The Challenge

So I made a challenge with Josh today, who ever can produce the better piece of video game music on Mario paint composer wins.

The rules are as follows:
1. The song can't have been done on youtube before.
2. Songs must be declared in advance
3. If the song is on youtube during the contest and after the song was declared then the song can still be produced.
4. Any and all resources and programs can be used
5. Have fun with this.

Our deadline is sometime in mid to late June, and I encourage any and all to join this competition. There is no prize however the winner will be known as the best Mario paint composer on Saddening Goat. All songs will be uploaded to youtube when completed under one user so that they can be watched at the end.

If you plan to join comment and tell us what song you plan to do, mario paint composer can be downloaded online free so go play with it!
Aaron

If you're bored...

...here are a few good online games you could play, that I have recently discovered:

http://www.addictinggames.com/theworldshardestgame.html

This game is pretty hard, but it's very satisfying to beat a level. Most levels generally appear impossible to beat at first, so you need a lot of patience to play this for more than 3 minutes, but otherwise it's pretty good.

http://www.addictinggames.com/doodledefender.html

This isn't actually that great a game, like most games of the genre, but if you suddenly have the urge to play a cheap shooting game, it's a good choice, since you get to draw your own ship! I suggest saving up for additional guns, as then you can draw even more!

http://www.addictinggames.com/magicpen.html

If you played the crayon physics demo that came out a while back, this is basically a slightly more developed version of that. Crayon Physics Deluxe should be out soon! Also, try building a catapult.

http://www.addictinggames.com/dropple.html

I don't know why they came up with a story for this game... but otherwise it's good.

http://www.addictinggames.com/accelerationmaze.html

Fun, though it gets frustrating at times. And, the music gets fairly annoying too, especially considering it's techno.


On a side note, did you know that Ash Ketchum was 10 years old when he began his Pokemon adventure? I don't understand who would send their child out to wander from town to town at 10 years old... yet apparently many people in Pokemon do. Maybe Pokemon is secretly trying to convince kids to run away from home at age 10. At any rate, good luck with summatives, exams, or whatever else you may be working on at the moment, and until next time!

oh, life is so depressing

What is it with me and extinction stories?

The real question is, however, where did the bees go?
A Mayan prophecy, Stephen Hawking theories, as well as an Einstein quotation all serve as damning evidence of inevitable doom. Apparently, Einstein believed that four years after the bees start to die, the world will collapse because they are so crucial to pollination and life.

Well, the bees started dying in 2007, so live it up already!

Males to become extinct???

Interesting title, isn't it?

But first...where have I been? Yes it's been a LONG time - almost 2 months - since I last posted. I have had good intentions but either lacked inspiration or time: there was a trip to Washington, D.C. and with May bringing about the end of the school year, there is much work to be done. And there was also an AP U.S. History exam. But I'm back now, so here goes:

***
I first heard about the topic in the title last weekend (and intended to write about it then, but never got around to it) when my parents showed me an article in a newspaper. It talked about how an Oxford Professor, Bryan Sykes, expects male humans to die out in as little as 125,000 years because of the degeneration of the Y chromosome.

My initial reaction was complete disbelief, because wouldn't the extinction of males imply the end of reproduction and therefore extinction of the species? Unless two females could produce an offspring? Or there were asexual reproduction? But shouldn't evolution progress forwards and not backwards - as in, sexual reproduction is more advanced than asexual reproduction, so if we went backwards wouldn't that be illogical? I also questioned the time period that he proposed, because 125,000 years in the scheme of evolution seemes way too short for an entire gender to die out just like that.

Anyway, I found the article online, here. The article also talks about a bill in the UK, and its implications on the lesbian community, but the middle section is the part that interested me the most.

Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at Oxford University and author of the book Adam’s Curse, is convinced that men will die out as the Y chromosome withers. He has calculated that, at the current rate of decline, heterosexual reproduction may only last around 125,000 years. “The core sex is female,” he says. “Male infertility is high because genes on the Y chromosome are packing up all the time. Many species become extinct because their Y chromosomes apparently disintegrate. In the end, the same thing will probably lead to the extinction of the male gender.”

The only glimmer of hope, he believes, may lie in the experience of the mole vole. This tiny rodent native to the Caucasus mountains of central Asia seems to have lost its Y chromosome somewhere down the evolutionary millennia, but the genetic material that confers maleness has nimbly transferred itself to another chromosome. If the Y chromosome turns out to be as useless as Sykes suggests, it would be possible to move the human SRY (the sex-determining region of the Y chromosome) and associated “maleness” genes to another chromosome and produce males with two X chromosomes.

It also talks about advancements in technology that would indeed enable two females to reproduce; sperm could also possibly be manufactured in labs from other DNA.
Anyway, just very interesting.

***
An added bonus:

A schoolmate and friend brought this to my attention - if you like food (all of you probably), and if you like food of the inexpensive variety, you might like CheapEats. It's a guidebook to cheap food (no surprise there). There's a book each about several Canadian cities, like Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver. It lists 365 restaurants where breakfast is <$5, lunch <$10 and dinner <$15. The bonus part is that there's a sale on it right now so you can get it for under $10 including taxes and S/H (in Canada only, though). When it asks if you have a coupon code (that's step 2), type in "facebook", and don't forget to press "apply". Being a Torontonian I got the Toronto version, of course, but I'm not sure if the code works for other cities as well - I guess it doesn't hurt to try.

Oh, and hurray for PayPal :)



That's all for now,
Cindy

Rubiks = puzzles that take less than 10 minutes to complete.

So my dad came to me this weekend holding a Rubik's Magic that's been stowed away in our basement since at least 1986. From then it took me 1 day to understand it and 1 day to master it. By the end of Sunday (today) it only takes me 10 seconds to solve it. For those who dont know a Rubik's Magic is a set of 2 rows of 4 black squares bound together that works similar to the toy jacob's ladder. On one side are the pieces of 3 rings which when in the right positions and order are unconnected and on the reverse are similar patterns but with three rings that link. starting in the unlinked the goal is to link the back rings. Sound simple? Infact it is. it takes little to no time for it to be solved when one knows what to do. from is 2x4 shape it becomes a v shape with a 2x2 square with two sets of 2x1 squares on sides 90 degrees from each other. This now brings my collection of rubiks puzzles I can solve to 4 being the cube, mini cube(2x2x2), the revenge(4x4x4), and the magic.

Ok so it wasn't a video game post. I know it wasn't in my posting nature but that's all I have to say right now... I'm just filling the space until my fellow contributors post.

let the next post happen soon,
Aaron

Some Halo WTF

So, it's been 10 days since the last post, in part due to my laziness. In any case...

There's a saying that goes, "expect the unexpected". Well, I hope you expected these things to happen =) (ordered by relative WTF-ness, best first):

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=KicJSFEgB_U
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=ym0BtwmCvoc
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=qXfwd4_ydLM&feature=related
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=hw-Y2mG0hYE&feature=related

Also, here are some... interesting... Rube Goldberg style contraptions people built. I should try making one of these some time =):

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=Jje1m9DJp8k&feature=related

(sniper vs. noob series):
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=qbELWI5nkPg&NR=1
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=HxMITb5a2p8&NR=1
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=arB8hCCl7NY&feature=related

While we're on the topic of WTF-ness, worsethanfailure.com is a very amusing site, especially if you know a thing or two about programming. But even if you don't, just look at http://thedailywtf.com/Series/Error_0x27_d.aspx - guaranteed laughter.

Ooh, and I also found a very nice job on the WTF site (it's real!): http://jobs.thedailywtf.com/1001/listing.aspx?Ad=Y&JobId=1001237 . They must have been stalking me.

