Time Lag

I beat Myst IV: Revelation on Friday. Great game. Loved the ending. You should try it, but if you haven't played the first 3 (not Uru, that comes after Revelation, technically), you should do so first.

Now I'm playing Uru: The Path of the Shell. Had to start over from the beginning because of a computer crash much earlier this year. Ended up erasing the entire hard drive. I hadn't backed up my progress beforehand (stupid!) so I lost it all. It's alright to do it again.

I don't remember anything else that I intended to say on Friday. I just got a router and installed it, but for some reason I couldn't access the Net that day. Obviously, the problem has been solved.

Over the break, I have to do a book report on any book I've read so far this year. I think I'll do Richard Bachman's The Long Walk. (Bachman is Stephen King's old penname).

Sooner or later, I'm going to begin working on my Chess AI. My novel's on the back burner.

But I did read King's On Writing not so long ago. It told me to set writing goals for myself. So for a short while, I began writing one hour a day, before I slept. I got a little bit done on a novel I had not originally planned on doing. But I haven't done that for a little while. Maybe I'll start it up again.

Hell, maybe I'll do a blog novel. I've seen little remarks about that all over Blogger, but I've always said that I'd rather it (my novel) remain a complete secret until publication. (That way, it's more a surprise for the reader.
(Ironically, writing the above paragraph just convinced me not to do it. Oh well.)

Last night, I was thinking about factorials. For some reason, my calculator (TI 83 Plus) allows me to do (1/2)! (one-half factorial), which it tells me is equal to .8862269255... Since 0! and 1! both equal 1, I thought, "Well, maybe you can graph factorials as a quadratic function." So I went through the rigors of finding that equation.

I know: y = a(x-h)(x-h) + k
I assume: y = x!
Vertex is (.5, .886226). Other points are (0,1), (1,1), (2,2), and (3,6)

The equation is y = a(x-.5)(x-.5) + .886226
When I use the point (1,1), I get
a = 4(1-.886226) = 4*.11377 = .45509
When I use the point (0,1), I get the same value for a.
But when I use (2,2) to verify, a becomes:
a = (2-.886226)/2.25 = 1.11377/2.25 = .49501
Using (3,6):
a = (6-.886226)/6.25 = 5.11377/6.25 = .8522955

I continue to try to solve by saying "the a's should be equal in all cases", therefore:
4(1-.5!) = (2-.5!)/2.25
If I said .5! was a variable f, then I find that:
4(1-f) = (2-f)/2.25
4-4f = 4.5-2.25f
-.5 = 1.75f
f = -1/7
which is clearly not .5!
So I just proved that factorials cannot be graphed using a quadratic function.

Sorry to have wasted your time.

Until next time, remember: Uselessness = Usefulness = .5!

---TDM