New Candy
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Fliky and Peter Stalin's Shitty Webcomics, (It's all about teh service!..... Go to hell)
Books I want to look at (i.e., probably a Davidian read):
Ideas/Problems: |
New Fav Song: THE CRUNGE!
GRONK! GRONK, GRONK-GRONK!!!!!~El Director
December 6 22:50Idea first. I was thinking in idly in Physics about linear combinations of e^x, wondering if there was something special about representing other functions in terms of e^x (I know it's possible since we can represent most functions in terms of Fourier series, made up of sins and coses, thus we can essentially combine e^x's). But this brings me to the more general problem, of, say we have a function and wish it to be expressed as a linear combination of polynomials (Taylor series) or e^x (Fourier Series), do these classifications have a similar structure beyond holding the same structure as the functions must have? Furthermore, what is special about the basis change between these 'vectors'?O.k., with that said, I do my nigh-weekly complaining. I have everything done. I mean, there are no more assignments do for me until the end of the semester, and it's been this way since Sunday (as MP may have been able to tell by my restlessness and constant green-ness on gmail). "Well, why don't you study some more Feppy?" And I have. I've gone through the notes, my notes, the professor's notes, the book, the review sessions, the practice exams (well, not totally, but I'm at the point where I could spend only an hour a day until my finals now and still be bored). Not only that, but I could flunk all of my finals and still get an A, and this knowledge does not necessarily motivate me correctly :-/. It's not that I haven't been a-working, just less than usual, which trips my usual guilt-sensors. Oh, and I shall say this: grad classes really aren't seeming that bad (I'm still being careful about making sure I'm not too cocky and use past tense). The stuff you learn isn't too bad, and you feel like you're on an intellectual par with the professor. I'm probably going to change my schedule, again, to make sure I have two like this semester. Although, most grad students have other responsibilities I did not have to deal with :p. But, I'll try to keep working. It's just hard when you've technically only got three classes left. I could fuck off tomorrow and Saturday, then spend a whole day for each class to study until I take the tests. And it's not like I can really study or read anything else :(. It's pretty sad that this is what I'm complaining about as well. ~Fephisto
December 4 20:44In "The Hole" (the Physics club room), is a group of very interesting people. In particular there's a guy whom we will call "Joe" that I usually get in particularly interesting debates. One the lasted for quite a few weeks was determining whether this blackboard was made of slate or not. It erases VERY well, and also has small white pecks that can't be erased. Some people thought it was a normal chalkboard, but just very, very old and natural forces caused the pock marks. We ended up doing experiments with calcite to determine the peck formation finding it was indeed due to the porousness of the board. The debate whether is was slate, though, was finished when we foudn that the board had been damaged (one of those 'positive accidents' in science), but the damage caused it to fracture in a way that is a tell-tale sign of it being slate (I know there's a technical name for it in Geology that my mother would know, but its name eludes me). He also brings up these weird....I guess they would be 'pop quizzes' that he constantly brings to me. I guess I usually fail at the English portion (pronouncing gist as 'guh-ist' instead of 'jist' and 'nouveah riche' as 'no-vey rich'). So, he brought my a Physics 'pop quiz' today that I believe I overthought...well, technically, my answers were right, it's just, if you considered what the average 221 student knows, then it wouldn't be right (the question was what would a piece of copper do if it was sitting beside a wire with current running through it. The answer is just 'nothing' (I had to remind myself that the Hall effect is only with running current), but the effect of a normal piece of iron being attracted to a magnet is caused by magnetic properties of the metal, and so I checked whether copper had any such properties, found out it was diamagnetic, and gave my answer that what the piece of copper would be the same solution for what a general diamagnet would do. I'm not sure if his reply about whether the thermal vibrations would cancel this out or not (actually, thinking about it now, that answer seems dubious), but we at least agreed that more conditions had to be placed on the problem in order for it to be effectively answered, like, "ignore diagmagnetic effects, etc.". Boy, this is a long parenthesis). He also asked me, and I'll tell you it in English, whether you could prove that if you have two 'continuous' lines going from one boudnary of a square to another, whether they'd intersect.Surprisingly, that problem turned out to be quite interesting, because initially I answered, "Intermediate Value Theorem" and left it at that. But he wanted more detail, which forced me to show my hand (the intermediate value theorem only works for a certain class of functions), and so we spent about one or two hours setting up the hypothesis. After which I had to crack out two real analysis books and an advanced calculus book and a book on topology to prove this "Uber-generalized Intermediate Value Theorem". It's only a one-page proof too :p (makes all that effort seem wasted). We were also talking about Thermal, sine he's taking it now. And we drifted into some problem about ideal gases. And I'm not sure if I brought it up or he did, but eventually the idea came up of modeling zombies and zombie infestation with an ideal gas model. For qutie a while we discussed the hypothesis needed for the model, until, in a moment of pure LOL one of us decided to write on the board, "Assume an Ideal Zombie Gas." We just left all of mathematical banter on the board for the other people. However, eventually, this took off, and people began seriously discussing zombies. For about a week we talked about the advantages and thigns humans would need to do in the case of a zombie infestation, and the resident computer programming of the club, we'll call him "Luke" or something, made a fucking zombie program. You read that right, and it is beautiful my friends, it is a beautiful two pages of C. Coincidentally, Luke became sick after that week and hasn't showed up for two weeks. We're worried about him, but the joke is starting to circulate that he has turned into a zombie. AND of course I occasionally pose my hypothesis' to Joe. The first was about the chalkboard, then another of light-fixture placement in buildings (about why engineers and architects don't try to create the most efficient placement for lighting in hallways), and drinking fountain design (they have an anti-splatter guard, so I was wondering about any Physics behind it, we eventually agreed that the current design is probably void of Physics and came about due to the market evolutionary process; but I find it hard to believe that consumers of drinking fountains would be informed over the splatter shielding of the foutains), and... WHAT I ORIGINALLY WANTED TO TALK ABOUT. We started taling about a very specific type of fluid-flow. Notice that when you drink milk or water, after you tilt the glass back to its original up-right position to place down, a small film is left from whence it once was up on the glass. However, the film never break evenly, it 'finds' other clumps and tends to these until the clumps 'break' and run down the glass. So, the discussion effectively became one of how polar forces in liquids affect surface tension, and how to efficiently calculate surface tension. Using a model of distributed polar forces, a polar field one might say, we were able to use this polar field to look at the system very well qualitatively. For example, for a rising bubble of water, the largest forces pulling down into the bubble is at the points of inflection. I have to ask how the discussion went after that, because it became very interesting. Actually, I originally wanted to do an introspective of the usual "I suck at working"-mantra. And upon reading this, I see where my work has gone :\. Although, I can't really justify leaving that kind of atmosphere, because there's no way in hell that I would come up with these kind of problems and have them be interesting by myself. Of course, if the computers in "The Office" worked, I wouldn't be having this discussion :/. O.k., I'll think about it some more later. Bye. ~Peter Stalin
November 28 10:16Win. Full of win.. I also finally stumbled upon this: A Very Nice Database.I also ended up organizing countless megabytes of files over the Break. I now have an academic folder with about 87 megabytes of shit. I will upload some stuff, including hopefully the moobie files to an external hardrive I have, and see if I can makes a gmail account for it so y'all can see it. Or, just try to find a good free file uploading site. I also worked with a Physics guy to make a pretty neat generalization of the Intermediate Value theorem, which I might post up on here, or I might just take down the blogs and essays I have here altogether and stick them on the database site if I get such a thing. Of course, this'll probably only happen after the whole Finals ordeal is over. ~El Director
