to S(3,6) again leads to a short path, so that possibility is out. Passing to T(2,5) means leaving out N(3,4), so that is out. Our final possibility here is V(4,4)-Q(4,5)-O(3,5)-N(3,4)-M(2,4)-...-K(5,4)-Q(5,5), but this path contains two Q's and is thus out. With all possibilities eliminated, we conclude V-Q is out.
19. Assume V-K. Then we must have V(4,4)-K(5,4)-...M(2,4). Passing to T(2,5) again leaves out N(3,4) as in (18), so that is out. Passing to N(3,4) leaves out T(2,5), so T(2,7) must be (the final step) in the path. Then working backwards we have O(3,5)-S(3,6)-U(3,7)-T(2,7). One more step back leads to either N(3,4) or Q(4,5). If we suppose N(3,4), then our path is set and leaves out R, so that possibility is out. Stepping back to Q(4,5) leads to another V-Q, which is out by our assumption V-K. Then our assumption [V-K] is out, so we must have V(4,4)-N(3,4).
That was an awful lot of work to show one edge between two vertices we already knew were in the path. It gets easier, though.
20. K(5,4) has only two edges, so K(5,4)-Q(5,5); then Q(4,5) is out.
21. Similarly, Q(5,5)-R(5,6).
22. Then either U(4,7) or U(5,7) must be final, so we may remove T(2,7) and U(3,7).
23. As in (6), we may remove S(3,6).
24. Then S(4,6) and R(5,6)-S(4,6)-U(4,7).
25. Then U(5, 7) is out.
26. T(2,5).
27. We now know every vertex in the path, and all but a few edges. We just need to determine how to get from N(3,4) to M(2,4). As in 17, we can easily verify N-O-T-M is the only path with all the letters.
That's it, then, we have the full path:
V(4,4)
N(3,4)
O(3,5)
T(2,5)
M(2,4)
L(1,4)
D(1-3)
J(2,3)
E(2,2)
F(3,2)
A(3,1)
B(4,1)
C(5,1)
G(5,2)
H(6,2)
I(6,3)
P(6,4)
K(5,4)
Q(5,5)
R(5,6)
S(4,6)
U(4,7)
It took a bit, but it's worth it, right?
Anyway, on the cover of this latest issue, there is a puzzle entitled "Lost in the Pyramid." It is a 7 x 7 grid of squares in different colors. The object is to get from the center square to one of the edges, with the path touching one and only one of each color square along the way. The last square, then, has to be one of the edge squares, but not one of the four corner squares. I have translated the colors into letters so as to make this possible to blog. Hopefully the formatting works out, but if not, you should at least be able to follow along by making your own representation. Here's what the puzzle looks like (the letters-color correspondence is obviously arbitrary):
ADDLLLT
AEJMTTT
AFJNOSU
BBJVQSU
CGKKQRU
CHIPQRR
CHIPPPR
Obviously not quite square when I type it like that (I think J's are too thin), but hopefully you get the idea. You start at the V, and have to draw a path touching one of each letter and end at an edge. I am going to refer to each square with a redundant nomenclature of X(y, z) where X is the letter and y and z the row and column number, starting from the top left [A(1,1)] and proceeding to the bottom right [R(7,7)].
I'll get to the solution, but since you might want to figure it out yourself, I'll include a picture break here.
Mmm, Stag. I'm not sure why this beer brewed in Milwaukee is the local beer of choice, but it seems to be.
My method for solving this was to turn it into a graph theory problem. That is, each square is a vertex, and adjacent squares are connected by edges. We proceed by removing edges and vertices until only one path remains. So, initially, the graph should look like a big grid [I would be a poor explainer of graph theory to note that you can draw the graph in any shape you'd like as long as you preserve the relationship between vertices and edges], which is what it is. The obvious first move would be to remove all edges between two letters of the same kind, since no path could contain two of the same letters. There are too many to list here specifically and anyone should be able to do this step on their own. Another convenient preliminary step is to mark all squares which are the only ones with their corresponding letters. That may be confusing wording. If there is only one of a letter in the grid, mark it, as the path necessarily contains that square. That is E(2,2); F(3,2); M(2,4); N(3,4); O(3,5); G(5,2); V(4,4). I am using bold here to represent a vertex we know (or are showing) to be in the path. I will try to keep that notation going throughout.
