Puzzling Queen

Fun Halloween Math

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:02:00 +0000

As you could presume, all math teachers are not boring. Check out this video by MDWeathers which he did for his Nature of Math class at Biola University, October 28, 2009.

Money Exchange Game

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 13:50:00 +0000

I have played a lot of flash games on PrimaryGames website. The game named Coinz! is disturbingly hard and addictive at the same time. The target of the game is to make money disappear by picking up the same amount of money using two currencies.

The first game involved exchanging Singapore Dollars to Russian Rubles. This was hard. There were lots of coins marked 1, but it is harder to determine if the coin is 1.oo or o.o1. Choosing Hint from the list on the right you can see the value when marking a coin.

After all the Singapore Dollars were exchanged the level was completed. Now the new currency was Lithuanian Litas. The exchange rate is shown above the box and below the box you can see how many Rubles you should find matching the Litas you have chosen.

Interestingly the third level seemed easier to me. Now Polish Zlotys were exchanged to Litas, and the value of the currencies being nearly the same made it easy.

A very good game in mathematics learning. I could imagine that kids are faster to find the right coins than I was.

Shift Happens - A Challenge for Teachers

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:52:00 +0000

I first saw this video about one year ago. The video got me really thinking about the world we and especially the young people live in. I think every teacher should see this and think for a moment. Does the education we give them really prepare them for anything?

This is the new official update to the original "Shift Happens" video. This completely new Fall 2009 version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist.

Did You Know 4.0

This is the previous edition from 2008 - also worth to check:

Did You Know 3.0

The 2007 version is very similar, but I included it for reference.

Did You Know 2.0

And this hopefully is the original, published earlier in 2007

Did You Know; Shift Happens - Globalization; Information Age

Geometric Art

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 08:24:00 +0000

BibliOdyssey introduces scans of wonderful geometric art.

Here is an example of Lorenz Ströer's 'Geometria et Perspectiva' in 1567:

and this is an example from the large Munich University Library manuscript called: 'Geometria et Perspectiva: Corpora Regulata et Irregulata':

See all the images in The Geometric Landscape and also follow the links on the page.

Mega Pic-A-Pix

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 06:36:00 +0000

This week Conceptis spoiled us with a coloured mega Pic-A-Pix puzzle. It took me several days to finish doing small parts at a time. Now it is finished and as always, the picture is just beautiful!

Make Puzzles Not War

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:12:00 +0000

I have often imagined what would have happened if mathematics concepts could be copyrighted. Newton developed differentiation and integration to complete his gravitational theory. What if he had realized that the idea is very valuable and had copyrighted it? All the other scientists would have had to use other methods for various problems or had to pay Newton to use it. Science would not have developed. Pure mathematics is actually a theory of different methods and the applications are used by physicists, economists, chemists, biologists and so forth. All intellectual development had suffered. In this case Leibniz was working on the same problem at the same time and there would have been a huge argument who actually got the original idea.

Luckily ideas can not be copyrighted. In the scientific world mathematicians publish their work for the benefit of everybody. When someone creates just a problem he may get his name in history like Fermat in Fermat’s Last Theorem. Andrew Wiles has now proved the theorem but it just may happen that someone will create a much better proof and Wiles will be forgotten. Mathematics strives for the best solution and the person who provides that, gets his/her name in history.

KenKen, CalcuDoku, Square Wisdom or Mathdoku?

KenKen is a mathematical puzzle. The goal of each puzzle is to fill a grid with digits so that no digit appears more than once in any row or column. Grids range in size from 3x3 to 9x9. Additionally, KenKen grids are divided into heavily outlined groups of cells and the numbers in the cells of each group must produce a certain given number when combined using a specified mathematical operation (either addition, subtraction, multiplication or division).

The image above is not a KenKen puzzle, it is Calcudoku. KenKen is now a registered Trademark of Nextoy, LLC (as well as KenDoku) and the books containing KenKen’s are authored by Tetsuya Miyamoto, and Will Shortz; Kendoku books are authored by by David Levy and Robert Fuhrer; Dj Ape used originally the title Square Wisdom; The Puzzle Society uses the name Sukendo; The Kindle version is Mathdoku and the puzzle above is a Conceptis made Calcudoku, which name is also used by Dj Ape in the later books. The trademark does not prevent people from doing similar puzzles, it just prevents others calling them with the same name.

The abundance of different names is confusing for the general public and makes it more difficult to assess the overall popularity of the puzzle. When the Sudoku popularity was at the highest, we had many different Sudoku books and magazines available in Finland made by local puzzle makers. Now we don’t have a single KenKen (or Calcudoku) book available. If all those puzzles had the same name people would find them better and the mathematical challenge could find also people who are not puzzle addicts like me. I constantly meet mathematics teachers who never have heard of these puzzles. It will never reach the popularity of Sudoku.

Variants of Sudoku

Actually KenKen is also one form of sudoku. It is also based on a Latin Square which is an nxn table filled with n different symbols in such a way that each symbol occurs exactly once in each row and exactly once in each column.

Here are 2 examples of 5x5 Latin squares.

Sudoku is a Latin square with an additional rule: The objective is to fill a 9?9 grid so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3?3 boxes (also called blocks or regions) contains the digits from 1 to 9 only one time each. The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid.

This puzzle is known to most people, because it became very popular and newspapers publish them daily even though the biggest boom is over. The amount of different Sudoku answers is of course smaller than that of 9x9 Latin Squares because of the 3x3 box rule. The amount of puzzles is bigger and depends on the givens, the numbers provided on the puzzle.

(For those who are interested on the mathematical calculations about the amount of Sudoku’s or the minimal amount of givens, I recommend the Wikipedia article on Mathematics of Sudoku. It contains links to several mathematical articles about the subject.)

