Tangential Ramblings

Movie websites annoy the shit out of me. Not the sites themselves, but their URLs. I rarely (never) visit them, preferring to get any such data from IMDB.

A Google search for "themovie" brings back pages from the following sites as the top five results:

• www.madagascar-themovie.com/
• www.guysandballs-themovie.com/
• www.simpsonsmovie.com/
• 300themovie.info/
• zeitgeistmovie.com/

The list goes on, no doubt through Google's 493,000 (approximate) results. Basically, when a movie creates an associated movie, they generally strap "themovie" on to the end of the movie's name, possibly with a preceding hyphen, then add whichever domain extension that's still available.

Would it not be better for one of the big movie companies (or even an independent body) to consolidate all of its campaign sites (for that's essentially what they are) under a single URL (themovie.com, for example), each movie taking its own sub-domain? 300.themovie.com, simpsons.themovie.com etc.?

As well as centralising control for the seemingly endless proliferation, it would allow a more logical experience for the end user.

There is a 3G coldspot across the whole of Vauxhall Bridge and all the way up Millbank. The heat returns just before Parliament.

Can make for a very annoying 87 bus journey.

Instead of measuring queue time at Alton Towers and the Post Office, for example, in hours and minutes, they should do so in Sudokus. My 23 minutes in the queue of the Trafalgar Square Post Office this evening were occupied completing 2.06 Sudokus. The two were the Simple and Medium ones that appear in The London Paper. The extra 0.06 was down to the first four cells being completed of the 66 empty cells of the Difficult one, upon which Cashier Number Eight was free. Given that 37 people that made up the queue on my arival, that equates to 0.056 Sudokus per person in the queue.

Update: Jon is right in his comment, something that I thought about at the time, but didn't have either the time or the inclination to allow for. Assuming the Simple Sudoku takes 50% less time than the Medium, and the Difficult one takes 50% longer, then my Medium Sudoku took an estimated 14m 28s. So I was 1.59 Medium Sudokus from the front of the queue, as opposed to my estimate of 2.06. Or else 3.18 Simples.

Over the last few months, I've started trying to access things using entirely the wrong access keys. I'll wander down my street, up towards my front door, readying my work access card to flash at the non-existent sensor. Or I'll get my house keys out on the way into my local Tube station, leaving my Oyster card safely in my pocket-clad wallet.

Quite a frustrating habit. I guess I'm getting old.

I was going to write a post about how the date on which Easter Sunday falls is calculated. But having researched it, I've decided it's way too complex; and annoyingly unscientific. So here's a link to Computus, the calculation procedure itself.

This year, it will fall on 23 March, the second earliest day possible. (It last fell on 22 March in 1818. Remember? Next time will be in 2285.) The latest it can fall is 25 April, this last happening in 1943; next time will be in 2038.

Finally, the weekday on which Easter most commonly falls is a Sunday, an outlier that is statistically significant.

I wonder if Jesus was aware of the rigmarole that people would have to follow in his wake (in the water sense of the word, of course).

In recognition of Rob's trip to Statistic Shell, I thought it timely to share a statistic of the day:

53% of Two Ronnies jokes/quips were based entirely on either a speech impediment or a homophonic misunderstanding.

I had quite a few issues with the BBC's iPlayer, so much so that I uninstalled to avoid its sapping of my intel® Centrino® Duo CPU. But if you needed a reason to install it, look no further than tonight's Horizon.

In the programme Dr. Brian Cox, whose Wikipedia entry informs me that he used to be the keyboardist in D:Ream, brings to life the beauty behind gravity along with its ongoing mystery at the sub-atomic level.

Fabulous TV.

The Snail and the Whale was the first book I bought for my daughter, and what a great book it is too. My only regret was not buying the board book, instead going for the easily-chewable paperback.

I've realised recently that I can now recite the entire book off by heart, all 695 words, or 3,450 characters. Which will be a blessing when we're out and about and she needs a story.

I am only able to recite 22 digits of pi, each being a choice of only ten, compared to 695 words, each having so many more choices. But sentence structure, coupled with the associated rhymes and the memorable storyline, make the challenge a different kettle of fish altogether. If only pi had some order to it...

I heard a promotion on the radio this morning offering a free coffee mug with every McDonald's big breakfast meal bought with a coffee. The disclaimer ran "excludes all drinks except coffee". Somewhat unnecessary double-negative, I felt.

A few things.

First of all, I'd like to know the production ratio between Bounty blue and Bounty red, the milk and dark chocolate varieties respectively. The red variety (30–50% better, in my opinion), is difficult to come by in shops, although the one at the top of my road sells it.

Secondly, I always felt slightly cheated as a child when my dad bought a Bounty (invariably blue) from the petrol station as a side dish to his petrol. I remember it being a toss-up between a Bounty and a Yorkie, a decision he made within the shop while we/I waited in the car. The Yorkie, with its seven chunks (don't get me started on their decision to take this down to six), was much more conducive to sharing (I always loved getting a chunk), particularly given my childhood hatred of the Bounty, both varieties.

Finally, I'd like to do a comparison of chocolate bar prices. I recently refused to pay 57p in a WH Smith for a Bounty, my refusal being made after the counter-scan, flummoxing the assistant somewhat. In an effort to understand WH Smith's mark-up, please could you comment with the price of the following three staple chocolate bars, together with the outlet at which they were being sold:

• Bounty (blue, standard-sized, two-part bar)
• Chunkie Crunchie (there are no varieties here)
• Mars Bar (standard)

Thank you. Feel free to respond more than once with prices from more than one outlet. If there is enough response, I'll do some spreadsheeting.

