Category: Math/Programming

After struggling with power cleans for a month, I’ve decided to not do them anymore. Trying to catch them is just too hard on my wrist, and I can’t seem to be more explosive doing it. If only I had a coach for a few sessions on this stuff to correct my errors.

On a similar note, Brighten is in the finals of the tennis tournament. He is even playing in the higher division! Quite proud of him for this.

I read these two books around one and a half weeks ago, and it made me realize how much I’ve been missing out. Not reading during the semesters stopped me from exploring stories which television or movies can ever tell. The details which books can delve into about the characters is simply amazing. What he wants to do, how he interacts, and how he feels. These are things which are explored in a deeper context in prose.

For A Spool of Blue Thread, it really has no plot. The whole book is a flowing family saga about the Whitshank family and their house, about their lives and their fears. Somehow, it entranced me to keep on reading. It made me realize again how intricate the stories must be for me to be here; how my great-grandparents met and fell in love, how they dealt with tragedy and happiness.

It also made me wish I have a better memory of stories. I don’t recall much at all of my early life, as trading stories have never been my thing. Maybe I’ll write them down from now on.

As for the Invention of Wings, I finished the book in the span of two days. That should be enough praise for any book.

I recently sent an email to a realtor the other day, and recieved a short 1 sentence reply.

On the other hand, the end-of-email signature…(edited of course):

Well, last semester was quite hard. But I’m back home, adjusted to living in Florida again, and ready to relax.

Maybe I’ll finally blog more now. Ugh.

Silly joke aside, how does one react to having one’s home utterly destroyed. What is the point of capturing this shell of a city after ISIS has destroyed all essence of human life in it. While a victory, it’s more a symbolic one from the humanist point of view.

Hopefully the people will come back, and it’ll flower under the Arabian sun once again. If not, then I wish the families the best of luck.

This series really emphasized change. Every character in the show transitioned from lofty goals and dreams to dead eyed stares. All because of one person who grasped the ability to change in his hands: Walter.

I’m not advocating myself to become a drug dealer. I’m not in the empire business.

Nor the money business.

Hell, I don’t know what my business is. Is it “make-the-world-a-better-place” business? I certainly hope so, but I don’t know what I should be doing to attain that while still living at a standard of living I like.

But what Walter taught me is to not wait until a stage 3 cancer derails my life. Take charge of the roaring bronco that is change.

It’s fairly obvious that a square is a regular lattice polygon, but it’s fair from obvious that it’s the only one. In the past semester, we actually proved that it’s the only regular polygon on the lattice without invoking any complicated mathematics.

Sketch of Proof:
We first show that regular triangles and hexagons can’t exist. The easiest way is to apply the irrationality of sine to either the area or a rotational perspective. Regular hexagons cannot exist because it’s composed of equilateral triangles.

For any other polygons, we apply infinite descent. Let P1P2…PN be the vertices of the polygons, then consider the vector P2P3 applied to P1. Since it’s a lattice vector applied to a lattice point, we will end up with another lattice point. Applying this procedure to all of the lattice points will result in a smaller lattice polygon! This concludes the proof.

Now what are the implications, and some other problems to consider?

Well for one, what other lattices will give us more regular polygons? For example a triangular lattice will give a triangle and a hexagon as the regular polygons. Is there any others? Does there contain a maximal lattice with such numbers?

Furthermore, does this imply the irrationality of sines and cosines of certain angles? If a regular polygon in the lattice exist, then the trig functions are rational. Is the converse true? I’m pretty certain it is, but haven’t worked it out yet.