THE PRINCE OF TENNIS
Jul. 12th, 2005 12:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedDistinguished from my previous post of the same title by CAPSLOCK OF DOOM.
I’m on episode 67. HELP MY BRAIN IS BEING EATEN I thought if I just didn’t download any new episodes over the weekend, I wouldn’t waste time watching and I'd be able to finish two or three request fics. But all that happened was that I was COMPLETELY UNABLE TO CONCENTRATE ON ANYTHING BUT THE EPISODES I WASN’T WATCHING.
I couldn’t do laundry or buy groceries. I wasn’t able to read any of the Shiny New Books I bought Friday while still on paycheck high. I didn’t have the heart to check my flist. I’ve been having trouble concentrating at work. THIS ISN’T FUNNY AND I DON’T APPRECIATE IT. (I skipped work to watch Juuni Kokki, I skipped class to watch Princess Tutu, I nearly failed a midterm after staying up to watch Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon. This sort of temporary insanity isn’t new. BUT STILL.)
Okay, enough of me being a total nutcase.
5. I can’t be the only one who wants to slash Ryoma with Oishi just because they sing a semi-duet in the third ending song? Tezuka and Fuji also sing together and their fandom is huge. (No, I don’t know how Ryoma/Oishi would work either.)
6. I really expected Coach Ryuzaki to slap Takamura after he played himself bloody in the match against Hyotei’s Kabaji. She should have. (I watch too much shonen, I’m in the “even if you know it won’t to do any good, you still have to slap them” camp. Physical violence is the only way to express concern!)
7. What’s up with all of the matches between players with similar personalities/playing styles? Wouldn’t the convolution of two different styles be more interesting to watch? But that would introduce more variables than “who is better at doing what they do best,” which would make the outcome dependent on more than “who’s level is higher.” Can't have that. (It’s like they’re trying to turn tennis into Go, where the better player always wins. Sports aren’t like that! Forget bad physics, bad physics is not the point. The point is that PoT tennis is to real tennis as playing chess is to playing chess with darts.)
8. Getting back to pairings, there’s this constant Tezuka = Nanjiroh implication, as least as far as tennis goes. But Fuji could potentially be SO MUCH MORE LIKE HIM. Like in Dragonball Z, when Videl nags Gohan and he says she reminds him of his mother, so of course they end up together? Only in this case Fuji would torment Ryoma and that would remind him of his father. (Ahaha. Did I just creep you out? I definitely just creeped me out.)
Here’s a shortfic so I don’t get out of the habit of writing. Ryoma-centric, in a way. This time with PoT-style tennis!
Title: Concentration
Series: The Prince of Tennis
Characters: You should be able to figure them out. If not I'm doing something wrong.
Twack, the sound of the ball against the racket. Shrp, the sound of the ball barely clearing the net. Thudthudthud, the sound of sneakers against the asphalt; plip plip, an unreturned double bounce. The roar of the crowd drowns out the player’s breathless curses.
“Where’s Echizen? Shouldn’t he be watching this?”
“Um, I think Ryoma-kun went to buy juice. That was three games ago though, so…”
“Pft, that’s just like him. Probably asleep somewhere. Lazy bum! Ne, Momo-chan-sempai, when was the last time Echizen bothered to watch someone else’s match?”
“Hmm. Hyotei, I think? Last week. But, ya know, he’s got a good reason for not watching.”
“Really? What?” In unison.
“Ehh, that’s…oi, Inui. Help me out here.”
Glint. “Image training.”
“Image training? You mean, like Kaidoh-sempai does?”
“Something like that, yes. Rather than confuse himself with last-minute observations or irrelevant playing styles, Echizen chooses to concentrate only on his own game. He maintains constant focus. It is a good strategy, but unfortunately not one I am at liberty to employ.”
"Wow!"
"Ryouma-kun is amazing!"
"How come you don’t do that, Momo-chan-sempai?”
“What?! I’m here to cheer for my team!”
“Cheering is also an important part of the match.”
“Hai!” In unison again.
“Geeze, don’t compare me to that anti-social-“ Another point for Seigaku interrupts the conversation. Three freshmen tennis club members and one girl cheer louder than before.
But there’s one thing that’s still bothering them.
“Ne, Inui, does that mean Jiroh is the most focused tennis player in the Kanto region? Because doesn’t watch any other matches at all.”
