Category: Blarghing

My general rants and speeches

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Christmas Wordle

My Wordle result on Christmas Day this year looked like this:

⬛⬛🟩🟩⬛
⬛⬛🟩🟩⬛
⬛🟩🟩🟩⬛
⬛🟩🟩🟩🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

It almost looked like what I wanted, which was a Christmas tree with a star, like this:

⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛
⬛⬛🟩⬛⬛
⬛🟩🟩🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

This got me thinking a little bit. For one, is such a pattern possible? It probably is given the large amount of accepted Wordle guesses. But more importantly, does there exist a sequence of guesses which “makes sense”, and still produces the desired pattern.

It turns out producing Wordle art isn’t a new thing. Frankly, this is not a difficult thing to accomplish: simply loop through the word dictionaries until the desired pattern is matched and move on to the next pattern. This is not some big data exercise as the number of words is less than 13000.

The second question, can we make a sequence which makes the art while still making “sense”, is also pretty easy. I define making sense in the Wordlebot manner:

If a sequence of guesses strictly reduces the number of possible answers.

The reason we ask for strict inequality is that if the nth guess results in only 1 remaining possible solution (say “carol”), then the next guess must be “carol.” This means that, with possibly more guesses than available, one can always find the answer.

This was not difficult to code up in a brute force manner, and, spoilers, for the solution on 12/25/2025, PRISM, one could’ve guessed

FORTH

QUIET

BRISK

PRISM

and gotten the nice Christmas tree.

Code located here.

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The Purgatory of Travel

I came back from Mexico City the past week after spending a short three nights there. Early in the morning of my departure, I was boarding the van I requested from the hotel for the airport when asked by a woman if her family can ride with me, claiming that the hotel never completed their request for a similar conveyance.

Of course I said yes, almost without thinking too hard and refused any money, simply requested them to cover the tip. If I were still home, and ordered an Uber to the airport, would I have done the same for strangers? I would like to think so, but perhaps not?

There’s an effect while in unfamiliar places, where one is more guarded and yet vulnerable at the same time. Perhaps it’s a willingness to share with fellow strangers in a strange land, both wearing marks indicating a (small) level of uneasiness. After all, it’s difficult to feel tranquil while not home.

Yet I may treat random locals too harshly. Maybe out of necessity now with scammers ever present, but I distinctly remember in Istanbul, a man approached me telling me I had great pants. To be honest, fantastic praise, and I would have gladly parted with a few liras just for that, but I did say thanks and quickly departed while he asked more questions.

Moral of the story? Wear good pants.

As a coda, I did get bitten in the ass. The driver reported it to the hotel and they charged me more. Forever, I was able to ask the woman to cover the charge after we got back to the states and everything was fine.

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When We Cease to Understand the World by Labatut

This book is definitely unique.

It starts off much like nonfiction, drawing the reader in by painting a dark line from the Zyklon B gas used in concentration camps to a pigment celebrated for its vibrancy. All that Labatut says in this chapter is true, and reads much like something by Bill Bryson: an easy read interspersed with facts and connections that grips the reader.

While it might seem like this writing style would eventually transition to discussing how scientists discovered quantum mechanics, and maybe some deep connection with a wildly different field, it slowly transitions to examine the minds responsible.

While no one can truly understand the excitement and fear of genius at work (unless you are one), it’s interesting that Labatut provides a meta-commentary regarding the thought process. The bulk of the book eventually lands on just two characters Schrödinger and Heisenberg, and using real events in their lives, paint their discoveries in a sometimes lurid but often transcendental  light.

I never thought I would say this about a book ultimately about these physicists, but there were aspects when I thought it was Lolita-esque and I was uncomfortable. But I do recommend the reader to do a little research afterwards.

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Freedom by Franzen

Continuing my trek through the NYTimes Best Books of the 21st Century list, I intended to buy a second-hand copy of The Corrections by Franzen but ended up with Freedom instead. From what I gathered, it seems the two are quite similar, with The Corrections being more “satirical” while Freedom seems more like a soap opera.

It’s funny, the book was simultaneously relatable and alienating at the same time. So much of the novel revolved around midlife crises, sexual frustrations, and societal angst that had no hold on me. Yet, at other times, it would discuss family dynamics and political frustrations which resonated quite deeply.

