My current iPhone game screen. As you can see, I’m quite a sucker for turn based card games.
Category Archives: Blog
A Sage’s Ramblings: A Toolbox for Modern Warfare (Part 1)
In case you’ve been living under a rock, in addition to Vintage and Legacy, we now have Modern as a new non-rotating format. In this multi-part article, I’ll be attempting the mammoth task of compiling a list of list of staples from these Modern-legal sets, partly inspired by Stephen Menendian’s Complete Vintage Checklist.
Excel: Average() and rank
My high-school batch has a football league going on the official Fantasy Football website. This year, the organizers proposed assigning points to teams representing our respective sports houses with bragging rights at the end of the season. Now, while the official league does a pretty good job at keeping track of individual scores, it doesn’t have a way to group teams into “groups” so I came up with this Excel spreadsheet.
We decided to assign 10/7/5/3 points to 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th placed houses each game week, with each house’s score each week being the average score of the top 3 performers in that house. At the end of the season, the house with the most points wins!
My initial thought process led me to think that the solution to this problem would be a combination of average() and rank(). The deliverable being, “return the average score of the top 3 teams in house X”. Turns out, rank() isn’t required at all! The solution was as follows, and must be entered using Shift+Control+Enter as it is an array formula:
If you’d like to toy around with the formulas, the excel spreadsheet is here: week1.xlsx
An Old Spice ode to London
Hello Rioters. Look at your friend, now back to me. Now at your friend, now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me, but if he stopped used petrol bombs and started using the job centre he could potentially be me. Look down, back up. Where are we? You’re at an interview with the man your friend could work for. What’s in your hand? Back at me. I have it. It’s an application form to that job you need. Look again. The form is now money. Anything is possible when you get a job, stop looting and grow up.
***
I don’t claim originality for this! First seen by Marc Penny on the “Scotland, where we don’t destroy our own city cause we’re no mongos” fan page.
London Riots
As a Londoner, the recent events have been appalling. The people involved have stopped being protesters and have turned into opportunistic looters and thieves. The scariest thing to me though, is that the riots are symptomatic of a far greater threat to our society: that of the lack of respect for authority. I think we as a society have failed to create meaningful lives for a growing underclass of individuals and that this growing resentment will continue to fester and blow up again in our faces again at some point in the future.
Here are a few pieces which I think communicate the issues pretty well:
Max Hastings from the Daily Mail:
If you live a normal life of absolute futility, which we can assume most of this week’s rioters do, excitement of any kind is welcome. The people who wrecked swathes of property, burned vehicles and terrorised communities have no moral compass to make them susceptible to guilt or shame. Most have no jobs to go to or exams they might pass. They know no family role models, for most live in homes in which the father is unemployed, or from which he has decamped. They are illiterate and innumerate, beyond maybe some dexterity with computer games and BlackBerries.
Zoe Williams from the Guardian:
I think it’s just about possible that you could see your actions refashioned into a noble cause if you were stealing the staples: bread, milk. But it can’t be done while you’re nicking trainers, let alone laptops. In Clapham Junction, the only shop left untouched was Waterstone’s, and the looters of Boots had, unaccountably, stolen a load of Imodium. So this kept Twitter alive all night with tweets about how uneducated these people must be and the condition of their digestive systems. While that palled after a bit, it remains the case that these are shopping riots, characterised by their consumer choices: that’s the bit we’ve never seen before. A violent act by the authorities, triggering a howl of protest – that bit is as old as time. But crowds moving from shopping centre to shopping centre? Actively trying to avoid a confrontation with police, trying to get in and out of JD Sports before the “feds” arrive? That bit is new.
Greetings, London!
I am now a Londoner!
Hello cold weather, Oyster cards and delays on the Tube!
My iPhone First Page
Despite what the Teh Tarik Drinker says about the majority of iPhone users being giggling teenagers, the iPhone remains one of the best phones I’ve ever used. Here’s the front page of my phone with my most frequently used apps:
A full list of apps after the jump!
[How-to] Remote Torrenting using Dropbox
Have you ever wished you could use Bittorrent on-the-go? Here’s a short guide how utilizing the magic of Dropbox!
What is Dropbox?
Dropbox is a free service that grants you 2GB of online storage space. You can upgrade your account for more space if you wish, but in my experience, 2GB is more than enough. It’s just like having an online USB disk.
Who is this guide for?
People who have computers running at home while they’re out in the office.
What do you need?
- An internet connection (duh).
- A computer running at home with your favourite Bittorrent program running in the background. I use uTorrent for the Mac.
- The ability to download
.torrentfiles with the ability to save.torrentfiles to Dropbox (Sorry, this won’t work on iPhones!).
Typically, this process would involve installing the Dropbox application on both your home computer and your remote computer. However, if you do not have permission to do so, you can always use the Dropbox web interface to upload your torrent files.
Here’s how!
- Sign up for Dropbox. If you use this link, both you and I get an additional 250MB free!
- Install Dropbox on your computer.
- Create a dedicated Torrent folder in Dropbox on your computer.
- In your favourite Torrent application, set it so that it monitors the Torrent folder setup in step 2 above. Here is what it looks like in uTorrent on my Mac:
My settings above are such that whenever uTorrent starts a new download, it deletes the original .torrent file. This gives me an indication that the Home computer has successfully picked up the .torrent file and has begun downloading.
And you’re done!
How it works
When you download a .torrent file and save it into the Dropbox/Torrent folder, it gets automatically synced your other Dropbox installed locations. So what happens is that your Home computer that runs uTorrent in this case automatically picks up the .torrent file and begins the download process.
Uploading the torrent file via the web interface isn’t that difficult either. Just go to www.dropbox.com and sign in. From there, just navigate to your Torrents folder and click upload.
Have fun!
Finding Directions on Google Maps
Google Maps is brilliant. When it first launched, I thought it was pretty amazing. Then came Google Maps on the iPhone. It was then I lost (haha) the ability to get lost!
Let’s take for example, the simple task of finding out how to get from Taiwan to China.
Google Maps is even smart enough to tell you that a journey by car will involve a ferry and that you have to pay tolls!
But for some INSANE reason, check out step #24 of 165km!
Thinking this was a fluke, I tried an even longer journey: Driving from California to Japan.
You apparently need something extra for this one
Thanks Fadh for showing me this!
The T-shirt Vendor’s Offer
“So how much would you like me to put on the invoice?” asked the gentleman at the other end of the phone.
“What?” I replied in bewilderment.
The setting for the conversation was in my last year in high school. I was speaking to the vendor from a t-shirt printing company whom I was arranging for some t-shirts to be printed for my boarding house. A couple of weeks prior to the conversation, the housemaster had just approved the new design and I had just emailed the vendor the digital copy when I received the phone call. We were expecting delivery by the end of the week.