In any case, that's all for now. Until next time,

-squidout

...

Wait! The title's not a random phrase! Oh no! Where are you going to get your (not-so) daily exposure to random archaic vocabulary that only about 10 people in the world have a justifiable right to use?

Too bad, it's down here now. And no more definitions - I trust you can use Google by yourself =).

subcelestial cadaster

Between Battles

Just signed off of Nintendo WIFI Connection, I was playing a game of brawl with Josh and Jon, tons of lag to go around. Everyone played their favourite characters and if it wasnt for lag I can say each of us would have won at least one game each. The final results after 3 games: Josh -2 (Josh I probably would have won the game I was Toon Link had lag not occured), Jon -1, and sadly me -0. We each proved our abilities as each character and in josh's case, how he could annoy us by rehashing the same move 60 times. If any readers would like to face any of the three of us feel free to comment.

Til then,
Aaron

Acescent goldstone

acescent (adj.): becoming, or tending to be, sour.

goldstone (n.): a type of glass (gemstone) made with copper or copper salts in the presence of a reducing flame.

Again, it's been a while since I've posted. But luckily (or perhaps not...), I should be posting more often now =).

Anyway, I was going to post about Brawl - mainly to convince you that, contrary to what you might expect, Peach does not suck, and in fact is one of the best characters in Brawl. But then, when you think about it, such discussions about "who the best character in Brawl is" don't really make sense. Especially not at this early stage, when there isn't even enough information from tournaments to get a rough sense of what characters belong to which tiers. You should just use whatever characters you're the best with.

But do try Peach for a bit before you condemn her to the bottom of your preferred list =).

Onto other stuff. Some people have recently rediscovered the board game Risk, or something. In any case, they seem to like playing it a lot now. Which is, in a sense, very strange, considering that if you really feel like playing a strategy game, there are many electronic alternatives. Most of them also have much deeper gameplay, with a much smaller luck factor. In fact, there are probably tons of other board games with a much smaller luck factor than Risk.

But bashing Risk is not the point of this post. Attacking in Risk has a very interesting mechanism. The way the people I play with attack in Risk (which actually is not the official way) is:

1. If the attacker has 1 army, he rolls one die, if he has 2 armies, he rolls two dice, if he has 3 or more armies, he rolls three dice.
2. If the defender has 1 army, he rolls one die. Otherwise, he has a choice of rolling one or two dice.
3. If the attacker's largest die is greater than the defender's largest die, the defender loses one army. Otherwise, the attacker loses one army. If the defender rolled two dice, if the attacker's second largest die is greater than the defender's other die, the defender loses another army. Otherwise, the attacker loses another army.

Now, the question is, when should the defender roll one die as opposed to two dice? Clearly, if the attacker rolled two sixes, the defender is probably better off rolling only one die - that way he will probably only lose one guy, as opposed to probably losing 2. Similarly, if the attacker rolled three ones, then the defender might as well roll two dice if he can, since he automatically kills two of the attacker's armies. But of course, there are more hazy scenarios, like if the the attacker rolls two 4s. Should the defender roll one die or two dice?

Firstly, it's clear that only the attacker's two largest rolls matter - the smallest die doesn't affect anything. So let these two rolls be r and s, with r >= s. Now we can consider both cases:

Defender rolls one die

In this case, only the attacker's largest roll, r, matters. The defender can roll any number from 1 to 6 with equal probability. For numbers 1 through r-1, the attacker wins, for the other 7-r numbers, the defender wins.

We are considering the change in relative strength between the attacker and the defender, i.e. (the number of guys the defender has) - (the number of guys the attacker has). If the defender wins, his relative strength increases by 1, and if the attacker wins, the defender's relative strength decreases by 1. So the expected change in relative strength is:

(expected change)
= ((7-r)-(r-1))/6
= (4-r)/3

Defender rolls two dice

In this case, there are three possible outcomes - the defender loses 2, the defender and attacker both lose 1, and the attacker loses 2. Note that if the defender and attacker both lose 1, this does not change the relative strength, so we only need to consider the other two outcomes.

