. . . muttered the ogre

calendar reform

Anton — Fri, 24 May 2013 06:09:58 +0000

Each month shall have 30 days, except within a lune spanning 157°15′57″ (5.242199 × 30°) of longitude, wherein the month shall be extended by one day which shall not affect the cycle of the week. The lune so affected shall shift westward each month by its own width. The phase of the lune shall be such that, in every longitude, the northward equinox shall fall on the last day of March. (During a transition of roughly two years, each month shall have 30 days without leaps, to shift the equinox from March 21 to March 30/31.)

to pass the time

Anton — Sat, 04 May 2013 06:52:44 +0000

If I didn’t have to worry about such mundanities as weather and fatigue — if, say, I had a synthetic antimatter-powered body with some of the traditional flaws ironed out — I think I might like to spend eternity walking around the world, stopping only for conversation.

what didn’t happen in Juneau didn’t stay in Juneau

Anton — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 07:56:32 +0000

In “It Happened in Juneau”, near the end of the third season of Northern Exposure (one of very few TV series of which I’ve seen every episode twice), Maggie flies Joel to Juneau for a conference; they both get lonely, and drunkenly seduce each other. But Maggie falls asleep and cannot be roused, so Joel puts her to bed alone.

In the morning they return to Cicely. Maggie believes that they did copulate, and partly regrets it. Some time goes by before Joel succeeds in telling Maggie what really happened. She is insulted: “Why didn’t you? I had consented!”

Maggie later invites Joel to her house to try again. She asks him to say his desire for her is so strong that he’ll let nothing get in its way. She then finds (or reveals) that that expression of desire, rather than the execution, was what she really wanted from Joel, and dismisses him.

This affair bugs me on two points. First: I can accept that Maggie is insulted by Joel’s inaction, but wouldn’t the insult be outweighed by relief? (Well, the people of Cicely are quirky, and Maggie more so than some.)

Second: what Maggie asks of Joel in the end, taken literally, includes a commitment to rape her. Am I sick for noticing that? On reflection, I guess it’s in character – and suitable for prime time – that Joel is too startled (and perhaps deflated!) by the dismissal to respond with more than a bewildered verbal protest; but I’m still disappointed that the script didn’t explore that point at all.

unexpected solutions to unknown problems

Anton — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 19:25:19 +0000

I woke up (within a dream), looked out my window and saw that my new upstairs neighbor (there is no upstairs unit here) stored his cello by hanging it from a kite. I went up to the roof and found a copy of the neighbor’s self-published, glossy, lavishly illustrated but poorly bound book.

The book’s introduction assured me that he had never lost an instrument stored in this way, other than that one flute; but then the book went on and on about rivers (natural or diverted) and bridges, whose bearing on the subject was not obvious. My reading was interrupted by knocks on some door.

better my computer than me

Anton — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 23:44:03 +0000

My computer ran for eight solid days to extend this table from six rows — (2 3 7), (2 4 5), (3 3 4), (2 3 ∞), (2 ∞ ∞), (∞ ∞ ∞), each of which is (in some sense) minimal — to 106, by request. I don’t know why anyone would want all those others; I see no qualitative difference between any of them and one or more of the six.

Now that the run is done, I look again at my code and see where it could be made more efficient, by changing from complex to real arithmetic; I’ve already done that in my other hyperbolic programs, the ones that generate the ribbon patterns.

a bit of randomness

Anton — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 19:44:03 +0000

I made a minor improvement to my Doodles page: it now chooses the dragon fractal tile randomly from a series of 243 variants – one for each possible assignment of the five high bits to the three color channels.

Leviathan’s appetite

Anton — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 18:35:11 +0000

Fred Astaire was 42 years old when his character was drafted in You’ll Never Get Rich, released some months before Pearl Harbor. What?!

morning nap

Anton — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 03:00:18 +0000

I found a laser pointer lying around …
Bramble sat up and watched the spot attentively.
Rocky chased it like a demon.

back

Anton — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 20:30:36 +0000

I return to Cascadia after a 39-day visit with Dad in the high desert. He forgives me for not fully sharing his admiration for dry scenery.

We watched a slew of movies together: Wreck-It Ralph; Midnight in Paris; Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog; The King’s Speech; Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner; Hot Fuzz; Tucker & Dale vs Evil; The Good, the Bad, the Weird; 3 Idiots; Brave; Absurdistan; Going by the Book; An Unexpected Journey; The Thirteenth Floor. (He didn’t “get” Dr Horrible and I didn’t “get” Atanarjuat, but in general we approved of each other’s choices.)

We also watched about a dozen NFL games, including the first round of playoffs (the “wild card” games). I had seen few if any games since Jerry Rice’s day, and was surprised at how the defense dominated most of these; in particular, I saw very few successful long passes.

Much as I enjoy Dad’s company, I am glad to get back to familiar routines, green grass, and cats who know what my lap is for.

Russian runes?

Anton — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 03:11:15 +0000

Backtracking a search that led to my runes, I found this page that seems to claim that the futhark descended from a Russian system based on segments selected from the wheel graph W₆. One needn’t accept the claim to find the system at least a little bit interesting.