hermiene.net

I was extremely fascinated by a small, but very cozy math problem today. Many thanks to Even for helping me figure it out. A little tweaked, the problem goes as follows:

Three guys, Alex, John and Jacob, have their own hard drives. The sum of all their space is \(230 GB\). Alex has \(10 GB\) more than John, and Jacob has twice as much as Alex. What did each of them have?

We want someone to have \(x\) gigabytes. The obvious choice is John, since both Alex and Jacob refer to him. So:

Alex: \(x + 10\)
John: \(x\)
Jacob: \(2(x + 10)\)

Next, we sum them up, and equal them to \(230\):

\(x + 10 + x + 2(x + 10) = 230\)
\(x + 10 + x + 2x + 20 = 230\)

We rearrange them...

\(4 x = 230 - 20 - 10\)
\(4x = 200\)
\(x = 50\)

There you go. John has \(50\) gigabytes of sweet hard drive space. Unless you are completely incompetent, you should be able to figure out how much space Alex and Jacob had.

I'm playing through Deus Ex for the 7^th time now, and I'm still noticing tid-bits of funny/interesting information; this game is so amazingly rich in details. I'm playing it on Realistic this time (before, I've only played it on the Easy level).

Although MetaPad is an extremely good text editor, I have now switched to TopStyle. It's an editor designed specifically for HTML and CSS, though it is not a WYSIWYG editor.

Added yet another friend to the Links page; Håvard Torsnes.

Added Even André Mathisen to the friends section of the Links page. I also noticed that when viewing the page in Internet Explorer (I use Opera), there was always one less bullet than it was supposed to be. While I couldn't flaw my HTML markup, I decided to instead use only list items (I used to nest definition pairs inside the list item; obviously not such a good idea).

I have made a new and improved Links page, after collecting a bunch of links, and sorting out those not worth placing there.

I have also managed to make a right margin, in addition to the left. I discovered this was not possible in HTML. The attribute for a 20 pixel left margin in HTML is leftmargin="20", so I figured the attribute for a 20 pixel right margin had to be rightmargin="20"; but no. Though it was possible with CSS:

body {
  margin-left: 20px;
  margin-right: 20px;
}

Hurray!

Also, my computer page is dangerously nearing completion. I just have to dig up the specs for my two oldest computers.

I have removed the links to the (few) files on my files page, because of a small overload on the server. This is only temporary, though.

It's been a while since I updated the site, but there's a logical explanation; I have been on a LAN party for the past four days.

I've replaced the URL I used as a title with a real title on all the pages, and I'm currently working on a page devoted to my computer. I'm hoping to finish it real soon. I also made an alpha transparent picture of myself.

Right on time! My new parts arrived today, and I'm pleased to announce that everything is in working order. A minor dissatisfaction, perhaps, that I had to reinstall my copy of Windows. But then again, it was getting old, and was full of spyware and what not. I'll get working on that computer page maybe tomorrow, or on Monday. We'll see.

I have ordered some parts for my computer, and boy, is it about time this rig gets upgraded. My processor is of this writing an AMD Duron 850 MHz, and I have 256 MB SDRAM. My graphics card is a GeForce 4 Ti 4200, I've got a Creative Labs Audigy 1.0 sound card and 240 (more like 222) GB of yummy disk space to use for various distractions, so of course I'll be keeping those. Now, I will be buying a new motherboard, a new processor, and more RAM. The motherboard will be socket 478, Asus, with Intel Hyper-Threading and 3x DIMM slots for 1023 NOK (about 140 USD). The processor is an Intel P4 2.4 GHz with 533 FSB and 512 L2 Cache, and the price is 1668 NOK (about 228.50 USD). I've also ordered Apacer 512 MB DDR RAM PC-333 for 676 NOK (about 92.60 USD). And to top it off, I've ordered a Chieftec miditower case, black, with 4 x 5.25" external, 2 x 3.5" external and 4 x 3.5" internal bays, thumbscrews and a door with hinges. I'm buying it all from PSData, which is situated in Arendal, Norway, a good 4-5 hour drive from where I live. It takes approximately two days to transport the items, from the day I order the merchandise, and this is pretty good. Oh, I look forward to this...

In other irrelevant news; lately, I've found myself gazing at distant objects which are contrasted against the sky, for no particular reason. When looking at trees, for example, I can often make out the single branches. Oh, I love my new glasses. Everything is so crystal clear!

Website-wise, I've inserted a left margin of 20 pixels. I'm thinking of making a page for my computer. When I get my new parts.

I discovered to my delight that the word 'coherent' can be Norwegian-ified to 'koherent'. I have been wondering about this for some time.

I had an interesting discussion today with my class about whether or not homosexuality is a mental disorder. It began with me and Even, peacefully and quietly walking down the road, chatting about the subject in a calm and relaxed fashion (I might add that I enjoyed the conversation with Even. He didn't get all fired up about it, compared to other immature people who engage in mindless flame wars). Now, when we couldn't agree on it, we brought the question up with the rest of the class, and about 3/4s of them claimed that homosexuality is a mental disorder, while I (and of course most of the girls) claimed that it is not. I will now try to explain why it is not. (And for the record, I am not a homosexual.)

First of all, it isn't a disorder, hence it is not a mental disorder. For something to be a disorder, it has to harm the person "infected" by it, or disable that person from functioning normally in society. Now, homosexuals aren't harming themselves, neither are they a disfunction to society. They are perfectly able to do their jobs, to go shopping, to interact with other people, etc. And they're not harming themselves, in fact, I'd say that they are enjoying themselves!

"But they can't reproduce, and hence, they're harming humanity as a whole!" There is a fine balance. If everyone is heterosexual, the Earth will soon be overpopulated, but if everyone is a homosexual, there will be no more reproduction, but that still doesn't make it any more of a mental disorder. Homosexuals aren't confused in any way, they are perfectly aware of this biological fact.

I finished the essay on Graphs & Functions today.

Phew. That was two hours well wasted. I changed all the text inside my HTML tags from uppercase to lowercase. This has nothing to do with the appearance of the site, just the source code. No reason why I'm saying this in a news post. I just wanted to vent, as it was very tedious and repetitive work. Never again.

In more happy news, I came across a very handy tool, a replacement for Notepad; MetaPad, which is far superior. You can (almost) tweak it to your heart's content, which is always a big plus. Head over there, you might find it worth your time.

Things I hope to get done soon:

• take pictures of my cube, octahedron and icosahedron origami figures (from STL's Origami Polyhedra page)
• finish my essay on graphs & functions (which is in fact beginning to shape up)
• make more cool stuff for my web page.

April Fool's day; the only day of the year when reading news posts on various web sites can actually be fun. So here's my contribution.

I'm going to convert all the images (erhm... make that "the few images") I have to GIF, use the Comic Sans MS font, and get a .tk domain. -_-