The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by qB:

My then nine-year-old son read tdvc one summer holiday and thought it was great. But he was, of course, nine.

Re literary cryptography there was a pleasing episode of the radio series Baldi called Cross Purposes when the Franciscan priest/semioticist/sleuth solves a series of annagram-related murders.

In fact he's got the 'tache too, now I think of it...

Re monorchids, interestingly (to me at least) it is whispered by some Zimbabweans - very quietly and in conditions deemed to be absolutely secure - that their glorious leader Robert Gabriel Mugabe is also afflicted by this condition. It had to be upped to one because the previous version, in which he had none, was belied by the sudden appearance of offspring with his second wife.

The resting time is very important, and the bird should be draped with a tea-towel, preferably Irish linen with very broad blue and white stripes. Don't ask me why, I have no idea. All I know is that it's what my step-mother does and she roasts the best turkey I've ever got my teeth round. This advice scores very low on the geek scale, but has the benefit of empirical evidence.

My favourite prime is 97. In fact it's my favourite number. I went straight to the 97 page at the site you originally linked to and discovered that 97 is the first "Bad prime." So that figures.

On hackery - we purchased, at a steam railway fair, an ancient book which consisted entirely of the fares for hackney carriages (as in the horse-drawn variety) for specific routes in London. An attempt to standardise charges before the advent of the meter. Hundreds and hundreds of routes in a London much smaller than it is now. Fascinating.

"I will arise and go
Where the pink flamingos grow"

The rather cryptic title of a print which hung in the house when I was a child. I always wondered whether it was a quotation but have never managed to trace it.

My world is populated by widgets. Yes, please share the Bush joke!

Would that be Silkience as in hair remover? Far gentler than tearing it out. (Sorry. Couldn't resist it. The rest is silence.)

More synchronicity, language hat! I've just finished reading Love Among the Chickens courtesy of theProject Gutenberg e-text.

I shall remain silent on the subject of Borges on the grounds that I might incriminate myself.

Damn! and I thought I was the only person to explore maths in knitting.

One particular favourite was to start with the alphabet in morse code (x and blank), write an appropriate word or series of initials as the base and then run Xor or other similar function in a spreadsheet. Binary numbers would also do, I suppose. Then you have a unique pattern which can form the basis for work in either colour or texture.

I love the idea of the probability cable.

I went to the Freud Museum here in London the other day and was interested to see both a weaving loom and evidence of serious knitting in Anna Freud's room. Apparently she was a fibre enthusiast. There was a beautiful knitted throw over a reclining chair. I sat and copied the cable pattern into my palm, despite the uncomprehending mirth of my companions.

Thanks for the best knitting post ever!

If you want to listen to readings, try The Chaucer MetaPage Audio Files.

I'm so excited I'm having to go away and post about it.

People over here can be very very peculiar about animals. Badgers are much beloved by a certain section of society which opposes their being culled by farmers who say the badgers pass TB on to their cattle. I am an agnostic on this subject, but note with interest that in Chaucer's day the term "brok" (still used to describe badgers in some parts of the country, and the traditional name for a badger) was an insult. Viz the Friar's Tale:

The cartere smoot, and cryde as he were wood,
Hayt, brok! hayt, scot! what spare ye for the stones?
The feend, quod he, yow fecche, body and bones,
As ferforthly as evere were ye foled,
So muche wo as I have with yow tholed!

[The carter whipped and cried as madman would,
"Hi, Badger, Scot! What care you for the stones?
The Fiend," he cried, "take body of you and bones,
As utterly as ever you were foaled!
More trouble you've caused me than can be told!]

I love Chaucer, am on the look-out for a good full translation of the Decameron and firmly believe that the Metamorphoses contains every story ever written. Or the germs of them, at least.

I've always found knitting very therapeutic, and was told once it produced electrical activity in the brain similar to that produced when meditating, but can't find any evidence for this claim - anyone know of any?

The post-Christmas sales are upon us in London, which is when the (few) wool shops (left) sell off end-of-lines cheap. Unfortunately I have no fellow knitting afficianodo within range so rather than group SEX I shall have to have an onanistic outing. But I'm excited already.

I'm so terribly sorry. There are some lovely crystals to look at here, if that would help soothe the pain.

Actually, it's his existing plug-in apparently. But it's a good stop-gap. Not long for the programme though.

My (gorgeous) host already has MT Blacklist installed and so it's operational over on my site. But not before I had to delete numerous large mammery glands and tweenies from my comments.

It seems to have a long, but manageable, list of things like, to take the Nabakov example, "Sisnai" which traps the whole netblock (or something).

I'll find out when I get up tomorrow if it works.

You can find out exactly who it was at Reading and Writing [http://chujoe.net/archives/000154.html] where Joseph Duemer did a bit of detective work.

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