November 23 1:36My pride and joy. My first game with a graphical interface. Usually, if I can program something in MUSHcode, it's a proof of concept sort of thing that I can program it in C++. The following code I'm not particularly proud of, however. Mainly because it's horribly inefficient, and there is a poitn where I should've been able to program mroe 'generally' instead of by 'brute force'; but, I've spent the past two days coding this, so gaze in wonder!@create cgol @link cgol = #24730 @set cgol = VERBOSE &ADD_ONE cgol=[add(%0,1)] &ADJ cgol=[cat(switch(setinter(%0,cat(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,33,49,65,81,97,113,129,145,161,177,193,209,225,241)),[null()],-17,[null()]),switch(setinter(%0,cat(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16)),[null()],-16,[null()]),switch(setinter(%0,cat(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,32,48,64,80,96,112,128,144,160,176,192,208,224,240,256)),[null()],-15,[null()]),switch(setinter(%0,cat(1,17,33,49,65,81,97,113,129,145,161,177,193,209,225,241)),[null()],-1,[null()]),switch(setinter(%0,cat(16,32,48,64,80,96,112,128,144,160,176,192,208,224,240,256)),[null()],1,[null()]),switch(setinter(%0,cat(1,17,33,49,65,81,97,113,129,145,161,177,193,209,225,241,256,255,254,253,252,251,250,249,248,247,246,245,244,243,242)),[null()],15,[null()]),switch(setinter(%0,cat(241,256,255,254,253,252,251,250,249,248,247,246,245,244,243,242)),[null()],16,[null()]),switch(setinter(%0,cat(16,32,48,64,80,96,112,128,144,160,176,192,208,224,240,256,255,254,253,252,251,250,249,248,247,246,245,244,243,242)),[null()],17,[null()]))] &CLEAR cgol=$clear:[iter(lnum(256),[set(me,s[add(1,##)]:0)] &COUNT cgol=[words([matchall([iter([u(cgol/adj,%0)],[switch([u(cgol/s[add(%0,##)])],0,0,x,1,0)])],1)] )] @DESCRIBE cgol=test @set cgol/DESCRIBE=no_command visual @FAILURE cgol=test @set cgol/FAILURE=no_command &NS1 cgol=0 &NS10 cgol=0 &NS100 cgol=0 &NS101 cgol=0 &NS102 cgol=0 &NS103 cgol=0 &NS104 cgol=0 &NS105 cgol=0 &NS106 cgol=0 &NS107 cgol=0 &NS108 cgol=0 &NS109 cgol=0 &NS11 cgol=0 &NS110 cgol=0 &NS111 cgol=0 &NS112 cgol=0 &NS113 cgol=0 &NS114 cgol=0 &NS115 cgol=0 &NS116 cgol=0 &NS117 cgol=0 &NS118 cgol=0 &NS119 cgol=0 &NS12 cgol=0 &NS120 cgol=0 &NS121 cgol=0 &NS122 cgol=0 &NS123 cgol=0 &NS124 cgol=0 &NS125 cgol=0 &NS126 cgol=0 &NS127 cgol=0 &NS128 cgol=0 &NS129 cgol=0 &NS13 cgol=0 &NS130 cgol=0 &NS131 cgol=0 &NS132 cgol=0 &NS133 cgol=0 &NS134 cgol=0 &NS135 cgol=0 &NS136 cgol=0 &NS137 cgol=0 &NS138 cgol=0 &NS139 cgol=0 &NS14 cgol=0 &NS140 cgol=0 &NS141 cgol=0 &NS142 cgol=0 &NS143 cgol=0 &NS144 cgol=0 &NS145 cgol=0 &NS146 cgol=0 &NS147 cgol=0 &NS148 cgol=0 &NS149 cgol=0 &NS15 cgol=0 &NS150 cgol=0 &NS151 cgol=0 &NS152 cgol=0 &NS153 cgol=0 &NS154 cgol=0 &NS155 cgol=0 &NS156 cgol=0 &NS157 cgol=0 &NS158 cgol=0 &NS159 cgol=0 &NS16 cgol=0 &NS160 cgol=0 &NS161 cgol=0 &NS162 cgol=0 &NS163 cgol=0 &NS164 cgol=0 &NS165 cgol=0 &NS166 cgol=0 &NS167 cgol=0 &NS168 cgol=0 &NS169 cgol=0 &NS17 cgol=x &NS170 cgol=0 &NS171 cgol=0 &NS172 cgol=0 &NS173 cgol=0 &NS174 cgol=0 &NS175 cgol=0 &NS176 cgol=0 &NS177 cgol=0 &NS178 cgol=0 &NS179 cgol=0 &NS18 cgol=x &NS180 cgol=0 &NS181 cgol=0 &NS182 cgol=0 &NS183 cgol=0 &NS184 cgol=0 &NS185 cgol=0 &NS186 cgol=0 &NS187 cgol=0 &NS188 cgol=0 &NS189 cgol=0 &NS19 cgol=x &NS190 cgol=0 &NS191 cgol=0 &NS192 cgol=0 &NS193 cgol=0 &NS194 cgol=0 &NS195 cgol=0 &NS196 cgol=0 &NS197 cgol=0 &NS198 cgol=0 &NS199 cgol=0 &NS2 cgol=0 &NS20 cgol=0 &NS200 cgol=0 &NS201 cgol=0 &NS202 cgol=0 &NS203 cgol=0 &NS204 cgol=0 &NS205 cgol=0 &NS206 cgol=0 &NS207 cgol=0 &NS208 cgol=0 &NS209 cgol=0 &NS21 cgol=0 &NS210 cgol=0 &NS211 cgol=0 &NS212 cgol=0 &NS213 cgol=0 &NS214 cgol=0 &NS215 cgol=0 &NS216 cgol=0 &NS217 cgol=0 &NS218 cgol=0 &NS219 cgol=0 &NS22 cgol=0 &NS220 cgol=0 &NS221 cgol=0 &NS222 cgol=0 &NS223 cgol=0 &NS224 cgol=0 &NS225 cgol=0 &NS226 cgol=0 &NS227 cgol=0 &NS228 cgol=0 &NS229 cgol=0 &NS23 cgol=0 &NS230 cgol=0 &NS231 cgol=0 &NS232 cgol=0 &NS233 cgol=0 &NS234 cgol=0 &NS235 cgol=0 &NS236 cgol=0 &NS237 cgol=0 &NS238 cgol=0 &NS239 cgol=0 &NS24 cgol=0 &NS240 cgol=0 &NS241 cgol=0 &NS242 cgol=0 &NS243 cgol=0 &NS244 cgol=0 &NS245 cgol=0 &NS246 cgol=0 &NS247 cgol=0 &NS248 cgol=0 &NS249 cgol=0 &NS25 cgol=0 &NS250 cgol=0 &NS251 cgol=0 &NS252 cgol=0 &NS253 cgol=0 &NS254 cgol=0 &NS255 cgol=0 &NS256 cgol=0 &NS26 cgol=0 &NS27 cgol=0 &NS28 cgol=0 &NS29 cgol=0 &NS3 cgol=0 &NS30 cgol=0 &NS31 cgol=0 &NS32 cgol=0 &NS33 cgol=0 &NS34 cgol=0 &NS35 cgol=0 &NS36 cgol=0 &NS37 cgol=0 &NS38 cgol=0 &NS39 cgol=0 &NS4 cgol=0 &NS40 cgol=0 &NS41 cgol=0 &NS42 cgol=0 &NS43 cgol=0 &NS44 cgol=0 &NS45 cgol=0 &NS46 cgol=0 &NS47 cgol=0 &NS48 cgol=0 &NS49 cgol=0 &NS5 cgol=0 &NS50 cgol=0 &NS51 cgol=0 &NS52 cgol=0 &NS53 cgol=0 &NS54 cgol=0 &NS55 cgol=0 &NS56 cgol=0 &NS57 cgol=0 &NS58 cgol=0 &NS59 cgol=0 &NS6 cgol=0 &NS60 cgol=0 &NS61 cgol=0 &NS62 cgol=0 &NS63 cgol=0 &NS64 cgol=0 &NS65 cgol=0 &NS66 cgol=0 &NS67 cgol=0 &NS68 cgol=0 &NS69 cgol=0 &NS7 cgol=0 &NS70 cgol=0 &NS71 cgol=0 &NS72 cgol=0 &NS73 cgol=0 &NS74 cgol=0 &NS75 cgol=0 &NS76 cgol=0 &NS77 cgol=0 &NS78 cgol=0 &NS79 cgol=0 &NS8 cgol=0 &NS80 cgol=0 &NS81 cgol=0 &NS82 cgol=0 &NS83 cgol=0 &NS84 cgol=0 &NS85 cgol=0 &NS86 cgol=0 &NS87 cgol=0 &NS88 cgol=0 &NS89 cgol=0 &NS9 cgol=0 &NS90 cgol=0 &NS91 cgol=0 &NS92 cgol=0 &NS93 cgol=0 &NS94 cgol=0 &NS95 cgol=0 &NS96 cgol=0 &NS97 cgol=0 &NS98 cgol=0 &NS99 cgol=0 @OFAILURE cgol=test @set cgol/OFAILURE=no_command @OSCENT cgol=test @set cgol/OSCENT=no_command @OSUCCESS cgol=test @set cgol/OSUCCESS=no_command @OTASTE cgol=test @set cgol/OTASTE=no_command @OTOUCH cgol=test @set cgol/OTOUCH=no_command @QUEUE cgol= @set cgol/QUEUE=no_inherit no_clone wizard &RUN cgol=$run:[iter(lnum(256),[switch([u(me/count,[add(##,1)])],<2,set(me,ns[add(##,1)]:0),>3,set(me,ns[add(##,1)]:0),3,set(me,ns[add(##,1)]:x),2,[switch(v(s[add(##,1)]),x,set(me,ns[add(##,1)]:x),0,set(me,ns[add(##,1)]:0))],set(me,ns[add(##,1)]:x))])];[emit(test)];[iter(lnum(256),[set(me,s[add(##,1)]:[v(ns[add(##,1)])])])] &RUN2 cgol=[iter(lnum(256),set(me,s[add(##,1)]:u(me/ns[add(##,1)]))] &S1 cgol=0 &S10 cgol=0 &S100 cgol=0 &S101 cgol=0 &S102 cgol=0 &S103 cgol=0 &S104 cgol=0 &S105 cgol=0 &S106 cgol=0 &S107 cgol=0 &S108 cgol=0 &S109 cgol=0 &S11 cgol=0 &S110 cgol=0 &S111 cgol=0 &S112 cgol=0 &S113 cgol=0 &S114 cgol=0 &S115 cgol=0 &S116 cgol=0 &S117 cgol=0 &S118 cgol=0 &S119 cgol=0 &S12 cgol=0 &S120 cgol=0 &S121 cgol=0 &S122 cgol=0 &S123 cgol=0 &S124 cgol=0 &S125 cgol=0 &S126 cgol=0 &S127 cgol=0 &S128 cgol=0 &S129 cgol=0 &S13 cgol=0 &S130 cgol=0 &S131 cgol=0 &S132 cgol=0 &S133 cgol=0 &S134 cgol=0 &S135 cgol=0 &S136 cgol=0 &S137 cgol=0 &S138 cgol=0 &S139 cgol=0 &S14 cgol=0 &S140 cgol=0 &S141 cgol=0 &S142 cgol=0 &S143 cgol=0 &S144 cgol=0 &S145 cgol=0 &S146 cgol=0 &S147 cgol=0 &S148 cgol=0 &S149 cgol=0 &S15 cgol=0 &S150 cgol=0 &S151 cgol=0 &S152 cgol=0 &S153 cgol=0 &S154 cgol=0 &S155 cgol=0 &S156 cgol=0 &S157 cgol=0 &S158 cgol=0 &S159 cgol=0 &S16 cgol=0 &S160 cgol=0 &S161 cgol=0 &S162 cgol=0 &S163 cgol=0 &S164 cgol=0 &S165 cgol=0 &S166 cgol=0 &S167 cgol=0 &S168 cgol=0 &S169 cgol=0 &S17 cgol=x &S170 cgol=0 &S171 cgol=0 &S172 cgol=0 &S173 cgol=0 &S174 cgol=0 &S175 cgol=0 &S176 cgol=0 &S177 cgol=0 &S178 cgol=0 &S179 cgol=0 &S18 cgol=x &S180 cgol=0 &S181 cgol=0 &S182 cgol=0 &S183 cgol=0 &S184 cgol=0 &S185 cgol=0 &S186 cgol=0 &S187 cgol=0 &S188 cgol=0 &S189 cgol=0 &S19 cgol=x &S190 cgol=0 &S191 cgol=0 &S192 cgol=0 &S193 cgol=0 &S194 cgol=0 &S195 cgol=0 &S196 cgol=0 &S197 cgol=0 &S198 cgol=0 &S199 cgol=0 &S2 cgol=0 &S20 cgol=0 &S200 cgol=0 &S201 cgol=0 &S202 cgol=0 &S203 cgol=0 &S204 cgol=0 &S205 cgol=0 &S206 cgol=0 &S207 cgol=0 &S208 cgol=0 &S209 cgol=0 &S21 cgol=0 &S210 cgol=0 &S211 cgol=0 &S212 cgol=0 &S213 cgol=0 &S214 cgol=0 &S215 cgol=0 &S216 cgol=0 &S217 cgol=0 &S218 cgol=0 &S219 cgol=0 &S22 cgol=0 &S220 cgol=0 &S221 cgol=0 &S222 cgol=0 &S223 cgol=0 &S224 cgol=0 &S225 cgol=0 &S226 cgol=0 &S227 cgol=0 &S228 cgol=0 &S229 cgol=0 &S23 cgol=0 &S230 cgol=0 &S231 cgol=0 &S232 cgol=0 &S233 cgol=0 &S234 cgol=0 &S235 cgol=0 &S236 cgol=0 &S237 cgol=0 &S238 cgol=0 &S239 cgol=0 &S24 cgol=0 &S240 cgol=0 &S241 cgol=0 &S242 cgol=0 &S243 cgol=0 &S244 cgol=0 &S245 cgol=0 &S246 cgol=0 &S247 cgol=0 &S248 cgol=0 &S249 cgol=0 &S25 cgol=0 &S250 cgol=0 &S251 cgol=0 &S252 cgol=0 &S253 cgol=0 &S254 cgol=0 &S255 cgol=0 &S256 cgol=0 &S26 cgol=0 &S27 cgol=0 &S28 cgol=0 &S29 cgol=0 &S3 cgol=0 &S30 cgol=0 &S31 cgol=0 &S32 cgol=0 &S33 cgol=0 &S34 cgol=0 &S35 cgol=0 &S36 cgol=0 &S37 cgol=0 &S38 cgol=0 &S39 cgol=0 &S4 cgol=0 &S40 cgol=0 &S41 cgol=0 &S42 cgol=0 &S43 cgol=0 &S44 cgol=0 &S45 cgol=0 &S46 cgol=0 &S47 cgol=0 &S48 cgol=0 &S49 cgol=0 &S5 cgol=0 &S50 cgol=0 &S51 cgol=0 &S52 cgol=0 &S53 cgol=0 &S54 cgol=0 &S55 cgol=0 &S56 cgol=0 &S57 cgol=0 &S58 cgol=0 &S59 cgol=0 &S6 cgol=0 &S60 cgol=0 &S61 cgol=0 &S62 cgol=0 &S63 cgol=0 &S64 cgol=0 &S65 cgol=0 &S66 cgol=0 &S67 cgol=0 &S68 cgol=0 &S69 cgol=0 &S7 cgol=0 &S70 cgol=0 &S71 cgol=0 &S72 cgol=0 &S73 cgol=0 &S74 cgol=0 &S75 cgol=0 &S76 cgol=0 &S77 cgol=0 &S78 cgol=0 &S79 cgol=0 &S8 cgol=0 &S80 cgol=0 &S81 cgol=0 &S82 cgol=0 &S83 cgol=0 &S84 cgol=0 &S85 cgol=0 &S86 cgol=0 &S87 cgol=0 &S88 cgol=0 &S89 cgol=0 &S9 cgol=0 &S90 cgol=0 &S91 cgol=0 &S92 cgol=0 &S93 cgol=0 &S94 cgol=0 &S95 cgol=0 &S96 cgol=0 &S97 cgol=0 &S98 cgol=0 &S99 cgol=0 @SCENT cgol=test @set cgol/SCENT=no_command &SCREEN cgol=$screen:[emit( [iter( lnum(16),[iter(lnum(16),[u(cgol/s[add( [itext(0)],1,mul([itext(1)],16) )] )])], ,%r)] )] &SET cgol=$set *.*:[set(me,s[add(mul(add(%0,-1),16),%1)]:[switch([u(me/s[add(mul(add(%0,-1),16),%1)])],0,x,x,0)])] @SOUND cgol=test @set cgol/SOUND=no_command @SUCCESS cgol=test @set cgol/SUCCESS=no_command @TASTE cgol=test @set cgol/TASTE=no_command &TEST cgol=test @TOUCH cgol=test @set cgol/TOUCH=no_command YAAAAY! ~El Director
November 18 15:17I referenced to my Royden about about Boolean Algebras, and they have the whole Boolean Calculus taken out in detail.Other than that, the L^1 Recursion, I'll wait out for what my Real Analysis Prof. says about the ideas I presented to her in a little one-page paper. The Markov Chains evolutionary idea is fairly simple, I can just use constant multiplication by certain matrices of an outcome to produce variant outcomes that on their own would converge, but since...bla, I can't explain this in words very well, but it's basically just normal matrix multiplication. The idea is really simple, but the concept is huge. Or something like that, who knows. Introspective? I guess. These things are mildly irritating to put up here. The only things I have to do this week, is a little project, and to finish the lab report. And, you know what, screw this. ~El Director
November 18 13:43I had a long debate with my matrix analysis prof about my idea of singular and non-singular matrix splitting. However, he was able to show me a simple counter-example of the JCF forms, and I believe the error in my proof had to deal with my similarity creation, in simpler terms, it was probably this:S^-1 J_A S V J_B V^-1 != M^-1 J_AB M In other notes, xkcd has made me fairly interested in computability theory, since it doesn't seem far off from my big-O knowledge from Number Theory; and also his talk of lisp/lojban really piques my interest due to both of their basis in predicate calculus. Also, speaking of calculus, I am wondering about if I can create a Boolean Calculus. So, I shall explore this possibility right now, also, I'll go ahead and write something up about Markov Chains since the new Linear Algebra book I got explained these fairly well. Also, together with my knowledge of matrix convergence dependence on the eigenvalues of said matrix, this allows me to say more about the Markov Chain idea. Furthermore, I've already written a little intro to the L^1{} recursion idea, so I'll see if I can post that up.... I'll get to work, and then maybe put an introspective at the end of the day. ~Peter Stalin (because of all the fucking Math in this post)
October 29 10:06Quick update today, more note-like.Idea: split matrix into nonsingular and singular parts. Another weird dream: I had the typical, "Argh, I woke up late!" dream, only I 'woke up', and noticed that it was a dream. I was frustrated enough that I decided to kill the three people responsible for the dream (one living in California, another in Virginia, and another in New Hampshire). So, to do this, I would clone myself so that every 5th clone would clone himself, and the remaining clones would go out and kill. Eventually it escalated into my attempt to destroy the world. 8|. Weird stuff.
