A Fool

 Been musing over the line from Spam LS (Psalms) the fool says in his heart that there is no god. It makes me wonder who the fool actually is, here. Because isn't it the height of foolishness to believe in something that has no basis of existence, and continue to believe in its existence in the hope that when you die you will go to the good place and not the bad place. 

Looking on Wiki about the line it seems that the fool is someone who disagrees with god, and therefore can do no right. Maybe so, but I think it a trifle foolish that accepting at ones word of a good afterlife based on one mans sacrifice alone. No matter what you have done in life, blameless or evil. Accept Jesus and you're in, regardless of whether you're an axe murderer or paragon of virtue. 

When it comes to religion I would rather be a fool than a sheep.

 

Program(me) for Destruction

 85th book in the series and I have some serious questions to put to whoever wrote this. 

For those unaware, this mystery revolves around the boys taking a case from an Arthur Stockard, owner of the CompuCar company (a sort of proto Tesla) which has a futuristic Voice activated car which is the target of sabotage. They are gifted a car to test and it eventually turns out that it, and the CompuCar factory is the target of a computer virus attack rendering everything a mess

Maybe I've seen too many Danooct1 videos on classic viruses but I'm pretty sure that the main criminal live coding a virus in his own self contained area of CompuCars car factory, in order to infect some master disks linked to (I'm guessing) the net or more likely a series of bulletin boards is not so efficient.  You would have a virus riddled disk and then infect a PC in order to then infect those disks. Oh and did I say he's keeping both Hardy boys and Arthur under control with a revolver.

Another nice touch is the whole car OS being run from a floppy in the boot. Frank checks it out on their PC and finds the virus which is  pretty risky, I'm guess he's going to reinstall DOS if it all goes tits up. 

Apart from that the main difference is like this post in the title and that we used to spell floppies "discs".

I like that we used to spell a computer program as programme. Its got a nice dual edge to it like a timetable for destruction, whereas the US version is just program.

Anyway you can read both here and here.  

Back home 2 Animal Edition

 So I've been back a week, and this is my obligatory animal post. Quite a lot of beasties for you today as he had a few great, stand out moments. We'll get block stuff out of the way as there was a lot of interesting things in our own back yard.

The block I stayed in bordered onto woodland and after the first week was over, fell in that the emergency stairs are quite literally the closest thing and could harbour some interesting life. This quickly became the late night gecko patrol as there was quite a few to see either running up the walls or over the ceilings of the landings. The biggest of the lot I called El Rey as he was the king of the geckos.

The west coast has a lot more lizards and geckos I seem to find than the east, I wonder if this is their stronghold on the island.  

El Rey The king of the geckos

The last day we didn't see any and found that among the usual Shield bugs and Vestal moths was a ginormous African Mantis. I haven't seen one since I first went to Cyprus over 15 years ago so of course I took film and pictures. 

Look at the size of this lass.

At the beach I didn't see much the first week as the sea was rough and it was a chore just to stand amongst the waves without being knocked down. But it calmed down a lot the second week and aside from overhearing talk about cheese in the sea from a Spanish group (apparently 400 grams is enough to make a good meal) the wildlife returned culminating with a Shag on the cliffs. 

Oh did I say that it was on the cliffs, more like on the rocks a good 4 meters away from where I was swimming along with an Audoin's gull. Decided to keep quiet and watch him sit there for a good 10 minutes before he headed off. Kind of wish I had a waterproof phone to take photos with. 

Finally and I still kick myself for not snapping this, we saw an oil beetle on the beach along with a few cats. They were near two Spanish lads who belatedly noticed it with a cry of Bicho, a good minute or two since I spotted it. Though will console myself with seeing a Swallowtail in Ibiza town for good measure and a Hummingbird Hawk Moth over the Plumbago on the road to the beach. 

I'll leave you with a good man ginger to watch over you and keep you company, before he goes off hunting for lizard. 

A good lad.

 

Back home.

 I know I'm a day late, but to be fair, this is the only day where I've not felt knackered. I'll give you a run down of what the place was like. If you've read anything its a very much a place that has a curated playlist, and a jokey modern style. We didn't have a proper basin in our room and our shower was the most advanced I've seen in a hotel (dual shower heads FTW). I could also do with going back a good 10 years later when the palms and trees have gotten their maximum height so you can see it at its best.

