Cryptogenic saleratus

Edit: As usual, non-messed-up formatting version available here

cryptogenic (adj.): Of unknown origin

saleratus (n.): bicarbonate of soda: a white soluble compound (NaHCO3) used in effervescent drinks and in baking powders and as an antacid

Pretty cool words today. Anyway, a bit about magic squares:

Magic Squares

A lot of people have played with or at least seen magic squares - arrangements of the numbers 1 through n² in an nxn grid so that all the rows sum to the same value and all the columns sum to the same value - before. Surprisingly though, very few people know of the easy way to generate large magic squares of any size.

There is a pretty cool, simple algorithm that lets you generate a magic square for an odd value of n. Let's demonstrate it below for n=5.

? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ?
1 ? ? ? ?

Start as such, with a 1 in the lower left corner of the square.

? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ?
? 2 ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ?
1 ? ? ? ?


? ? 3 ? ?
? ? ? ? ?
? 2 ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ?
1 ? ? ? ?

.
.
.


? ? 3 ? ?
? ? ? ? 5
? 2 ? ? ?
? ? ? 4 ?
1 ? ? ? ?

As you can see, each time we move one unit to the right and two units up (wrapping around if necessary) to place the next number. At 5 we run into a problem - the next number we'd have to place would coincide with the 1. So we go down instead:

? ? 3 ? ?
? ? ? ? 5
? 2 ? ? 6
? ? ? 4 ?
1 ? ? ? ?

And so on:
? ? 3 ? ?
? ? ? ? 5
? 2 ? ? 6
7 ? ? 4 ?
1 ? ? ? ?

etc.
07 20 03 11 24
13 21 09 17 05
19 02 15 23 06
25 08 16 04 12
01 14 22 10 18

Which happens to be a magic square =). Of course, it doesn't matter where you start with the 1 (because, you can tile the plane with any nxn magic square, take a nxn chunk of the plane, and you'll have a magic square). Even cooler is that moving one to the right and two up is completely arbitrary. In fact, you can always move r to the right and s up - as long as both r and s are relatively prime to n. And we can actually extend it a bit more. We don't necessarily have to move just one unit down after every n moves. Actually, we can move e units right and f units down, and it still works as long as rf-se is relatively prime to n.

Seeing why this is the case is not obvious. However, it helps to see that (we let [x] denote the floor of x):

x_j = (a + rj + e[j/n]) mod n
y_j = (b + sj + f[j/n]) mod n

Where (x_j,y_j) is where j+1 is located, and (a,b) is where 1 is located. After this, proving that this method always fills the square with a magic square is really just an exercise in elementary number theory.

So now we have odd squares. What about even squares?

Well, evidently enough if we've found a magic square of size m, and a magic square of size n, we can combine them to get a magic square of size mn. We can find a magic square of size 4 easily enough (the famous Melancolia square, for example), so this saves us for things of the form o*2²ⁿ. (o is odd, of course). What about sizes like 6, or 8?

Unfortunately there's no 2x2 magic square, so we can't use it to generate these. If we could generate squares of size 2o we could generate magic squares of any size. There are such methods - one very famous method is Conway's LUX method. It's not as simple as the above method but it's not bad - search it on wikipedia if you want.

Of course, what if we want something like... magic cubes? Try adapting the above method to make magic cubes (hint: you'll need to do something after every n²).

There's also something cool known as 'regular' squares. It's quite natural to write the elements of an nxn square in base n. A regular square is one such that the n base n digits appear in the unit's digits of each row and column and in the column's digits of each row and column. Writing our 5x5 above square in base 5 (after we modify it to 0-24), we have:

11 34 02 20 43
22 40 13 31 04
33 01 24 42 10
44 12 30 03 21
00 23 41 14 32

So our square is regular. Turns out it's quite easy to get regular squares for odd n or doubly even n - singly even n are trickier. Euler conjectured that there are no regular squares for any singly even n, but it turned out that there regular squares for all singly even n except 2 and 6 (too bad it was nigh impossible to check 10... it still almost is).

As well, the number of magic squares of size n grows rapidly. For n=1,2,3,4,5 it is 1, 0, 1, 880, 275305224, and no one knows the number of magic squares of size 6. It's estimated at about 1.7745×10¹⁹.

That's all for magic squares. In case you haven't heard, Yoda and Darth Vader are in Soul Calibur 4. Also, the first round of the TCHS Tourney was today. I feel a bit stupid for not getting the 1000 pointer, since I should have been able to get it, but I progressed and my rating change was +7, so oh well. The next two rounds are much more important =).

Until next time, ciao.

-squidout

Job interviews are a piece of cake.