Colour Sudoku

The classical Sudoku has the 3x3 boxes. The third rule can however be obtained in many ways and these puzzles are called Sudoku variants. Different lists of them can be found all over the internet. Some of the variants have made it to publications containing these variants; some of them are published regularly on Sudoku variants magazines, some others have been created just for examples. The longest list I found is made by Uwe Wiedemann.

One not so know variant is Colour-Sudoku. This example is from Added Bytes.

Here the third rule comes from the colours; every colour represents the “region” which has to contain each number only once. Here the region is totally spread all over the grid. The size would not have to be 9x9. The same arrangement could be obtained by any nxn grid.

Now Conceptispuzzles has published a new variation called Chain Sudoku. The release article got a very angry response from Strimko. Their puzzles have the same idea; the third rule defining the region is obtained by lines connecting the numbers. This variant has also different sizes. Here is an example of Conceptis Chain Sudoku.

Battle

Now Strimko says that the intellectual idea belongs to them. In some comments they also claim that the streams have not existed before and this idea is totally different from Irregular Sudoku.

Here is an irregular Sudoku, and this would make a Chain Sudoku very easily:

The Chain Sudoku contains one feature which irregular Sudoku doesn’t, the ability to link numbers diagonally.

However this is not a new idea even for Conceptis. In August 2006 Sterling published a book Snakes on a Sudoku – official Snakes on a Plane Puzzle Book and the puzzles were created by Conceptis. Here is one scan from the book:

As you can see there is also the diagonal snake. Somehow the word stream describes these better than the previous ones. To me they look chains. The logic I use in solving both types is the same!

Mathematically speaking

I have also seen a more advanced approach to connecting the numbers, a Toroidal Sudoku:

In mathematics toroid is the doughnut-shaped object. These puzzles are scanned from a magazine BBC Mind Games Christmas 2006. This could really be clued to make a doughnut, but I think it’s better to solve it first. Dr Gareth Moore publishes these regularly on his Puzzlemix website.

Mathematically speaking Strimko’s and Chain Sudoku’s are graphs, more precisely they consist of connected acyclic graphs which are called trees. An acyclic graph with multiple connected components is sometimes can be called a forest.

There is also another puzzle closely connected to graph theory: Hashi. The rules in Hashis are however totally different

As a conclusion to the above; any puzzle having the third rule in addition to the row/column –rule is just another variation in the Sudoku family. Conceptis has an algorithm to create Sudoku’s and Dave Green states in Conceptis Forums:

“To demonstrate how close these puzzles behave, it took us only several minutes to modify the algorithm and the graphical export of our Sudoku generator to enable it to produce Chain Sudoku puzzles.”

I have done some programming but my main interest is algorithms in general and I know that if the code is written using good programming, the changes are easy.

I think I answered this question.

Gareth Moore's Colour Sudoku

There is still the design, but even there Strimko is not totally original. Here is another Sudoku from Gareth Moore which uses colours instead of numbers:

My love of logical puzzles started originally from my main interest, mathematics. I think logical puzzles are very good in learning logical thinking which is a very important skill in mathematics. Puzzles are not as threatening to students as mathematics sometimes seems to be. To me it is a very sad thing that copyright issues get in the way of making these puzzles publicly known. Sudoku’s became popular because the Japanese puzzle company Nikoli, which created the name Sudoku, never trademarked it outside Japan. (Nikoli did not invent the puzzle).

Crediting Strimko

Some of the comments have been criticizing that Conceptis does not give the credit to Strimko. With all the puzzle types Conceptis has provided info about the history of the particular puzzle and I have no doubt they would have made it this time also but quoting Serhiy Grabarchuk in Conceptis Forums:

"Some months ago I warned Conceptis Puzzles that if they will use the idea of Strimko (under any name) with the same features as our Strimko, we will understand that as a direct and clear infringement of our intellectual property rights."

I hope there will be some solution to this. I wrote my opinion to my blog because I see no point in joining all the puzzling forums Strimko has left their accusations. Those who are interested in them can use Google to find them. If Conceptis decides to drop out this puzzle, I will not solve them. I want to find my puzzles on the same website. I have too many links to various social media sites and educational sites as it is!

Summer Hits

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 08:50:00 +0000

Summer is a very important time of the year in Finland. The sun is shining, at least now and then, and people have their holidays. Because of the relaxation and fun times, we seem to have special hit songs for the summer. They are very catching, played a lot in the radio and finally you can't get rid of the melody. It just keeps repeating in your head.

Finnish Wikipedia has even an article about summer hits in Finland years 1996 - 2009. The last three years The Voice (local radio station/Tv/net radio) has chosen the official summer hit. This year the competition was in June and the chosen one was Aste: Poikkeus sääntöön which you can listen here. The melody is very catching but I think summer hits are partly surprising. They can't be predicted; some songs just become popular. I like the song but there are others that exceeded it.

Wikipedia has also listed some foreign songs in addition to the Finnish favourite. Year 2007 it was Rihanna's Umbrella and I can agree with that one. Last year does not have any suggestions in the article.

This summer two songs have grown over the others as summer songs, at least for me. The curious thing is that even though these songs are very different, they have one thing in common. Both performances make fun of their own nationalities.

As for the foreign summer hit I declare a Swedish song Promoe: Svennebanan. The video has been shooted on a boat between Sweden and Finland. One of the tags in YouTube is Finlandsfärja, we call them Sweden's boats. The video and the song are making fun of Swedes drinking on the boat. The same film could be done about Finns also. People sometimes go to those boats just to party and get drunk. I don't even try to translate the words. It is like the usual rap lyrics. No full sentences, words cover all the activities you do on the boat.

