Sunday, October 06, 2024

 

Sign of Our Times

 The lion is known as the king of the jungle, the top notch predator. The wildebeest is the choicest prey of the predators despite its size, its timidity is well known. Wildebeests are like the mobile larder of the predators in the Serengeti plains.

But wildebeests are now seen in videos fighting against the lions, defending themselves and even defeating their enemies, the awesome magnificent lions that are known to devour their prey at will. And not only the wildebeests, other gentle and peaceful animals like the zebra and giraffe also are fighting back against leopards and cheetahs, and saving themselves too
In our human world small African nations are standing up against their colonial masters and aggressors. Is this the Sign of Our Times

Friday, April 26, 2024

 

The Enigma Puzzle

The Enigma Puzzle The Enigma Puzzle is true to its name. This puzzle was designed and patented by Eldon Vaughn in 1975. It is a puzzle that baffles even puzzle grandmasters. It consists of three stringy solid components made of cast metal chained together. One piece is like the treble clef symbol without the vertical part, the second piece is like the capital letter J with a small loop at its curve end, and the third piece is like the capital letter G with two small loops inside its lower part. Each piece has its own characteristics, distinctive design, special shape and intricate features; all together making it such a complex puzzle. It is a puzzle extraordinaire, one which truly challenges the best of puzzle solvers. It is graded most difficult, at level 6 on a scale of 1 to 6, a grading for Hanayama huzzles. This enigma puzzle, like other cast metal puzzles, is solved by disassembling and reassembling its components, from and to its original form. And no physical force is required or allowed, any movement and shifting of the pieces in the process of solving it is free and without restrictions. Many puzzle lovers have had a go at it, some have succeeded, some have solved it but were unable to remember how it was done, some sought for the solution, some abandoned it, and others have declared letting it went with the wind; yet some others are still trying to solve it. What is the intrigue, why is it so difficult to be solved. What is its allure, that puzzle lovers spent money and time and cracked their brains to solve it. It is simply a toy, it is made of three stringy pieces of metal, they are intertwined but not fixed, together it looks like a mess of twisted wire. It has no hidden parts, every bit of it is visible. Yet, to separate the parts is very exacting, and it is equally challenging to restore the parts to their original arrangement. Be that as it may, those who have been humbled by its complexity and those who have unravelled its mystery would appreciate its special design with all the cunning oddities. And watching it being dismantled and restored is also captivating and fascinating, a beautiful graceful step by step procedure. It is a wonder how such a puzzle can be imagined or conceived at all.

Thursday, April 18, 2024

 

Our world

In the world of peace and of disorder 
 the cleavage lies between 
 Love Thy Neighbour and Love Oneself. 
In every society sages teach for order and peace 
 while selfish and evil people exploit and plunder. 
Sages can't do much good where there are no followers, 
 and dictators can't do much harm where there are no sycophants. 
The world is full of resources 
Abundances of kinds still unknown 
Mankind's free to till and harvest 
to live in luxury and comfort 
Alas some chose to take the easy path 
To rob and gather unto oneself. Who's smart and who's stupid Only the end of life shall reveal. As all men are mortal, they come and they go. The globe spins on.

Monday, April 08, 2024

 

Cast metal puzzles

Puzzles activate the mind, exercise the brain, maintain and enhance its functions and capabilities. There are all kinds of puzzles, natural and created; liquid and solid; mental puzzles, puzzles made of paper, of plastic, wood and metal. Puzzles are mostly made for fun, for enjoyment and for leisure; puzzles are the best panacea for boredom and the grand thief of time. Of all man made puzzles, the cast metal puzzles are unique; they are capable of being replicated exactly, each piece being of the same dimensions, and possessing the same intricate characteristics, being cast from a mold to possess any requisite intricate precision thinkable. They are rigid and are durable, being able to withstand inadvertent mishandling, and last as long as the quality of the metal they are made of. Puzzles come with different levels of complexities, and cast metal puzzles are graded on scales of 1 to 10, or 1 to 6, with the highest number being the most difficult. These can be bizarre, very deceptive, oddly shaped and tricky. All sorts of difficult puzzles exist, and two lovable models are notable, The Enigma and The Equa cast metal puzzles, both belonging to level 6 standards. Level 6 puzzles are most suitable for diehard puzzle lovers and excellent for passengers on long journeys with time to kill. They are not graded level 6 whimsically, there are tales of some puzzles ending up in places non retrievable. Advisably, Sun Tzu's art of war helps greatly in solving these puzzles, especially that bit about knowing the enemy is half the battle won. This is because the structure and every bit of oddity in the components of each puzzle contribute to the complexity of the puzzle. The solution of this type of puzzles is the disassembling of the components and reassembling them to restore it to its original state. The test of greatness is to be challenged.

