One year ago today: December 25, 2021, all work, no profit.
Five years ago today: December 25, 2017, such an essence.
Nine years ago today: December 25, 2013, every 250 years.
Random years ago today: December 25, 2003, 20% safe.
Another frozen day so I figured why not check out the competition? Turns out several comparison and ratings sites consider this blog to be a news feed. None rate it as general views, trivia, or science but it turns out they don’t much assign those categories at all. That led me to look at other news feeds and that would place me in bad company. Those other blogs do not come close to the format and coverage, but I understand they did not begin as journals. One or two posted lines twice a week is not, in my opinion, a worthy comparison to the information contained here daily. For example, take MXM, an abbreviation I used for “Merry Xmas” this week.
This second day of freezing weather has hurt the holidays. The odd cold spell doesn’t get time to penetrate things to the core. But two days means trouble. My heaters and two bowls of cream of wheat prove not better at keeping me warm than they did sixty years ago. Keeping indoors has brought my pastimes to the forefront and I report a failure of my algorithm to solve mazes by examining the length of “walls” that touch the other rim. See addendum for where this led before I determined it not worth more time.
Aha, see this photo (above)? That’s gourmet bird food, with peanuts and raisins. There, the rules didn’t say it had to be people food, so I’m off the hook and I might just go out for an Xmas drink. Or two. Meanwhile, here is a mystery. A gif from 2013. While my filing system for pictures is bad, the filing dates are usually exact. This series showed up in my 2013 archives. This would make it the earliest known photos I have that are compatible with my gif software. To the best of my memory, I do not know where or how I would have taken these, or where I got the camera to do so. Even the concept precedes acquiring getting my gif apps by some five years.
However, what is entirely possible is I was experimenting with getting some slideshow software to emulate a gif. That would make sense around here. I have no recollection of these photos otherwise. It does look like either south Miami or east Ft. Lauderdale, taken not later than January 30, 2013. At that time I was probably unaware that gifs were a separate package. Kewl.
Later investigation shows companion photos which evidence this was a trip to the bookstore in Ft. Lauderdale. And the pictures were taken from the sidecar. If so, this includes a rare and probably first trip [by sidecar, I mean] through the tunnel. I’d like to say it was Xmas, but all these photos are in January of 2013. This history is possible because of a frozen day off in 2022. It’s past the stage where I should be spending considerably more time doing nothing. Tending my yard is all the outside I really need.
The birds are fed. The feeders are not care-free. The local humidity means if you fill them to the top, the ports will clog up before half the seeds are gone. If you don’t fill them, it’s a chore to keep ahead. The outdoor says the temp is easing toward 45°F, above which I will get out in the yard. There’s hope yet today. Either way, the Gulf makes sure it won’t stay cold so tomorrow we’ll get moving again. Meanwhile, allow me to just sit here. With my coffee, of course.
Wood carver duplicating jig.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
How about that Italian tennis star that faked her vaccination? Fake authorities, fake vaccines, I don’t see the conflict. Unless the jabbed players claim she gains advantage by not having myocarditis. Mastodon, the centralized media outfit, gets my attention again. I’m into computers, not social media, so what’s go my attention is their effect on Big Tech. Decentralized communities are not for profit and can operate well outside the rulebooks followed by the money-grabbers of the Left Coast. Asking around reveals the so-called power users don’t really have a clue how it operates, they just know it does. You get a lot of that nowadays.
Shortly thereafter, I opened an account via a shared e-mail account. We’ll check it out. Their terms of usage is long and tedious consisting of mostly things they know they ought to say. It appears the content is moderated by users, so that’s a plus. A few undesirables have set up shop but we don’t know enough yet to see if they prevail. The guy whose headline says he printed a 3D mechanical watch is a lisping liar. He printed only the case from a downloaded pattern. And Xmas Day or not, some jerk up the way has been running some kind of nailing machine all day. It’s just loud enough to keep everyone awake. The power isn’t out, so it’s not a generator.
Five people were gunned down at a condo board meeting in Toronto (Canada), police say there is no motive, but it’s common knowledge such boards are their own motive. North Korea tests a solid fuel rocket with intercontinental range, again not one important part of the rocket or science was ever developed in that country.
ADDENDUM
How to solve a maze with A.I.? My approach was directed at square maze patterns. Imagine one, then mentally divide it into four quarters down the major axis. Start with the vertical and find the longest “wall” toward the center. In the example shown, all the walls were short. Instead, I found one marked here in orange. We know the solution must pass around this wall by a single gap. The next frame shows a similar trace from the lower left corner, meaning the red circle shows the only possible through path.
Next, a third wall is marked from the lower right, which is shorter, but begins to demonstrate how a simple set of A.I. rules begins to narrow down the options. In this case, it appears to be using a different approach than known faulty human intelligence. My search here was for the rules of following these walls, an indirect approach but relevant because I know the set of rules must be simple. This over-rides the consideration that there are robots already that can navigate past dead ends.
Some may say this is just a version of the “finger on one wall” solution. But that is trial and error at the path level, whereas my version is not examining the path itself, but would eventually establish the whole route. My finger points to a corner of the maze that need not even be looked at. This is a big part of what separates the millennial version and my version of A.I. Their methodology plods through every option, whereas mine knows to zero in on what is most likely to work. My goal was to find a series of rules that apply to this solution, but as mentioned, maybe later. One idea is to eliminate every path where one part of the wall touches the side walls. Hope you like.
Later, I took another look at the maze configuration. If any one “wall” reaches within a single channel of the opposite wall, you’ve half solved the path. If it touches any side wall, that defeats the maze rules by sealing off that entire “quadrant”. Am I approaching the same set of rules that generate the maze? Is the trick to reduce the puzzle to a series of smaller pieces? Work with me here.
