Bathroom tile activities
Jul. 17th, 2017 06:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoyI'm wondering what other people do when they're sitting on the toilet in a bathroom with a tiled floor.
I have various "games" (not games in the usual sense obviously, really they're what Tom Vasel would call "activities") I play while I'm sitting on the toilet, staring at the floor tiles. A common one is imagining a ray of light, moving diagonally, passing through the light-colored tiles and bouncing off the dark-colored ones.
I don't think I've ever really spoken about this before except once -- it was the summer of 2013, and I was talking to Angus and Patrycja, and... I don't remember whether I mentioned that I do this and Angus said "oh, I do that too", or it was the other way around, but basically it was a case of, yeah, we both do that (the light ray thing, specifically). Patrycja on the other hand said she never does anything like that. ("Didn't anyone ever teach you how to use a toilet?", I joked.) So I'm wondering who else does this and what their rules are specifically.
What follows are the ones I do. I'm putting this below a cut since I'm guessing most people won't care.
First, we have to talk about different types of tiled floors. Tiled floors that are uniform are, of course, no good. The most common non-uniform types I see are:
A. Square tiling, two colors
In my experience these tilings are not done in a periodic manner.
B. Square tiling, three colors (with one color intermediate between the other two -- e.g. white, gray, black), not periodic
Again, these are not done in a periodic manner.
C. Tiling made up of rectangles (grid-aligned) where each side has length 1 or 2
These ones typically are done in a periodic manner; indeed typically not only is it periodic, but the rectangles are arranged into one larger rectangle (actually typically a square!) which repeats over and over, so that there are large horizontal and vertical breaks running through the whole thing. (In the case where this isn't true, it's still generally true in one of the two dimensions.)
D. As C, but with varying colors
See C about periodicity. I don't have any "games" that make use of both the varying sizes and the varying colors; typically I just ignore the colors in this case, putting this under C, but if instead ignoring the varying sizes would put this under A or B, I might do that instead. So below I won't consider this a separate type.
So, having laid out the types of tiling I normally see, here's what I do with them. I'll also list two that I thought of just now which I don't play, but could (and perhaps I'll start):
1. The light ray game (two colors, center-aligned) -- used with type A
This is the one I mentioned above. The lighter color is the background color (I'll call it white) and the darker color is the background color (I'll call it black). I trace a ray of light that travels diagonally through the white tiles and bounces of the black tiles. It moves in such a way so that it passes through the centers and vertices of the tiles, not the edges. If it hits a corner (external or internal) dead-on, it just reverses direction.
2. The light ray game (two colors, edge-aligned) -- used with type A
As #1, except the light ray passes through the midpoints of the edges of the tiles, instead of the centers and vertices. This is one I don't play, but could.
3. The light ray game (three colors, center-aligned) -- used with type B
As #1, except now there's a third color, which I'll call gray. The gray tiles all start as background, or, alternatively, as foreground. However every time the ray is reflected and a gray tile is involved, and every time the ray passes through a gray tile, all the gray tiles toggle between being background and foreground.
4. The light ray game (three colors, edge-aligned) -- used with type B
Combine #2 and #3. This is another one that I could play but don't.
5. The outline game -- used with type A
I imagine a moving point that traces out the outline between the two colors. (Note that while I tend to think of white as background and black as foreground, in this one the two colors actually play symmetric roles.) The thing that makes this interesting is that, when the path encounters a vertex around which the two colors alternate in a checkerboard fashion, the path simply continues straight and passes through. So it's an unusual sort of outline.
6. The push-through game -- used with type C
We're going to consider a path of positions in the underlying grid of squares that the rectangles are made up of. If you're on a square in a domino, the domino pushes you out the *opposite* end of the domino (moving parallel to the domino). If you're on a square in a 2x2 square, it pushes you out the *opposite* end of the square (moving diagonally). If you enter a 1x1 square, you just continue straight through. (For this one you can't start on a 1x1 square.)
Since type C typically consists of rectangles arranged into a big square (which is then repeated periodically), my usual initial starting places are the corners of that square.
7. The push-out game -- used with type C
This is the reverse of #6; tiles (other than 1x1 squares) push you out the same end, not the opposite end. This is typically less interesting than #6 and I generally only do it once I've exhausted the possibilities of #6.
...and I think that's all of them, really.