Tuesday, January 02, 2024

 

 My understanding of the phone battery as of now - 2.1.23

Battery cells need to be charged else they stay dead, the longer they remain discharged the harder to restore their life. Yet the process of charging the battery also weakens it. Thus a battery's life may be maintained to last only as long as possible.
There is a difference between powered off and switched off. When it is powered off, a very minimum of energy is used, for being ready just to boot up the phone. When it is switched off, some energy is used to perform the basic functions of housekeeping etc. and to be ready for the phone to resume full function.
In the former state the battery can remain charged for months, whereas in the latter case it may last several days.
Although most phones are made with cutoff charging of the phone battery when it reaches fully charged, phone batteries do have faults which may cause the battery to explode and catch fire causing much harm.
So, what to do and where to find the way.
As of now, I powered off my phone at night, and charge it in the morning. If the battery is below 50%, I charge it up to about 90%. The phone should not feel hot or very warm while it is being charged, that is the danger sign.

Thursday, December 21, 2023

 

 The kaleidocycle

The kaleidocycle, the name of a flextangle, is a paper toy. It is made by folding a piece of paper according to specific dimensions. It is shaped like a chain of six identical hollow triangular cones, connected side to side forming a ring. The base of two adjacent triangular cones may make contact such that it looks like a ring with three hexahedrons, or triangular bipyramids. And its outer circumference looks hexagonal.

The unique feature of this toy is that it can be turned around the circular axis of the ring. When it is being turned, inside out or outside in, all the pieces turn similarly simultaneously, And the beauty of this toy is that its pattern changes continuously while it is being turned. This is mesmerising, intriguing and captivating.

Additionally when the faces of the pieces are painted a plethora of changing colourful motifs come alive. Thus creativity is added to the enjoyment of this toy, and a challenge emerges for the design of the motifs. The design of the motifs is up to imagination, there is no boundary. This kaleidocycle is easy to make, yet it can offer so much fun, creativity and entertainment.

The creator of the flextangle is unknown, and it was Walter Walker who named it kaleidocycle. In 1977 Doris Schattschneider and Wallace Walker published a book about them using M.C. Escher patterns. And in 2018 researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University published a paper called Möbius kaleidocycles.

Where kaleidocycles are found, science, mathematics and art meet. Just as the nice looking wheel has had other applications by being eccentric, scientists foresee other applications by altering the structure of the flextangle, in its twist angle, the number of linkages and other characteristics. Researchers are now on the path that this kaleidocycle can spur advances in kinematics and robotics, in architecture and mechanics, in engineering and chemistry, and in creating new deployable devices.

This little kaleidocycle, the name of a flextangle, formed from Greek words meaning beauty, ring and cycle, may yet spawn great inventions. People ought to love and play toys.


Saturday, August 26, 2023

 

The presidency 2023


Once there were four gentlemen

They all want to be president

They put up their credentials

They declared their intentions

Alas one did not qualify

His companies not big size

He did have his way and say

Naturally all were blown away

Three who cleared the hurdle

Sat higher up equine saddles

Once they were gentlemen

Appearances benevolent 

Outfits reflect super class

Brown noses attend their ass

Ripples erupt in quiet quarters

Mud oozes into open gutters

Allied institutions joined the fray

People with angst gain sway

Closets alike Pandora's box

Behaviours past visited

Want begets wants

Fight begets fights

Smear begets smear

Dirt begets dirt

Who then stands up clean

Look look but none be seen

The Presidency awaits the Finest Man

Who really deserves that Position then.



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