People say that time is money, but I'm not sure that it's true, and if it is the conversion is bewilderingly complex. Last week I did manage to turn a twenty pound note into two hours of professional cleaning in my house. If you saw how much she did, and knew how ineffectively I clean my own house, you might think I had created four hours of free time, but it's not that simple, I could just as easily have chosen to live in squalor.
I have been asking my hobbies to pay me back for the time and expense that I've lavished on them, but they have all threatened to default and negotiated very favourable repayment terms. For example I turned six hours of guitar restoration into a tenner and a pint, five hours of roadying and sound engineering into £25, and 10 minutes of knife grinding into a haircut.
What this seems to mean is that I'd be much wealthier if I could declare cleaning and tidying as one of my hobbies, and that I'd be a millionaire if only I could find an infinite supply of barbers with blunt kitchen knives - and I could exchange haircuts for goods and services.
Richard "play that tambourine properly or not at all" B
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Forbidden Planet
Posted by
rjb
I went to Surrey for a long weekend, and on Friday we went up into London. Amongst other places we stopped at Forbidden Planet on Shaftsbury Avenue. It's a shop that sells comics, graphic novels, books, memorabilia, and anything associated with cult entertainment. There was for example an adorable cuddly Totoro that I couldn't afford. I picked up a sci-fi novel and took it to the counter to pay for it. The woman who served me was wearing a white blouse and a very small black waistcoat and when she stepped back to let the till open it became distractingly apparent that she wasn't wearing any trousers. In fact she had on fishnet hold-ups with lacy tops and black pants. (I suppose it could have been the bottom of a swimming costume, or some sort of dance-wear. I'm going to assume that she was dressed as some manga heroine with whom I'm unfamiliar). I was so transfixed that I lost the powers of speech and hearing, and I fear that I might have been staring. I was eventually transported back from my delightful reverie by the question "DO. YOU. WANT. A. BAG?" And the strongly implied "My face is up here."
Richard "The Count" B
Richard "The Count" B
Wednesday, 26 October 2011
Round of Drinks
Posted by
rjb
"Never ascribe to malice that which can be reasonably explained by incompetence." I went on a drinking expedition on Friday, and in the early evening a very nice, pretty, very drunk, and mildly crazed young woman latched on to my group of friends. There was great competition among the single men to spend time talking to her. She joined three of us who went to the rock venue to listen to a very loud metal band. At the venue she ordered a very elaborate round of drinks involving a small glass of spirit submerged in a larger glass of something else, and a bottle of strong beer for everyone. When the barman told her how much it would cost (nearly £20 for three people) she opened her purse and discovered that it was virtually empty. I paid for the drinks and she gave me the rest of her money (£1.04). I can't believe the nerve, skill, and timing it would have required to pull off that trick deliberately, but I also find it hard to believe that she would mistakenly order a millionaire's round when she didn't have enough money for a bag of chips. To answer your follow up questions: No nothing happened, she was very definite in her decision not to get the last bus home with me.
Poetic swearing
(stop reading now if you are offended by adult language). My band played on Saturday night, and uncharacteristically the rhythm guitarist made a glaring error. We made fun of him all through our cigarette break, and would probably have carried on until about 2015. He got rather tired of the subject and turned his knowledge of the Profanisaurus to devastating effect saying "Can we talk about something else now? I think we've wanked that one dry."
Richard "two nap weekend" B
Poetic swearing
(stop reading now if you are offended by adult language). My band played on Saturday night, and uncharacteristically the rhythm guitarist made a glaring error. We made fun of him all through our cigarette break, and would probably have carried on until about 2015. He got rather tired of the subject and turned his knowledge of the Profanisaurus to devastating effect saying "Can we talk about something else now? I think we've wanked that one dry."
Richard "two nap weekend" B
Memorial Quiz Answers
Posted by
rjb
Q1: Name a Goss team member who shares a surname with the creator of a well-known programming language.
Acceptable answers were either Rob McCarthy or Bob McCarthy. Computer scientist John McCarthy invented the LISP programming language to pass the time while chained to a radiator in Beirut.
---------------
Q2: Which Note is out of key in this chord sequence?
Fm7 Ab Fm7 Bb Cm Bb Ab
The answer that I was expecting was that the piece is in the key of Ab, that the Bb chord should have been minor, and so the wrong note was d (which should have been d flat). If you look at the piece it starts on a change from the related minor to Ab and it finished with a descending cadence that resolves at Ab. It looks very much like a piece in Ab.
I now realise that it was a poor question, an equally correct answer is:
Nothing is out of key, it's in Eb major, but played as the Dorian mode of F
Fm7= [F,Ab,C,Eb]
Ab = [Ab,C,Eb]
Bb = [Bb,D,F]
Cm = [C,Eb,G]
Key of Eb = [Eb,F,G,Ab,Bb,C,D] = three flats
Key of Ab = [Ab,Bb,C,Db,Eb,F,G] = four flats
---------------
Q3: Which singer shares initials with a part of the London transport system and a technology developed by Microsoft?
