Constancy

With slightly less noise than a feather landing, he stepped out into a square bustling with activity. People walking past purposefully and hurriedly. Talking to one another animatedly. Submerged in deep thoughts of their own. Some appear to be moving mechanically, as if not yet free from the effects of slumber. Or lack of it. So he stood, in the middle of the crowd, observing. For his eyes generally only registered black and white. Generally. From where he was from, he saw everything in black and white. It was therefore with great surprise that for the first time of his life, he could observe the scene before him in color. Well, not totally in color. He observed 2 people walk past him talking excitedly, and he could see both of them in contrasting colors of bright yellow and blue. A couple was in a corner exchanging a quick kiss, and he could see them in soft pink. But some were slinking past him in monotonous colors; he could see 2 crossed daggers hovering over their heads too. Probably a bad day for them. The background.. he could only see it in black and white too. And so he stood there, motionless, only watching.

Even as life moved and flowed around him, he appeared not to be a part of it. It was as if he is an unchanging rock jutting from the ocean around it. The people around walked past him without noticing him either. We do not know how long he stood there, for time stood still for him, he that does not change. After an eternity it seemed, he finally sitrred. Well, maybe not an eternity, but definitely after a long, long while. Nevertheless, stirred he did, for he decided to probe his surroundings. He made a small gesture, muttered a few words in a language long forgotten, and immediately a small ball of light winked into life hovering above his palm. Nobody cast even as much a glance in his direction. He decided to try again. Stretching his arms further, he called into a collection of showy sparks that danced in mid air. Certainly that must catch at least someone's attention. Back from where he was from, nobody could fail to be surprised at what he could do, at least those whom have never seen him conjure that before. No reaction. Not even a twitch. He tried to moving the collection of sparks in front of the nearest passer by, but he walked right through it without noticing it or even affected by it. It was almost as if he was invisible, and he could not interact with this new place.

Disappointed, he pulled his long travelling cloak around close around him, the hood over his head, turned around and walked into the shadows.

Rocket Jumping

Ok, this is a post to debunk all my bunkmates who refuse the believe that a certain concept is im-possible in real life. Rocket jump is a nifty trick built into the game engines of the game that we are playing, Team Fortress 2. Basically, you point your rocket launcher to the floor, jump and fire at the same time. You take a bit of damage from the blast, but you literally sky rocket forward allowing to 'jump' further than is necessary.

Now the challenge is: whether rocket jumping is possible in real life. After all, its a fine and dandy concept in the game, but can it be done in real life? My answer is yes. First of all, my disbelieving bunkmates who think I have gone utterly crazy say that in the game, the explosion from the rocket propels you forward. Their argument advances then to say that in real life, the explosion would have killed you. Blast you into little bits. Now, my friends, a rocket designed for war is designed as such: a booster at the back which propels the rocket forward when fired and a warhead which explodes on hitting the target. The propulsion for a rocket is in the gases leaving from the rocket. Since we are talking about using the rocket launcher here, we will be utilising the recoil of the launching tube to propel ourselves.

Now this is where my friends advances the next bit of their argument. Gases from the rocket are expelled from the back of the open tube. This is due the ingenuity of mankind for they invented the recoiless rifle. The recoiless rifle basically allows for the firing of heavier projectiles than we otherwise be impossible due the large recoil. The recoiless rifle functions pretty much like any other rifle, except that it has a hole at the back. When fired however, instead of propellant blast following the projectile out by the front muzzle, a large portion is allowed to escape, providing an inertial force to counter the inertia of the projectile. Despite the name, in real world, the forces seldom cancel perfectly, leading a noticeable recoil of the gun. Additionally, old and poorly maintained weapons have faulty gas ports, leading to a failure of the recoil-dampening effect.

Ok, so we have the possibility of utilising the recoil tied down. Next is to run a calculation of its feasibility. We will be utilising the most basic of basic physics equations that every JC student should know: Conservation of momentum. And the rocket launcher in question? A M1 bazooka.

The laucher weight is roughly 6 kg. The missile weight is 1.59kg. The maximum range is 365m. Next, we need to calculate the speed that the rocket is fired since this data is not provided. Estimating that the rocket is launched horizontally, the range is basically determined by how long it takes for the shell to fall to ground. Since it is fired from shoulder, we estimate the shell vertical distance that it takes to fall is roughly 160cm. Analysing the horizontal and vertical components separately, time is takes for shell to fall to ground is given by t=sqrt((2*1.6 m)/9.81). Range of missile is therefore r = v * sqrt(9.81/(2*1.6m)). Since we know r to be 365 m, and need to find v, its a matter of reaching for the calculator, and out pops the answer that the missile travels at approximately 639 m/s.

Now, applying conservation of momentum, the forward blast of the missile must be compensated by a backward recoil of the rocket launcher. Therefore,
1/2 (missle mass)*(missile speed)^2 = 1/2 (launcher + human mass) * (recoil speed)^2

Substituting and crunching through the numbers, the speed of recoil should be able to launch a person like me, at the speed of roughly 100 m/s, which is much much greater than my SBJ speed during IPPT(Roughly 22m/s for me).

Now, rocket lauchers do not blast backwards at this speed because they are specifically designed to dampen the back blast, eg. using a hole and gas ports to allow gases to escape to rear, portion of shell detaches and propels to the back, carrying most of the backward momentum away. Remove this modifications, and voila, see the recoil propel you!

