a few of this year's #xmasgames

The remote control for the telly hasn't featured very much over the whole festive season. Board games have certainly made a showing, including up-to-the minute topical questions from Trivial Pursuit's gambling version and a couple of vintage appearances from that game that involves uranium mining in Peru and Moon shots. That's the game where you have to balance happiness, fame and money to win according to your own secret formula.

Then there is Stockbroker, complete with its couple of specially developed extra £10 million pound banknotes because some of us get so good at the wheeler-dealering.

And, of course, there are the silly games, whether it's racing to dress one another in newspaper or clockwork snail racing. More here

Festive tidings to all.

remembering to use Boom on new macs

I'm sorting out and simplifying my various technology. I notice today's New Yorker cartoon says "Everything is charged!" - which I still consider to be an imaginary state.

A current dilemma now is how best to simplify music collections. Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, actual CDs and vinyl. I'll start with something simpler - the sound replay. For many years I've used Boom as a sound enhancer on the various Macs, but I've only recently noticed Boom 2, which I assumed was a bit of a cash-in and ignored.

Oops. Wrong. It's a very handy compressor/equaliser wth multiple presets and makes a remarkable improvement to casual listening via whatever device is to hand.

That was easy. One sound control now does everything very well and is making Regina Spektor sound perfectly wonderful.

Santa speed calculations, NORAD tracking and links to Xmas games

Time for this year's Santa Calculations, which I first published back in 2006 and then updated in 2010. This year I'm still using 7 billion as the world population because the cocktails are already at work.

Firstly, here's the link to the Santa tracking system created by NORAD.

For those of you who are more interested in the technology of Santa, NORAD's FAQs provide the following:

I've again used the Joel Potischman and Bruce Handy calculations as the basis for the speed calculations, with my own adaptations:

The most notable adjustments applied are:

- Santa delivers no gifts to naughty children (not even coal)
- Naughty to nice ratio is 1:9
- As confirmed by NORAD, one Santa distributes all of the gifts.
- There is only one family per household.
- Santa bypasses non Santa belief system houses.
- Reindeer have recently eaten fresh magic acorns.


Calculation Assumptions:

- World population = 7.06 billion
- Children under 18 = 2.353 billion (Hmm may be higher)
- Global Santa based belief systems: 33%
- Max children requiring delivery therefore 784 million
- Children per household: 3.5 (may seem high?)
- Number of households requiring distribution 224 million
- Naughty to nice factor applied but not many all naughty households
- Remove all naughty households (25% 0f 10%) = 5.6 million
- Eastern orthodox using Jan 5 instead of Dec 25 = 16 Million
- Target Households = 202 million on Dec 25
- Estimated child bed time 21:00 (9pm) with 7 hours sleep.

(child sleep duration on Dec 24 may also require revision)

Gives circa 31 hours (24+7) for all deliveries
Time is 1860 mins or 111,600 seconds

Average number of homes to visit per second = circa 1810.
So average delivery per household is 552 milliseconds, which is why Santa normally appears a bit blurry (I previously thought it was the sherry)

Land surface minus Antarctica is around 79 million square miles. Distribute destinations evenly = 0.7 miles between households creating a total distance of circa 110 million miles.

So 110 million miles in 31 hours = 3.6 million miles an hour or circa 1000 miles per second or Mach 4770 at a linear speed.

This explains Rudolph's red nose because of air resistance creating around 20 quintillion Joules of energy per second, which would convert a non reindeer nose to charcoal at such energy levels. I think the acceleration and deceleration per household may also need some examination.

Luckily Santa has lots of special powers so these mere physics facts are no problem to such a superhero.

rashbre year summary in 4 minutes

2016 Year End from rashbre central on Vimeo.

Yep, its the hurriedly boshed drag and drop year end video. rashbre 2016 in 4 minutes.

James and the Giant Peach

We managed to get along to see James and the Giant Peach over the Christmas period, at Northern Stage. Whilst not strictly a pantomime, it still features a couple of tyrannical aunts and some crocodile tongues, and is suitably bonkers in the way of Roald Dahl.

