| The Functioning Brain |
[Jun. 21st, 2009|05:04 pm] |
| [ | place |
| | 02138 | ] |
| [ | soul |
| | curious | ] |
| [ | ears |
| | Skullcrusher Mountain | ] |
Every now and again I involve myself in some kind of abstract exercise, mostly to prove to myself that my brain still functions after many years cut off from basic science. This one is both simple enough and potentially complex enough that I thought I would share it.
( Math fans, read on. ) |
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| Curve Ball |
[Jun. 13th, 2009|03:32 pm] |
| [ | place |
| | 02138 | ] |
| [ | soul |
| | wistful | ] |
| [ | ears |
| | silence | ] |
I recently had occasion to learn a (very) little about elliptic curve cryptography. It's pretty cool!
Ah, to have been better at math...
(Advanced math was always the part of doing physics that most frustrated me. I had a great time with anything to which even a little physical intuition could be applied, and this actually extends much farther than you might expect. Eventually, though, the symmetry-group-Lie-algebra-complex-inner-product-space-manifold-itis would kick in and I'd spend hours trying to show something to which ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) silkspinner and company would probably declare "but it's a trivial consequence of Hmm-Whozit's Theorem!", and I'd run back to the lab-- home of such straightforward issues as "there's a leak somewhere"-- with my tail between my legs.)
Edit: I just realized that someday it'll be "but it's a trivial consequence of Carde's result on the multiplicity of Goodman distributions over S_{vk}", and I'll feel really stupid. :) |
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| Mathematical Muddle |
[May. 17th, 2009|11:56 pm] |
| [ | place |
| | 20770 | ] |
| [ | soul |
| | curious | ] |
I'm at physics camp, and having a good time. Later I'll post about my experiences, perhaps. For now, I'm hoping some of my mathy friends are reading, for one of our problems has raised a minor conundrum.
We wish to find the maximum value of a such that ax + sin x has a positive zero. We suspect that this cannot be done analytically (in terms of elementary functions, at least), but I for one don't know enough to be sure. Can it? If not, how would you prove that? |
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| Like Christmas |
[May. 7th, 2009|03:06 am] |
| [ | place |
| | 02138 | ] |
| [ | soul |
| | amused | ] |
| [ | ears |
| | Christmas at Ground Zero | ] |
HRSFA drafted triple Alara Reborn tonight. I've mostly stopped recording my draft decks, but this one was special enough to warrant using up some bytes...
( The best no-rare draft deck I've ever seen. )
I really enjoy drafting casually with friends like this, and I really wish we had the time to do it more often. Alas! |
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| The Broad Side |
[Apr. 21st, 2009|08:59 pm] |
| [ | place |
| | 02138 | ] |
| [ | soul |
| | amused | ] |
| [ | ears |
| | Sunday Bloody Sunday | ] |
A classic moment of humor in serious science was the naming of the common unit of cross-section, the barn, equal to 10-24 cm2. (Cross-section is a measure of reactivity. Essentially you shoot one particle at another, and ask how large the other particle appears with regards to the particular reaction you're interested in. A barn is a fairly large cross-section, hence the name; a reaction with a 1 barn cross-section is as easy as hitting the broad side of a barn.)
Related units are, of course, the millibarn, the microbarn, the nanobarn, the picobarn, the femtobarn, and... the shed, equal to 10-24 barn.
Seriously. |
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| Regrets |
[Apr. 9th, 2009|02:48 am] |
| [ | place |
| | 02138 | ] |
| [ | soul |
| | melancholy | ] |
| [ | ears |
| | silence | ] |
I recently started fighting my email inbox with the goal of getting it down to zero and keeping it there. (No, this isn't the first time I've resolved to do this. Maybe it will stick this time...) I've come to realize with growing horror exactly how bad I've been at keeping in touch with people. For quite some time. We're talking about years, if not the better part of the decade.
Why, just today I got a call from thekinginyellow which I planned to return before the Magic SIG draft at 8:30 but didn't, and I've been meaning to call pastwatcher, silkspinner, and a bunch of other people for weeks now.
Argh!
(Incidentally, why does it seem that the more I miss someone, the harder it is for me to get in touch with them? Very odd.)
Edit (5:58 AM): Also, insomnia sucks. |
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| Sugar Sugar |
[Mar. 19th, 2009|03:34 am] |
| [ | place |
| | 02138 | ] |
| [ | soul |
| | satisfied | ] |
| [ | ears |
| | silence | ] |
I've developed an unhealthy semi-addiction to these. It will probably wear off as soon as I run out of bananas, but at the moment I'm happy to keep eating them...
