kjp

I'm back in Brisbane tonight. Been away for work, and will be away again next week. As it's work related; it won't go up on this website; just to say that it was interesting: I look forward to next week.

On my list of things to get for a while is some luggage. I've had an email (from myself) reminding me to look at this; and some of the things to look out for:
* Sturdy
* Has wheels (2 only)
* Extendable handle thing, that can be packed away so that it doesn't protrude (preferably covered somehow)
* Lockable?
* 2 or more handles, on at least 2 sides
* Fits in a standard economy air fare luggage allowance dimensions.

Any more? hmmm.

Strange but true...

Because I sent a grand total of 1 or 2 letters per year, I don't bother having a roll of stamps / pile of envelopes that I'll just loose somewhere. So, I just get the pre-stamped envelopes that you buy at the post office for 60c.

So, anyhow, I was about to send in a form to the Organ Donar people, bought the said pre-stamped envelope, went to write on the address, and found that it is a Reply Paid.

Good work.

I suspect I'll sleep like a log tonight: I'm buggered.

Orienteering in bushland ("real" bush, not the crummy "suburban" bush) this morning - getting lost once; and coming off a track too soon meant that the Long Red course I did was a bit longer than expected...

Early afternoon - a gig (it's the Anzac season). I stuffed up my bit of the Radetzky March [Strauss]. Of course, I was playing the Solo Clarinet part. Ooops. (There was supposed to be 2 on the solo part, and 1 on the 1st part; but it ended up just 1 (me - having not done much practice...) on solo... yikes).

Hurried off to the shops to get some food; and had a meal with a friend and watched a few things. Then caught up with mumsies in Canberra. Now tired.

I have a DVD to watch - Pirates of the Caribbean. Must watch it before seeing the sequel at the pictures. Aparently... And my book that I'm reading (strange but true), on Oil stuff is really interesting. More about that when I finish it.

So it's been one month since Dad died.

I suppose things having been going ok (ok means, of course, ups and downs).

From dinner the other night and a conversation last night, I think that I went back to work too soon; I should of had a break (more than 1 day) before going back. Pretty silly of me to expect that getting back into the swing of things would help.

I'm writing some music (for clarinet, of course); about all of this. Although I can't do my ideas justice - my musical composition skills are... poor - inexperienced. Ohh well; I have to do it now; no other time. I've got a couple of themes in it down; and some ideas for the dying.

Anyhow; I think that excercise is important (duh). At the start of this week and down to Thursday afternoon - was not feeling very happy - at all. All of this stuff going throguh my head. Anyhow, after a jog on Thursday arvo; felt it a bit better. Ditto after yesterdays jog. No jog today (delibrately); but orienteering (hopefully) tomorrrow.

So, a blog reading addict pointed out this website, and wanted an explanation. So here goes. NB: Before anyone comments, yes, I, like Fido, have nerdish tendencies. There's no trick to it, just some maths.

If you take a number (well, from now on, well just consider positive integers), change the order of the digits, and take that away from the original number, the result will be evenly divisible by 9 (ie: congruent to 0, mod 9). Therefore, knowing all but one of the resultant’s digits, you can determine the missing digit.

So, looking at the first part, as an example, taking a number with digits: a, b, c and d (ie: abcd). And subtracting from it the number bdac. (We assume that bdac is smaller than abcd, otherwise swap - argument still applies).

a b c d
- b d a c

Now, doing the subtraction from right to left:
* the first digit = (d - c). However, if d < c, then we’ll add 10 to it, and take 1 away from the tens column. Let m = 1 if d < c, and then 10 is carried. m = 0 if d >= c. Thus, the first digit will be (d - c + 10*m)
* now for the second digit. Similarly, it will be (c - a), however, we may have taken 1 away from this, if m = 1 (from above). So the total will be (c - a - m). Now if this is negative, then will need to take from the next column, (let n = 1 if c < a + m - and so 10 is carried over, n = 0 otherwise). So the total for the second digit is (c - a - m + 10*n)
* Same for the third digit, with p as the variable for carrying over from the last column, the total is: (b - d - n + 10*p)
* For the last digit, there won’t be any carrying into it, maybe just out of it: (a - b - p)

So now the sum of the digits is just
= (d - c + 10m) + (c - a - m + 10n) + (b - d - n + 10p) + (a - b - p)
= (d - c + c - a + b - d + a - b) + (10m - m + 10n - n + 10p - p)
= 9(m + n + p)
As m, n, p are all 0 or 1, then the sum of the digits is divisible by 9. The order of the digits in the mixed up number do not matter, as they'll all just get subtracted off.

