Oleg's Big Party

Making use of the Web

Recently my philosophy teacher made history. Well, thats a bit of an over statement. He has done something no high school teacher I had ever has done before: make an actually useful website with our marks, assignments and even a forum (wow). What’s more… is that the domain registry (the “whois” command) shows that he has done it in a matter of days (domain was acquired on March 21, 2005). Impressive, I gotta say.

Now, that I have praised him long enough, I start poking holes in plan. The site is a little simple, but quite pleasant actually - much better than I’ve expect. But it is still that Adobe GoLive auto-generated crap which does not validate as HTML 4.01 Transitional. And the board… is phpBB which is pretty good, but Invision is simply better. Oh well, we can live with that, I guess.

The marks are stored in static html files. To access them, we need to enter our username and the password, and the JavaScript takes care of the rest. Of course, most people just don’t realize that JavaScript isn’t a layer of security, because it runs on the local host and can trivially be circumvented. Well, in this case, it doesn’t really help, because the username and the password are useless - they generate a case-sensitive 12 character alphanumeric “Master Key” which is used to form the URL. Thats too much possibilities, and lies outside beyond my hacking capability.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 08:27 PM / Comments (4)

Canadian Mathematical Olympiad

Yeah, another contest again. Well, actually its a little more than another contest, because you get nice 1337 prizes. But other than that, its just one of the three to get into the IMO team (so I have to do try a little harder). The time control is 5 questions for 3 hours, usually ends up being a rush in the end. Most of the marks are for style - for the neatness, clarity of the solution (something I really need to work at). In any case, wish me luck. We’ll see how well I do tomorrow.

Update: The CMO was significantly harder than that of the past two years. I ended up solving the first four questions, which would be good - if they were perfect write-ups. Given that the CMO folk like to deduct marks, my mess in question 3 could prove quite damaging, which would be equivalent to screwing up. I still did well, its not like I did bad, but money wise, I won’t get rich. I had some ideas on number 5, but not much (they can provide some compensation).

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 07:09 PM /

Linked Right In

A not-so-minor change now. The linklist RSS feed now links directly to the linked pages, rather than the Permalink (individual entry page, the one with comments). This is worthy of note, and thus makes the Big Party Key Dates list.

Finally, linkage done right. Some aggregators would require you to re-subscribe to mark those changes.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 06:19 PM /

Canned Drinks

Tokyo, Japan - International Mathematical Olympiad

In our spare time, the Canadian Team enjoyed varieties of canned drinks. In Japan, the vending machines don’t serve Crush or 7UP, they serve Royal Milk Tea, Aloe with White Grape and Pocari Sweat. They still have coke though, which is good. If you thought the names are strange, the drinks are stranger too. You have to be cautious, sometimes you can find stuff floating inside!

In Japan, they have a lack of aluminum. So, they build their cans out of stainless steel. Not only the mass is bigger, but the size is bigger too - 355 ml coke cans are actually hard to find. What you get are elongated 500 ml ones (evidently the Japanese like to drink a lot). And you don’t get “Original Taste”, you get “No reason!”

The day after the closing ceremony (our flight departed a day later), we went to this “fast food” place. Normally, people order through person. However, here - we ordered through a vending machine. At least the delivery wasn’t automated. Can’t help but think, these people really are strange.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 01:18 PM / Comments (3)

Flash Epidemic

Recently, there has been a large increase in Flash designed sites. The “new” cool, its called. Well, I tell you what, lets hope people see the light and the new cool will go away. So what exactly is wrong with Flash? I am sorry, there is nothing wrong with Flash. It is that it is often misused to create such monsters. Flash is a nice tool for constructing web animations, photo/movie galleries and quick/dirty games (for those who don’t know any real programming). However, many designers have took it further: introductory splash pages (those should never exist) or even worse: whole Flash sites. Imagine that.