We have various small blocks with long halls, I was in block 4 and looked out over the circle pool, which was the quiet pool. It bought all the little kids around with parents and you could sit out and read without being bothered. They had a large pool for swimming in which was nice and did most of the blogs from to be honest. 

But to be fair the thing that struck me most about this holiday was defeat from victory. Everything I wanted to look at or had an interest in was a broad case of curb your enthusiasm. Case in point, my room was 444, triple bad luck, we had to keep asking our regular black cat for some good luck and to be fair I've seen some good stuff but that only applies to wildlife. Other stuff was definitely not good.

Oh and before you wonder about the TV, I never had it on much. So my abiding memories are dubbed American Pickers, a new Italian version of Kommisar Rex and a central Lechera Asturiana advert that turns a mishap with cream into a something much worse.

Pool blogging2

 So, decided to do this again. This basically a short post about nothing much, a few oh moments with various Huckleberry friends (i.e fucked) I've spotted.

First up is a woman brushing her teeth at the pool with an electric toothbrush. Shades of that Merzbow clip and a case of why.

My second is watching all the beach hawker Africans get off the morning bus and one white woman with a Straight outta Compton shirt. I guess N.W.A. now stands for N199a's with articles.

Pool blogging

 We are one of those people, who now live post stuff. Relax it's not going to be tedious, we'll give a few bits of info on our hotel and check out, as quite frankly this sounds like work.

So far the bad, we're in room 444, which if you read last week's post, isn't good. You have a view of one block and a small pool. 

On the plus side, we got good food so far with a decent amount of grub. Though the main parts of our dining area have caught jokeyitis, with a liberal amount of piss poor slogans and rip on the Lady and the Tramp pasta scene but with humans.

Our hotel manual is a QR code with a good run down of channels and a pitiful amount in English.

Oh and fair props to whoever is doing the music, so far I've heard Westchester lady, and the beat goes on and I come from a land down under. An ace selection if ever I heard it.

Edit. Pool selector let us down a few times but redeemed themselves with a latin version of Big Fun by Inner City.

888 Number Special

Felt sure that this would be blog post number 888, but it was last Sunday's post instead. 

If you are wondering why I'm going all out on all the eights and such, well, its my lucky number. Ever since I was small, 8 has been my lucky number and 4 my unlucky number. I know its more commoner in Japan and China to have these views but as a westerner 7 should be my lucky number not 8.

I was going to go all out on a big blog post on my deepest lore but, the truth is, I can't be arsed. So I'll just give you a quick way of working out my luck day by day.

I have six dice that I roll, I add up the top faces and then when I get the total amount I then add these number together. This is one half.

I then add the numbers up from the side facing me, and do the same. I then add the two together to give an overall luck. 

Say I roll 21. The number for this days half would be 3. 2+1 this is pontoon or special luck, normally 3 is bad. Looking at the side I work out my number and it comes to 18. 8+1 is nine which is very good luck.

I then add the 3 and 9 together to make 12, 1+2=3 which is bad luck.  So over all I should have a mix of great and poor luck for today. 

I have a few other things involving numbers which of course I'll add. I like, whenever I travel by bus which gives you a proper ticket, to add up all the numbers on it and work out my luck along those lines. Though you don't get a printed ticket on London buses now, if I get one abroad, I work out my luck from there. 

Finally a trick with sudoku. I like, when working out the regular 9x9 grids to put completed numbers on the corners  and a x between the top row so the last number multiplies the overall result.

Example. This is how a completed grid looks when I'm done with it. 

12        x 9     78

34                 56

I then add up the numbers 

12

34

56

78

-----

180

-----

x9 this is the number to multiply it with. So 9x180...

Leaving you with 1620 as your result. I'm no mathematician but wouldn't mind knowing what is the actual highest and lowest amounts you can actually get. I figure the lowest would be having 1 as a multiplier and 23 45 67 89 as your corner amounts, I would love to see if this is an actual thing or just more junk.