I was in London today and ended up in Foyle's at St. Pancras International, where I bought The Graveyard Book on the grounds that I was inevitably going to sooner or later. I got to the other end of the station before I realised I couldn't have chosen a more appropriate book for Halloween.
Andrew at 105, is it Gur Gbhtu Thvqr gb Snagnflynaq?
Raphael @ 86:
> njs @74, overeating: Consider Phlebas
> My keyboard is lucky that I wasn't drinking anything.
My keyboard is lucky that my stomach is empty.
For someone who feels their life is shapeless and lacks meaning, I'd recommend Fire and Hemlock.
And for someone who's having trouble working out who they are (or how old they are, or what planet they're from) Hexwood is the ultimate reference. It's also useful for those who hear disembodied voices.
Teresa, the link on the front page to your recent comments at BoingBoing is broken.
What, no number-related tidbits in this thread? Okay, I'll start:
121 is the third row of Pascal's Triangle. What I like to do with a Pascal's Triangle is divide every number by some n and use only the remainder. This means that as the triangle grows you get larger and larger triangular areas filled with zeroes, until it starts to look rather like a Sierpinski triangle.
More mundanely, 121 is the number I have to dial to pick up my voicemail.
And apparently, "One point twenty-one jiggawatts!" is the precise power of a lightning bolt that strikes the clock tower at exactly 10:04pm. Combine that with a car that's passing exactly the right point at exactly the right speed at exactly the right time, and I start to wonder why I still like that film so much when it stretches my suspension of disbelief to that extent.
I was seriously tempted to go, but there were too many reasons not to. Now, as it turns out, there's a new baby in the family. Maybe I'll get to meet her next weekend, if her parents are up to it.
Have a great time, everyone!
I don't know Amsterdam, but I'm distinctly interested.
Leah Miller @ 850: the TV Tropes Wiki calls it a Clown Car Base.
JCarson @ 386: Yes. I hadn't thought about it in years, but the other day I found the front cover of my family's copy on the web by chance.
I know who 137 is, but I'm not so sure who the Countess is. Qbaan isn't one when we meet her. Was she married before that?
Anyway, I love how his name ROT13s into an anagram of itself. "Evire" at 63 almost does the same thing.
#377 and #378: correct, and thank you.
Here's a harder one:
Of course it was an astonishing coincidence that he was so close by, but what was it about me that first attracted his attention? I think it was when I spoke Uvaqhfgnav* to his servant that day on the roof.
*Decode for a hint.
A late entry:
He was the only visitor I ever got, and I hated him. He chatted to me because I was slightly more presentable than most of the others there, even though he must have thought that was the most frightening thing about me. The bleeding idiot never bothered to ask what I really was.
Anyway, that day he had a newspaper rolled up in the pocket of his cloak. It was freezing, and I kept thinking about the journey he'd have back to the mainland, not only with that cloak to keep him warm, but with something to read as well. So I asked for the paper, and the condescending git handed it over. He probably thought he was Father Christmas, except he never could manage to grow a decent beard.
Everything important that happened afterwards, happened because I read that paper.
Abi @ 5: I'm not sure what you think I was criticising - I just thought it was clever if intentional and serendipitous if not.
Abi, was gur svany jbeq bs lbhe rknzcyr intentional?
Zombie, zombie, zombie, zombie,
Can't you hear the people screaming
In the village square?
Zombie, zombie, zombie, zombie,
Can't you hear the people screaming
In the village square?
Zombie, zombie, join the devastation
They'll be praying, but there's no salvation
Dawn will find us tearing all their brains out,
Feasting in the village square!
Telling my new violin teacher that I would rather be in a violin lesson than in the maths lesson I was missing at the time. I was eight.
The thing was, I liked maths. I was paying her a compliment, goddammit. She did not understand this, and so began my life as an ex-violinist. Which led me to a certain bookshop on a certain day six years later, to buy a book on the clarinet ...
j h woodyatt @ 186: Smart companies hire developers who can pick up new skills at need. Possession of a Ph.D. in physics is a good sign that she's bright enough to do this. Both my first two employers hired me to work in languages I didn't yet know. When I entered the job market I had a degree in mathematics and knew some C. I learned C++ in my first job, then (with far less effort) Java in my second.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
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| 2009 | 19 |
| 2008 | 8 |
| 2007 | 32 |
| 2005 | 5 |
| 2004 | 5 |
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