My Finnish summer song is very different. The melody is actually very sad and it is a parody about the neighbours of a man who comes out of the closet and comes back from holiday with a lover, another man. To my surprise this song has got very controversial opinions. When I tried to find the lyrics to this song, I stumbled into many forum discussions about this. Some people thought it was against gay people, the others didn't and some people were just singing the song without realizing it has a message.

It certainly is not against gay people. It is making fun of the neighbours who obviously have never seen gay people and have all the possible prejudices against them. I know these people exist and I am not even sure if I should laugh or cry. The melody suggests the latter.

One of the things people were angry about was that the man is named as Timo Hokkanen. There are 88 people named Timo Hokkanen in Finland and the idea is not pointing at anyone of them. It just shows that the hero in the song is just an average guy and that makes the situation even more intolerable to the neighbours.

My Finnish summer hit: Vesterinen Yhtyeineen - Mitä Tapahtui Hokkasen Timolle?

The words to the song translated by me without trying to fit them into the melody:

What happened to Timo Hokkanen?

Did you heard, neighbours Timo came back from holiday
with a Lover from Berlin

refrain:
Exactly what happened to Timo Hokkanen?
Gave in to the lust of life
This can't happen among us
Not here, but elsewhere

No one of us is allowed to smile at them
They will not stand up very long, in the middle of us
Here in the middle of Us.

refrain

After all, it is always easier
When the same language is spoken
Do not need anyone to watch
What will happen on Saturday evening, in the men's sauna

This can't happen among us

What happened to Timo Hokkanen?
Gave in to the lust of life
This can't happen among us
Not here, but elsewhere.

Not here, but elsewhere.

Relaxing Holiday

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 06:45:00 +0000

I was on holiday. Despite my decision in the beginning of the summer vacation I just had to go to Israel for one week. The trip was too short but the feeling to be away from home made me wonders. My mind was totally reset from the past school year and even after I came home I have been able to relax instead of worrying all the things I should be doing at the moment.

At home I have spent the days in my social networks but mostly I have enjoyed my puzzles. Nowadays my main interest is Pic-A-Pix. Here are 4 screen shots of last week's 6 puzzles.

This week all the others are back to work and I am spending my days with Piitu. I should really start planning next year but as it seems I am not making very good progress. Sometimes I hope I had a job I could leave outside my home. This way it seems I am at my workplace all the time...

Sudokid - Sudoku for Kids

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:05:00 +0000

Sudokid is a kid’s version of Sudoku. Sudokid is very simple: Sudoku with shapes, instead of numbers. Sudokid comes with 75 Unique Game Cards- 25 at each difficulty level (easy, medium, and hard). Be careful adults, you may get addicted too...

It’s designed and developed by the Quirky community. The idea is that the product requires 300 commitments to buy before it goes into production and is made (priced at $14.99). So far 27 have been pre-sold. You’re not charged until the threshold is met.

I hope they make it, the idea is great. If you are interested, check the details here

[via Josh Spear]

Wife Carrying World Championships 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:04:00 +0000

photo by Jurvetson (flickr)

Finland put an end to Estonia's 11-year reign and took gold and bronze on Saturday at the annual Wife-Carrying World Championships held in Sonkajärvi, central Finland.

Wife carrying (Finnish eukonkanto) is a sport in which male competitors race while each carrying a female team mate. The objective is for the male to carry the female through a special obstacle track in the fastest time. The winner gets the weight of the carried wife in beer.

Several types of carry may be practised: piggyback, fireman's carry (over the shoulder), or Estonian-style (the wife hangs upside-down with her legs around the husband's shoulders, holding onto his waist). More info and the rules you can find here

The idea of the Wife Carrying Competition is Sonkajärvi’s own and it has roots in the local history. In the late 1800’s there was a brigand called Rosvo-Ronkainen,and according to the legend he had accepted in this troops only those men who proved their worth on a challenging track. In those days, it was also common to steal women from the neighbouring villages.

In the team competition three men in the team carry the wife in turns. At the exchange point the carrier has to drink the official "wife carrying drink" before continuing the race. The winners and the team with best costumes are awarded.

In the sprint competition the length of the track is 100 meters, and the surface of the track is partially sand and partially gravel. The track has a water obstacle, about one meter deep. The contestants run the qualification round with 5 to 10 couples at a time and the first three of each heat continue in the next round until there are just three couples left to compete in the final.

For the public there is a cheerleaders’ competition. Four to six persons form a group that takes part in the competition but they may have backers of their own with similar humour in the audience.

Here are the results for the best and also for the best foreign teams. Altogether there were participants from 13 countries.

1. Taisto Miettinen and Kristiina Haapanen (Finland)
2. Alar Voogia ja Kristi Viltrop (Estonia)
6. Ri Fahnestock and Sarah Silverberg (Exeter, USA)
7. Anthony Partridge and Cath Whalan (Australia)
8. John O’shea and Aoife Desmond (Caherdaniel Castlecove, Ireland)
20. Mike Koy and Gillian Kirby (Hallerup, Denmark)
21. James Chester ja Erika Chester (Anscbach, Germany)
22. Christopher Hill and Nanko Minami (Palmyra, USA / Osaka, Japan)
27. David Dobogai and Jitka Dobogai (USA / Czech Rebublic)

If you get interested in the sport, here are some tips how to become a master in wife carrying

The Evolution of My Cellular Phones

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 18:42:00 +0000

Living in the homeland of Nokia has meant to us adopting the use of mobile phones very early. Nowadays the coverage is about 110% of the population since many people have more than one mobile. Actually there are lots of households which don't have a landline any more. The phone cables are used for the internet connections like in our household.

The first network was NMT, Nordic Mobile Telephone, which was used in Finland 1982-2002. It's successor GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) started in 1991. It is a 2G network and both signalling and speech channels are digital.