I'm not sure why, but today I remembered that I found out about Microsoft's decision to underline mis-spelt words in the New Varsity pub just off the Warwick University campus in the Summer of 1995. I was told by Amanda's fiancé. I was shocked.

I still see it as an affront, an insult to my albeit limited intelligence, an unnecessary return to school days, a similarly unnecessary ridicule of me, the author, in a world where most underlinings invoked by my installation of Word are caused by an incorrect setting of the language (usually CY: Welsh or US: American English). I still have no idea how the language is set.

I've always been thrown by the whole quote unquote thing. Not the fact that people are quoting other people—that's fine. But the fact that their closing quotation marks are always said before the quote itself. So how much of the ensuing wisdom was actually quoted? Does it ever end? Surely it would be more sensible to follow the written standard by de-quoting the quote at its conclusion rather than before it's started. Quote, it's just an idea, unquote.

We often have subtitles on our TV. It helps, particularly if the TV is on low. On tonight's prelude to the Brits on ITV, the following lyrics flashed upon our screen when some lady performed a rendition of Whitney's Count on Me.

You can c*nt on me through thick and thin...

UK TV's subtitling on the whole is impressive, but for some of the more up-to-date programming (news, award shows etc.), it seems some automated tools kick in that are far from perfect. Sometimes its results are amusing to read.

Not only does the BlackBerry sport the brightest light in the solar system with the sole exception of the Sun (this fact is yet to be proven but I'm confident of its outcome), its choice of light colours is open to confusion.

As for the former, unconfirmed fact, the green light that flashes when the BlackBerry is bereft of new mail is capable of blinding small children from 50 paces and severely compromising the sight of their parents. Particularly at night. If left face up on the bedside table, the night-time experience is much like having a 747, nay an Airbus A380 (depending on the width of your bed), land in your bedroom, such is the luminosity of its flash. Well, one wing of which at the very least. Unless you and your partner both have BlackBerrys (for that is the plural), in which case I assume it's like the entire two-winged plane coming in to land, your bed being the start of the runway. You'd have to turn them on at exactly the same time of course, to synchronise their incessant flashing.

In terms of the colour confusion, it's only when you look away. If you see the BlackBerry flashing out of the corner of your eye, a green flash (no mail) can often be mistaken for a red flash (you got mail). When I say you, I actually mean I, for I've not validated this experience with anyone else. I assume it's something to do with the whole red/green colourblindness thing, not that I am colourblind. It's just when it's right at the edge of my range of vision.

Among other things, my brother bought us six Duralex Picardie drinking glasses for Christmas which we were given today, not having managed to meet over Christmas. One of them had a chip on the rim (despite their spiel marketing them as chip-resistant), so we left them for him to exchange.

I have no idea why, but I completely forgot to look on the base of the glass that I adoringly inspected for the circled number that identifies each one. He's since confirmed by text that the glasses do indeed sport the numbers, which makes me yet more giddy about the present.

For those unaware, Duralex glasses were used to hold the water that accompanied my infant and primary school dinners. I have fond memories of them, and always checked the base of the glass to see which number I'd been given that day.

The BBC yesterday reported the Tories' claim that the number of children in schools of more than 2,000 pupils has trebled in the last ten years, the Tories linking such schools to discipline problems.

It's certainly a headline grabber, but the truth behind it is unlikely to be as significant as the headline suggests.

Having an arbitrary cut-off of 2,000 pupils defining a large school is dangerously powerful. There were 12,650 such pupils in 1997, rising to 47,540 in 2007. Such an increase could be explained by 18 schools each increasing their register by two pupils, from 1,999 to 2,001 pupils. It's doubtful that this extreme scenario is indeed what has happened, but the reality is also unlikely to be as momentous as the highlighted statistics suggest.

Yesterday, I pumped up an exercise ball that I bought my wife for Christmas. Much like leaf-sucking, it's a thankless, seemingly endless task.

The ball pumps to 75cm in diameter, a step up from the 65cm ball we had previously. (I can only measure progress by wrapping something around the ball and dividing that length by two pi. I'm figuring that it would be easier if they'd printed two dots on the ball that would be 10cm apart when the ball was pumped to the right size.)

I'm using the 15cm-long hand-pump that came with the ball. I figured that to exercise the mind while pumping, I'd work out the amount of extra air the 75cm ball would need over the 65cm ball. It turns out that the extra 10cm (15%) of diameter increases the volume by 53%. And when I'd reached a diameter of 60cm (80%), I was only half way through the pumping. Seems unjust.

In December, I received eleven marketing emails from Amazon.co.uk and twelve from Amazon.com. A total of 23 in 31 days.

Surely this transcends the line from marketing to spam, no?

My friend Rob posted his best bits of 2007, kindly crediting this blog as the best other blog. I started putting values against the same list of attributes, but the first three centred around my daughter, so I refrained from continuing for the sake of my audience's respective (needed?) stomachs' contents. Instead, I compiled what I consider to be my favourite nine posts of 2007. Here they are in no apparent order:

• How to guarantee a draw in football: the strategy McLaren should have adopted against Croatia
• Rising sea level: if the world's population jumped in the sea at the same time, what would happen?
• Happy 1000th Birthday, little blog: self-explanatory, with some detailed analysis of the first 999 posts
• Universally challenged: a witty retort from my lady wife
• Much anticipated lines in Simon & Garfunkel's Mrs. Robinson: pretty self-explanatory
• How can you miss it?: a big hole in the universe. But how big, exactly?
• Law and Order shorts: another witticism from my lady wife
• Slices of pi: the Oregon pi mystery solved
• String theory: if you tie a string tightly around the earth and then add a metre, what will happen?