Let the defender's rolls be a, and b, with a >= b. Looking at it like this, there are 21 possible rolls for the defender, since rolls like (4, 3) and (3, 4) are considered the same. (21 since 1+2+3+4+5+6 = 21). Then, he loses when both a(r-(s/2))(s-1)

cases where the defender loses 2 guys.

How many cases are there where the attacker loses 2 guys? We must have a>=r and b>=s. This works out similar to the above case... it turns out that there are:

(7-r)(4+(r/2)-s)

cases where the attacker loses 2 guys. So, the expected change in strength is:

(expected change)
= (2(7-r)(4+(r/2)-s)-2(r-(s/2))(s-1))/21
= ((7-r)(8+r-2s)-(2r-s)(s-1))/21
= (56 + r - 15s + s^2 - r^2)/21


Now we can finally resolve the initial question - it is better to roll two dice whenever:

(56 + r - 15s + s^2 - r^2)/21 >= (4-r)/3

or

28+8r-15s+s^2-r^2 >=0

Technically, if it equals 0, it doesn't matter whether you roll two dice or one. Now, while that formula isn't that large at all, it is still pretty random. But note there are only 36 (and really only 21) possibilities for (r,s) pairs. And if we check whether to use two dice or one for each pair, we get the following very nice pattern:

1 2 3 4 5 6

-+-----------
12 2 2 2 2 2
22 2 2 2 2 2
32 2 2 2 2 2
42 2 2 N 1 1
52 2 2 1 1 1
62 2 2 1 1 1

That is, it's better to roll two dice whenever your opponent's smallest roll is smaller than 4.

Now with this, it's not too bad to calculate chances of winning. For example, assuming you're smart, the expected change in relative strength if the attacker rolls r, s, is:

2.0000 1.9047 1.7142 1.4285 1.0476 0.5714
1.9047 1.3333 1.1428 0.8571 0.4761 0.0000
1.7142 1.1428 0.6666 0.3809 0.0000 -0.476
1.4285 0.8571 0.3809 0.0000 -0.333 -0.666
1.0476 0.4761 0.0000 -0.333 -0.333 -0.666
0.5714 0.0000 -0.476 -0.666 -0.666 -0.666

Looping over all possible 56 different rolls of three dice for the attacker, the expected change in relative strength each time is 5/56 - with favor towards the defender.

Figuring out the probability that the attacker will win if he attacks with n armies and the defender defends with m armies isn't much harder either - you can get a recursive formula fairly easily. But maybe I'll post that another time.

Until then, ciao.

-squidout.

MORE REASONS TO FIGHT CBC's CHANGES

Just look at this list (kudos to Peter McGillvray for compiling this list on Facebook):

1. The CBC Young Composers Competition has not been held since March 9, 2003. It, as well as the CBC Young Performers Competition, have been suspended for the past four years. The Canada Council provided the funding for the $10,000.00 grand prize

.2. CBC erased the classical music budget for CBC Records in February 2008, precisely on the eve of their first Grammy win by Canadian violinist James Ehnes and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra under Bramwell Tovey on the CBC Records label. Many artists, such as Measha Brueggergosman, launched their careers on a CBC Records label recording.

3. The commissioning budget previously devoted to commissioning new works from composers is now spread out to cover jazz, pop musicians, and some unspecified amount of contemporary music.

4. CBC cancelled Two New Hours, a multiple-award winning program that was aired for two hours a week in the incredibly prime time slot of Sundays 10pm to midnight. This program was dedicated to the music of living Canadian composers. It was cancelled in March 2007 in its 29th year.

5. CBC cancelled The Arts Report. The late Val Ross, an arts columnist for The Globe and Mail, lamented the loss of this particular radio segment, saying that it kept her in touch with important cultural developments across the country.