Dry (in the alcoholic sense) Bananas Foster
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 banana, split
Cinnamon (or your favorite spice)
Combine butter and brown sugar in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Add banana and cook briefly, spooning the syrup over the banana. Add spices to taste. |
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| Godwin in Azeroth |
[Mar. 8th, 2009|04:07 am] |
| [ | place |
| | 02138 | ] |
| [ | soul |
| | tired | ] |
| [ | ears |
| | silence | ] |
Much belated, the one-word story from Vericon, by Dan and me. This was delayed in part because I'm not a huge fan of it; in future we should disallow both Hitler and specialty references.
A one word story about Hitler and Mussolini, set in Azeroth, with a sonic screwdriver.
( Yes, elves get involved. ) |
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| Thwack Boom Kapow |
[Feb. 11th, 2009|04:45 pm] |
| [ | place |
| | 02138 | ] |
| [ | soul |
| | curious | ] |
| [ | ears |
| | Positive-Definite Non-Degenerate Symmetric Bilinear Forms | ] |
I was recently occasioned to think about simple combat systems for roleplaying and other games. I don't know if the idea I came up with has been done before, although it's so simple that I assume it has. Still, here we go.
( A little LARP design and a little game theory. ) |
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| Cats, Corners, Cupcakes, And Other Wondrous Things |
[Feb. 11th, 2009|03:32 pm] |
| [ | place |
| | 02138 | ] |
| [ | soul |
| | amused | ] |
| [ | ears |
| | silence | ] |
I spent the weekend in Philadelphia, visiting Quirk, Elisabeth, and Warren. Among other wonders I was introduced to the Mysteriously Offensive Street Corner, the Rotationally Symmetric Restaurant From the Future with Bao Buns, the Randomized Grocery Store, Fifty Edible Cats of Doom, and Industrial Caulk Cupcakes.
For elaboration you'll have to ask them (or post a comment, since nobody seems to do that ever). |
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| Physics Is Hard; Let's Make Commercials |
[Feb. 6th, 2009|01:16 am] |
| [ | place |
| | 02138 | ] |
| [ | soul |
| | annoyed | ] |
| [ | ears |
| | silence | ] |
I've been watching a "documentary" about the making of the Honda commercial in which they cut grooves in a road so that it plays the William Tell Overture when you drive over it. At one point, they decide to perform experiments to determine-- I swear I'm not making this up-- whether cutting the grooves closer together would cause the note played to go up or down. "Eventually we... realized we were getting different tones from the different gaps."
The state of physics education in this country!
(I would gladly have accepted a tenth of what they presumably paid these guys to do the single line back of the envelope calculation for them...)
Update: In the end, they don't actually end up with the William Tell Overture. Maybe that's on purpose. Maybe they just can't do arithmetic... |
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| Success! |
[Feb. 1st, 2009|02:28 am] |
| [ | place |
| | 02138 | ] |
| [ | soul |
| | sleepy | ] |
| [ | ears |
| | silence | ] |
Today Kirby, Nathaniel, Alessandro, and I headed to Pandy's to play in the Conflux prerelease. Apparently all of the Magic I've been playing since the last prerelease taught me something, and also earned favor with the card-opening gods, because I opened two good pools and built and played well enough, going 4-1 and 2-1 to win a total of 11 packs. The rest of us had mixed results, with Nathaniel and Alessandro winning packs in the first flight but not the second, and poor Kirby getting nothing. Of course, the primary goal of a prerelease is to have fun, and we certainly did that. The new set is wonderful to play and full of power.
( Deck details! )
So that was the prerelease! As I said, a good time was had by all, and we now have enough packs to run an 8-man Shards-Conflux-Conflux draft if we like. (I'm hoping this goes off so that I can turn some of my Conflux packs into money...) Now, off to bed, for I am still, in fact, rather sick. |
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| Shambling Remains |
[Jan. 29th, 2009|03:09 am] |
| [ | place |
| | 02138 | ] |
| [ | soul |
| | sneezy | ] |
| [ | ears |
| | Space (from Where the Hell is Captain Blastoid) | ] |
Remember when I said I wasn't sick?
Yeah.
My Traditional Post Mystery Hunt Cold struck with a vengeance on Sunday, rendering me unable to get out of bed for a good 36 hours and thus causing me to miss MST and the post-Vericon dinner, as well as being a less than ideal host to Elisabeth and Warren. Boo!