I was not very convinced about the need of a mobile and at first I took in use the phones that were left over from my husband or my son, when they wanted new and better models. My first one Siemens NT 910 was really big, weighed 900 g and I could easily have used it as a weapon to defend myself. My husband had bought it used around 1994 and it had been a leasing phone in some company, because those days phones were too expensive for regular individuals.

The next one Bosch M-COM 214 was bought new in 1995 and I got it again after my husband deserted it. It had an extendible antenna and it worked on the GSM 900 network. The funny thing was that I could receive text messages with this one, but I was unable to send any.

My first Nokia was the popular 5110 (1998), which I bought from my son. This one still had the external antenna, but now I did not have to extend it any more.

The next one, Nokia 3210 from 1999, was a Dual-band phone working in both GSM 900 and GSM 1800 networks. It had a built-in antenna. I think this one I got from my daughter but I changed the covers.

Nokia 3510i (2002) was the first one I bought new to myself. This was also the first one with a colour screen. By this time the weight of the phone had dropped to 1/6 of the first Siemens. I think this is the only one of my phones which actually stopped working. All the others were replaced mainly because some family member had to get rid of the old one and my still older one would have needed a new battery.

When the phone stopped working I bought a new one and wanted just a basic phone with no extra features. I wanted it for talking, not listening to music or playing games. The previous had the possibility to use MMS services but I never did use them. I bought Nokia 1600 (2006), which according to Wikipedia was originally released for developing countries. I still use this one. My current mobile has a secret number and it is open all the time. This phone has a prepaid connection and I can choose whenever I am available.

Last year I decided that I need a MMS phone but since I am not very fond of text messaging, even though Nokia has a very good predictive text system, I wanted a Qwerty-keyboard and my choice was E90 communicator. It was expensive, but it is basically like a small laptop. It uses 3G connection when available and I can use my WLAN at home.

I have been faithful to Nokia but my husband hasn't. Here is part of his history, but he has changed phones so often that he has sold the old ones on Huutonetti, our equivalent of eBay. There is one old phone I never used, Nokia 1610 and his two current ones Siemens A50 and LG KG 800, the "chocolate" phone.

Mobiles create a big environmental problem, but I still haven't got rid of my phones. Maybe I am just transferring the problem to my children, but also these may become collectible items someday.

Solving a Conceptis Color Pic-a-Pix Puzzle

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 07:03:00 +0000

I think I have spent too long blogging about other things but finally I got into recording a session about solving my favourite type of Conceptis puzzles, a color Pic-a-Pix. These I prefer solving on the computer because I always have trouble finding the right color pencils even though my house is basically filled with ones my children got from school and left behind when they moved away. The other problem is that color pencils are much more difficult to erase than regular pencils.

This particular puzzle can be found here along with other similar bigger puzzles. Because this is a very easy puzzle, I could solve each colour on its own. With harder puzzles that solving method is either impossible or at least makes solving the puzzle even harder.

Notice that you can watch the video on full screen. I made it with ScreenToaster which is an excellent tool for recording your screen. The video is stored on the website and you don't have to upload any software on your computer.

Capture your screen in seconds

Arthur Benjamin about Math Education

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:07:00 +0000

I found this video on my usual bookmarking sites. It got Front Page on Digg and lots of Stumbles also. The video is very interesting from my point of view as a mathematics teacher. Arthur Benjamin, a mathematics professor and also the mathemagician offers a bold proposal on how to make math education relevant in the digital age.

I think he is a really good performer but he cuts some corners and speaks like a politician convincing people of something they know very little about.

Before I utter my criticism, I have to remind you that my perspective is Finnish and our mathematics education. I probably don't know enough of the conditions in USA. I have learned that there are schools where the students don't advance very well, but on the other hand the most of the best universities are located there. Anyway calculus and statistics are universal.

The biggest problem in my opinion is that statistics is not a science we can put under the main category mathematics. It belongs to social sciences (in the University of Turku for one) and the interpretations of statistic data and their relevance has very little to do with math. Probability is a part of applied mathematics and also the calculations regarding statistics use math, but something as vague as predicting the future can not be a part of a science which gives only absolute solutions or shows that there are not any! I have a master's degree and my major is mathematics, I have even had some predoctoral studies, but I never had a single course in real statistics.

In Finland we have two different levels of mathematics the students can choose from, the short and the long course. Both levels have one course containing probability and basic statistics. The courses are very similar on both stages and I have noticed a certain trend with these courses: there are always students who get fascinated by the common-sense-math and perform much better than on the other courses BUT also some of the top students are finding this course very hard.

Calculus (we actually use the word Analysis) is taught about 2 courses on the shorter course (no integrals) and 5 on the longer course but also extra courses for those who want to choose them.

I have heard the statement: "I don't remember anything about derivatives" or: "I have not used derivatives after I left school" numerous times. I also know that most people don't, not even those who choose their career in engineering. However the basic calculus is needed in order to understand the further studies in engineering, physics, chemistry, mathematics and even statistics! A tool for the continuous probability distributions is integrals.

Teaching basic mathematical statistics is not as simple as it may sound. When I teach mean values and standard deviations the examples are either too simple to show anything about real statistics or too complicated to be handled without the calculator's built-in statistical functions. Mental mathematics skills are not very good even now, they would be worse if we take more calculators or computers in use. Regardless of the methods we use the examples take time. Typing all the input data is not so simple.

Arthur Benjamin mentions the digital age. I have a better suggestion, let's add Number Theory. It is simple, it is fun and it is a very relevant field of mathematics regarding computers, coding, cryptography and sharing secrets which will be needed in internet voting. These fields of math are hot at the moment, but the basics have been there for ages. I teach one extra course in Number theory (+ Math Logic) but there are many students who don't choose it.

