I'll think of a good title later

Presenting my pet Snake.

So what if there are a lots of other snake clones on the net?

Why should you play this one over all the others? Well:

1. The snake looks cute.
2.
3. Profit.

Controls:

Enter to play
Arrow keys to change direction
P to pause.

A couple of weeks ago my department boss moved on to a new job. We were understaffed with three of us, but now we are down to two things are a nightmare. We are helped out two days a week by a consultant, but with so little time the amount he can do to help is very limited. So far a lot of the solutions that he has come up with is for me to work more hours.

I am now the only programmer in the company. So every little request seems to come through me & everyone seems to want me to work on everything at once. A common request is for some custom report or graph (we already produce a monthly document which is an inch thick full of reports, but these reports have a nasty habit of not saying what people want them to say). It always makes me cringe how people ask for a report by stating the conclusion they want it to show, but I have learnt not to waste my time trying to explain the correct use of statistics. A lot of the time people's instincts are correct but sometimes I get to enjoy handing over reports that massively conflict with someone's beliefs. It is a very rare occasion when I produce a report exactly as it is asked for.

It has been noted that my usual calm demeanour at work has been slipping on occasion. Soon after my boss had left we were having a problem with one of our systems that I just couldn't crack, even my old boss who wrote the system couldn't shed any light on the problem. Our consultant spent all morning looking at it & couldn't come up with anything either. Then at lunchtime he left saying he had to go meet another client & wished me luck. Great.

After working late I came home. I was feeling really angry & like the everyday for the past few days my head was buzzing with work. Instead of turning on my computer to read some news & blogs as I usually do I started a practise session instead. I practised various circus skills for a couple of hours. It was like the scene in Footloose where Kevin Bacon starts to dance in the abandoned factory. Ever since I started juggling there has been something about it that calms me down. I particularly remember doing a handstand & all the tension seemed to just pour out of me. Since then I have been juggling a lot, usually I'd spend an hour or two reading on the internet, now though the only reason my computer gets turned on is to set iTunes going. Since upping the amount of time I spend on my favourite hobby & cutting down the amount of time I spend staring at a flickering screen I have been feeling noticeably better in myself, more relaxed, fitter & more alert.

Right now I can't think why I slip out of the habit of practising.

I don't think it is just me either, everyone at TWJC seems to be doing more juggling. Previously there used to be a lot of standing about chatting, now though everyone is definitely using the hall time much more & saving the chatting for the pub afterwards. I remember a time when it would be approaching 9.30 when they chuck us out of the hall & I'd just want to go home or to the pub. This week when I was walking from the hall to the bar I remember thinking, "I wish I had another hour or so so I could work on that a bit more..."

Whatever it takes is an article from The New Yorker Magazine about the use of torture in 24.

I absolutely love the film Dark City which stars Keifer Sutherland so it is strange how I've never seen a single episode of 24. If 24 features torture in the way that this article suggests I don't think I will.

So Richard Branson is Offering $25 million to the first person to come up with a method to remove at least 1 billion tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere per year.

Well, here's my effort:

Stop consuming so much useless crap.

I applaud Richard Branson for putting up a prize fund & I sincerely hope that someone (maybe Nikkogen?!) does come forward with a solution & bags the prize money.

But what gets me is that the problem is posed as if we don't already know the solution: If you want to empty the bath, turn off the tap.

If Mr Branson still requires specifics then how about this: Get rid of packaging, patio heaters, escalators, automatic doors, running machines, leaf blowers (is there anything more futile? /Shatner), shops that keep their displays illuminated throughout the night, cosmetics, electric kitchen knives, juicers, whisks & toothbrushes, fairy lights, the fashion industry, open freezers in supermarkets, disposable carrier bags, disposable nappies, motorised golf trolleys, shopping channels, remote controls & cosmetic surgery.

Who Can Name the Bigger Number? Is a really interesting article that discusses really big numbers funnily enough. I thought I was doing pretty well on the challenge set at the start of the article using a paradigm of stacked factorials eg. 9!*9! (131681894400) would quite happily beat the equivalent stacked exponential of 9^9 (387420489).

Interestingly Opera's Math object thinks that 9!^9! is infinity, but I guess web browsing doesn't really require that sort of computational range!

You can skip the mathematics in the article it still makes for a good read.