October 25 22:38STOOPID INTROSPECTIVE.Out of all my weeks, this has got to be the one in which I've worked the least. I must admit that to some extent it does greatly disturb me. Although, I really only check 5 sites: my forum, the Austrian forum(s) (they're going to merge with the mises.org's forums), gmail, bash, and a scrollback of another site. Well, then there's the Wikipedia outings. I think it's a backfire off of an earlier plan I had, so I'll try to rectify it..... You know, here I am spouting the bads of planned economies, and the perils of thinking "We need a man with a plan!", and yet here I am trying to rigourisly plan myself :/. Ah, I remember towards the end of the Summer I used to have a Chore Wars account. The concept is pretty stupid, but for some reason it got me to read Hayek and relook at The Analects. Speaking of which, I should add Tao te Ching to THE LIST. However, usually if I use the calendar, I'm fairly good (if nothing else, because it exaggerates the straights of which I am in). But, I pretty much just have to be more strict about it, or maybe the CW, we'll see. ~Fephisto
October 22 22:12Took the GRE today (with admittedly minimal preparation), and I got enough to do O.K. through admissions, which is all I really care for.
For some reason, however, a splurge of ideas hit me: Finally, me and another Physics guy are doing an experiment with chalk, I'll tell you the results afterwards. ~Peter Stalin
October 20 20:52Homework becomes a lot more invigorating when Patton is involved :D.~The Whole Skitsophranic Crew
October 20 19:40Graaar, why is it so hard to get back into action on Saturdays?! -_-.Admittedly, staying up until.....5 or 6 a.m. on Fridays doesn't help :|. Either way, there isn't much to say other than I'm trying to look for a professor to start up a dynamic systems course so I can solve the peg problem. Also, I should probably coast through my old notes, shrink them down to 5-font and single-spaced on a page. I'm finding more and more recently that I wished I had my old notes with me because someone brings up something similar of interest. And I take the GRE in 2 days :|. Happy times. ~FEPHISTO IS JUST ONE HELL OF A GAY MONGREL! ~Stop that Peter :( ~Go to hell you Christian bigot.
October 12 10:44Gotta make this quick, seeing as I have class in, ohhh, 5 minutes.First idea: I talked w/m/prof. about The Peg Problem, seeing as this was the main reason I took that Matrices class. Again, I got the answer that it was more of a dynamical system (because I've asked this around) (which gives me the idea to take some sort of math class on dynamical systems :p). He suggested looking at the problem with the set of all possible triples of the peg board. This looks like it might yield something less dynamic/can give a possible function of the system. Second idea: I was pondering back on old class material, especially a question I uttered when I was in Classical Mechanics. There was this whole deal about the Lagrangian/Hamiltonian and how to switch a system back and forth from such a thing (which, if I could get a hold of my old Thermal notes, would be a lot better to fucking look at about the general procedure of such a transformation rather than my classical mechanix book!), but, either way, after making the transformation, there are these class of constraint functions that are called holonomic functions that appear to be directly related to Lagrangian multipliers. So, I'm thinking there's a much more deeper, easier meaning to all of this, since, after all, the systems are called LAGRANGIANS, and the constraints are called LAGRANGIAN MULTIPLIERS, it appears as if they be a set of simple eigenvector/value problems, but this never occurred to me. So, if I ever get the time in the future, I'd like to check that out. Also, we were going over all the types of convergences in Real Analysis about a week ago, and I know there is a way to let Uniform Convergence imply L^1 Convergence (UC to convergence in measure, which added with MCT I believe gives L^1 convergence), but whether they might be some other thing, to preserve the circular convergence symmetry, of directly implying UC to L^1. Alright, that's all. ~Peter Stalin (In case you haven't gotten it yet, Peter Stalin gets to sig. all the math/science stuff because Russians are good at that stuff :p)
October 8 12:17STUPID INTROSPECTIVE:I'm going back to basics on this one. I wonder about certain concessions I've made... I'm usually trying to find some way to 'work harder', because 1) Confucian stuff, and 2) To avoid guilt. I mean, sure there are the 'lofty goals' of my actions, but down more to heart that's probably it. As always, there's still the Saturday Problem. As always, I usually end up screwing off a couple of hours a day. I come here, do an introspective, try some new idea, it fails, rinse, wash, lather, and repeat. So, is it even possible, or even worthwhile to do so? I find myself recently, just allowing 2/3 hours of probably wasted time a day, and the usual minimal work of Saturday. I.e., I've been trying this for two years with no avail. And when it comes to Summers, I switch to a completely lax mode all-together, despite any agenda I may have (see right). The most useful thing would be some logical test that I could implement beforehand before putting in a worthless suggestion for a week, finding the idea is wasted, and I'm back to square one. Otherwise, despite how ingenious an idea might be, I'm really just doing trial and error each week. So, to discover this, I'm back to finding out my own inspirations to do my work day-to-day. Why don't I just sit at home all day playing Steambot Chronicles and 8bit? What really brings me from this to doing the things I have to do? Wait, just stop there. I'll just make that my test. If an idea I have has a motivational backing, then I consider it to pass the test. So, then, with this test, what can I do? Let's apply this to ideas I have currently running. First, I've been trying to calender out my days more. Furthermore, I put into certain hours what I like to call 'fuck off' times. They're periods of an hour that I hope by putting them somewhere once in a day, will cut back on my lacking otherwise in the day. Experimentally, I have no idea if this is working or not. But does it apply any motivational impetus? If anything, they would work only by increasing fear and apprehension from procrastinating, however, in a sense, the use of this as a motivation contradicts my purpose in this enterprise, and thus since it contradicts my Motivational Principle, must not be a correct tool. As for the effect of calendaring, does this provide impetus to work hard and simultaneously do so (I might as well lay down that this would be how I would define the Motivational Principle)? I know that it certainly is not a procrastinatory activity, and thus it passes this part of the test. However, it also serves as a means to which my current states lie, and thus provides a pre-apprenhesiveness motivitional factor, and thus such an activity passes the second test.
Now I leave the theory behind, and discuss practical considerations with calendaring. Things can't be perfectly planned. I have no idea how long it will take me to do homework X. So in this way, it is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction.
Now, is there a pattern between similarly working activities? So far, they seem to be based on the similar motivational factor of apprehensiveness. And all motivational factors are based on some seeming emotion. So, by determining emotional motivational causes, one can apply a sort of Inverse Motivational Principle to create a set of independent activities to further my goal. :P, too much school. ~Fephisto
October 6 23:07What I've been working on:@create lute @link lute = #24730 @ASOUND lute="Plaaaay meeeee. @set lute/ASOUND=no_command @DESCRIBE lute=You see a small, 4-stringed lute. The strings are made of wrapped thin wires of steel, while the rest of the guitar is made out of masterly crafted cherry wood. If you want to learn how to play, [ansi(g,pluck)] some strings. @set lute/DESCRIBE=no_command visual @FAILURE lute=You try to pick up the lute, but something keeps you from doing so. @set lute/FAILURE=no_command @OFAILURE lute=tries to pick up the lute, but fails. @set lute/OFAILURE=no_command @OSCENT lute=smells the lute. @set lute/OSCENT=no_command @OSUCCESS lute=picks up the lute. @set lute/OSUCCESS=no_command @OTASTE lute=tastes the lute. @set lute/OTASTE=no_command @OTOUCH lute=feels the lute. @set lute/OTOUCH=no_command &P lute=$s *:[foreach(me/plucker,%0)];[lemit([v(preload)])];[set(me,preload: )] &PLUCK lute=$pluck:[pemit(%#, Here's the run-down of how to play the lute, first type [ansi(g,s)] to show that you are indeed plucking this lute, then, there are four base strings: [ansi(r,a s d f)]. These are your four main notes. To play a step higher try moving up on the string: [ansi(r,q w e r)]. And similarly to move down: [ansi(z x c v)]. If you want to hold a note, just make sure to hold that key down. If you want to pause type [ansi(g)]. To play at a louder volume, try typing in caps. So, [ansi(r,s asdfasdfasdfasdfgggggggggggggasdfasdfqwerqwerqwerzxcvzxcvzxvc)] could be a riff that you could play. &PLUCKER lute=[set(me,preload:[v(preload)][switch(%0,z,[ansi(R,o)],a,[ansi(Rh,o)],q,[ansi(Y,o)],x,[ansi(Yh,o)],s,[ansi(G,o)],w,[ansi(Gh,o)],c,[ansi(B,o)],d,[ansi(Bh,o)],e,[ansi(M,o)],v,[ansi(Mh,o)],f,[ansi(C,o)],r,[ansi(Ch,o)],Z,[ansi(R,O)],A,[ansi(Rh,O)],Q,[ansi(Y,O)],X,[ansi(Yh,O)],S,[ansi(G,O)],W,[ansi(Gh,o)],C,[ansi(B,O)],D,[ansi(Bh,O)],E,[ansi(M,O)],V,[ansi(Mh,O)],F,[ansi(C,O)],R,[ansi(C,O)],g,%b,X)])] &PRELOAD lute= @QUEUE lute= @set lute/QUEUE=no_inherit no_clone wizard @SCENT lute=The lute smells like finish, guess it still must be rather new, or well-cared for. @set lute/SCENT=no_command @SOUND lute=The lute sits quietly. You can almost hear it.....begging to be used, to be played. @set lute/SOUND=no_command @SUCCESS lute=You pick up the lute. @set lute/SUCCESS=no_command @TASTE lute=You lick the lute. A splinter finds its way on your tongue. @set lute/TASTE=no_command @TOUCH lute=You caress the lute, and along the grain of the wood, it is very smooth and soft indeed. @set lute/TOUCH=no_command It's beautiful. ~Peter Stalin
September 22 17:12I have a small cold, it sucks :(. But, fortunately, I was able to still work with some people to get some good progress on M515.The only other thing of mention was sometime last week I ended up just falling-asleep mid-work. That was pretty weird, never collapsed from exhaustion or whatever before. I mean, compared to most people here, I get a shitton of sleep. That's all. ~Fephisto
September 10 13:24Whoa, it's been 10 days since I've last posted.Oh well, new theory, whether drinking my daily matι on Saturday can induce me to work then.
Another new theory, I've noticed the following relations:
Now, there is a way to extend from semi-algebra to algebra to sigma-algebra, so I wonder, first if it would be possibly to uniquely do the following: Or if I can't, whether there still exists a unique way to extend categories into fields in a similar process that semi-algebra are to sigma-algebras, and whether this details the extent of an uber-general measure, and thus calculus. I'm sure there's already a calculus of calculus sets, i.e., meta-calculus, but this would be a rather unique way of achieving such a thing, IMHO. Lastly, I love overcast days. I don't really get the connection between them and dreariness. The point is that: it's cool, perfect temperature, there's no blazing sun, and I don't have to squint. There, enough random babbling. ~Fephisto, El Director, and Peter Stalin
August 31 12:06I want to talk about the Theory Behind Climbing Stairs (I really want to include pictures here.....).
First, there's the typical one-step montage. A slow,methodical, and easy way of climbing steps.
So, why rails? Rails allow you to use your upper-body to thrust yourself to such a momentum that not only are higher-steps less laborious, but now, even quite possible. Furthermore, the rail aids in the stability of your flight (and yes, in some cases, I would say 'flight' would be an appropriate word).
