Tastes like burning

I'm sleepy, but I feel obligated to write something. My carving schedule has been a bit inconsistent this last week or so, as you may have notcied from the gaps of days between pictures. But I'm entering the home stretch with Hermes, so I resolved to spend more time working on it/her. This makes sense when you consider that I need to finish by next Wednesday. So today was going to be the start of the glorious process of feathering an entire foot tall bird. Luckily my computer shut off an hour before I had to go tutor and it would not turn back on. I'm hoping the faint odor of burning was just the power supply dying. So rather than work on the bird, I spent most of my time investigating computery things and hooking up my old computer all sandwiched around four hours of math. I feel like I used the word "so" too many times.

You might be thinking that this really has nothing to do with carving. Aside from eating up a bunch of my time it wouldn't really, except for the fact that all my pictures are on a computer that won't turn on. If it was the power supply things should be back to normal in a couple days. There likely won't be pictures put up until that point. I may not put them up anyway until after Hermes is complete. We'll see how things go. If something else was burning I may just /wrist and be done with it. HAVE GOOD NIGHT EVERYONE!!!

generically titled post to honor generically titled baseball stuff with dionysum

What up what up. Working on Hermes now. Hermes is a female spirochete. That's not true, but it sounds kinda like parakeet. The truth is I have no idea what Hermes is other than bird. The real question here is why have you named your female bird after a male god? I'm speaking to the mainlanders here. How many people are thoroughly confused at this point? I hope at least one of you. So yeah, working on a bird.

I'll probably update the coming attractions stuff tomorrow, but up next will be another bird. I normally don't like to do two similar things in a row, but my boy Azziz (pronounced Ozzie (this is an inside joke that only he and I will understand (note the rare use of triple parathenses here, somthing only a pro can manage (pro at what I have no idea)))) is graduating from law school in May. He goes to The U and has settled on some bird related to The U with some symbol related to The U on it. Anyway, check for something on that tomorrow.

Finally, EMG has started a baseball blog. For those of you that care about baseball, check it out. I linked to it in the read or else section. My hope is there will be some trash talking here or there once the season starts. Or now. Hahahahah Carl Pavano. And you can't come back at me with A-Rod. That's just too cliche.

There were actually a lot of respectable (which means insulting to normal people) comments the last two weeks. Unfortunately they're kind of spread out. But if you're bored start here and then when you run out of those you can move to here.

AND THE DRAGON COMES IN THE NIIIIIGHT!!!!

I have actually been doing stuff the last few days even though there haven't been pictures. One thing I was doing was considering my options for the wings. You can see more on that in the pictures I added tonight. While pondering I was also painstakingly filling in tiny unpainted spots between scales. I didn't think this would be interesting so I haven't been putting up pictures of that. I also started work on the next project. My feeble system of photo organization can't handle two current projects, though. I believe I have completed the dragon, so expect a bunch of pictures from the new thing to show up tomorrow.

Victor was kind enough to post some encouraging comments this week. Check them out. Oh, and earmuffs before you start reading them.

And if you'd like to understand the title of this post you should view this.

Can I resuse titles if I wait a long time between posts? I want to reuse "What? Oh, this thing. Right."

You were wondering if I crapped out on this idea. A combination of me not feeling like it and me not having anything interesting to say means I've neglected posting for weeks. So I guess I did crap out, but not forever. I'm not sure crap out is grammatically correct. Judy, help me out here. +/-

Anyway, I finished carving the dragon tonight. Tomorrow I will be painting. I'll be putting up pictures as I go rather than one large update, so check in often. Or don't. It's not going to be that exciting. And it's not like they're going anywhere. You can look whenever you want really. Shut up. Here's a dragon picture.



There were some riddles, but as far as I can tell only Mike is enjoying them lately, and he's gotten them right so I'm going to skip the solutions this time. Complain here if joo got a problem.

I live dangerously

I feel so guilty for being sick I've decided to give you another post after less than a week. I'm so thoughtful. This one is rife with danger and intrigue but no intrigue really. And SAT questions. +/-

First the danger. My glove has become increasing tattered. This week things got real bad.


