Archive for the ‘fun stuff’ Category
Guilty as charged
Posted on: July 3, 2009
- In: fun stuff | links
- 2 Comments
The chicken or the egg?
Posted on: December 13, 2008
- In: fun stuff | ricky gervais | video
- 4 Comments
Ricky Gervais answers this and a lot more unlikely questions. Genius.
HT: Blue Fish
Cryptic Crossword Solver
Posted on: December 6, 2008
- In: crosswords | fun stuff | links
- 2 Comments
Have you always wanted to understand how cryptic crosswords work? Thought it would be cool but never got further than the first incomprehensible clue?
Never fear! The answer is at hand. Jam Cary is providing a handy guide to solving cryptic crosswords, using the Daily Telegraph crosswords as a starting point. He shows you the basic kinds of clue and walks you through a few examples every day as well as giving some hints for other clues. You can ask questions in the comments, too, if you’re really stuck.
- In: books | christmas present | fun stuff | links
- 2 Comments
Last week I had the pleasure and privilege of proofreading a novel written by the very talented James Cary. It was funny, intriguing, tender and a jolly good read. How can you not love a novel with a cryptic crossword to solve in the middle of it?
In Jam’s words:
It’s about a professional crossword setter who discovers some worrying things about his grandfather. It’s also about D-Day, security leaks, codewords, Bletchley Park and chess. Like Robert Harris. But with jokes. It is a quintessentially British comedy thriller.
The jokes are good – I laughed out loud more than once. The history is pretty good too – I’m no expert but it feels like Jam knows his stuff. And the mystery is convoluted enough to keep interest right to the end.
So, now that you’ve worked out how many copies of this brilliant novel you’ll need, where can you get hold of it?
It’s all available here. If you can solve the crossword clues, you can download each section of the manuscript in pdf form and print it out yourself. Or you can wait a couple of days and then order a professionally printed copy from Lulu. I’ll definitely be getting a copy for my dad.
- In: fun stuff | links
- 4 Comments
Go here for a list of the Top Ten UK Female Christian Bloggers*. Now, technically, I’m second. :( But since there’s more than one of them writing Titus2Talk, I shall split their ranking between all 4 of them and so that makes me the winner!! I’d like to thank you all…
*There is a worryingly large number of modifiers in this title. I can’t help wondering exactly how many few blogs are actually eligible for the award.
The Italian Job
Posted on: November 1, 2008
- In: fun stuff | italian job | italian job solution | links | mechanics
- 7 Comments
So, the Royal Society of Chemistry (who, by the way, have excellent initials) are looking for a solution to the problem at the end of the Italian Job.
Um, isn’t this pretty easy? The person in the middle first needs to go and join his mates. Then, once the bus (Is it a bus or a lorry? Never seen the film) is stable, they need to add more weight to that end of the bus. Even small amounts of earth and pebbles will make a difference, since they are at a fair distance from the pivot and since the vehicle is clearly almost stable without. Eventually they’ll have added enough to allow one person to get off the bus and go and find heavier rocks. And soon there will be enough to keep the bus stable while one person goes to the other end and brings the gold back. Once they’ve brought one chunk (ingot? bar? Haven’t seen the film, dunno.) back, the balance will have shifted sufficiently that there will be no difficulty with the rest.
Things I have been making
Posted on: October 28, 2008
- In: crafts | fun stuff | maths
- 3 Comments
The hyperbolic plane:
A Möbius strip:
And a Klein flask:
My answers
Posted on: June 7, 2008
- In: books | fun stuff | links
- 11 Comments
David Field has a little odd-one-out quiz.
The answer is clearly (a) since the other two might actually be worth the time taken to read them. Nor are they massively overrated nonsense.
Here’s a good idea…
Posted on: June 6, 2008
…for a new game to play on camp this summer. I call it ‘Paparazzi Photo Run’. Send the kids out with disposable cameras to take pictures of local celebrities. Points scored according to celebrity status:
10 for an Olympic yachtsman
15 for a Ken Russell
3,000,000 for a Johnny Depp.
According to today’s Telegraph they should all be there.
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