State Your Objections

I decided to produce a page called 'State Your Objections' because I found Neddie's 'State Your Intentions' page at his blog an amusing idea. I don't intend to list my life goals and objectives yet as I prefer to keep them in a state of flux. I'm also convinced that if I put them down in a list somewhere then I'm guaranteed to never achieve any of them. It's a bit like using the word plan - as soon as you do, whatever it is you were going to do will be fraught with difficulty.

To kick things off I'll start with the following:

- I won't see "Brokeback Mountain". Sure it's an Ang Lee film, but I can't say the thought of watching a film about gay cowboys makes me want to rush to the cinema and buy a ticket. I want something with more action - the Rock hitting someone with a big stick is more my current tastes.

- I won't be joining the gym opposite my office. I inquired the other day as I quite like the idea of an early morning swim before work. Membership is a criminally large £52 per month and that's with a corporate discount. I can't even turn up and pay to use the pool unless I wish to cough up £10.

- I won't be buying an Xbox 360. Admittedly it’s chock full of superb hardware, but it doesn’t support a next-gen DVD format yet. In order to get HD-DVD you have to spend more money on an add-on when it’s released.

Tinfoil hats

I found a link from theregister.co.uk this morning to an MIT article about tinfoil hats. As any conspiracy theorist knows you need to wear a tinfoil hat in order to prevent the government from reading you mind. Unfortunately this seems to be government propaganda designed to do the exact opposite !

You can read the whole article here but I've put the abstract below to give you an idea of what the article is about

" Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We theorize that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason. "

The Wotsit Problem

Here in the Hive we firmly believe there is no problem we cannot tackle when we combine our powers and pool our genius. Yesterday afternoon stretched our powers to the limit as we pondered exactly how we could supply a paddling pool full of wotsits at our party this coming weekend.

You may ask "Why on earth do you wish to do such a thing ?" which would be a fair question really. The answer lies with Geoff's friend Dave who replied to the email invite with the following:

“Anyway, afraid your invite was 2 days too late, and I kind of said I'd go to another firework pi$$up down here. Gonna depend on how much in the way of munchies is being provided. . . . A paddling pool full of cheesy wotsits could influence my decision! “

Geoff was left with no choice other than to provide such a treat in order to lure Dave to the party at the Hive.

Of course this leaves a number of problems:

A) Procuring a paddling pool - a task and expense I am happily leaving to Geoff
B) The placement of such a pool - our house is going to be filled to the rafters as is and space is already at a premium
C) How many wotsits will be needed to fill the pool ?

Tuesday afternoon was devoted to sufficiently answering question c) Geoff kindly sent everyone an email containing his basic workings and assumptions for the task, which quickly captured the imagination of those who received it.

"The principal one is this: just how many Wotsits does it take to fill a paddling pool? I devoted my lunchtime today to answering this question.

My first port of call was the newsagents just down the road. To my dismay, they only stocked a new limited edition variation called “Twisty Wotsits”. Since use of these would foul up the calculations I quickly went on my way, cursing their ill-considered stock choices. I walked a bit further and found a shop that sold conventional Wotsits. On the way back to work, I started to consider the problem in earnest.

A paddling pool can be considered to be a short cylinder of relatively large diameter. The formula for cylinder volume is ∏r2 x h where r is the radius of the cylinder’s cross section and h is its height.

If we assume a cylinder radius of 0.75m and a height of 0.4m this gives paddling pool area of: 3.1415 x (75)2 x 40 = 706837.5cm3

A Wotsit can also be considered to be a cylinder (mathematically rigorous types may wish to point out at this stage that Wotsits often feature a slight curve which would no doubt complicate these volume calculations. For the purposes of simplicity we will allow the approximation of Wotsits to cylindrical shape, irrespective of their true geometry).

