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It struck me today that saying something is a delicacy is just another way of saying “this is gross, eat it!” Here’s a list of things that are a delicacy, according to Google:
Now I’m hungry!
I’m totally hooked on a website called Project Euler. It’s a site with tons of math problems that can be stated simply but generally require a computer to solve. The idea is to help people build both math and programming skills, so it’s a great way to learn things or just practice your chops.
The problems are things like, “Find the sum of all the even-valued terms in the Fibonacci sequence which do not exceed four million.” As the problems get harder, they require you to think of more and more clever solutions — any program you write should be able to run in about a minute, so brute-force solutions don’t always work. So far I’ve found this to be true (although I had one program that took 10 hours to complete… I didn’t figure out a trick for that one). And once you solve a problem, you gain access to a forum for everyone who has solved that problem to share their solutions!
This site’s been around for a while (since 2001), so there are over 230 problems to solve. There are also “levels” — today I finished my 25th problem, finally attaining Level 1:
Anyway, if you like some good ol’ fashioned nerdy fun, I encourage checking it out!
You know how when you say a word or phrase over and over again, it can lose its meaning to you and just sound like a made up noise? Right now the phrase “connect to the wireless router” sounds as meaningful as “toad the wet sprocket” to me.
The other day, I purchased Ten Trillion Dollars on ebay for a mere $9 and change. Here’s a picture of it:
So, it’s “Zimbabwe dollars,” but that still has to be a lot of money, right?
This morning, my friend Curt asked me how much it was worth. I googled “Zimbabwe exchange rate,” punched in the amount at the first site I came to, and got the answer:
$81,004,768,003.09
81 Million Billion dollars! Not bad for a $9 investment. “Maybe I shouldn’t just leave this bill lying around in my cubical,” I thought.
Then I went to another google result, and I got a different answer:
“Notice: The Zimbabwe government redenominated the ZWD again on February 2, 2009 at a rate of 1,000,000,000,000 old ZWD to 1 new ZWD.” So, 1 trillion old dollars is 1 new dollar. So I have 10 new dollars, which is worth: 8 cents.
Oh, how my heart sunk when I learned that I had not 81 Million Billion dollars, but 8 cents. (Probably 4 cents by the time I finish writing this post — the inflation there is ridiculous!) Well, I’ll hang on to it. When the Zimbabwean economy rebounds, that’s going to be my retirement!
There is a new addition to our family, which we love very, very much. Here’s a photo of our special little guy:
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Yes, we are the proud owners of a simplehuman fingerprint-proof rectangular step trash can. It locks in odors. It looks nice. It telepathically compliments my hair. We love this thing! We even took a family photo with it:
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If you visit us, we’ll be sure to introduce you!
Tonight we went to a Mexican restaurant called El Rincon for dinner. For a little while, Jonah was making googly eyes at the lady at the table next to ours. Karianne, Kaeta, and I enjoyed some queso. Then all of a sudden, Jonah started crying and asking for Mama.
He kept looking back at the table with the nice lady, then looking at the large, tattooed man with the leather jacket sitting next to her. His eyes would get really big, then he’d cry some more!
When I noticed this, I looked at the guy and he just smiled and shrugged. “I guess he’s scared of me!” he said. I couldn’t help but laugh pretty hard — I wonder how it made that guy feel that a little baby was scared of him! I just picked Jonah up and distracted him, and then a few minutes later the couple moved to a different table. It was very kind of them (there was no convincing Jonah that the guy was okay), but I felt kind of bad.