Being ever so safety conscious I ordered some new gloves. But alas, I immediately cut that thumb.


It's deeper than it looks, but my toughness kind of cancels it out. Thankfully the gloves arrived a couple days later before I could manage to remove the entire finger.


The one on the right is roughly three times cheaper so I'm going to try it out and see if it's more than 1/3 as safe.

I've updated the coming attractions with two new projects.

As for the dragon I received some encouraging words from Judy, a rare commentator. Victor had to jump in and ruin the good vibes, though.

There were also two more SAT questions. Mike is now 3 for 3 on these. He's like a really smart high school student trapped in a 27 year old who was eaten by an ogre. Here's number one and here's number two.

Answers below.

Six Cards

Answer: 2/15

To add up to three the first card can be 3 or less. This means 4 out of the 6. Whatever the first card is, there's only one card that will work for the second one to make them add up to 3. 1 out of the 5 remaining. So the chance the cards up to 3 is 4/6 * 1/5 or 2/15 or 13.33..%.


Geese

Answer: 280

We can say there were originally x geese. If 1/5 of them leave, that means 4/5 are left, so ater 1 pm there are (4/5)x geese. Then 1/8 leave, so 7/8 of those remain. Now there are (7/8)(4/5)x geese or (7/10)x geese. At 3 pm three times as many leave as at 1pm, so (3/5)x leave meaning there are now (7/10)x - (3/5)x geese, or (1/10)x geese. (1/10)x must equal 28, so x must be 280.

What? Oh, this thing. Right.

No, I didn't stop doing this thing. I was sick last week and also working a lot. As a result, I can come up with more excuses. I really was sick, though. But I'm back now!!! +/-

Also, there's not really much to report. Not anything interesting anyway. I'm working on the dragon. I'm feeling good about it. Like it might be really awesome. After some direction from Mike and response from me I think I have the design nailed down. Uh, give me a sec while I see if there was anything interesting since last time.

Ok, there were a couple riddlish puzzles and an SAT question. First riddle here. Eric cheated and used Excel, and I don't think anyone else tried it.

Here's the second one featuring everyone's favorite band, U2, and everone's favorite constructed tool, a bridge. Mike had a unique solution.

Finally, the first of six SAT questions I copied from real tests while sitting around for an hour after someone cancelled the other day.

So here's answers for those three.

Cows, Geese, and Chicken

The answer is 3 cows, 31 geese, and 56 chickens. There are probably a lot of ways to do this, but I just used a system of two equations.

cows + geese + chicken = 100
15*cows + 1*geese + .25*chicken = 100

Substituting and solving for cows gives

cows = (3/56) * chicken

Since it doesn't make sense to have fractional animals, and there can't be more than 100 of any animal, chicken must be 56, so cows must be 3 and geese must be 31.


U2 and the Bridge of DOOOOOOOM

Bono and Edge cross first, taking 2 minutes. Bono returns, taking 1 minute. He gives the flashlight to Adam and Larry, who then cross, taking 10 minutes. Edge takes the flashlight and goes back across, taking 2 minutes. He comes back with Bono, taking another 2 minutes for a total of 17. You can switch Bono and Edge throughout this and still do it in 17 minutes.


Triangle of DOOOOOOM

First consider a right triangle with the two legs being 6 and 7. This has area 21, so obviously 21 is an answer. Any other configuration results in a smaller area, so 24 is impossible, but 13 is obtainable.

Back and better than some previous state but perhaps there was some previous state that was still better than the current state

I'm still feeling lazy, so this is going to be short. Florida was fun. See more in the new Florida New Year's photos. I've removed the Eric Visit from public view, but it's available through the link on the right to you, my faithful viewers. As an added bonus I've put the original Florida trip back up there as well. You know, in case you are really super bored and want to see those again.

Ohio State lost the Fiesta Bowl, which puts a damper on the Brutus the Buckeye thing, but I don't really care. I think mostly Eric cares. He was, however, kind/bored enough to ask a question about frogs and stones and love and betrayal, but I accidentally erased it. Oops. That's all I got for now. Like I said, still feeling lazy.