It was actually Gauss (more known from the Normal Distribution) who said: "Mathematics is the queen of the sciences and number theory is the queen of mathematics."

Image credits: Wikipedia and zazzle

The Inspirational Rubik's Cube

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:00:00 +0000

The Rubik's Cube was invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. The puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toys in 1980. Nowadays there are lots of variations of the puzzle by size but also by shape, like this Pyraminx Crystal

I did not concentrate on the puzzle aspect but all the imagination people have been using creating everyday things using the magical cube. There are also some new variations of the puzzle at the end.

Ear rings

[via eCRATER]

Necklace

[via CharcoalDesigns]

Handbag

[via YesStyle]

Cufflinks

[via The Retroist]

Salt and pepper mills

[via giftmonger]

Table

[via Popgadget]

Chairs

[via ON24 (Finnish)]

Art called Rubikubism

[via space-invaders.com]

Car commercial

Watch the awesome video!
[via Maniac World]

Cakes

[via Geekologie]

[via Eden Cakes]

Alarm clock

[via Bedzine]

mp3 - player

[via Yankodesign]

Subwoofer

[via Project 'Cube 2007]

Speaker

[via Megahouse]

Lamp

[via übergizmo]

Photo Cube

[via Ann's Personalized Gifts]

Felted Art

[via Taitoisa (Okko Pyssysalo 12 yrs)]

Pillow

[via Lankalauantai]

People who want more expensive looking cubes can choose form the one covered in swarovski stones

[via Etsy]

or try to get this full-size, fully working cube with 185 carats of precious gems, 1.5 pounds of pure sliver with eight coats of hand-painted enamel. Only 2,500 of limited edition Rubik's cube were produced worldwide distribution. The price of this toy is $10,000.00.

[via Gems Collection]

The colours are not necessary and the puzzle can be solved by touching the different sides. The next two examples show two different solutions.

Rubik Cube for Blind by Zhiliang Chen

There are six different basic materials involved. They are Metal, wood, textile, rubber, plastic and stone. Different materials give people different senses, which thus enabled the blind men to play.

[via Yankodesign]

[via Gearfuse]

Some additional twists are included in the next two cubes.

Sudoku and Rubik's Cube combined

[via Hilavitkutin via The Gadget Chest]

Mirror Cube

If you want to see this cube solved watch the video
[via Digital Gadgets Freak]

The next two are also games but not based on the Rubik cube's pieces and movement.

Rubik's Revolution

This cube has 6 different games. One of them is light rally where you have to push the hole in the cube on the side which has a matching colour. The cube mentions the colours in some order and this particular cube speaks Finnish

[via mulletoi where you can also see a guy playing light rally]
link to the English product's page

Magnetic Cube

[via Andrew Curtis]

One example of a futuristic puzzle

FENTIX CUBE

The world's first cubic touchscreen games platform. Featuring unique cubic ultra-bright full-colour multi-touch touchscreen technologies, the Fentix Cube has been programmed to implement various multi-dimensional games, puzzles, and lighting effects.

[andrewfentem]

And for the end two funny cubes

For the lazy person

[via Geekologie]

For Engineers or Blondes or...

Depending on the source this has different target groups. The engineer joke was from a Finnish engineer-student-website which I am not linking here because of the very questionable content. Other suggestions were of course blondes, beginners, non-geeks etc. I am not sure who to credit for this picture. It seemed that various sources had watermarked it for themselves.

Medieval Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:43:00 +0000

I had a very interesting weekend exploring medieval habits here around my home town. First of all at this time of year we have a Medieval Market in Turku and it lasted from Thursday to Sunday. I went there two times, Thursday with my husband and Sunday with my daughter.

Although archaeological findings in the area date back to the Stone Age, the town of Turku was founded in the 13th century. Its name originated from an Old East Slavic word, tǔrgǔ, meaning "market place". The history of Turku is often started from the letter Pope Gregorius IX wrote, dated January the 23rd 1229. The letter granted a permission to transfer the Diocese of Finland to a better place, probably meaning from Nousiainen to Koroinen.

The Cathedral of Turku was consecrated in 1300, and together with Turku Castle and the Dominican monastery (founded in 1249), established the city as the most important location in medieval Finland.

This event takes place on one of the first market places in Turku and along the banks of the Aura river.

The programme consists of various independent performances, here is some announcement to the citizens of Turku:

Here is a man waiting to be convicted for killing someone:

And here is one of the trolls scaring people:

There are lots of booths selling all kinds of things; You can buy an official certificate that you are insane:

You can buy bones and skins of small animals

Swords and knives

Pottery

Products made from beeswax

Handicraft and wool

There were two small wild boars

A medieval swing for the kids

Here is a blacksmith working

I work in Turku, but live 8 km east in a smaller town named Kaarina. Friday I went with my husband, sister and her husband to see a play by the Summer Theater of Kaarina. Summer theaters are played outside, somewhere the place is covered to protect from rain, but mostly they are not. The plays on summer are usually humorous, light performances but the one we went to see was based on history of the place.

Kuusisto Castle was a medieval castle on an island of Kuusisto in Kaarina. The castle was probably built in the early 14th century, although the site seems to have been bishop's residence already in the 1290s.

The castle was ordered to be demolished during the Protestant Reformation in 1528 by the king Gustav I of Sweden. Excavation and reconstruction work on the remaining ruins began in 1891.

