On Randomness

I know, I know, I haven’t been blogging for a few days already. Don’t sue me.. I’m extremely busy nowadays with school, and various projects…

Few people have asked me why I like Lucky Star. Well, for one, it very much mimicks my conversations in real life (yes, I talk about Chocolate Coronets, and I dare you to tell me you haven’t played a game that was meant for a more mature audience when you were still young. Ahem.. GTA?)

I guess, that’s what’s so interesting about randomness (and yes, I know Lucky Star was shown last year). Now, here’s a slice of the random conversations I get into (and ooh, it has annotations!):

cfgt says:
that tutorial
nearly made me go to sleep
there’s this differentiation
since I am king of skipping steps
I did all four partial differentiation
in 8 lines

Chewxy 0, Algebra 5 says:
………¹

cfgt says:
tutor went through every alternate line of so of the full proper working, which means about 9 lines per partial differentiation
so he boringly explained his way through nearly 36 lines
over the course of 20 minutes

Chewxy 0, Algebra 5 says:
…

cfgt says:
hahaha

Chewxy 0, Algebra 5 says:
I personally think Joshua Gans’ kids are way too mature for their age²

cfgt says:
hahaha

Chewxy 0, Algebra 5 says:
either that, or american kids are just too stupid

cfgt says:
we know americans can be kinda stupid
Exhibit A: Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader

[personal conversation - censored]

Chewxy 0, Algebra 5 says:
95% chance of finding higgs boson
that is… really really really high
compared to 15% chance of finding Dark matter
# Antimatter: 100%. We detected antimatter long ago! In 1932, to be precise. It is no longer a mystery.
# God: 10^-20%. More likely than stable black holes, but still a long shot.³

cfgt says:
God LOL
maybe we’ll find hyperspace! LOL

Chewxy 0, Algebra 5 says:
there is a 20% combined chance of finding something like hyperspace⁴
and once we find that
we suddenly see a lot of spacecrafts in it that look like the Millenium Falcon

cfgt says:
nah
first we need to make sure living things can survive within hyperspace

Chewxy 0, Algebra 5 says:
and I’ve got a curious question: does the Death Star have a hyperspace engine?

cfgtsays:
doesn’t it?
I thought it jumped to Yavin

Chewxy 0, Algebra 5 says:
oh ya, it did

cfgtsays:
quite sure the Death Star jumped to Alderaan
and made it go boom!

Chewxy 0, Algebra 5 says:
I suppose it has to jump OUTSIDE the solar system
then slowly make its way in
then it won’t suddenly disrupt the gravitational field of the system

cfgt says:
different shows FTL have different rules

Chewxy 0, Algebra 5 says:
I mean, as itself, the Death Star has enough gravity already
no need to bother about supergravity/gravity-bending FTL drives
so to avoid collision into a planet, the death Star has to travel in the space where the net gravitational forces between planets is 0
forgot what that point is called already
but I remember the equation: GMm/r²

cfgt says:
hahaah

Chewxy 0, Algebra 5 says:
GMm/r² = 0
solve the quadratic equation
Winamp shuffle is screwed⁵

cfgt says:
we need encryption secure PRNGs!

Of course, while this particular conversation has a scifi/geeky bent to it, our conversations are usually completely random. One moment we may be talking about anime, and the next we could be talking about food (this combination is disturbingly becoming common), and then the next moment, we talk about random fantastical stories.

Even in real life conversations with cfgt and gang, it DOES turn random. Ah, I need to find more random friends over here.

And now, for something even more random… this is why I get EPIC FAIL in algebra:

My working was all correct, and a girl I lent my homework to found my mistake, and I copied her answer – 1/5. Which was also wrong. So I came back and re-did and found the answer was 2/3…. which is also wrong! cfgt pointed out that the actual answer for a^*₂ should be 2/5. FAIL in basic algebra. Ugh.

Here I am, doing advanced GT, and what I go bungle up? Basic Algebra… sigh. Then again, I shouldn’t do my homework at 3 in the morning.

And continuing on the topic of randomness, did you know I have 2 unannounced vodcasts? Well, lemme announce them now:

How to Fake Six Pack Abs -

The Headcrab Zombie Does Game On -

High Definition version of The Headcrab Zombie Does Game On -

1. cfgt’s a mathematical genius. I on the other hand, made the same mistake in basic algebra consecutively for 5 times [↩]
2. ah, gossip about other people’s professors [↩]
3. the source of these is here [↩]
4. i.e large extra dimensions, or warped dimensions, and there is only a combined 10% chance of finding either. I forgot that they were independent of one another [↩]
5. explain to me why its stuck on Motteike Sailor Fuku and One Year Later (from Battlestar Galactica) as sort of return-to constants? Every other song is Moeteike Sailor Fuku or One year later [↩]