Prepoceros

Earlier this evening I poured out my daily big-school-bureaucracy angst into a long ranty post, but after I’d put it aside for an hour I realized that no one wants to read a thousand words about how slowly the transfer office processes transcripts.

Instead I’ll foist upon share with you my newest addiction: Numbrosia.

At the wifi-enabled teahouse in which I sit, there are several fish tanks. For the last three hours, I’ve been watching (via a large mirror on the wall in front of me) a man clean two of them behind me. Cleaning a fish tank isn’t something I’d ever given much thought to, as I’ve never had fish, but it’s a rather involved process. Hoses and filters and chemicals and lots of scrubbity-scrub.

At intervals, the fish’s apparent owner came out to chat with the guy about all sorts of fishy things: tank size, water temperature, all the different types of fish they’d owned, etc., and I was struck by the depth of cleaner-dude’s knowledge. To my untrained ears, it sounded as though he knew EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD EVER about fish.

(more…)

I sweartogod I had nearly this exact thought a day or two ago. Eerie*. Also awesome. Of course I don’t have the mojo to present it this wittily, but I’m glad someone does.

We must’ve been listening to the same story on NPR. Did anyone else hear that one? The teacher professor talking about random numbers? I only caught the end of it, sadly.

(more…)

Here’s something that might interest the scientists and/or creative folk and/or XtR33m puzzlorz out there. The World’s Fair guys over at ScienceBlogs* posted their first Puzzle Fantastica several weeks ago. They put up five ‘clues’ (three images, a video, and an image of text) and challenged the world to discover “something not to reveal.” That’s it—no rules, no hints, just five clues. When you get it, you’ll know it, apparently.

I saw the puzzle when it first went up, idly thought about it a bit, read through the comments (wild-ass guesses and conspiracy theories, mostly)…and then went on vacation and forgot about it.

Interesting to see, then, that as of today, the puzzle remains unsolved (hat-tip to BoingBoing for the reminder). Readers have collectively uncovered piles and piles of ‘evidence,’ but the community as a whole doesn’t even seem to be moving in a coherent direction. The puzzle’s creators promise there’s a solution; it’d be a dirty trick if there weren’t, wouldn’t it?

The puzzle explains itself better than I can. Links: the original post, adding the final clue, the most recent update.

This style of puzzle is a little too hardcore for me, but I love the idea of it and watching people try to untangle it, and of course I can’t wait to see the answer. I do hope it’s elegant.

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* If you’re looking for quality science blogging, or even if you’re not, I highly recommend ScienceBlogs: great writing on fascinating, relevant topics by variously-flavored Ph.D.s and other smart people, plus a friendly community of commenters. The site has grown a bunch since I first found it a few months ago (47 blogs as of this writing), and I have to exert a measure of self-control to keep from just subscribing to all of them and spending my whole day reading. (Right now I’m subscribed to three or four…or five. I think.)

So I’ve been working lately. As in actual teaching work, work that people pay me for. While it’s nice to have money and things to do, this means that I’ve been letting some of the “work” I was doing earlier, like editing videos, cleaning my apartment, and blogging, slide a bit. (Ok, really I was never cleaning my apartment, but we can pretend, right?)

Even YouTube. I used to spend all my time on the Tube, ostensibly to connect with people and be creative, but really to avoid all the other things I ought to have been doing. Even that’s fallen off now, and I haven’t posted a new video in over a week.

I don’t know where that train of thought was going, except perhaps that I haven’t updated this here ode to myself in several days and am not feeling particularly inspired by my day-to-day life at the moment, so it’s time to pull an idea out of the vault.

I’m going to go through my old blog posts—all 3.5 years of them—and pull up every post made on the 8th of some month. (I hope it’ll still be the 8th when I post this.) I’ll pick one sentence from each entry and make a mash-up post right here in this very space. Daring, eh?

But wait, there’s more. I’ve been wondering how to translate the idea of randomness from my aleatory video into a blog post, and I think this is as good a time as any to try it out. Along with my “intelligently-designed” mash-up, I’ll make two others out of randomly selected sentences from the same entries.

