Things

 

Breaking Cat News - Dish Soap
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How could you confuse dish soap with dishwasher soap? I have to admit I did try using liquid dish soap in a dishwasher once upon a time and the results were just like those depicted in the comic. I knew what I was doing though. I was just hoping that it would work because I was out of dishwasher soap and didn't want to run to the store to get more.

There is a woman singing a song on the radio these days wherein she says something to the effect that she 'isn't careful with things'. (I don't know who sings it.) This just reminds me that the ability to deal with things varies greatly among people and not everyone is good at it. Strikes me as weird, but then I'm a thing kind of guy. Likewise I can't understand why some people are so fascinated with every nuance of people's behavior.

Demokratia

Aleta Demokratia

From Prince Valiant in this morning's Oregonian. Given that the whole world seems to be pumped up about the coming US Presidential election, I thought I would chip in my two cents, or rather Aleta's.

I've been reading Prince Valiant for as long as I can remember and I am still not sure where the Misty Isles are. Sometimes I think the British Isles, and sometimes I think the eastern Mediterranean.

I've been kind of dragging the last week, but I seem to be doing better. I finished today's Jumble in only a couple of minutes. The solution to every word popped into my mind almost immediately, and deciphering the final phrase was almost as quick. This was unexpected because I have several Sunday Jumble's I have saved to work on later because I haven't been able to solve them yet.

Cube Puzzle Part 2

Recursion

I modified the program so it now finds all 335 solutions. It runs quite a bit longer now, almost 15 hours. I also uploaded a text file that illustrates all how all the transformations are done to place a piece in the cube.

The program made 41 billion comparisons, which is a bunch, but a far cry from the umpteen zillion I expected. Since the 10th root of 41 billion is only about 11, I'm thinking most searches must have reached the end of their list early on.

The program starts with the first piece placed in one of it's twelve possible positions. The first piece has only 12 possible positions as all of the other positions (276) are simply rotations of one kind or another.

We are going to test each of these against all 288 possible positions for the 2nd piece. Some of these tests will fail, indicating the pieces would collide, but most will pass. Of those that pass, we will test all 288 positions for the 3rd piece. More tests will fail at this level and fewer will pass. There will be 335 searches that will go through all of possible positions at all levels, but that only amounts to 

(12 + (3*96)*4 + (4*96)*5) = 3084

I suppose I could track how deep each search goes and perhaps a graph of the averages might give some insight, but I expect it's some kind of exponential curve. Besides, I got my solution, put the puzzle together and shipped it off to my niece. We shall see what she does with it.

Part 1 here.

Toaster Repair

 

Toaster Innards

Our toaster suffered a malfunction a couple of weeks (months?) ago. One of the arms that lift the bread up after it's done toasting became uneven which made retrieving your toast a little tricky. I was ready to order a new one, but I thought I would see if I could fix it. I mean, I can't break it if it's already broken. I sat down to fix it on Friday, and, surprise, surprise, I was successful. The mechanical lift parts are the flimsiest bits of gimcrack you can imagine, but being as their job is to lift two pieces of bread I don't suppose you need anything stronger. And we have had it for a long time, ten years at least. So, good enough. 

The toaster has all the working bits at one end. The lift arms are cantilevered from a vertical carriage. The problem was that the lift arms are attached to the carriage by little metal tabs less than an eighth of an inch square. These are inserted in slots in the carriage and then twisted to hold them in place. One of the upper tabs had not been twisted enough and had worked loose allowing the arm to droop. So the actual repair was easy enough, it consisted of inserting the wayward tab back into the slot and giving it a twist with a pair of pliers.

Toaster Bits

Getting there, by which I mean getting the cover off, was a bit of a chore. There were six screws in the bottom. Two of them were concealed by little rubber feet that were about a half inch long and shoved into half inch deep holes. The awl on my Swiss Army Knife got them out. Spit got them back in.

There were also two screws securing the power cord. I took them out because I have the machine upside down and I'm taking out screws. They look almost identical to the screws holding the case together, but they are not. Found that out when I am putting them back in and the power code screw won't tighten up. Stupid, over engineered gimcrack.

KitchenAid Toaster

It's a KitchenAid. I don't particularly like it. It's one of these modern safety toasters that won't burn you but takes forever and a day to deliver your toast. Someday I'm going to get one of those oxy-acetylene powered toasters that will serve up your toast in milliseconds.

Spider

Spider

Changed out the windshield wipers on the cars yesterday and once again I discovered that the generic windshield wiper bought by-the-numbers from the holy book of windshield wiper fitments for the rear glass on the Mitsubishi doesn't. But while I was there remembering that - oh yeah, I've been here before - I spotted this little guy. He has some orange flecks on his legs. I like spiders, generally speaking. They are very capable and not the least annoying, other than causing an occasional freak out by the women-folk.

Diamond Dream

Pink Brown Diamond

Ross & I are watching some PBS drama about merry olde. An upper class victorian dude is at a jeweler's buying a dark brown colored diamond for his beloved. He's picked out the gem (we never actually get a good look at it, it's just a small dot on the screen) and agreed to a price of around $5K (though units are not mentioned either. Could be pounds.) He and the clerk then go through some rigamarole negotiating when it can be delivered (it can't possibly be ready today) and where it is to be delivered (some specific address, presumably his house). All terms satisfactorily completed, dude goes out the door, and as he does he is suddenly struck by the idea that $5K is entirely too much money to pay for a bauble, so he turns and goes back in. He starts to talk to the clerk but is interrupted by a call on his mobile phone. He's talking about stock market trades to someone in his office, a partner or maybe his broker. The transactions they are talking about are like a hundred thousand dollars. I turn to Ross and say something to the effect that he's being kind of a cheapskate and Ross replies 'what do you expect from some upper class twit'? Then I woke up.

Desolation Island by Patrick O'Brian

I finished re-reading Desolation Island by Patrick O'Brian. During an ill-fated cruise to Australia, Jack runs afoul of a Dutch man-of-war, much larger than he is, who sets after him. Discretion being the better part of valor, Jack flees south into an Antarctic storm. Think The Perfect Storm and you have a pretty good idea of the conditions. When a lucky shot of Jack's takes out the Dutchman's foremast, the Dutch ship slews sideways, is capsized by a giant wave and is lost. Boom. Just like that.

I'm thinking that is a hell of an event. Something like that would be a capital subject for a painting, so I go looking for one. 

Loss of HMS Blenheim and HMS Java in a hurricane - Thomas Buttersworth

I didn't find much. Two large British warships, the HMS Blenheim and the HMS Java were lost in a hurricane in the Southern Indian Ocean in 1807. This is closest event I could find to the fictional one in the book. It takes place in the same part of the world, the two ships are of similar size to the ones in the story, and a hurricane sounds similar to the conditions our heroes encounter.

We have one painting of the event (above), but I don't think it portrays the situation very well. I suspect that not many first class painters experienced a hurricane on board a ship.

This scene from Black Sails does a better job.

into the storm | Black Sails 3.01-3.02 storm tribute
alameli
After surviving the storm and an encounter with an iceberg, our heroes wind up on Desolation Island where they rest, recover and repair their ship.

Dutch whalers near Spitsbergen - Abraham_Storck, 1690

An American whaler stops by and lends them some assistance. Though this painting is of a place on the other side of the world, I think it gives us a good picture of the situation. Except for the whale. There is no whale in the harbor at Desolation Island.