jack

I haven't updated -- barring maths musings, and dull private diary doodlings -- for ages. I've always seemed just five minutes behind, except when enjoying things too much by half, and never have a chance to record it for your amusement.

Today, my desk was just slightly different, much cleaner, slightly lower, and one story higher. The company expanded into the top floor of the building, with much buidlers-still-moving-things, wandering around going "Ooh, this is what it's like" and not very much getting done at all.

I skived off early and got the bus to Pizza. I was early and spent about tewnty minutes talking about why porn was bad[1] with Naath and Douglas until anyone else turned up :) Pizza was jolly, with many legal hypotheticals (can I hide my encryption key from the govt in a foreign country anyhow? can/must I prevent fighter jets causing property damage in iraq?), overly complicated answering machines (If you want to know where post pizza is, press 1. If you want to not disturb the residents but leave a message saying where post pizza is, press two. If you want to speak to someone, sorry. If you want to leave a message, please enter the i-am-not-a-telemarketer-code now...) and gentle bullying of fivemack (sorry:))

Then we went to Caraway to steal large amounts of old computer stuff, have conversation wars between people who wanted to talk about old computers (hey, a foo hub!), talk about OLD computers (only eight sprites per raster line...), talk about hypothetical computers ([key_i,1^text_i]_2j+key(i,0)U...), make fun of people we don't like, or drink shiny wines.

Now it's unfortunately late and I have to get up, so I shouldn't write fic before tomorrow...

[1] Why most porn is badly written, not why all porn must be evil, that is :) I have a post about that somewhere.

After FF a few of us went off to geek pizza; very aptly named :) Most people way underformalise "do we want pudding" and "have we all paid the right amount", we err slightly but consistently on the other side. But I assume it goes smoother without people who don't normally go.

Certainly "n garlic breads" is the correct approach in a pizza restaurant, a la "n popadums" in an indian, as opposed to "Oh, is it my turn already? Um, um, um, what's everyone else having?" As we were leaving, the waitress asked if we'd left the money, and on learning a card had been used, said "Oh *eyebrows* you normally pay with cash."

I recon that then, my life was not sitcom, but webcomic. Much conversation fitted the "Story, more story, punchline" or "Remark, witty remark, punchline" format.

I'm not sure what medium I should prefer. For instance, in sitcoms/soap-operas (it seems to be somewhere in the middle) you can be fairly sure that everyone, regardless, will have much the same standard of living. And if don't have any major changes for a month will spontaneously be run over, have an affair, be arrested, graduate, or something.

In a webcomic, pretty much anything could be happening so long as there's a stream of punchlines. I could even estimate time by them, and arrange for things to happen on or off camera. Eg. prevent plot by supplying much punchlines and visual panoramas, or vice versa.

Post-pizza we talked about spherical geometry. My mind can still cope with maths problems, but lots of the knowledge has leaked out. I do still enjoy limbering up, though; programming, even abstractly, isn't quite the same. I should do *something* mathematical, but I don't know what.

Then we played egg-cup whist. Estimation whist. [52/n] cards each, make secret bid for number of tricks expected (by placing coins under an egg cup). Score one pt per trick made, plus 10 for a correct guess. Before the round, the total number of tricks bid is announced by counting the *remaining* coins. In retrospect, it's probably not particularly better than playing either announcing-each-bid (sequentially or together) or not-announcing-at-all, depending which style you prefer.

But the 10/1 ratio seemed about right insofar as the leading players approximately tied with different numbers of correct guesses. I did badly, but I enjoyed it I think with practice I can do that sort of game.

And then I can be a game webcomic, a la Order of the Stick or Absurd Notions, which would be cool!