If you’re in the mood, see if you can figure out which of the posts below is the one I created “purposefully.” A correct guess earns you an imaginary cookie, by which I mean I will bake you a cookie and eat it in your honor. Imaginary for you, delicious for me. A good plan, yes? I’ve ordered the paragraphs below randomly as well, so don’t bother trying to “get inside my head” and guess where I’ve hidden the real one.

#A#

who was this guy? But I can talk about things besides myself too…really, I swear. By the by, I just retyped this entire entry from memory after xanga ate the first one, so…appreciate it. Tournament! Tonight when I got there I really hadn’t eaten lunch or dinner, so I took a break to snack on some of the food I’d just bought (mmm, delicious embezzlement). Why would you give all that up?! You speak eloquently and have seemingly read every book ever published. Anyway, you’ve probably heard by now about the Genesis crash. It is the end of the week, after all, and we all know by now what that does to Natalie’s schedule. Now, if there were only some way to apply this magical ’studying’ thing to school… I’m a huge fan of logic puzzles, so I forwent dinner to solve this one. Severe thunderstorms, hail, and 70 mph wind gusts expected. Martyrdom is fun and easy. Creepy. Clearly I would make an excellent senator. D’oh.

#B#

won’t that duct tape smart when they rip it off? Haha, so maybe nobody cares about that…but what am I doing wrong? And what if someone put a big magnet next to your eye? Woohoo! I spent a good 5 or 6 hours doing math and eating bagels, and it was GLORIOUS. An excellent choice for masochists. Heh heh heh. Anyway, you’ve probably heard by now about the Genesis crash. This one’s awful, and it’s only going to get worse. I could win an irrational fretting contest with one hand tied behind my back. Undaunted, I grabbed a stack of index cards and two colored markers, cleared a space on the floor, and had the thing solved within five minutes. Rock. As a physics major in a history class, I feel I have something to prove. It’s not something I get to experience often. Clearly I would make an excellent senator. And life should totally revolve around instant gratification, right?

#C#

and the board? LOTR? Drew Carey, tonight at the Muddhole. Wish us luck! What threat to the Bush administration are you? When I was in ninth grade, we were assigned a biography project on an author of our choice. What people love: You can answer almost any question people ask, and have thus been nicknamed Jeeves. It’s the first time anybody’s brought space-things back to Earth since the last Apollo mission in 1972. It is the end of the week, after all, and we all know by now what that does to Natalie’s schedule. I’m going to bed now. I’m a huge fan of logic puzzles, so I forwent dinner to solve this one. We thought we’d have a picnic outside, but after a week of gorgeous spring weather, we’re under a tornado watch. My enthusiasm will wear off, I’m sure, as the semester wears me down, but hopefully I can hold out for longer than I’ve done before. It’s not something I get to experience often. (I’ll be stopping by later to pick up my country club membership, fine cigars, and loose women, thanksmuch.) Oh wait.

Okay, wow. That was an assload of work, and for what? Goodness only knows, but now I can (1) go to bed and (2) cross this idea off my list of “things to blog.” If you want to look these posts up for yourselves, here’s a list of the months in which I posted something on the 8th. I’m not going to bother linking them—the archives are in the sidebar. Apparently April 8th is a never-fail blogging-day for me. Who knew?

2003: April
2004: February, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November
2005: April, May, September, November
2006: February, April

Feel free to leave your guesses in the comments. Reading the three paragraphs, I think it’s fairly obvious which one was intelligently designed, relatively incoherent though it is, but that may be because I can see the twisted, made-up logic behind it. I’m interested to see what y’all come up with—will it be obvious to you, too, or will your human brains conjure up order from randomness and be led astray?

Well, we’d *planned* to take today off, but we ended up going on a “quick” four-hour outing anyway. It was pleasant, to be sure, but by the time we got home, ate dinner, had some vla and coffee, and did a little sudoku, I only had time to finish one video.

