repton_infinity

I went to a Catholic primary school (in fact, two Catholic primary schools). This naturally involved some reading of the Bible, although the only thing I can remember of that is the time when it turned out I had the wrong kind of bible.

One thing I'm certain we didn't read, though, was Ezekial 37, in which the prophet raises an army of undead.

He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. [...] So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. [...] So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet–a vast army.

Man, RE could have been so much more interesting.
(or perhaps this is an easter egg that the church puts there to reward people who read the whole thing :-) )

It does explain where the song Dry Bones comes from. I always did wonder about that..

(and perhaps this is Zelazny's inspiration for Nirriti the Black?)

For those of you who watched 20-20 tonight: I would just like to say that those books displayed were mine. Stephanie hasn't even read _Dune_!

GWRC has put out a journey planner, powered by Google Maps, aimed directly at walkers and cyclists. I just spent a bit of time playing with it, trying to build some walking routes I like. It's a bit hard to use, mainly because Google addresses are focussed around streets, and I like walking offroad. I can't just type in "wind turbine" as a destination. Once I figured out the trick, however, it wasn't too hard.

[the trick is: make a route from anywhere to anywhere, and then drag the 'A' and 'B' markers into the right place, adding waypoints along the route you're making if necessary]

Here are some of the fruits of my procrastination:

Up to the Wind Turbine

Continuing round to Wright's Hill

The complete loop

A hole in the data

Another hole

And another hole

Ian Galloway, through the cemetary, to Johnston Hill

To Johnston Hill, then looping back through Otari Flax Clearing

(to see what I mean by "hole", zoom in on A/B (the start and end points) on those maps, and maybe switch to hybrid view)

Although you'll notice that Google's time estimates are based on an average walking pace of 5km/h. This might be a reasonable average for flat ground, but it's pretty inaccurate for broken, hilly ground. If you feel like doing either of the loops listed above (and I recommend them), I would recommend leaving three hours, unless you're very confident in your fitness.

Hitler's 39 living relatives revealed

[...] a paper serviette after eating fried chicken that they retrieved and later matched with "DNA of Hitler that we keep in a sealed, armoured chest" [...]

I'm sure there's the seeds of a hundred B movies (or roleplaying games) in that line...

I was looking at my fiction bookshelf the other day.

Adams, Tolkien, Eddings, Asimov, de Camp, Wilson, Lem, Zelazny, Herbert, Heinlein, Leiber – a significant chunk of my books are by people who are now dead. If Donaldson and Pratchett were run over by a bus tomorrow, I'd be almost entirely trapped in the past.

I bought an iPhone. Yeah, yeah, sue me.

The first iPhones had accelerometers. That means, essentially, that they know exactly which way is down regardless of how you hold the device.

The second generation added GPS. I'm not sure what it was like then, but it's certainly the real thing now. If you're outside, it'll pinpoint you to within a few metres.

Gen 3 added a compass.

Add all those up, and you get a hand-held computer that knows its exact location and orientation relative to the Earth.

So I went out onto our "balcony" tonight and held my iPhone up against the sky. On the screen was a labeled starmap. In the sky, behind the phone, were the same stars on my screen (well, those I could see over light pollution and my poor eyesight).

That is awesome.

New iPhone pricing.

32GB iPhone 3GS with no plan: $1379
32GB iPhone 3GS with $40/month plan: $899
$40/month early cancellation fee: $350
$899 + $350 + $40 = $1289 – instant $90 discount!

The maths are even better for the 16GB iPhone 3G:

16GB iPhone 3G with no plan: $1129
16GB iPhone 3G with $40/month plan: $499
$40/month early cancellation fee: $350
$499 + $350 + $40 = $889 – instant $240 discount!

So, over the weekend I thought I lost my wallet. Turns out I was merely an idiot, which I guess is better.

But it did set me thinking about what I actually need to carry around. So when I got home, I put my wallet in storage and pulled out a replacement.

Currently in my pocket where my wallet used to be are: two eftpos cards, two access cards, and my gym membership card. What else do I need? Drivers licence and credit card I don't need, and I can certainly do without the plethora of loyalty cards I used to carry. Cash? Easy to do without. What's more, the whole thing is practically disposable. Eftpos cards will cost about $10 each to replace, and the rest probably nothing. And the only thing with identifying marks on it is my gym card.

