Tag: puzzle

Categories
Old

Things 6: Elliptical Orbits, AI Koans, Magnetic Liquid

(Originally sent January 2008)

This (actually last) week’s film – one line review
I am Legend turned out to be one of the best ‘last man on earth’ films I’ve seen, but the story took an abrupt turn for the worse towards the end.

Next week’s film
I’m going to see Charlie Wilson’s War.
Imdb rating: 7. 8/10
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 81%

Prognosis: A hilarious historical black comedy about complex ethical issues starring Tom Hanks… fascinating.

A Puzzle
At Christmas my dad asked me why planetary orbits were elliptical. I realised that a mathematical demonstration wouldn’t convince him, so decided to try to come up with an heuristic argument. Turns out this is a good, hard puzzle.

A Quote
Laurence: You will have a vested interest in someone that has a vested interest in something that you have a vested interest in.

A Link
Some AI Koans:
http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/koans.html

A video
Magnetic liquid art:

A picture
I’ve put together all the posters of films I reviewed in 2007 in the order of how good I thought they were, highest rated being top left, lowest rated being bottom right, in rows:

Categories
New

Things 71: Stadium Destruction, Book Length, Time for Money

Video
I first posted one of Immersive Media look-around-as-you-play-it videos in Things 62 (not yet on the blog). I like this one even more, because it achieves something artistically that a static video can’t.

Link
I’m interested in the way form influences content. As part of a longer series explaining what actually goes on between someone writing a book and someone else buying it, Charlie Stross explains why books are the length they are.

Puzzle
You can’t buy time (and I note that the world would actually be pretty scary if you could), but you can spend money on things that save you time. In terms of maximising hours saved per pound spent, what would be the best thing I could buy?

Pictures
Monsters are distilled fears. New fears demand new monsters. So here’s some Google Monsters, courtesy of Super Punch:

Categories
Old

Things 5: Maze, Look Around You, Cats

(Originally sent December 2007)

Special Christmas bumper edition! Kind of.

Next week’s film:
I’m going to see I Am Legend some time after Christmas. Mainly because I have a strange obsession with films about being the last man on earth. I think it might be a metaphorical way to deal with one’s own mortality.
Imdb rating:   7.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 62%

Prognosis:  It’s a big-budget last-man-on-earth film! And he has a dog! I don’t see how this can go wrong.

A Puzzle:
The image below is an incredibly elegant non-abelian maze. It should be pretty self-explanatory. (Click to view printable size).

Answer to last week’s puzzle:
Half way.

A Quote:
My favourite quote of this year is one I overheard on IRC:
[13:22] <ChocoJon> just being nice
[13:22] <ChocoJon> is there something wrong with that?
[13:22] <Norgg> Yes.
[13:22] <Norgg> Nice people killed my parents.

A Link:
I was trying to work out what would be the ultimate link for the Christmas bumper version of this thing, and then I realised it was probably my own meta-site, from where you can find all things that are cool according to me – comics art and videos I’ve made, photobucket with every image I’ve ever needed to share with someone on a forum, and my geocities site with everything I thought that the net needed to know in 1999.
http://tim.mannveille.com

A video:
Look Around You, episode 1: Maths. Episodes of this series are only about 9 minutes long. The first two at least are well worth seeing.

A picture:
For a Christmas bonanza of image fun, I’ve put together my 10 favourite cat-caption pictures from 2007, starting with the cat that inspired the most popular blog on wordpress, I Can Has Cheezburger. You can see them here.

Categories
Old

Things 4: Dog Run, Wire Hang, Cat Herd

(Originally sent December 2007)

This week’s film – one line review
Hitman came close to the so-bad-it’s-good mark, but seemed mainly aimed at those familiar with the game, and so didn’t really work for me.

Next week’s film
I’m going to see  Enchanted some time next week.
Imdb rating:  8.0/10
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 94%


Watch Enchanted Trailer in Entertainment |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Prognosis: The trailer made it look somewhat meta-trite and obvious, but the animated parts look beautiful and the reviews are insanely positive, so I guess it must be good.

Puzzle
How far can a dog run into the woods?

Answer to last week’s puzzle
Because once you’ve found it, you stop looking.

Quote
In the vein of the brilliant quotes presented at the Riverside [A recent work-related meeting during which some mixed metaphor quotes had been presented – metatim 25/04/2010]:
Ross [my university flat-mate]: “I wouldn’t trust him with a barge-pole.”

Link
Wire Hang is a beautifully simple and original concept for a 2-minute-distraction kind of game. I’ve never seen what happens beyond the one-block point – does the game end? http://www.220.jp/~d2ac/wirehang/

Video
Another great viral video – if you’ve not seen it before, or in fact even if you have, have fun trying to guess what it’s actually advertising before the end:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_MaJDK3VNE


Picture
Below is a photo I took of my best free-running buddy, running into a spot of trouble.