For a careers assignment, I had to interview Jon for his hypothetical job at ABC tutoring. We did it over msn, even though I had to grade him for things like "shows enthusiasm" and "shakes hands firmly," because it was easier. To aid our readers in preparing for any future interviews that they may have, I decided to post it here. Happy reading!

Josh says:

hello!

Jon says:

hello!

*shakes hand firmly*

Josh says:

*shakes back*

Jon says:

I am Jonathan Schneider!

Josh says:

wow!

Could you plz tell me a little bit about yourself?

Jon says:

Sure.

Josh says:

wrong!

the correct answer was no

Jon says:

Oh, sorry.

I'll keep that in mind for next time.

Josh says:

okay

now

tell me about yourself, or else.

Jon says:

Okay.

I am a Grade 10 male human who attends the University of Toronto Schools.

Josh says:

(I prefer elven ranger, but okay)

Jon says:

I have lots of experience in math, physics, and computer science, and as such, think that I am appropriate to fulfill the job of math tutor here at ABC tutoring.

Josh says:

Give examples of said experience.

Jon says:

Let me show you my resume.

Josh says:

I'm illiterate

Jon says:

*of course, I'm making eye contact all this time, while being very interested and enthusiastic*

Josh says:

*okay*

(after a considerable amount of time)

hm, have you shown me your resume yet, or are you still getting it?

(I happen to be blind as well)

Jon says:

I have just found it.

Josh says:

okay

Jon says:

Here, let me send it to you.

Josh says:

okay

Jon says:

*since it won't all paste in*

Jon sends:

(his resume was sent to me here, but I don't know if he really wants me to post it, so I won't.)

Jon says:

I would like to draw to your attention that the topcoder rating is outdated.

Josh says:

why'd you randomly write SAT tests?

Jon says:

My current rating is 1557.

Josh says:

ah

Jon says:

Because I finished the highschool math and physics courses then, of course.

Josh says:

lol okay

Jon says:

By the way, I happen to know a lot about ABC tutoring.

Including their excellent record in tutoring.

Josh says:

I request a reference regarding your 2007-2008 ACTIVITIES

Jon says:

ah

You can ask Mr. Louis Bernard.

He lives in Czechslovakia.

He can attest that I didn't randomly copy those activities off other people's resumes.

His email is lbernard@czechslovakia.com

Josh says:

could I have his phone number, please?

Jon says:

i'm sorry, you'll have to e-mail him for his phone number.

i don't have that piece on information at the moment.

*saying everything courteously and positively*

Josh says:

okay

I will keep that piece of information in mind when comparing you to other candidates who do have the phone numbers of their references

Jon says:

ok

Josh says:

continuing along,

why would you like to work here at ABC tutoring?

Jon says:

I think a job of a math tutor fits me well, considering my credentials, and ABC Tutoring can provide me with such an opportunity.

Also, the pay is very good.

Josh says:

do you really have the time to be engaging in such a time-consuming endeavor such as this?

Jon says:

Yes.

Josh says:

considering all the many things that you do?

Jon says:

Well, there aren't too many things that I do.

Josh says:

oh

Jon says:

Plus, I can always skip school to tutor for you.

So everything is alright.

Josh says:

okay, that is reassuring

now, can you please explain why you bothered to learn how to program in languages that have the same names as pokemon games?

Jon says:

Ruby is actually a pretty powerful language.

It's probably going to become more powerful in the future.

Especially for web-related programs.

Perl isn't exactly the same as Pearl, so it's not quite a pokemon game.

But Perl is also quite powerful.

Actually, the reason why they named Ruby 'Ruby' was to make fun of Perl, which sounds like 'Pearl'.

Josh says:

lol, okay

continuing along

please list a prime number of ways in which you are a better candidate for this position than wainberg, ignoring all previous experience

Jon says:

1. Wainberg isn't very good at math, as indicated by our math club meetings and contests.

2. Wainberg wants to work at the ROM.

that should be enough.

Josh says:

good

Describe a typical work week

with whatever work you plan to do here included

Jon says:

Well, i'll tutor once a week.

So my work week will look something like

Monday: School, then tutor.

Tuesday: School.

Wednesday: School.

Thursday: School.

Friday: School

and that's it

Josh says:

describe the other days of the week

Jon says:

Saturday: swimming and attacking things.

Sunday: attacking more things.

of course, I will be doing other stuff during the week, but those are the only things with a fixed schedule

Josh says:

okay

are you willing to travel?

Jon says:

yes, as long as you pay for my travel costs.

by travel, i assume you mean like, to indiana?

