202222022020

There seem to be a lot of twos and zeroes in posts and dates at the moment and obviously that makes my tiny mind decide to do another post about the veritable plethora of twos and zeros. I suppose it's just the natural pattern seeking human trait, which I have picked up on in the past and hopefully will be able to do in the future.

I've done numerically sequenced post projects in the past such as #ALifeInNumbers which I did when I turned 59 and I'm sure I did one month where I included the day number in the song I chose, but I can't identify it so I must not have set up a hashtag for it.

I'm still relearning my Google Pixel 2XL although it seems to be making noises when I want it to be quiet but two days in, I'm a lot happier than I was withe the Samsung Galaxy A3, which was adequate and did it's job.

So this is just about m noticing things and noticing unnecessary correlations and thinking of a song to go with that. It's my second post today , so it can be fairly short I think, though looking at the title it almost looks binary, although numbers are just a shape to represent a concept.

I've heard people say you need to be good at maths to do Sudoku. No you don't , you need to be good at observation, pattern recognition and assimilating that information. I do one Sudoku a week in The Observer and it gives my mind a little work out though every now and then I make a mistake a screw it up, and sometimes I do manage to correct myself.

So as we're talking numbers we can go with "6345789" , my favourite version is the upbeat Ry Cooder version, although It's a great song originally by Wilson Pickett and covered by The Blues Brothers

Quietjin

For some reason I either dreamed or thought that "Quietjin" was a solution to a scrabble word, but it's not , just a deactivated twitter account and there are various results from Google and DuckDuckGo and there is Quietjin1 on twitter. Quietgin was another option although Quieting is a valid word. There are some weird words or letter combination that online Scrabble allows and some oddities it does not allow. Words like XI , XU , QI , ZA , ZO which I am sure you would get questioned on in real life Scrabble.

I find Scrabble more like Tetris in that you are trying to fit words into spaces which get harder as the game progresses. It's more about observation than literacy. Anagrams are easy enough to solve, but once you have the solution you have to find somewhere on the board to fit it in. Usually when I play a word I work out what my next play will be and hope my opponent doesn't take my place.

It's similar when people say that you need to be good at maths to do Sudoku , it's just again about observation except Sudoku gets easier as you progress through the puzzle. Although generally Sudoku uses numbers you could use any symbols at all, although when you see one that doesn't use numbers you get slightly disorientated because you are used to using numbers.

I used to play with about ten people on Facebook Scrabble and that is generally the main reason I stayed on Facebook , but it's down to two of the first people I started playing with. Others have dropped off and when I have tried to start a new game  the game has not been reciprocated although according to Scrabble these folk are actually playing.

The visits to the blog have dropped significantly and it's down to a more realistic one hundred a day, though I may just hit half a million by the end of February, so that is not an impossibility, and if not February I will hit it in March.

This Sunday morning is grey and rainy, not the most inspiring, but I have lots to do today while also trying to relax before what will be a very intense week at work, but that does make the days fly by, there is nothing worse than having nothing to do, and I do love having problems to solve, hence the enjoyment of problem solving puzzles such as Scrabble and Sudoku.

So a fairly obvious song is "Games People Play" by Joe South (although it's been very widely covered) , but enjoy your Sunday everyone. The melody was appropriated by eurotrash poppers Dan The Banjo Man in the seventies (listen on th elink.

September Scamalot Coincidence

September is upon us and someone yesterday that summer is over. Not from my window it isn't. Blue skies and bright sunshine and I might even mow the lawn and go for a walk after breakfasting and reading the papers with the crossword and sudoku to have a stab at.

This is an unusually extremely short post just to mention James Veitch , who I first came across on TED then went to see him at The Stand in Newcastle , bout his book , and found his take on scamming funny, entertaining and informative.

I was then surprised that he has a series on Amazon Prime called "Scamalot". The episodes are two or three minutes and are in fact presentations of sections from his live show and is book "Dot.Con" both well worth your investment.

In August I actually did 420K steps which is approximately 140 Km or 90 miles and 20% over my monthly target

I've just noticed that this is post number 2023 , and "2023" is the novel by The KLF that then got me into my current read "THe Illuminatus! Trilogy" . Life is full of noticeable coincidences.

So time to sign off with this first post of September.