I found the “average” Wotsit by finding a Wotsit that seemed larger than its fellows, and another Wotsit that appeared somewhat runtish in comparison to its lengthier bagmates. I then found a Wotsit that was smaller than the large Wotsit yet larger than the small Wotsit and deemed this to be the average Wotsit. I measured this Wotsit and found it to be 4.5cm in length by 1cm in diameter.

Feeding this into the formula, this gives: 3.1415 x (0.5)2 x 4.5 = 3.5cm3
Now it is a simple matter of feeding in the numbers. 706837.5 / 3.5 = 201953.6 Wotsits required to fill the paddling pool.

Now, 201953.6 sounds like a big number (and it is), but when you consider that there may be as many as 37 Wotsits in a bag, this equates to: 201953.6 / 37 = 5458.2 bags of Wotsits required.

5458.2 is still a very big number in terms of bags of Wotsits. The final factor to account for is the space between the Wotsits – the preceding calculations assume that the Wotsits are laid out neatly with no space between them. As anyone who has ever poured Wotsits into a bowl will know, this configuration is unlikely to occur by chance. It is more reasonable to believe that the Wotsits will form an intricate and tangled lattice of deliciously cheesy puffed maize snacks. Therefore, we should factor in that 50% of the volume of the pool will be accounted for by space between the Wotsits.

This reduces the number of bags required to a paltry 2729.1, or 272 multipacks of 10. Good grief."

Clearly obtaining the best part of 300 bags of wotsits is no small feat or expense. Within half an hour or so Geoff received another email from a friend of his - Dr Smith. He gave the following advice:

"Geoff,
I have tested your elementary Mathematics...
We’d normally charge this type of consultancy at £££’s an hour, but I’ll waive the fee this time...

To give a ‘worst case’ figure I have ignored your 50% air figure and made an assumption that these wotsits will tessellate perfectly.
This would indicate that a single covering of the (rather small) paddling pool would require 13,783 wotsits.

At 4.5cm in height, you can then fit 8 full layers of wotsits to avoid overflow... giving a total of 110,264 wotsits.

At 37 per pack, that is 2980 packets... 298 (x10 multipacks)
a figure within 8% or 9% of your initial estimate... very good!"

The best part of 3000 packets of wotsits was not what we wanted to hear. Dr Kirk a good friend of mine also chipped in with his workings on the 'Wotsit Problem'

“Geoff your maths calculations are correct on the Wotsit problem. Also by some freak of nature if the calculation is done on a scientific calculator with a value of pi to 30 decimal places and all the calculations are done to the same d.p the answer comes to exactly 200000 wotsits, in fact the proof is show below so you can try it for yourself.

Area of pool = 706858.34705770347865409476123789 cm3

Area of wotsit = 3.5342917352885173932704738061894 cm3

Total number of wotsits = 200000"

200,000 wotsits or equivalent to 5405 bags ! Wow. It occurred to me as I wrote this that we have no idea what size the pool is going to be. I don't believe Geoff has found one yet or has one in mind, but I could be mistaken. Hopefully we'll end up with something relatively small and therefore need less wotsits to fill it.

One of the last things we received was an artists impression of Dave in the paddling pool from Bones :


The observant among you will spot the Rock's head in this picture. This is due to the uncanny resemblance between Dave and the Rock.

Lastly we received this from Mr Lichfield:

“Something I don't think the mathematicians have thought of or perhaps they did and I'd stopped paying attention. Anyway, I imagined Dave spending the evening sat in the paddling pool for ease of consumption, this would therefore displace a number of wotsits.”

It remains to be seen how this will pan out and whether we will succeed in filling a paddling pool with wotsits. Rest assured pictures will follow shortly afterwards if we manage it !

The Hive gears up for 'Shock and Awe'

Those in the know realise where it's at this weekend. It's not your back garden or your local bonfire night, those with any sense will be heading over to the Hive in Reading for the 'firework spectacular'.