The Castle of Läckö, located on Kållandsö insel in Lake Vänern, Sweden is considered as a model for the Kuusisto castle and this gives the idea how big the building was.

photo credit: Matthias Alder

The play was about the last catholic bishop (1510-1522) Arvid Kurki in Turku and in Finland. His successors started to reformate the church. Kurki was a supporter of Gustav Vasa of Sweden and he had to flee the Danish who attacked the castle in 1522. He sank with his ship to the Gulf of Bothnia.

Also Pietari Särkilahti was included in the story. He was a Finnish student of Martin Luther and one of the early pioneers of teaching science in Finnish language. He spread the idea of the religious reformation eagerly.

It was not allowed to take pictures of the play, but here are some shots of the stage on the interval.

A Bigger Puzzle

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:13:00 +0000

I think most of people have heard of or even seen IKEA furniture. Since IKEA is originally Swedish and makes furniture suitable for the Finnish eye, I have used lots of their products. Until last year we had to travel about 150 km to the nearest store but now we have one of our own, just on the other side of Turku.

The interesting part of IKEA furniture is that it is like you had bought a huge wooden puzzle with all these pieces:

What makes the puzzle a lot easier is that it comes with a booklet with the illustrated instructions. If you follow the instructions step by step, you can't mess up with anything.

I have heard these booklets criticised about chauvinism; somebody had noted that all the figures in the pictures are male (as if there were men who read instructions ! ). Who cares, because in my family the absolutely best handyman is my daughter who loves assembling these puzzles.

Here is what I bought this time. One piece is missing above the TV, but it was out of stock for the moment.

The main reason I love IKEA: with a very reasonable price compared to others I can get exactly what I want. Believe me, about 3 years ago I visited every store selling furniture in the Turku area and I found bookshelves which were a) made for something else than books b) were totally unsuitable by their measures to my house c) did not have adjustable shelves which means you can have only standard sized books! d) were too expensive e) too massive (heavy) f) too dark (birch is my choise). Sadly enough the ones I found met approximately two of my six criteria.

From IKEA I got all this; just custom-made gor me, glass doors to prevent dust and lots of space. Assembling it was a lot of work, but also fun!

Now there is a slight colour difference between the old and the new one, but it does not take much time when the sun corrects the situation.

Summer, Food and No Night

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:53:00 +0000

Last weekend we celebrated the summer solstice even though the right day was Wednesday. We have changed it to the nearest weekend to get more time for the celebrations. Now that the children are grown-up, they spend the weekend with their friends and travel usually quite far to a festival or some other place crowded with young people.

We don't own a summer cabin but live near the nature and were going to spend the weekend just between the two of us. However my sister called and told that they had lots of extra food to eat and we decided to go to my sister's place. Their son has also left home so there were four "oldies" and Piitu, my dog.

I have blogged about Hannu's exceptional skills in making traditional Finnish food, but this time the menu was really something many people never have the chance to eat.

Hannu had most of the day been preparing something we call a bandit steak (I have no idea how this food is named elsewhere). Actually our name for it originates from a famous Finnish book, but the food itself is very traditional. Probably the method is from Mongolia but the book brought it to common knowledge. The book tells a story of two men who steal lambs and prepare them as bandit steaks.

First one has to have a big hole on the ground. Hannu has built it and put some bricks as walls to keep the hole together for further use. Then Hannu kept a fire in the hole for 3-4 hours. The fire was put out, the hole opened and the food covered with foil and newspapers put in. The hole was covered again and a new fire is built, again for 3-4 hours.

This is where we got in, ready to eat. The fire was put out again:

And here is the satisfied bandit with his very hot steak :)

The package is carefully opened

revealing the delicious steak covered with potatoes and vegetables.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the delicious dish, but I can assure it was fabulous.

And even Piitu got her part of the goodies.

All of this happened Friday and Saturday we went back to eat delicious salmon Tuula and Hannu had caught themselves. I don't even remember when I have got so good food in a restaurant!

After all the eating we came to our house to play some PS2 Singstars, which Tuula and Hannu had never even tried. They found a total favourite among the songs; Deep Purple's Smoke On The Water and that is why I put that song in my previous post. It's really fun to notice that all these years we have been growing up our children have not really changed anything. We can still have fun together with my sister and her husband!

Smoke On The Water

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 20:24:00 +0000

For Hannu and Tuula :)

Midsummer and Magic

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:38:00 +0000

Image: Wikipedia by Janne Karaste

The midsummer festivals are here again.

From Wikipedia:

Midsummer may simply refer to the period of time centered upon the summer solstice, but more often refers to specific European celebrations that accompany the actual solstice, or that take place around the 24th of June and the preceding evening. The exact dates vary between cultures.

The Finnish tradition From Wikipedia:

Before 1316, the summer solstice was called Ukon juhla, after the Finnish god Ukko. In e.g. Karelian tradition, many bonfires were burned side by side, the biggest of which was called Ukko-kokko (the "bonfire of Ukko"). After the celebrations were Christianized, the holiday is known as juhannus after John the Baptist (Finnish: Johannes Kastaja).

Since 1955, the holiday is always on a Saturday (between June 20th and June 26th). Earlier it was always on June 24th.

This is the time when the day is the longest and in Lapland the sun does not go down at all. In the south we have about 3 hours which could be described as dark. It is not so easy do decide where to draw the line because here the dark never comes in an instant.

People burn bonfires all over Finland nowadays, unless it is too dry to do that. Many people spend the weekend in their summer cabins but an increasing amount of young people spend the holiday among friends instead of the family and go to midsummer festivals or even spend the time in the city.

In folk magic, midsummer was a very potent night and the time for many small rituals, mostly for young maidens seeking suitors and fertility. Here are some examples of the rituals you should perform on the magic midsummer night and why.

Image: Wikipedia

According to tradition a fern blooms only on midsummer night. When you see it blooming, you should pick it up and it gives you magic powers.