It would be nice if I could control that behavior, though. Like, if I didn’t want to talk to someone, I could just give Jonah a signal and he’d start acting really scared of them. Then I could use that to get out of the conversation. (Does that idea make me sound anti-social? Hmmm…. 🙂 )
Last Saturday, our friends the Hendleys came over. The plan was to eat dinner, then Curt and I would watch the kids (all 4 of them) while our wives did some girly stamping and cardmaking. Well, Curt had a brilliant idea — he brought his ukulele over, along with a “fakebook” (a book of song lyrics with chords written in above the lyrics, so you can “fake” your way through playing the song). We set up my microphone and recorded ourselves (to the utter neglect of our children, but hey, whattaya want from us?). The results are… well, here:
| L-O-V-E | |
| King of the Road | |
| I Want to Grow Old With You | |
| Friendly, Friendly World | |
| Dream Lover |
But the real gem of the night was when Curt’s son, Joel, wanted to sing something called The Fox Song. As far as we can tell, this is a song he made up on his own, and it’s GREAT, especially considering he’s only 3! But it takes him about 2 and a half minutes to get to the song — before that, he’s just playing on a 4-note piano while we all wait anxiously for him to sing the Fox Song. I’m including the full recording (waiting for him to start singing is hilarious, in an Andy Kaufman kind of way), but also just the part where he’s singing, which I’ve dubbed the “Radio Edit.”
| The Fox Song | |
| The Fox Song (Radio Edit) |
And now, as if this post weren’t long enough, I’ll include some words from Curt about The Fox Song:
…[Joel] said, “I’ll sing The Fox Song.” He tinkered around for a while, and then he sang a fox song. I think he must have composed it himself. I realize I may just be a proud father speaking, but I know a little something about music, and this was beautiful. First of all, the lyrics are deliciously nonsensical, on a par with anything Lewis Carol ever wrote in his poetry. He also managed to come up with an Aeolian melody, sung almost pitch perfect in a minor key even though his piano played only a major chord. He also displayed a real flair for performance, with subtle intonations and variations that keep an otherwise repetitive tune interesting the whole way through. And he ends with a flourish that is simultaneously surprising and logical, making the entire song memorable by returning to its initial lyrical theme with a strong musical punctuation. Simply beautiful.
Here are the lyrics:
When that fox went away
You can’t climb a tree
You have to sing the words
And without watch TV
When you have a song
You can’t when you move, move… a FOX!!!
(spoken: Hmph. That doesn’t rhyme.)There’s a little bit more on the recording where he asks if our music book contains the song Mary Had a Little Lamb. That’s not part of The Fox Song, just so you know.
This post comes with a Nerd Alert Level 7. You have been warned.
On computers, “Unix time” refers to the number of seconds since midnight, January 1, 1970. That date (1/1/1970) is referred to as the “epoch,” and many computers (not just unix-based ones) use this method for storing date/time as a number.
You can see the current time right now by going to unixtimestamp.com. As I write this, the time is: 1234569992.
Anyway, a few hours ago, the timestamp was 1234567890. This is extremely cool! It would have been cooler if I had posted this, you know, before it happened, but hey, I had last-minute Valentine’s shopping to do.
Have a good 1234567890 Day!
I just renewed a domain name with GoDaddy.com, and the experience was surreal. In the last step of checking out, I confirmed my address information, and I noticed this little box:
I assumed they just wanted to know what they should call me, so their pages can say something like, “Welcome back, Mr. Hamsterpants!” (or whatever I typed in the box). Anyway, I chose not to type anything in, and when I clicked “Checkout” — to GIVE THEM MONEY, mind you — I got this:
ERROR. Enter a friendly identifier. You’ve got to be kidding me!! 🙂
Yesterday, as we were organizing our study closet, I went through a stack of Guitar World magazines from 1998-2000. In the Feb. ’99 issue, there’s an article about Frank Zappa that I still remember and think about 10 years later, so I re-read it.
A thing that amazed me was Steve Vai’s story of auditioning to be in Zappa’s band:
Frank had given me a tape of stuff to learn, and, at the rehearsal hall, of course he only played stuff that wasn’t on the tape… He was really grilling me: he picked up his guitar and played something and asked me to mimic it at a specific tempo. Then he asked me to play it in 7/8, which I did. Then he said, “Play it in 7/8, reggae style,” and I did it. And he said, “Now add this,” and I looked at him and said, “I can’t — that’s impossible.” Because it was! And he said, “Well, I head Linda Rondstadt is looking for a guitar player!”
..After the rehearsal, I went up to Frank and said, “I’m sorry, but thanks for having me down, and if you ever need me for anything give me a ring.” And he looked at me and said, “You’re in the band!”