<a href="https://smidgeo.com/notes/deathmtn">deathmtn</a>

2/25/2024, 10:45:37 AM

Some elegant Baba Is You weirdness. If:

- KEKE is YOU
- BOX is YOU
- KEKE has BOX (meaning that if the haver is destroyed, the havee will be released)
- WATER is SINK (in the game, this means that if a thing goes into the thing that is SINK, both things)

Then, when you walk into WATER, KEKE and the WATER will be destroyed. But KEKE had BOX, so that will then be released. But BOX is YOU, so YOU reappear. And YOU are KEKE. The water’s still gone, though.
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2/25/2024, 10:30:27 AM

This makes me think: Baba Is You style bumper stickers would totes sell.
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2/24/2024, 5:31:55 PM

So far, fretless guitar has mostly just made me feel like I’m really good at regular guitar.
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2/24/2024, 2:35:31 PM

Finally ordered a birthday present for my nephew. What do twelve-year-olds want? Honestly, probably cash, but it somehow felt too lazy. I might have to do that when he’s thirteen, though, because that’s, like, past the event horizon.
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2/24/2024, 11:48:04 AM

Optimal parking garage usage
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2/24/2024, 10:47:44 AM

Dag, we got up early and drove all the way to math circle only to find it was off today. Calendar checking: it can save you time.
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2/23/2024, 8:02:40 PM

Hey, the guy landed the seoinage-kouchi combo twice in randori today. The Nine-Year-Old Enskillening continues, seemingly across all domains!
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2/23/2024, 5:34:15 PM

Junior calisthenics, 12 pull-ups.
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2/23/2024, 4:31:06 PM

Total immersion
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2/22/2024, 8:42:26 AM

Franko: the Crazy Revenge, a 1994 Amiga game about kicking ass. It has art that looks exactly like what middle school boy drawing. In this case, it happens to be awesome? There’s misunderstandings of anatomy and perspective, but everyone’s swole, and there’s blood aplenty.
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2/22/2024, 12:10:50 AM

I got the metal fingerboard working. The extra thickness puts the strings closer to the neck, so the strings were pinging the fingerboard.

I checked the neck with a carpenter’s square and found it convex. So I turned the truss rod to get it flatter. I used to always view that as a way to potentially ruin your guitar, but it’s OK to ruin this guitar, so it wasn’t nerve wracking.

Then, I raised the bridge. I think there is still some pinging in some places on the G string. But oddly, the ping doesn’t get amplified, so I decided to live with it.

I think it does yield a more ringing tone, but admittedly, it might not pass a blind taste test. Still, it’s neutral at worst. By my low standards for guitar construction, that is a victory.
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2/22/2024, 12:00:08 AM

I ended up not needing this, but it’s pretty cool that you can roll sheet metal into little bars with pliers and a hammer.
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2/21/2024, 9:04:23 PM

Tin snips can cut curtain brackets!
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2/21/2024, 9:03:49 PM

Turns out you can sand and polish galvanized steel.
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2/21/2024, 7:19:54 PM

Junior calisthenics, rolling breakfalls, newaza drills with the guy. Also trying to show the guy how to do applejacks. The current obstacle is that handstand position is alien to him, even though he’s comfortable being upside down for rolling breakfalls.
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2/21/2024, 11:35:03 AM

A thing the guy told me about that he read in Murderous Maths: If you fit a right triangle into a circle with all of its corners on the circumference, the hypotenuse is always the circle's diameter. We looked up the proof. (In the grown-up world, this is called the converse of Thales's theorem.)

The proof that was easiest for us to understand was the one that starts with a right triangle being half of a rectangle.

If you have a line going from two points along the circumference (which you do in the case of the non-hypotenuse lines of the triangle), there can be a parallel line that is also on the circumference — a mirrored line on the other half of the circle, sort of. If you draw those mirrored lines for the two non-hypotenuse lines of the triangle, you have a rectangle.

The rectangle is exactly centered within the circle. If you draw diagonal lines between opposite corners of the rectangle, you then find center of the circle where they cross. One of the diagonal lines is the hypotenuse of the original triangle. So, that hypotenuse goes through the center of the circle and is a diameter.

I have to admit, I'm still a little amazed by this basic geometry.
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2/21/2024, 10:24:05 AM

Provenance is a small contemplative game that ends up simulating an ideal museum visit. It was more thought-provoking than 90% of my actual museum visits.
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2/20/2024, 9:17:05 PM

The guy read a suggestion in Math Games with Bad Drawings to play Scrabble with a rule allowing Pac-Man style wraparound. This sounded like a good idea, but it puts all of the triple word score squares right next to each other, so it’s pretty much a race to just get to those and get a 9x word score. (27x word scores are also possible.)

It did almost make me want to try 3D Scrabble, though.
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2/20/2024, 6:10:42 PM

Guitar body horror
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2/20/2024, 5:26:37 PM

Goodbye, nice fingerboard paint job.
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2/20/2024, 1:54:47 PM

Will Smith eating spaghetti.
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2/20/2024, 10:12:21 AM

The guy is making an accidentally vaporwave game.
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2/20/2024, 8:45:07 AM

Whoa, video from Parker Solar Probe, which is orbiting the sun closer than Mercury is and looking outward at the solar system.
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2/19/2024, 10:47:43 PM

I tested out the metal fingerboard by just taping it on. Here’s the same note played with it on and with it off.

It’s subtle, but I think the tone is clearer and the sustain is slightly better with the metal. I’ll think about it some more before I actually sand and glue it on, though.
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2/19/2024, 10:05:22 PM

Hey, I cut sort of close.
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