Josh says:

more like to madagascar

now

why do you think you would be sent to madagascar?

Jon says:

it's been repeatedly shown that madagascar students perform below average in math.

a math tutor could help them.

Josh says:

does ABC tutoring have a history of doing things like that?

Jon says:

yes.

Josh says:

to what countries have we sent people, and for what subjects?

Jon says:

well

you've sent people to nicaragua, to teach them spanish.

to madagascar, to teach them math.

to japan, to teach them japanese.

to china, to teach them science

to england, to teach them american history.

and that's about it, ignoring the few times you send people to eastern europe.

Josh says:

you have ignorantly forgotten the people we sent to the USSR back during the cold war

Jon says:

USSR is in eastern europe

Josh says:

but this was a major project

Jon says:

but it was a long time ago.

Josh says:

fine

Jon says:

plus, all the tutors were killed because the russians thought they were spies.

so no teaching actually happened.

Josh says:

good

your knowledge of ABC history is at an adequate level

Do you prefer to work independently or on a team?

Jon says:

independently.

Josh says:

why?

Jon says:

it's easier to sneak around unnoticed.

teams make too much noise and aren't stealthy enough.

Josh says:

do you think that this would be good or bad for your productivity as a tutor?

Jon says:

what?

Josh says:

that you like to work independently and sneak around unnoticed

like*

Jon says:

ah, this would be good

Josh says:

why?

Jon says:

i wouldn't want to be noticed by the person i'm tutoring.

that might distract them from learning.

Josh says:

what about those who are visually-inclined learners?

Jon says:

hardly changes things.

we just sneak around them and put pictures in front of them.

since we're not noticed, they focus on the pictures.

and we succeed, once again.

Josh says:

who is this we you are referring to?

Jon says:

i'm sorry, i can't answer that question at this moment

Josh says:

okay

Jon says:

if i told you, I would have to kill you

*i'm still being courteous, positive, interested, enthusiastic, and making eye contact by the way*

Josh says:

okay

now, let us continue to the second part of this interview: the hypothetical questions.

how would you answer the following question 50 years from now "Start with your graduation from college and explanation the rationale behind each of your career moves"?

explain*

Jon says:

1. I bought a Swedish castle because castles in Sweden are very cool and big.

2. I then proceeded to take over the world with my robot monkeys because I was bored.

that's it.

Josh says:

oh

I don't really see how the first is a career move

Jon says:

it is

i had to move my career to my castle.

Josh says:

oh

and what was your career?

Jon says:

tutoring math, of course.

(and building robot monkeys, but don't tell anyone about that)

Josh says:

okay

now

what happened in your career path that forced you to change to a career in world domination?

Jon says:

I got bored.

Josh says:

does this show your dedication to your job here?

Jon says:

yes

even though i switched to a career in world domination, i never stopped building robot monkeys.

or tutoring them in math, for that matter.

Josh says:

that's good

what benefits would you give to past bosses when in a world domination career?

Jon says:

i would let them rule new zealand.

and build huge mayan temples on new zealand

Josh says:

*in a flattered tone* how did you know I have mayan heritage?

Jon says:

I know all.

Scio omnia.

Josh says:

good

that is something we are looking for in candidates

Jon says:

That is good.

Josh says:

indeed.

Have you worked with someone you didn't like? If so, how did you handle it?

Jon says:

Like this:

(after some time, again)

Josh says:

I have a feeling that I dislike that response

*angry face*

Jon says:

I was wondering how long it would take you to respond.

Here is the continuation of the last statement.

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20070907

Josh says:

hmm

4 scares me

Jon says:

Yes.

That's why I would kill her.

Josh says:

next question: explain 3 comics in which 4 was present, and what scary thing she did in each

(I can only remember 3)

Jon says:

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20070905

Where she makes 2 say "GLARBLEGHK!".

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20070907

Where she eats Pez

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20061125

Where she eats mashed potatoes.

Josh says:

aha, it was a trick question: there is a fourth!

you should have known that!

find it now!

Jon says:

Of course I do.

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20061124

You only asked me to explain 3 though.

Here she says "Amen".

Josh says:

well, there, you definitely should have said something

for there is also a 5th

Jon says:

You mean:

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20070723

where she puts sharp objects into 1's eyes.

Josh says:

yes

good job

now,

Tell me about a time that you worked conveying technical information to a nontechnical audience.

Jon says:

No such time exists.

Josh says:

tell me how you would answer that question 50 years from now

Jon says:

How dare you ask me questions?! I own the world.

Of course, I would combine the ? and the !

to make the interrobang.

Josh says:

that is good

how would you answer that question a year prior to taking over the world?

