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mike  ·  965 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: August 4, 2021

Nearly finished building an extra room on a small annex. Fun time working with a knowledgeable friend, we built it from the bedrock up. Scraped the earth, build foundation walls, leveled gravel, placed insulating sheets, poured concrete floor, framed it, translucent roof, windows, doors, siding largely done.

Still to do: finish siding, electrical, insulation, and paneling. It's going to be work room for our puzzle-making business.

Very satisfied.

mike  ·  1205 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: My TEDx talk - Art Inspired by Mathematics

Thanks! Here's the picture of the Family Tree that was a little hard to see on the video.

mike  ·  1208 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A Story of Limitations

I get your point. A lot of our customers have expressed surprise that we are delivering on time. I suppose they are the ones most experienced with KS and know that on-time delivery is unusual!

Yes, for us KS has been great for marketing. We decided last year to expand our hobby to a tiny business. We have many tiny businesses we're running at the same time and think puzzles could become the largest. Sales is the hardest part. We sold puzzles at some local fairs, visited a few local shops, got our puzzles in 3 stores in the city, did a mailing of samples to 20 stores, two of them bought a few packs, and we started to plan a sales road trip around the country for fun when corona hit and killed our plans.

Selling 2 puzzles a day from our webshop is definitely hobby-level, but that is 30x increase from before we did the kickstarter. We also picked up 3 stores, 2 in the UK and one in the US that want to sell our puzzles, so from a marketing perspective our KS has been a hit. 2 puzzles a day plus 6x $10k KS next year is over $100k in sales and that's no longer hobby but small business. And if we can increase sales 30x again next year then it's really good business.

We got a new machine we'll order this month with large cutting bed and double heads that can make 50 puzzles/hour. With enough sales we can employ someone to assemble and avoid manufacturing overseas, which we've tried and quality is a problem.

My wife's been enjoying posting updates on KS, which lots of personal touches and touches of Norwegian culture. Some have been loving the updates and many have signed up for a newsletter, so she's going to start a blog on our website and build this brand-loyalty by drawing our customers into a kind of friend group.

Fun stuff.

mike  ·  1225 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I published my first novel

Good catch! Not so many people would recognize one right away!

mike  ·  1225 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Garry Kasparov on What The Queen’s Gambit Gets Right

We just finished watching this series last night. It's one of the best series we've watched. I was particularly struck by how exciting they made chess appear. Wonderful.

mike  ·  2275 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski what is your New Year's resolution?

Congratulations! I'll be 50 this year too. Hurray for us '68 models!

mike  ·  2282 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Cool folding stairs I designed

You really should!

mike  ·  2365 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Collatz conjecture

I've "wasted" happy hours with this.

Wrote a post about it when I was writing a blog for the Norwegian national math education center:

http://www.matematikksenteret.no/content/2159/Collatz-formodning-The-Collatz-Conjecture

I'm re-inspired by those pics! Gonna fire up Processing now and play... maybe find a new way to visualize, maybe just find a new way to lose a few hours...

mike  ·  2487 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Shake it up. Offer up one somewhat unpopular opinion that you hold.

The EU requires vehicle inspections every 2 years. We all grumble every time our EU-kontroll comes due but dutifully take our cars in to find out there's a light burned out and a shock-absorber that's worn. We pay up, people complain but generally agree that it is nice to know that your car has everything fixed and every other car is in good condition. I actually like getting everything fixed on my car every two years.

Folks that don't like the inspections quote the studies that say required vehicle inspections do not improve safety. But that doesn't seem to make sense. Google will give you stats favoring both side. I do know I see almost no cars broken down on the road, which I used to see often when in the US. How do cars on the side of the highway affect safety, both for the driver and passengers of that car and of the other cars? It is not zero.

The question seems to be of cost-effectiveness: what is the cost of these inspections vs. the costs of repairs after failure/accident, hospitalization and funeral expenses related to vehicle failure, and is it worth this cost?

mike  ·  2532 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I am building a chicken coop. Protips wanted.

We had a large fenced in area around our chickens, about 4 feet high if I recall correctly, and it kept the chickens in. The fencing was cheap wire fence from Home Depot, kept in place with metal stakes in the ground. We kept the coop in the same place and shifted the fenced area between the right and left sides as the grass got eaten up.

I'd recommend getting a compost tumbler. You can rake out the coop once a week and throw all the straw and chicken shit in the tumbler, along with kitchen scraps. It makes awesome soil in a short time (a few weeks, again if memory serves).

