Anotherblog

Solving puzzles

I’ve been quite frustrated with the puzzles that people have been posting at work, but we made some good progress at lunchtime today: I presented my progress on one particular puzzle, and that was sufficient for everyone to solve it. I’d been working on that puzzle for a week, and had come to the conclusion that I was no good at them. This is still true, to an extent, but I think it’s just that the group of four or five of us are very much better at solving puzzles than any of us separately with the same number of man-hours.

We’re thinking of doing some kind of external puzzle competition, now. Some of the puzzles have been really, really good - the kind of ones that have you saying “of course, how could I have been so stupid!” once you work them out.

Puzzles

We’ve been doing a bunch of puzzles at work - coming up with the puzzles, and then everyone else trying to solve them. In general, they’ve been much harder than we thought, so I was pleased that the latest one I added was solved fairly quickly:

Easy Listening

It’s a big enough umbrella for the daughter of the devil himself. I realized she probably was right - when I wake up, well, I know I’m gonna be reborn as fortune’s child to judge this Welsh Rarebit wearing mercury shootin through every degree.

You’re listening to…

Busy, as usual

Another trip to Sweden in two weeks’ time. And tomorrow isn’t a holiday for me: we’re going from 5:00pm to 1:00am in a teleconference. Urgle.

Feeling really out of it at the moment. I’ve been fiddling endlessly with the first thousand words of the short story, and I’ve been feeling guilty about doing of my other home projects, because I ought to be working on the short story.

The extended weekend was full of busy fun. Archery on Friday (at which I did poorly, as I had been doing quite a bit of arm exercise recently, and they were trembly.) Did some work on the video delay project. Still haven’t ported it to the PC or done the save feature.

I went to the Dissention pre-release tournament on Saturday morning, with David MM, and put together a Rakdos deck for a 2-2 result. I thought I was a little unlucky in the last match, as I mulliganed a total of seven times in the three games. Highlight: me on 1, him on 20 with a life-gaining artifact and a deck that was running red. Second game of the third match. I had lost the first game. He had four cards in hand; I had none. I drew Infernal Tutor, tutored for Rakdos, and played him. Three turns later, he had only two permanents left on the board, and died. Even better was my winning game of the third match - got Rakdos out, and gave him psychotic fury. Fourteen points of damage, and he sacrificed three quarters of his permanents. Rakdos seems like fun - utterly psychotic, and liable to lose very badly indeed when it loses, but fun.

Then, Sunday: golf, at which I sucked mightily, Greek Easter lunch with Anna’s mom, then off to David MM’s place for a day of games - Amun-re, Apples To Apples, and Formula De. Finally, Jon & Kate came over for Lost & Dr Who. No time for music.

I think I’m getting a cold.

Day off

I’m taking a day off work tomorrow. Evidently, a four-day week is too much at the moment. I intend to be very lazy with my day off, dammit.

Yep, still feeling a bit antisocial.

Archery high score

Again with the archery high score: 58 (X 10 10 10 9 9), my first six shots of the day. Gotta be pleased with that. And the overall set wasn’t bad either: 315 (58, 54, 44(!), 54, 52, 53). Had the 44 been anything decent at all, the set would have been a record too. Guess I can’t handle the pressure.

Easter

I’m going through a fairly dull literalist phase at the moment. No philosophy from me today. Today, I list things that I have done or seen. Browse away now, boredom-fleers.

It was a good Easter weekend. We ate much, watched Dr Who, played music (new tune for us: Black Umbrella, by Even), went to the movies (The World’s Fastest Indian) and watched DVDs (Saw 2, Oyster Farmer, several old episodes of Arrested Development). I drooled in anticipation of Guitar Hero.

I also did a bit of work. I wrote up a very short FF of Oyster Farmer (and will do one of Saw 2 some time.) I worked on the video delay line project a bit, and got it into a good working state. I went to golf on Saturday and did very poorly indeed (getting my worst score on that course), then went to archery, and did very badly as well (285, or thereabouts, thanks to problems with my anchor point). But then the instructors were very helpful, and I finished the day thinking I would probably do better the next time I went, which proved to be the next day. On Sunday, I took the video camera and laptop computer to archery, and gave the video delay-line a bit of a run. It went well - my change in anchor point suddenly clicked, and I could really see what I was doing thanks to the video delay, and I got my best ever score: 317 (54, 51, 50, 54, 54, 54).

Anna made creme caramel for the first time, and it worked well. They were extremely tasty, and I had to do much exercise on Monday night to stay under 86kg, thus being able to continue scoffing chocolate today.

Lunchtime seminar

Well, after a couple of days of stress about giving the lunchtime seminar, very few people turned up. Those who *did* turn up fell asleep. It was pretty boring subject matter, unfortunately, and I couldn’t do much to zest it up.

Now I feel drained. I didn’t get much sleep last night thanks to the teleconference, and I got up early this morning to do some more work on the talk. I should probably just volunteer for so many talks that they become second-nature. Despite the very average effort/reception today, I do feel I’m getting better as a public speaker. In particular, I’m learning to *think* about the topic while speaking, rather than just reciting, while thinking “Oh dear, I’m giving a talk right now and it’s like in those dreams and I wander what would happen if I forgot what I was talking about.” I can improvise and change topics if I need to.

Anyway, it’s over. Now I can listen to “At War With The Mystics” in peace, playing it over again and again and marvelling at it. Wonderful album. I’d heard a variety of complaints that it wasn’t up to Yoshimi or Soft Bulletin, but I disagree. There’s more of a Pink Floyd vibe in places, and it does interesting new experimental things in places. It is, as with the other two albums, multilayered and dense.

New Spit weblog post

I’ve put up a post on the Spit Weblog explaining (rather incoherently and incorrectly, I’m afraid) the Spit concert. Check it out.

Birthday

It was Anna’s mother’s 70th birthday on Sunday, so we went out for a cruise on the harbour. The boat was fairly small and a bit tattered, but we had it all to ourselves and the food was very nice, and although everyone else was talking Greek, I enjoyed it.

Puzzle-o-rama

I’ve redescovered that I’m lousy at puzzle-solving. While I was away in Brisbane, our gaming group participated in the Melbourne Uni puzzle hunt, and they had terrific fun doing so. So, we decided to hold our own informal set of puzzles. I have had a go at a bunch of them, and have been there when other people have solved them, but I really haven’t felt at all close to solving them myself. It’s particularly frustrating because most of the puzzles are really good: they have the “Oh, of course!” factor that makes you feel like even more of an idiot for not solving it quickly. I refer, in particular, to Ian B.’s puzzle (this is not the Ian B. whose tooth I knocked out, I should note), and Ben C.’s puzzle.