Flash pages are harder to navigate and are less accessible. To make matters worse, many designers deploy non-standard GUI controls (e.g customized scroll bars). Okay, screw the scroll bars. They are filled with tons of redundant animation. People read web pages to absorb information, not to watch red and blue bricks float up and down the screen. Flash pages lack the most basic elements of website navigation such as a back button, link colours and search (not to mention text size and encoding). On top of that Flash distracts webmasters updating content. Oh, they are harder to index on search engines too.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 08:01 PM /

Theories and Observation

Mathematics is often called an “exact” science, for we start from a few basic unchanging principles (axioms) and move from there. This mode of thinking is known as foundationalism. However, impure science (physics, chemistry and biology) rely on observation. To do this, they create theories. So, the central question is what exactly are theories? Why we need them? How do they connect to the truth?

All theories are inherently buried in observation (thought or actual). They begin with experimentation. This provides a range of qualitative and quantitative data. However, data on its own isn’t going to get very far. So, we put forth a model, which simply put is a collection of patterns in the data. Still, the patterns don’t explain the data, they only suggest it. A theory is the extrapolation of the model for a more general class of objects and its synthesis with other similar theories. Thus theoretical knowledge must not be provable (based on a set of axioms), but has to be consistent. This structure of knowledge is known as coherentism.

At this point, the theory is knowledge beyond experience. The outcomes suggested by a theory doesn’t need necessarily to reflect reality. This is known as the theoretical jump. Because of this, theories may provide inaccurate data - however they are not wrong. That is why you don’t disprove theories (because you can’t). This is an example of a self-saving clause. It rather cheap, really - oh well, it works. In chess, one can say that every sacrifice is only temporary, otherwise it would be called a blunder. Basically, the idea is to choose the definition which bests suits you, or draw a distinction between two synonyms (or equivalent objects) to your advantage. A theory is a definite statement, while the outcome can be probabilistic, the theory asserts itself fully.

Where do inaccuracies arise? In experimentation the inaccuracies are the “sources of (theoretical) error”. The explanation brings fault to the model - the sample are too local, the pattern is a rough estimate, circumstantial external forces, etc. However, these are just experimental irregularities. The problem usually lies in unaccounted phenomena.

Theories are definite, but developing - as soon as one finds an experiment which contradicts to the theory, the theory adapts to explain this experiment. Theoretical development is based on simplicity. There are many ways to explain a certain phenomena. Scientists seek the simplest explanation which provides most conclusions. When a theory needs too much “special case “adjustments, it is usually discarded in favour of a simpler one. Thus if theories and designed for explanation, scientific experiments are designed to develop theories by providing a better model to work on (most often scientists don’t understand what is practically going on).

So what about the theoretical jump? When a practical meaning becomes theoretical, we often apply the theory in reverse to the practice. However, by reasoning outside the system, we may come to some not so wanted conclusions. The basic, humble, simple intuitive ideas can combine to make some hard, difficult and quite counter-intuitive statements. But more on that next time.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 06:47 PM /

Our Writers Write

A new bunch of question came in (previous questions: February, March).

The donut people? They made a Marble Fritter for ya? They are beyond hope. A normal person would try to sell two donuts, but a topologist would first link them.

Anyone asked you for the student card lately? No, but thats perhaps because I have a habit of sticking it in their face (joking). I didn’t see them interrogating anyone else either though.

The ball? Did you see him again? Can’t recall. Speaking of which, he was the one who lost the gloves. No, wait, he is the one who I gave the gloves back to. Oh well, a technicality.

Your inventions, did they come to life yet? No, not yet. But I am trying man. Seriously, I am trying.

That teacher which died a while ago, she still dead? She came back to life on March 14. Coincidentally, thats the day when the APMO was written.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 01:39 PM / Comments (2)

Farming

Sometimes I go to farms, and say hi to my friend Richard Peng. The rural household is a nice source of carrots, tomatoes and other kinds of spam (harvest). But that exactly isn’t the point. Richard is one happy guy: a computing nerd. By nerd, I mean he is a farmer, or something as silly as that. Overall, Richard is a nice guy, nice enough that they let him onto the IOI team. Speaking of which, you know how many IOI questions deal with cows?

