ilai: (Default)
2005-05-19 10:47 pm
Entry tags:

Broken glasses :(

OMG, my housemate was such a bitch!! She was walking so slowly I called her Pokey Lokie (lol) but then she kicked me in the face and broke my glasses. Now I have to go to my unfashionable backup. *disgusted*
ilai: (Default)
2005-05-09 09:23 am
Entry tags:

Typographical horror

My dear little heart broke when I saw this photograph of the craigslist office in the Metro on the way to work this morning. Does anyone else wince when they see it? If you do, don't visit the "valet parking" sign at the Hotel@MIT either (next to the University Park Star Market).
ilai: (Default)
2005-05-04 02:11 pm
Entry tags:

Pandas and Golden Monkeys oh my

Rumor has it that the Communist Party of China is preparing a panda and a golden monkey as gifts following talks with the chairmen of the Nationalist and People First parties in Taiwan. Of course, there is now a petition out to protest the use of endangered species for political reasons (in Chinese):

抗議政治人物拿動物的生命當贈禮 讓貓熊及金絲猴留在牠原有的棲息地

There is even talk of returning the favor with native monkeys of Taiwan! What will politicians think of next?
ilai: (Default)
2005-03-17 11:00 pm
Entry tags:

Katamari Easter Egg!

[livejournal.com profile] lokiect and I just discovered this fun easter egg: if you've got all the comets, then when you go view the constellations, you can press all their buttons in rapid succession to get a meteor shower! It doesn't matter what order you press them in, and you don't have to worry about trying to get all the comets to show up individually.
ilai: (Default)
2005-03-10 05:21 pm
Entry tags:

Amusement of the day

I now have a new web site for the answers to all my questions--the Anglo-Saxon Wikipedia! Maybe it'd be more useful if I knew German....
ilai: (Default)
2005-03-09 09:54 am
Entry tags:

Dreamy food is dreamy

So there I was in the kitchen with a saucepan on the stove, pondering whether to make spicy stir-fried eggplant, when my mother came in with a sandwich-like concoction comprised of cheese, white bread with its crust removed, and some intriguing filling. I took a large bite and fell instantly in love with it. Then I woke up and felt an intense craving for food.

It was 3am when I had this dream, and I so wish I could remember what was in that sandwich.
ilai: (Default)
2005-03-01 09:35 am
Entry tags:

Another night, another snowstorm

When you turn your lights off to go to bed at night, and your curtained windows are eeriely bright, you know there's a snowstorm here tonight, and you're glad it's just barely out of sight.
ilai: (Default)
2005-02-09 12:15 pm
Entry tags:

Messed-up late night thoughts

I had trouble sleeping last night, because my mind drifted off to a problem, which I record below. I make no guarantees with respect to coherence :)

Say that you have a set of tuples (puv), where p is a point on the x-y plane, u and v are positive integers, and u > v. One of the tuples is the origin tuple, (p0u0v0), and no two tuples share the same point.

A run is a nonrepeating sequence of n such tuples (pi, ui, vi), starting with the origin tuple, where any sum u0 + v1 + v2 ... + vi is at least ui+1.

Let's say the length of the run is the sum of all the distances between adjacent pi and pi+1 points in the sequence, and the size of the run is the sum u0 + v1 + v2 ... + vn.

the actual problem, maybe )

Then my head went "BA-NA-NA" and I decided I should forget about this and go to bed. Maybe I'm mad.