Sunday, January 29, 2012

Sophisticated

Someone from India landed on my blog searching for “why life is so bad shayari”:

why life is so bad shayari

How ridiculous is that? (S)He should have searched for “why life is shayari”. An example sher to illustrate this point (have a look at the tab titled ‘Shayari’ above before reading further!):

तुम्हारी सोच के साँचे में ढल भी सकता था,
वो आदमी ही था इक दिन बदल भी सकता था।

Tumhari soch ke saanche mein dhal bhi sakta tha,
wo aadmi hi tha ik din badal bhi sakta tha.

Could have shaped in the mould of your thoughts,
Being a human, he could have been eventually cast.

-राजीव भरोल (Rajeev Bharol)

Sorry for pretending to be sophisticated. If you want to witness real sophistication, watch Sora as she teaches Natsumi what it means to be highly sophisticated!

Sketchbook v8p119

HAHAHAHA

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Volume 8

of Sketchbook is now in my possession. More specifically, Sketchbook 8 [Limited Edition] w/ Illustrated Tote. YOO0000000°°°°°……

Let me take you through the unpacking of the package worth $(24.04 → 24.42 → 24.79 →)25.04, which arrived from Japan in 15 days:

Sealed Package

Unsealed Package

Unsealed Package w/ Contents

I was expecting Kate to be on the cover of this volume and she indeed is! Next would be the President and then finally, we’ll see Ooba as the Cover-girl. Wait, the two Sensei’s could have their turn before her… Well, we’ll have to wait.

Contents in Bubble-wrap

Contents in Plastic-wrap

Contents Freed

Tote Bag Freed

Sora & Mike on the Bag

I was expecting the whole Art Club to be here… Oh well, next time!

Now let me take a sneak peek inside the volume. Since I don’t understand the script, I will have to wait (to fully understand the strips) till the Scanlators get started on this volume (or I could bug my Superpartner to translate for me… should definitely give it a try!). But the beauty of Sketchbook is its simplicity and all this ‘tension’ is almost unnecessary as the following pages illustrate:

Sketchbook v8ch102pg3

Sora tries to suppress a whirlpool… Natsumi is confounded as usual.

Sketchbook v8ch102pg7

Natsumi & Daichi let their Kuro & Inuo meet… and hilarity ensues?

Sketchbook v8ch102pg9

Nagisa is trying macro photography… with not so great results!

Best of Luck to You, anyway!

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Numbers, Numbers Everywhere!

Today, someone from Mexico landed on my blog after searching for… Wait for it:

A Sudoku Searcher

Yes, can you believe that? Someone actually searched ‘solution for the sudoku from beelzebub’ and landed on this blog! Brilliant… I want to thank Ryuuhei Tamura for screwing up! Smile

Coincidentally, I also saw a report in Nature on an article about the minimum number of entries required for a Sudoku to have a unique solution. The answer turns out to be 17 and a sample Sudoku is provided there. Guess what? A story similar to Beelzebub repeats here!

First of all, this Sudoku can not be solved logically:

Partial Solution

Moreover, my Superpartner was able to fill-in the 16 red numbers on her own (as expected)! Second of all, it does not have a unique solution; it has a hell lot of solutions (>500!):

Complete Solution

I feel a little bad that I’ve been giving her ‘invalid’ Sudokus to solve. Maybe I should give her a valid Sudoku for once like this one (taken from some YouTube video; don’t remember which one!):

Valid but Impossible Sudoku! ;)

Anyway, talking about traffic on my blog, this post has the highest number of hits; more than double the number of hits on the post below it:

Posts' Stats

Curiously, people do some quite explicit searches to end up here:

People who heard Bill Bailey

Sunday, January 1, 2012

A New Year

So what?

Apparently, some people don’t say, “So What?” and go along with others to parties, uh… I don’t know what else they do. But another ridiculous thing they indulge in is making resolutions:

Before I start to get self-aware, let me just wish you a very Happy New Year and point you to the photos of my recent

NYC trip