Cue maniacal laugh…
16 September, 2008
Sitting on the train this morning, a younger gentleman sat across from me. He was well kept, bulky but fairly in shape, early twenties, and he had an iPod shuffle on his lapel.
In his hands, he had an old book. The pages were very coloured with age, the cover was being held on manually as he read, and the first third of the book had come unbound and was being balanced in place with his fingers.
It was such an odd contrast, (the iPod and the old book) that it stood out to me. In the daily commute I see magazines, free lite papers, and all manner of pretentious bullshit and celebrity gossip. Ray Bradbury would, I think, consider himself a prophet if he commuted in modern London. The amount of fast-food-information is overpowering.
But today, the book burners were kept at bay. It made me happy to see a book that had either been kept for years, cherished, or it had been acquired in that state. Either way, it was a testament to the endurance of a human idea. It was a steak dinner, home cooked, right in the middle of the quickie-mall food court.
And it gave me hope.
13 August, 2008
Saw Devin off this morning. His London summer has come to an end. We had a blast with him here and got to really get to know him.
Devin, Thanks for the fun camping trip, light saber fights, RE time, and late night Jedi Knight games. See you on the Bespin Bridge. Light sabers only! Hope you enjoyed any Big Gulp Cokes you got on the flights home.
9 August, 2008
AK and Big Ben
9 August, 2008
He’s picking out his own toys now. Crazy!
9 August, 2008
A friend if mine allowed me to guest-review game titles for his site. My first one is up. It’s a review of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 for Virtual Console on the Wii.
Those considering picking the title up might find this useful.
25 July, 2008
Sitting on the train after a day out in London. The ladies are out of frame.
25 July, 2008
Several people have commented on my non-updates. Also, there has been mention of the inability to comment on posts.
As a result, I’m transitioning the hub here. It lets me update the blog without iWeb, and of course comments are allowed here.
So please bear with me while content gets moved from the old blog here.
10 March, 2008
NOTE: This is a re-post from my old blog. I thought I’d bring it over. Read on at your own peril.
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Statistically speaking, there will be 6 crimes of violence this year for every 1000 people in London right now.
Departing from raw statistical data for a moment, allow me to divulge what solidified my current thoughts.
I watched a show recently about a guy that had figured out a system to predict horse race results. The show followed one person that had been invited to participate in the system, and it was incredible. They had won 5 races in a row by picking the winning horse and putting all their funds on it.
The guy with the system, in order to prove its effectiveness in predicting results of seemingly random events, proceeds to predict that he will flip a coin 10 times and get heads every time. And he does it. Could it be faked? Sure, of course. I work in fooling the camera, so yeah. It could be faked. But without being a fiction show (which it wasn’t), the horse races could not be falsified, and the coin toss accompanying it is very validating.
But after he does the coin toss, he reveals the system to the participant. The system was this. They took the probabilities and introduced that many participants. Thousands of participants, each given a ‘winning’ horse to bet on. One group would win out of six, they’d dismiss the non-winners and refund their money, thanking them for participating. That winning group would be split up for the next race, and so on. So the group gets divided every time until you get down to 1 person that has won every race. They threw the numbers at it and statistically it is going to happen with enough participants, no matter how unlikely it is.
Improbable is not impossible.
So with the coin toss, he flipped the coin all day long and recorded it until he got 10 heads in a row. Given enough tosses, it will happen, however unlikely.
My point (solidified by this experiment) is this. It is unlikely that something bad is going to happen to my son. Or Sarah. But it is not impossible, only improbable. We see it on the news all the time. Statistically, some poor parents are going to be parted with their child in a terrible accident.
So this is why I’ve been criticised for being more cautious than the average guy. Looking both ways before crossing the street a little more diligently than necessary. Locking the doors and the windows at night, even windows off the ground floor. Reading more about a new toy online than I have to before handing it to the wee boy.
Statistically, bad things will happen, and they will happen to the average person. Therefore, I will do whatever I must to remove myself from the pool of the average. I can’t make my family invincible, but I can lower the odds of bad things happening.