So, why exactly am I writing this? One time, I called Richard a farmer. So, Richard started wondering why he’s a farmer. He wondered for a while, and just couldn’t figure out the answer. So, he turned to the local “Know Things Guy” (that means me) to figure it out for him. A few months passed, and the funny thing is: I still haven’t figured out the answer. Unlike Richard, I am just the sort of person who gives up (luckily, I am creative enough to cover up the shame). All I can say to you Richard, is that “your sodbustering is beyond me.”

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 05:53 PM /

The Downward Spiral

With all good new inventions, the web is rapidly deteriorating. Websites are becoming uglier, less usable and much more annoying. One fanatic movement is replaced by another, and the cycle of good web standards turns. Good humans have declared war against these zealots, only to be faced with corruption themselves. We can’t fight a disease - the more you kill it, the more it keeps coming back, in a stronger, more powerful reincarnation of itself.

To fight disease, we must pinpoint its source. Well, then what would be the source of all evils? Internet Explorer. Microsoft. Broken web standards. New HTML tags. Handling of malformed HTML. Thats a lot to hate Internet Explorer, but… here, we run into a problem. We cannot blame Internet Explorer, because its Microsoft. In fact, that’s the reason we can’t blame it, for Microsoft hasn’t been developing it for the last few years.

No tabbed browsing, no pop-up and image blocking, no News Feeds. Sure its sucks, and is all infected with bugs… but, thats only a local dump. We would have to look elsewhere. Perhaps the problem lies in the “good” modern browsers (Safari, Opera, Firefox)? Where does browsing stand today? The plague of pop-ups is almost over. Image ads are all but gone. Soon, with plugins like Greasemonkey, the web will be ours to control. Or will it?

What I learned: spam never gives in. The better the browsers become, the nastier do the nasties get. Friendly 480x80 image ads have turned into distorted proportions (some browsers block images of known ad sizes). Animated gifs have been replaced with Flash, JPEGs - by long listings of text. Pop-ups became overheads. But I caution you from making quick conclusions yet. For browser features don’t dictate website design. So far, we have only been examining a red herring (bummer). Thus, the answer must lie in how the websites are designed (or must it?). But that is something for next time, isn’t it?

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 07:04 PM / Comments (1)

Acro is the Game

The game is very simple. We are given a bunch of letters (the acronym), and from them, we decide what it stands for. After 60 seconds are up, players must vote for their favourite acro (players are forbidden to vote for their own).

Now, the scoring. Players receive 1 point per vote. The first-entered acro which gets a vote will be awarded 2 bonus points for speed. The first-entered acro gathering the most points during a round will receive 1 point per letter (this is based on the assumption that the difficulty is proportional to the number of letters in the acronym). Clearly, this last bonus is huge. The game traditionally goes to 30 points.

Additionally, there is a topic (make it rhyme, server admins, role playing games, etc). The game has been complicated by “strategic voting” (i.e voting for the worst acro), voting off topic and cheating (getting “dummy” players to vote for you). Well, anyway, enter me. I suck at the game (people never vote for my acros), so I decide to make a computer (program) which plays for me.

So far, it makes nice 3 and 4 letter acronyms (NCF: Netherlanders can fly, FMU: Fish mutate uncontrollably, PHSM: Peculiar hamsters singly merrily) and decent 5 letter ones (SPDMF: Smart pandas dance mighty ferociously). The maximum is 7 (I still have to work on those). You gotta admit those are pretty good, albeit possibly off-topic. :).

The thing is, the computer has the advantage of thinking real fast and could output those in less than a second (lag time). Assuming that it gets at least 1 vote, it snacks all of the speed bonuses (some human players don’t like it, but thats only because they want to keep the speed bonuses for themselves, schmucks).