I’m trying to upload it right now, but the wireless connection in this bedroom is a bit sketchy, and it keeps stalling out on me. Whenever the video finally makes its way to YouTube, I’ll add it here. Done!

While we wait, here’s a puzzle for you to ponder. My aunt Bettina challenged me with it at lunch the other day, and after some hard thinking I came up with the solution in about ten minutes, which is apparently a record among the people she’s tried it on. The format will be familiar to those of you who played the “24″ game in school. So:

You have three 5’s and one 1 (5, 5, 5, 1). Using only the four basic operations (+, -, *, /), how do you get to 24?

You may not use any roots or powers, but you may use parentheses. You must use all four digits. You may not combine multiple digits into a single number (e.g., 55 - 15 = 40). You may not turn numbers upside-down, do the arithmetic in base-7, or anything else similarly tricksy.

The solution is rather elegant. There’s no catch—everything in the rules is to be interpreted literally and exactly as you’d expect it—but you do have to think outside the box a tiny bit.

If you have the answer, email me (prepoceros at gmail) rather than leaving it in a comment, so as not to spoil anyone else’s fun. I’ll post the solution in a few days, but with plenty of spoiler alerts if you’re determined to work through it on your own. Happy puzzling!

P.S. If you want to see more video of wuppies in action, YouTube can totally hook you up.

Tomorrow I’ll be spending 2.5 hours of my Saturday afternoon solving puzzles. Not jigsaw puzzles, but the fun kind. Puzzles with numbers and lines and scrambled-up words.

This is the Google US Puzzle Championship, an online contest to select part of the US delegation to the 2006 World Puzzle Championship in Bulgaria in October.

No, I’m not special*—registration is free and open to all US citizens. The format is simple: 15-ish puzzles with varying point values. You print them all out at noon, submit the answers online as you come up with them, and the two people with the highest score at 2:30 win. The difficulty of the puzzles varies enough to make it both enjoyable and challenging for puzzlers at all skill levels.

I participated in both the 2004 and 2003 championships, but I think last year’s was held while I was in Chicago, and I missed it. I would’ve missed this year’s, too, if my friend Paul hadn’t reminded me last week. (Thanks!)

Hooray for puzzles! Hooray for any sort of mental stimulation, really! Summer can be really boring!

P.S. I’m going to try to flea-bomb and -powder the apartment again tomorrow. Wish me luck.

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* Yes I am. But for other reasons. For instance, I ate a whole pint of Cherry Garcia frozen yogurt today. Mmmmm, special.

I like statistics. A lot. Give me a big ol’ table of raw data to stare at and I’m good for the afternoon.

So when I stumbled across the NameVoyager earlier this evening, I couldn’t help but be enthralled. Not only are the data (popularity of baby names from the 1880s to 2004) themselves interesting, the visualization is perhaps the most fascinating representation of a dataset that I’ve ever seen.

I can’t explain it well—you’ll have to go try it for yourself. (But wait until you have a free hour or two.) Click on one of the bars, or start typing a name into the box at the top and see what happens. Mouseover the names that pop up to see their relative popularity in each decade.

Before you’ve explored too deeply, though, you can play a little game I made up. Yes? You want to play? Smart move. It’s fun, I promise.

Ok, here’s the deal: without peeking at the pretty name charts, write down your guesses for the top 10 girls’ names and the top 10 boys’ names for the decade in which you were born. Think of your kindergarten class, your soccer team, the people you work with—anyone who’s about your age. Spelling matters (e.g., John and Jon are different names).

Now go look up all those names and note their actual rank (again, for the decade of your birth). Your score is the sum of these ranks. A perfect score would be 55 in either gender, or 110 combined. The order you list the names doesn’t matter.

This scoring method, as I’ve learned the hard way, is highly sensitive to outliers. One dud in the 50s can blow the whole thing. But these are the arbitrary rules of my made-up game, so that’s the way it’s gonna be.

I’ve hidden my own answers below the fold (no peeking!) so as not to spoil your fun. So go on, get out your pen and paper, back of an envelope, shirtsleeve, whatever. You know you want to. The score to beat (mine) is 147 (6 correct) for girls and 180 (4 correct) for boys.