Now, just to cover all the bases, there are the two-methodical rail-climbings with the rail. The first I like to call "The Grandpa", which is a slow one-step climb with one hand on the aid of the rail.
Now, let's cover one-handed approaches. Typically, you use your hand closest to the rail, and pull up on it to thrust yourself forward. Note that as you go into higher-step climbs, like the illustrious 4-step, the process is 2-fold: first, you must go on a lower-step process for the first few steps to gain enough momentum to lunge yourself that far, and second, the larger the step-count, the longer you have to extend your rail-arm.
Now, here is the reason why I distinguish between Inferior and Superior rails. In the lunging process, it's better to curl your arm somewhat to the side or under the rail, to get yourself better leverage to propel yourself harder.
However, there is are serious problems with the one-handed rail approach: 1) Your not utilizing as much strength as you could, and 2) After lunging, your arm is behind you, and you must bring your arm back up, which in the meantime, to salvage time, you must keep stepping, creating a 'recovery' step (holy shit, I think all those commas were grammatically justified, can someone check me on that?). Before moving on to two-handed lunging, however, let's discuss the tactics of the 'recovery step'.
Due to loss of possible thrust in the recovery step, it's typically not possible to reach as high a step-count while maintaining gracefulness as the lunging step would. The easiest way to counter this is to: Now, there are 2 tactics one can use if two-handed lunging is done (everything in this fucking discussion is coming in twos!). One is obvious, use both hand on the rail to propel yourself in the lunging phase. However, this has, AGAIN TWO, very serious disadvantages: your body will stop how far your left arm can swing around (which can be countered by reaching out far enough), and you can't use your knee as an alternative rail with your other hand on the other side of your body. Now, the other way is to stagger your lunging arms, using your right then left arms to propel yourself accordingly. However, due to the left arm being on the other side of your body, you still can't perform the under-grab on a superior rail, and you create as much work on the lunge, so a stagger-step is preferred. Now, just with this two-handed lunging and stagger-stepped climbing technique, you can fucking fly, even with doing simple 2-steps, since the thrust is so large. But, this two-handed technique allows a stagger step of 5-3 very easily, and with some difficulty, possibly a 6-3 (whoosh!). But the best conditions come in what I call "The Ultimate Rail". A rail that occurs in a stairway small enough that you can reach both rails, and bars are along both sides for easy support. You can stagger-lunge with incredible ease (although I still appreciate two-handed lunging and stagger-stepping, for some reason), reach incredible speed, and step-counts previously thought impossible due to your height. The Ultimate Rail also allows you to not dual step anymore, lunging off each step with both your feet at once, and staggering your power with lunging with your feet and lunging with your arms. The only staircase I know of here that has such a situation is the Zaffarano Building's staircase. Unfortunately, though, the number of steps before turning around is so small that you can't reach a good momentum that would allow me to even test out dual-step power-arm lunging. Probably the ultimate technique, of which your height is pretty much the limit to the achievable speed and step-count you can reach. Damn, that staircase would be fucking awesome. ~Peter Stalin
August 29 10:06Meh B-Day. Wooo!~El Director, Fephisto, Peter Stalin
August 27 12:49I usually hang out in the undergraduate room. Apparently all the juniors/seniors from last year either disappeared (I can't find /any/ of my usual buddies )8), or don't use it anymore; and the math department hasn't told the new juniors about it. As such, the room is practically all to myself, alone, very quiet, with two dedicated computers, couch, chairs (comfy chairs), and a chalkboard. All of which are in close proximity to each other. I like to think of it has my office, and I have really long office hours ^_________^. Combined with taking grad. classes, it makes me feel like a grad. student. All feeling important and such high in my ivory tower, with unnoticeable scribblings on the chalk-board beside me, a computer always on, it's great. Come save me, I'm so lonely.I added what I get the gist of being Hernando de Soto's magnum opus. I reiterate his point of the influence of defining property rights in a market economy, but I haven't directly read him, so, in order to make those arguments, I probably should, don't you think? Anyways, this weekend I was playing around with this evolutionary programming idea. Basically, by my constant input, I would be able to see if I could 'teach' this object words. It would randomly appendage collections of letters together, and when it stopped ask me for input, at which I would declare whether it was or wasn't indeed a 'word', and then if yes, it would place it as a word in its banks and frequency analyze it to come up with a higher probability of creating more words. Then, and I know there must be an easy functional way to generalize this process, it would do the same process with the words to try and to create sentences...etc.. Because of the object usage of this to create interesting works of literature (reminiscent of a million monkeys.....), I decided to try to capitalize on this on the MUSH. However, I was in "C++ programming"-mode instead of "MUSH programming"-mode, and immediately thought of the solution in terms of the "function, sets, linking arrays" paradigm, when MUSH-programming doesn't really utilize arrays, which made me sit around all day trying to manipulate lists into array-like objects, when the way to do it (suggested on chat), was a helluva lot easier. I got another suggestion about simply using a Markov chain, at which I replied I didn't know what it was, which called into question my being a math major 8(. It's not my fault every year or so not enough people sign up for graph theory 8(. But supposedly, I can just use a Markov chain for a simple evolutionary program. The other idea to put into tandem with this, is that there needs to be a lot of memory/processes to do this project, so in order to add memory processes, I can link up the learned stuff attributes in possibly some neural-network span. ~Peter Stalin
August 24 13:41I might as well declare it. I consider myself to be an anarcho-capitalist as of the moment. Whether I'm an Anarcho-capitalist in the Rothbard, Friedmanite, or more extreme sense, Kritarchist, Individualist Anarchist, or Voluntarist is still up in the air seeing as how I don't really get the really mundane differences between them (yes, the anarcho-capitalists are really subdivided as far as I can tell, mainly in approaches to anarcho-capitlism Check out my "Layman question").On the voting sense, I consider myself to being Rothbardian, given his view of the subject: "NEW BANNER: Some libertarians have recommended anti-voting activities during the 1972 election. Do you agree with this tactic? ROTHBARD: I'm interested to talk about that. This is the classical anarchist position, there is no doubt about that. The classical anarchist position is that nobody should vote, because if you vote you are participating in a state apparatus. Or if you do vote you should write in your own name, I don't think that there is anything wrong with this tactic in the sense that if there really were a nationwide movement if five million people, let's say, pledged not to vote. I think it would be very useful. On the other hand, I don't think voting is a real problem. I don't think it's immoral to vote, in contrast to the anti-voting people. Lysander Spooner, the patron saint of individualist anarchism, had a very effective attack on this idea. The thing is, if you really believe that by voting you are giving your sanction to the state, then you see you are really adopting the democratic theorist's position. You would be adopting the position of the democratic enemy, so to speak, who says that the state is really voluntary because the masses are supporting it by participating in elections. In other words, you're really the other side of the coin of supporting the policy of democracy that the public is really behind it and that it is all voluntary. And so the anti-voting people are really saying the same thing. I don't think this is true, because as Spooner said, people are being placed in a coercive position. They are surrounded by a coercive system; they are surrounded by the state. The state, however, allows you a limited choice there's no question about the fact that the choice is limited. Since you are in this coercive situation, there is no reason why you shouldn't try to make use of it if you think it will make a difference to your liberty or possessions. So by voting you can't say that this is a moral choice, a fully voluntary choice, on the part of the public. It's not a fully voluntary situation. It's a situation where you are surrounded by the whole state which you can't vote out of existence. For example, we can't vote the Presidency out of existence unfortunately, it would be great if we could but since we can't why not make use of the vote if there is a difference at all between the two people. And it is almost inevitable that there will be a difference, incidentally, because just praxeologically or in a natural law sense, every two persons or every two groups of people will be slightly different, at least. So in that case why not make use of it. I don't see that it's immoral to participate in the election provided that you go into it with your eyes open provided that you don't think that either Nixon or Muskie is the greatest libertarian since Richard Cobden! which many people, of course, talk themselves into before they go out and vote, The second part of my answer is that I don't think that voting is really the question. I really don't care about whether people vote or not. To me the important thing is, who do you support. Who do you hope will win the election? You can be a non-voter and say "I don't want to sanction the state" and not vote, but on election night who do you hope the rest of the voters, the rest of the suckers out there who are voting, who do you hope they'll elect. And it's important, because I think that there is a difference. The Presidency, unfortunately, is of extreme importance. It will be running or directing our lives greatly for four years. So, I see no reason why we shouldn't endorse, or support, or attack one candidate more than the other candidate. I really don't agree at all with the non-voting position in that sense, because the non-voter is not only saying we shouldn't vote: he is also saying that we shouldn't endorse anybody. Will Robert LeFevre, one of the spokesmen of the non-voting approach, will he deep in his heart on election night have any kind of preference at all as the votes come in. Will he cheer slightly or groan more as whoever wins? I don't see how anybody could fail to have a preference, because it will affect all of us." (found here) As far as mode of implementation I consider myself to my a Friedmanite As far as morally why I accept AC, I consider myself to be a Misean? I used to build it off of a non-ordinal subjectivism measure, but I should probably read some more suitable natural rights approach, probably by Nozick somewhere. Note that I can't say I'm a Friedmanite, because Friedman justifies AC utilitarianistically (although there's nothing wrong with that, in my opinion). I might be compatible with Rothbard's ideologies, dunno, need to read more :p. That's enough for now, you Socialists are probably clawing at your eyes right now. ~El Director
August 24 13:25Wooo, M515 is going to cover Hilbert Space, wooo! Booo, M510 isn't going to cover Tensors, booo! Yaaay, But I'll ask him about it, yaaay!^_^ I've noticed that last semester I used to be quite efficient at certain things. My ability to read and comprehend entire sections, *cough* or do entire homework assignments *cough*, whilst riding the bus being one of the most useful skills I've ever developed. I notice that it's not quite as good as it once was. Which brings me to the question of, "How much can I blame on, 'It's just the first week.'?" I mean, the skill isn't quite as up to par, but I still have it. I also have the 'denial of certiain internet resources' skill, but it is also not up to par (I still must do my daily runs of bash.org, xkcd.com, austrianforum.com, and occasionally fephisto.stumbleupon.com and the associated phsyics/math forum there). If I effectively utilize my usual Friday/Saturday schema, I think I should be alright. However, I would like to note that I should've not just read math/physics articles during the summer, but really whatever utmost peaked my interest. I got a lot more done in the reading of "Road to Serfdom", various sci-fi, and some other Von Mises material than really anything else. Also, just to keep a runnning list of interests, I'll put a little delimited list of them on the front page's left-table thingy. Because usually I'll forget ideas I've mentioned, or even things I was interested in, that if I remembered it, I probably would still be interested in it. And if anyone find a good small floppy-base Linux OS that can run on that crappy Gateway 2000 with networking capabilities, let me know. ~El Director
August 19 14:25I'm spending today doing what I should have been doing the rest of the week, had I not been trying to live as much life as I could've before the Summer ends :p. The typical, looking at syllabi, being irritated by Pooky, trying to see if I can do the first-week's assignments, etc., etc., etc. 8|.In my defense, nearly all of my books weren't ordered until sometime mid-August. One of my classes has a book that'll come in ON August 20th :p, that was after he changed books a week before classes-start. Fun. Oh well, I hope I can work harder than last year.