Anyways how does the program work? Well I have a bunch of lists, based on (1) parts of speech (2) connotation (3) placement within sentence (4) category. Then I have a few patterns, say #n#v#d [noun-verb-adverb], #n-c#v [noun-can-verb], &a-l&d [animals-like-desert]. The program chooses the best possible query (matches maximal number of patterns, well, weighted maximum actually - some patterns are more important than others) and sends it to the server.

I am looking into porting it to PHP code to give you a live demonstration over the web. Maybe this plan will come into being, maybe not.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 10:26 PM /

Logic: Deductive and Inductive

I have never bothered to understand the fine line between inductive and deductive logic, but my physics and philosophy teachers forced me to reconsider… So what do official definitions say?

“Deductive logic = this refers to the application of general rules to specific cases. Begins with general statements and moves to the particulars. Inductive Logic = Examines the particulars or specifics in an attempt to develop generalization.”

However, this misses out paradoxes, probabilistic statements and specific cases. A better definition of the the two would be as follows: Deductive logic = you lose information, Inductive logic = you gain information. Part of the definition is that it dispels myths that deductive logic is somehow “better” than inductive logic. Read on for my analysis.

In deductive logic, you lose information. Deductive logic relies on the validity of its base propositions. Many claim that deductive logic arguments are the only ones “full-proof,” but this is only a red herring, for we are concerned with the truth and not with the validity of the argument. Deductive logic may be a localization of a well-established fact, but it can also be seen as a logical interpolation of two (or more) assertions into one. This itself is tricky process which may require typographical properties of logical quantifiers (and, or, for all) as well as jumps outside the system (which cannot be definitely explained in the system). It is not merely inductive logic in reverse, where the premises follow the conclusion.

In inductive logic, you gain information. You extrapolate the qualities of the particulars onto a more general subset of this universal. To do this, you make a leap forward, even in the case when you have a base object and an ordering schemata (such as mathematical induction), you may still suffer from ω-incompleteness (some may reject arguments based on indefinite existence, meaning a successive pyramid of true statements may not lead to a true statement in general, this gets much more complicated with unprovable statements from Gödelian incompleteness).

Another foundation of induction is Limit Theory, which states that objects tend to change little over little time. For instance, “if the sun rises today, most likely it will rise tomorrow”. In fact - it definitely will, for the “sun rising today” is not a specific event, meaning that the line between it happening and not happening is blurred (the famous the chicken and the egg paradox). But the two propositions are different, and perhaps even conflicting. One describes timeless attributes the other describes state-of-being. Yet (its arguable that) both are able to provide absolute certainty (or the same certainty) of knowing the truth as deductive logic.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 12:13 PM / Comments (2)

Text, more text, even more Text

If you haven’t noticed, the Big Party pages were filled with 100% text. Well, to be honest with you, it was nicely styled… but still text. This is about to change. I have decided that this page needs some colour, some real colour and not the CSS styled #BBDDFF or #336699. That means images, good 128x128 thumbnails. They have worked surprisingly well over at the Linklist. Now, the linklist is fed onto the sidebar (low space area), which means I would have to figure out a way to display images differently or don’t display them at all. Hope you find the pages more friendly.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 08:38 PM /

Oleg's Big Adventure (Part III)

I have started this story exactly 3 months ago… but have been thrown off track. Now, that I have more vacations, I could bother finishing it. So this is where the story gets interesting. In the last part, I said that I will use my calculator as a laser to blast a hole in the wall. You might be wondering what happens next. Today’s Theme: Larger than Life.

I will walk out of the hole. Except I wouldn’t be walking out, I would be dropping out. Yes, dropping out - clouds will be all around me. Clouds will be under me. In fact, I will be standing on a cloud. Then I will notice that the cloud is made out of cotton candy. 100% sugar. One day its going to rain. And when it does, I will float down to earth and land on a cactus. I would get mad and kick the cactus. This would be a dumb idea, as I will regret it later. A little later, actually.

