Categories
geek

poor postman pat!

did you know the most common name for a city in the world is “oktjabrskij”? or that there are 11 cities named “springfield” in the usa, and another 11 named “clinton”? :)

here’s a ranking of the top-20 most frequent names of cities, freshly squeezed from postcrossing‘s database (might not be totally accurate):

City name      Country     Total of cities    
Oktjabrskij Russia 23
Springfield USA 11
Clinton USA 11
Pervomajskij Russia 11
Neustadt Germany 9
Madison USA 8
Hidalgo Mexico 8
Komsomolskij Russia 8
Washington USA 8
Lebanon USA 8
Shāhpur India 8
Dmytrivka Ukraine 7
Kamenka Russia 7
Auburn USA 7
Burlington USA 7
Greenville USA 7
Viişoara Romania 7
Áyios Dimítrios Greece 7
Troickoje Russia 7
Farmington USA 7

impressive redundancy if you ask me, but then again, except maybe a couple of countries, all the others on this list are pretty big… perhaps they just ran out of imagination?

anyway, there you go: one more reason never to forget the zip code! 8-)

Categories
links and ideas photography

terrazo: views of mexico city

terrazo: views of mexico city is a photo exhibition by pablo lopez that was until recently on sasha wolf gallery, ny.

some samples of the photos are up on the exhibition website, and what a sight they are. the city seems to run immense through hills and valleys, evergrowing and yet strangely quiet and still, in the distance of these images.

via notcot, a long time ago.

Categories
foooood just life links and ideas

the grass is always greener…

last thursday i ate my first francesinha in a smoke-free café. and let me tell you, it tasted really good. my sincere thanks to all the portuguese smokers out there who are playing by the (new) rules – i appreciate it. :)

ad by tbwa for the world tobacco free day.

Categories
geek just life

mr. cook, we have a problem.

when i failed to join the air force and had to choose another career, i picked informatics, journalism and astronomy, all in the same application form – that’s how clueless i was towards my future. in the end, informatics won, and 7 years later, here i am, still clueless but with an engineering degree! :)
every now and then, on the most improbable situations, the informatics/mathematics part comes in handy, like for instance (and ironically) when i have to fly.

here’s the formal definition of a common problem, known as packing. the next time your mom tells you to stop procrastinating on your packing duties, you can properly explain her how hard that is – and hopefully delay the task a little longer!

  • you have n kinds of items, 1 through n. each item j has a value (sentimental or of importance) pj and a weight wj. the maximum weight one can carry in the suitcase is c, and according to british airways, c=23 kgs.
  • the number of each kind of item in the suitcase, xj, is restricted to zero or one (for simplicity purposes).
  • mathematically the problem can be formulated as:
    maximize \sum_{j=1}^n p_j x_j.
    subject to \sum_{j=1}^n w_j x_j \le c, \quad \quad x_j = 0\;\mbox{or}\;1, \quad j=1,\dots,n.

this is called a 0-1-knapsack problem, which is known to be a np-complete problem. np stands for non-deterministic polynomial time… and that translates into “very hard & time-consuming problem”.

another np-complete problem is called bin packing, which consists of neatly placing different volumes in as less bins as possible. no time-efficient solution has been discovered for these problems.

so there you go. combine the two and you have packing! :D

(and now, back to the suitcases…)

ps – images from wikipedia, more on the subject here.
ps2 – who was stephen cook?

Categories
on the big screen photography traveling

on roadtrips

roadtrip

“Ernesto Guevara: What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land.”
from diarios de motocicleta.

if i hadn’t already felt the urge to travel to south america, i would surely get the itch after watching diarios de motocicleta: the story of young che guevara on his south-american continental roadtrip on a bike named la poderosa (“the mighty one”). the film photography is simple and stunning, eye-catching in its rawness.

besides, roadtrips fascinate me, as i am sure they do to many other travelers out there. my only stint at a roadtrip was a 3 or 4 days drive through colorado, utah and wyoming, over a year ago.
it was beautiful and liberating, and we plan to go back to the states and repeat it someday, with a twist: we shall visit an itinerary of odd-named places. it will certainly include highlights like potomac, normal, breakneck, chicken, gringo, frostproof, ding dong and most definitely choconut. no kidding!

above, our detour to visit a place called cisco. :)