Love,
August 15 20:17Easiest programming language evar: Brainfuck. I looked at it quite a while ago, l33t in particular, and am interested by its turing completeness. Of course it would take forever to program stuff out of it, but technically I could keep making functions and functions upon functions of it.....I was wondering about lisp too. I know the xkcd guys really like it, but C++ really does serve my purposes.Was thinking about trying out creating symbolic manipulation programming. Make a derivative calculator or something :p. Of particular interest was this brainfuck computer that I found, about $4 cost or something like that XD. Of course, there's only so much you can do with what I saw as Von Neumann Architecture. I remember I made a 2-bit computer before, out of a clump of transistors. My first practical experience with electronics and logic gates :p. I remember I used these old radioshack books (they're good, if you want to learn anything about electronics). It had a couple of LEDs (which made the magic smoke the first time I tried, I wasn't too old, but it taught me an important lesson, "Look at the motherfucking specs of your hardware"), SR flip-flops, and various logic for adding. It was hardware dependent adding though, rather than software dependent; however, it worked by storing the data into the flip-flops, then activating a switch to release the info stored in the flip-flops to architecture to add up the corresponding value and rely the info finally in two LEDs. It had three switches, one for each flip-flop, and one to initiate. It might still be around here, I remember when I was finished that it was this massive blob of wires on a switchboard. Eh. ~Peter Stalin
August 12 22:40Alright, so I went to go see all of my extended family this weekend, the McGoverns, McKenzies, Krauses, Weisbrods, Ohls, etc.. My grandfather went around showing me off to people. Actually, he ended up staying up later than I did (me: 22:00, him: 2:00) and actually drinking, and he's more than 3 times my fucking age! Just, damn x-x.Anyways, I met two WWII guys there: Bobby Krause Sr., and Don Ohl. Bob was out with the Marines in the Pacific at Timien (sp?), and Don Ohl is known for escaping from a German POW camp. Don's story is more exciting, and he bothered to tell me all of it, so I'll tell his first. It started out when he was getting his degree, and he got a card saying he was drafted and was going to be shipped out sometime in early April. He argued to the board that he only needed until April 22nd to graduate, so he pleaded that he not be drafted until after then. They agreed, and this gave him two benefits: he became an officer, and he missed D-Day. Although, the real thing that allowed him to skip D-Day, and another example of wasteful spending by the military, was that after he finished training he was sent on maneuvers first in Colorado. You see, there was this hotshot somewhere in the Pentagon that for some godforsaken reason though that mules still had some place they could beat jeeps in, and thus had a really vital role in the military. So, he was sent to maneuver a platoon around in the Colorado mountains against a bunch of jeeps. Of course the jeeps just installed snow plows and outmaneuvered the fuck out the mule guys. So, that didn't work, well, maybe in the jungle! So, Don was sent out to California, on some guy's very large-acre place growing this thick jungle-like cane crap. And he was sent out with a bunch of machetes and men, who organized themselves to hack through the crap in pairs (and with those helpful mules!) fruitlessly. The jeeps installed another item on their front and mowed right on through. Another wasteful experiment ;P. After all of this, he was finally sent over waiting on Scotland. After the initial assault he was loaded on a troopship from Scotland to Omaha beach (the troopship carried them the whole way, damn thing should've capsized). Once there, he was a platoon leader in the third army under General Patton fighting in the hedgerows of northern France. There was one occasion where apparently he saw Patton himself. He platoon was fighting Germans across a hedgerow, the rows made a sort of dike alongside these cart-wide rows, making a self-made trench kind of a thing, when a squad-leader under him yells "Hey Don! It's ol' Blood and Guts!" and points behind them. And there was Patton, standing a ways back, watching his platoon fight, with his hands on his hips, his pearl handgun (my grandfather mentioned the whole pearl v. ivory thing here), and cavalry riding pants. Either way, about 3 weeks after D-Day, he was coming down this hedgerow leading his platoon, and came along an intersection. He went down and looked one way along the hedgerow, seeing no resistance, but didn't really look the other way, and he came back to the intersection, and then looked the other way only to see a German tank with its machine gun pointed straight at him. He didn't even think, his gun dropped and his hands shot up straight in the air, and he was captured, 3 weeks after D-Day. After he was captured (there was the initial bit he skipped, where he somehow got from being captured by that tank, to being on a POW train), he somehow got to a German POW train (NAZIS, ON A TRAIN!). And they had to take the most obscene route to somewhere (they didn't know where they were taking them, obviously), because the Allies kept destroying the damn rail-lines (that's a Crissy challenge thar). Eventually, a bunch of the POWs agreed to get up on the roof and get into formation to spell out POW on the top of the roofcars. The Germans didn't really stop them obviously, since they were doing them a favour from being shot as well. They were shipped all the way over to Poland, and spent there time in an old-style medieval dungeon. Complete with the stereotypical stonework, porticullis, small opening of daylight beyond reach, metal cup, and bread rations. This is how it was for Don until about early '45, when the Ruskies started advancing. Around then, the Germans started marching all the POWs, leaving the sick behind at the castle, to another place, this other medievalish castle, only completely made of wood. A gigantic wooden mansion. After a while, they left the sick there again, and started moving the POWs again. I think he mentioned that a lot of people did die in those marches as well, and he lost quite a bit of weight, when he got home he was around 100-110 pounds. Either way, when they were marching him away from the Polish baron's wooden palace, they made a plan to escape. The whole lot of them (about 2000), would just keep stretching and stretching out the guard-line, until they could make a break for it. At the start, the Germans had plenty of guards for the 2k of them, but the 2k of them stretch the line so much there was no way for them to do anything by then. Then when they all came to a bend in the road, they made a run for it. Ron met with a few co-conspirators, and they decided, having no idea where to go or what else to do, they would run parallel to the road back to the baron's place, and pretend that they were sick or something and they were being sent back. Well, the story is when they got back, the Germans were gone! Apparently, one of the POWs went up to a German and said, "Y'know, you've treated us really nice, so I just wanted to say that we'll try and put in a good word with the Russians for you." The German took this into consideration, told him to give him a moment, and they never saw him again. He just ran off! The other two guards there, seeing their commander ran off, did the same as well. Thus leaving this place all alone for the POWs. So, the whole group just camped out there, receiving support from the local Polish peasants. Eventually, a Russian tank rolled around, and they told him that they were American POWs. The tank commander really couldn't care less, and just asked if they knew where the Germans were. They told him what little they knew (my educated guess is that they pointed him off to where they were marching them before their escape, I should've asked), and off he went. Later on the main force of the Russian Army came, and they were transported to Odessa, where they met up with a British transport vessel in the Black Sea, then went to someplace in Egypt, and then met up in Italy to recuperate before they might've been used again, had the nuked not been dropped on Japan. And that was his story. Bob's story I know less about, I could barely hear the guy, but I didn't really want to bother him that much so I tried to bear with it. He was on the island of Timien in the Fleet Marine, or fought up there (I think he was one of the people who didn't talk about the experiences that much, so I didn't push it), don't really know. The only story he did tell, was that he was going along in a jeep on the island (because, I believe, he found out his brother was on the same island) on this newly paved road with no speed limits yet, so he was speeding. Speeding was a problem or something, so this Lieutenant decided to make an example of him, and he put him in the brig for it. The story goes that they forgot about him there, and new command was brought in before they realized they forgot their own guy or something :p. There was one other story I heard, a nurse in a hospital ship in the Mediterranean, but I didn't get much out of that *shrug*. Oh well, that's all and enough for now.
Love,
August 11 0:30Alright, I'm writing this, then going to bed.I tried to picture my ideal life. All my desires fulfilled. However, the only thing I got was this tremendous sense of guilt in this imaginary life. I don't really know why. If I imagined myself living as now, I only felt this tremendous amount of stress. If I imagined myself taking classes without grades though, that kicked ass. That's pretty much the only revelation I wanted to share. ~Fephisto
August 5 8:00I shall supply upon ye all the answers to the questions I asked the beginning of the Summer. The only one that I consider thinking further about is The Peg Problem, I really do feel there is a deeper mathematical concept here that we're missing.
The Lines Problem: To see this, think about how many pairs of lines there will be if you start with n points. As there are nC2 (n choose 2) lines, there will be (nC2)C2 pairs of lines. Each pair of lines meet in a vertex, but some of these will just be the original vertices. Indeed, at each original vertex, (n-1)C2 pairs of lines will meet. So the total number of new vertices is (nC2)C2-n((n-1)C2), which can be expressed as n(n-1)(n-2)(n-3)/8. As long as this number is positive, we'll have a new vertex. As long as n > 3, the function is a positive and strictly increasing function of n. So, assuming we aren't unluckly (i.e. assuming none of the points are colinear and that none of the lines are parallel), we'll continue to generate more vertices." But notice he's saying that the processes don't halt. I don't really agree with him here. I agree with his heuristic upper-limit analysis, but then this say that all such line problems will still converge. Eventually you'll get to (...(((((((3C2)C2)C2)C2)C2)C2)C2...)C2, which is still a finite number. I'm sure there's a more rigorous proof of this, but I'm fine with this as it stands.
The Peg Problem: My analysis of this problem so far has been an attempt at defining the operation of 'jump'. From there I come up with easy conclusion. Hole and peg limits based on the initial config./etc.. However, this way of thinking leads me into looking at static positionings of the system. Usually in mathematics we define the set, then the operation, from there we can apply a ridiculous amount of theories already created. However, when I look at the objects/operation paradigm, I'm forced to take each step individually, because the operation is not one-to-one. At most I can apply the meta-thinking of category theory that leads me nowhere! I have no way for the system to realize whether a further-state system could've really devolved from one state without trial-and-error. I bet that could be proved too!.....Note to self: That example might solve the PNP problem, look at that. But, there MUST be some more dynamic way of looking at the system! I'm looking at an approach that is: do operation, next state, do operation, next state. There must be SOMETHING MORE DYNAMIC! I DON'T KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN IT!
The Dice Problem: For m rolls of an n-sided die, you want the x^rth element of the function: (x + x^2 + ... + x^n)^m Use residue theory on the above. Ugly derivatives, but Mathematica can do that in P-time (why I didn't realize this before, I don't know XD), thus the problem itself is done in P-time. Done. ~Peter Stalin
August 1 17:30Got teh new computer. 3.6 GHz processor, 1 GB RAM, plenty of HD space. It's wonderous.Other than that, I'm finishing up my Austrian Business Cycle Theory reading. I'm contemplating on whether I should go and get De Sota's book on Private Property mitigation of negative externalities, or read "Categories for the Working Mathematician". I hear the Categories thing is a classic for Mathematicians, and I'm wondering where I'm going to specialize in. After looking further into Topology, I doubt that I'd want to specialize into Analysis, and looking further into Cryptography, I'd doubt I'd want to slide (the urge to substitute 'slide' with 'permutate' or 'transcribe' to make a weak math pun was great here) into applied, and really, Algebra doesn't seem that bad :p. I've been thinking about researching further into Category Theory for a while now..... Oh, my synthesis on what I've read so far about The Calculation Problem and ABCT from Mises. Again, Mises is much like Hayek in his long-windedness. It appears to be a common malady for Austrians (Ron Paul as well). He could repeatedly make his points in a page in what he does in 50. My gist of Economic Calculation Problem. His attack here appears to be two-fold. One is just simply saying: an economy is REALLY complicated, stupid. The other is saying the crux of the argument: value is subjective, and thus you can't calculate it. In fact, of the other random points that I've read in Socialism it appears to be a constant re-depth of this argument in different situations. Although, Mises never relies on one argument (which might explain why he writes 50 pages for every 1), I think it's a heavily repeated term throughout the book. My gist of ABCT. Cycles are caused by misinformation, of which central bank intervention is a central cause. The argument for this? I don't know how to explain it, and it might be entirely my fault since I skipped into chapter 20 instead of reading his whole intro into the theory of Catallactics. However, he appears to just be making the usual economic analysis. Of course, all in words, with no graphs; but then again subjective values keep you from making graphs; but that does not hide the fact that there still is utility. At least, I think that's his argument, I read it pretty fast 8p. I'm the one reading, I can do as I please, kthxbai. ~Peter Stalin Btw, I'm going to test out this computer's performance by playing df 8D. ~Fephisto
July 31 14:10 (a second update!)This is very interesting.....I think Mises, argued FOR utilitarianism! Of course, with the economic calculation problem, you can pretty much make anything Socialist or slightly Socialist bunk; but still, damn. Unless I'm completely reading it wrong, I really think Mises was a utilitarian?! Which is strange, considering how most libertarian philosophers argue under natural rights. Damn.~Fephisto