Anyways, forget all that, I will be in some desert (didn’t I just say it was raining). It would be very hot (hotter than it is now). I will immediately start thinking about survival. I would realize that I don’t have any water, but thats okay, because I got the coke.

After a day of wandering around the hot desert, I will find a giant conveyer belt. I will get on. It will be zooming at high speeds. After riding for 5 minutes, my head would start spinning. Then, I would realize that it goes in circles. Remembering that I don’t have much longer to live, I will pull out my handy-dandy calculator, and find the circumference. It would happen to be approximately 40,000 kilometers. I would realize that as the diameter of the Earth. That would mean I am on the equator.

Then, I realize that soon when the land would end, I will be cruisin’ the ocean floors. Realizing that wouldn’t be a fun experience, I jump off. The centripetal force would carry me far forward… and I will bump into a sign. It would say 50 KPH max. Then, I will see the Ice Cream Man. But he wouldn’t have any ice cream. He would turn out to be an undercover police officer and chase me to deliver my first speeding ticket.

I will quickly blind him with my flash light, and then get away on my balloon. Except that it would be in the shape of football, and instead of going home… I would be flying into space… more to come next time!

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 09:29 PM / Comments (3)

Attention to detail

So the history test just passed away. I wrote two pages, but some have wrote considerably more. And for what? The questions weren’t that hard. They did not need long, complicated answers. All we have to do is to get the facts across. People just don’t bother to read the questions and understand what they are asking for (especially when the teacher gives them a handout with all the prompts).

In history, on the grade 12 level anyway, people get marked for substance. Detail, on the other hand, is largely irrelevant. Its memory work, not critical thinking. And luckily, thats not where marks come from. I write little (as you can see from my blog posts), but its good info. Gets the point across, too. Writing a lot, simply loses it. And I get marks for it accordingly. If a question is worth 5 points, you need to bring in 5 different ideas. Not 5 details about a single idea. If you want to do extra work, its fine with me… but otherwise, why do it?

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 04:12 PM / Comments (2)

Links and Chains

The Linklist quickly became popular after its introduction on Feb. 10. As of this writing, over 50 entries have been made, which is quite an achievement. I have made a few tweaks to the Linklist website to further integrate it with the Big Party. It remains to fix up the search page and add some more nav links on the side (this will take a couple of days). After this, is March Break.

Anyways, many articles come from News Feeds. What I didn’t realize before, and realize now is that many news sites (such as NewScientist or Wired) attach an optional suffix to the URL indicating that the article has been reached via a News Feed. Of course, you don’t need to know this, so I conveniently chop it off. This keeps the Big Party download file size low (joking).

Example: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7107&feedId=online-news_rss20

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 10:09 PM /

APMO coming up soon

Very soon in fact, because it will be happening tomorrow. APMO stands for the Asian Pacific Mathematical Olympiad. The thing is, I don’t know why I am writing it, because I am not Asian nor Pacific, but I have been writing it for quite a while now, and they didn’t kick me out then, so I doubt they will kick me out now. Usually, it happens on a March Break, but now our March Break has been shifted a week ahead so I am going to take a day off school instead. Its your typical 4 hour - 5 questions olympiad, shouldn’t be anything too hard. I will tell you how I do after, ok?

Update: I solved 1 and 3 completely, my number 4 is messed (solution is generally correct, but unfortunately, I maximized a given variable, we will see how well that turns out), my number 2 is just wrong and 5… Its just a stupid diagram (and a bunch of special cases, but no general formula). Slightly frustrating I must say.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 12:07 PM / Comments (2)

Ice Breaker

When your ratings are high, breaking bests isn’t easy. Well, guess what? Today is my lucky day, I broke my first best in 2005. Anyways, the game is losers - very simple rules: if you can take, you have to take, and your goal is to lose all your pieces (except your king which technically isn’t a piece). Not only I broke my losers best, but I also broke the 2200 margin, which according to today’s standards is like huge. This puts me 1st on the “best losers” list (it shows the top 22 active players). To make matters even better, I have won my 900th tourney, which makes me 11th on the Tomato Winlist. This of course, makes me very happy. Now, I can sit back, relax and do homework.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 10:47 AM / Comments (1)

Big Party Key Dates

Every blog has a history, and this one is no exception.

