Jekyll2023-11-12T17:37:09+00:00http://localhost:4000/feed/blog.xml | BlogAndrew ConlinEnhancing Rock Paper Scissors2023-11-12T17:27:35+00:002023-11-12T17:27:35+00:00http://localhost:4000/blog/2023/11/12/rock-paper-scissorsAt least where I live, Rock Paper Scissors (henceforth referred to as RPS) is still the dominant way of quickly making a decision between friends. However, it is in desperate need of an update.

In this post, I will set out the existing problems with the game, then how I aim to resolve them, and conclude with a summary of the amazing of the brand-spanking new edition.

For the record, I am writing this post because the game is bad, not because I always lose to my girlfriend and have decided to change the rules rather than accept defeat1.

1. The problems

  1. Lack of options
  2. Scissors picked disproportionately
  3. General lack of whimsy

2. Fixing the problems

How many extra options should we add?

Graph theory

Before we dive in, let me give you some Graph Theory 101. First some terms:

  • vertex: a point in space
  • edge: connects any two points
  • vertices are joined with edges to create graphs
  • to begin with, we will have undirected graphs, where edges have no direction associated with them

Therefore, to represent the current setup for RPS, we can have the following

Each possible hand is a vertex, and each edge is a game. In graph theory, a complete graph is one where every pair of vertices is connected by a unique edge. Intuitively you can see that rock, paper scissors is complete, otherwise there would be combinations that couldn’t be played against each other.

Another concept that I now need to introduce is that of degree. The degree of a vertex is the total number of edges it is connected to. This is the second criterion that we need to fulfill: Every vertex must have the same degree. This is known as a regular graph. The exisiting RPS graph is also regular, with degree 2 (2-regular). We need to satisfy this with our new graph.

It is now time to introduce direction to our graph, used to represent winners and losers. Here is the RPS graph with directions representing who will win each game, also known as a digraph.

Rock beats scissors etc. etc.

More specifically, we want an oriented graph. There shouldn’t be any bidirectionality between vertices, which would indicate a draw.

A complete, oriented graph is called a tournament.

Buidling on out definition of regularity from the non-directed graphs, we have directional regularity (indegree = outdegree). A tournament where each of the vertices is regular is called a “regular tournament”. This specific type of digraph satisfies all our criteria, and any new game that we create must be regular tournament.

  1. complete (every hand can play every hand)
  2. regular (every hand can participate in the same number of possible games)
  3. oriented (every game results in a winner)
  4. indegree = outdegree for all vertices (each hand wins as many as it loses)

Number of regular tournaments for numbers of nodes (even no. of nodes excluded because they have an odd degree, and therefore no regular tournaments):

Nodes Degree Regular Tournaments
1 0 1
3 2 2
5 4 24
7 6 2640
. . .
. . .

as much as I would love to look at all of the possible 2640 combinations for a 7 player tournament, 5 possible hands looks like our sweetspot here, both in terms of the possible winner/loser combinations and in terms of the brain capacity of people playing the game.

This took me so long to figure out2

  1. It’s like she’s in my head it’s crazy ↩

  2. The notebook of a crazed madman ↩

]]>Andrew ConlinLinks aren’t performances2023-04-29T00:00:00+01:002023-04-29T00:00:00+01:00http://localhost:4000/blog/2023/04/29/links-arent-performances“For starters, it finds that publishing a link can be a “performance” of a copyrighted work, which meant that when Linkletter linked to the world-viewable Youtube files that Proctorio had posted, he infringed on copyright.

This is a perverse, even surreal take on copyright. The court rejects Linkletter’s argument that even Youtube’s terms of service warned Proctorio that publishing world-viewable material on its site constituted permission for people to link to and watch that material.”

Via: Pluralistic

]]>Andrew ConlinA measure of how easily thoughts can be translated to action2023-03-10T00:00:00+00:002023-03-10T00:00:00+00:00http://localhost:4000/blog/2023/03/10/putting-thoughts-into-actionRecently, I’ve been using multiple different languages and frameworks (both at work and personally) and I’ve been thinking about why I prefer some over others. Ultimately, I think it comes down to this:

How easily can I translate what I am thinking about into a working setup?