Jon says:

No such time exists. Would you like to join me for tea in my Swedish castle?

Josh says:

I hate tea

Jon says:

Too bad.

I own a Swedish castle.

Well, I am going to play Halo now.

I hope you consider me for your job position.

Josh says:

wait, I have one last question

that is imperative

Jon says:

*shakes hands and concludes interview satisfactorily*

ok

Josh says:

do you have any questions regarding the job?

Jon says:

Yes.

Josh says:

good!

we will tell you if you are accepted with 50 years

now, be gone!

Jon says:

Ok

GL HF DD

Josh says:

I hope that this will be of great help in preparing for job interviews in the future. I'll probably post my puzzle in the near future. A plus tard!

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis - a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust found in volcanoes.

Many may recognize this word as the longest existing English word, as I did when I searched Wikipedia for "word," and came across the article about it, but apparently those people would be incorrect. Partial credit can be given - at 45 letters in length, it is the longest English word officially recognized dictionary, appearing in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1936. However there are three words that Wikipedia considers words, that are longer than it:

In third place, 85 letters in length, is

Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotameteaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenakitanatahu

This word (I don't want to write it again (and by write I mean paste)) is the longest officially recognized name of a place. It is the name of some hill, 305 meters in height, in New Zealand. I don't know how something becomes "officially" recognized as a place, but I don't really mind, either. The name means "The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the climber of mountains, the land-swallower who traveled about, played his flute to his loved one."

In second, with 183 characters, is

Lopado­temacho­selacho­galeo­kranio­leipsano­drim­hypotrimmato­sil-
phio­paraomelito­katakechymeno­kichl­epi­kossypho­phatto­perister­alek-
tryon­opte­kephallio­kinklo­peleio­lagoio­siraio­baphe­tragano­pterygon.

This one doesn't really deserve to be one of the longest words. It is "the longest word ever used by a major author." It comes from Aristophanes' comedy Assemblywomen, where he used it as the name of an invented dish. If someone can both remember the word, and use it in a sentence in a conversation, I would be exceptionally impressed.

And in first place, with 189819 (that's not a typo) letters,

This word!

This is the "longest full chemical name of a protein," more often referred to as titin. Makes sense. If someone could use this one in a conversation, I would be about 1037 and a quarter times more impressed than before.

Now, onto other things that aren't long words!

Rogers

is incredibly evil. I was peacefully finishing off an English assignment at 11:00 last night, when suddenly the internet, my source of secondary references to prove that I was not entirely making up what I was writing, ceased to function. I spent about 30 minutes trying to fix the problem (well, 20 fixing and 10 trying to connect to my neighbor's network), then my mom called Rogers to ask if it was a problem on their end. It was. They always give such useful information when called, those Rogers people. Yesterday they informed me that their cable services throughout the Greater Toronto Area were broken, and they were not sure why, and that they would be fixed within the next 48 hours, or else we would get free internet for the month. With such useful information, completing my English assignment was simple: I got my mom to write me a note!

Pikmin

should not be in SSBB. I have played Pikmin and Pikmin 2, and they were both pretty good games, so I am pretty sure that my opinion on the matter is not biased. I just think that playing as Olimar would be very limited. All he can do is pick Pikmin off of the ground, and throw Pikmin. Compared to the 10+ moves that all the other characters have (even sonic has a couple ways of turining into a ball and killing people), I think it'll be pretty dumb. Kind of like putting Akamaru, the dog, into Clash of Ninja 2. You can read more about this likely very stupid idea here. Hopefully Nintendo will take the extra month that they have delayed the game for (again) to make Olimar a decent character in the game.

jPod

I realize that I didn't really explain jPod at all (well, I was going to, but then realized that I was incredibly busy) (or maybe I just didn't feel like it), thus I'll actually talk about it now.

Basically, it's a book about a guy named Ethan, who's a video game programmer. Because of a glitch in the office distribution program at the company at which he works, he and all the people whose last names begin with a 'J' were moved to the lowest floor of the company's building, which is very very far underground (I believe there was a funny explanation of this, but I forget what it was...), and thus they called themselves the jPod. Interesting things then follow, like:

• Ethan's mom kills a biker who comes to her house to buy pot, by accident.
• Ethan's dad no longer likes his wife, and goes out with someone who Ethan went to high school with.
• Ethan's brother, who is smuggling people somewhere (I forget) leaves them in Ethan's apartment one day.
• Ethan's new boss makes him turn the skateboarding game that jPod is making into a game about a turtle.
• Ethan's boss gets forcefully brought to China.
• Much more...

Now you have an even more compelling reason to wither watch the tv show or read the book!