4 chickens is a great number. If you go to 10 you'll have more eggs than you can eat and enough to give to friends. I'd get a mix of chickens based on egg color. It is a lot of fun to take your child out every morning to gather a mix of eggs in white, brown, blue, green, pink, and white with brown speckles. It's like Easter every morning.

Advice: do not have 75 chickens. This is exactly the wrong number of chickens to have. Enough to create serious work. Not enough to create money from egg sales. 4-10 chickens or over 300.

mike  ·  2536 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski, what have you been watching lately?

Ooh! I love binge-watching TV series!

Enjoyed the new Westworld very very much, exspecially episodes 1-8. The last 2 episodes got bogged down. A western with androids and an awesome vision of themepark that showcases human nature in often dark ways. Very good scifi. Will watch season 2 when it comes out. No release date yet so maybe not until 2018.

Finished season 1 of Outlander, very good. WWII nurse goes back in time to 18th century Scotland and makes a life for herself. Interesting story, historically accurate (maybe?), a lot of sex that makes it almost soft-porn. Started season 2 but couldn't get into it as much. Switched to...

Masters of Sex. Also very good. Drama based on the first two sex researchers in the 60s. I think it does a good job of showing the process, trials and excitement of real science. Great characters. Less sex than you'd think given the theme. Got halfway through season one and then we visited a puppy we will be getting next week. His name is Jon Snow and my gf has never seen GoT, thus we got sidetracked on this series and started watching...

Game of Thrones. I'm seeing it for the second time, my gf for the first and she was hooked during the first episode. Thus some major binge-watching over easter. Starting season 3 tonight. Surprising how much more I'm getting out of the series by watching again. Many small details that are important later that you don't notice if you don't know what you're seeing.

mike  ·  2778 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: cgod serves a fine cold brew

On my way to cgod's today! See y'all soon!

mike  ·  2882 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Latest addition to my math park

Ceiling is tiled... and it now the quietest room in the house.

mike  ·  2897 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: When Dungeons & Dragons Set Off a 'Moral Panic'.

I play D&D a lot when I was I kid. I also attended a Lutheran school as a child. We had a school assembly about the evils of D&D. I remember the example they gave of players putting orc babies in catapults and splatting them against walls. Me and my friends sat in the gymnasium feeling very persecuted. Letters were sent to parents and I had to explain to my parents that we played good guys.

Ahhh... to be part of history!

mike  ·  2902 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Sleeping Beauty problem

In the comments on the linked site several people refer to the Monty Hall problem, which is not relevant in this problem. When I first heard of the Monty Hall problem years ago, I modelled it with playing cards, and by actually doing the experiment I was quickly convinced of the obviousness of the not-so-obvious correct solution.

With this problem also, it is very easy to model. Flip a coin. If it is heads, wake up SB on Monday and ask her the odds of flipping heads. It is 50/50. If it is tails, wake her up on Monday and on Tuesday and ask her on both days the odds of flipping heads. It is 50/50. "Thirders" are incorrectly assuming that each of the three outcomes is equally likely. Ain't so.

Chance that upon awakening it is Monday is 75% (50% Monday and heads, 25% Monday and tails). Chance upon awakening that is Tuesday is 25%.

mike  ·  2985 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I just sold a photo!

You are now a professional photographer! Congratulations!

mike  ·  3013 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Sit-it-outs: do you have those?

I've been here for 8 years, and it is something I observe frequently. Definitely a part of the culture.

mike  ·  3017 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski, what's a light hearted confession you'd feel comfortable sharing?

I'm a math educator and include mental calculating in my courses. When no one is watching, I use a calculator to multiply, even when I could have done it in my head.

mike  ·  3030 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The 1000 day club -Are you in it?

Yep. Not kind to coffee cups either. First day I had them I blew out my favorite coffee cup. Which was filled with coffee on top of a dresser with all of the drawers open a little bit. Lost my favorite coffee cup, scratched my new acrylic, and got coffee on all kinds of things I didn't want coffee on. I called it a "very bad two seconds".

mike  ·  3056 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Epic Conway's Game of Life

I'm a big fan of GOL. It's been proven to be a universal computing machine, meaning it can do anything any computer can do, even recreate all the calculations for Halo 5 for example.

I met John Conway this summer. He hates the game because he considers it trivial, he's done much more important work, and it's all most people know of his work is this game. I think he's lucky to be known for anything!

