Category Archives: Life

Lots of Puzzles!

Okay, so I’m committing myself into two puzzle projects.

First, a puzzle test in LMI. I won’t tell further, but e-mail me if you’re interested as a test solver. I need about one or two more.

Second, a puzzle pack. Well, there will be two; one is from the puzzle test, much like MellowMelon’s FF2 pack. Should be a sufficient amount of puzzles from every genre that makes an appearance in the test so you can enjoy any genre in a hopefully suitable difficulty.

The other is different. The premise is a story related to my OCs, one of which has been revealed in a previous post, and it will also feature several more OCs of another furry puzzle maker. Puzzles will accompany the story. Let’s say it takes place in some location with a bunch of puzzles scattered, and it takes the usual hero-vs-villain theme, but let’s see.

I haven’t typed a single word to the story; I haven’t made any puzzle for it; I haven’t planned the plot with more details… Mostly focusing to the LMI test and the upcoming tryouts for national exams, the latter can probably make me unavailable for four months, and afterwards I still need to manage college stuffs. But hey. I think I made a puzzle while a teacher was explaining in class anyway…

So yeah. Most obvious rejects will come to this blog often, but better puzzles will be kept for those two events.

Pushing Myself Over My Limits

It all began on Sunday. I tutored several people for 6 hours, from 2 PM to 8 PM, for Math finals we took on Monday.

Next, things get even more bizzare on Monday. 9 hours for Tuesday’s Physics.

And I overdid myself for tutoring 12 hours on Tuesday for today’s Chemistry.

The result? I was too tired, forgot pretty much everything and I can ony assure myself 50/100 score while I usually score high in the 90s.

Lesson: Don’t overdo yourself. Or if you do, learn everything so it sticks in your mind without being forgotten due to extreme tiredness.

Meh.

Antiderivative of tan x

I was toying with Problem 317 on Project Euler when I found a messy (but rather easy) antiderivative of a polynomial (with messy coefficients of course). Somehow whatever train of thoughts led me to think of the antiderivative of tan x. (That’s extremely sidetracked, but whatever. My initial guess of 2.4 million something was wrong anyway 😛 )

And it is pretty surprising.

Letting u = \cos x, we have du = -\sin x \,dx. Hence
\displaystyle \int \tan x \,dx = \int - \dfrac{-\sin x \,dx}{\cos x} = \int -\dfrac{du}{u} = - \ln |u| + C = - \ln |\cos x| + C.

Wild Logarithm appeared! But seriously. This is pretty amusing. Well, if you know \dfrac{d}{dx} \arctan x = \dfrac{1}{1 + x^2}, this is not that amusing, but still.

Math has always mesmerized me with its beautiful, unexpected results. However, it requires deep thought to actually understand it, hence a boatload of dislikes to math. In my class of 22 students, only one goes deep to math (namely me); one or two are good at school math, a few more okay, but that’s it; the rest are…uh…terrible. Of course, you cannot ask the opinion of a person who really digs math about math in these settings (aka the question about how his classmates are progressing in math); that’s biased.

Recently, namely 2.5 hours ago, I’ve just finished tutoring seven of my classmates for about 5.5 hours about math. Tomorrow is math (and history) finals exam, and it involves four topics: antiderivatives and integrals, matrices, vectors, and geometric transformation. I almost gave a very terrible problem (find the area enclosed between y = e^x - 1 and y = \ln (x+1), later revised to be base 2 instead of e); it’s terrible just because finding the intersection points will be a nightmare for them. Although I’m positive that most readers of this post can solve the problem without too much effort (note that the former is convex and the latter is concave, so they cut at at most two points, and they can be found easily).

Appreciating math (or any subject for that matter) is hard. I tend not to appreciate Indonesian (mostly because of severely flawed and broken “opinion-type” questions, where English should have anyway but our English focus more on grammar and reading); there might be someone out there who loves Indonesian more than their spouse (if there is any). Sometimes someone simply doesn’t appreciate any subject at all. I don’t have any right to judge; it might be that they like something else.

However, if you have the patience and logic to grasp the hidden beauty of math masked by mindless exercises such as \int x \sin x + x \sin x^2 \,dx, you might just stare in awe (or in confusion; again note that you need logic) of the beauty of math. You might even be amazed of the wonders of antiderivatives; note that the above example employs both partial integration (for first term) and integration by substitution (for second term) while differing only a number in its expression. So beautiful, so orderly.

Now that I’ve written too much, I might better sleep and prepare for tomorrow. It’s going to be a big day. (Those seven will come again for tutor on Tuesday’s Physics. 😛 )

Thanksgiving

Apparently today is Thanksgiving in US. As I’m getting more and more Shaymin-like, it’s natural that I’m going to thank people.

A few thanks are directed to certain obvious people. I’m not sure whether God is a person or a deity or something, but whatever.
– God
– Parents and family
– Friends, school and not school
– Other people and non-people

But there are some that deserve just those special mentions that are within the third and fourth categories above (the first two have my highest gratitude). They are, in no particular order:
– levans for making me a moderator of G&FF and Mafia
– Indonesia’s math team leader for a chance to go to IMO
– betaveros for countless things, but mostly his puzzles, ideas to various stuffs, and basically a nice person to chat with
– Yoshiap for the same reasons as betaveros, although unmentioned reasons might differ
– My classmate who gifted me the Shaymin action figure (pictured in some previous recent post (yeah recently updated so just see))
– My English Native teachers; I can now do IELTS Writing Test with some ease as opposed to 5 months ago where I’m pretty much unable to do it at all, and my other skill have improved too
– Game Freak (or Ken Sugimori? Whatever) who invented Shaymin so I can, to put simply, love it
– Everyone who came at my 17th birthday party a few days ago. You all are great.

