Slow month

Well, it's the end of the year and I must admit that I worked not nearly hard enough in the days running up to this one. I had my share of the sniffles, but that barely excuses two weeks without measurable progress.

Working on transfering Kulkarni's theory to my graphs. I suspect that it's really not that difficult, but my focus is little, owing in some parts to my renewed interest in Anime, spurred by Axis Powers Hetalia, which is remarkable.

2009 was difficult for most people I know and I feel this is more of a cosmic event than I would like to admit, but apart from the economic situation this was a really tough year, emotionally, spiritually and physically.

In any case, I wish everyone a happy new year, may it be more comfortable than the last one.

Part II at inspection, part III started

I "finished" part II, the one where I show the duality between my two graphs. Unfortunately there is little to be gained from that fact, as the structure of these graphs is dictated more by algebra than by graph theory. Still, it might be interesting to see that it's possible.

Fearing that I will have to omit part II in the final thesis, I have combined the theory on $\Gamma^n$ and the commutator subgroup into a more general theory which tries to emulate Kulkarni's results. I gave an exposé of this part III to my prof along with part II and will work out the details far into the beginning of next year.

Ken Steacy on Desert Bus

Ken Steacy, the reknowned comic artist, is on Desert Bus the second night, auctioning off amazing stuff. A remarkable drawing of a destroyed Toronto went for only $1100 and I was really tempted... Amazing guy!

About them subgroups

A few days ago I finished the theory about $\Gamma^2$ and $\Gamma^3$. I'm still lacking the part for the commutator subgroup, but I think I'm starting to see the light.

Desert Bus

The Desert Bus for Hope!

51 hours in. Watched most of it so far. Let's see how far it'll go....

Handed in Part 1

Yesterday evening I went to the university and gave my prof the first 30 pages I've corrected so far. A few hours later I noted a grievous mistake. Oh well. Correcting part 2 and writing part 3. I kinda hope that part 1 will suffice, though^_^.

Subgroups

The day before yesterday I talked to Alexander Rahm, whom I got to know by a drawing of his on a blackboard in the Übungssaal, that represented the modular graph. I was extremely nervous about that and inquired to find out who had written that.

He pointed me to some very interesting literature (Brown) that I can use as a reference. Also he remarked, that the modular graph is also called "Serre's graph" which to google returned many more results.

Also, he made it quite clear, that I should concentrate more on subgroups, since the modular group itself is very well understood. So, I'm trying to adapt my theory to $\Gamma^2$, $\Gamma^3$ and the commutator subgroup. It is kind of late to begin with a new dev cycle, but I fear it will be necessary, as the lack of treatment of subgroups always loomed over the whole thing.

72 pages

728kB and mostly feature complete. There is a major chapter about subgroups missing, but I have no idea where to put it. It's a mess, but I feel like I won't see the bigger picture without correcting on paper.

Riddle #2 (easy)

As is often with the absence-words

It's difficult to describe

Before the sleeper is disturbed

He hears the most delicious vibe.

67 pages

669 kB PDF. Two chapters missing, images are only roughly strewn in. Final thesis should be around 70 pages. Yay!

I hope you had a better Halloween than I did...

EDIT: Just resizing the images pushed the count to 69, so maybe 80 is a better approximation.

A riddle

A quiet prison, watery and full of stuff.

An example? A net both smooth and rough.

Books and books are written without pause,

Benign meals are the only energy source.

Can one call the prison system anything but Zen?

'Cause its only obvious goal is to create more prisons again.

DS part 6

I got this reply yesterday:

hi,
please don't worry,if it has not scratched, then we will replace a new one for you, and the next time,we will ship by EMS, it will be cheap and would not need pay the tax, do you think okay? Thank you for giving us the opportunity to solve the problem!

Went down to the post office and mailed that darned chunk of plastic back to sender, shipping is 8€. Sad thing is: I know customs will screw me over badly. I labeled the package 'defective electronics, worth 0 €' and forfeited insurance to not look suspicious, but this all won't help. They're gonna charge on receipt in HK and when I get it back here. Probably another 20-30€ to stimulate the economy...

Oh well... Probably no new DS parts for a while ^_^.

DS part 5

The good news first: With battery swapping I defeated the third boss and now have all three spirits! The bad news: The charger is gone. It works on neither mine nor the borrowed console. The battery's probably gone too, in the borrowed console it displays green (or yellow?) but in mine it's red.

So I've decided to contact my seller about this. I wrote him this E-Mail:

Dear eBay-seller,

I recently bought a Nintendo DS lite console from You. The auction ID on eBay is ............., the model is China Dragon. I have several complaints about the console You delivered:

- The charger is broken.
- The console's power circuit is broken. It does not charge the battery even with a working charger.
- The battery was thus not correctly charged before use and is probably damaged.