Note that some of the squares we have marked as included in the path are adjacent. One might be tempted to suppose the path runs from one marked square to the next, but take heed that this is not necessarily true. Note that N(3,4) is adjacent to both M(2,4) and O(3,5). We can't distinguish which of these it will be, if it is even one of these at all. The path could even pass through J(3,3); we don't know if it is in the path or not. Now, onto the parts that require a bit more reasoning. I am going to label my steps so that I can refer to them like a real mathematician might.
1. If we look at A(1,1), we can see that there is only one edge for us to use [we already eliminated the A-A edge]. Then A(1,1) must be the final vertex on our path. However, it is a corner vertex, and, thus, cannot be final. So, we may eliminate A(1,1) and the corresponding edge. The same process can be used to remove T(1,7); C(7,1); and R(7,7), all our corner vertices.
2. Examine R(6,7). Only one edge remains, to U(5,7). From that vertex, only one other edge remains, to R(5,6). Then any path through R(6,7) contains two R's; we may eliminate R(6,7). I won't mention eliminating the edges from an eliminated vertex anymore, this should be obvious.
3. This is really a key step, so if you are paying attention, pay attention. U(4,7) and U(5,7) have only one edge and are possible final vertices. U(3,7) has only two, one of which leads to T(2,5), which similarly can only be final. Thus, if a U is contained in the path, either that U is final, or T(2,5) is final. Since a U is necessarily contained in the path, we have determined that our final vertex is one of these four vertices [a U or T(2,5)]. Then obviously, no other vertex can be final.
4. By applying (3), we may now remove any vertex along the edge of the grid (sorry for the edge/edge) confusion with only one edge. That is A(2,1); H(7,2); P(7,6); D(1,2); C(6,1); L(1,6).
5. Another application of (3) yields I(7,3); L(1,5); and P(7,5) out.
6. Another application yields P(7, 4) out.
7. R(6,6) now has only one remaining edge but can't be final, as it is not along an edge, so we may eliminate it, as well.
8. We have removed vertices, so we may mark some others as in the path as in our preliminary step. D(1,3); L(1,4); A(3,1); C(5,1); H(6,2); I(6,3); R(5,6); P(6,4).
9. Since A(3,1) has only two edges, B(4,1).
10. Then B(4,2) is out.
11. E(2,2) has only two edges, so J(2,3).
12. Then J(3,3) and J(4,3) are out.
13. As in (6), Q(6,5) is out.
14. We know C(5,1)-G(5,2) is in our path. Assume G(5,2)-K(5,3). Then K(5,3)-I(6,3). If we continue to P(6,4), then the path contains no H (it is impossible to get to). If, instead, we suppose I(6,3)-H(6,2), we have essentially cut ourselves off and must end at H, which is impossible. Thus G-K is impossible, so we must have G(5,2)-H(6,2)-I(6,3)-P(6,4).
15. Then K(5,4).
16. Since each vertex in the obvious path E(2,2)-...-P(6,4) has only two edges, we can confirm our suspicions that J(2,3)-E(2,2)-...-P(6,4)-K(5,4) is part of our path (a sub-path, I suppose). Note, we don't yet know the order, that is, which end connects to the V, and which to the edge.
17. From J(2,3), we have two options, D(1,3) or M(2,4). If we assume the latter, we have cut off our only D and L, so we must have J(2,3)-D(1,3)-L(1,4)-M(2,4).
At this point, the solution is close enough that one could probably guess one's way to the end, but I have my reasons for wanting to continue in this fashion, despite the next two steps being quite involved in terms of logic trees. Regardless of where we look, we are going to have to start using more complicated logic trees to find contradictions, etc., so let's just start at the beginning, that is V, and try each of the wrong first steps. By eliminating them, we leave ourselves with only the correct solution.