Perhaps to be updated later.

Thank you for everything. Let’s make more puzzles. Wait what?

What If

What ifs… Always a great thing to escape from reality. Which itself is not a pretty good thing unless you have nothing to do, like laying on your bed and waiting when sleep will strike you. Indeed I wrote this while laying on bed, waiting to fall asleep.

After last night’s dream of transforming to a furry anthro, I spent a good deal of my thinking to twist it just so slightly so that I would transform to a Skymin anthro if it continued. Then the thought stayed with me for the whole day. I looked or felt my back at least three times for no real reason (itchy or something) today; all of which were checking whether the dream would became a reality by my back starting to grow white fur and such. (Obviously it didn’t.)

Afterwards, whenever I laid on my bed (which is twice: before nap and before sleep), when I didn’t actively using my phone such as browsing TVTropes, making a fic about game worlds meshed together, and writing a blog post, my thoughts would always run to that.

What if I’m truly becoming a Skymin anthro?

I tried to think a few normal routines, only that I was a Skymin anthro doing the routines. Among several, I got that:
– I would need way more shampoo for my fur.
– I would have some problems with personal documents (I specifically thought of passports, but identity cards worked too).
– I thought I might need some other people to be transformed to some other Pokemon anthros too. It would make things more fun, although not necessary.
– I would have problems using my touchscreen phone. I didn’t think fur-covered fingers can send some sort of “onFingerDown” signal to touchscreens…
– I would have looked odd. Not because of the Skymin look, but because I wore glasses. Skymin wearing glasses is weird.

But of course there are positive things too. Only that they are pretty obvious (people look at me in awe(?) and I can fly for example). Yeah.

What if I have a Skymin pet?
Seriously, this one is pretty hilarious. Bringing the Skymin to school.

Today (Monday) I have a math test. This post should be up at the time I’m having the math test anyway. In any case, here’s roughly what’s imagined, translated:
Teacher: But you can’t keep your pet while test.
Me: I can’t get him to wait outside!
Teacher: But he can help you otherwise!
Me: Seriously? Not intending to brag, but I definitely don’t need his help. I can do the test myself.
Teacher: …
Me: …and I promise Sky (his name) won’t want to cheat anyway.

Described pretty much exactly as imagined, so sorry if you got offended. But yeah.

Also, I held him with one hand while riding a motorcycle (okay I can’t phrase this properly, but there is someone who rode the motorcycle and I sat on the back), and wind rushed through his fur. Cute fluffy ball with a kawaii smile, if you ask. Yes, seriously. Can’t describe it without “girly” words. Meh.

What if I get asleep now?
Maybe it’s a good idea. Scheduled away.

Dreams

Constantly getting memorable ones. Apparently I always dreamed whenever I’m sleeping in some time period of 6-8 AM; my most recent dream was in my 6-7 AM sleep (woke up for a while at 6 AM, then fell asleep again).

The dreams were bizzare, and for whatever reason sometimes they stayed in my mind for the day. More if I actually store the dream (write it somewhere).

Yesterday, my dream was really weird. Aspertia City became a gigantic metropolitan city with skyscrapers literally everywhere, more than Castelia City. Exiting it via the ground went to some volcanic cave that currently hosted some ritual. Flashbacks occurred. While in my flashback, I woke up 😛

Today’s is not that insane; I’d say this one is pleasant, even. Participating in some competition; math, I think. But that’s not the point. The point is that I was turning to some furry anthro. My back had grown fur and somewhat softening, although I don’t remember seeing some transformation anywhere else in my body. To what, I’m not sure, but I certainly hoping for Skymin 😛

Bizzare stuffs.

On a loosely related note, you should have known that I turned 17 last Friday (not two days ago, the week before that). I had fun and made three wishes that I would unlikely get but would surely be surprised if I did get them. The wishes are, in increasing order of unlikeliness, get a Skymin plushie, get a real Skymin (yes, the Pokemon), and be a real Skymin. Guess what…

The first wish, get a Skymin plushie, is somewhat fulfilled. I got a Skymin action figure as a gift from my friend that I was sure hadn’t seen the wishes. I now have a Pokemon collectible, which is a Skymin. What a joy 😀

A gift from my friend. Yes, it’s truly a Shaymin action figure.

As you can also see, my third wish occurred somewhat in today’s dream, turning to a furry anthro. Which anthro, I’m not sure; I couldn’t see my back. But let’s take the best case; Skymin. Then my third wish was half-complete.

Gotta dream about being totally transformed; whatever the result is (whether I can speak, walk like a normal person but fly like a normal Skymin, do telepathy, etc). Hm…

Goals

UPDATE (20 Nov 2012, 19.46 UTC+7): Okay this is obvious

Math, career, and life:
– IMO participant (done) Gold IMO medallist (IMO 2012 fail. Now 7m)
– Get scholarship for college (7m)
– Has own website domain and a well-known internet company (15y)

Programming:
– Fluent in C++ or Pascal or Python or Java (2m)
– Solve 250 Project Euler problems (7m)
– Get URLQuest 3 well-known (2y)

Games:
– Catch all legends in HG (done)
– Get BW2 (done)

Yay. I have bad life goals.