6. CBC cancelled Music For A While, which aired classical music daily from 6pm to 8pm. It has been replaced by Tonic, a jazz program which also features hip-hop, soul and world music.

7. CBC cancelled In Performance the flagship Classical concerts program. It was replaced by Canada Live, which has an uneven and unpredictable offering of funk and R and B bands, jazz, Middle eastern fusion music, throatsinging...

8. The proposed cuts for the Fall of 2008 represents further reductions in classical music content, eliminating classical music 6am to 10am and 3pm to 6pm.

9. The new hosts are not musicologists and have little depth of knowledge to share with radio listeners. Howard Dyck, for example, who is no longer hosting Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, is an Order of Canada recipient, a conductor and the recipient of numerous honourary degrees for his contribution to music in Canada. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Dyck Larry Lake, former host of Two New Hours, is a Toronto composer, performer and broadcaster. He is Artistic Director of the Canadian Electronic Ensemble, the oldest active live electronic music group in the world, now in its 35th season. Other hosts whose, such as Tom Allen, Eric Friesen, Rick Phillips are also giants in the field of music broadcasting.

10. The axing of the CBC Radio Orchestra: North America's 70 year old last remaining radio orchestra and platform for countless premieres of new Canadian compositions

11. Gone are Music & Company - Tom Allen's morning show, Here's to You - Catherine Belyea's (Formerly Shelley Solmes') all-request show, Studio Sparks - due to the venerable Eric Friesen's "retirement", and Disc Drive - Jurgen Gothe's popular drive-home show after almost 30 years. These changes come on the heels of last years round of cuts to vital programs such as Danielle Charbonneau's much-loved Music for Awhile; Larry Lake's new composer showcase Two New Hours; Symphony Hall - Canada's live orchestra recording showcase; The Singer and the Song - Catherine Belyea's excellent Classical vocal program; Northern Lights - the overnight Classical program beloved by Night Owls everywhere; The reformatting of In Performance- a primarily classical live performance show into the much-reviled Canada Live - a uniformly non-classical and completely unfocused hodge-podge of World music, soft pop, and sort-of Jazz; and the controversial replacement of veteran Howard Dyck from Saturday Afternoon at the Opera after many years of great service.

12. The CBC axing the Radio Orchestra one day citing lack of resources, and the next day buying hugely expensive full-page ad in the Globe and Mail to convince us how wonderful everything is going to be in their Brave New World

SAVE CLASSICAL MUSIC AT THE CBC

When I was younger, I always looked up to the CBC as a symbol of Canadian culture. From Hockey Night in Canada to the Passionate Eye, it was an organization of journalistic integrity, a place to find solace from the nonsense known as CNN, and a hub of the arts.

When I was younger, I loved CBC Radio 2. It was dominated by classical programming, with an enormous amount of Canadian content, reflecting the diverse and potent Canadian classical scene. It was a nice little refuge from Classicalk 96.3, which really, gets bland after you listen to the same stereotypical (pun intended) selections of classical music, like Fur Elise, Chopin Nocturne 1 and Beethoven's 5th Symphony.

When I was younger, I always liked the CBC Radio Orchestra, in Vancouver. The only remaining radio orchestra in North America, it had a mandate to perform classical music with a large percentage of Canadian conductors and soloists, as well as being responsible for premiering numerous numbers of newly commisioned compositions.

But you know what, the CBC has decided to change. Gone are the interesting shows and innovative programming, replaced with horrible and tasteless dramas about hockey wives and scnadals and bad reality TV shows. And they are removing most of CBC Radio 2's classical content, and replacing it with gar-bage. Oh, did I mention they are destroying the CBC Radio Orchestra, even after they WON A GRAMMY over other well-funded and better managed orchestras in the United States (even beating the almighty Boston Symphony)?