What's worse, in my continuing fight with headaches, stuffiness, sore throat, and general malaise, I've been doing a lot of reading in bed. Here's a summary...
- Bouncing around on Wikipedia led me first to an article on the isolation of tritium, which led to an article on upcoming fusion research reactor ITER, which led to articles which can be summarized as "yeah, that climate change thing... we're screwed." Next I read about the Euro, which led to articles which can be summarized as "yeah, that U.S. economy thing... we're screwed." Finally I read about various new commercial aircraft (a pet topic of mine), which led to a discussion of Boeing bombers of the past, which led to an article on nuclear weapons, which led to an article on Iranian nuclear aims. I'll let you guess where that ends up.
- One in two articles on Google News is about the economy, and no, none of it is encouraging.
Surely there must be something uplifting on the Internet...
Also, I ran out of orange juice. Boo. |
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| A Major Upside |
[Jan. 20th, 2009|07:36 pm] |
| [ | place |
| | 02138 | ] |
| [ | soul |
| | happier | ] |
| [ | ears |
| | Straight No Chaser - Sitcom Medley | ] |
I'm not sick!
Those of you who have been around me on the week after the Mystery Hunt know how nice a surprise this is. |
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| Too Close |
[Jan. 20th, 2009|07:07 pm] |
| [ | place |
| | 02138 | ] |
| [ | soul |
| | disappointed | ] |
| [ | ears |
| | silence | ] |
So, we didn't win the Mystery Hunt.
Aaargh.
However, I had a great time as usual, and I'm quite sure we were closer this year than ever. We were probably in the lead for a good portion of the middle of the hunt, and we could have cracked our final meta at almost any time had someone just gone back and checked everything. I'm pretty sure we reached a number of milestones (Phase 1 metameta solved, any phase 2 meta solved, round 12 meta solved) before any other team, and were ahead in total puzzles solved for a good portion of Saturday.
On the other hand, I really, really want to win. As much as I enjoy solving puzzles, I enjoy writing and editing them much more. I wouldn't be nearly as gung-ho about the Mystery Hunt if it didn't have the prize it does. Alas!
Lessons learned:
- Check everything. Whenever I come into a stuck puzzle with some data extraction already done, I should insist on verifying as much of it as I reasonably can. Not only do many answer extractions completely fail with a relatively small number of errors, but this process familiarizes you with the content of the puzzle in a way that a short description simply can't. This is particularly true on metas, where you're already missing information from missing puzzles, and can't afford further gaps due to mistakes. On the other hand, I already knew this from past experience, which leads to my next point...
- I need to take better care of myself. Under normal circumstances I really think I would have taken some time to play with the source data for meta 7, since it's really a very easy data processing task. But by the time I looked at that meta, I was very tired and rather demoralized, and I don't really know what I was expecting to accomplish by staring at the same pieces in the same configurations as everyone else.
- I should consider just staying home next year, except for kickoff and (if we're close enough to the Bombers to run it before they win ;-)) endgame. Many of my most efficient puzzle moments-- seeing the round 5 meta answer, Doing the Right Thing for the islands puzzle, developing an accurate spreadsheet for the round 8 meta-- were done either at home or in Ed's office. I really deal badly with the general noise and chaos of the onsite solving center, and I would also have been better rested and fed. Having my own printer, a second monitor, and a coffee table to lay stuff out on would just be icing on the cake. Being at home would also encourage me to do things from scratch more often. I also wouldn't have lost my wallet, an event which certainly didn't help my mental state. (I finally recovered it from Ed's office on Monday. Thanks Ed!) |
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| Be Vewwy Vewwy Qwiet |
[Jan. 17th, 2009|01:23 am] |
| [ | place |
| | 02138 | ] |
| [ | soul |
| | energetic | ] |
| [ | ears |
| | silence | ] |
Shh! We'aw hunting mystewies!
The Mystery Hunt is going great! I feel very useful, having broken a couple of puzzles and put the finishing touch on a meta. I shouldn't, of course, say exactly how we're doing, but I can say that I feel good about it... |
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| Dropping the Bomb |
[Jan. 10th, 2009|06:54 am] |
| [ | place |
| | 02138 | ] |
| [ | soul |
| | tired | ] |
| [ | ears |
| | silence | ] |
Yes, yes, I said I wouldn't be at FNM this week, but I was in Central Square for a Mystery Hunt meeting anyway, and I decided to stop by, and one thing led to another...
I should probably focus more on other things, like the Mystery Hunt and, you know, my actual life. Sigh...
( At least I won money, so I feel better about my skills and my wallet actually came out ahead. ) |
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