Image: Wikipedia

If you walk in the midsummer night in the forest, you may see a Will-o'-the-wisp. You can find a tresure under it.

Image Wikipedia by GabrielBuissart

A girl has to listen a Cuckoo singing. As many times as she hears the cuckooing, as many years she has to wait for the fiancée to appear. If she does not hear it at all, she will find him the same year. This is a bit controversial; we also believe like the Russians that a Cuckoo predicts the number of years you have left to live...

The bonfire has predicted future marriages. The top of the big heap falls to the direction of the house which will get their daughter married next (obviously that has been very important at some point). The direction of the smoke shows the person who will be married next.

There are lots of ways to see your future boyfriend (mostly these seem to be targeted for girls).

If you use two mirrors facing each other and look in the other mirror, you will see the future fiancée in the other mirror.

Many of these spells have to be performed naked.

Image: Kaarlo Kaiholampi

If you check the bottom of a well, pond or spring, preferably naked, you will see your future spouse.

Source

You will be lucky in marriage if you roll around in a dewy meadow during the midsummer night, and of course you have to do it naked.

Image: Juha Silander / YLE Radio Suomi

Here is another option for girls: after the bonfires you should roll over naked in the rye fields of houses which have unmarried boys.

Another magical feature of rye fields: If you run from the sauna naked along the ditches of the rye field, you will run into your fiance in the 9th ditch :) This might be hard nowadays. Most of the fields have covered drains...

If you circle around a triangular field on midsummer night 3 times and on the third round you will meet the future spouse.

You will see your spouse to be when you on the midsummer night go to sit on the rock of a waterfall naked except a straw belt.

And a mysterious thing. If a girl sweeps her bedroom floor on the midsummer night, with only a red ribbon on her waist, her fiancée's ghost will come to see her.

I guess the traditions remained after the Christianity but the rituals had to be cleaned a bit. One of the ritual involves the hymn book: You have to keep it in your hand and run 7 times clockwise around the biggest stone on the yard. When you come back to the stone ion the midsummer night you will see your fiance to be.

The following rituals basically still remain even though I have not heard about all of them. Different parts of Finland had (and partly still have) their own habits and my knowledge covers Finland Proper, Karelia and bits of Uusimaa (the area around Helsinki, not Helsinki itself). These differences explain the different names for the bunch of birch brances used in sauna.

Creative Commons 2.0 by NiinaC

If you put a vihta (or vasta) which is unbound (practically just birch branches) under your pillow, you will dream about your future spouse binding it.

If you throw the vihta on the roof of the sauna after bathing, the direction where the fiancée will come from will be shown by the vihta. The right direction is where the wooden handle is dericted.

The following flower things are probably something my aunt told me when I was a child and spending Juhannus(Finnish) in Loimaa(English) with her and my grandmother and the rest of the family. Finding the flowers is not hard even now but the other things I am not so sure.

Source

If you collect 7 flowers or herbs and cross 7 fences and sleep with the flowers under your pillow, you will dream about your future fiancé.

Another version of the same spell is to collect all the 7 flowers from different meadows.

Or you have to use nine straws of grass to make this wreath of flowers:

There is one usable for the city people: You can dream about your future fiance sleeping with the sock on your left foot upside down!

I am married and don't need any rituals to get a husband. Additionally getting a husband is not an issue any more. I just wonder why you have to get so old before you can respect your inheritance.

Happy Juhannus, midsummer and solstice!

House Cleaning

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 04:26:00 +0000

When I found the Japanese puzzles and got myself involved with the Conceptis forums as well, people who had been there much longer than I was said: "Remember that you will never have a clean house again!" They were right, until now.

I know I have some serious issues about cleaning. I am the person who checks that all the items are placed straight; carpets on the floor, books on the shelves, magazines on the table... I even do that at work sometimes. When I start cleaning at home I always have to start with arranging all the misplaced items. After I have done that, I am usually so exhausted that I have no energy left to the next stage, washing floors or windows or removing the dust from small items. My husband takes care of the vacuum-cleaning. I find cleaning so useless; before I am finished, the place where I started from is totally messy again. Children leaving home made things a bit easier, but also leaving me with lots of stuff they wanted me to store for them. Their apartments are much smaller than mine.

In the Finnish culture it is not very common that people have cleaners in the house. It is the burden placed usually to the woman of the house and conclusively women who use outside help feel guilty about it. However nowadays our taxation supports giving work to cleaners and we get deduction to the taxes if we employ cleaners or people doing household related work. The deduction is 60% of the work charge if the cleaner is a company listed as collecting the preliminary taxes from their employees. This model is very controversial; some people say that this is not fair but it gives advantage to rich people. I don't regard myself as rich but I am working and pay taxes for that. Why should I not get deduction if I again employ people paying taxes?

Anyway it took me this long to decide that I need my house cleaned. Before Christmas I got an advertisement to my mailbox from a company located in my own town. The ad was actually about giving a Christmas present to somebody but something in the ad caught my attention. That is very rare, mostly I throw all the junk mail away. You can get the idea from this screen shot from their website www.LA8.fi. The link is to the English pages so you can check more.

They have a really cool idea making things for people like me very easy. They clean the house, do all the paper work and I don't have to do anything else than keep away for the day, pay the bill and give their bill to the taxation authorities. The name is also ingenious. Lakaista is the Finnish equivalent to sweep. When we read the 8 in (informal) Finnish, the company name is lakasi. It is not correct Finnish but it is the Finnish we use in our daily speech and means swept.

I called them, made arrangements and last Tuesday they came, with this car :)

The text says: Attention: we are the LA8 Cleaning Police. Emergency: number, website
Well, no chance that the neighbours would not know what was going on...