As I am very happy with the console otherwise, I would like to exchange the console and charger for a working one with You.
I am aware that I already applied the screen protector, so I would refund You its worth, if You cannot repair the console.
Since customs are very high to Germany, let us arrange a delivery method, so that I do not have to pay it again.

Otherwise I am very happy with the console and will surely give You a positive eBay-feedback, if we can work this out.

Please answer swiftly, as You have limited the time period for refunds.
Sincerely,

DerMangold

His automailer says that he will replay in 24h. Let's see...

The Dirty Dozen

Well, it's not Donald Sutherland's greatest performance, but it's still a very enjoyable movie. I just found out that it's 150min. I'd tought 2h or so. What a great movie.

Font

I think I've finally found the font I want to use for my thesis. With a little help from here I found MnSymbol which overrides most of the Symbols for any given font. So I can use fourier, that is the Fourier-GUTenberg math font plus Adobe Utopia, and still have reasonably beautiful brackets! This is a triumph!

Of course I've got a load of warnings and the kerning is completely screwed. But overall it looks much better.

Sick

Yesterday's smoky pub killed the last of my trachea, I'm coughing and my voice dies when I hit certain frequencies. Kewl. Head's stuffed, but fine. I work and play Zelda and don't leave the house. Just gotta hope my supply of tea will last... Thank god for Fisherman's Friends.

DS part 4

Well, I'm playing Zelda. Nothing has changed, but I borrowed my friend's DS and swapped batteries (inadvertedly erasing his profile, sorry). I now have a full charge before I have to swap batteries again. It's not really elegant or even sane, but at least I can play Zelda. And what do you know ... it's awesome!!!

DS part 3

In the evening I tried charging/running the darned thing with a friend's DS charger to no avail, both DSTT cards worked fine in his DS and I gave him my surplus.

From reading this I am quite sure my F1 fuse is dead. I wanted to go downtown to give it up for repairs, but I only just got up and feel pretty sick, so that will have to wait until tomorrow or so. I really don't want to do this on my own, SMD soldering is a horror to which I am not yet used, I am pretty bad at soldering in any case, so I think I'd fry my DS before and after repairing it.

I wonder what the costs of repair will be, bu I guess around 30€, as it's really not that big of a problem and official Nintendo repairs are 55€, any store should be below that.

Now there is one thing I am wondering: Would it really have been so much more difficult to use thermistors instead of fuses? I know they are bigger and a lot more expensive, but at least the console could recover on its own from power issues. Guess it isn't worth it from Nintendo's POV as most failure modes will be related to displays anyway. And they get to earn some extra cash for repairing consoles outside of warranty, where power issues should only then start to manifest.

Well, I'm trying of charging the battery independently from the device at the moment. It would only be a temporary fix, but at least I'd be able to play Zelda...

Geocities

It just sunk in. I kinda remember being at the school computer lab in the summer of 1997, a hot summer if I remember correctly. I learned HTML then and wrote a little adventure in it, ZORK-style. Of course there was no interaction, but you could visit a house and I planned that you could go into rooms and play games. I wanted it so that people can interact dynamically. Basically a MUD.

I wrote all text in <H1> to <H5>. Lol

I actually had some favourite sites on Geocities and I'm rather sure I had one myself. What for, I dunno. What the other pages were about. I can't for the life of me remember. 'SpacePort' was my favourite domain, I think I was there.

I played an MUD there, quite a lot, I think it was called Avalon. I sucked pretty badly.

I hated that place and many of the people there, I wonder what happened to them. I learned C back then. Or tried.

Wow, has it really been ten years? Twelve? It feels like a lifetime. We're all on a survival trip now ... Okay, I'll stop ^_^

Damn, I really wonder. I think I'll start googling some people...

Also on Donald Sutherland

What is the color of the coat he's wearing in Don't Look Now? I want one of these. And a matching scarf!

JFK

So, I finally got to watch JFK last night and despite it being a pretty awesome movie that deserves more than a few words, my DS-related troubles keep me from going into depth. Just let me say this: Donald Sutherland is god! When I grow up, I want to be like him.

Solve this

Sheep is to wolf as man is to X.

I wonder if they use that one in IQ-tests

DS part 2 1/2

Well, at least I'm not the only one with that problem. I am really unsure about the colors of the battery indicator. I haven't read the manual, so I guess it's really very easy, but the fact that yellow, green and red LEDs are cheapest (and blue is just too bright, compare eeePC) clashes with the most common type of color blindness.

Dual colored LEDs should be outlawed as indicators. Just put in another one. Or make it flash, or better don't make it flash. Much appreciated.

DS part2

So, of course the first question is: is the battery okay? I have to admit that I'm stupid. Each time I turn it on it works for a diminishing amount of time, should be obvious, eh? But I loaded the battery from 11:30 to 15:30, what's going on here?