I'm working on another problem that hopefully Jon won't be able to solve with a program (I think I'll go for one that would take far too long to solve this time), and I'll probably be done by tomorrow. Plus, It's the first round of the Topcoder TCHS tournament tomorrow at 1! Hopefully I'll get a score > 0 so that I can advance. A bientot!

Friable lacuna

friable (adj.): Easily crumbled, pulverized, or reduced to powder.

lacuna (n.): A blank space; a missing part; a gap.

Well, I'm back from Winter Camp. Unfortunately, seeing that I was more or less isolated from the rest of the world for the past few days, I guess there's not very many interesting things I can say, aside from how you shouldn't go to university at York unless you want to live in a closet and always eat fast food. It was fun though =). Camps with only around 14 people are much more awesome than huge camps, since it's much more informal and much more just like a get-together.

Back to the uninteresting stuff - seeing as I don't have too much to say, I'll just proceed in bashing Josh's third logic problem.

Third Logic Problem

This logic problem took me the longest to do, but not because it was hard to code. Au contraire, I had it coded in 10 minutes, give or take a few - much faster than the second problem. Yet of course, the program repeatedly discovered no solution.

Part of the reason for this were the several typoes in the problem that Josh corrected yesterday. The program still didn't work of course. The reason why? Apparently, colors are very, very strange.

If you actually decide to try this problem, you should notice that the five colors are:

pink
grey
red/brown (this 'contains' red)
red/green (this 'contains' green)
other

In particular, "red" itself, is not a color. Of course, after adjusting this, the program spits out:

2 3 0
0 0 0 0 0
3 2 4 1 0
1 2 3 0 4
4 1 3 0 2

Which is more easily understood as (highlight):

Cat in the Hat has 5 eyes, is other, and is hairy
Lorax has 4 eyes, is grey, and is lumpy
The Who has 6 eyes, is red/brown, and is greasy
Horton has 2 eyes, pink, and is fluffy
The Grinch has 1 eye, is red/green, and is smooth

The program itself, as always, can be downloaded on the sidebar.

Solution to Ghost

Randall Munroe posted his solution to Ghost using the Ubuntu wordlist on the xkcd blog. It is the simpler version, though, where you can add letters only to the end of words - still pretty cool though.

Piles of Stones

Here is a cool trick/problem shown to me at Winter Camp.

Take a bunch of piles of stones that add up to 21. Here we'll take 5 piles: 4 stones, 6 stones, 2 stones, 7 stones, 2 stones:

2 2 4 6 7

Each step, remove one stone from each pile, and put all those stones into a new pile:

1 1 3 5 6 5

Continuing (new piles in bold):

2 4 4 5 6
1 3 3 4 5 5
2 2 3 4 4 6
1 1 2 3 3 5 6
1 2 2 4 5 7
1 1 3 4 6 6
2 3 5 5 6
1 2 4 4 5 5
1 3 3 4 4 6
2 2 3 3 5 6
1 1 2 2 4 5 6
1 1 3 4 5 7
2 3 4 6 6
1 2 3 5 5 5
1 2 4 4 4 6
1 3 3 3 5 6
2 2 2 4 5 6
1 1 1 3 4 5 6
2 3 4 5 7
1 2 3 4 6 5

And here, at 1 2 3 4 5 6, the piles remain constant. Now, the cool thing is that it doesn't matter what piles you start with, as long as they, in total, contain 21 stones - you'll always end up with 1 2 3 4 5 6. In fact, if you take n(n+1)/2 stones, you'll always end up with 1 2 3 4 5 ... n.

This pretty cool fact is pretty hard to prove actually - there's a nice short proof though.

That's all for now. Maybe soon I'll talk about magic squares, since I've recently played with them again. Until then, ciao.

-squid out

jPod

At camp last summer, I brought four books: two Dilbert books, a sudoku puzzle book, and jPod by Douglas Coupland. All four were good books. However, today I read in the Globe that they made a jPos television show, thus, today, I watched the first episode of the jPod television show. It was good. You should watch it. I would describe it to you, but Jon has just pointed out that I made a few mistakes in the copying of the hints from logic problem 3 from my scribbles on paper to the blog, thus, here are my corrections:

hint #7 should be: one of the characters, maybe the grinch, is red/green.
at hint #3, when it says "not red", that means not red/brown or red/green.
at hint #6, I meant to write "happens to be a color other than pink" at the end.

With these, it should be solvable. Good luck! Maybe I'll post more when I don't have homework to do! By the way, jPod shows at 9:00 on Tuesdays on CBC (channel 6 for most people in Canada, I believe).