We like any excuse to fill our home to the brim with an eclectic mix of people, place half of them in our cellar, subject them to loud music and encourage them to eat and drink copiously. This weekend coming sees a return to that successful formula but with the added addition of an explosive and a large fire. As with many things in life quality is always more important than quantity so instead of a box of distinctly average fireworks we've stumped up the cash for the largest single rocket we could find.

At some point on Saturday evening the rocket pictured below will shoot off from our garden and explode high over the streets of Reading.


Weighing in at a whopping 0.5kg I can only imagine the spectacle and noise that awaits. Having hyped it up to being the equivalent of cruise missiles raining down on Iraq, I only hope we manage to let it off safely and it doesn’t disappoint. We'll just have to see.

The rocket isn't the only showpiece we have. Tradition dictates we must try and assemble a crude bonfire in our garden - no small feat considering the size of the garden and the close proximity to the neighbours. A guy is also being fashioned and in honour of democracy we've given the invitees a choice of 5 'celebrities' to burn. The votes we've received show an overwhelming support for the burning of Linda Barker. Currys cheap electrical goods and crass DFS sofas cannot save you now.

All in all I think we've got the makings of another excellent party. I hope our guests think so too and the old woman next door who clearly loves us very much. We'll try not to destroy her garden this year.

You call this news ?!

Oh dear, has it really come to this ?

This is apparently what counts as news these days. Clearly it's either a very quiet newsday or the BBC just can't be arsed anymore. Honestly does anyone really give a shit about Kate Moss and her no-good junkie boyfriend Doherty ? Apparently the BBC does as it has three seperate articles on this silly cow under the UK section of their 'news' website ! I mean why do any real work on a real story when you can drum up a dozen paragraphs on some coke addled model in need of a good meal and her equally drugged up boyfriend ?

However I do like the comments on the 'Have Your Say' part of the article. 'Alex Brady from Coventry' sums the whole affair up quite well - "Kate Moss, a top model and member of London's social set took coke? Where's the story, or the public interest?"

Quite right too. Personally we'd all be better off if all these 'celebrities' and others of the same ilk were loaded into a giant rocket and fired into the sun.

SCEE are evil and the cricket

Well it has been exactly a week since the PSP was launched in the UK. The wallet busting price of £178.99 hasn't put off consumers as there have alledgedly been 185,000 of them sold in that time. Apparently this breaks all records for a 'console' (which IMHO it isn't) in the first week of launch.

All well and good you say ? No. I couldn't care less how much it sells - I'd happily buy one if I had the money though if I was honest I'm sure I'd never have the time to play it. What is annoying is the rip off price we're forced to fork out for these things here in Blighty.

Now admittedly the launch titles aren't too bad as things go, but if you intend to buy UMD movies to watch you're in for a nasty suprise. Not only are there precious few recent titles available, the ones you can get hold of are absolute shite. A perfect example is found here.

I wouldn't pay £3 for a film like that from a DVD bargain bin. But of course people will be stupid enough to buy them and even more stupid for shelling out on memory stick duo at high street prices. I've even seen UMD disc holders being sold for £8.

So punters here have been forced to wait months and months longer than expected only to get a handful of reasonable titles and the promise of some shockingly bad films in a few months at a vastly inflated price.

Of course the people that have relatively little technological knowledge come off worse. There are plenty of ways to mod the damn thing, run homebrew apps, convert your existing DVDs and run them off the memory stick. Sadly this is above the average Joe who will get lumped with shelling out money on a load of toss.

I blame pretty much everyone involved in this sham. Why ? Because I can.

In other news we seem to be doing OK at the cricket so far.

Holidays a coming

Hurray !

We've finally booked up a holiday, Emma and myself will be off to Dubrovnik in Croatia for a well deserved week away.

This is where we are off to -

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/destinations/europe/croatia/dubrovnik/
http://web.tzdubrovnik.hr/

Looks good, only a month away too !

Ed's Wedding

I can't be bothered to try and write something about the actual wedding at the moment, but Ed has sent over a picture of us outside the church after the ceremony. It's one of the few pictures of all of us that doesn't involve a pub too.