Book Review: Take the Kakuro Challenge

Hey, it's a book, and I finished it, so it gets a review. About 2 years ago, I got into Sudoku, and did lots of them for a while. Well, Kakuro is Sudoku on steroids. It's not necessarily harder, but it is one step more involved. Sudoku isn't really mathematical. It's just arranging 9 different symbols into rows columns and boxes. But in Kakuro you've got rows and columns that all have to add up to given values. No numbers are given to start, just all the values. If you've got three boxes in a row that add to six, they must be 1, 2 and 3. But if they add to 18, they could be almost anything. Of course, I was quickly addicted, and Shannon hated it. I finished last one a few days ago, and now I find myself with little bits of free time where I wish I could work on one of them. The book is arranged excellently, with 10 pages or so at the beginning with explanations and an example puzzle. Then it starts with small simple ones which get bigger as the book goes on.

I recommend against Kakuro on the internet, because particularly early on you'll need to be able to make notes in the margins so you can keep track of what you're doing.

Book Review: A big fat zero

As of last night, I am done with "The Nothing that Is: A Natural History of Zero". I would like to rename the book "A humanity major trying to write a math book: A pile of garbage". Notice that I didn't say I finished it, but that I am done with it. The author constantly drifts off for two and three sentences at a time, comparing mathematicians use of exponents to authors writing a book, or throwing in references to Lot and his family, or whatever else seems to suit his fancy. He's trying to write a book about the history of the number zero relying strongly on metaphors and Shakespeare plays. Bad idea. It was pretty much unreadable. The author is overly verbose, and seems to be working very hard to show you how many things he knows, about every topic under the sun. If someone would be so kind as to go through and highlight the one sentence per paragraph that has something to do with the real topic of the book, I might give it another go.

Here's a quote: "Any five-year-old will tell you that negative numbers aren't numbers at all, and phylogeny recapitulated ontogeny in taking its time to recognize negatives."

Could someone tell me what this one has to do with anything? "What does it take for an immigrant to the Republic of Numbers to gain citizenship? Think of the situation with words and with ideas. New words are always frisking about us like puppies."

Periwinkle

As we've been preparing for our trek (T-minus 5 days) Shannon got out her Brighton camp songbook. There were a number of gems in there, but my favorite part was when I got to teach her a song from the book that she didn't know. For all her trips to camp, both Girls and Brighton, she was apparently completely unaware that there are ants, ants, ants, ants trying on the pants in the store, in the store! There are ants, ants, ants, ants trying on the pants in the Periwinkle Store!

Of course, I should thank my countless older sisters for filling my head with girls camp songs.

Piggies

You've got to be careful joking around with Shannon when she's in a foul mood. Otherwise you end up with her rearranging old nursery rhymes. I present the little piggies, as Shannon filled in the blanks:

This little piggy died.
This little piggy died.
This little piggy fell off.
This little piggy I don't know.
And this little piggy bled.

I wouldn't suggest using this version with your young ones.

Nickname

So, I've got a new nickname at work, given me by Stuart. He is starting to call me "PC". Not because I'm politically correct, but because I'm just like PC from the Mac commercials, specifically this one. I've told him that I'm not sure if that's a compliment or insult, but really, deep down inside, I think we all know that I'm proud of being a nerd.

I'm a college graduate!

A letter I received over the weekend.

Dear Graduate:

Congratulations on your graduation! Since we did not see you at convocation, we wanted to send you a copy of the April 2007 Convocation program, and a copy of the Dean's remarks. You can expect to receive your diploma in about six to eight weeks. In the meantime, if you need a transcript with your degree posted, contact the Records Office and they will be happy to send you one.


We wish you the very best with your post-graduate plans. Feel free to contact our office at [phone number] if you need assistance in the future.

I'm listed in the convocation program (for the second year in a row!) and am waiting anxiously to see if they'll mail me another diploma. (Who knew they were this easy to get!)

Dudu

About a week ago, Shannon found some one's blog where she mentions that her son, "Dudu" weighed 3452 kg when he was born. (It's a Brazilian lady's blog, "Dudu" is short for Eduardo, and she obviously meant 3.452 kg.) It was somewhat humorous to see the typo. But tonight, a full week later, Shannon was thinking about it and decided that the baby weighed "as much as a house" and started laughing. And couldn't stop. This went on long enough that she was in tears, and still going in time for me to get the camera out and take some footage, which I share with you:

Wonder baby

The other day Laneah was over at our house and she was kind enough to help me solve something I've been working on for a while. And it only took her a few minutes to go from this:

To this:

She really did work on it very intently for a few minutes.

Barrys

Last night, Barry Gibb (of BeeGee fame) was on American Idol. It was decidedly tough for the contestants to figure out what to do with his songs. It's not every day you get to hear a male recording artist tell a woman who is singing his song, "no, it goes higher in the chorus. It shouldn't be so low." The 4 left didn't do a great job, but it was a tough assignment.

The top idea of the night though, goes to Shannon. As Barry was telling LaKisha to go higher, she realized that the perfect twist would be to sing a Barry Gibb song in the style of Barry White. Or imagine Barry Gibb and Barry White singing a duet. Or Barry Gibb taking a Barry White song and singing it twice as fast, two octaves higher. Or really, anything that puts Gibb and White in the same room at the same time. The possibilities are nearly endless.

Growing and Pains

I know this is nearly a week old, but since Shannon hasn't mentioned it, let's all remember how the guest performance by Robin Thicke on American Idol last week was terrible. Shannon and I spent the next few days calling him "Helium Thicke" and "Dip Thicke". And yes, as we all instantly guessed, he is the son of Alan Thicke, better known as Dr. Jason Seaver.

I haven't posted much in the last week or two, and apologize. I've been busy at work, and busy at home, and this is what has taken the biggest hit. At work we're growing by leaps and bounds, and have added 2 new crystal pullers. (It's hard to tell when I'm referring to people or machines when I say "crystal pullers" but in this case it's people.) They both started yesterday, and that has kept us hopping. And we're pulling this week. And I'm just a bit under the weather.

And back to the "pain" theme: Alex gets really weird when she's on Loritab. (While it's best not to touch the first link up at the top, this on is a must see. Trust me!)

Newt Dance.

We've found something that might just rival the Ham. It's from Jeeves and Wooster, season 1, episode 4. The newt scene starts at the 7 minute mark in this video. Watch to the end, and pay attention to the people in the background in the last 30 seconds. The scene finishes with the first 30 seconds in the next clip from the episode. If the Newt doesn't work for you, I guess you can try these moves, too.