Two posts in one: more boxes, and more commentary.
So, I missed the entry for Sunday (21 August 2005), so this is a double-entry for both this past day and the day before.
Sunday: Most interesting thing there was that my mom fixed noodles for a brunch, but then French toast and newly-cut watermelon for a late breakfast-like lunch. Oh well. More boxes got unpacked from the basement...box, box, box, box, so much that the music of the day just about became:
Kenji Yamamoto/Minako Hamano: vs. B.O.X. (Security Robot) [album: Metroid Fusion]
Also, I was kinda feeling a bit uncomfortable on my ankles and my right elbow, probably from driving all the way back home from the Enfield DMV branch the day before.
Monday: Not much too interesting there. Practiced piano, killed time, read stuff, went out with dad to practice parallel parking (kinda starting to get a sense of where I should start cranking the steering wheel). I also read up on guidelines and requirements for diploma music examinations from the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. Wondering if I should take an FRSM exam this winter. Gotta write a 5000-word paper on the stuff, though, research required.
And now for the (above advertised) commentary (numbered for no particular reason).
1. I actually wanted to add, to my ranting about how unattractive I am (or at least I think) to the opposite sex, a list of generally-considered-handsome guys I look nothing like. So far, they included Brad Pitt (the one I would never want to look like anyways), Franz Schubert (good luck digging up a portrait of him in his teens), Cecil Harvey (play Final Fantasy IV), Legolas (see LOTR), or Locke Cole (play Final Fantasy VI). Why a list? Just for humor's sake, I guess.
2. So I came close to dropping a plate of noodles that day, recovery from which I actually prided myself on, because I did it rather smoothly. (Fate, please don't send me bad luck just because I'm praising myself. Please don't.) Then I remembered how much I admired this little scene I once saw on some television show. It showed this news anchor who, 30 seconds before broadcast time, spilled coffee over his broadcasting desk. WITHIN THAT HALF MINUTE, he calmly and skillfully wipes the spill from the desk and from his trousers, and then begins talking ON TIME without missing a beat and with complete professionalism.
I wish that I could be like him when I encounter a problem.
"Vile sees a problem; Vile solves a problem." (~Starnik, an internet sprite-comic creator, commenting on his comic character Vile)
3. I wrote up this long rant about the Second Viennese School music style. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, the SVS consisted of people like Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg, who wrote in "atonality"--the "absence of tonality".
"I can't stand the music of the so-called Second Viennese School. Ironically, by struggling to keep to the highly restrictive idea of an ordered set of notes and essentially imposing communism among the twelve tones of the chromatic scale, they have created a constant dissonance that lacks coherence and macroscopic direction and becomes lost on most who try to enjoy it. [That's true; a number of musicologists find their works interesting, or at least historically significant, while those works are rarely performed in public.] Pointillism [putting notes in all kinds of different places] just worsens the problem by chopping up the music. On the other hand, the music of Prokofiev [one of my favorite composers], even Ravel, and even Messiaen is more approachable."
Okay, fine, I haven't heard -that- much atonal music. But just for ranting purposes (and nothing scholarly), I'd think I've heard enough and read enough about it to write this basically useless paragraph.
3. I've been thinking, RISK isn't too hard of a game to program. So I was thinking, how would a computer work with the various items that a RISK game tracks? Then I came up with this:
First, let's use 3-letter codes for variables pertaining to each country (such as KAM = Kamchatka).
Now, say the blue player has 4 armies on Kamchatka. We then have KAM_armies = 4, KAM_player = blue.
If he/she wants to fortify, then we know Kamchatka's adjacent territories from KAM_adjacent = (YAK, IRK, JPN, MNG, ALK).
If he/she wants to attack, we simply use random number generators to dice values ( attackerdie1=rand(6),attackerdie2...etc.) and we simply make lists of these numbers. If the highest number of dice used is 2, then we compare the max of each list, and then delete them from their respective lists, then compare the new maxes. If the highest number of dice used is 1, then we just compare the maxes of each list. Tags on each list will determine which side to increment down, and by how much.
So, basically, this would allow players to play Risk, as long as they knew the layout of countries. I -don't- know how to program images, but at least I can take shots at algorithm design.
3. So, I recently declared (jokingly, of course) that ubiquinone, or Coenzyme Q, would be nicknamed "Master Q". For those of you who don't know why I did this, google "Master Q", and you should find information on the famous-in-Hong-Kong comic strip that's pretty darn hilarious--even to a person like me, who can't really read much Chinese.)
