Bounded-Error Log

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha look at all the services

ahem

So, if you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last decade, Twitter is a platform for microblogging, i.e. blogging with very short posts, called tweets, which have to be under 140 characters after they shorten all the links for you for no reason, often after you’ve already shortened it once somehow-or-other. And yes, I hopped onto the bandwagon during procrastination. Everybody who matters on the technological edges of the internet seems to have one.

I’m not arrogant enough to imagine I could compare Twitter to anything else authoritatively… I only barely count myself as using it. But a brief set of first impressions should be okay. Twitter is very public: you can see everybody’s tweets, who everybody is following, and who everybody is being followed by; the single privacy setting is a simple binary choice to lock up your account, so that everybody who wants to see what you posted needs your explicit authorization.

My Facebook feed consists of entries such as:

• photographs of people I barely recognize, which I scroll past quickly… unless my mom comes up and says “Who is that?” and spends ten minutes looking at more such photos while asking me questions like “How do you go to the next picture?” or “Why is this photo so blurry?”
• context-less fragments of some larger conversation, e.g. “LOL!” or “linglinglinggg” (copied verbatim from a status)
• alerts of J. Random Person having taken a Personality Test or scored too many lines in Tetris
• Meta-Facebook infographics, like a cloud of your closest friends or number of status posts. I tend to… have an extraordinarily negative impression of the type of narcissistic achievement-reliant… people… who need rewards at every step, except that they seem to be everybody… *sigh
  

Yes, it’s official now. I’m on the 2012 International Mathematical Olympiad team bound for Argentina, and if I didn’t make a post about this I would be ashamed to call myself a blogger. So, a little moment of smug self-satisfaction should be justified, I hope? And not to mention, last year’s title of youngest Taiwan contestant is not yet passed? Let’s cue the evil laughter!

…or maybe not.

Here is a simple tabulation of our selection problems:

1. GA/GN/CG/GNC/NGA
2. AG/CA/NG/GCN/AGA
3. GA/GN/CA/GCN/AGC

Algebra x9, Combinatorics x7, Geometry x12, Number Theory x8. In other words a distribution in perfect negative correlation with my estimated ability in each subject. At least, that’s how I’ve always estimated them before about a month ago. Ouch, the last stage was the only one of the three where problem distribution for combinatorics actually reached its fair share. (Alternative interpretation: 2011’s distribution was majorly f123ed up with only one real geometry problem, which just means that this year’s battle will probably be difficult for me. (Alternative alternative interpretation: the evil, nasty, wicked, depraved windmill was actually an outrageous negative for me. Gee, I don’t know how to feel. But I should actually do stuff instead of wildly speculating; let’s get back to the topic.))

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?