I Wonder

After yesterday going on about Roman Numerals I thought what is the Roman Numeral for Zero? It turns out there isn't one, but medieval scholars used the word "nulla" to signify zero. In IT we used to be familiar with the concept of "null" (and those who know what they are talking about still are).

Zero is the numeric representation of no items, as in "I have zero pounds in my bank account", but it is a numeric value, it is one less than one or one more than minus one, though this summation could be done with any numbers. The formula:

x - x = 0

is always true, though mayb Stephen Hawking, Andrew Wiles or someone else could possibly dispute that successfully with me.

Null on the other hand is a complese absence, it cannot be used in computation whereas zero can, and will often cause systems to crash if returned as an answer. Null is the bane of any programmer's life, in that it is often valid but you can't actually do anything with it, and no doubt I will come across it in some calculation today.

I'm still feeling absolutely shattered and  despite have nine hours in bed last night after watching Black Sails and Nightcrawler, I didn't feel up to walking into work, so though this would be the first time in a long time that I walked into work having done less that a thousand steps.

Then I decided to get off the bus at the BBC and walk down Barrack Road from there thus giving me a couple of thousand steps.

I thought I'd include "Countdown" by Lindsey Buckingham from his album "Out of the Cradle" as I love the song and it's vaguely numerically themed.

The sun is shining so it should be a good day.

III II

Well this is my second attempt of trying to do three posts in a day, and today I have at least started, so that means that I am probably on course for #August50. I could stop writing here, but I thought using Roman Numerals for the title was and interesting departure.

I am so glad that we didn't stay with Roman Numeration and went for the decimal Arabic number system, although you do become used to whatever you grow up with. I someone want was brought up with Octal or Hexadecimal instead of Decimal that would be a fine number system for them.

Talking all this Roman stuff (and I watched four hours of  documentaries by Mary Beard on the genesis of Rome last Friday) reminds me of the WH Auden poem "Soldier on the Wall" that was turned into a song by Alex Harvey,  which I used as a soundtrack for some film I took of Vindolanda so I will share that with you.

Tonight I am feeling absolutely drained again, so there won't be any more writing today. I'm not even up to mowing the lawn, but maybe that's a good thing given the lack of rain.

Sleep well my friends.

Busy Doing Nothing

Today is my first day of home recuperation after the Liver Biopsy and it really has been a case of being busy doing nothing. For me that has been trying to find something that requires as little input from me as possible.

It hasn't stopped me walking a little, and reading a little and choosing a little music, but most of the day has been watching four Mary Beard documentaries about Rome , which are very interesting and so I've gained a little knowledge today, so that is a small win.

Thoough it's grey and cloudy it's still very hot and humid so not the most comfortable, though is an excuse not to wear too much.

I thought I may have done a lot of blogging today but, obviously I haven't.  I mean this is barely a hundred words and this has not been easy to drag out of me, so obviously I am not going to producing anything worthwhile today.

Tomorrow is going to be more of the same, unless I get some inspiration, although I have been surprised by the number of well wishers based on my last post, I wasn't really expecting that. I know that people care but sometimes that results in "Oh I must let xxx know I'm thinking of them" and I am as guilty as anyone for that, and I do know who cares about me.

Anyway what should I leave you with, just looked at my pile of CDs and there's a best of Beverley Knight so I think "Come As You Are" (hers not Nirvana's) would be a good one to leave you with.