So: What games, if any, do you play with bathroom floor tiles?
-Harry
I have various "games" (not games in the usual sense obviously, really they're what Tom Vasel would call "activities") I play while I'm sitting on the toilet, staring at the floor tiles. A common one is imagining a ray of light, moving diagonally, passing through the light-colored tiles and bouncing off the dark-colored ones.
I don't think I've ever really spoken about this before except once -- it was the summer of 2013, and I was talking to Angus and Patrycja, and... I don't remember whether I mentioned that I do this and Angus said "oh, I do that too", or it was the other way around, but basically it was a case of, yeah, we both do that (the light ray thing, specifically). Patrycja on the other hand said she never does anything like that. ("Didn't anyone ever teach you how to use a toilet?", I joked.) So I'm wondering who else does this and what their rules are specifically.
What follows are the ones I do. I'm putting this below a cut since I'm guessing most people won't care.
First, we have to talk about different types of tiled floors. Tiled floors that are uniform are, of course, no good. The most common non-uniform types I see are:
A. Square tiling, two colors
In my experience these tilings are not done in a periodic manner.
B. Square tiling, three colors (with one color intermediate between the other two -- e.g. white, gray, black), not periodic
Again, these are not done in a periodic manner.
C. Tiling made up of rectangles (grid-aligned) where each side has length 1 or 2
These ones typically are done in a periodic manner; indeed typically not only is it periodic, but the rectangles are arranged into one larger rectangle (actually typically a square!) which repeats over and over, so that there are large horizontal and vertical breaks running through the whole thing. (In the case where this isn't true, it's still generally true in one of the two dimensions.)
D. As C, but with varying colors
See C about periodicity. I don't have any "games" that make use of both the varying sizes and the varying colors; typically I just ignore the colors in this case, putting this under C, but if instead ignoring the varying sizes would put this under A or B, I might do that instead. So below I won't consider this a separate type.
So, having laid out the types of tiling I normally see, here's what I do with them. I'll also list two that I thought of just now which I don't play, but could (and perhaps I'll start):
1. The light ray game (two colors, center-aligned) -- used with type A
This is the one I mentioned above. The lighter color is the background color (I'll call it white) and the darker color is the background color (I'll call it black). I trace a ray of light that travels diagonally through the white tiles and bounces of the black tiles. It moves in such a way so that it passes through the centers and vertices of the tiles, not the edges. If it hits a corner (external or internal) dead-on, it just reverses direction.
2. The light ray game (two colors, edge-aligned) -- used with type A
As #1, except the light ray passes through the midpoints of the edges of the tiles, instead of the centers and vertices. This is one I don't play, but could.
3. The light ray game (three colors, center-aligned) -- used with type B
As #1, except now there's a third color, which I'll call gray. The gray tiles all start as background, or, alternatively, as foreground. However every time the ray is reflected and a gray tile is involved, and every time the ray passes through a gray tile, all the gray tiles toggle between being background and foreground.
4. The light ray game (three colors, edge-aligned) -- used with type B
Combine #2 and #3. This is another one that I could play but don't.
5. The outline game -- used with type A
I imagine a moving point that traces out the outline between the two colors. (Note that while I tend to think of white as background and black as foreground, in this one the two colors actually play symmetric roles.) The thing that makes this interesting is that, when the path encounters a vertex around which the two colors alternate in a checkerboard fashion, the path simply continues straight and passes through. So it's an unusual sort of outline.
6. The push-through game -- used with type C
We're going to consider a path of positions in the underlying grid of squares that the rectangles are made up of. If you're on a square in a domino, the domino pushes you out the *opposite* end of the domino (moving parallel to the domino). If you're on a square in a 2x2 square, it pushes you out the *opposite* end of the square (moving diagonally). If you enter a 1x1 square, you just continue straight through. (For this one you can't start on a 1x1 square.)
Since type C typically consists of rectangles arranged into a big square (which is then repeated periodically), my usual initial starting places are the corners of that square.
7. The push-out game -- used with type C
This is the reverse of #6; tiles (other than 1x1 squares) push you out the same end, not the opposite end. This is typically less interesting than #6 and I generally only do it once I've exhausted the possibilities of #6.
...and I think that's all of them, really.
So: What games, if any, do you play with bathroom floor tiles?
-Harry
