Cake!

Tonight we went to a Scouting dinner and cake auction. Our Scout leaders do a really good job with this. The food is donated by a local Italian restaurant (a good one, too) and they don't just auction cakes. In the line up for items to be auctioned was a repelling lesson, car washes by the scouts and service time by the scouts. The cakes and other items go from $10 to $150!

Well, I decided I would make a cake. I wanted to make a kitty litter cake, but I could not find a cheap, basic kitty litter box. So I made a normal cake...



Props to you if you recognize the symbol. (If you need a clue, hover your mouse over the image, a little text box should pop up.) My target audience immediately recognized it and were duly impressed, so I was pleased. I was hoping it'd go for more, but $15 was what it went for.

Last year, we failed to jump in early and get anything... not a big deal. But this time we got a black forest chocolate cake for $15! We got lucky :)

Geek topic of the day: Numbering Systems.

As you may or may not know, there are many ways to count. Many of you have heard of binary, decimal and hexadecimal (sometimes shortened to “hex”). Each of these are ways to represent a value. For example, if we have eleven apples, we can say we have 11d, 0xB, or 1011b apples. If the numbering system is understood between both parties, it could be written as 11, B, or 1011. Obviously, I have these numbers in the order of decimal, hexadecimal, and binary.

There are many ways to represent a number and the three I mentioned aren’t the only ones. If you want base5, your numbers are 0,1,2,3,4, or [0..4]. The number 8d would be 13 in base5. The number 54d in base 33 [0..9,A..W] would be 1L. Obviously, you have to define what your characters represent with numbers from another base. (In this case, A = 10d, L = 21d and W = 32d. 10 = 33d, 1W = 65d, 20 = 66d, and so on.)

Anyway, here is the reason this came up in my mind. There is an easy program which was needed at work. So they hacked out a simple VB (Visual Basic) script to get the necessary information. I would have preferred a “real” language which is also easy to program (such as C#). This would have the advantage of being fewer lines of code, not as bloated (still bloated), and can be compiled to an executable file (.exe).

Of course, I like to make things difficult while making it easy for others. I thought, why not do this in assembly language? It will be ultra fast and small and not be dependent on other systems (such as dotNET). So I found www.asmcommunity.net. It is a resource for people wanting to learn assembly language. The second chapter in their book is “Number Systems”

Here’s the wrap-up. The second to last sentence of their section on Base (what I explained above) is “Base-0 does not exist and you cannot do much with base-1.” Base 1 is easy, there is only one number – 0, if you will. Or 1. It doesn’t matter, there is only one character to represent the entire numbering system and there is nothing or that character – that’s it). In base 1, you could even make your only value, your only digit, Ψ.

This got me thinking about base 0, though. Base 0 has no values. It will have no characters. It is nothing – not even 0. It’s what happens when you divide by 0 – you can’t (excluding 0/0 which is ∞).
This base system is really, completely useless… except to explain it like I have here.

Surprisingly, my little thought process here is not at all off, in fact it is quite on. Here is a post by someone else who has put in a lot more thought on off-beat numbering systems (a system based on pi, e, or i?!) . Scroll down a bit, he calls Base 0 “truly worthless” where I said “completely useless”. Funny.

On dwheeler’s closing remark about base 0 potentially representing all numbers (ie. 0/0), I disagree. A base 0 system has no characters to represent it. It is nothing (which is the same as not nothing, that is – doesn’t exist).

To close this up, enjoy two (10b) videos by They Might Be Giants which do a surprising good job of explaining ZERO and ONE

Jeff the Handyman

So I got a little inspired today and decided I would fix one of our two toilets that need fixing. We only have two toilets, by the way. Anyway, it was an adventure for a couple of reasons - the fix was relatively easy.

The toilet I fixed was leaking out the handle. Yea, that's weird. We figured out it was because when we flushed it, the cap on the intake shaft was probably clogged. Sure, I could have cleaned that, and I tried to figure out how to get to the dirty parts, but I decided after having done some research that it may be just as well to replace the thing. The other toilet, we have to hold the handle down to get it to flush properly. Yes, I could also probably just adjust a screw on the thing, but I think it has some other problems too.

The first reason it was an adventure is because I've never done this before. I did do the first thing right - turn off the water. But the next steps were not quite as obvious to me. Fortunately, the kit that I got, the FluidMaster Water Saving Dual Flushing System, had complete uninstall and install instructions. So, I figured out which screws to remove and in proper order. After verifying I was getting everything in proper (ensuring to cut the overflow tub to proper height - note: use a dremel tool, not a hacksaw as they suggest) it was time to put the screws in.