Well, I guess something in the power circuit is broken, preventing the battery from being charged or the DS from getting power from the socket (probably because that runs over the battery).

So while that darned thing was glowing brightly away with its green mains indicator, the battery didn't charge at all and what I played on was just the minimum charge that all LiIons come with. Great!

Well the good news is, I'm rather sure what's broken, because when I fired it up after giving it an hour's rest, it actually showed the menu and in the upper right corner there was a blinking red battery indicator, case closed. Phew! I was already scared.

The bad news is: Something's wrong with the power circuit and that will have to be fixed. Maybe I'll try it myself first but it shouldn't be a big deal at a store either.

Yeah! It's so good to know what is broken (and that you probably didn't just screw up) it almost soothes the pain of not being able to play Zelda tonight.

Blister packages

I really regret that I don't have a photo camera at the moment, because I could demonstrate a curious fact. When I browsed the flash modules at the electronics store today I wondered why blister packages often have a bulge on the backside, hollow, often square and of no use but to make them bulkier. I thought.

When I came home to journey off into DS-land (covered elsewhere)  and I tried to open the DSTT blister I was amazed when it came apart and I held two identical packages in my hands, only one labled with a price-tag. I was now the proud owner of two DSTT modules where I only paid for one.

What happened? Well the blister for the DSTT does not have such a bulge on its backside, so two blisters got stuck inside each other and the clerk handling it failed to realize. So I guess that's where these bulges come from, but maybe I'm completely off-track.

In any case, as that DS-thing didn't work out so far it was a lackadaisical stroke of luck.

DS part1

I'm depressed. I thought buying a DSlite from China (via eBay) was a good idea. After all, look at this:

(image courtesy of dscity.co.uk and probably copyrighted)

Tell me where you'd be able to get one of these in Germany, where the concept of color was only realized in the late 70's, more on that another time. Alas, I paid the eBay seller 90€, customs (Zoll) was a lowly 1,75€, but then my beloved government asked me to fess up another 21,93€ for lost sales tax (Einführungsumsatzsteuer).

So I ran downtown today to fetch a chip. You know, to use Colors! with my DS (honestly!) and bought a DSTT for 20€ in a shady outlet. Then I skipped over to the electronics store and bought a micro-SD card, 4GB together with a thumb-sized reader that doubles as a usb-stick - 15€.

I return home, happy to see the DS sitting on my bed, having absorbed a good three hours of juice and ready to roll. I fire it up without any module: It works fine. I load the firmware onto the SD card and apply the display covers (package to the right, sorry for the bad scan) my Chinese dealer threw in as a bonus. I do it very carefully with generous use of compressed dry air, I want it to be perfect. A minor blemish sits under the lower screen, I try to remove it, but it only gets worse, I screw up the clingfilm on the lower right edge. Once the console is fired up, I rationalize, this won't be visible.

I put the SD into the DSTT and fire the console up. Everything works fine. I load Colors! and begin scribbling. Obviously there are thousands of micro-bubbles under the lower disply covers, because the stylus scratches over the surface, but it get's better fast. Okay, I load Zelda and start playing. It's great, I like it. I save and shut down, I fire up another game, it plays the intro, then the console shuts down, no screen of death, it just dies.

I launch the DSTT's test of authenticity and hell breaks loose. The console shuts down again, I try to fire it up, but after showing the first screen and the welcome sound it shuts off again. I fiddle, fickle, reload the DSTT's firmware, nothing helps.

I remove the DSTT completely and boot the naked DS, it dies again. So this is basically the state it's in and I'm wondering whether to return it (costing me at least 10€ shipping + 23€ taxes I'll never see again) or try to repair it (costing probably a similar amount, as I have neither the time nor the tools).

This sucks. I'd like to say I'd learned my lesson, but what is the lesson? Not to buy from Chinese online sellers due to warranty? Yes and no, because I wanted this specific model which would have costed at least 200€ or more. I realize I should just return it and buy a genuine DS from a store, but I'm somehow attached to that lump of dead plastic, maybe I should buy a DS at a store and slam the shell from the Chinese one on it. Nah, that's stupid.

On the question of whether the DSTT screwed up the console, I'm unsure. Probably. But I'll never pay for a game library on NDS, the whole point was to use an adapter. Then again, maybe that's stupid too, after all I hear Zelda is really good.

It is really difficult in this time of mass production to find an item that suits you, the concept of freedom has been reduced to the concept of choice. Honestly, I want to play DS, there's no freedom there ^_^. This chunk of fail now sits there on my desk, staring at me with puppy eyes not to return me and I feel like I won't. In any case this will be an expensive bit of fun when it's over.

