Tyrethali on Friends
I wanted to update again, and thought I'd do another Random Rambling post, similar to the one directly below this section. But then I remembered that most of the my friends, the ones who comment on my updates at least, implied that I was on crack when I wrote it, or that it scared and disturbed them deeply. So I'll do a post on friends, instead. Serves them right for complaining. ;)
Most of my friends, I feel, don't appreciate my interests. One claims to, but he still runs cringing whenever I get really into it. Into what? Hmmmmm. Let's take a look.

There's Nomic. That's a big friend scarer. It's basically a game. A game with rules. A game with rules which detail how to change the rules. Including the rules which tell you how to change the rules. The self-modification aspect is IMHO is fun, and interesting, and can get deviously complex and twisted. What's not to love?

But my friends don't like it. Some go "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" whenever I mention the game. Others will hide behind nearby furniture. One will occasionally play a game, but never does it anymore, so I'm forced to play online, which takes forever and isn't really quite as much fun as playing face to face. Although information storage is a lot easier.

Let's also take mathematical sequences. For example, consider the following: "0 1 1 2 1 2 2 3 1 2 2 3 2 3 3 4 1 2 2 3 2 3 3 4 2 3..." and so one. I came up with it during study hall, using a simple enough method. It's the number of "1"s in the binary equivalent of a number, starting with 0. But then I looked at it deeper, trying to find a pattern that didn't have anything to do with the "real number" or binary terms or whatever, that just dealt with the sequence at face value. When I finally found one, it was pretty nice and elegant, but I knew before mentioning it that most of my friends would have just either reacted Ala Nomic, or went "Uh huh. That's nice. Why don't you tell me more while I ignore you and finish this book?"

Anyway, I could go on forever about my specific friends [they are a pretty cool bunch though, and we all like RPGs which is a pretty good common base to share, so don't get any false impressions. And they probably make up 90% of the reader base of this site. I love you guys. ;)] Where was I? Damn long parenthetical comments. Hmmmm. Oh, yeah, I wanted to move off a rant about my specific friends, and move to friendship in general.

Six Degrees of Connectivity. It's an interesting rule which says you can connect any two people in the world via six steps or less. Example: My english teacher this year had a friend who worked in a movie with Harrison Ford. I'm connected with him via three degrees. All my friends are connected to him via four degrees. All their friends, five degrees. And everyone who is connected to good old "Rusty" (Don't ask) is also connected, one step further, to everyone Harrison Ford is connected to.

I wonder if the principle works with websites. Norcumi has an actual link to my page, most likely the only one outside of Fortunecities or various search engines. Everyone who linked to her page, and everyone she linked to, is two steps removed from me. Repeat as desired. Hmmmmm. Be an interesting thing to find out more about.

Where was I? Friendship? Shame on you for letting me get distracted. ;) Just kidding.

I stole this from Tyr, cause he didn't feel like posting it right away. So there. He thought it wasn't quite up to snuff yet, and wishes to develop it more, so don't tell him it's here. *grin*