Boredom Chasers? 63
yuggler asks: "Ever found yourself in a boring meeting, class or lecture? Sure! Does anyone know of something to do to make time fly? I feel that somekind of simple game, at the most requiring paper and pen would be the ultimate soultion. So, my question to you is: Does anoyone know of a game with childishly easy rules, yet with a depth that can keep the player(s) spellbound for a small eternity?
An excellent example of what I'm trying to describe is the game Sprouts which only takes 30 seconds to learn, but will take a good portion of your meetings to fully understand. I am currently being tormented in a Swedish highschool, and feel in desperate need of something to get me through classes like Swedish, and Chemistry, while waiting for the programming and technology-classes."
Boring (Score:1)
Actually
Sprouts (Score:1)
Looks interesting
Forget the "if", that does happen to me
One of our managers doesn't believe in fun.
ti calculators! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:ti calculators! (Score:1)
Re:ti calculators! (Score:1)
Re:ti calculators! (Score:2)
Why not pay attention in class? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why not pay attention in class? (Score:1)
When I was a boy... (Score:3, Funny)
3 Steps To Success (Score:2, Informative)
Step 1. Buy Handspring Visor or Palm Pilot
Step 2. Download and sync Chessgenius
Step 3. Enjoy
3D Tic-Tac-Toe (Score:1)
Re:3D Tic-Tac-Toe (Score:1)
Skewed Priorities (Score:1)
hp calculator? (Score:1)
No, seriously, perhaps you should try and focus on the class instead of publicizing your need to kill time? plus it's going to be pretty embarrassing when you get asked a question and can't reply because you've been busy playing a game. Yes, i can picture that: "hold on a second, professor, i'm trying to pass level 8 here.."
Re:hp calculator? (Score:1)
Re:hp calculator? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow. If that's true, I guess most of the teachers I had in High School qualify as BIG PRICKS. I always had a sneaking suspicion about this, but I wasn't sure until now.
Want to know what to do in class? Hack. Classrooms are fun to hack. Back in school, I purchased the smallest universal remote I could find, and used it to mess with the TV/Projection Panels and VCRs in the classes I had. Now you could use something like these happy little devices http://www.quemex.co.uk/ [quemex.co.uk], http://www.surprise.com/likes_dislikes/gadgeteer/
Re:hp calculator? (Score:1)
Due to insane education requirements, not all of us can always be in an engaging class all the time. If I want x degree, I have to take the classes that correspond. This isn't a matter of being an elitist or know-it-all. Just looking for someway to entertain ourselves without causing a distraction to others. Also, if you noticed, it said prof, referring to a professor, not a high school teacher. In high school you have to pay attention. In college, the profs work a lot differently.
Personal entertainment should not come at the expense of others, unless they are willing participants.
A solution and rebuttal (Score:4, Insightful)
* Paying attention in class is not necessarily necessary, especially if you already know the subject,
But whatever works for you...
* And as for your actual problem: Learn Go. (aka 'Wei Chi', which certainly yields more relevant hits in Google
Oh, did I mention that the gameplay requires more thought than Chess? And that GNU-based Go servers and clients are available at all over the known Internet, as well as (passable) AI oppoents?
Okay, so it's two players... but once you get good, you'll want to practice constantly, and it's the sort of game conducive to experimentation and situation-analysis. In particular, books of Go problems are quite fun... take a look at one of the problems, and go to your lecture. By the time lecture is over, you just might have solved it.
Re:A solution and rebuttal (Score:2)
1. go to class once a week, to see whats happening, when tests are, etc and read the book, work problems etc.
2. go to class (nearly) every day, and make some effort at paying attention (usually falling asleep, but hey... playing tapes while you are falling asleep is supposed to be great for memory).
with the second method, i avoid buying the book, and save some money
with lab courses, if the labs are relevant, it enforces working problems, so i can avoid a few lectures, but with irrelevant labs, i still have to attend classes. (at this school, you automatically get an f if you don't complete all lab assignments)
Re:A solution and rebuttal (Score:1)
The Answer: Palm Pilot (Score:1)
Sprouts info (Score:3, Informative)
The link to sprouts [everything2.com] mentioned in the original query seems to have an error in attribution.