Got him to sign a couple of boxes of Life cereal. See what he wrote? :-)

mike  ·  3078 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Fun and hard little math puzzle

Seems like several commentators hate this kind of puzzle. I like them. Someone showed me this variation last week:

Set in symbols one the left side of the equals sign to make equations which equal six:

0 0 0 = 6

1 1 1 = 6

2 2 2 = 6

3 3 3 = 6

4 4 4 = 6

5 5 5 = 6

6 6 6 = 6

7 7 7 = 6

8 8 8 = 6

9 9 9 = 6

I found the 8s most difficult.

mike  ·  3132 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Personality Insights about You Delivered by IBM's Watson

I ran 3 experiments: put in 7000 words from my cancer blog and 10000 words from my novel, and got wildly different results. I find truth in both - just like one finds truth in horoscopes no matter which one you decide to read for yourself?

Does each reflect my frame of mind at the time of writing?

Cancer blog: You are guarded.

You are organized: you feel a strong need for structure in your life. You are empathetic: you feel what others feel and are compassionate towards them. And you are independent: you have a strong desire to have time to yourself.

Your choices are driven by a desire for well-being.

You are relatively unconcerned with tradition: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done. You consider helping others to guide a large part of what you do: you think it is important to take care of the people around you.

Novel: You are generous, heartfelt and expressive.

You are confident: you are hard to embarrass and are self-confident most of the time. You are laid-back: you appreciate a relaxed pace in life. And you are unstructured: you do not make a lot of time for organization in your daily life.

Your choices are driven by a desire for well-being.

You are relatively unconcerned with taking pleasure in life: you prefer activities with a purpose greater than just personal enjoyment. You consider helping others to guide a large part of what you do: you think it is important to take care of the people around you.

mike  ·  3212 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: PSA: Welcome to Hubski, Redditors.

I had to look it up myself. No good just googling "freeze peaches", you find a lot of pages on how to actually freeze peaches. It's a good homophone though: free-zpeaches. It's some kind of reddit thing... I've only been to reddit like 3 times so I don't know that bit of culture.

My dad used to test speech recognition software by saying "It's hard to wreck a nice beach." A pretty cool homophone. Sorry -- tangent. I'm prone to those.

mike  ·  3237 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Tasting The World’s Foulest Food (hákarl vs. surströmming)

I don't know about fermenting trees, but lots of folk here in Norway drink hjembrent, or moonshine, especially out in the country. It's not legal, but popular none-the-less. In my part of Norway there's a local drink called karsk with a wonderful recipe:

Place a one-krone coin in the bottom of cup. Fill with coffee until you can't see the coin anymore. Add moonshine until you can see the coin again. Enjoy!

I got seriously messed up on karsk one night at a party way out in the country. It was terribly fun. And that one time was probably enough times for me!

mike  ·  3257 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski Movie Club - Voting Thread #13

Possibly my favorite film. Go Speed Racer, Go!

mike  ·  3263 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pretty cool invitation in my mailbox today

I like the idea of "The Book". There's a lot of very elegant proofs in mathematics. One of my favorite is the proof that there is no greatest prime number. Assume there were a biggest prime, P. Now make the number 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x .... x P plus 1. This number cannot be evenly divided by 2 or 3 or 4 or any number up to P because there will always be a remainder of 1 (that's the plus 1 on the end of the expression). That means the number must itself be prime or it must have a prime factor that is greater than P. Either way, we've shown that there must exist a prime greater than P, and we started by saying that P is the greatest prime. Therefore there is no greatest prime number.

For example, if you suppose the greatest prime number is 5, make a new number 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 + 1 = 121. Try dividing 121 by 2, 3, 4, and 5. There will always be a remainder of 1. That means 121's prime factors must be greater that 5 (they are: 11 and 11). So 5 is not the greatest prime.

mike  ·  3285 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Check Out These Tunes I Recorded With a Friend

I want to hang out at your parties!

mike  ·  3292 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Ask Hubski: Will be moving to a foreign country soon. Advice?

Ask people lots of questions. About language, culture, history, whatever. People are experts in their own language and culture. By asking them, they feel like the experts they are and will be surprised by how much they know and how valuable it is to you. They will like you for it and perhaps be amused by your wonder and appreciation. This is a very fast way to make friends and learn a LOT quickly!

I'd suggest keeping a blog, a simple one on blogspot. Document differences between your new culture and old. Your family and friends will enjoy living vicariously through you, you'll have a record of the things you did, and writing the blog will give you time to reflect on what you've learned, prompt you to learn things more deeply and give you direction for finding new things you think you might want to learn.

You're going to love it! Good luck!

mike  ·  3314 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What do you want done with your body when you die?

Here's a company that does it for as low as $995:

http://www.celestis.com/services.asp

mike  ·  3396 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I am also new here

Welcome bristolstreet! I used to be a Google News junkie until Hubski. I like the content here much better. And the company, as well.