July 31 14:04 (harhar, 404)A story for y'all, a true one for once!Around 2 in the morning....I guess it'd be today, not last night....I woke up. So, I started out looking for water, but my house was out of it, and instead I went stumbling out to the garage's refrigerator, noting how damn bright it was tonight, to find some water. I found a frozen water bottle in the freezer, started breaking the ice, and headed back for bed. Then, in looking at that ever bright moon, I just got this urge to take this little known graytop road south. Well, I jumped in my car and started heading south. It was a really foggy night, the kind where it's in one thin sheet, kind of hovering over the same level on the ground. Thus, as I was passing up and down on the rolling hills of Iowa, I'd either have a ceiling of fog above me, or an ocean of it around me, covering the fields. And they created this other weird effect that sometimes happens when it's night, even though there's plenty of light, and there's a fog: you're essentially colorblind. It was if I was transported into some 40's movie. Eventually, I came upon this T-section, and I saw this little dragoon figurine signpost with the message EAST and a little arrow pointing left. Following my instincts once again, I turned and went east. Immediately the fog became thicker, and as I started climbing up this, what appeared to be a hill to climb up out of it, it suddenly vanished like a sea around me. And there, in front of me was a gigantic sprawling bridge. I stopped the car and pulled over to the side. There was NO ONE there. There was not a sound of an approaching car. In fact, it was one of the most silent times I had heard in my life. So, I walked onto the bridge, the Moon now on my right, shining onto a sea of fog, and there was the Des Moines River. Everywhere there were seemingly boiling pits of steam and fog looking like a dangerous miasma below. Looking away from the Moon looked like a gigantic sprawling industrial complex made from nature, and looking towards the Moon I saw these great big pillars shooting up into the sky and covering the horizon. It couldn't have been the Kate Shelley bridge, at least, last I knew it had something actually crossing between the pillars. This bridge was empty. Just a monument of huge pillars reaching into the sky across the horizon at exactly equidistant lengths with the Moon shining above. And there was no one there, and no sound of approaching anything. So, I jumped and hollered and ran over that bridge, having the time of my life; but I then heard this low, soft hum. I went back in my car to cross the bridge to investigate, and sure enough, hidden in the forest was a water treatment plant. I was all ready to go home, but something told me to tread onwards. I following the road and finally entered 'civilization', the small town of Madrid. The only moving thing I saw was a police car (which immediately causes me to think 'police state' now, for some reason 8\), but other than that the town was seemingly deserted. I decided to go ahead and follow these signs for '210' for some reason, and soon left the city, following further on backwater roads. after a while, the graytop turned into blacktop and I entered Slater and just as soon left it. I kept driving on and on, the fog going up and down along with the hills. Until, again, the fog got thicker, and I started my way up a hill where after a bit of climbing the fog suddenly vanished. Here I got out of my car and looked over the bridge. It was a train. I had seen many trains before, but this train was made of completely identical, small, enclosed cars. Usually they're only identical if they're carrying coal. But I couldn't find the engine or the end. The train apparently was infinite and never-ending. Dissapearing into the horizons. After this, I went on yet again. And the fog rolled with the hills, I passed a highway, but met no other cars or towns. My entire trip, in my opinion, was surprisingly devoid of traffic. I crossed the Skunk River, and then sometime after, after more rolling fog, the fog got thicker. my elevation raised as I climbed out of it, and before me was a bridge over what appeared to be a great big swamp covering the whole landscape. I got out, but instead of looking towards that bright Moon as I had been when I got out every time that night, I looked to where it was pointing over the swamp. And there, in the fog, was a great big luminiscient arc. The fog and the darkness had either made me colorblind, or obscured its colors; but there was no doubt about it. This was a lunar rainbow. I doubt if many people had seen such a thing in their entire lives. So, I stood in awe of it. It was not gigantic, but it was not small either, and appeared very whitish (the wikipedia article says if I had taken a picture, I would've seen the colors )8, should've brought a camera). It was the most amazing thing I ever saw. And then I looked towards the Moon, and the corona created by its brightness, and this small creek running through this swamp and the sea of fog, and then back again to the lunar rainbow. After a while, I finally decided to head back home. It was getting to be around 3:30 now. However, I swear the moment I closed my door, the rainbow vanished. I looked frantically for its remains, but it had gone without my noticing. As I traveled back along the roads I visited the places I had visited that night. The infinitely long train had completely vanished when I crossed back over that bridge. I would've thought (because it was not too far from the swamp), that I'd hear it, or that I wasn't gone too long as to not see some train so long just completely vanish. But it too was gone. And then I trailed back across Slater, and then Madrid. Each town now slowly waking up. And then I reached the first bridge in my journey, and it's fog was completely gone. But the colorblindness remained. I don't know why, but I saw this strange cluster of hand-sized stones. So, feeling aesthetic, I picked the one in the middle and headed towards the middle of the bridge, and tried to toss it into the Moon's reflection on the river. It missed, and after getting lost a bit on the way back, I went back home and slept a bit. And that is my tale, I got back home ~5. ~El Director
July 30 20:00Lucca's been driving me crazy, 'raw'-ing for the better part of 3 hours, straight, no stop. In the end, Pooky was well rewarded for his heroic actions ^_^.I've been on-and-off just reading various things, probably because I realize that this'll be the last time I'll be able to do this in a long while 8(, mostly The Road to Serfdom by Hayek. But I've also skimmed over this applied functional algebra book, and Soocialism by Von Mises (mainly all the counters set up for the ethical arguments for Socialism, I believe Human Action describes the ethicality (word?) of Capitalism). So, here's what I'll consider to be my book report of Hayek's TRTS: It's more or less summed up in here (warning, not an automatic open-in-new-window link). Of course, TRTS goes into a lot more detail than this, and usually provides actual arguments, some very good. Before I summarize his arguments, would I suggest it to read? Hell. No. There are five types of English writing in my mind, and in order of hardest to easiest to read: Old Shakespearish/Adam-Smithish (where the f's are actually s's), Adam Smithish, Shakespearish, BBC, and Adam Douglass. This book is in Adam Smithish tone, you know the type, where the Brits REALLY loved their prepositions! The kind upon which there should be a preponderance of the not so daintfully used words and thereupon an abundance of a montage of the ridiculous numerous number of redundancies in the sentences and of the prespositions in of the utmost character upon wherewhich there should be of a great lack-a-dasical amusement of this therefore confusion and amusement there-in of ... which .... where .... the .......... sphincter. My point is that each chapter could have really been reduced to a single page each and not have lost any major content and have become a lot less confusing...therein.
My summary is as follows: And now afterthoughts. It would overjoy me to return back the math/physics realm pretty soon probably. By the time I finish reading the Austrian Business Cycle stuff fully in Human Action and the critique of Socialist ethics in Socialism, I seriously doubt that I'll continue to want to read this fucking long-ass and redundant shit. God, Hayek repeated himself so many times and wrote in the equivalent level that I do. His message was important, but the writing.....sucked. To leave y'all with one more thing, I gotta tell this awesome dream I had (which pretty much told me I was playing too much OPIGs 8p). I was in Alemania (yup, the in-game one XD), only it was modern-times. I was a police detective working either with or under Bill Cosby. Yeah, that's right, I was working with Bill Cosby (cue the Cosby Bebop). And we were talking about protecting this artifact in this museum in Panama (yup, still in-game OPIGs Panama), so we took this plane over to David in Panama. However, the plane ride was.....the plane was filled with these bearded ASCII smiley faces (yup, Dwarf Fortress), and I had to sneak past them Metal Gear Solid style. It was eagle's eye view, the plane was one helluva long fuseloge (sp?), and it was in very clear-cut Metal Gear Solid-like graphics (btw, can you guys guess what other game I've been playing lately? XD). After sneaking past them (barely), I arrived in Panama City (apparently it changed names from David, I'm pretty sure I was in a city previouisly called David) in front of this very modern-looking building (Let me get a picture next update) that was obviously the museum. Bill Cosby told me on the way over that that was a simulation, and that obviously we had to reposition the dwarven defenses to protect the jewel-encrusted egg of Yondor (and what other game did I play this Summer?). The the dream ended, well, at least I think it did, because leading into a flock of lesbians doesn't make sense, OR IS IT THE BEXT IDEA FOR A VIDEOGAME EVER? Joking about the lesbians part, sorry. ~El Director
July 26 21:00Re-read the Analects, not sure what I got out of it though....but I did notice more of the oft-repeated themes. Meh. Off to read Topology book I think?~Fephisto/Peter Stalin
July 25 17:28I've been working on that rocket problem lately.Basically, stuff a railgun, point it at the ground, and let it go. I think it's a probable rocket design, as the length of radius of the wires can be adjusted to fit any thrust or specific impulse requirements needed. Well, really a 2 meter long, and half a millimeter diameter radius would probably do, but eh. I can't get the specifics because (and I really hate kind of quitting like this), I need Mathematica to do the calculations a lot more efficiently, but here are the probable spec.s:
Thrust and specific impulse are variable. With Mathematica I could greatly increase the efficiency of the theoretical design. In the current design I could probably greatly elongate the structure, allowing me to use much less fuel, but I'm staving off from such a calculation becaues the amount to elongate is dependant on my cooling processes, which heat loss can be minized via Mathematica. I actually feel quite embarrassed by this report, because the mathematics were more or less basic algebra/little bit of calculus. But I kept making dumb-ass mistakes and getting confused. At least it's good practice. But really, I feel really dumb for not coming to these pretty simplistic conclusions a lot soooner. Other plans includes: read up on Topology so I can read this book by Louis de Branges so I could send an e-mail asking to work under him, and to re-read the Analects. As another thing to talk about, I really like watching kid's shows. The PBS kids shows especially. Last Summer I would actually wwake up at 10 just so I could watch Sonwa, this story about this Chinese palace cat. The stories were really cute, stupid, but cute. Now it's Cyberchase, just because it's semi-Doctor Who-ish. It's also fun to point out all the times they advocate group-think. One of my favourite shows when I was a kid was Garfield, and they'd have these "Buddy-Buddy Bears" come through to mock other kids shows. I guess it made me feel empowered when Garfield mocked these other shows. That and Garfield would regularly break the fourth wall. I also liked Pee-Wee Herman when I was a kid, according to my mother (who watched it with me), probably for much the same reasons. Actually, my parents teased me on that I didn't watch Barney. Actually, my parents just plain teased me a lot. If I started complaining for something, instead of chewing me out at the cereal aisle (weak pun), they would proceed to mock and laugh at me. They made fun of me hating Barney a lot too. Coming up to me out of nowhere and starting to sing the Barney song, at which I would start yelling at them to shut up, and they would point and laugh at me. Which probably explains my ability to keep my long hair. Speaking of which, I have no idea why I have long hair, and there isn't a whole lot of attachment between myself and it. The only reason I wouldn't cut it would be because everyone would make a huge-ass fuss out of it and I'd have to explain to every @#$% passerby why I cut my hair. It's too much of a hassle. That, and my mother would freak. I remember somebody offering to pay me $100 to cut my hair, which I was gladly ready to accept, and then the cheap bastards started to see that I wasn't kidding and tried lowering the price on me. I tried to keep them at their original investment of $100, and, well, as you can see, the deal failed 8(. Nowadays I'm not sure if I would accept $100, unless you were able to clear out the clout I would get from my parents, then I'd probably do it for $50. I PUT MONETARY VALUES ON MY SENTIMENTAL BELONGINGS! 8D, I'LL SELL MY SISTER FOR $350! That's probably the best possible way I could end this rant. ~Fephisto
July 12 20:09Roar, Dwarf Fortress. My only solitude that keeps me from playing it is remembering my cycle with nearly every single simulation game. They're all uber-deterministic, so whenever I play a simulation game, I start out the same way, finding some formulaic way to create the optimum whatever, and then once you've done it.....that's it. That's how it went with SimCity, RoN, LinCity, Civilization, FreeCiv, etc.. However, even though I rationalize like so, it's still hard to convince myself not to try and play it >_<. Dammit.~Fephisto After more chugging through Heinlein, I'm bored again. I don't know if it's just me or not. Because, the story isn't that bad, he's intriguing as hell, but...yeah, nothing. So, page 300 and to hell with it 8p. It's weird, because I would consider Stranger in a Strange Land to be a better book than the Odyssey trilogy, but I think falling asleep only an hour after you start reading it...for the past three days you've been trying to read it....is kind of a sign 8|. Sorry Heinlein (maybe the 160,000 word version is better?). ~El Director I was thinking about any problem that I'd be willing to work on, and the only one that I think I'd appreciate toying with my own feeble plans to go to the Moon. So, why not? Well, it's that or check out that computer at Mod Pi's house for WWFWG So Yggdrasil can be a proud creature once again. Or look at random math books. 8p. So, planning the thing in stages, not being incredibly original here:
-Leaving Earth Good Luck me, 8p. ~Peter Stalin
July 6 21:10Usually when I talk things out here, I get some ideas.So, I'm trying to solve that, well, it should be a simple statistics problem, here, I copy-her down: Maybe the solution easy and it's evading me, I don't know. Here's the story: I'm creating a program that determines the expected damage of OPIGs characters (OPIG=D&Dish) in a game I'm hosting so my players can determine whether or not they want to dual-wield or not. In the process of making such a program, I found that a function that would spit out the probability given the dice type and number of dice would be a very nice function to have that would simplify some of my programming. So, I set out to find such a function, but came upon a problem that seems vaguely combinatoric, but resists to be nPr'ed or nCr'ed. For 1 dice and 2 dice the probability cases are fairly simple. Let's use a d3 to simplify calculations:
for 1d3:
For 2d3: Al 1 die are uniform probabilities, and all 2 die climb up and then down. But what about 3, 4, or x? What's the pattern in these?