Flamboyant Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth shares initials with the Docklands Light Railway and the Dynamic Language Runtime. Surprisingly, this fact is not mentioned anywhere in Diamond Dave’s 384 page autobiography "Crazy from the Heat".
---------------
Q4: You cut a 2cm border off 3 sides of a square and you are left with
3/8 of the original square. How big was it to start with?
8cm^2
There are several ways to answer this question, the most practical seems to be trial and error, I also like the idea of a spreadsheet of widths and heights, but for those of you that enjoyed maths at school, I'll show you the algebraic solution:
The original square had a width and height of x cm, and an area of x^2
After the border had been cut off it was 2cm shorter and 4cm narrower.
The remaining area is (x-2)(x-4)
The remaining area is 3/8 of the original area so:
(x-2)(x-4) = (3/8)x^2
x^2 -6x +8 = (3/8)x^2
8x^2 -48x +64 = 3x^2
5x^2 -48x +64 = 0
(5x -8)(x -8) = 0
So either x=8cm or x=(5/8)cm. We will disregard the second solution as it isn't big enough to cut a 2cm border off from.
---------------
Q5: Calcium and Potassium are important nutrients, mix them up with tin to make something to eat.
SNACK
This is an anagram based on the symbols for the chemical elements named in the question. Calcium = Ca, Potassium = K, Tin = Sn. These can be rearranged to give "Snack".
---------------
Q6: How many times do you have to roll six dice before the odds of them all coming up 6 are evens?
32340
This piece of probability theory was probably too hard for this quiz. There are 2 ways to calculate it, you either have to understand and use the Poisson Distribution, or follow this convoluted reasoning:
The chances of having seen a win once or more is the complement of never having seen a win.
The chances of never having seen a win are the chances of not seeing a win on the first turn AND not seeing a win on the second turn AND .... AND not seeing a win on the last turn.
The chances of 1 dice coming up 6 is (1/6)
The chance of 6 dice coming up 6 is (1/6)^6 = (1/46656)
The chances of 6 dice NOT ALL coming up 6 are 1-(1/46656) = (46655/46656)
After n rolls, the chances of NEVER having seen a win is (46655/46656)^n
(46655/46656)^32339 > 0.5
(46655/46656)^32340 < 0.5
So the answer is 32340
---------------
Q7: A French city annoyed the poster shop by giving a piece of fruit to the 2nd planet. Which war followed?
The Trojan War.
This was a clumsy cryptic reference to a story called the Judgement of Paris. It involves the Trojan shepherd prince Paris (a French city), Athena (the poster shop), Aphrodite (Venus in the roman pantheon), and Hera. It's a story so petty, titillating, and hackneyed that you'd be embarrassed to see it on a soap opera, but it's actually a significant bit of the Greek myths. The three goddesses ended up squabbling over a golden apple inscribed "to the fairest" and eventually agreed to have an impartial mortal decide who was most beautiful and award the apple.
The goddesses were taken to Paris on mount Ida. These are the goddesses of ancient Greece remember, not fishwives. Every one of them firstly posed naked, and secondly bribed the judge. Aphrodite's bribe was that Paris would have the love of the most beautiful woman in the world. Paris picked Aphrodite, royally pissing off the other two goddesses, went to Sparta to pick up his new wife Helen, who - wait for the plot twist - was already married to the king!
Helen's husband, also not best pleased, teams up with Hera, takes his army to Troy, and politely asks for his wife back.
As an interesting side note, there is no reference in the bible as to what the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil looked like, but the Apple of Discord was so well known that religious artists have always represented it as an apple.
---------------
Q8: Correct these sentences for grammar where necessary:
"Thank god he gave the appointment to my wife and I."
"None of us was ready."
"If I was in charge of the practise, then I would have rung."
A
"Thank God he gave the appointment to my wife and me."
Ai)God is a proper noun and needs a capital letter. I'm sorry if you don't believe in Him, but if you're going to write correctly in English, then you're bound to a Judeo-Christian monotheist ideology.
Aii) "my wife and I" are the object of the sentence, not the subject, so you have to use the objective form. If I wasn't married, you'd have had no difficulty knowing that he gave the appointment to "me" not to "I".
B
The sentence is correct. "none" is a contraction of "not one" so "One of us was ready" "Not one of us was ready" "None of us was ready"
C
"If I were in charge of the practice, then I would have rung."
Ci)The sentence is hypothetical, so we have no choice about using the subjunctive mood. "If I were a rich man" is correct grammatically.