One of the moves in child fiction is to give the young characters freedom to act and Dahl does this by killing off the parents during an unfortunate shopping expedition, when they are trampled by a rhinoceros.

This was a lavish and high energy production, delivered in the round, and we happened to have some front row seats by the stage which felt almost like being part of the action.

There were many children at the perforce, and they all seemed to know the various cues to participate in different parts of the action. suddenly, when the giant peach was floating in the sea, we were treated to about half the packed audience donning shark fin hats. I would have too, but I didn't get the memo.

Further along there were some immersive underwater scenes, with bubbles and puppetry. All of the staging worked very well. And then the cast themselves. Full of energy, encouraging the audience, most of them playing multiple instruments throughout the action packed show.

Great fun.

a loud bang

There was a loud bang as we drove around the M25.

I was already about to pull from Lane 2 into Lane 1, ready for an upcoming junction.

Yes, a high speed blowout of a front tyre. I remembered that thing about not braking but instead letting the car slow down as I indicated my way onto the hard shoulder. Also about parking diagonally with the wheels facing away from the traffic, so that I could get out of the driver door onto the hard shoulder instead of towards oncoming 70 mph traffic.

Hazard lights and all other lights on. Check for a safe place to stand behind the barrier.

I looked at the dead tyre. Behind it was a piece of wood with some nails. It may have been coincidence. High speed blowouts are usually caused by under inflation, kerbing the tyre or some catastrophic damage. I suspect the last case.

The tyre was well and truly popped. Time to call the AA and the very nice rescuer was along speedily to fix everything. Space saver tyre from the boot, torque wrench, correct inflation. And then we were back on our way at a maximum speed of 50 mph.

Later I was along at the tyre place and they read out the treads from my tyres. All six and seven millimetre, so plenty left, well above the three millimetre that I usually consider minimum.

Did I want to see the old tyre? Not really, although I'm pleased it was premium and kept me in a straight line.

shard of light

Up the Shard for a jolly celebration, before the start of the complicated logistics around the festive season.

It is always fun to look out across London, even if this occasion initially included some of the now seldom spotted London fog.

There's a fair amount of mileage involved over the next few days and I'm sure there will be plenty of twinkly lights.

2016 cycling target achieved - now for the cakes

I reckon it's safe to say that the mince pies will kick in now and I should declare my mileage target for 2016 cycling as a modest victory. 4,200 miles is respectable and hits my 'Gold' target for the year. I set 2000 miles as Bronze, 3000 Silver, 4000 Gold and *ahem* 5000 Platinum. Maybe next year?

Garmin says I've clocked 127,000 calories to achieve this.

Cakes all round before I hit reset and start all over again.

terminal velocity of snowflakes @livetheatre

I managed to get one of the nowadays rare tickets for Nina Berry's 'The Terminal Velocity of Snowflakes', performed in the Studio at the ever groovy Live Theatre.

It's a two-hander, magically performed by Dean Bone and Heather Carroll, using Nina's crisp and sparkling dialogue.

The story starts simply enough, with a glancing snowy encounter in Heaton Park, and progresses through the lives of the two characters, both separately and intertwined.

There's an underpinning idea of time's arrow and the adventure laden descent of individual of snowflakes. No wonder they all look different. It creates a simple and memorable life-lesson as the story unfolds, as well as the idea of starts, hope and the different ways that things can turn out.

That's not to say it's all warm and cuddly, there's some hard edges and audience tears as the story progresses.

As a studio sized production it is also very strong, with a stylish clean looking set design able to evoke snow, sunshine as well as the trippier moments of the narrative. Similarly the choice of music and the soundscape helps create an altogether well-rounded production.

malcontent at the mall

A trip to the mall on Sunday. The big stores don't open until midday, although the smaller ones are open from 10am. We drove through sleepy London streets and parked ahead of many other shoppers, although by the time we returned to the car the surrounding car park had filled.

I discovered a few of the reasons for a decline in walk-in shopping.

The malls have long taken a kind of Las Vegas approach to the internals of the individual stores. Walk around a casino in Vegas and it's impossible to see daylight or the exits. A deliberate design to keep you there longer. In general the mall stores adopt a similar approach, except they don't serve free beverages.