Of course there is still the problem of the the explosion of the warhead to deal with. One, we could possibly jump off a cliff and fire, so that the explosion of the blast is not so near to us. Or we could wear a heavier armour and use a bigger missile. Certainly both methods are liable to suffer burns and broken bones, since we humans do not have bodies suited for jumping at such great speeds.

This whole thing has been to prove that as a concept in the real world, using a rocket launcher to jump is perfectly possible. Obviously no one survives this unscathed, which is why the game TF2 made it such that all the soldiers that rocket jump will suffer 2 injuries: from the blast at such close range, and from landing due to high velocities. Is smashing your head against the wall not possible in real life? Yes it is, but you would most likely suffer great damage, or even die from this action, but that does not prevent this action from becoming an unreal situation that is only worth talking about in games and books. Whoever has the guts to do this obviously can prove that this is possible.

Now, for my dear readers who do not know what this game is and therefore does not even know what I have been talking about in the past 10 min, here's a video from the game that illustrates this famed trademark move.

And the character in question: Meet the Soldier.

Toradora final

After 2 weeks since the last episode, 25, I still remain unbelieved that the series is over. To me, the ending was just not satisfying enough. My friends have told me that the ending was entirely alright and within normal 'anime' bounds.. so I could not really figure what was I feeling about the show that made me feel that it was an unfinished piece of work.

And I believe I have the answer finally.
The ending or the events leading up to the ending simply lacked the color that marked the vibrancy well illustrated at the start of the series. Starting from episode 2, (episode 1 was just some preamble about our main male and female lead), the series have proven itself to be upbeat, with the the character interacting colorfully. Right from the OP song at the start to the ED song at the end. Each single episode was like this, perfectly illustrating the colorful personality of each character, all the while showing how they interacted relative to one another.

However, close to the end of this series, around episode 18 onwards, the story plot seemed to me to dive tail. The color between the characters seemed to evaporate more and more, until it looked very much like another drama TV series that we so commonly see on TV. Well, I have to give credit that Ryuuji finally made his choice clear, but then, the series ended on this abruptly like this without going much into the consequences of his choice. Well, they did show the part where their family seems to object to their choice, and subsequently,(in the next episode), their family seems not to object anymore.. There are so many consequences, not just the lovey-dovey aspect of the 2 of them together. For example, they could have illustrated how the dynamics of interactions changed between them and their friends, Kitamura, Minorin, and Ami. But no unfortunately.. the 3 characters seems to have just faded into nothingness near the conclusion of this series. They might have illustrated how the 2 of them got through their school life together. How their (funny) teacher and (varied) classmates react to the pair of them, now that they are 'officially' together. There was also no satisfactory conclusion between Taiga and her family members, though they were not properly mentioned to begin with, so I'll can let go at that.

This series begs for a second season.. with a proper closure. I hope.

Down with the rich!..

If you have been becoming more well-off in the past 10,20 years, that would have been a good thing, isn't it? Being more well off would mean that your standard of living have improved. Generally, standard of living is not just the hard work of one person, you alone, but also due to the combined work of the society. It could be due to the physicists working in the lab to store more data on a magnetic disk resulting in you able to carry terrabytes of data with ease, or that productivity of you increasing thanks to online networking tools that are shifting towards pro-user, or your life being lengthened because more a better understanding of nutrition, or having your wierd cravings satisfied by logging to the World of Warcraft servers just to see your Level 150 NightElf hunter kick some serious ass, well the list goes on and on.

But some people are just not satisfied that their lives have been becoming better generally. Because other people are having their lives becoming better and richer faster. They think themselves getting wealthier too slowly. Before the financial(->economic) crisis, there have been concerns over the widening income gap. Is that so surprising to see this? After all, it is common sense that the more money you have, the faster you are going to earn profits when you invest it. But no.. common sense does not appeal to some people. And then, when the financial crisis hits, these people are quick to pounce and point their judgemental finger at the rich, accusing them of manipulating the world at the expense of the rest. Have they forgotten, that those people who have made the error in judgement are too paying the price for their mistake? Some are likely to go bankrupt for having made too risky ventures. Clearly, their mistakes must be made known, after all, those greedy people were really greedy. But it would unnecessary to go to extremes and start bashing every single of one of them. After all we are all human, and we all make mistakes. To those who would use this reason as an excuse to make mistakes deliberately, we should be strict, but magnaminous enough to give them a chance to do better.

Bailouts are a tricky matter. If you let these people who made an error fail, by virtue of their economic size and influence, they are likely to bring unemployment to many working under these people. And then we have these people wailing loudly. If you bail them out, then other taxpayers are going to wail loudly, because they feel unfair having to pay to save a bunch of people that they feel are bringing no direct benefit to them. So do we bailout, or do we not bailout? Shall we put this to a vote? Say nay, if you object to saving these bunch of undeserving people. Pronounce yea, and put down how much you are willing to pay. The government collects the results, processes it, collects money accordingly from the yea people, and then hands them over to the drowning company. Here, this is it. The public's goodwill. Or better still, to the forgiving public willing to give them a second chance, are you willing to lend them money at an interest rate? Too bad, different people are likely to rate different interest rates. Putting out a single fixed interest rate could be discouraging people who are willing to give them a second chance, but want expect more from them as a reward for throwing a lifeline.

Hubris was ever one of humans' seven sins. Being overly confident, complacent definitely leads to one's downfall. And that is a sin that is as impossible to purge from humans as greed or lust or avarice is. Good times do not last forever, but take heart, for we are definitely capable of making them come again. Thankfully, tenacity is one of life's features.