Cii)"practise" if something you do, "practice" is a thing. Don't try to argue that this is a spelling error and not a grammatical one. It's the wrong word spelled correctly.
Acceptable answers were either Rob McCarthy or Bob McCarthy. Computer scientist John McCarthy invented the LISP programming language to pass the time while chained to a radiator in Beirut.
---------------
Q2: Which Note is out of key in this chord sequence?
Fm7 Ab Fm7 Bb Cm Bb Ab
The answer that I was expecting was that the piece is in the key of Ab, that the Bb chord should have been minor, and so the wrong note was d (which should have been d flat). If you look at the piece it starts on a change from the related minor to Ab and it finished with a descending cadence that resolves at Ab. It looks very much like a piece in Ab.
I now realise that it was a poor question, an equally correct answer is:
Nothing is out of key, it's in Eb major, but played as the Dorian mode of F
Fm7= [F,Ab,C,Eb]
Ab = [Ab,C,Eb]
Bb = [Bb,D,F]
Cm = [C,Eb,G]
Key of Eb = [Eb,F,G,Ab,Bb,C,D] = three flats
Key of Ab = [Ab,Bb,C,Db,Eb,F,G] = four flats
---------------
Q3: Which singer shares initials with a part of the London transport system and a technology developed by Microsoft?
Flamboyant Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth shares initials with the Docklands Light Railway and the Dynamic Language Runtime. Surprisingly, this fact is not mentioned anywhere in Diamond Dave’s 384 page autobiography "Crazy from the Heat".
---------------
Q4: You cut a 2cm border off 3 sides of a square and you are left with
3/8 of the original square. How big was it to start with?
8cm^2
There are several ways to answer this question, the most practical seems to be trial and error, I also like the idea of a spreadsheet of widths and heights, but for those of you that enjoyed maths at school, I'll show you the algebraic solution:
The original square had a width and height of x cm, and an area of x^2
After the border had been cut off it was 2cm shorter and 4cm narrower.
The remaining area is (x-2)(x-4)
The remaining area is 3/8 of the original area so:
(x-2)(x-4) = (3/8)x^2
x^2 -6x +8 = (3/8)x^2
8x^2 -48x +64 = 3x^2
5x^2 -48x +64 = 0
(5x -8)(x -8) = 0
So either x=8cm or x=(5/8)cm. We will disregard the second solution as it isn't big enough to cut a 2cm border off from.
---------------
Q5: Calcium and Potassium are important nutrients, mix them up with tin to make something to eat.
SNACK
This is an anagram based on the symbols for the chemical elements named in the question. Calcium = Ca, Potassium = K, Tin = Sn. These can be rearranged to give "Snack".
---------------
Q6: How many times do you have to roll six dice before the odds of them all coming up 6 are evens?
32340
This piece of probability theory was probably too hard for this quiz. There are 2 ways to calculate it, you either have to understand and use the Poisson Distribution, or follow this convoluted reasoning:
The chances of having seen a win once or more is the complement of never having seen a win.
The chances of never having seen a win are the chances of not seeing a win on the first turn AND not seeing a win on the second turn AND .... AND not seeing a win on the last turn.
The chances of 1 dice coming up 6 is (1/6)
The chance of 6 dice coming up 6 is (1/6)^6 = (1/46656)
The chances of 6 dice NOT ALL coming up 6 are 1-(1/46656) = (46655/46656)
After n rolls, the chances of NEVER having seen a win is (46655/46656)^n
(46655/46656)^32339 > 0.5
(46655/46656)^32340 < 0.5
So the answer is 32340
---------------
Q7: A French city annoyed the poster shop by giving a piece of fruit to the 2nd planet. Which war followed?
The Trojan War.
This was a clumsy cryptic reference to a story called the Judgement of Paris. It involves the Trojan shepherd prince Paris (a French city), Athena (the poster shop), Aphrodite (Venus in the roman pantheon), and Hera. It's a story so petty, titillating, and hackneyed that you'd be embarrassed to see it on a soap opera, but it's actually a significant bit of the Greek myths. The three goddesses ended up squabbling over a golden apple inscribed "to the fairest" and eventually agreed to have an impartial mortal decide who was most beautiful and award the apple.
The goddesses were taken to Paris on mount Ida. These are the goddesses of ancient Greece remember, not fishwives. Every one of them firstly posed naked, and secondly bribed the judge. Aphrodite's bribe was that Paris would have the love of the most beautiful woman in the world. Paris picked Aphrodite, royally pissing off the other two goddesses, went to Sparta to pick up his new wife Helen, who - wait for the plot twist - was already married to the king!
Helen's husband, also not best pleased, teams up with Hera, takes his army to Troy, and politely asks for his wife back.
