orkut Blog: Beauty Perception

orkut Trends: Beauty or conceit?
Read about this interesting piece on orkut blogs. It is based on statistical analysis of how people rate themselves on "beauty" on orkut. Since people are usually biased about their own beauty, it is better to think of it as a conceit rating index.;-)

Spin these pipes...

Recently, a dry spell at work waiting for the customer to deliver the requirements faced me. Nothing to do but chatting, surfing, and catching up with old friends through e-mail. It was fun for the first couple of days, then the feeling of doing nothing productive started to settle on me.

Then I struck upon Wei-Hwa Huang's gadget page on Google. By the rate at which Wei comes up with new puzzles, he seems to be a very innovative soul. Best of all most of his puzzles are simple and involve almost no learning curve. At the same time the puzzles are not trivial, though some are easy to solve.

Of all the puzzles, I fell in love with "Pipe Spin". It has a typical arcade feel and is sufficiently stimulating, without really taxing your mind. Ideal for those rainy days at work, when the feeling of useless waste comes creeping.

A sample Puzzle from his site has been reproduced here. Enjoy...

Statutory warning: Can be highly addictive.

More of Wei-Hwa's puzzles can be enjoyed here.

Alice in the Forest...

Heaps, Random Number, Hashing algorithms,Self-Balancing Trees have always had me kind of confused a bit around the edges. Add AVL and Red-Black Trees into the equation and the plot thickens. Recently I had to get my ankles wet with self-balancing Binary Trees to avoid the degenerate worst case, and found myself sinking to the depths instead. I recalled some of the things I had studied, but there was the fuzz arounbd the edges, that you usually see on old sepia toned photographs.

I called out to Google for help and Eternally Confuzzled was among the first few pages it threw back at me. Written by Julienne Walker[happyfrosty@hotmail.com], it deals with Trees, hashes, Rand Numbers, etc. If you are also one of those who think a "Hit" is something that the mob orders, and that you should avoid being the target of one, this site is just the place to get you started. An excellent resource for those who are interested in doing more than just CCPT and getting the job done.

Granted that you don't have to know physics to be a pitcher, but having a sound understanding of the underlying ideas always helps, espeacially when those nasty bugs rear their head. Starting with Binary trees, I found myself hooked to the effortless way in which complicated sounding ideas were presented.

<BRAG>While I was at it, I even happened to find a minor but significant bug in the code, and wrote to the author, who promptly responded wiht the promise of a correction.</BRAG>

Overall an execllent resource especially for all the Comp. science and Engg. students who feel a bit flustered by Knuth, Djikstra and the gang.

P.S. Absolutely no offence meant to the GODS of Algorithms.

Animate any webpage

This works especially well with IE, works partially in Firefox too. Open any website that contains images. Copy paste the javascript given below in the address bar and press enter.

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.images; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i < DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5; DIS.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5}R++}setInterval('A()', 35); void(0)

Sit back and enjoy the fireworks.

Huamn Paetrtn rengcoition...

You may feel that the title of this post has too mayny typos, but believe me it is intentional and you'll still be able to make out every word.

cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty  uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg.

The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig  to a rscheearch at
Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the  ltteers in a wrod are, the olny
iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat  ltteer be in the rghit
pclae.

 

The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll  raed it wouthit a
porbelm.

Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey  lteter by istlef,
but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas  tghuhot
slpeling was ipmorantt!