Now, if we take CBC's side of the issue, they will say promoting classical music so much is not reflective of the Canadian cultural demographic. But how can they be so blind, with so much talent (and I do not over inflate this term) coming out of this country. There are so many youth in this country who listen to Classical music. How is tommorow's youth going to hear classical music in the future? Those CD's, or (insert name of new device replacing CD's in 3 years) are very very expensive. Specifically, how is tommorow's youth going to hear the music of today's youth. How are we going to have new works commisioned by Canadian composers, when private interests (orchestras such as the TSO) can only include so much Canadian music, when they are catering to a paying and general audience?

So I ask you, PLEASE help us (the movement who are trying to stop them) to avert this disaster. I know many of you think these email initiatives don't accomplish anything, but sometimes, SOMETIMES, they do. A similar thing happend with Hockey Night 3 years ago, when they didn't want to renew Ron McLean's contract (the semi bald guy working with Don Cherry). Fans were outraged, did a similar thing, and got him back with a 6 year contract.

The addresses below are of IMPORTANT people! Richard_Stursberg@cbc.ca; mark_steinmetz@cbc.ca; jennifer_mcguire@cbc.ca; ht.lacroix@cbc.ca; AND NOT by commas as listed below. So, if you click on send and it doesn't work, try using the ; sign instead)1) copy the list of e-mails / copiez cette liste d'adresses2) add the e-mail of a local and/or national newspaper / ajoutez l'adresse d'un journal local ou national3) Copy one of the messages provided (if you don't have time to write your own) copiez un des message suivants (si vous n'avez pas le temps d'ecrire un vous-memes)3) click send / cliquez sur le button "send"Richard_Stursberg@cbc.ca, mark_steinmetz@cbc.ca, jennifer_mcguire@cbc.ca, ht.lacroix@cbc.ca, richard_stursberg@cbc.ca, Verner.J@parl.gc.ca, Min_Verner@pch.gc.ca, Harper.S@parl.gc.ca, Belanger.M@parl.gc.ca, angusc@parl.gc.ca, liaison@cbc.ca, auditoire@radio-canada.ca, liaison@radio-canada.ca, ombudsman@cbc.ca, ombudsman@radio-canada.ca[And here are some e-mails of journalists and big newspapers. Send me more contact information of CBC officials, newspapers, journalists and I will post it!opinions@metronouvelles.com, info@metronouvelles.com,letters@globeandmail.com, mlederman@globeandmail.com, jadams@globeandmail.com, scormier@ledevoir.com,ppapineau@ledevoir.com, fdoyon@ledevoir.com,sunletters@png.canwest.com, sunopinion@png.canwest.com, tabtips@png.canwest.com, provletters@png.canwest.com, smeurice@nationalpost.com, mhiggins@nationalpost.com,sstinson@nationalpost.com, wmoriarty@png.canwest.com, rguggi@png.canwest.com,submit@theherald.canwest.com, calgaryherald@reachcanada.com, letters@thecitizen.canwest.com, psimpson@thecitizen.canwest.com, letters@thegazette.canwest.com]

***To whom it may concernI am writing to express my immense dissatisfaction and anger with your decision to dismantle the CBC National Radio Orchestra.The National Radio Orchestra is the last remaining broadcasting ensemble in North America. Its mandate to commission and perform Canadian music makes it an invaluable resource for Canadian musicians and performers. Your decision to terminate it reveals an incredible shortsightedness and disrespect to the Canadian cultural values. I am outraged that this decision was taken without any consultation with the musical and cultural community and that the players and other concerned parties were deliberately left in the dark and wouldn’t have even known about this decision beforehand hadn’t it been a leak of information.I am extremely disappointed and enraged that you have decided to terminate one of the most important Canadian musical traditions.I ask you to show responsibility and respect to Canadian culture and to reverse your decision immediately.

Sincerely,
(insert name)

Thanks guys, I really would appreciate it! And so would the 80 odd musicians who will lose their jobs next year