End ranting. Oh well.
Sunday: Most interesting thing there was that my mom fixed noodles for a brunch, but then French toast and newly-cut watermelon for a late breakfast-like lunch. Oh well. More boxes got unpacked from the basement...box, box, box, box, so much that the music of the day just about became:
Kenji Yamamoto/Minako Hamano: vs. B.O.X. (Security Robot) [album: Metroid Fusion]
Also, I was kinda feeling a bit uncomfortable on my ankles and my right elbow, probably from driving all the way back home from the Enfield DMV branch the day before.
Monday: Not much too interesting there. Practiced piano, killed time, read stuff, went out with dad to practice parallel parking (kinda starting to get a sense of where I should start cranking the steering wheel). I also read up on guidelines and requirements for diploma music examinations from the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. Wondering if I should take an FRSM exam this winter. Gotta write a 5000-word paper on the stuff, though, research required.
And now for the (above advertised) commentary (numbered for no particular reason).
1. I actually wanted to add, to my ranting about how unattractive I am (or at least I think) to the opposite sex, a list of generally-considered-handsome guys I look nothing like. So far, they included Brad Pitt (the one I would never want to look like anyways), Franz Schubert (good luck digging up a portrait of him in his teens), Cecil Harvey (play Final Fantasy IV), Legolas (see LOTR), or Locke Cole (play Final Fantasy VI). Why a list? Just for humor's sake, I guess.
2. So I came close to dropping a plate of noodles that day, recovery from which I actually prided myself on, because I did it rather smoothly. (Fate, please don't send me bad luck just because I'm praising myself. Please don't.) Then I remembered how much I admired this little scene I once saw on some television show. It showed this news anchor who, 30 seconds before broadcast time, spilled coffee over his broadcasting desk. WITHIN THAT HALF MINUTE, he calmly and skillfully wipes the spill from the desk and from his trousers, and then begins talking ON TIME without missing a beat and with complete professionalism.
I wish that I could be like him when I encounter a problem.
"Vile sees a problem; Vile solves a problem." (~Starnik, an internet sprite-comic creator, commenting on his comic character Vile)
3. I wrote up this long rant about the Second Viennese School music style. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, the SVS consisted of people like Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg, who wrote in "atonality"--the "absence of tonality".
"I can't stand the music of the so-called Second Viennese School. Ironically, by struggling to keep to the highly restrictive idea of an ordered set of notes and essentially imposing communism among the twelve tones of the chromatic scale, they have created a constant dissonance that lacks coherence and macroscopic direction and becomes lost on most who try to enjoy it. [That's true; a number of musicologists find their works interesting, or at least historically significant, while those works are rarely performed in public.] Pointillism [putting notes in all kinds of different places] just worsens the problem by chopping up the music. On the other hand, the music of Prokofiev [one of my favorite composers], even Ravel, and even Messiaen is more approachable."
Okay, fine, I haven't heard -that- much atonal music. But just for ranting purposes (and nothing scholarly), I'd think I've heard enough and read enough about it to write this basically useless paragraph.
3. I've been thinking, RISK isn't too hard of a game to program. So I was thinking, how would a computer work with the various items that a RISK game tracks? Then I came up with this:
First, let's use 3-letter codes for variables pertaining to each country (such as KAM = Kamchatka).
Now, say the blue player has 4 armies on Kamchatka. We then have KAM_armies = 4, KAM_player = blue.
If he/she wants to fortify, then we know Kamchatka's adjacent territories from KAM_adjacent = (YAK, IRK, JPN, MNG, ALK).
If he/she wants to attack, we simply use random number generators to dice values ( attackerdie1=rand(6),attackerdie2...etc.) and we simply make lists of these numbers. If the highest number of dice used is 2, then we compare the max of each list, and then delete them from their respective lists, then compare the new maxes. If the highest number of dice used is 1, then we just compare the maxes of each list. Tags on each list will determine which side to increment down, and by how much.
So, basically, this would allow players to play Risk, as long as they knew the layout of countries. I -don't- know how to program images, but at least I can take shots at algorithm design.
3. So, I recently declared (jokingly, of course) that ubiquinone, or Coenzyme Q, would be nicknamed "Master Q". For those of you who don't know why I did this, google "Master Q", and you should find information on the famous-in-Hong-Kong comic strip that's pretty darn hilarious--even to a person like me, who can't really read much Chinese.)
End ranting. Oh well.