• Apr. 18 - Linklist breaks 100 posts.
• Apr. 7 - 150 posts have been made. More to follow.
• Mar. 28 - Linklist feed made right (links directly to the pages).
• Mar. 9 - Linklist breaks 40 posts.
• Mar. 6 - Another site redesign. Very well accepted.
• Feb. 10 - Linklist established. Quickly becomes popular.
• Feb. 2 - Site redesign is well accepted.
• Jan. 13 - Adrian So joins the big party team.
• Jan. 4 - Tout Wang joins the big party team.
• Jan. 3 - Talk with Oleg established.

2004 — Key Dates:

• Dec. 29 - Vlad Baranov joins the big party team.
• Dec. 27 - 50 posts have been made. More to follow.
• Dec. 15 - The big party moves to the Movable Type publishing system.
• Dec. 11 - 20 posts have been made. More to follow.
• Dec. 5 - Oleg’s Big Party up and running.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 07:09 PM /

Munching Donuts

Lately, I have been ordering non-existing donuts. Thinking of fake donut names is just as easy as balancing chemical reactions (without the actual balancing). The people at Don Mills station were very confused.

Marble + Apple Fritter = Apple + Marble Fritter.

Double Chocolate + Toasted Coconut = Toasted Chocolate + Double Coconut.

Honey Glazed + Sugar Twist = Sugar Glazed + Honey Twist.

Blueberry Cruller + Rainbow Sprinkled = Blueberry Sprinkled + Rainbow Cruller.

And the classic reply is… “We’re sold out!” Seriously, do these people know their donuts?

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 05:17 PM /

Lots of Noise

Instead of learning history, we went over to the library to watch a student-run presentation. Or the “Global Noyse” (it was an acronym, they couldn’t spell it right) as they called it. Overall, it was… eh, more on that in a second (can’t start bashing it away just yet). They told us to pass the message along, “reach out to as many people as we can” - so… following their advice, I will tell you my story.

Okay, now that I have introduced the topic, I would like to say that the presentation was bad. By “bad”, I mean “very bad”, by which I mean “horrible”. I just can’t stress how bad it was. For one thing, the Power Point was bad (okay, it sucked, but I am trying to be polite). Black and white pages with single-size text just don’t meet good design. Even the Cyber Club® can do better.

I tried to read a book, but they just talked too loud and my head kept on spinning. Yeah, they “talked” about Human Rights violations for an hour. Just talked, talked, talked. They could have just shaddup and let me read a book, but nooo, :). They had to suck it. They didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. They didn’t even pull an act, to pretend to know what they talked about. It wasn’t informative, it wasn’t a comedy, it was plain boring.

Now for a more formal evaluation. Hard work could be such a waste of time. Its sad that others don’t think so. They (their effort) would be recognized and recognized for this, but what have they done? Many would say that they have done something bleeding good, performed some kind of a “public service”, but I would rather classify it as a “boring waste of time”. You want public service?

Take Peter Yung. He is the newspaper man: he distributes the Metro. Not a big thing, but lightens up many a people’s day. Now thats public service. And what recognition does he get? My respect. Thats why he gets to be a case study for this blog. But unfortunately, not much more than that.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 04:35 PM / Comments (4)

Roller Coaster

My physics teacher is a short, crazy old woman. She makes people go up to the board and write up a question they don’t know how to solve, discovers an error (Good question! or Who is your math teacher?), humiliates them into crying and then calms them down saying that crying is a good human emotion. Or if to her surprise, they actually get the answer, she says “Good girl” or “She’s good” (boys don’t surprise her often).