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I thought I was ready, but all of a sudden, when I sat down to register, I found myself groping wildly for something with which to distract myself—a not-unfamiliar feeling, but one that I usually associate with overdue papers and lab reports, not signing up for classes.

Long story short, it’s been 13 almost 16 hours. I’m really really good (or bad) at the distraction game. Since 11:00 this morning I have

1. Gone to Latin class. This doesn’t count as a distraction since it’s something I should have done anyway, but it happened after registration opened, so it makes the list.
2. Eaten lunch. Again, not a bad thing, but I could have registered before I ate.
3. Checked my email. Several times. In the last thirteen hours I have gotten all of one email. Damn, I *do* need to stock up on cialips, xavnax, and armbien.
4. Read all my Bloglines feeds. This is a brilliant meta-distraction, as it includes both Slashdot and BoingBoing, each of which are compilations of external links. Reading through all of them took about two hours.
5. Checked on the blogs I read that don’t have feeds. Ten minutes.
6. Read all the interesting-looking news stories at CNN.com.
7. Reread my own last ten blog entries.
8. Perused my website stats. Usually the traffic here increases 5–10% every month, but April is more or less even with March, month-to-date. Hmmm.
9. Noticed that three people have found Prepoceros by searching for “Caltech cannon” or “MIT cannon.” Did a Technorati search for “Caltech cannon” and read the first twenty or so blog posts that came up.
10. Bought two t-shirts.
11. Looked for dressier shirts on Amazon, because any place you can buy discount toasters, dog food, cell phones, and lawnmowers is bound to have cute shirts*.
12. Looked for shoes on Overstock.com. Learned that Overstock.com is a terrible place to look for shoes, unless you’re in the market for clogs. Cheap clogs, but clogs nonetheless.
13. Played a few rounds of “tear camelsheep to bits” with Sammy.
14. Eaten the other half of the tub of rainbow chip icing I started yesterday. Wondered why I felt sick to my stomach.
15. Debated going to fetch my iPod, which, according to the door tag the deliveryperson left behind, is apparently sitting in a FedEx depot 16 minutes away.
16. Decided I could wait until Monday.
17. Wandered over to the kitchen table, shuffled the schedule cards around a little more.
18. Designed and implemented a color-coding scheme using highlighters. This is a clever sort of distraction, IMO, as it’s close enough to the real assignment that I can convince myself I’m “working on it,” but inane enough to avoid any risk of productivity.
19. “Samson, would you rather live with a Physics major or a Linguistics major? Both? But Sammy, that means Mommy can’t take Greek. Don’t you think if would be fun if Mommy could read Greek? Me too, pumpkin, but it won’t all fit, see? Well, no, there’s no *law* that says I have to graduate in two years…”
20. Taken a three-hour nap, under the rationale that “sometimes your unconscious solves hard problems for you in your sleep.” This was just an excuse at the time, but when I woke up, there *was* an answer sitting right at the “front” of my mind: I need to see myself in a different role. (Scroll down to “Third Principle.”) But what role would that be? Whether this is actually part of a solution to the what-major problem or just a random association (I read the article earlier this week) remains to be seen. I don’t often wake up with clear, purposeful thoughts like that, so I feel like this might be worth something.
21. Walked the dog.
22. Fed the dog.
23. Eaten several handfuls of very stale pretzels. I’ll cook dinner after I register. Just like I’ll do my taxes after I register. And prep my next LSAT class after I register. And do research for my Women in the Ancient World paper after I register.
24. Read a first-person account of the World Sudoku Championship.
25. Rummaged through my garbage bags of not-yet-unpacked stuff, looking for my sudoku books. Didn’t find them.
26. Acknowledged that sudoku would not be a feasible distraction anyway, as it could take up an indeterminate amount of time, a la Minesweeper or Spider Solitaire. I removed all such “pointless” distractions from my repertoire several months ago. Baby steps.
27. Registered for an online puzzle game similar to the superfabulous MIT Mystery Hunt, which I’ve long admired as pretty much the awesomest thing ever. If you like puzzles as much as I do, or even half as much as I do, or even if you’re just curious, I’d love for you to join my team at The Puzzle Boat. (Team Name: prepoceros, Password: rhino) It’d obviously be easier if we were in the same geographic location, but if you want to log in and solve a puzzle or two sometime, that’d be great. It would take me years to do the whole thing myself, if I even could. Thems hard.
28. Checked mail again, Bloglines again, CNN again. World hasn’t exploded in the last four hours. Shocking.
29. Given Sammy a cookie and a belly rub because awwww, wook at mommy’s widdle shnookums wif his sweet widdle face.
30. Pondered the reasons behind the apparent mental block I’ve put on picking classes for next semester. Connected it to my inability to make decisions, and, of course, how life is short and I only get one shot at it and if I continue on in this wishy-washy way and never throw myself into anything with confidence then I’ll waste all my opportunities and nothing will ever become of me and I’ll lead a miserable life, grow old, and DIE full of regret.
31. Written and published a 1000-word post on the above topic—an absolute bog of self-pity and dreary inner monologue. Wallow wallow wallow. (Don’t bother scrolling down—it’s gone.) Anyway, there went another hour and a half.
32. Gone to Sonic for an ice cream sundae. Came back with mozzarella sticks and a strawberry limeade. The four guys in the car next to mine were so. baked. Dude, get the bacon toast thing. No seriously man, get the bacon thing I want the bacon. Like, with cheese. And toast. Okay? Seriously, dude. Dude. Seriously. I love bacon.
33. Realized that I haven’t washed my hair since Wednesday morning. Gross. Resolved to do so FIRST THING after I register.
34. Removed the post mentioned above. It was self-absorbed, whiny, and not even all that funny. Those of you who subscribe to my feed might still be able to read it. Sorry.
35. Considered replacing the deleted post with a quick five-liner about my trip to Sonic.
36. Decided instead on this behemoth. Three hours in, I realize that this is a vicious distraction. Have you made lists before? Because 37 things is A LOT OF THINGS**. But I can’t stop now and waste all that work…I’m so close.
37. Finished the goddamn list.