Take a look at: http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc97/4_5_97/mathla
There's a bunch more info on game play, theory, and mathematical background on the game at that link, as well as this link: http://www.forum.swarthmore.edu/news.archives/geom etry.research/article399.html [swarthmore.edu] to a strategy by John Conway on a strategy for game play.
As an aside, I knew a guy at RPI [rpi.edu] who in 1981 or so wrote a program to play the game and graphically display the results... if you wanted it to, it would show all the possibilities as it tried different moves, too! Pretty amazing feat considering the capabilities of the computers we had available at the time.
Re:Sprouts info (Score:1)
Ooops, shoulda checked that last link, it was redirected, and then died. Sorry about that!
Ok, I'll be the fuddy duddy (Score:1)
Believe me, I have had regrets so many times for having the attitude you're expressing because I would like to know more about what I thought was a "waste of time". That's just some advice from a boring old 30 year old. If only I had listened to similar advice!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Pente (Score:2, Informative)
My solution is to get a Palm and play Patience, but that's beside the point.
Re:Pente (Score:2)
Killing boredom (Score:1)
Re:Killing boredom (Score:2)
I slept through many of my lectures, mostly because they failed to sutain my interest. However, I did go to nearly all of mine, because occasionally, a topic came up that piqued my interest, and that made it all worthwhile. I remember troff being mentioned as an aside when someone asked how the lecture notes were formatted, and that prompted me to go off (outside the lecture, on my own time), and learn about it insude and out. That single comment made up for going to the other less interesting lectures. The end result was that I graduated with lesser marks than others in the year, but probably knowing more about Unix than pretty much all of them, and it's payed off later in my career.
Tree-fluid (Score:4, Funny)
First person {says|writes|emails} "Tree". Second person does "Fluid". First person does "Tree". Second person goes "Fluid". And so on.
Until someone says "Sap!" at which point they are declared the winner.
Of course you could win every round by just saying "Sap!" first time, but that would be boring. The skill is saying "Sap!" on the go before your opponent wants to say it, thus causing the maximum amount of annoyance to them! It is very rewarding to get through about ten echoes of 'Tree - Fluid' and then hit 'Sap!' and have the other person go "I WAS JUST GONNA SAY IT!!!". Ahh, satisfaction. Similarly there is great pain in being 'Sapped' just as you are about to say it.
When played face-to-face there can be a lot of psychology and body-language involved. Look for any sign of hesitation in your opponent, that's normally a sign of an impending 'Sap'. Have no mercy, hit back straightaway.
Strangely I cant find any web sites devoted to Tree-Fluid...
Baz
Re:Tree-fluid (Score:1)
Re:Tree-fluid (Score:2)
did I win?
Re:Tree-fluid (Score:1)
(for those who don't know: there was a BBC radio show called I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue. Think of it as Monty Python on the radio and you won't go far wrong. Anyway, they had a game called Mornington Crescent, where you had to traverse London by naming Underground stations in no particular order. The rules, like which station you could get to from which other station, were never documented and had nothing to do with the actual geography or topology of London - instead random rules were occasionally invoked, like "under the Shrewsbury conventions, going from Bakerloo to Covent Garden on the seventeenth Thursday after a new moon results in your opponent being sent to Tower Hamlets, unless you have already been to Embankment, in which case you may only go to Covent Garden via Kings Cross" which of course changed constantly. The winner was the first to reach/say Mornington Crescent.)
Re:Tree-fluid (Score:2)
Baz
How about origami? (Score:2)
To make it a challenge for yourself, remember that classical origami does not allow for tearing ,cutting, or using flat surfaces to get a good crease! Once you pick up the paper, it doesn't leave your hands until your creation is complete. And the no tearing rule makes it particularly challenging because most patterns want a square piece of paper, and most of the paper you'll encounter in the wild isn't square. Folding cranes out of business cards without tearing off the extra bit is a particular hobby I enjoy because with the thicker paper it's hard to get the head to come out right.
If you're really bored with that, and you want to play some tricks on your teachers, you can search around the net for some "adult" origami patterns to fold and leave on other people's desks.
YES! (and two small nitpicks) (Score:2, Insightful)
Ahh, the many hours of meetings that I've spent folding paper. I did, however, tend to get in trouble for folding paper during middle and high school.