But we still like her, room 220 will always be in our hearts. Chessclub, physics club, everything! The place of gathering, if anyone ever comes to visit the school, room 220 is a must (usually the first stop to come by). All in all, her assignments are kind of crazy too. For grade 12, we are supposed to design a roller coaster. This is how mine turned out. I hear Ben was sneaking by.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 09:23 PM / Comments (3)

AIME tommorow!

I usually announce contests one day in advance, and wouldn’t want to break the tradition now (even though I won’t have this luxury at the IMO, maybe someone can do it for me? Nah, there is always future posting). The AIME is the second stage of American Math Contests, and the road to the USAMO (if you do well). In any case, wish me luck, and I guess, until tomorrow.

Update: Okay, the AIME went (relatively) well. I solved 13 (not too sure about the last two), but made two mistakes (as I said before, not that my answers weren’t wrong, just the questions) so am expecting 11/15.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 08:29 PM / Comments (2)

Some changes...

Over the next few days, things will go terribly wrong again. I’ve decided to include the linklist on the side (I’ve got the MTMultiBlog plugin working), hence a new layout. I have updated the stylesheet, but not all pages (only the index page) reflect the changes. There is a date bug, I hope to fix it today. So if this page looks like crap now - crap enough that you wouldn’t want to continue surfing, come back later.

Update: Whats left to do? Fix up the three comment templates, the search bug search page, a few broken links and the headers, create monthly and category archives, post progress. Make a random thingy, make sure code works with popular web browsers. Fix up the category bug (newly discovered).

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 12:56 PM / Comments (1)

Highest level of recommendation

Okay, guys (and girls too, I am sure I have some female readers), thank you for making this blog happen. Today marks the 3-month existence of the big party. This is the 120th post. During the 3 months of existence we have hit a whooping 35,000 hits.

As part of my expansion policy, I have started recommended books and recommended websites lists. They are not finished yet (as of this writing), but I promise you, that in a couple of days, they will get real big. You should seriously check them out, a couple of gems there. If you have anything to contribute, email me or post a reply, and I will include your suggestion shortly.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 09:29 PM / Comments (2)

Recommended Reading

If you have a book that deserves to be in this list, go ahead email me.

• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
• Magazine Beach by Lewis Gannett
• Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays by Elwyn R. Berlekamp, John H. Conway, Richard K. Guy
• What is the name of this book? by Raymond Smullyan
• The Twelve Chairs by Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov
• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
• Mathematical Puzzles: A Connoisseur’s Collection by Peter Winkler

Suggested by our beloved readers:

• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• The White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Last updated: Mar. 17, 2005.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 09:25 PM /

Recommended Websites

If you have a website that deserves to be in this list, go ahead email me.

Tech News: Slashdot, Ars Technica, C|net News.com, Wired News, The Register.

Search Engines/Encyclopedias: Google, Wikipedia.

Math/Science: Math World, New Scientist, Planet Math, Turgor Toronto.

Chess: Chessclub, XBoard/WinBoard.

Mac Apps: Omni Web, Adium X, Transmit, Snapz Pro X, BBEdit, Unison, Graphic Converter.

Computers: Rinkworks: Computer Stupidities.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 09:22 PM /

Suddenly, its March!

Well, thats the end of February (it was rather quick). Anyway, my dad bought me another lock and off I went to school… unfortunately, someone already put a lock on there. I complained but the office was rather slow about it (and totally unwilling to help). I deserve the rights to my locker: its a good location, I am used to it, its my locker, but the administration didn’t think so. What a bummer. So off I moved to the Ivan-Kirill domain (near room 220 - the physics lab). Good lockers have all been taken, so my locker is left without a handle, but it works, you know. Hopefully I will make some new friends, forget the old ones, oh hell! This is all nice and well, but its not going without revenge - someone is going to pay (and fast).

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 08:15 PM / Comments (1)