Makes me think how silly it was to carry around stuff that (a) I didn't need, and (b) would cost me time and money to replace if lost or stolen..

So, a little while ago I acquired a new personal trainer from Brazil. He's keen on plyometrics and agility, which is great, but he's also keen on ginastica netural, a Brazilian floor workout which is a bit hard to explain, so I'll just link some youtube videos:

One (2:49) Two (0:56) Three (1:03).

I've been doing this once a week for about a month and a half now, albeit at a less advanced level than some of the stuff you see in those videos. Liking it so far. I failed on jujitsu because I didn't like the actual fighting element, and I got bored of tai chi because it was insufficiently energetic (and similar problems with ypga and pilates), so this looks like a good medium.

Also picked up a pair of Vibram Fivefingers (in red). Here is a PT's view. I've been for a few runs – last Saturday and today, ~30 minutes each on the road, and I had a crack at the wind turbine before that. Wind turbine didn't go so well, ended up walking back with sore knees, and I struggled for grip in the steep sections (as you might expect for offroad Wellington in winter). On-road running has been fine, though, with the expected soreness in my calves. Hopefully if I keep it up I'll get better strength in my calves :-)

This is an amazing site to look at, if you are interested in programming: The speed, size and dependability of programming languages

Readability: Javascript magic that declutters web pages. Amazing.

Playing for Change: a bunch of musicians all around the world play/sing the same song (using headphones for timing). Pretty neat.

Thought for the day: 36,000 people day every year of this disease in the United States. Thousands have died already this year. Do we care?

Right wing:
"The economy is booming! We should take advantage of surplusses to cut taxes."
"The economy is in recession! We should cut taxes to stimulate growth."

Left wing:
"The economy is booming! The government should spend more on useful projects."
"The economy is in recession! The government should spend more to stimulate growth."

Here's the latest goss about everyone's favourite online bookseller: Amazon have decided to remove "adult" material from searches and best-seller lists. By "adult" they apparently mean a haphazard selection of books with gay or lesbian themes.
(but not, for instance, straight porn)

1.30am on a Thursday morning is not the optimum time to be letting off fireworks in the carpark outside our house.

So I know I'm late for this bus, I've been doing problems on Project Euler for a few weeks. It's interesting to look at how problems that might once have required thought are being overtaken by computing power.

I was just looking through the problems around 40-50 to see what's coming up, and I noticed a spike in the "solved by number of people" column at 48: "Find the last ten digits of 1^1 + 2^2 + ... + 1000^1000." So I'm thinking, ok, 1000^1000 won't have any effect on the last ten digits, in fact any multiple of 10 can be ignored, but that still leaves ...". Then it occurs to me that it's obviously easier than that:

y = sum(i**i for i in range(2, 1001))

Less than half a second to run the code.

Or there's problem 97, another spike: "Find the last ten digits of the Mersenne prime 28433×2^7830457+1.

..surely this one must be more difficult, right? Nah; according to the timeit module, my computer can calculate that number in about 7 milliseconds. Although taking the modulo 10000000000 pushes the time up to a whole 50 milliseconds.

And in Euler's day, just calculating big numbers was a valid occupation for mathematicians..

I don't post youtube links very often, but this is pretty good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8fbrUjjivw

It's one of many parodies of a scene from the German movie Downfall.

What do you get when you combine the Wellington Sevens, a public holiday, and beautiful weather?

( Answer under the cut.. )

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4825860a11.html

"European-only 'mini-state' planned"

Former skinhead, National Front leader and Christchurch mayoral candidate Kyle Chapman is attempting to set up a "unified mini-state" in North Canterbury.
[...]
Other "benefits" included:

• "Ability to put our European skills and intelligence to create new technologies and build something to be proud of."

Clearly I wasted all those years at university. I just needed to concentrate on expressing my european-ness!

Another indy game: Auditorium. 2d puzzler using music. Play the demo online – it's worth your time.

Auditorium will be selling the full version soon, for US$11 – still as a browser-based flash game. Will be interesting to watch how that turns out – are people willing to pay for online flash games?
(and will there be an offline option?)