For some serious challenges, try memorizing more complicated models like Kawasaki's rose. [wanadoo.nl] (diagram) [vancouver.bc.ca] (makes a nice tip, too. the rose in Origami for the Connoisseur is easier to learn...) Or learn to make modular origami stuff [gentleworks.com] (origami that uses multiple units that are [generally] all the same). (instructions) [merrimack.edu]
A great place to start is Joseph Wu's Origami Page [vancouver.bc.ca].
The myth that a thousand paper cranes will bring good luck and health is much older than Sadako's story, although she did try to fold 1,000 while she was sick with leukemia. She finished 644 before she died, and her classmates completed the rest. There are two books about her story: Sadoko and the Thousand Paper Cranes and Child of the Paper Crane .
It's also not true that "classical" origami is extremely restrictive. Most of the rules mentioned were added by outsiders. There are many very old designs (such as connected cranes) that require cutting. It is an interesting challenge to follow those kinds of restrictive rules, but they are not really requirments with a long history.
The Origami FYI [neu.edu] covers these and many other interesting points.
hmmm (Score:4, Funny)
Graph theory (Score:1)
solve the degree-diameter problem for small graphs (Score:3, Insightful)
Make a planar (in 2-d and no edges cross each other) graph where each node has no more than three connections. Each node also has to be no more than three hops from any other node. Can you get more than twelve nodes? Can you prove that nobody else can, either?
I have scribbled away many an intriguing hour playing with this.
Re:solve the degree-diameter problem for small gra (Score:1)
Re:solve the degree-diameter problem for small gra (Score:1)
good effort! unfortunately.... (Score:2)
which means that you have to be able to draw it out on a piece of paper without any of the lines crossing.
But, don't be discouraged--it was fun to solve the problem that you did, right?
I have worked on it for a while, keeping a list of "forbidden subgraphs", but I keep losing track of the work. Still, it's fun, and you can spend a lot of time (at least with my approach).
What I am doing with it is starting with the maximal circuit (I don't know the terminology--the biggest loop in it that isn't directly short circuited) and the maximal one connected to that.
Or something like that. LIke, draw a 4-sided figure with a triangle on top and see if you can stay planar, starting from there, and exceed 12 nodes. I think I might have proved (by tedious lists of drawings) that you can't, but I don't remember which ones i finished.
Somewhere in this process you may end up with some clever insight into the problem. I don't think I have yet, but I do seem to remember something...
Oh well, getting old.
later
By gum, you're right! (Score:1)
Hmm... thought about it... (Score:1)
If you had drawn a numbered circle of 12 nodes with 1 at the top and 7 at the bottom:
2->6 (internal path), 12->8 (internal), 3->11 (external), and 5->9 (external).
I cannot devise any other figure that works, and I cannot add to it. I like to think of the internal paths as "highways" and the external paths as "bypasses." One observation I made is that each node has within one hop either two highways, two bypasses, or one of each.
If it can be proven that this is a requirement in order to have all nodes within three hops, we can show that +12 node graphs are impossible, since extending the graph at any point would keep at least one node from being able to reach two of the "special" paths, thus keeping at least one other node from being able to reach it.
What do you think?
Re:Hmm... thought about it... (Score:2)
N-e-way, I'm still checking to see if that is a solution I have seen before. It looks different to me. One solution that is easy to describe is if you take a tetrahedron and chop off the tip of each corner (exposing a triangle). Use the vertices for nodes and the edges for edges.
There is another one, more later.
mike
Ah! Looks right if you copy & paste into note (Score:1)
Buzzword bingo (Score:1)
Although everyone so far has answered the question in terms of being bored in class, it's usually much more of a problem in meetings, where attendance is often mandatory and content often entirely lacking.
Fortunately, meetings provide the perfect setting for playing buzzword bingo, which can be played alone or in groups.
Re:Buzzword bingo (Score:2)
Keener Bingo (Score:2)
At any rate, each time your selected keener raises their hand, you get a letter; the goal, of course, is to spell bingo. You will be amazed at how attached you will become to your keener of choice.
Re:Keener Bingo (Score:1)
Not so much a boredom chaser as it was a way to keep me from killing the two of them...
Thanks a lot, /.! (Score:1)
Actually, I'm not sure if I'm joking.
knight's tours. (Score:2)
Its not too tough, but it requires a bit of planning to get it right, and it keeps your mind occupied for a while.
-Restil