18. Assume V(4,4)-Q(4,5). Then either Q(4,5)-S(4,6) or Q(4,5)-O(3,5). The former yields two short (they leave out letters) paths, both to U's, so we must have Q(4,5)-O(3,5). Passing to S(3,6) again leads to a short path, so that possibility is out. Passing to T(2,5) means leaving out N(3,4), so that is out. Our final possibility here is V(4,4)-Q(4,5)-O(3,5)-N(3,4)-M(2,4)-...-K(5,4)-Q(5,5), but this path contains two Q's and is thus out. With all possibilities eliminated, we conclude V-Q is out.
19. Assume V-K. Then we must have V(4,4)-K(5,4)-...M(2,4). Passing to T(2,5) again leaves out N(3,4) as in (18), so that is out. Passing to N(3,4) leaves out T(2,5), so T(2,7) must be (the final step) in the path. Then working backwards we have O(3,5)-S(3,6)-U(3,7)-T(2,7). One more step back leads to either N(3,4) or Q(4,5). If we suppose N(3,4), then our path is set and leaves out R, so that possibility is out. Stepping back to Q(4,5) leads to another V-Q, which is out by our assumption V-K. Then our assumption [V-K] is out, so we must have V(4,4)-N(3,4).
That was an awful lot of work to show one edge between two vertices we already knew were in the path. It gets easier, though.
20. K(5,4) has only two edges, so K(5,4)-Q(5,5); then Q(4,5) is out.
21. Similarly, Q(5,5)-R(5,6).
22. Then either U(4,7) or U(5,7) must be final, so we may remove T(2,7) and U(3,7).
23. As in (6), we may remove S(3,6).
24. Then S(4,6) and R(5,6)-S(4,6)-U(4,7).
25. Then U(5, 7) is out.
26. T(2,5).
27. We now know every vertex in the path, and all but a few edges. We just need to determine how to get from N(3,4) to M(2,4). As in 17, we can easily verify N-O-T-M is the only path with all the letters.
That's it, then, we have the full path:
V(4,4)
N(3,4)
O(3,5)
T(2,5)
M(2,4)
L(1,4)
D(1-3)
J(2,3)
E(2,2)
F(3,2)
A(3,1)
B(4,1)
C(5,1)
G(5,2)
H(6,2)
I(6,3)
P(6,4)
K(5,4)
Q(5,5)
R(5,6)
S(4,6)
U(4,7)
It took a bit, but it's worth it, right?
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Miyajima
With only a week of living in Japan left, I figured I should go do something cool, and since I hadn't yet been to see Miyajima, that became the goal. Miyajima is an island off the coast of Hiroshima (actually part of the city, I think) that is one of the three great sites in Japan, the other two being Kyoto's Ama no Hashidate (kind of far away) and Miyagi prefecture's Matsushima (really far away). Joining me on this trip and thankfully handling pretty much all the details, faithful friend Mie, seen here riding on a boat.
Our journey started at the local train station, but didn't really start getting update-worthy until we got to Hiroshima. Hiroshima still has streetcars, so we took one of those for the sake of taking one (it wasn't that far) to the peace park. I already posted a bunch of crap about that, and we didn't spend any real time there, so there aren't going to be any pictures of that. From the park, though, one can take a boat down the river and out to Miyajima, which we did.
You can see the atomic dome there. While the boat is on the river, you can stand on the deck outside, which we obviously did, but once you get to the ocean, you have to go back inside and they speed up, the boat bouncing around like crazy. While we were taking pictures and whatnot, a guy offered to take a picture of the two of us, which I don't have because it was with Mie's camera. Mie offered to take a picture of him and his friend, and so I tried to get out of the way, but they thought it was funny and took a picture with me, too. I also don't have that picture.
