Anotherblog

Another puzzle

Another of my puzzles in the puzzle comp went up today: Cross Section. And by the look of it, it’s a tricky one - nobody’s solved it yet!

Puzzle Competition

My third puzzle Flowchart for the CiSRA Puzzle Competition went up today (my previous ones were Tourist and Smilies). Very happy with all the puzzles, though I really thought this one would be a bit harder - quite a few teams have already solved it, some quite quickly! I have a deep-down suspicion that I have unwittingly reproduced some classic puzzle somewhere. Or maybe it’s just not all that difficult.

Much activity

Really, if this is to continue being a record of activities done for my future self to look back on (hello future self!) I should record more of said activities. So, here is a brief list.

Loki, one of the lunchtime crowd, took it upon himself to create an entire Magic: The Gathering expansion by himself, called “Asgard”. We printed out cards, cut them out, made boosters, and played it at my place on a Friday night a couple of weeks ago. And it was awesome (though obviously not quite as polished as ‘proper’ magic sets). He introduced a sixth colour and about a dozen major themes and keywords. It was just bursting with ideas. We’re still playing out the remaining games.

I’m spending heaps of time with Jade, and things are going very well indeed. It was her birthday recently and I made a lemon merangue pie, which was quite pleasant, except that the crust was a little thick (though quite delicious - short crust pastry made with icing sugar, yum) and the merangue was a bit flat. Must Try Again. We’re gradually thrashing through our theory of truth and honesty and will no doubt one day write a book on the topic, discover that when written down it looks like every other book about truth and honesty, and give up. Still, it *feels* new and fresh and alive, it’s just one of those things that you have to discover empirically, I think.

My main procrastination activities of late have been Lotus and the Cars short film, both of which have gotten shocking short shrift in the face of other much more immediately pleasurable pursuits. Like the lexifabricography lexicon we’re coming up with at work, and Darths & Droids (which is really filling up the Film Forensics hole).

Rubik’s cube

Still working away at the cube, solving it a few times each day, gradually getting faster (though I haven’t timed myself) and getting better at the last few stages. I can understand how people stay addicted at this…

Puzzle comps

I lost some of my and Dave’s postings thanks to a server upgrade not saving some database changes that happened in-between. Botheration.

Meanwhile, life has propelled on at unusual speed. We did very well in the Melbourne University Puzzle Hunt, finishing first on the Leaderboard of points, but not getting the puzzle hunt item. I provided critical assistance in one puzzle, working out the answer “Stairway to Heaven” just from looking at some puzzle data that someone had just asked might be musically related, and was tab notation.

It was particularly pleasing because it shows how far my guitar playing has progressed lately. I’ve been playing every day and missing the guitar when I can’t play. My hunt for the Next Guitar is continuing, though I think I’ll wait until later in the year. Several of the guitars I’ve tried at the Gladesville Guitar Factory and at the Dicksons music in Chatswood have been excellent, much better action than my current guitar. I’ve started tackling some more adventurous fare (two of the Preludes by Los Lobos) which are really testing me and the tone of the guitar, which is now approaching ten years old (it’s a $400ish Yamaha classical.)

Back to puzzles: our lunchtime group, as well as entering into other puzzle competitions, run our own comp. A couple of the puzzles are already published and have been available for a few weeks, but the puzzle comp starts in earnest next week. We’re doing a few last minute administrative preparations, but on the whole we’re ready. I’m really pleased with this year’s set. I wrote five of the puzzles, two of which were in the first group and one of which (Tourist) features many pictures of Veronica, hoorah!

Folks in town

Had a really good time with Mum & Dad over the last week or so. They went home yesterday morning after arriving the previous Tuesday, and we managed to get out to dinner a couple of times and do a bit of sitting around and chatting, which counts as good times for us aging people. Highlights included dinner with Veronica and family at the Imperial Peking restaurant at the Rocks, which was thoroughly excellent food and company, and later dinner at Sakana-ya with just the folks and Von.

I suspect I may have slightly gotten Dad into Rubik’s cubes, for while Mum will probably never forgive me. And I definitely got him back into SLR photography after a well-engineered staff purchase and handover of a Canon 40D. He seems very, very happy with it.

Darths & Droids: it’s up

That cool thing that I was talking about a little while ago is now up. Very happy with it.
In other Darths & Droids activity, I did another strip last weekend (number 86) and we have now illustrated up to Episode 95 and written up to Episode 106. The run of strips over the last few weeks have been building up to this, and I’m (if anything) even more proud of it than of yesterday’s strip. It sometimes feels like a very extended Film Forensics, and as such, has somewhat taken away from any progress on Film Forensics in a good while now. Oh well.