The Rodeo

Watch Andy McKee.

RodeoClown: that is all.

As of right now, I am the first result in a search for Ian Tyrrell, huzzah!

Finally I have overtaken Prof. Ian Tyrrell at UNSW, who may or may not be the author of a series of historical books, and who seems to dominate the rest of the result page.

Of course, google is pretty fickle, so I may only rule the results of my ego-search for a few moments, but I will remember this moment for the rest of my life at least a day or so.

RodeoClown: enjoying it while it lasts [for some value of 'it'].

Anything else you see today can’t touch this. MC Hammer blog.

RodeoClown: happy pants.

I’m on the train to work and I just realised that a spider is spinning a web between my head and my bag.

Does that mean I sit too still?

Can anyone provide a great pun for me? I’ve got nothing.

RodoClown: it was a little spider.

I’ve been published in a magazine.

You can read it for free here.
Or you could get a paper version, of which I have four remaining on my desk (they are much nicer to read than PDF files).

Tell me what you think, my article is right near the back, ‘Unfinished Tales’.

I can’t remember if I named it or not.

RodeoClown: always hangs around.

For the last nine months, Jennifer has been harbouring a growing child of indeterminate sex.
Quantum mechanics seems to suggest that as long as we did not check the gender of this small person, he or she would actually have both, or neither, gender-specific equipment sets. At the moment of birth however, the quantum wave function would collapse, causing one of the states to become apparent.

Suffice it to say, at 7:36pm last night (the 15th of February 2008), it collapsed well and truly, leaving me the ecstatic father of a new baby girl!

Aravis Rose Tyrrell, whether as a result of wave function collapse, quantum decoherence, or just God deciding it was well and truly time, arrived safe and sound at Nepean Private Hospital, and readily attached herself to the nearest source of colostorum, which just happened to belong to my aforementioned wife. Both of them are doing well.

See how good she looks!

You can see more photos and stats here.

RodeoClown: father of the heisenbub!

Baby #2 is no longer a baby. But he is still 2.
2 awesome that is!

Happy birthday Jester!

RodeoClown: also fighting the man. But not too much.

RodeoClown: is even more freaked out by crows than he was before watching this.

Huzzah!

As of last night, I now weigh somewhere just south of 94 kilograms. That’s 10 kilos less than my record weight of 104 (I know you can do the maths, but it’s nice to see lots of numbers here). I’ve had to change the hole in my belt that I use, and my shirts are all fitting better.

I know you are all thinking “so, Ian, what’s the secret to your success?”

So as not to disappoint, I give you the four things I have done to drop that weight:

4. Drink water
Lots of water. I have a bottle on my desk and I drink from it constantly – then I fill it up and drink some more. I’m probably drinking about two litres of water a day. This helps me not to snack so much, and I think it flushes excess stuff out of my body at the same time.

3. Increase your exercise level
I got Wii Fit for my birthday, and have proceeded to use it infrequently*. I’ve also been walking to work from Central, rather than Wynyard (the closer station). It’s about 15 minutes longer, and (apparently) walking an extra hour per week (I only go into the office Monday to Thursday) is helping me lose weight.

2. Buy a house
Property is expensive, and the money you spend on it has to come from somewhere – in our case, we have been eating cardboard boxes, and licking the backs of stamps for dessert.

I’m lying through my teeth there – we have been eating fine, but we have been having less chocolate and smaller serves of meat, and less calories = less weight**.

1. Sandwiches
I used to take leftovers to work for lunch every day. Lately I have been taking sandwiches*** instead. Now I’m not having two main meals each day, there is a whole lot less of me.

*Maybe just thinking about using it is helping…
** I realise there is more to weight loss than your calorie intake, but it obviously has some impact.
***Peanut butter and Vegemite sandwiches. Of course.

RodeoClown: 97.76% the man he used to be

I don’t know who it was that first talked about the possibility of monkeys typing randomly on typewriters producing Hamlet entirely by chance, but it is an argument that I have often heard. “Sure it’s unlikely,” I’m told, “but given enough time and enough monkeys, it would happen.”

This argument is actually quite sound — given enough time and enough monkeys, one could eventually produce “Hamlet” by accident. The fact that it is intuitively sound is the argument’s greatest problem, because it means that people generally don’t bother checking the exact figures. This is a shame, because it is one of those rare areas of speculation where the exact figures can be calculated.

The Mathematics of Monkeys and Shakespeare,
 by The Famous Brett Watson

A fascinating explanation of why you might get the word “Ook” from an thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters, but getting “To be or not to be, that is the question”, much less the entirety of Hamlet, just ain’t going to happen.

Go read it, it makes the mathematics of unimaginably large numbers fun.

RodeoClown: is aware of the study with orangutans and computers.

They also introduce me to other people that way (and insist I do the same).

Captain Awesome: has great kids!

Today marks the end of the 2009 birthday season for the kids.
Matthias has just turned five, Jesse was three in March and Aravis one in February.

Several months ago I was blessed to see Matthias’ face as he finally got reading – it was an incredible moment, seeing him realise that those letters on the page actually held a deeper meaning. Quite probably the most amazing thing I have seen, in the space of several seconds he went from being a ‘looker’ to a ‘reader’. I hope I’m there to see the other two grasp this fundamental concept too.

Jesse has started telling us of his ‘dreams’, fantasies mixing the mundane and fantastic with improbable results. He is so much a people person, always talking, wanting cuddles and kisses and informing everyone of how much he loves them. I’ve never seen a child so good at sharing either.

Aravis has finally entered the world of walking and talking, with a record of three steps and a vocabulary of three words (dad-ad, mum-um, (ba)nana). She is the cutest kid I’ve ever seen. I am, of course, completely free from bias.

It used to feel strange lugging a single small human creature around; now I feel something missing when a single one is gone.

RodeoClown: loves his kids more than ever.

The title says it all. These two videos are fantastic, and you should watch them.

First: Kseniya Simonova wins Ukraine’s Got Talent and when you watch this, you will see why.

So, you just watched Germany conquering Ukraine in the second world war. IN SAND. I got it from The Guardian.

Second: Stand By Me. Played by a bunch of street performers around the world. Much cheerier that video 1, but just as amazing.

From Gizmodo

RodeoClown: has talent?

I just got back from lunch with Ben, who described himself in an email to me this morning as a ‘painfully handsome hobbit with a chip on his shoulder’. That description made him extremely easy to spot when he came round the corner.

We had a nice lunch, ended up having a drink and chips at Sweeney’s, and while we were talking they came round with a plate of fruit for us. That was odd.

Anyway Ben, thanks for making the trip – I hope you didn’t get fired for getting back to work late!

RodeoClown: pensive pirate.

It’s 4:25am.
Dark outside, can’t sleep.
In 5 minutes, I open Flash Builder and officially start my new job.
My workmates aren’t around – they are on a plane. No snakes.
When they land, it will still be Sunday. For them.
I’m alone in my office and it begins.

RodeoClown: do You Need A Budget?