Double incredulous stare. Inui pushes up his glasses and smirks; Momo-chan-sempai bursts out laughing.
ENDE
Fun fact! If this were the real world Inui would have perfect vision, since he obviously doesn’t need glasses. Only flat (non-corrective) lenses reflect light from the whole surface at once.
In real-world news, I finally got the mu fitter to run! *dances* If you don't like science, you'll probably want to skip the rest of this entry.
Mu is the distance modulus, or how far away a supernova is, and its calculation is the #2 priority of SNAP after redshift (or, how quickly a supernova is moving away from us. For those who missed it, we’re trying to measure changes in the universe’s rate of expansion with time). The tricky thing about Mu is that it isn’t a simple luminosity calculation (the further away something is, the dimmer it is). It's a comparison of the luminosity of the brightest point of the projected light curve, which is what we get when we take a bunch of observations made over the course of 50-60 days and fit them to some abritrarily predefined functions. We've also got to correct for 1) the difference between our rest frame and the supernova rest frame since we're moving at different speeds (for the furthest stars one day over there equals 2.7 days here), and 2) color extinction, or the tendency for certain wavelengths to be absorbed by dust, and 3) detector noise, or the tendency to measure photons where none exist (or to measure background light). And other things, but those are the Big Three sources of error.
All of which is to say YES! FINALLY! Now I can run simulations of supernova explosions all the way from the generation of a simulated universe full of simulated supernova, to their simulated propagation through simulated space, to simulated measurements taken by a simulated detector, to simulated fitting of simulated light curves, resulting in a simulated distance modulus which will eventually be used to simulate a universe. WE HAVE COME FULL CIRCLE. (Hi! This is exciting! Feel free to ask questions about it! You’ll be doing me a favor, really! There are still gigantic gaps in my understanding, but if you ask I can ask and then we’ll both know what the heck is going on! (My job does not require me to know what is going on, unfortunately! I am only making lots of graphs! But knowing makes me much, much happier! ))
There’s a shuttle launch this Wednesday, possibly the last one ever. Watching on television in no way conveys the NOISE and LIGHT and WIND and POWER you experience in person – or so I’ve been told. It’s something I’ve always wanted to see (but probably never will).
I’m on episode 67. HELP MY BRAIN IS BEING EATEN I thought if I just didn’t download any new episodes over the weekend, I wouldn’t waste time watching and I'd be able to finish two or three request fics. But all that happened was that I was COMPLETELY UNABLE TO CONCENTRATE ON ANYTHING BUT THE EPISODES I WASN’T WATCHING.
I couldn’t do laundry or buy groceries. I wasn’t able to read any of the Shiny New Books I bought Friday while still on paycheck high. I didn’t have the heart to check my flist. I’ve been having trouble concentrating at work. THIS ISN’T FUNNY AND I DON’T APPRECIATE IT. (I skipped work to watch Juuni Kokki, I skipped class to watch Princess Tutu, I nearly failed a midterm after staying up to watch Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon. This sort of temporary insanity isn’t new. BUT STILL.)
Okay, enough of me being a total nutcase.
5. I can’t be the only one who wants to slash Ryoma with Oishi just because they sing a semi-duet in the third ending song? Tezuka and Fuji also sing together and their fandom is huge. (No, I don’t know how Ryoma/Oishi would work either.)
6. I really expected Coach Ryuzaki to slap Takamura after he played himself bloody in the match against Hyotei’s Kabaji. She should have. (I watch too much shonen, I’m in the “even if you know it won’t to do any good, you still have to slap them” camp. Physical violence is the only way to express concern!)
7. What’s up with all of the matches between players with similar personalities/playing styles? Wouldn’t the convolution of two different styles be more interesting to watch? But that would introduce more variables than “who is better at doing what they do best,” which would make the outcome dependent on more than “who’s level is higher.” Can't have that. (It’s like they’re trying to turn tennis into Go, where the better player always wins. Sports aren’t like that! Forget bad physics, bad physics is not the point. The point is that PoT tennis is to real tennis as playing chess is to playing chess with darts.)