I spent the day in my daughter's apartment with Piitu and when I came back, I was more than glad to have taken this step. All the places were clean, much cleaner than I would get them, even after working for several hours!

No fingerprints in the kitchen (and there is chocolate candy on the table):

No dust in the study:

All the tiny dolls and collectibles were wiped clean. BTW, the small wooden doll carrier on the floor in mine, from the 1950's :)

Now I am planning on a regular agreement for the cleaning. Why would I bother myself with cleaning anymore? I have enough work going through all the old school papers and books and all the stuff children left behind. Now I can concentrate on them and hope that someday I also will have empty space in some of my closets!

Congratulations Tetris -25 years!

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 12:14:00 +0000

Since Tetris was the first puzzle game that hooked me on the computer, I have gathered some examples where Tetris has inspired people in very surprising contexts.

Geeky

Tampere university students playing Tetris with the dorm house.

[Flickr]

one of the numerous Tetris costume designs:

[tetris costumes by kikkochan55]

Playing Tetris with people:

[tetris made of people via technabob]

Tetris case mod:

[tetris case mod via technabob]

Food

First some of the numerous cakes:

[Flickr]

[nintendononstop]

[nerdfighters]

[Flickr]

and even a 3-D wedding cake:

[Geeksugar]

cookies:

[fraske designs]

[Flickr]

[Flickr]

waffles:

[Flickr]

Bento lunch:

[Flickr]

Kitchen

Ice trays:

[Iceblox by Martin Zampach]
[Dima Komissarov for Mystake ]

[self-made by Instructables]

Trays:

[tetrish by Seungyoub Oh via coroflot]

Soap:

[tetris soap via etsy]

Furniture and interior design

Tiles:

[ Tetris Tiles via technabob]

[electricpicnic]

[thingelstad]

[vinyl wall via etsy]

[Soner Ozenc via Geekologie]

Ceiling:

[AS220 LABS]

Furniture:

[Tetris furniture by Diego Silvério via coroflot]

[kid's furniture by Harri Koskinen]

Pots for plants:

[Tetris pots by Stephanie Choplin viabehance]

Art

[kotaku]

[via Justin Sachtleben in Flickr]

Handicraft

[crafty crafty]

[pillows via etsy]

[Urban Fusion on Flickr]

[tetris magnets via etsy]

[tetris-gollum at DeviantArt]

Clothing

[via Technabob]

[etsy]

Thanks for Walyou which again inspired me

Benefits of Vacation

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:05:00 +0000

Now that I have no obligations regarding work, I don't have to feel guilty about solving puzzles. My favourite puzzles are Pic-A-Pix and that is why even these six were not enough for this week.

The next one in line was Fill-A-Pix, but they were not very big this week

So I had to turn to the Link-A-Pix puzzles which normally are too easy for me. There was this one MegaLAP and I thought I would solve it. After solving that I remembered how nice pictures they have and decided to try some more and as I went backwards from the biggest to the smallest, I noticed that I still had time for more... ending up solving them all before the new update.

Here is a better screen shot of the bigger ones

Now that I have finished this Conceptis should have updated the puzzles and I can start solving a whole new set,

Graduation

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:53:00 +0000

My summer vacation has officially started. Actually it started already last Friday but I have been just enjoying myself solving puzzles.

The graduation day was warm and sunny. The graduation took place as always across the street in the house of Turku Voluntary Fire Brigade (VPK). It is a beautiful Neo-Renaissance house. We also arrange the matriculation exam there.

The ceremony contains of speeches, music performances and of course rewarding the students with the official certificates and giving them the Finnish white student cap.

This year one of performers was a celebrity, Jackson Shuudifonya, who belonged to the group INDX winning the Finnish Popstars in 2004. The group does not exist anymore, but I found Jackson's music online

We had many students and here is just a small part of them. The age difference between the oldest and the youngest was more than 50 years!

Summer is Here

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Sun, 24 May 2009 14:23:00 +0000

Finally the nature is alive, this year a little bit later than usual.

One of the first blooming in the garden is Chaenomeles. It has beautiful flowers which are many but hidden behind the leaves. The fruit from this bush make good marmalade.

This is my Plum tree. The flowers appear very suddenly, all at the same time and the petals are already flying away with the wind. The tree actually grows plums which are very sweet.

This is a meadowsweet. It belongs to a big family of Spiraea, this one being Spiraea 'Grefsheim'. That one I did not find in the Wikipedia. We call it the Norwegian meadowsweet but I don't know the reason for that either. It is also on full bloom now and when the flowers are gone, it will grow very much and I have to cut it down occasionally. The flowers have a very strong scent and our garden is like a perfume shop now.

This is the scene from the parking lot. We call this type of houses "row houses". There are six apartments attached to each other. We live at the other end.

This is our part of the house from the other side.

This is the lawn of the two houses which together form a housing company. The Finnish housing companies are almost all limited-liability companies and the difference to a separate house is very small. We have the benefit of sharing the expenses and the gardening of all this. The area our housing company owns is very large compared to others with the same distance from Turku. On summer time the trees almost cover the houses.

The very annoying flower is the Dandelion which is beautiful in this picture but totally ruins the lawn! It also spreads so fast and getting rid of it is a real pain.

This is definitely the most beautiful time of the year. Later my garden suffers from too much heat (or rain) and my flowers don't do so well. I prefer plants I don't have to water all the time.

Funny Math - Integral Joke

noreply@blogger.com (Leena) — Sat, 23 May 2009 06:48:00 +0000

I was looking for a suitable video for my students about Integrals. It is not as simple as it sounds even though the net is full of videos about integrating various functions. My problem is that I can't seem to find ones which use only the methods we have been using during the classes. While searching I found this joke about math. For people who understand integrals it is hilarious but I think others will miss the point.