For as expensive as this kit is, they provided everything and great instructions. This included the brass bolts, rubber washer, metal washers and nut. Unfortunately for us, our tank had 1/4" bolt holes and, apparently, the standard bolt hole for tanks is 5/16". The hole was 1/16" too tiny. I tried forcing a bolt in but ended up stripping it. So Rachel and I packed up and went shopping. After over an hour looking in both The Home Depot and Lowe's, Rachel was very tired and I found out nobody has the 1/4" bolt that is needed for this type of job.

I ended up getting a glass and tile drill bit. I was quite nervous about this because drilling into ceramic is a careful job. It also required running water through the hole while the drillbit was doing its thing otherwise it gets too hot. In any case, I was successful at creating the hole and not breaking my drill by getting water in it.

After that it was just checking to see if I had any leaks (I did and had to dismantle the tank 4 times before getting it on straight and tight enough.) Then it was fine tuning the float adjustments to maximize water saving with flushing power. So, here's to saving water and water bill costs.

The whole job took me way longer than it should have. But having never done this before, I think I did good. The other toilet should not take nearly half as long to complete. The next challenge is to remember to flush UP when a light flush is needed.

UofL's epic win against Marquette

With 6.5 minutes to go in today's UofL basketball game against Marquette, I had thrown in the towel. I'd seen this story many times before. I sent a text message to Noelle and told her it was over. Then Van Treese got a steal and dunk. Preston Knowles decided that the rim was no longer too small and started draining 3-pointers and I sent 4 or 5 more text messages to Noelle (because she was at a party and would be interested in these turn of events.) As it turns out, the response I got (That's nice, but UK is better) was not really what I expected from her. I was sending these messages to my nephew, Austin. Oops. So, instead, I called and told Noelle the final events of the game. What was it? With 12.2 seconds left, UofL's Preston Knowles got the ball, drove the lane, jumped to shoot; but, being triple defended, dished the ball to an open Kyle Kuric who scored a ring around the basket. UofL leads by 1, 71-70, with 4.0 seconds left. Marquette failed to score and UofL capped, what columnists are writing, a furious win.

Coach Pitino, in his post-game interview, called it a top 5 comeback win. Of course, we all know about UK's epic win over LSU in 1994. UK was down by 31 points with 16 minutes left in the game. UK turned on their A-game and outscored the Tigers 62-27 to win the game 99-95.

This got me thinking. UK's win is epic. It is still talked about in Kentucky. But how do these two games compare? Coach Pitino gets to notch his cap with another epic comeback win, sure, but if we analyze the numbers which is the greater comeback? UK allowed LSU to score 27 points in the final 16 minutes, UofL held Marquette to 7 points in the final 5. minutes. That's 1 point every 35.6 seconds in UK v LSU compared to 1 point every 55.7 seconds in the UofL v Marq. Advantage UofL defense. On offense, UK scored 62 points in the final 16 minutes, or 1 point every 15.5 seconds. UofL scored 24 points in the final 5.2 minutes, or 1 point every 14.8 seconds. Advantage UofL offense. (Originally, I started counting at 6.5 minutes with Van Treese's steal and UofL scoring 26 points. That's 1 point every 15 seconds. But UofL was still down 18 with 5.2 minutes left.)

In other areas, LSU lost their point guard and missed free throws. Marquette had UofL in foul trouble the whole game, but couldn't capitalize on it during the end. They also missed an important free throw series, scoring 1 of 2. I give the advantage to UofL on this, they were in foul trouble and were battling the full force of Marquette.

In both cases, the game came down to the last seconds. LSU made an errant baseball type inbound pass that was picked off and UofL was able to trouble Marquette's lane running shooter enough that his shot was short. Both of these games were won by the same coach using similar tactics: pounding defense and tenacious pressing. It helped that the players started knocking down shots.

Being down by 31 points with 16 minutes left is usually a time when a coach or team throws in the towel and says, "Here's a practice game, let's make the best of it," UK didn't do that. Being down 18 points with 6.5 minutes left caused a large number of UofL fans to head to the door.

UK's 1994 win over LSU is totally epic, but I think Pitino is right, today's UofL win over Marquette should stand as a top 5 comeback win in NCAA Men's Basketball - it may even be a bigger win than the UK game. The raw analytical numbers bear it out.

Christmas Light Hero

Some people have too much time and or money... But sometimes they create Epic Wins!