Point-Counterpoint-Countercounterpoint: the conclusion

So I guess I should finally say what has been discovered. With the polls closed my lone vote was for M&S being better and failed, however much to my point, most people voted that both games are bad. these votes accounted for more than 50% of the votes and therefore I believe we can draw the conclusion that there are better games out there. Looking at older posts I remember that Jon wasn't happy with gamespy's game of the year. Because of this I think that we here at saddening Goat should hold GOTY awards in some shape or form with reader opinion.

Infusive Cinerarium

Infusive - Having the power of infusion; inspiring; influencing.

Cinerarium - A niche for a funeral urn containing the ashes of the cremated dead

I guess the contents of a cinerarium could be infusive, if you use the two last definitions of the word, but not really the cinerarium itself (well, you never know I guess...).

Anyway, today, along with the two newest Dilbert comic collection books (Possitive Attitude, and Cubes and Punishment) I bought Stephen Colbert's new, and only, book, I am America (and so can you!). By the way, I'm not going to bother putting a link to the Amazon page of each book, because I doubt anyone really wants to go to them anyway, and its 2 minutes of work that I don't feel like doing. Well, I already read the first two chapters of I Am America, and so far its a really good book (it's kind of like Dilbert minus any intelligence or engineering plus a bit of politics), and I would suggest it to all who have nothing to do on their last day of break.

Speaking of which, they should make breaks longer. In France, they have four two-week breaks throughout the year, plus equally as many long weekends as we have, and an equally as long summer break. I want that! Some people argue that breaks get boring, and they would prefer school, but if that's the case, they should organize a party to get to see their friends, or just spend their whole lives on MSN. It works for me! Plus, although I do like most of school, I dislike work. And maybe some evil teachers too, but mostly work. If each of my friends who dislike breaks did one subject's worth of work for me, I would be more than willing to shorten winter break for them.

I think I will end this post here, as I want to get back to reading, and I am trying to install Starcraft on my computer upstairs. I find it very stupid that my Pentium 3 Windows 2000 with 256MB of RAM can run Starcraft, yet my Pentium D Windows XP with a gigabyte of RAM won't start the installation. I bet it's Norton's fault! Anyway, I'll go fix that and read, so for now, ttyl.

Side note: There's actually some very interesting stuff in the news toolbar on the right, I suggest you check it out.

Azo Tintinnabulum

Azo - relating to or containing the azo radical

Tintinnabulum - a bell, especially a small tinkling on

Azo radical - The bivalent group -N=N- united to two hydrocarbon groups

Aha, I've moved on from biology words to biochemistry! I guess that's a moderate improvement, though it makes sense that many obscure words happen to be science-related: I would imagine that, unless you are a scientist who specializes in observing reactive radical oxygen species, you probably wouldn't use the adjective azo very much. Anyway, today I decided to talk about techy stuff I read about in the last day or two (I forget if I read it all after last midnight or not), so... happy reading?

Netscape Navigator

On February first, Netscape is officially retiring. I guess there's not much to say about it that's not in the article here, but I had almost forgotten about Netscape once Firefox came around, so seeing this article reminded me of my pre-tabbing web-surfing experiences. Speaking of which, according to the article, 80% of people that surf the web today use IE, yet only two thirds of people who visit saddening goat do, as the others use firefox, which is good! If more want to convert to the light/dark (whichever is better) side, they should click here.

Nintendo WiFi

Apparently some researchers at Indiana university did a study where they found that hacking into a Nintendo (specifically Wii's) WiFi network is surprisingly easy, because it still uses WEP encoding instead of WPA or even WEP + MAC. Considering many people send their credit card numbers through Nintendo WiFi networks each day to buy virtual console games on their Wiis, I think that this is a bit stupid. More importantly, however, I find it very dumb that researchers in Indiana would bother making a study like this. There was an article the other day in the Globe about stupid research that has been done recently, and it lead me to think that if people didn't bother doing useless things, we could already be cloning each other, or something equally as advanced and cool. I forget what day the article was written, and I can't really remember most of the studies it talked about (I only remember important things) but one that I do remember, which must have been the most memorable, was that a group of researchers at California state University did a study to find that people, while under the age of 15, are much less likely to crash cars than when they are over the age of 15. I would never have guessed that...