Keep em guessing about where the checkout is. A stupid idea, which this weekend cost D*******s some sales created by the frustration of having signage pointing to non-existent checkouts.

Don't put staff in areas where there might be questions. Another large store favourite. I did see a few personal shopper types being escorted around, but they would have had a somewhat grander budget.

Display goods in the windows which are out of stock. The objective is to get people inside, right?

For clothing, include long racks of clothes with a 'From' labelling on the head of the rack. Ensure one item remains on that rack at the stated price, but boost the price on all the other items.

The above methods are laughingly called retail science, but the ironically named Gruen Transfer and similar tricks don't seem that far removed from snake oil sales.

I could go on, but I think I'll have a coffee and then hit online shopping.

lifestream (anywhen)

Anywhen* I look at twitter nowadays I start to see the first claimants of the '10 years and counting' tweeters. The early adopters with low serial number accounts.

And opinion is divided as we see their reminiscences of the altogether simpler times, 140 characters, no emojis, nothing fancy. A limited audience and maybe 50 followers apiece and that specially delayed refresh time in the early days.

I still follow some of those early day twitterers, before the days of the managed hashtag, mute, advertising, GIFs and the progressive incursion of noise to the feed.

I recently sat in the Turbine Hall and looked at the installed screens, which are part of Phillipe Parreno's current work. An initial simplicity as I tuned in. I could sense alien spaceships, jet aircraft landing, a clicking language, some kind of industrial mayhem, water and birdsong. The sound and light scape ebbed and flowed. You really do have to be there.

I'm told that the room at the far end of the hall contains the science that makes it all happen. Sound and vision driven from a series of microphones and probes around the building, plus a life force that filters what we see manipulated by a living container of yeast.

Like many, I dallied awhile, but didn't feel the need to break open a laptop or smartphone to distract me from the experience. Others had more complex life streams and would be tapping away on virtual keyboards in the midst of the experience, tweet-echoes diminishing their attention towards the installation.

I, like many others, was caught in the moment and wonder of this vast and curious installation.

Anywhen is a South West of England expression. Perhaps I should move there?

in which i go #konmari with the book line

I've been going through that tidying thing, with yet another skip about to depart from outside the house. Each one takes away another 6 cu meters of stuff and I'm now just around the point where something like the Kon-Mari method becomes practical.

I'm struck by the delightful Marie Kondo approach to tidying, which fundamentally involves only keeping things that spark joy. An obvious early part of the method is to discard things.

Yep. Hence the skip(s).

Then to work through various categories for tidying, in a specific order. That's about where I am now, although there's another part that says put all of a certain category together in one place. Okay. Could be difficult because of the sometimes haphazard nature of the prior 'filing system'.

My modest success so far has been to remove many items from indoors, hence the overflowing garage.

However, I could, with a little bit of re-arrangement, re-park a car in there now. I won't though, because I need the floorspace for 'sorting'.

Maybe I should get one of those hats?

Although, come to think of it, that'd only bring a short term spark of joy.

And that brings me to books. For some years now I've gone mainly digital with books. That's except for gifts or books requiring obvious pictures or diagrams. The Kindle works well for me and the ability to swap between devices like Kindle to iPhone to MacBook, creates a great flexibility, with the Kindle giving a pretty good reading experience as well as an ability to change typeface when the going gets tough.

So what to do with the thousands of real books? I decided that most can go. A few have a special history (spark joy), some are immensely practical and used, but many of the rest have already made their way to the local charity shops. I tried using a couple of those recycling points for books. One was completely full and the other only allowed books to be posted in about two at a time. Perhaps a sign of the times?

I can understand the TV cliché of ostensibly learned people sitting in front of big bookcases, but the digital native in me doesn't operate like that.

By the time I've stored, say, 1000 books, that's a lot of space consumed with paper.

I had several ex-indoor bookcases in the garage filled to the brim with stuff, but in the end decided it was better to also add the shelving to the skip.

Curation over quantity. Sparking the Joy.