Bounded-Error Log

Some bloggers have a regular schedule for posting and forcing themselves to meet the deadlines. In essence, something like “updates every Thursday.”

For me, I think this is a bad idea, because it forces me to write. If my day is boring and uneventful as it quite often is and I still have to crank out a post, it would not be a post that readers would enjoy. Better once-a-month enthusiastic, interesting posts then an ugly stream of tedious drudgery for the visitor to wade through every time, stuff like (quoting one random ancient post):

A bonus gift for the birthday of a very important person! Ignore the colors while solving.

Just a normal one this time.

Finally getting into geography honors. And surviving, somehow, with grades that still might count as ridiculous-in-a-good-way. The one big change I’m getting used to is the need to take actual hardcore notes.

For eight years, most classes I’ve gone to, both inside or outside school, have been straight from a book or handout, which would be so easily read and comprehended (…to me) that any notes would be a waste of energy. A couple science teachers would make us take notes and count them as a grade. All you had to do to get an A was write down most of the important bits, even if the chapter sections were written in exaggerated cursive that took up half the page and there were random teddy bears straddling the margins, as in my notes.

There was a stage in maybe seventh grade where I told myself I would make neat, doodle-free notes that actually summarized the stuff in biology (the easy seventh-grade kind (not that we still remember all of it)), and to get to that goal I would force myself to use only one page for each section, with a special way to mark the vocabulary words. It helped studying a little, but the stage didn’t last, and I ended up doodling again.

Even when the going finally got tough and understanding became a nontrivial task, I still had irrelevant embellishments and a bunch of artificial fonts for my “notes”. Even in the days when I was free to go to the Chiao-Tung University for classes twice a week (and still get consistently ridiculous grades, judging by the score breakdowns the prof gave us after every test), my notes looked like this.

Somewhat depressing almost-symmetry.

If you are reading this, then our APMO testing time is over! There’s a small chance of me being really happy or really frustrated about how I did, but I’m betting on a solid “meh.”

Rules page by mathgrant. There’s no way I’m going to memorize the Japanese name yet. [edit: It’s Sashigane. It’s not that hard.]

Ruleset designed by Zotmeister.

A ratio-preserving enlargement of the janko.at sample invocation puzzle, perhaps. I wanted to try using smaller clues. Finally a grid too large for full-size displaying! Is that even supposed to be an achievement?