That is, how much effort needs to go into converting my idea into a solution? (If there is not already a word for this, then there should be. Don’t worry, I am willing to take the hit and have it named after me.)

For example, I’ve been building this website over the past month or so. Generally, for static websites, I think that HTML + CSS are very good at allowing me to get what I see in my head running on localhost. At this point CSS has so many different options that you just need to find the right search terms in order to get what you want.

However, they are both lacking somewhat in intuitiveness. Especially when starting out, it can get very confusing to know the right tags and the right syntax and the right placement (and so on) to realise your vision.

This is where services like Squarespace et al. come into play. They give you that intuitive UI, dragging and dropping of features, resizing and changing colours. They make it super duper easy to do the actual building, at the cost of the range of bricks you can use.

So, we have two measures:

  1. Can I do everything I want to?
  2. How easy is it?

These are usually a direct tradeoff, with ease typically preferred over options. This tends to frustrate me, as I want full control of all those little configurations.

The solution to this, at least for me, are frameworks such as Bootstrap and Jekyll. They put a layer between the user and the options; essentially translating and simplying all the little configurations into something much easier to work with. Columns in Bootstrap make page layouts simple; markdown-to-html parsing in Jekyll makes text formatting a breeze. But, most importantly of all, these frameworks don’t sacrifice on the possibilities. They make it easier to apply complex setups, but if you want to go in and tweak absolutely everything to your liking, go right ahead. By providing the user with simpler ways of doing the same things as before, they manage to bridge the gap between Can I do everything I want to? and How easy is it?. And I think that is beautiful.

]]>Andrew ConlinYuri Felsen on love2023-03-05T00:00:00+00:002023-03-05T00:00:00+00:00http://localhost:4000/blog/2023/03/05/yuri-felsen-on-love“Like everyone, I have my own, maybe obsessive futile, maybe in some way authentic, vision: all of a sudden, I will imagine the entire homogenous world as it is revealed to us-the streets, the cities, the rooms, those intelligent beasts of a sad and predatory nature, who have learn to stand on their hind legs, who have built all this but are fated to disappear, who, despite this, still try to cling to something solid and lasting, still try to ward off the inevitability of death, who dreamt up fairy tales and, now that these stories have been disproved, are disconsolate - and for me the only means of defending myself from our terrible fate is love, my love - Lyolya. Without love we fall into a stupor or despair, it covers our naked animal essence; with the fear of death, with deliberate attempts to grab hold of some kind of eternity, one that is at once a mystery to us and yet devised by us, even the remains of love, even its very echo in music, imbues us with a semblance of fearlessness, dignity and the spiritual range to disregard death. Only by loving, by knowing about love, hoping for love, are we inspired and meaningfully engaged in life, able to banish the sovereignty of petty day-to-day cares, to stop waiting for the end to come”

- Yuri Felsen (trans. Bryan Karetnyk)

From ‘Deceit’, first published in 1930 and translated to English in 2022.

]]>Andrew ConlinMusings on the power of cinema2023-01-14T00:00:00+00:002023-01-14T00:00:00+00:00http://localhost:4000/blog/2023/01/14/musings-on-the-cinemaI’ve realised that going to the cinema makes me sad; a quiet, contemplative melancholy. Ennui. No matter the film, something about the cinema experience is meditative for me. I always look at things differently in the aftermath; like my perception is temporarily knocked off balance. No, more like a fog is lifted for a while. I especially enjoy that time immediately after, the cycle home. I notice so many little details, scenes of beauty and of strange nostalgia. Like I’m finally seeing the world how it is, or rather, I begin to see rather than look, listen rather than hear. I feel as though these moments, however brief, are when I am truly in touch with myself. My soul, my inner essence. This is why I love the cinema. These moments of private melancholy, of temporary clarity. It is a feeling I cannot replicate anywhere else in my life.

]]>Andrew Conlin