3d3 It's possible to create an algorithm for a computer to do this, and by symmetry you can always cut the work in half, but such an algorithm is highly inefficient, and isn't telling us what's going on, it doesn't explain this weird combinatoric problem I'm seeing, which I have been alluding too and will explain currently: Let's take the 3d3 case, when finding out the possible die throws to get a 5 we have the possible combinations:
113 And then we have all the permutations of those two, which is the number of dice, 3 for each. So, we have what seems to be a bunch of permutations in a combination; but how do we determine, without brute force, the number of combinations? That, and all possible combinations may not have 3 permutations, complicating the matter, take the possibilities for 6 on 3d3:
123 The first has 6 permuatations, and the second only one, further complicating the matter. I can go ahead and complete the program since all the die-rolls in the OPIGs game do not go more than 2; but the lack of easy generalization troubles me at the moment. O.K., with that said, I've been talking with a guy by the name of Morosoph on a math forum about this, and he suggested an isomorphism to a polynomial group (which, note for the future: polynomials are usually good thing to isomorph too when you have a difficult problem). Basically, this means that the problem of ndm is the same as looking at (x + x^2 + x^3 + .. + x^m )^n, and to determine the chance of summing up an r is the same as the coefficient of the x^r polynomial /m^n. Now, I can solve this as it is with simple residue theory: take r derivatives, and, well, read the residue theory wikibook and you'll see what I'm talking about (it's not that long and the first 3 chapters require only basic calculus, go on, read it). However, such an algorithm, because of the derivatives, is still not a P-time algorithm (and thus would be a really hard thing to program up), so it's not good yet. Now, here's my simplification so far: I know that polynomials are usually a good linear group, so maybe I can isomorph to a linear group of...ohhh...I dunno? Matrices? 8p (the epitomy of linear groups!). Now, using that isomorphism, I was able to determine that it's basically (for n=2), counting up the diagonals of a matrix, or for n=3, counting up these diagonal lattice points. for n in general I'd need to count up hyper-lattice points in n-space. The higher-dimension generalization should be simple if all goes well, but I'm having trying devising a simple algorithm to count the diagonal lattice points. I mean, I can't just take an area! Graraarrraaaaaaaar. Wikipedia, tell me more of lattice points..... ~Peter Stalin
July 5 22:52Well, I've finished 3001: The Final Odyssey, and I must take back the earlier comment on 'characters'. The more obvious thing the series was lacking was just general conflict.I probably answered the importance of character development earlier because of the GENIUS of Rumiko Takahishi. But, anyways, my final thoughts of the 'trilogy' was that the ending was good. But it was almost Tom Jones in its nature. 2061 was minimal to the plot (if you should consider it as a contiguous plot, which the author does not, so, take that as you will 8|), and there were only three sources of conflict. The obvious one in 2001 (looking back, 2001 wasn't that bad, I really want to see that movie now). 2010 had an interesting 1 page of conflict. However, the final ending in 3001 was interesting, and its connection to the Foundation trilogy and thus Asimov multiverse (by mentioning Susan Calvin! 8D) somewhat makes up for it. So, I consider Clarke above the average SF, but among the lower end of the spectacular SF authors. Sorry Clarke, no harsh feelings, but at least I do thank you for the fantastic ideas and voyages you have given me.
Thanks and Love,
July 5 17:49Ha! It's been quite a few days since I've finished Odyssey Two! I feel quite embarrassed, since I ended up bumrushing the last 200(I don't know really, my reading style is odd. I prefer to not use bookmarks, because I figure if I can't remember where I was exactly at last time, then it would probably do me good to start where I last remembered) pages of 2061: Odyssey Three just yesterday and am halfway through 3001: Final Odyssey right now.It's weird though, I'm fairly fuzzy on the details of 2061 right now, even though I practically just finished reading it. The book was fairly reminiscent of 2001, the whole thing was a gigantic feel for exploration....in fact, I really don't think there was any /real/ conflict that occurred in the entire book! It was just good floaty-exploration. That might be a good reason for its ease of forgetfulness, actually, so far it hasn't played any sort of a pivotal role in 3001. This is probably the other reason I forgot so much of it, since 3001 deals MUCH more with the plot of 2001 and to a much more minimal extent 2010, so it has made me recall those past events more than 2061. The only thing of ANY reasonable importance in 2061 was in the last two pages. I hope that it will lead to a Third Foundation/Time Storm like ending, but maybe I'm giving Clarke too much credit. Unless something REALLY special happens, I really won't consider Clarke an extraordinary SF writer. I really should revisit Time Storm, and why I liked it so much (because my precious memory fades fast!). I think it was because of the civilization building that went on.....much akin to Vanishing Point, which isn't that bad a book either..... I remember the ending, somewhat, of the Foundation trilogy, and I must say it was something that I really particularly enjoyed (what was the name of that robot with the ridiculously long name?). I really didn't think Asimov could beat The Mule. God, that character kicked ass, my all-time favorite SF character has got to be him. Number 2 is Leto III, and Number 3, for some reason only known to the mysterious workings of my inner psyche, Mallow. Next I finish up the last half of Stranger in a Strange Land (with its INSANE political intrigue that I will talk about when I finish it, and which 3001 has been like a lot so far (well, not in the political intrigue department)! More SF later. ~Fephisto I've been working on that dice problem with someone on the forums (have I already discussed this?). We've made an isomorphims between it and polynomials that appears to simplify the problem somewhat (at least make the problem a bit more solvable), but we're still working on a explicit algorithm. ~Peter Stalin
June 30 4:20Finished 2010: odyssey two, I'm still stuck on page 200-300 (somewhere in there) on Stranger in a Strange Land since my checkout deadline for the Odyssey trilogy is limited (I want to call it quadrology, but I respect the author's humour by calling it a trilogy).~page 250 I was thinking this to be an ordinary sci-fi book. Akin to Clarke's Imperial Earth or Asimov's Nightfall or Vanishing Point, etc., etc.. And after seeing the climax I realize what it is that really distinguishes (IMO) good sci-fi from O.K. sci-fi. Although, quite possibly not, because sci-fi is REALLY in it's element when it's made as short stories, but for the purposes of argument, I shall distinguish between Short Story Sci-fi and Normal Sci-fi (as if they are different genres, which, is probably not far from the truth! Speaking of which, did Herbert write any short stories? because those MUST kick ass). But, as for the defining moment that makes sci-fi good, is when it stops talking about some utopian Physics concept or idea, and there enters a character element. So many times is there sci-fi with great ideas sans plot or meaning. As if I'm reading a scientific journal. This might be why I'm separating Short Story SF from Normal SF. SSSF seems much more platable, and nearly expected in SSSF to only display the cold, hard, nice utopian ideas the author wants to talk about. In NSF it seems to linger. It seems I've come to appreciate character development more and more in stories that I've read as I've gotten (every so slightly) older (if you consider 3 years "getting older"). The thoughts that that brings me to talk about (what exactly does 'that that' mean in comparison to just 'that' anyways?) I might talk about some other time, since it reminds me of the great Free-will v. Determinism v. Semi-Determinism debate I had with myself a while back (which I, incidentally, never talked about, it was a cool intra-debate). Anyways, I'm really impressed with stories in which you know the characters so well, their characters are so well-made/stubborn, that the plot makes itself (like making the fourth doctor the master, the plot makes itself!). Well, you know who Hal is. The first time Hal went for Fux was of course in 2001, but for some reason I was rather dispassionate about it. It may be because I already knew what was going to occur (because I have overheard the story of 2001 many a time), but I like to think that it was because Clarke was constantly talking about the many quirks of the ship Discovery that he didn't develop the (only 3!) characters so that I could really appreciate what was occuring. I remember a similar occurance when I read his Imperial Earth. Now, Clarke had spent ~250 pages not describing so much the systems and the ship and geopolitics in place (2001 did that for him!), but the months of the people on Leoniv, so that when disaster time comes about, I really give a damn. And dammit, Hal was so much more fucked up, that fucker is SCARY. So, at least there was 5 pages of climax and then 25 pages of resolution that I enjoyed. And it's quite nicely set up for a sequel, with many possible occurances available. Although, it also leaves Clarke a chance to ascend back in non-character-dom; but we'll see, usually people's skills increase as they continue them, and 2061 will probably kick ass.
Dammit, I just gave a book report x-x.
I was thinking about where to rank this on both my "List o' Good NSF" and my "List o' Good Books". But, due to the kicker Clarke recently sent me page 250, I will hold out until then. This will probably be Clarke's magnum opus in my eyes. Akin to Foundation being Asimov's NSF magnum opus in my eyes. Actually, on the topic of Asmimov's magnum opus, he (I accidently started capitalizing He in this paragraph for some reason >_> <_<) wrote a REALLY good SSSF about, well, pretty much the circular history of our universe. The title evades me. But I really want to call that, albeit much shorter than the Foundation trilogy, to be his magnum opus. Of course, my titles for magnum opus's aren't set in stone, because I doubt I'd go around reading every Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov or Robert A. Heinlein or even Frank Herbert book.
Oh, as another note, there was a small reference in the book (playing tribute to the people who actually read the forward) talking about how one of the characters (the inventor of HAL) got pissed off about how everyone asked him if he purposefully made it so each letter was one away from IBM.
Oh, something else I'm currently working on. I can't remember if this was a comment or a suggestion from MP, but I'm trying to make a program that, if you give it you total to-hit and damage modifier bonuses, it will calculate your expected damage. Just a way to help you guys realize how your character is/decide if you want to dual-wield. But, in working on the problem I came across an interesting sub-problem. I'm trying to make a program, and before that, a function, that given the number of dice, dice-type, and beef modifier, give the expected value of those dice rolls. Beef modifier and dice-types are easy enough to account for in the function and thus program. However, the number of dice does not appear to be so easy. I'm sure the problem must have been worked out mathematically elsewhere, and I feel embarrassed that it should turn out so hard. Should it? I mean, I could attempt the fairly uncreative way: count up the permutations. But such a method is so inefficient. There MUST be a better way to calculate such a thing. If I'm still working on this.....let's make the deadline Monday (since I'm hoping to finish the Odyssey trilogy by Sunday) (which pushes OPIGs that much further), then I'm going to the Ames library to search the journals for this..... Argh, I should be looking at the statistics journals FIRST for such a menial problem. Someone surely must've done this, I bet it's a book-problem by now. I don't know why such a supposedly menial solution evades me. My Stat class relied WAY too heavily on combinatorical answers. Free will v. Determinism v. Semi-Determinism and Ethical Theories Abound will come another day I guess. ~Fephisto
June 25 1:48I battle this gigantic fly today. I'm serious, this thing was fucking HUGE! His body was probably as big as my pinky or ring top finger.For a few hours it was him basically zooming by and I'd pathetically flash my hands wildly at him and he run away after a while laughing. Or he'd bring by one of his 3 fly friends as decoys or to distract me. I didn't really mind until around the third hour, when I was all like, "Alright, this is war bitch." First was his little friends that were hanging out in the computer room with me. Got a source of light, shined it on the window from outside, then came inside, and shut the window on a couple of them. I then tried rashly just swatting the Big Fly with my hands, but flies are really fast and my reaction time sucks 8(. So, I went ahead and looked for a flyswatter. I then went on the search for the Beast, and eventually went ahead and left the only light on in the computer room. I knew he was in the area because when he flew it was loud, but he did not come into my trap. Not your ordinary "ZOMG A LIGHT!" fly. So, I came into the kitchen to do battle with Him. I really want to say it was uber-epic and I ended up breaking my flyswatter in the process but alas 8(. First I just whiffed the swatter around the kitchen, hoping for the air pattern to lull him out. Then I heard a slight buzz, and he was above me sitting on the ceiling. Instinctively I swatted at him, but he easily dodged it and went straight at my face, which I isntinctively dodged. He then began to fly in circles pretty damn fast. I wanted to keep up with him, but it didn't help that I was in the center of the room, so I thought that if I went to a doorway I'd have scope of the whole room, find him, then go after and attack Him again. However, the moment I ran to the doorway, he flew out of the room, and settled somewhere else in one of the dark areas of the house. I had lost Him... So, I made my way back to the computer room, but along the way I must've disturbed Him, and He began flying arond once again, but this was one of the dark rooms I left unlit between the kitchen and the computer room, so I could only hear Him enter what sounded like the computer room, and this being my best chance, I entered after Him in close pursuit. By the time I entered it was quiet yet again. There was no sign of Him anyway, and for some reason my adrenalin started pumping because of this simple fly. By random chance (rolled a 12 on my spot-look) I saw him across the room on the wall. So, I carefully entered the room from another direction and sneaked up on the Fly. And lo, I rose my swatter and brought it down upon Him, and He was slain, and their was goodness amongst the kingdom.
On other insect related news, I think I found the spider that had that ridiculously large battle with the ant. He's up on the wall now, just sitting there, chilling..... Oh, and you can bet that you're going to see that Fly and the Spider in the OPIGs game.
