Category: Geekery

My Hypothesis is Ruined!

15 songs into the Hottest 100 and the Warmest 100 prediction is not doing well. The average deviation is standing at just under 21 places, and there have been five songs that weren’t included at all! Can you feel the tragedy!?

(Yes, I’m keeping stats. Deal with it :))

LATER: A quarter of the way in and the average deviation has dropped to 18.3. There are now 6 unpredicted songs.

LATER STILL: Halfway! The average deviation is 16.6 and there are now 7 unpredicted songs. For the sake of interest, the signed average deviation is almost exactly 2, which shows that the songs predicted too low are almost cancelling out the songs predicted too high. So far, the worst prediction is Internet Friends by Knife Party, which was predicted at position 94 and came in at 55, and the best is Draw a Crowd by Ben Folds Five, which was predicted at 74 and came in at 73. On to the lower 50!

LATER, AGAIN: Three quarters of the way through! The average deviation is now 14.1, there are nine unpredicted songs and only three of my selections have made it in (damnit!). The most accurate predictions so far are Gasoline by Alpine, Hold On by Alabama Shakes, Hurricane by Ms Mr and our old friend Draw a Crowd by Ben Folds Five – all came in only one off from the prediction. Internet Friends by Knife Party is holding strong as the least accurate.

At the 75% percent mark my total rating for the countdown is 2.90 – on a scale where 5 is super happy awesome and 1 is kill it with fire! Some more of my songs better make it into the top 25…

NEWSFLASH: Ballpark Music’s Coming Down has proven the first 100% accurate prediction of the countdown at number 23!

LATER: Oh Derp! I missed that the Warmest 100 actually did include Sun by Two Door Cinema Club! Oh well, it won’t have skewed the stats too much. In the meantime, here’s my thoughts on Matt Corby.

Matt Corby

LATER: And right on the verge of the top 10, two more accurate predictions. Flume’s Sleepless at 12 and Calvin Harris’ Sweet Nothing at 11. Does this mean the top ten will be completely accurate?? (I doubt it :))

IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LAST LATER: Maybe I spoke too soon. My Gun by the Rubens at number 10 – just as predicted…

IMMEDIATELY AFTER THAT: Another correct prediction – Tame Impala at number 9 with Feels Like We Only Go Backwards. How long can this streak last!?

AND AFTER THAT: Well, that was fun while it lasted. Frank Ocean breaks the chain taking number 8 with Lost.

GETTING TOWARDS THE END NOW: Down to the top five. I imagine that it’ll be a shuffling of the five highest songs left on the Warmest 100 list – Thrift Shop, Little Talks, Breeze Blocks, Holdin’ On and I Will Wait. We’ve just got to wait to see what order they come in….

RIGHT ON THE VERY TIP: So, will the Number One be Monsters and Men (Yey!) or Macklemore and Ryan Lewis (Boo!)? I have a nasty feeling thrift shopping is going to beat small talk. Also, what the hell is this “Breeze Block” thing at number three!?

THE END OF EVERYTHING: Well, there we go. Little Talks by Monsters and Men at number 2, so (barring an apocalyptic upset) Thrift Shop by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis has taken out the 2012 crown. Damnit. But on with the statistics.

The average, overall deviation for all Warmest 100 songs that made it into the countdown is 10.79 places. The signed deviation is 0.08, which means the songs that were ranked too high almost completely cancelled out the songs that were ranked too low. The worst prediction (excluding those songs that didn’t make it in entirely) remains Internet Friends by Knife Party – which was predicted for 94 but ended up 37 places higher at 55. Eight songs were predicted accurately…

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis – Thrift Shop – 1
Of Monsters and Men – Little Talks – 2
Alt-J – Breeze Blocks – 3
Tame Impala – Feels Like We Only Go Backwards – 9
The Rubens – My Gun – 10
Calvin Harris – Sweet Nothing – 11
Flume – Sleepless – 12
Ball Park Music – Coming Down – 23

The top ten songs were all predicted correctly, but the middle five were in the wrong order. The top three songs were predicted accurately.

Eight predicted songs didn’t end up in the countdown – the highest predicted position being 56 for Japandroids.

Japandroids    – The House that Heaven Built
Haim – Don’t Save Me
Kanye West – Mercy
The XX – Chained
Something For Kate – Survival Expert
Frank Ocean – Pyramids
Haim – Forever
Van-She – Idea of Happiness

On the whole I think the Warmest 100 did a great job – and at the very least gave me something to do all day 😀

The overall score as far as songs that don’t make me want to remove my brain with a spoon is 2.9 out of five – which means I could just about put up with the entire playlist. Of the songs I voted for, 8 made it in. Which is pretty good considering I never expected Euphoria to get in anyway and just voted for it out of principal. The other omission was Santigold’s The Keepers – which I’m actually very surprised about. But hey, it’s probably my best performance in years, so I ain’t complaining.

Roll on the Hottest 100 2013! (and let the whinging about how the Hottest 100 and Triple J in general aren’t anywhere as good as they used to be begin…)

Bronchial Adventures

Well, this is fun. I’ve had a dry, itchy cough since before Christmas. This week it decided it would be better accommodated by my lungs, moved downwards and turned into bronchitis. On the plus side I’ve got a few days off work. On the downside my body seems to have decided that the best method to get rid of the infection is to get rid of my lungs entirely, and is attempting to cough them up on a regular basis.

