I'm glad it's your birthday

[austin_dern]

Wow. As near as I can figure, today -- well, actually tomorrow, since I'm just posting after midnight instead of more honestly on the day -- marks the 10th anniversary of my first, tentative, hesitant playing of Austin Dern. Remarkably, it took only about four months to get a good handle on a character that's essentially the real life me, apart from being more likely to actually say out loud the jokes I keep making instead of muttering them so softly nobody realizes I'm saying anything. That natural soft-spokenness is a good habit when you're ridiculing a movie in the cinemas; it's a bad habit when you're trying to order in a restaurant.

It's been an opening that let me meet a good number of interesting people, many of whom I've lost contact with except through the Livejournal, which ironically quickly turned into a real-life diary. I'm tempted to start making stuff up. But some of you have known me on the order of a decade now, and thank you for being there, and I hope I've been interesting enough to be worth it.

In big-picture news, the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board apologized for something called a PLSE Mathematics exam. I can't find what the `PLSE' stands for, but it appears to be standardized tests for middle-school-age students. It seems they asked a question which, it turns out, couldn't be answered. They'll be giving points to all students, whether they answered or not, and are sorry for it. They say it's the first error in a PLSE examination, though I'd bill it as the first known. I feel a bit better.

If you're curious, the problem is: a rectangle of length 15 cm and height 6 cm is divided along a diagonal (from lower-left to upper-right corner, for the record). At a point along the diagonal a new horizontal and vertical are drawn, so the rectangle is divided into four smaller rectangles, two of which are themselves divided into triangles. Triangle A is one of the two in the lower-left corner; triangle B is one of the two in the upper-right corner; rectangle C is the lower-right rectangle (width of triangle B, height of triangle A). If the area of triangle A is 4 square centimeters, and that of B is 10 square centimeters, then what is the area of rectangle C? (Bonus points if you figure out which condition has to be dropped to make the problem self-consistent.)

Trivia: The first detailed history of coatis pioneering into a new territory was of the 1969-70 colonization of Kitt Peak National Observatory by a tribe. Source: Chulo: A Year Among the Coatimundis, Bil Gilbert.

Currently Reading: Watt's Perfect Engine, Ben Marsden.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Happy 10th birthday! Welcome to the double-digit Muckers.

--Chiaroscuro, turns 11 in November.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Thank you, and you would think I'd have spent enough time mucking about by now, wouldn't you? But I don't seem able to finish ...

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

It'd be nice to reach a point when a character could have lived a reasonable virtual life, and then, effectively be retired having done it all.

Had an idea for that, actually, but it only would have been really possible for me in college. Solomon, the One-Week Wolf. As in, that's his set and visible species- 'One-Week-Wolf'- and his character's duration. Play him every day for a week, see what can be accomplished with the character and what sort of life he could have during that time.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I have thought sometimes about the End of Austin Dern, actually. Endings of things tend to haunt my mind, ever since catching this one episode of Cosmos when it was first on. At some point there'll be a time I'm just bored by the character, and even vacations and such don't bring back the appeal, and I don't know what will happen then. I hope he can go out with some dignity or at least artistic merit.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've never been precisely bored by my characters; Kittel jusst got hard to play correctly, Brazos was taking up too much time, and any further cahracter reductions will be.. hmm. Just decisions of "I have to spend less time online, someone has to go. Whose departure will cause the least diassapointment and misery?"

That is, I have notice, how I divide my online MU*/SL time now. Not to enhance the joys of friends, it would seem, but to decrease their dissapointment when I cannot be there. If that seems egotistic to say, it's what I repeatedly hear from some parties.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, all right, maybe bored isn't going to happen, particularly given how close in temperament the real me is to the character me, but ... at some point it does seem like my real-world obligation are going to keep me from hanging out online. To date it's only been in a few special crunches, but I have noticed how rarely I get more time on my hands.

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure why the answer isn't thirty-one square centimeters. I mean, it seems simple to me. Wherever the horizontal and vertical are drawn, the two small rectangles (one of which is C) will be the same size. Take the area of the entire rectangle (fifteen times six equals ninety square centimeters), subtract the sum of the two rectangles that are split into triangles (both are known because they're twice the area of the triangles in them, this eight and twenty square centimeters) and halve the remaining area (sixty-two halved is thirty-one.)

Wait, it just occurred that there's no way the numbers can work out for the areas of A and B given. If they'd dropped either the height or the width of the main rectangle, or anything like that, it could be done. *facepalm*

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

That's my `A' student. The areas of triangles and surrounding rectangle are just inconsistent. However, the upper-left and lower-right rectangle (C) are going to be equal in area only if they do intersect on the diagonal; if they're free to intersect anyplace you can quite easily make the two of different sizes.

I'd have rather they fixed the areas of the triangles, since it's just so nice being able to use similar triangles in pretty near any context.

[chahala.livejournal.com]

Happy annaversary my friend. Very happy indeed. It has been a true pleasure to know you all these years.

Chahala

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much. I've been quite glad to know you nearly all of that time too.

[chahala.livejournal.com]

The rest of the time you were pulling your hair out and shouting. "That damn otter!" ":)

Chahala

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Uhm ... yeah, sure, that's it ...

[spaceroo.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on your decade of coatimunditude. I've been most honored to know you for... what is it now, about 80% of that? I do hope that at least some of the non-depressing parts have been fun for you too.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Thank you, and ... huh, I guess it is about 80 percent of that, although I'd swear it was a touch longer. I'm mighty glad to have your friendship.

[spaceroo.livejournal.com]

Thinking it over I imagine 85%-ish is a closer number. I never touched the internet before very late 1996, but I did meet you quite shortly thereafter.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'll accept that. I've got to have known you at least from early 1997, but I'm a touch vague on late 1996, as who is not?

[skylerbunny.livejournal.com]

Wow. Congratulations...I hadn't realized! It really has been that long, hasn't it? Here's to more years, and it's been great to know you through most of those - I think I've known you since sometime around Fall of 1996, if memory serves. Certainly back when we were well deep in our respective college crunches...

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Thank you, and I do hope there's a comfortably large number of years yet to come. I think we would have had to have met around Fall 1996, which would indeed have us both pretty well crunched in colleges.