Now given 3 of the digits, the last can be calculated as simply the number that when added to the sum of the given digits, equals a multiple of 9. 0 is excluded as an option on the website, just so you avoid the case of: 3 4 2 0 - if 3, 4 and 2 are given, then the answer could be 0, or 9 by this algorithm.

Feel enlightened?

I’ve generalised this on a bit of paper, but can’t be bothered typing it up (especially in text only), plus my washing has just finished, so I should hang it up…

I spent today in the house (except for a brief drive to the shop to get some soup, bread and fruit). I woke up feeling pretty awful, and so had my second ever day off work sick. I spent most of the morning and early afternoon (until 3pm or so) in bed. Hopefully haven't slept too much during the day (as otherwise sleep may be difficult tonight?).

I think that I should be ok tomorrow. (Fingers crossed).

My standard response to people (when they ask how are you going after dad dying), is "OK, but sometimes pretty bad - just depends on what random thoughts are floating through my head". Or something like that. I think that this is wrong - I'm not OK, but I don't know what I can do about it to make anything better (other than building a time machine and finding a cure). It's a problem (like for a bit of yesterday afternoon) when I can't concentrate on stuff enough.

Cleaning up / out stuff apparently has it's benefits: in the form of christmas moolah from B.S. (they're her initials).

Better than a poke in the eye.

For a little while (since I've gotten back, I think), my computer has been running very hot - once when the CPU was 100% for a while, it reached it's warning limit, and beeped incessantly telling me to turn it off and let it cool down. Hot. Too hot.

Anyhow, I investigated, and found one of my case fans wasn’t whirring... Problem. After taking the cable out and back in, it was working again. So just had gotten bumped or something.

I took a 10 second exposure. CPU fan is busy spinning away in a blur, case fan is still.

For a few times in a row, I've woken up cold. Time to get out the doona? Apparently (13.7 degC at 0600) it was a few degrees cooler than the average minimum for April. Trivia.

125g butter
100g dark cooking chocolate
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup plain flour
1 cup chopped walnuts

1/ Melt butter and chocolate (stir them together) in saucepan over low heat
2/ When mixed and melted, remove from heat and leave to cool
3/ Mix together sugar and eggs and stir in the cooled chocolate and butter mixture
4/ Add flour
5/ Add chopped walnuts
6/ Pour into well greased 20cm square cake tin
7/ Bake in moderate oven 180 degrees Celcius for 30 minutes
8/ Allow to cool, cut into squares

375g zucchini - grated
1 large onion - chopped
3 rashers of bacon - chopped
2 cups (125 g) of cheddar cheese - grated
1 cup self-raising flour
1/2 cup oil
5 eggs (both yoke and white) - beaten a little
Salt and pepper (to taste)

1/ Set oven to moderate (175 degrees Celcius)
2/ Prepare and combine ingrediants
3/ Pour mixture into tin (about 15 cm x 30 cm)
4/ Bake for 30 to 40 minutes

The classic Zucchini Slice recipe from mum.

I have a new category - Cooking - to put all sorts of random stuff relating to the kitchen. The older cooking for engineers post is in this category. Several recipes that I'm in fear of loosing (I've lost my chocolate brownie recipe several times) will be put up here.

Yummy.

In January (I think), I joined up to get private health insurance for a few reasons.

Anyhow, I thought that it was a bit average the "change" (increase) my premium after just a couple of months.

Grumble.

Just to let people know, I've put myself onto the Australian Organ Donor Register. Apparently, just ticking the box in your driver's license renewal form is ok (already done this), but signing up on the national list is helpful as well.

I've been sorting stuff out this morning: cleaning up my piles of papers from earlier this year, late last year, and a few things pre-China. This is instead of a swim / surf at the apparently really flat (well today at least) coast.

I've changed some of the categories around, adding one called JPBT. Standing for JP Brain Tumour, obviously. I haven't put some of the older entries that are in "Life" in this new category. That's on my job list. Because it's an important category, it gets a button at the top of each page. Like China, and probably in the future "South America".

So expect a few more posts up here of random stuff that I'm cleaning off my to do list.