I’ve been to the docs (happily I had booked an appointment to get the dry, itchy cough looked at before it went feral on me) and have been prescribed rest and a five day series of antibiotic pills the size of twenty-sided dice, so I should come up smiling on Tuesday morning.

In the meantime I’ve been working on painting my Cyclops Demolition Vehicle and watching a rather good documentary on H.P.Lovecraft up on ABC iView, so all’s well that ends well (assuming I do end up well – if not, I’ve got a repeat script on the giant pills).

Oh yeah, this is new. I bought a copy of the Game of Thrones board game. Hopefully I can introduce the guys to it soon, so Fabian can wipe the floor with us all. I’ve got a half a mind to try playing as the Starks, as it looks like an interesting challenge… I’ve also read my way through the first three books, and am now onto part II of Storm of Swords. I found Part I hard going at a few points, but it picked up at the end and I can’t wait to see just how awful the Martells turn out to be (just about everyone in Westeros is awful, it’s merely a matter of degree ;))

That’s it for now. Got some coughing to do…

Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness

TV Tropes is not only an awesome site for general browsing, but (for some reason) it also has this great page on Asperger’s Syndrome. Read it if you want to know why I’m such a freakin’ weirdo 😀

Somewhat related, my order from Forgeworld came in W00t! (as the young people used to say…).

(Oh, and also some Lego for my Gaunt’s Ghosts project.)

Maths-Hammer 40k

There’s been a lot of trash talk recently about the impossibility of every Crux Terminatus containing a fragment of the Emperor’s armour. Well I’m here to set the record straight!

The first thing we need to consider is how many Crux Terminatii are there? Let’s assume that only the ones on suits of Tactical Dreadnought Armour count – no doubt many marines that have been awarded the Crux carry small replicas with them to show off when not suited up, but the real ones are on the armour. Each suit bears only one Crux, so the question boils down to how many suits are there?

Codex Chapters are usually divided into ten Companies of roughly equal size. As a full strength Codex Chapter consists of 1,000 Marines, this means each company will have 100 members. Only the first Company are usually provided with Terminator Armour, so at full strength each Codex Chapter could be considered to have 100 suits.

Of course, not all Space Marine Chapters are Codex compliant, and very few Chapters of any type are ever at full strength or full equipment. However, there are said to be around 1,000 Chapters in total, so it’s not unreasonable to assume that over such a large sample size things will even out. Roughly speaking therefore we can assume that at any time the Imperium has 100,000 suits of Tactical Dreadnought Armour at its disposal.

Now, how big would the Emperor’s armour have to be to provide material for 100,000 suits? This depends on how big the piece on each suit is. For the sake of argument, let’s say each Crux Terminatus contains a one centimetre cube. This works out to 100,000 cubic centimetres. The cube root of 100,000 is 46.416, so therefore the fragment of the Emperor’s armour for every Crux Terminatus in the Imperium could be provided by a cube 47cm (18.5 inches) on each side.

That’s pretty damn small, especially considering the Emperor was a frickin’ giant!

So, simple maths makes it abundantly clear that the Emperor’s armour is more than capable of providing a sample of material for every suit of Terminator Armour in the galaxy. Hell, a one metre cube could provide enough material for every Space Marine in the galaxy (1,000 Chapters of 1,000 Marines) to carry a one centimetre cube around his neck!

Ain’t numbers wonderful? 😀

Winter is Coming

Earlier this week I had the singular pleasure of playing the Game of Thrones board game with a bunch of Paula and Bek’s friends. It was a fun afternoon, made even more fun by the fact that I – as House Tyrell – stumbled my way through to winning. I ascribe my victory to the following factors…

1: Keeping a low profile and not attacking any of the other players until well into the game.
2: It was the first time any of us had played, so we were all learning the rules as we went along.
3: A very opportune Westeros card came along at just the right moment to break House Baratheon’s defensive strategy and let me grab Kings Landing.

If we play again I don’t expect to win so easily 🙂

I have been thinking about the game since however, and have come up with what could be an interesting variant (or a horrible, horrible travesty). The game as it stands doesn’t do anything with the seasons of Westeros. I think it could be interesting to play a game where Winter is most definitely coming…

New Rules

* These rules come into effect at the start of Turn Six or (OPTIONAL) as soon as a “Winter is Coming” Westeros card is revealed.
* At the start of every Westeros Phase, before the cards are drawn, the Wildling track is automatically advanced by one.
* Territories with Supply and Consolidate icons lose them at a rate of 1 per turn (if a territory has both Supply and Consolidate icons, it loses one of each).
* Supply is recalculated at the end of every Westeros Phase.
* Players may pay Power Tokens to prevent their supply counter from being moved down the Supply track at a rate of 1 Token for 1 level. For example, if House Lanister’s Supply Counter is going to be moved three places down the track, they can pay three Tokens to leave it where it is, two Tokens for it to move down one place, or one Token for it to move down two places. Tokens CANNOT be used to move the counter up the track.
* OPTIONAL RULE: At the start of the Westeros Phase, all counters are moved one space down the King’s Court influence track. Counters moving off the bottom of the track are removed. The Raven is retained by the holder of the highest position on the track, until only two counters are left on the track, at which point it is removed from play. Bidding for position on the track is played as normal, but bidding cannot place a counter higher than the current maximum (ie: if the tokens have moved down two spaces, then the winner of the bidding places their token on space 3).

These rules would ensure that once winter sets in, everything will go completely to hell in the most entertaining fashion 😀

Back to work on Monday. Blech.

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