This is what Miyajima is famous for, its shrine. The actual name of the island is Itsukushima (厳島), and Miyajima (宮島) just means "shrine island." For those paying attention to the characters, shima (島) means island. The unvoiced palatal sibilant sh is voiced as an affricate, j, sometimes due to the preceding sounds. It is odd because usually the change is only in the voicing, but here the actual type of sound changes. If you left it as a fricative (sibilant), then you would get the zh sound, like the j in the French je. That sound doesn't exist in Japanese, however. Anyway, this is the torii, which looks like this at high tide. When the tide is out, you can walk out to it, which we did, but I don't have any pictures of. The tide was out when we got there and we had to wait a while, actually, before we got this. There were some Americans who tried to swim out to it, but they got yelled at by some priest or something. There's a boat that takes you through the gate, actually, if you want to. Prepare for a multimedia experience.
I was saying "Amerikajin da" meaning "[I am/They are/etc.] American[s]." I don't know what we were talking about, so I don't know what the topic of the sentence was. Japanese is high-context.
That's the other thing that Miyajima is famous for, obnoxious sacred deer that try to steal your food or anything they think is food. You are not supposed to feed them, unlike the deer in Nara, though I suspect that people do, anyway. That deer ended up eating that map, but we didn't need it anyway.
There are lots of deer. I have no idea who that other dude is; he just happened to be there.
We went into the main building of the shrine (this costs a small fee), and were lucky enough to see somebody's wedding ceremony. I tried to take a couple pictures, but they aren't very good.
Ah, well. We also did omikuji, which is a kind of fortune telling where you shake a box to get a stick out, and the stick has a number on it. Then you take a fortune out of the drawer with the same number. I got kyou, 狂, which is the worst one. That basically never happens at shrines because they want people to do it more, which they are unlikely to do if it says they are going to get sick or lose their job or something.
We also saw this big pagoda. Not much to say about that. After all that walking around, etc., it was time to take a break (I love this about Japan; it is almost always break time). On a hot day, what makes for a good meal?
Tempura soba! The long tempura is anago, conger eel. Soba is buckwheat noodles. I wanted cold noodles, so this hit the spot nicely.
After lunch, it was time to make our way up Mt. Misen. On the way there were stores selling normal touristy stuff, which in Japan usually includes wooden statues. I don't know who buys giant wooden statues, but they usually have big ones like this:
I'm pretty sure the one on the right is Yebisu, who appears on some of my favorite beer.
The first segment of the climb is done via a "ropeway."
Don't look down, Mie!
Living on the mountain are Japanese macaques. There are a bunch of signs saying not to feed them and not to look at them in the eyes. Also, there are lockers to put your stuff in because apparently they are good at stealing things. When we were coming down the mountain, a couple of them came flying down the path towards me, howling. It was crazy. They were fighting, though, and didn't do anything to me.
I think this was about halfway up?
Most of the way up there is this little shrine building. Mie's doing the classic Japanese pose. We were covered in sweat by this point from trying to climb up the mountain. It isn't that steep, but it was so humid that none of the sweat would evaporate until she found a passage behind the building here that acted as a wind tunnel where we stood to cool off. There were French dudes who were climbing the mountain in sandals (what?).
Even further up the mountain, a little passage between rocks.
Not a very good picture, but from the top you can see the Seto inland sea, on a clear day, all the way over to Shikoku.
お疲れ様、美絵ちゃん！We did make it all the way to the top, where there is a little lookout building, from which you can see 360 degrees of inland sea.
On the way back down, we saw a monkey picking bugs off a deer. Mutualism at work.
And Mie's real goal, green tea flavored ice with sweet bean paste.
And my real goal, delicious Kirin stout. We had drinks with oysters, since they are a local specialty. 御馳走様でした！
Our journey started at the local train station, but didn't really start getting update-worthy until we got to Hiroshima. Hiroshima still has streetcars, so we took one of those for the sake of taking one (it wasn't that far) to the peace park. I already posted a bunch of crap about that, and we didn't spend any real time there, so there aren't going to be any pictures of that. From the park, though, one can take a boat down the river and out to Miyajima, which we did.
You can see the atomic dome there. While the boat is on the river, you can stand on the deck outside, which we obviously did, but once you get to the ocean, you have to go back inside and they speed up, the boat bouncing around like crazy. While we were taking pictures and whatnot, a guy offered to take a picture of the two of us, which I don't have because it was with Mie's camera. Mie offered to take a picture of him and his friend, and so I tried to get out of the way, but they thought it was funny and took a picture with me, too. I also don't have that picture.