News in the OS war

Some guy at ZDNet looked at the number of security flaws in vista, XP, and Max OS X for the past year, and decided that they look something like this:

Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OS X vulnerability stats for 2007
	XP	Vista	XP + Vista	Mac OS X
Total extremely critical	3	1	4	0
Total highly critical	19	12	23	234
Total moderately critical	2	1	3	2
Total less critical	3	1	4	7
Total flaws	34	20	44	243
Average flaws per month	2.83	1.67	3.67	20.25

(yes, 34 + 20 != 44, but the XP + Vista number doesn't count the flaws that both XP and Vista had twice)

I somewhat doubt that Mac OS X actually had that many more flaws than Windows did (I think the guy who did the study was fairly biased) but he also pointed out in his analysis that:

"Also noteworthy is that while Windows Vista shows fewer flaws than Windows XP and has more mitigating factors against exploitation, the addition of Windows Defender and Sidebar added 4 highly critical flaws to Vista that weren’t present in Windows XP. Sidebar accounted for three of those additional vulnerabilities and it’s something I am glad I don’t use. The lone Defender critical vulnerability that was supposed to defend Windows Vista was ironically the first critical vulnerability for Windows Vista."

Now I have one more reason to add to my list of reasons that I dislike Vista! By the way, the article can be found here.

Batman

The sequel to the new Batman Begins, called The Dark Knight, is coming to theaters the 18th of July (this is actually old news, but I didn't realize it until today)! I thought the first one was even better than the first Spiderman movie, even though I prefer Spiderman to Batman, so it must have been pretty good. Here's a trailer for it, which looks pretty cool too:




Geek Test

For fun, I took the geek test, and, very surprisingly, scored "Major Geek" on it (36.12229%). I think that the quiz may not be entirely accurate, since, for instance, reading the Lord of the Rings once probably added about 1% to my score on its own, and I don't think I'm too geeky just for having read it. There were also a few things there that I didn't know were characteristic of geeks, like "I like to watch public access TV." Oh well.

I didn't come up with any logic puzzles today, partly because I doubt anyone has solved the last three, but mostly because I was busy playing a 7-hour game of RISK. If you have solved all three of the previous puzzles, say so in a comment or something, and maybe I'll come up with another one. If you're really bored, try this. A plus tard

Luciferous Cataphyll

Luciferous - giving light

Cataphyll - a reduced or scarcely developed leaf at the start of a plant's life (i.e., cotyledons) or in the early stages of leaf development

Aha, I copied Jon's way of giving the definition of the randomly generated words in the title! For some reason, I keep getting words relating to plants... but, what can you do (well, I could just generate new words, but then I would have to click the button again)?

Summing Arithmetic Progressions

This was a cool problem I found when going through recent TopCoder SRMs (it's the 1000-point problem from SRM 385 div 2) that I think even people who have had 3 months of compsci class should be able to solve (or you could think of an algorithm to solve it even if you don't know how to program):

A magic arithmetic progression with k elements is a sequence of the form x, x+d, x+2*d, ..., x+(k-1)*d for some positive integers x and d. How many integers between left and right, inclusive, can be represented as the sum of some magic arithmetic progression with exactly k elements?

inputs
int left, between 1 and 1000000000, inclusive
int right, between 1 and 1000000000, inclusive, and greater than left
int k, between 2 and 5, inclusive

eg - for left = 1, right = 12, k = 3, the representable numbers are: 6=1+2+3, 9=2+3+4=1+3+5, and 12=3+4+5=2+4+6=1+4+7, therefore you should return 3.

Winter-een-mas

Finally, it is Winter-een-mass season! Winter-een-mass, or WEMass for short, can best be described by a quote from Tim Buckley the other day:

"Winter-een-mas is a holiday of sorts. More specifically, it is a celebration of video games and the people that play them. Video games allow us to do things, go places, see stuff, that we couldn't do in real life. They can be an escape from reality, a release after a long day, a fun activity with friends, or just an enjoyable way to pass time. They give us a lot of entertainment. So why shouldn't they be celebrated?"

If you want to read the CAD arcs regarding WEMass (which are all pretty funny), here they are (well, the first comics in them, anyway):

The first WEMass, in '03
The second, when Ethan started spreading it a bit, in '04
'05, when Ethan gets attacked by evil corporations
and again in '06
and then the random one in '07

In spirit of this, everyone should go play some video game, or start reading Ctrl-Alt-Del (a link is in the links section on the right), or something like that. Or at least not vote that two pretty good games (well, one really good and one pretty good) both suck in the next poll.

Disney Channel Hits

Back when I was 7 years old, or around then, my mom got me a CD called Disney Channel's biggest Hits. I liked it at the time, and it even had Weird Al's take of American Pie on it (the one that tells the story of Star Wars episode 1), which I still think is a funny song. Anyway, I was just thinking about it the other day, when I went to Disney World during my trip, then I came across this. I guess Disney just made a stupid mistake, but I would think they would have some way of checking to make sure that an incident like this doesn't happen, especially considering their audience.