There, self. I did it. Happy? No, of course you’re not—you still haven’t registered. What’s that? You’re sleepy now and want to go to bed? Well no shit, it’s 3:30 in the morning. But you’re not going to bed until you pick classes, do you hear me? NOT GONNA HAPPEN.

[Edit (4:46 AM): HIST1378 POLS1336 POLS 1337 // ENGL3302 ENGL4305 LATN2301 MATH3333 MATH3338 PHYS3110 PHYS3111, bitches! It’s bedtime!]

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* Did you know that Old Navy has rescinded their 8-item-max fitting room rule? ’strue. You can waltz in there carrying 18 items and the salesdude won’t even blink as he says “Back again?” and unlocks your room. I think it might be because sometimes the people who walk in with 18 items end up buying 14 of those items, plus like five other things they see on their way to the front. Happened to a friend of mine. Friend of a friend.

** Three hours of early-morning list-making has done wonders for my diction. I do things. I like stuff. It is very good and fun and interesting. Before long I’ll be reduced to grunts and primitive hand gestures.

You know, I used to think the world was pretty awesome. But today I discovered this, which blows ‘awesome’ right out of the water. It’s a newspaper. A newspaper in a dead language. Gaahhhhhh it makes me so happy I want to chew all my fingers off.

On a related note (i.e., linked from the above site), check this shit out. Wunderground was already my favorite weather site, but now they’re my FAVORITE favorite. Click the ‘Select Language’ link in the sidebar to see all the nifty languages they support. Tagalog. Afrikaans. Cherokee. Omg make out with me.

P.S. In other nerdy news, the discovery of the largest known prime number was announced today. Now that they’ve got banks and banks of computers churning away at these numbers for years at a time, prime-hunting has become a little less of a mathematical endeavor than a computer-sciencey, algorithmical* one. Still, I join one of the professors involved in being “super excited.”

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*I have a way with words.