Issue
Seven
July
2003 |
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©2003
by
Cliff
Johnson
All
Rights
Reserved |
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All good things come
to those who wait. |
the officious newsletter of author Cliff Johnson |
Time and tide
wait for no man. |
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>Take
One<
There
are 10 kinds of people in the world.
Those who understand binary and those
who don’t.
>Take
Two<
Jules
Feiffer recalls “I used to think
I was poor. Then they told me I wasn’t
poor, I was needy. Then they told
me it was self-defeating to think
of myself as needy. I was deprived.
Oh, not deprived, but rather underprivileged.
Then they told me that underprivileged
was overused. I was disadvantaged.
I still don’t have a dime. But
I have a great vocabulary.”
>Take
Three<
From
Graeme’s List of Words that
are Fun to Say — Bedraggled,
Cantankerous, Epicurean, Hornswoggled,
Incipient, Lackadaisical, Lugubrious,
Obsequious, Persnickety, Ramshackle,
Slatternly — I composed this:
Bedraggled
from the cloudburst, the cantankerous
coot, epicurean in his youth, fled
inside his ramshackle cabin and slouched
in the slatternly sofa; hornswoggled
by a lackadaisical roof repairman,
the coot, his mood, lugubrious, contemplated
the incipient leaks in his ceiling
and wondered why he trusted a handyman
that obsequious; next time he would
err on the side of persnickety.
>Take
Four<
William
Shakespeare recites “Brevity
is the soul of wit.”
Dorothy
Parker reveals “Brevity is the
soul of lingerie.”
Woodrow
Wilson relates “If I am to speak
ten minutes, I need a week for preparation;
if fifteen minutes, three days; if
half an hour, two days; if one hour,
I am ready now.”
>Take
Five<
Woody
Allen admits “I am at two with
nature.”
>Take
Six<
If
receiving this newsletter is interpreted
as the Third Sign of the Apocalypse,
click
here to cancel.
However,
if you’re reading over someone’s
shoulder and wish to subscribe, have
them click
here.
>Take
Seven<
Last
issue I conceded:
Why
do programmers always get Christmas
and Halloween mixed up?
Because
DEC 25 = OCT 31.
I’ve
no idea what this means.
Excerpts
from the dozens of letters I received:
The
Bewildering:
2
* 10^1 + 5 * 10*0 = 3 * 8^1 + 1 *
8^0
The
Tad Less Bewildering:
OCTal
31= 1*(8^0) + 3*(8^1) = 25
DECimal
25= 5*(10^0) + 2*(10^1) = 25
The
Visual: |
Base
10: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25
Base
8: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
30 31 |
The
User-Friendly:
Octal
(OCT) refers to the base-8 number
system, which uses just eight unique
symbols (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and
7). Programs often display data in
octal format because it is relatively
easy for humans to read and can easily
be translated into binary format,
which is the most important format
for computers. By contrast, decimal
(DEC) format is the easiest format
for humans to read because it is the
one we use in everyday life, but translating
between decimal and binary is relatively
difficult. In Octal: 3 times 8 =24,
plus 1 = 25, the decimal equivalent.
Welcome to Geekville.
The
Skinny:
Most
programmers these days don’t
need or use octal, so young programmers
probably won’t get it. Unix
hackers have a better chance of getting
the joke, because permissions on Unix
files are done in octal for some arcane
reason.
The
Do-It-Yourself:
31
(to the base 8, ‘oct’)
is 25, as is 25 (to the base 10, ‘dec”)
To test
this out you can start up your Windows
scientific calculator and convert
it for yourself.
The
Dead Pan:
“I
assume you’re joking about not
understanding this.”
The
Droll:
Time
to listen to your Tom Lehrer, specifically
New Math — “Now, that
actually is not the answer that I
had in mind, because the book that
I got this problem out of wants you
to do it in base eight. But don’t
panic! Base eight is just like base
ten really - if you’re missing
two fingers!”
>Cut<
>Print< |
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A
fellow eMailed me and asked about
the level of difficulty in The
Fool and his Money.
Will
the game be on par with The Fool’s
Errand and 3 in Three? Or, will it
be as hard as David Blaine’s
$100,000 Challenge? Or as punny as
Jumble Jitters? |
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“Something
old, something new, something borrowed,
something blue, and a silver sixpence in
her shoe.”
The
Fool sequel is on a par with the
Fool original. I clock The Fool’s
Errand and 3 in Three as being about 40
hours of playfulness. That is the goal again.
The story
is complete in itself but continues the
narrative of the first. Portions of the
story are earned by surmounting the challenges
and enchantments discovered in the four
Kingdoms. The Fool encounters twists and
turns in his adventures, illustrated in
storybook silhouettes and described in text.
As the Sun
provided a map to help the Fool on his Errand,
this time, it is the Moon who sways the
Fool with a silvery map to guide him on
his road from rags to riches. The metapuzzle
structure is the same. A new piece of the
map appears as each smaller mystery is solved.
The assembled map is a unique treasure hunt
where the Fool pools his knowledge to gain
the means to assuage the wrath of Justice
and Judgement whom he has unwisely angered
in his ill-considered haste for wealth.
Familiar challenges
of words and wit have new twists and turns,
and other enchantments, unfamiliar, tease
and tantalize with hands-on visual mischief.
As the Four Keys of Thoth and the High Priestess
beguiled in Errand, in Money,
the Fool explores the Pyramid of Thoth where
more deviltry awaits.
Although
an expert player at the Tarot card game
of Thoth, the Fool apprehends that each
Kingdom plays the game in an entirely different
manner. The stakes are high. He must win
every game if he is to claim the complete
set of 78 cards of the Tarot deck for himself.
The major
distinction, though, between Errand
and Money is the bartering and auction
puzzles where the Fool strives to seek his
fortune, first as a Vagabond, then as a
Peddler, then as Shopkeeper, and then as
a Merchant. Here, the Fool must parlay his
gift of wisdom to divine the secret motivations
of those who manipulate the commerce of
the Land and then use that knowledge to
his own advantage.
Why
not pre-order
today and list your name in the Compendium
of True Believers?
For
the record, Blaine’s Challenge was
designed to be $100,000 difficult. No comparison. |
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I
created this one-page puzzle for the
Los Angeles Macintosh Group newsletter
back in 1987. It is simple fare that
well illustrates the eclectic nature
of solving the Sun’s Map and
restoring the fourteen lost treasures.
To print
it out, click
here and use your browser
print menu.
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Three
nincompoops enter a pub to celebrate.
The bartender is curious.
“What’s the cause
for the celebration?”
he asks.
“We just
finished our jigsaw puzzle!”
says the first.
“And
it took us only a month!”
says the second.
“And
the box said 3 to 6 years!”
says the third. |
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Condensed
from an article by Jill Lawless at
The Associated Press.
Give
an infinite number of monkeys an infinite
number of typewriters, the theory
goes, and they will eventually produce
the prose of Shakespeare.
Researchers
at Plymouth University reported this
week that primates left alone with
a computer for a month attacked the
machine and failed to produce a
single word.
“At
first, the lead male got a stone and
started bashing the keyboard. Then
they took turns urinating and defecating
on it.” |
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Eventually,
the monkeys Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly,
Mistletoe, and Rowan produced five
pages of text.
“They
pressed a lot of S’s,”
said researcher Mike Phillips. “And
then the letters A, J, L and M crept
in.”
The
experiment proved that monkeys “are
not true random generators.”
Til
the middle of August.
Corduroy Jersey
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