Sunday, May 25, 2008
Poesysteme -vvx

Here's an interesting word game you can download for free. It's called Poesysteme.

In this game, you can create "words". These words will then roam the landscape, meet other words and even produce children words. The children will be new words made from parts of the parents. Essentially, the words are like the genetic material of the creatures.

After a while, most of the words roaming the landscape would have evolved so much they are barely recognizable. The program even generates a poem made from the descendant words.



Here's a poem my words created.

I also noticed an interesting behaviour in this evolution simulation. When I run the simulation for a sufficiently long time, the diversity of the existing "gene pool" seems to decrease. Since there aren't any pressure for selection here, I believe I am witnessing genetic drift in action!

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Yiheng made 10:28 PM

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You did to get a life.
By  Anonymous, at 8:37 PM  

*need
By  Anonymous, at 8:37 PM  

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Thursday, May 22, 2008
Thanks a lot, Microsoft! (Part 2) -vwv

Never mind why spell check only spots the mistake on one instance of the word. I changed the spelling as recommended, only to find...



Make up your mind!

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Yiheng made 7:36 PM

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Monday, May 19, 2008
Lucid Dreams -vvv

I have been having some bizarre dream experiences lately. It's like some sort of second-level lucidity in dreaming.

In what I call normal lucid dreams, one is aware that one is dreaming. In my recent dreams, I am not aware that I am dreaming but in my dream within a dream, I am aware. That is really strange.

Basically, this is how my dream went. I walked into a bus stop. A few minutes later, I fell asleep and started dreaming (dreaming within a dream). In this dream, I am also in a bus stop but I realize that I am now dreaming.

In fact, I proceeded to scrutinize the faces of everyone at the bus stop because I was curious how the faces of random people in dreams were generated by the brain. Anyway, they all looked the same, so I concluded that my subconscious must be drawing from one of the people I saw at the bus stop a few minutes ago before I fell asleep. I didn't realize that the whole scene at the bus stop before I fell asleep was actually part of a dream.

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Yiheng made 12:49 PM

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I had this one recurring dream before. Its like I'm waking up from sleep and then start moving around the house and doing stuff until I start to realise that I'm actually dreaming. I become lucid upon realising that the things can't happen in reality ie. flying 3-legged cats, people eating my intestines etc.

Then I wake up and start my day, only to find some anomaly in it that I realise that I'm still in a dream.

Then I wake up. THis cycle continues on for 7-8 iterations. So is this called N-level lucid dreaming?

Anyway, I sort of realised that it was impossible to break out of that dream on my own volition, so in a sense it is semi-lucid
By  Soqcrates, at 12:08 PM  

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Sunday, May 11, 2008
Random Knowledge 6: Infrasound -vww

Infrasound, as one might have guessed, is the term for sound that is below the human audible frequency range. There are various natural phenomena that can produce infrasound, e.g. earthquakes, aurora, etc. And it is not surprising that many animals are capable of detecting infrasound. But what I find particularly interesting is the effect infrasound has on humans.

Studies have shown that certain infrasonic waves can cause anxiety and discomfort in humans. Some researchers suggest that naturally occurring infrasound causes people to attribute their experience to ghosts.

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Yiheng made 4:08 PM

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Yes, there is this type of infrasound called "Brown Noise" which induces humans to empty their bowels uncontrollably. Think of all the cool stuff you could do with that.
By  Soqcrates, at 5:24 PM  

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Thursday, May 08, 2008
Thank God for bananas! -vvx

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Yiheng made 9:27 PM

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Saturday, May 03, 2008
Read thy holy book carefully! -vvx

An analysis of the language of the Koran claims that the supposed 72 virgins that await Muslim martyrs in paradise are really a mistranslation. Instead of perpetual virgins (some sources say they "revert" to virgin status every time one sleeps with them, don't ask me how), the actual reward for martyrdom is - lo, and behold - raisins! What a bummer!

Read article here: Virgins? What virgins?

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Yiheng made 12:34 PM

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