Prime Time

Reading "How Not to Be Wrong: The Hidden Maths of Everyday Life" by Jordan Ellenberg  and there are some complex concepts in there and we're talking prime numbers (or should that be Prime Numbers) and he make a stange but true point n and n+2 are more likely to be a pair of prime numbers than n and n+1.  Now given that after 1, 2 and 3 only odd numbers can be prime, it seems a strange point to make. 29 and 31 are prime but 30 isnt, 31 and 33 are not both prime but I think 131 and 133 are. It also talks about the apparent randomness of prime number distribution, which obviously cannot be random because the nature of numbers is set in stone ... sort of.

Below is one of my favourite TED talks on very large prime numbers by Australian DJ Adam Spencer. This talk held no interest for me, or so I though but it is a brilliant way to spend twenty minutes and you learn a lot as well.


So it's 7AM and we need a numerical song to go with it and what about The Jam's "Away From The Numbers" , my nay is spent dealing with numbers but there are times when maybe a rest would do me good

Here Comes The Night

Tonight it's cold and wet, the days are getting shorter and we'll soon be waking up in the dark as wll, looking out from our windows at work into the blackness, then looking at the clock and seeing that it's only three o'clock.

The think is , is this is the world we live in, days fluctuate like an giant elastic band getting longer and shorter depending what part of the year that we are in. Rain is good because it waters gardens and plants. Dark is good because it makes us appreciate the light, it the way that cold makes us appreciate the warmth.

I can't recall the weather being so bad that I wished for something else, for quite a long time. Tonight even though it was slightly raining , I put on my waterproof hat and walked for half an hour clocking up 3K steps. Tomorrow will be interesting to see how long Pacer keeps recording my steps as I expect. Will it clok 5K steps for me to get to work, I'm sure you can't wait to find out.

Anyway, the night is here so I'll leave you with "Here Comes The Night" by Them, sleep well my friends.

The Trouble With Shooting Ghosts of American Astronauts

A ridiculously rubbish play on words, in my last post I said that Google Fit didn't seem to be tracking steps, but was it my Sony Xperia, or the operating system or the software. Today I installed something called Pacer and it seems to be recording the steps OK so it looks like it's Google Fit.

It is a small trial when something is not working and you don't know which part of the chain is the problem , and it may be one part or more than one. Remeber when a bulb went in Christmas lights and trying to track which was this problem one. Though it does feel good when you sort it out.

Tonight I went out for an extra walk to hit my 11K, and I've done nearly 12K so that's cool.

Anyway as I type this "Ghosts of American Astronauts" by The Mekons is playing, just a lovely surreal song whihc I will leave you with. My blood sugar is down to 4.4 so I need to sort out something to eat.

Enjoy your evening my friends.

Failures

This was going to be my second post yesterday for #August50, but I didn't get round to it so that's one failure to start off with , although I am writing it now. This morning I was thinking that the milk was lasting a hell of a long time, then I poured it in to the tea (I'm not a milk in first person which still seems very odd to me), the milk was finally past it's sell by date, another failure!! But !!! If I had written this last night I couldn't have written about the sour milk.

When I worked at EE someone said to me they felt under pressure because we were always expected to deal with emergencies (like Summer, Valentine's Day and Christmas, that was a running joke about marketting), but I said that mobile phones were now a 24/7 thing and you always expected to be able to make a call or use your phone. I said imagine you came home and hit the light switch and nothing happened you'd be straight on the phone (assuming it was working!!) to the power company because you expect power and water 24/7. Phones have become a utility, and need to be always available and we make sure that they are.

Yesterday I walked to work and Google Fit recorded 3.5K steps , normally it's 4.5K to 5K (the highest as been 6.6K via Cowgate and Westgate Road), so I was disappointed , and continually during the day it's been down on what I expected. Fenham Library to home was recorded as 100 steps when I know it's 5-600, so that was another failure, but is it the Sony phone hardware , the Android Operating System of the Google Fit App, or even the EE network. For me it's a failure but I will deal with that.

