Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Updates on Blog

This is a post meant to show off (or maybe draw attention to things which might fetch brickbats). Anyway this is what I have been up to on the blog front in the few days that I have been at home. I have added: -
  1. My own Blog roll - finally!
  2. Rearranged the list of other blogs I visit so that it looks like a left-justified pyramid - this is because I liked the way the 'Reluctant Rebel' had done it!
  3. A slide show of some samples of my pathetic attempts at photography - This is why I love digicams- they let everybody attempt fancy photography without wasting the 'reel'. :-)
  4. An application which should show us all the 'Endangered Animal of the Day' - I liked this. Period.
  5. An application which should give us one bit of completely useless information per day - Hopefully this should keep the four people who read this blog interested even during my inevitable and long absences - i.e. if they even notice the absences.. :-)
  6. Two lists - one which tells you the books that I have recently read - i.e comparatively recent; and the other which tells you the books that I am currently reading. Note of caution - this list may not change all that quickly if the rate at which I am currently reading books, continues!
  7. And the list of my 'followers' as Blogger calls it. Though why I chose to make the fact that this blog is not widely read, public, I do not know. Maybe it is simply a way of saying thank you to the kind soul.

That's it. this post was also a way of masking (unsuccessfully) the fact that I have nothing substantial to write about. So till I do, Cya.

16 comments:

What's In A Name ? said...

The Endangered Animal widget is novel.

Sroyon said...

I see you're reading A Brief History of Time. Of course it's my own personal choice, but if you want to learn about stuff like quantum physics and the Big Bang theory, I'd recommend the Feynmann lectures on physics. Any day. They are a bit more challenging, being written for Freshmen (as opposed to laymen), but once you put in the extra effort, according to me, they are way more rewarding than A Brief History of Time.

Also, the Useless Information widget says "Mozilla was unable to find this page". Is there a bug in the widget, or was that the piece of useless information for today?

Sroyon said...

And technically, your blog list is not a pyramid, but a right angled triangle. Pyramids are three dimensional.

Indecision Personified said...
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Indecision Personified said...

@what's : Thankyou... I thought so too. Now I can scream 'copycat' at anybody else who uses it!

@sroyon 1: - hmm...considering that physics was one of my worst subjects at school and that I gave it up for good after 10th std...and that I am finding 'Brief...Time' itself a handful, I think i'll stick with this. thanks for the suggestion though.
Dunno abt the useless info widget.. will have to see what to do...but it would be funny if it were the useless info of the day wudn't it????

@Sroyon 2: - Thank you, I stand corrected! :-) Right anglede triangle it is!

The Reluctant Rebel said...

I see you are reading Its not about the bike. It is the single most inspirational, albiet ghost written boon I have read. Its the reason why I cycle today. Goosebumps all over. And the left justified Pyramid was not my idea but Tommy's at hhtp://www.tommyjournal.com

Anonymous said...

you can claim it's a cross-section of a pyramid! (actually you can't, because a pyramid is an approximation of a regular polyhedron and no cross-section will ever look like a right-angled triangle!)

but I guess we are allowed to refer to two-dimensional representations of pyramids as pyramids!

Sroyon said...

I beg to differ with incorrigible introvert's statement that "no cross-section (of a pyramid) will ever look like a right-angled triangle!"
Consider a tetrahedron (which is nothing but a three sided pyramid) whose base is an isosceles triangle, the triangular side which shares an edge with the base of the isosceles triangle being at right angles to the plane of the base. If you now take a cross section of the pyramid by slicing vertically along the altitude of the isosceles triangle (i.e. the base) right through to the apex, you will get a right angled triangle.

Indecision Personified said...

@rahul: - to tell you the truth, I haven't begun it yet. Am interning at Bombay now.. and getting back late everyday! But after what you've said... I'm dying to start reading. Maybe will do that tomorrow... Holiday an all.

@Incorrigible & Sroyon: - wow! I never thought a no-brainer post like this could generate a discussion on physics and Maths - on my blog!!! :) So what if I don;t understand a word of what you're saying.... I like it.. makes me feel brainy too!!!

Anonymous said...

@Sroyon
I was talking of "regular" structures. To repeat myself, of a regular polyhedron, no cross-section will ever look like a right-angled triangle! That includes a regular tetrahedrons too. :)

And once you sacrifice the symmetries, you can of course make anything out of a pyramid in the cross-sections. Which is why I wonder why you had to struggle with the isosceles base! I mean, I get what you tried to do, but I would like to point out that it was unnecessary, because all we are looking for is a cross-section, and hence two edges being orthogonal would suffice!

cheers. :)

Sroyon said...

@ii: Yes, but I still don't understand why you'd want to restrict yourself to regular polyhedra. In my understanding, the generally accepted definition of a pyramid runs much wider than that.
And my choice of solid had more to do with making the comment comprehensible to an average reader of the blog, than with adhering to geometrical generalisation. I suggested a specific solid because I thought it would be easier to visualise.

Anonymous said...

@sroyon
Oh, but I don't really want to be restricted to regular polyhedra. I just pointed out that I was actually talking about regular polyhedra in that first scrap (if you read the sentence again, you'll see that I could have been talking either about pyramids or about regular polyhedra, so I made clear what I was talking about).

And thinking of the average layman is what prompted me not to consider pyramids where any of the usual isometries have been sacrificed, just like how it prompted you to come up with your complicated design! No layman will ever imagine an asymmetric pyramid, even though the definition embraces a lot of things!

And I think any pyramid with two mutually perpendicular edges is very much easier to visualise than what you described.

In fact, in your design too, you don't need to take cross-section at whereever-you-have-described. Since the planes are perpendicular to each other, taking a cross-section perpendicular to the base plane parallel to the cross-section you have described would produce the desired result, and there is an uncountably infinite number of such cross-sections!

Come to think of it, almost any cross section perpendicular to the base plane would do the trick, given it partitions the assymetric face.

Anonymous said...

and for the sake of completeness, I did commit a mistake.

the tetrahedron is the "only" regular polyhedron which is also a pyramid! :)

I meant to say a pyramid with regular polygon faces! Oh, but whatever... now I am being a boring jackass!

whatsinaname said...
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humptydumpty said...

@manavi
you havent added me to your follwers list

@sroyon and ii

ok we know yu guys know a lot of maths..now shut up..

Indecision Personified said...

@ humpty dumpty: - Sorry... do not know how to do that. I was, and still am, under the impression, that once I add the widget, it is supposed to automatically add all 'public' followers. Are you sure, you are a 'public' follower?

+ if you all the time to comment... surely you will oblige all of your blogger fans by posting?