Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Note to self: Time pointers in youtube clips

In direct links the form is &t=XmYs, e.g.,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjDw3azfZWI&t=5m08s
In embedded clip links the start time is converted to seconds and is appended to the each vid. reference within the embedded object tag as &start=n (where n = X*60+Y), e.g.,
http://www.youtube.com/v/PjDw3azfZWI&hl=en_US&start=68

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

drench 2

Suppose m colors and an nxn grid/Drench board, m ≤ n, and both m and n are even. We make a start on constructing a demanding board as follows (click on images to enlarge):







The whole top half of the board.


The bottom half of the board.



Tuesday, December 15, 2009

drench

The flash game Drench doesn't always solve. This led me to explore move-expensive Drench boards a little:


Friday, October 16, 2009

Whitcoulls's website

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is $20.95 on Whitcoulls’s web-site but $32.99 at my local mall Whitcoulls (St Lukes, Auckland).

The difference is dramatic, and it’s clear which price is, as it were, objectively correct. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters has its US price on the jacket: 12.99 US, which converts to 17.50 NZ.

Although I haven’t systematically checked other titles, my sense is that many items that are ~$20 on the web-site are ~$30-35 store retail. The practical conclusion is obvious – no convenience (let alone the endlessly degraded, low stock, Whitcoulls simulacrum of convenience) is worth a 57% mark-up.