There's a few other things like moving the Song of The Salesman site, trying to set up the Joomla database connection. It makes some suggestions but doesn't tell you what information you have to give it, and the help and talk boards all say the same thing "you must have put the wrong information in". Well guessing doesn't really help in this situation.

All these are failures but they are challenges to be addressed and I will will deal with the ones I can, and I do like a challenge though not as keen attempting the apparently impossible which is a situation I often find myself in.

And in an amazing piece of synchronicity Chris Hawkins on 6Music has just put on "Needle In A Haystack" by The Velvelettes which seems fairly appropriate given the subject. Have a great Tuesday everybody.

Ideas

I love showering but always find drying myself a bind and was thinking what a great idea a full body air drier would be. No wet towels , afterwards, no picking up wet towels to dry yourself with if you are not first in and just the feeling of warm air on your body would almost be like a mediterranean holiday. I love warm water on my body and warm air would be just as good.

The thing is many years ago what would be the next step, Yellow Pages? Your local libriary? If you asked friends they may think you are some kind of deviant... warm air on your naked body.... you pervert sir ... how dare you. But we use hair driers (or is it dryers?) , we use hand driers , and I do like the Dyson Airblade, and we also have fans to keep us cool when the weather is hot , so all the bits are there.

However thanks to Berners-Lee and Arpanet we have the Internet, the worlds biggest reference library and if you search Google for "full body drier" this is what you get. There are a lot out there. You can get this fairly snazzy one by Valiryo on Amazon, though at £900 to replace my shower towels I am still tempted. I don't know of any friends who have one.

So I had a great idea but found that someone had got there first, though if someone were to offer me a free one I would take it straight away.

Anyway , although it's Monday it looks like a gorgeous day so I will probably be walking into work and no doubt looking for things to video and photograph. Also this post is keeping up the #August50 and if I do another one tonight then I should be starting to get towards the 50 that I am aiming for.

So the song has to be Polly Jean Harvey's "Dry" ... one of those songs that is not on the artists album of the same name like Led Zeppelin's "Houses of The Holy" , what else could it be ... have a great Monday everybody...

Jumping In The Deep End

Well I've moved everything and now need to think how either WordPress or Joomla will benefit me. Both use a MySQL Database so that means that maybe I should get TOAD to get the hang of that. Seeting up Joomla I can't find the database , and even logging into the databse causes a timeout. I really thought I was past this but it looks as though I'm not, it's piqued my interest.

It's like jumping in at the deep end and I am not sure I am able to swim, but this is a possibly foolhardy way of finding out. I am going to leave it a day just in case overnight updates have to take place as that so often has to happen.

As well as all this I am trying to write , both words and music and get the hang of the technology. I just want to simply record things , not set op input channel and assign inputs to them , but maybe I will get the hang of it and get the sound on sound sorted out.

Anyway as I write this TOAD is downloading and after that I am going to bed, so I'll leave you with Ginger Baker's "Toad" performed by Cream.

Sleep well my friends.

Funny How

While people are not reading my posts as much as I thought , it doesn't help if I don't post on Facebook, even so the average hits per post have dropped from 50 to 25. Something that has been bothering me for about about a year is changing to format and hosting of Song of the Salesman and my friend Bob Armstong's sites.

Bob's is a static site so that was simple , but Song of The Salesman is an Access Database driven .Net site, which has served it's purpos and I don't think people are bothered what song was used for a Guinness Advert in 1999. I am looking to move it over to Joomla as people are more bothered about current information that past.

Today is the first day this month that I wont hit 11K but I am ahead of the target having done 4K so far, and I am going to brave the rain and do a few more steps soon.

Anyway, it seems recently I've not really been writing about the fun stuff, like music and travel and film, though I have been watching and listening , and I have just had an idea to put some of Bob's images together  and soundtrack it for a youtube video, and maybe use something like King Crimson's "The Night Watch" which is about the Rembrandt painting.

That seems a great point to stop and maybe I will post again later for #August50