I'm sure you're all very busy solving my last logic puzzle or the arithmetic progressions problem or trying to understand Jon's "Artefactual coattail"s, so I'll stop now. Till next time!

Indivertible Eugenol

I was surprised to get eugenol as a randomly generated word, since I had to remember it for a biology test the other day (apparently it is good for numbing the itchiness of bug bites) and I think that the definition of indivertible is self-explanatory. On the topic of titles, Jon confused me with Monism Bruit because at first I thought it was French (monisme is French with an 'e' at the end), and although I did direct random people from France here the other day, in hopes that we would get a visitor from all of the continents, I was fairly certain that Jon wouldn't have made any of them a contributor. On a side note, we actually have eleven people who read the blog enough to vote (though I now think I shouldn't have put a "Both suck" option, because the results are pretty saddening (but not a goat)) which is good! According to Google Analytics, we had 40 visitors on the 24th of December, and yesterday we were down to twelve (I guess people stopped checking as often once I stopped posting) so hopefully we'll get more readers soon.

Anyway, I should probably explain my prolonged absence (or at least I can't think of anything better to write about), therefore I will:

THE EXPLANATION OF JOSH'S PROLONGED ABSENCE

Part 1 - The Introduction

I bet I'll forget to make a part 2, but I felt like making titles... anyway, it all started last Thursday night. Jon had come over, and we had played about 5 straight hours of The Simpsons Game, which was pretty fun (maybe I'll talk about that later if I feel like it). Once he left, I went into the kitchen where my mom was getting a drink and we had a conversation that went something along these lines:

Me: Mom, is anything happening on Sunday?

Mom: Ya...

Me: What are we doing?

Mom: ...

Me: ...

Mom: We'll be in Florida, of course!

Me: ...

Mom: Speaking of which, you should go pack.

I think that was the first time that I went on a trip with only one day's notice (actually, the plane took off about 18 hours later), but it doesn't really make a difference, I guess. So then I packed my bag (I really only brought a Dilbert book and a Rubik's Cube which I didn't even end up touching the whole trip, so that wasn't very difficult), slept, then left.

Part 2 - The Flight

The flight was funny, because, as usual, Air Canada overbooked, but for once everyone actually showed up, and as we were one of the last people to get to the airport, there were no seats left aside from those in first class, so that's where we went. It was nice to have ample leg space and a person who hangs up your coat before the flight, though on a 2 and a bit hour flight to Florida, it didn't make much of a difference.

Part 3 - The Rest (ya okay, I just put part 2 in so that the story wasn't too short).

Actually, there's not much to say about the rest of it. Probably the most unexpected part was the temperature while we were there. The first day, it was about 30 degrees, the second was 26, the third 20, and the fourth, -2. The negative two especially surprised me (I would insult Al Gore here, but I realize that I don't actually hate Al Gore for any particular reason, and yet insult him often anyway, so I won't), but I think it would have been worse for the people who came to Florida and only packed shorts and tee-shirts.

Part 4 - The Other Flight

Well, we didn't get to go on first class this time, but I did get to watch Transformers on the little screen in front of my seat (which I find funny to play with, especially their weird version of connect-4), and it was a pretty good movie. Oh, and I also came up with another logic puzzle, and I do not think that Jon will be able to write an algorithm to solve it. At least, I hope not.

LOGIC PROBLEM THE THIRD

One day Josh wandered off to Universal Studios, and wound up in Seuss Landing. There, he found lots of whos and loraxes and grinches and such, and decided to figure out which one was which (his memory of Dr. Seuss suddenly got erased or something like that). Anyway, he wanted to find the name, number of eyes, color (JAVA spells it without a 'u', and thus I will as well), and main characteristic of each of the five characters that he saw (of course, they are all unique in all aspects), and as this is a logic puzzle, he got the following hints:

1. The Cat in the Hat, has 2 more eyes than the Fluffy character, which does not have just 1 eye.
2. The Pink character doesn't have a Lumpy or Smooth body and has less than 4 eyes.
3. The Five eyed creature is not Greasy and is not Red.
4. The Lorax is Grey or Pink and has 3 more eyes than the Smooth bodied character, which is not the Who.
5. Horton the Elephant has 1 less eye than the Lumpy bodied character and less eyes than the Greasy bodied character.
6. The Red/Brown character has more eyes than the Hairy bodied character, which happens to be pink.
7. The Grinch, like all the other characters, is not Green.

Good Luck!



(I was just thinking about that episode, so I posted it for fun)

Anyway, I don't feel like blogging anymore, so ttyl