8. Getting back to pairings, there’s this constant Tezuka = Nanjiroh implication, as least as far as tennis goes. But Fuji could potentially be SO MUCH MORE LIKE HIM. Like in Dragonball Z, when Videl nags Gohan and he says she reminds him of his mother, so of course they end up together? Only in this case Fuji would torment Ryoma and that would remind him of his father. (Ahaha. Did I just creep you out? I definitely just creeped me out.)
Here’s a shortfic so I don’t get out of the habit of writing. Ryoma-centric, in a way. This time with PoT-style tennis!
Title: Concentration
Series: The Prince of Tennis
Characters: You should be able to figure them out. If not I'm doing something wrong.
Twack, the sound of the ball against the racket. Shrp, the sound of the ball barely clearing the net. Thudthudthud, the sound of sneakers against the asphalt; plip plip, an unreturned double bounce. The roar of the crowd drowns out the player’s breathless curses.
“Where’s Echizen? Shouldn’t he be watching this?”
“Um, I think Ryoma-kun went to buy juice. That was three games ago though, so…”
“Pft, that’s just like him. Probably asleep somewhere. Lazy bum! Ne, Momo-chan-sempai, when was the last time Echizen bothered to watch someone else’s match?”
“Hmm. Hyotei, I think? Last week. But, ya know, he’s got a good reason for not watching.”
“Really? What?” In unison.
“Ehh, that’s…oi, Inui. Help me out here.”
Glint. “Image training.”
“Image training? You mean, like Kaidoh-sempai does?”
“Something like that, yes. Rather than confuse himself with last-minute observations or irrelevant playing styles, Echizen chooses to concentrate only on his own game. He maintains constant focus. It is a good strategy, but unfortunately not one I am at liberty to employ.”
"Wow!"
"Ryouma-kun is amazing!"
"How come you don’t do that, Momo-chan-sempai?”
“What?! I’m here to cheer for my team!”
“Cheering is also an important part of the match.”
“Hai!” In unison again.
“Geeze, don’t compare me to that anti-social-“ Another point for Seigaku interrupts the conversation. Three freshmen tennis club members and one girl cheer louder than before.
But there’s one thing that’s still bothering them.
“Ne, Inui, does that mean Jiroh is the most focused tennis player in the Kanto region? Because doesn’t watch any other matches at all.”
Double incredulous stare. Inui pushes up his glasses and smirks; Momo-chan-sempai bursts out laughing.
ENDE
Fun fact! If this were the real world Inui would have perfect vision, since he obviously doesn’t need glasses. Only flat (non-corrective) lenses reflect light from the whole surface at once.
In real-world news, I finally got the mu fitter to run! *dances* If you don't like science, you'll probably want to skip the rest of this entry.
Mu is the distance modulus, or how far away a supernova is, and its calculation is the #2 priority of SNAP after redshift (or, how quickly a supernova is moving away from us. For those who missed it, we’re trying to measure changes in the universe’s rate of expansion with time). The tricky thing about Mu is that it isn’t a simple luminosity calculation (the further away something is, the dimmer it is). It's a comparison of the luminosity of the brightest point of the projected light curve, which is what we get when we take a bunch of observations made over the course of 50-60 days and fit them to some abritrarily predefined functions. We've also got to correct for 1) the difference between our rest frame and the supernova rest frame since we're moving at different speeds (for the furthest stars one day over there equals 2.7 days here), and 2) color extinction, or the tendency for certain wavelengths to be absorbed by dust, and 3) detector noise, or the tendency to measure photons where none exist (or to measure background light). And other things, but those are the Big Three sources of error.
All of which is to say YES! FINALLY! Now I can run simulations of supernova explosions all the way from the generation of a simulated universe full of simulated supernova, to their simulated propagation through simulated space, to simulated measurements taken by a simulated detector, to simulated fitting of simulated light curves, resulting in a simulated distance modulus which will eventually be used to simulate a universe. WE HAVE COME FULL CIRCLE. (Hi! This is exciting! Feel free to ask questions about it! You’ll be doing me a favor, really! There are still gigantic gaps in my understanding, but if you ask I can ask and then we’ll both know what the heck is going on! (My job does not require me to know what is going on, unfortunately! I am only making lots of graphs! But knowing makes me much, much happier! ))
There’s a shuttle launch this Wednesday, possibly the last one ever. Watching on television in no way conveys the NOISE and LIGHT and WIND and POWER you experience in person – or so I’ve been told. It’s something I’ve always wanted to see (but probably never will).