This is what Miyajima is famous for, its shrine. The actual name of the island is Itsukushima (厳島), and Miyajima (宮島) just means "shrine island." For those paying attention to the characters, shima (島) means island. The unvoiced palatal sibilant sh is voiced as an affricate, j, sometimes due to the preceding sounds. It is odd because usually the change is only in the voicing, but here the actual type of sound changes. If you left it as a fricative (sibilant), then you would get the zh sound, like the j in the French je. That sound doesn't exist in Japanese, however. Anyway, this is the torii, which looks like this at high tide. When the tide is out, you can walk out to it, which we did, but I don't have any pictures of. The tide was out when we got there and we had to wait a while, actually, before we got this. There were some Americans who tried to swim out to it, but they got yelled at by some priest or something. There's a boat that takes you through the gate, actually, if you want to. Prepare for a multimedia experience.
I was saying "Amerikajin da" meaning "[I am/They are/etc.] American[s]." I don't know what we were talking about, so I don't know what the topic of the sentence was. Japanese is high-context.
That's the other thing that Miyajima is famous for, obnoxious sacred deer that try to steal your food or anything they think is food. You are not supposed to feed them, unlike the deer in Nara, though I suspect that people do, anyway. That deer ended up eating that map, but we didn't need it anyway.
There are lots of deer. I have no idea who that other dude is; he just happened to be there.
We went into the main building of the shrine (this costs a small fee), and were lucky enough to see somebody's wedding ceremony. I tried to take a couple pictures, but they aren't very good.
Ah, well. We also did omikuji, which is a kind of fortune telling where you shake a box to get a stick out, and the stick has a number on it. Then you take a fortune out of the drawer with the same number. I got kyou, 狂, which is the worst one. That basically never happens at shrines because they want people to do it more, which they are unlikely to do if it says they are going to get sick or lose their job or something.
We also saw this big pagoda. Not much to say about that. After all that walking around, etc., it was time to take a break (I love this about Japan; it is almost always break time). On a hot day, what makes for a good meal?Tempura soba! The long tempura is anago, conger eel. Soba is buckwheat noodles. I wanted cold noodles, so this hit the spot nicely.
After lunch, it was time to make our way up Mt. Misen. On the way there were stores selling normal touristy stuff, which in Japan usually includes wooden statues. I don't know who buys giant wooden statues, but they usually have big ones like this:
I'm pretty sure the one on the right is Yebisu, who appears on some of my favorite beer.
The first segment of the climb is done via a "ropeway."Don't look down, Mie!Living on the mountain are Japanese macaques. There are a bunch of signs saying not to feed them and not to look at them in the eyes. Also, there are lockers to put your stuff in because apparently they are good at stealing things. When we were coming down the mountain, a couple of them came flying down the path towards me, howling. It was crazy. They were fighting, though, and didn't do anything to me.I think this was about halfway up?Most of the way up there is this little shrine building. Mie's doing the classic Japanese pose. We were covered in sweat by this point from trying to climb up the mountain. It isn't that steep, but it was so humid that none of the sweat would evaporate until she found a passage behind the building here that acted as a wind tunnel where we stood to cool off. There were French dudes who were climbing the mountain in sandals (what?).
Even further up the mountain, a little passage between rocks.
Not a very good picture, but from the top you can see the Seto inland sea, on a clear day, all the way over to Shikoku.お疲れ様、美絵ちゃん！We did make it all the way to the top, where there is a little lookout building, from which you can see 360 degrees of inland sea.
On the way back down, we saw a monkey picking bugs off a deer. Mutualism at work.And Mie's real goal, green tea flavored ice with sweet bean paste.
And my real goal, delicious Kirin stout. We had drinks with oysters, since they are a local specialty. 御馳走様でした！
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Tarantula
I've just started reading Tarantula, a collection of poems by Bob Dylan from his psychedelic period. A wonderful friend sent me it. It is fantastic.
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