The book centered around a single family, Patty and Walter, who both grew up as the odd ones out in broken (in their own ways) families. They eventually meet in college, and through this relationship, Franzen brings in many supporting characters: their son (and daughter), whom Patty dotes on too much, which drove him away; Walter’s best friend, who complicates things with Patty; and a young, attractive woman whom Walter works with later in life when his marriage with Patty is on the rocks.

By switching the point of view four or so times in the novel, we get an interesting take on the events. For large parts, the novel was supposedly “Patty’s Journal,” where she detailed her, frankly confusing, motivations. When it was appropriate, we switched to Walt (and sometimes their son).

The story is expansive, yet also has a slightly meaningless ending.

But isn’t the journey the point?

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The Bob’s Burgers addiction on Garmin

Bob’s Burgers has been the ambient track to my life for awhile now. It provides a comforting background noise from which I can choose to tune in to or out of at ease due to the irrelevant (but good humored) nature. Day to day, I would pull up Hulu, and just resume… however, this is not ideal. I only have the ad supported version of Hulu meaning no offline or minimized playing, and it has ads.

“But Marshall, Bob’s Burgers is only available on Hulu. Where else are you watching it?”

Good question. For awhile now, there have been people uploading virtually full episodes onto YouTube. As this is against copyright, these videos all have various ways to skirt around the initial screening: cropped videos, truncated episodes, slightly distorted sounds. They still get taken down relatively quickly. For an explanation of why this is happening, see posts like this. But I would also use these videos, as they generally don’t have shuffled episodes too, meaning I can be surprised by what comes up next. I can also play this very much like a podcast due to having Premium.

Recently, I got a Garmin smartwatch with the capabilities to play stored music. Looking to curb my phone dependence, I thought about putting Bob’s Burgers on the watch in an audio format. However, I wanted a few constraints:

  1. Since I listen to this sometimes to zone out/nap, as much as I like the introductory jingle, it needs to go.
  2. The audio should also generally be faded out before the credits, as it’s usually a long jingle which is too distracting.
  3. Audio cannot be too “jumpy.”

This turned out to be very easy due to the structured nature of the episodes. Suppose one has the files of the episodes in “.mkv” files in a legal manner, then the following lines

for file in *.mkv; do
echo "Processing $file..."
filename="${file
ffmpeg -i "$file" -map 0:a:0 \
-ss 00:00:20 -to 00:20:20 \
-filter:a "afade=t=in:st=20:d=5,afade=t=out:st=1215:d=5" \
-metadata title="$file" -metadata artist="The Bobs" \
-id3v2_version 3 "${filename}.mp3"
done

creates mp3 files of the audio which simply fades in/out the credits and out song. The last point about normalizing the audio turned out to not be important, but using the following line into the for loop might help

  ffmpeg-normalize --progress -c:a libmp3lame "${filename}.mp3" -o normalized/${filename}.mp3

By moving this onto Garmin, I know can shuffle through various episodes!

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Pied-à-terre

small living unit, e.g., apartment or condominium, often located in a large city and not used as an individual’s primary residence

Of course there’s a French word for this.

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Grasshopper

The grasshopper laid on the small open air passageway between the stairs and the front door of my apartment. A streak of ardent green juxtaposed against the gray, brutalist pockmarks of the concrete walkway. And yet, I almost stepped on it. Not, on purpose mind you, but because of the very subtle pull from peripheral vision; a beckoning of sorts when one’s mind is on autopilot.

It looked like it was dead. A grasshopper is not considered an elegant insect, with its many sharp angles and rectilinear tagma. Nothing like the gentle curves of a butterfly. But with this, comes a natural orientation that I could clearly see even while erect. It was lying on its side, throwing off the alignment to the ground attained by millions of years of evolution.

But occasional twitches showed specks of life remained. Unfortunately, my hands were full carrying trash to the bin, and saving this tiny green mote involved several steps. I would had to lean my trash bag against the wall, find and gently use a piece of card stock or paper to scoop the little fellow. Finally, take this little specimen down the flights of stairs and deposit it among the shrubs.

Maybe “several steps” is overselling it, but I ultimately did nothing and continued with my chores after returning from the bins. Was it really that hard to do something for a helpless creature stuck in a foreign land? The activation energy required so large that I chose inactivity? (To be fair, it was three flights of stairs…)

Or was my laissez faire attitude the correct choice for it was too weak to survive anyways? The wind was strong that day, and I suspected that it was blown from the nearby tree onto the balcony. Perhaps the traveler was just catching its breath and would straighten up by itself after several minutes

Twenty minutes later, when I was throwing away the recycling, it was gone.