You are now a Polymer

Ever since I started writing, I’ve been just a little concerned over the name of the blog: Polymath Programmer.

I want to write on topics that I’m familiar with, that I’m fairly good at, that is interesting. Programming formed the main focus, and slowly mathematics as well. I want to bring in other disciplines as well, even if I’m not very good at them, because they’re interesting or somewhat related to programming. Thus was born my main quivers of articles.

Polymathy perfectly encapsulates what I’m trying to get people to understand, to bring together seemingly disparate topics and synthesise them into a solution. Since I’m passionate about coding and its related subjects, I came up with “Polymath Programmer”.

Even though it’s just two words, the first one is big (who knows what “polymath” means anyway?), and both are 3 syllables each. Add them together and I get a long URL. Not very conducive to spreading the word.

Yet it feels right. So I left it as it is. You’ll have to imagine the kinds of typing acrobatics I perform whenever I comment on another blog, or key in my URL. I remember I was registering for a local bloggers’ event, and I made 3 mistakes (3!) while typing in my own URL. I don’t like laptop keyboards…

I want to shorten it. I hope to get people following this way of thinking, of coding, of solving problems. It’s hard to say “I’m a Polymath Programmer”. Doesn’t roll off the tongue easily.

So I put forth all my linguistic skills into play, cutting words up, switching them around and joining them.

• Polyrammer
• Polygrammer
• Programath
• Polyprog

Finally, I came up with one. It’s even an actual word. This word actually has similar meanings to what my grand idea is.

Thou art now a Polymer.

What do you think? Hopefully, the chemists don’t hammer me…

Swing doors reopened – Flawed assumption

After all the brilliant math calculations I did while studying the math, science and psychology of opening double swing doors, I had an awful realisation in the pit of my stomach. Something’s not right.

I pored over my calculations, checking each symbol, diagram and math theory. All were correct.

I read through my deductions, following through the logic and found them to be in order.

Then I found it. It was small, almost insignificant, yet it changed everything about the article. Well, I’ve already written the entire article. I’ve spent hours coming up with the solution, and the arguments accompanying it. I’ve even prepared some funny remarks to break up the monotony.

So no way in the pits of fiery lava was I going to scrap the whole thing and rewrite it. Besides, I thought it would make an excellent fool of myse… , I mean, an excellent example of critical thinking.

“What is it?” you ask exasperatedly.

Patience, my friend. My original assumption was flawed, in that the goal of opening swing doors was to maximise the space between the tips of the doors (or door gap distance as defined from before). I should be concerned with maximising the space through the wall relative to the person opening the door, or (henceforth defined as) wall gap distance. Let’s bring our hypothetical stranger Bob back.

There’s another reason that could explain why we push swing doors in. Suppose each door is 1 unit wide, and I pull open one of the doors to 90 degrees as before. If Bob pushes the door on his side, he immediately gets 2 units of wall gap distance.

As Bob continues to push the door and move in, the wall gap distance shrinks. Because Bob is still pushing the door open, it doesn’t shrink very fast. And you know what? Bob will probably open the door the full 90 degrees anyway, and end up with 2 units of wall gap distance. By then, he will be fully in the room.

I still think Bob should have used this solution:

He will have a temporary 1 unit wall gap distance, pass through the threshold, and then BAM! 2 units of wall gap distance (more actually) all the way, because he will be fully in the room.

And that should end my (temporary) obsession with swing doors.

Random Quote – Program X not social networking site

Today, my users got into a tangle. All of them got into a database deadlock.

Now my users have this habit of opening multiple windows so as to “appear busy”. Granted, my application wasn’t designed and programmed with many concurrent users in mind. Still, if more than 2 of them happen to access the same table, or heaven forbid, performing an update or delete operation on that table, the database throws up its hands in defeat and promptly denies further access. This includes other users accessing other tables.

So I did an sp_who (it’s a Sybase database) and found out the perpetrators. Then I wrote an email telling those who were doing non-critical tasks (and not still performing database transactions) to get the heck out of my database and log out of the application. And not return until half an hour later. Nicely coached in diplomatic language of course.

One of them asked if another colleague could continue, since that person was still performing a transaction. I said “Of course.” I also added something in the email that I thought was interesting (on hindsight):

Program X is not a social networking site. Log in, do your thing and log out.

Yes, I was a bit peeved and slightly mischievous at the time.