Fantastivision Blog

Chess problem

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:18:01 +0000

Assign values to the non-king chess pieces as follows: Pawn=1, Knight=3, Bishop=3, Rook=5, Queen=9.

Now consider this variant that I will call Plus-3 Chess. Plus-3 Chess has exactly the same gameplay as ordinary chess, but a player wins if either a) he wins by ordinary chess rules, or b) it is her turn and the value of her remaining pieces exceeds the value of her opponents pieces by 3 or more.

For example, in plus-3 chess if the material is even and White captures a bishop and Black does not capture a piece in the immediately following move, then it becomes White's turn with a material advantage of 3 and White wins.

Has this variant been considered elsewhere? Does it have a fancier name? Is this game easy to solve? ( Weakly and/or Strongly? )

Now consider Plus-k Chess for k=4,5,etc. that are defined like plus-3 chess except they require the material advantage to have a value of k. It seems to me that plus-6 chess is almost the same as ordinary chess for nearly-matched players. But of course you are probably able to construct a position that wins in plus-6 chess that is losing under continuation in ordinary chess. So instead let's examine all Grand Master tournament games in the history of Grand Masters, and find the maximum material disadvantage that was overcome. Call that value K-1, then plus-K chess is "tournament-equivalent" to ordinary chess. So solving plus-K chess, while not strictly equivalent to solving chess proper, should be good enough for any human player. And should be easier.

Apple dream dream

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:17:02 +0000

I had a dream. In my dream I woke up from a night of very interesting dreams. I told my sister, who told asked me if I had been eating apples before going to bed, because she also had amazing dreams because she ate apples before bed. And you know, she told me in the dream, apples contain a mild hallucinogen that causes you to have vivid dreams if you eat them before sleeping. That's all I remember from my dream. I woke up and wondered if it was true or false. If true, then how could I have learned this in my dream - I don't think I have ever heard this while waking-conscious. If false, then what an excellent untruth to think of. The kind of thing that is plausible enough that you might find it on Wikipedia because it might not be absurd enough to quickly remove. I considered putting it there myself, to see if I could insert it into the collective body of unverified "knowledge," to start what I will call an Originally-Wikipedia Legend (OWL). Perhaps a bit later. A google for apple hallucinogen doesn't seem to turn up evidence, so I think this tidbit is dream-only.

Reading

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:46:26 +0000

Read: Death Note, Volume 5 (Ohba/Obata)

Read: Death Note, Volume 6 (Ohba/Obata)

Read: Death Note, Volume 7 (Ohba/Obata)

Read: Death Note, Volume 8 (Ohba/Obata)

Read: Death Note, Volume 9 (Ohba/Obata)

Read: Death Note, Volume 10 (Ohba/Obata)

Read: Death Note, Volume 11 (Ohba/Obata)

Read: Death Note, Volume 12 (Ohba/Obata)

Reading

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:03:58 +0000

Read: Death Note, Volume 2 (Ohba/Obata)

Read: Death Note, Volume 3 (Ohba/Obata)

Read: Death Note, Volume 4 (Ohba/Obata)

Read: Hikaru No Go, Volume 1 (Hotta/Obata)

Started reading: Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Thaler & Sunstein)

Reading

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:02:41 +0000

Started reading: Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures (Zimmer)

Started reading: The Samurai (Endo)

2007 Honda Civic mileage

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:07:19 +0000

We recently took a road trip in our 2007 Honda Civic.

We travelled 1191 miles using approximately 29.966 gallons of gasoline. Based on the totals, the mileage we achieved was approximately 39.7 miles per gallon.

Here is a chart of our distance and gas usage that I recorded over several days. Based on a linear regression, our best-fit mileage is 39.46 mpg.

This was almost all highway driving, but it still seems surprisingly good, considering the new Honda Civic is supposed to get 36mpg highway.

Here are the data that I recorded to measure our mileage. The Price and Gallons data from Ontario are converted from litres.

Date	State/Province	Price/gallon	Odometer	Gallons	Mileage
07/25/08	NJ	3.899	10736	Full	N/A
07/26/08	NY	4.329	11080	8.775	39.2
07/30/08	ON	4.652	11346	6.908	38.5
07/31/08	NY	4.329	11570	5.985	37.4
08/02/08	NJ	3.859	11927	8.298	43.0