unexpected solutions to unknown problems

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.

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mood swing

Thursday I saw that my favorite bookshop is hiring. I got a bit of a buzz from the fantasy of working there. Friday I went to the shop and had a polite chat with one of the owners. When I got home, I was depressed, perhaps because the fantasy wore off. After dinner I went straight to bed “for a nap”; slept three hours, woke up feeling rested but still depressed.

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better my computer than me

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.

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Leviathan’s appetite

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

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morning nap

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

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back

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.

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Russian runes?

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.

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