My mother is also getting ridiculously irritating about asking or trying to find out if I have a girlfriend (I don't), and she is convinced I've done it (I haven't). Normally I don't really care, and thus don't talk about it here; but now she thinks I'm gay because of lack of evidence to show that I have a girlfriend. I'm not even 20, give it a break. ~Fephisto
June 16 13:42Introspective later. Does anyone know why my typing keeps lagging? Its only happened so far on the new Firefox 2.0 stuff, hopefully it'll be fixed by 3.0.....I was reflecting yet again on the similarities between mathematicians and programmers. From what I have seen, a lot of the problems are very similar. Start with a base set of axioms/functions and build a theorem/program from there. The steps of analytical thinking are incredibly similar, and I find when I make my shitty programs I feel as if I'm thinking the exact same way as if I'm writing up a proof. The people are very similar too, there's a 'romance' of the programmer which I've talked of before, and which holds almost a troubadour-esque like quality in its telling that is much akin to the coffee to theorem mathematician machines today. Well, it seems as if I already talked about this, so never mind. I occasionally wonder if the work of mathematicians will be taken over by computers. I mean, it's completely possible, since the presentation of a proof is very mechanical: apply theorem 3.41, then so-and-so, etc.. To know whether it is possible, however, I guess is dependant on whether mathematicians use a countable number of problem-solving tools. For example, a computer /might/ be able to construct group theory; but group theory isn't /exactly/ made by a series of applications of theorems from set theory. Rather, they're sets that fit the axioms of group theory. Extending this idea, I would for the moment assume that there are an uncountable number of 'axioms' that could be applied to a collection of sets to make an uncountable number of theories. Ah, I digress, I can't say whether computers can or can't think in countable or uncountably many terms. However, the point is that it's not only important to create a theorem, but the theorem itself has to be in an important area. A computer can create millions, trillions of useless theorems, whether they are useful is up to the mathematical community. For this reason, it might be entirely plausible: make a computer that will on the one hand randomly apply theorems and logic processes to create new theorems in a theory, and for the moment allow new theories to be developed by mathematicians, and finally just apply an evolutionary algorithm. A tick mark for every 'useful' theorem, and hope that it will find theorems of the calibur mathematicians are looking for. I believe there is a computer already doing this, but eh. A theory-building computer can be built much the same way. Oh, right, introspective. I was wondering whether my lack of recent progress is really true or not. When I'm in school, I know clear-cut which activities are non-guilt inspiring. If I spend the day mostly doing the crap work I have, I'm completely free of guilt, and I'm positively reinforced. However, it's not the same when I don't have this work. Maybe it has gotten to the point where this certain kind of work has achieved a nigh holy point that is untennable for any other kinds of work. Even if I do something, program some shit or whatever, and spend one hour playing some game or another, the whole day is negatively feedbacked and unintentionally in this example, programming is in the same boat as gaming. So, as usual, I call for another shitty experiment....I'll maybe report afer I do it, either way, I have to go buy a Father's day present now. ~Fephisto
June 11 22:22Still working on the decryption program. I basically had to relearn some tricks I apparently already learned in another program a while back, and I'm now able to download data into a buffer stream to analyze. I'm thinking, once I get past this level of cryptanalysis (i.e., basic frequency analysis), I can set off to make this program decrypt other known cyphers. I like this project so far. Keeps my math and programming knowledge in check.Other than that, I've been reading stuff from "The Big Three" of sci-fi: Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert (B.?) Heinlein. I already talked about how I read a bit of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and how I thought that sucked (but it was only because of the certain type of dialogue in the book (they typed (roar, 'talked', I've been on the Internets too long) like cavemen), not because of the details themselves persay). I'm reading another Arthur C. Clarke book, the fabled "2001: A Space Odyssey", I might read the whole trilogy (a 4-part trilogy, XD) because I like it so far. The main reason I like Sci-fi is because it's an optimistic (usually) view of the future. They come up with these extravagent gizmos that are just really cool. I read sci-fi mostly for the gizmos, mental or physical (spice in Dune, Gestalt in Time Storm). And Clarke brings to life things that can pretty much be done with today's tech.. I also like when sci-fi authors (well, obviously) obey Physics, i.e., I believe they call them "hard sci-fi" authors. Its been so long since I've been able to read sci-fi, and I'm pretty content with just lazing around reading it, because technically my minds is still working (because I have to check the authors on whether they got their facts right (when Arthur says that the ship Discovery is rotating at x times per minute, and it has a diameter of x meters, and is at Moon-like gravity, I have to check him on it XD)). Oh, right, the closet thing failed, because I forgot the obvious thing: I need to leave for food and bathroom. 8p, go figure, however, I figure the enw programs and sci-fi will be good. If I don't keep meeting people! Dammit! It's like, the moment people figured out that I'm out of school for a little bit, they all want to fucking meet me! I can't have a full week by myself anymore! That is where the majority of my time has gone lately. Oh, I figured out how to subside the NetHack addiction at least. I made it so I only do one level a day, and now I'm able to shuffle it off to my Friday-routine. Out of all my tricks, the one that works the best is to do only a little of it a day, and then to shuffle it off to Friday. I really should just depend solely on that trick come to think of it. Maybe the rest of the Summer will go well now.....well, wish me luck at least. Oh, I apologize for leaving the thing up on the forums, I didn't get caught from anyone else 8p, but I just realized that yeah, MP was right. ~Fephisto
June 10 2:34 (heh heh)I found something to do! Inspired by this. I shall build a frequency analyzer.~Peter Stalin
June 8 1:45Found a copy of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, its been so long since I've been able to read for the hell of it/found something somewhat interesting. Although, I don't really like the book, only because the main character has horribly broken English and the entire book is written from his point of view. I get quite irritated with the constant caveman-esque speech, that, and I'm still waiting for something to.....happen....Wait, why the fuck am I reading it then?! Fuck it, so I only get through a hundred pages, it sucked anyways >8|. I hate meeting people so many times a week, it's also quite irritating. I've gotten used and accustomed to being alone to do my thing. I know it's quite selfish considering Gman is on leave for only so long.....but I really consider limited human contact to be a luxury, once or twice a month. I've been trying to reconstruct the Friday-only lifestyle again lately. ~Fephisto
June 4 1:52I found the gay detective thing.also, I might as well mention some other funny moments in shows I've seen (seeing as how the above is still loading, dial-up gives nigh-infinite patience it seems, or frustration...one of the two). The best Azumanga Daioh scene has to be where one of the teachers intentionally gets drunk (because if the other teacher got drunk, it'd be worse), and ends up telling this trot of high school girls about "it" and everything about "it", how "it" works, what to do about "it", etc.. Funniest shit evar. It's still loading, obviously, but at least I got a few more seconds now! ~El Director
June 4 0:32I got into another Wikipedia purge, which lead me to seeing if my Plan 9 edits were still there (they are, but somebody nicely modified the caption's saying a little), which lead to a hunt for the plot's behind the world's worst movies, and eventually coming back upon the question of the best animes ever.Personally, it is, and quite possibly may always be FLCL (pirated in some VHS tapes hidden amongst my scattered belongings). But, what is the most /classic/ anime? I would definitely label Akira as such, the animation is superb, and it really amazes me what they could do back in the pre-digital Golden Age of Anime. It brings me pride to say that I own it, and that I got it for $1 ;D. Space Battleship Yamato is really considered the climax, I believe. I really want to see it, from what I've heard it's Doctor Who anime-ized only the TARDIS is a fucking flying batleship and there's not a main character. Then there's all of Rumiko Takahishi's works: Maison Ikkoku (reknown for possibly the BEST ending ever, which I have yet to see 8(, and I only own a scattered collection of tapes...I wonder if it's on YouTube?), Ranma 1/2, Inuyasha. You can see and notice the animation techniques slowly and progressively get better. But are they old enough to be considered /classics/? I know Maison Ikkoku might... I also must applaud Rumiko for her /very/ character driven stories. Ryoga has to have the best and most used personal flaw ever. And the way how every action is over-exaggerated. Neon Genesis Evangelion, for /really/ bringing in the mecha genre. Excel Saga for Monty Pythonesque humour. Kanon for following in the footsteps of Maison Ikkoku and being one of the many works of the harem genre. I take that back, obviously Gundam is the reigning classic when in comes to mecha genre....well, I don't really know. I'd like to hear an argument between some otaku between Neon Genesis Evangelion and Gundam. Speaking of which, I have an episode of Gundam in my room somewhere which I have not watched. Lupin, I guess, is another classic, but I don't really like it that much. Ah, then there's Rurouni Kenshin for setting the old Meiji-fantasy genre. And all the other semi-good but not what I would consider classic anime: Solty Rei, Kashimashi, Eureka 7, Cowboy Bebop (well....that is its own genre, and is quite a succesful anime), Kamichu, Stellvia, Argentosama, Genshiken (FUNNY, AS, HELL), Azumanga Daioh, Roar, I must relive Genshiken. If anyone is up for it, I will go to Ames and rent out all 3 DVDs, THEY MADE AN ENTIRE EPISODE DEVOTED ON A SINGLE NOSEHAIR, AND HOLY SHIT IT WAS HILARIOUS! It was just that I could relate to the characters and their social situations so entirely well! Holy fucking SHIT, it was hilarious! It is number two in my book RIGHT (and very close) under Fooly Cooly. Dammit, how can I explain it? One of the characters just has a nervous breakdown and starts crying, so instead of trying to console her, this guy does exactly what I would've probably done: freeze up, avoid eye contact, and think, "Oh crap, now she's crying, I can't exactly leave, and I don't know what to do, what should I say? Is she expecting me to say something? Maybe it's one of those 'leave me alone issues'? But what can I say now? Its already been like 3 minutes since she started crying, so is this when I /am/ supposed to say something?-" And by then she starts freaking out at everyone for being so anti-social towards helping a greiving friend, yells this at them, and leaves, to which the characters continue: "Great, now I can't just continue reading this manga, otherwise these people will think I'm a freak after she left like that-" When in truth, EVERYONE ELSE is thinking the exact same thing, because they're all anti-social bastards intent only to watch anime, read manga, or play videogames, "I guess I'll just wait a couple of minutes, let's see, is 3 enough? Yeah, let's go for 3, then I'll just kind of casually move my chair over to the Dreamcast, and it'll be smooth sailing." To which the character casts his head down and intently looks at his watch, waiting for EXACTLY 3 minutes. And when the time is up, he looks around to see if the situation is clear (which it is, since EVERYONE ELSE arrived to the same conclusion in similar but not identical circumstances), then the activities pursue like normal. The whole time I'm thinking, "I'd do the exact same thing" to myself over and over again (yes, I have done the "cast head and watch and wait for socially appropriate time" method), I could go on with this too, the storyline is self-constructing. And fuck screwing up the storyline, so.....
SPOILER WARNING: WARNING, THIS SECTION MAY MAKE YOUR CAR AERODYNAMICThe infamous Nosehair Episode. Alright, basically Genshiken is a club at some random college that's an excuse for watching anime, reading manga, and playing loads of videogames. There's this girlfriend of one of the members of the club (a rarity!), eventually throughout the series, she's becomes more accomodated to otakudom, and becomes one herself, even though she denies it. At this time Madarame is the president of the club (the first club president looks like an alien and is fucking awesome). So, she's in the room waiting for her boyfriend and starts reading stuff, when Madarame enters. Begin the largest and greatest internal dialogue ever made in any show in human history. Edit: I tried to write it out, but no matter how many times I tried to type it out, I couldn't do it justice; but it had to be the funniest fucking episode I've ever saw. Since I'm on the subject of insane episodes, apparently Shin-Chan is supposed to be a Japanese kid show, which makes me feel incredibly disturbed about Japanese soceity, but damn is it funny. This is the same show that I mentioned someone shouting, "Play Free Bird!" when he was playing a piano (perfectly, by the way) with his ass. It also had an episode where they escaped to a planet ruled by dogs, I'm guessing solely so they could say bitch AS MANY TIMES AS POSSIBLE without being censored. However, there was one episode that just gradually built up in ridiculousness and censoring.
These two detectives are holding a stake-out against Columbian drug-dealers (those Columbians don't play by the rules meng!), and rent this apartment to stake-out from, and thus are Shin's neighbours. And in the process of Shin's repeated grilling and questioning, they quickly make up a cover story that they're a gay couple (gay couple! Out of all the cover stories you could've given, why'd you say that?!). But in order to keep with this cover story, the lies just get more and more ridiculous. In order to explain why one of the guys never really leaves the apartment, he says he has a broken bone, and in the discussion later with the other detective to make sure he knows about this excuse:
Then they have to make a story why one always keeps leaving the apartment (to get supplies), so he ends up saying that he's a giggolo because his partner with his broken arm just can't support him at the moment (there's repeated allusions to penis envy between the two detectives throughout the episode), and EVERYTHING they do needs an excuse, and you can see how it builds to epic proportions.
There was a cameo appearance between the two where Shin was moving out of the apartment so they had this party in the apartment building and they invited the stake-out detectives: Fucking hilarious. DATA LOST
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