So many movies, so little time

This site offers lots of pictures and challanges you to find the corresponding movie. I'd be glad to be able to name more than 10%. Unfortunately most you know will be far to easy, while others are just obscure.

Moonwalker follow-up

So, there is a making-of that's more or less worth a look, rather less if you ask me. The built robot is in any case the highlight of the movie, because it looks like 1999 CGI. Again kudos to Dream Quest Images.

Sadly the robot is also plot- and emotionwise the low point of the movie, as I lose all interest in the character when he 'heals the world' by mass-killing, as has been pointed out elsewhere. An excellent strategy to enjoy this film, which I successfully employed, is to raise speaker volume about 5dB above what you'd consider reasonable for music. It really helps ignore the lack of plot, taste and sophistication.

I'd really like to know budget figures by the way...

Heavy Metal again

So there is a segment based on a story by Dan O'Bannon, about the crew of a B-17 whose crew turn into zombies. It's short, it's fun, and it's Alien. I remember hearing that Alien was once supposed to be set in WWII, so I guess this was somehow the starting point.

Well, the starting point was to my recollection when Jodorowsky's Dune-Project fell through and O'Bannon which had been on board as a writer suffered a nervous breakdown. The details schould be on Wiki, if you're interested (Salvador Dalí was cast as Emperor Shaddam IV. for one million a day or something) it's really an interesting story.

So then the good Dan wrote Space Beast which in turn fathered Alien. I still kind of wonder, if Ridley Scott's Alien Prequel will finally pick up the WWII roots of the material, after all, Ridley has yet to do a WWII project, does he?

An interesting double feature

I took the time to watch Heavy Metal,  the 1981 animated anthology flick and was astounded by the amount of ideas and moods that are in there. Don't expect all too much on the animation side, as budget and release date were obviously tight, but you might be surprised by the amount of taste that is shown - for an R-rated movie at least. Exceptionally enjoyable, even when sober.

Right after that I watched Michael Jackson's Moonwalker from 1988. Now this is a completely different story. While it's also an animation-driven anthology bursting with ideas, I found it much harder to find a common mood or even a continuity of mood in it. For example in a remarkable 'Smooth Criminal'-performance, that has some of the best steadycam-work I've seen in a music video, there is a very abrupt break completely disrupting my experience. The film is all over the place and just doesn't come together (haw-haw...).

The effects are rather astounding. Will Vinton did claymation, Dream Quest Images did some other amazing shots, so for that alone it's definitely worth a look. Maybe I'll do some in depth research at another time, until then judge for yourself and take a dip into a highly disturbed mind with Michel Jackson's Moonwalker.

Planarity

A while ago I enjoyed playing Planarity. It is somehow interesting to note, that as with most puzzle games, you'll need to know if the current puzzle has a solution. In case of planarity you want to know, if a randomly chosen graph on $n$ vertices is planar. So what's the math behind it? It's obviously simple enough to be implemented in Flash. I'll see, if the graphs greated are sparse enough to fulfill $#E(G) \leq 3#V(G) − 6$, as that would be my first choice...

P-Graphs, part 1

Currently I'm battling with generalizing the concept of dual graphs to infinite graphs. Considering algebraic duals, that is a Graph $G^{\ast}$ for a graph $G$ such that for each cycle in one there is a minimal cut in the other graph, there exists an algebraic dual to a given graph $G$, if and only if two vertices in $G$ are joined by only finitely many edge-disjunct paths. The details can be found in Henning Bruhn's doctoral thesis here.

I just noticed that he a) moved to Tokyo and b) wrote a Habilitation. Good for him, I'll check it out in time.

But back to graphs, the classical notion of a dual graph is a geometric one and is well-enough described in the according Wikipedia article. A famous theorem by Whitney states, that algebraic and geometric dual coincide in the sense, that a graph is planar iff it has an algebraic dual. However, it seems not unlikely that for infinite graphs this does not need to hold.

In another post, I'll try to describe my approach to geometric dual graphs.

Behold! The tesselation of the upper half-plane by the extended modular group $\bar{\Gamma} := \{z \mapsto \frac{a z + b}{c z +d} | a,b,c,d \in \mathbb{Z}, ad-bc=1 \} \cup \{z \mapsto \frac{a \bar{z} + b}{c \bar{z} +d} | a,b,c,d \in \mathbb{Z}, ad-bc=1 \}$. This picture was created by using a C++ program to output SVG code. I'll publish it as soon as it's done.

Micropolygons rock, ask Reyes!

Also, I'm in the process of writing an OpenGL micropolygon approach for procedural geometry. I'll post here as soon, as I get somewhere with that.

Modular Group

One of my main interests at the moment - mainly due to writing my Diplomarbeit - is the modular group $\Gamma$. An excellent short history is given here. Check it out!