As an interesting side note, there is no reference in the bible as to what the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil looked like, but the Apple of Discord was so well known that religious artists have always represented it as an apple.
---------------
Q8: Correct these sentences for grammar where necessary:
"Thank god he gave the appointment to my wife and I."
"None of us was ready."
"If I was in charge of the practise, then I would have rung."
A
"Thank God he gave the appointment to my wife and me."
Ai)God is a proper noun and needs a capital letter. I'm sorry if you don't believe in Him, but if you're going to write correctly in English, then you're bound to a Judeo-Christian monotheist ideology.
Aii) "my wife and I" are the object of the sentence, not the subject, so you have to use the objective form. If I wasn't married, you'd have had no difficulty knowing that he gave the appointment to "me" not to "I".
B
The sentence is correct. "none" is a contraction of "not one" so "One of us was ready" "Not one of us was ready" "None of us was ready"
C
"If I were in charge of the practice, then I would have rung."
Ci)The sentence is hypothetical, so we have no choice about using the subjunctive mood. "If I were a rich man" is correct grammatically.
Cii)"practise" if something you do, "practice" is a thing. Don't try to argue that this is a spelling error and not a grammatical one. It's the wrong word spelled correctly.
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
Memorial Quiz
Posted by
rjb
Dear fellow GOSS employees,
Before he sadly passed away, Nic Fish had been looking forward to organizing a GOSS quiz. The GREAT team thought it would be a nice little tribute to him to have a quiz in his honour. Tom and I produced the questions, submit your entries to me and I'll send out the answers when someone has got them all right. Google is permitted - you'll use it anyway and so is conferring because you will anyway, perhaps you will want to enter as a team or department! No prizes, it's just for fun.
Q1: Name a Goss team member who shares a surname with the creator of a well-known programming language.
Q2: Which Note is out of key in this chord sequence?
Fm7 Ab Fm7 Bb Cm Bb Ab
Q3: Which singer shares initials with a part of the London transport system and a technology developed by Microsoft?
Q4: You cut a 2cm border off 3 sides of a square and you are left with
3/8 of the original square. How big was it to start with?
Q5: Calcium and Potassium are important nutrients, mix them up with tin to make something to eat.
Q6: How many times do you have to roll six dice before the odds of them all coming up 6 are evens?
Q7: A French city annoyed the poster shop by giving a piece of fruit to the 2nd planet. Which war followed?
Q8: Correct these sentences for grammar where necessary:
"Thank god he gave the appointment to my wife and I."
"None of us was ready."
"If I was in charge of the practise, then I would have rung."
Best of luck,
Richard B
Before he sadly passed away, Nic Fish had been looking forward to organizing a GOSS quiz. The GREAT team thought it would be a nice little tribute to him to have a quiz in his honour. Tom and I produced the questions, submit your entries to me and I'll send out the answers when someone has got them all right. Google is permitted - you'll use it anyway and so is conferring because you will anyway, perhaps you will want to enter as a team or department! No prizes, it's just for fun.
Q1: Name a Goss team member who shares a surname with the creator of a well-known programming language.
Q2: Which Note is out of key in this chord sequence?
Fm7 Ab Fm7 Bb Cm Bb Ab
Q3: Which singer shares initials with a part of the London transport system and a technology developed by Microsoft?
Q4: You cut a 2cm border off 3 sides of a square and you are left with
3/8 of the original square. How big was it to start with?
Q5: Calcium and Potassium are important nutrients, mix them up with tin to make something to eat.
Q6: How many times do you have to roll six dice before the odds of them all coming up 6 are evens?
Q7: A French city annoyed the poster shop by giving a piece of fruit to the 2nd planet. Which war followed?
Q8: Correct these sentences for grammar where necessary:
"Thank god he gave the appointment to my wife and I."
"None of us was ready."
"If I was in charge of the practise, then I would have rung."
Best of luck,
Richard B
Fond Farewell
Posted by
rjb
Nothing funny happened this weekend, and if it had I don't think I'd be writing about it. Last weekend something decidedly unfunny happened. One of my colleagues died. His name was Nic Fish, and, like most of the people in this industry he was a little bit of a weirdo. He was also a completely decent man, there was not a grain of malice or deceit in him. I can't pretend that I was a friend of his, but I saw him virtually every day and I've worked with him on and off for over a decade. He had a dicky ticker since the day he was born, and he took some pleasure in telling people that in his case you couldn't say "He's got his heart in the right place". He was very intelligent and had an incredible memory, particularly for films, tv, and music. I used sometimes to use him as a kind of interactive verbal equivalent to the Internet Movies Database. He was so constant and reliable that I find it almost impossible to accept that we now live in a world without Mr Fish in it, and I can only think that it's a worse place because of it. My deepest sympathies go to his family and those he left behind.
Richard B
Richard B
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