It's all maths, you see

Yesterday, I was playing around with some of Amy's Lego, and was placing some fences on a board.

I was surprised to find that the fence, which I had placed at a random angle rather than horizontally or vertically, seemed to fit perfectly! Since diagonals are not, in general, a whole number of units long, I found this surprising... perhaps the distance was close to a whole number? But it fit rather too well for it to be chance.

It was only after a looked at the result more closely and counted that I realised what was happening. (I was also, at first, misled by an off-by-one problem: the number of bumps that are "covered" by a fence are not, of course, the number of spaces between bumps.)

( Pictures )

(How quickly) can you figure it out?

The Emperor's New Clothes

Stella bought some new clothes today.

She says she has a figure that she needn't hide, but most of her clothes are fairly baggy, so she bought some that are a bit more form-fitting.

My first impression, when she showed me a pair of jeans and a new top, was that she looked slimmer and taller in it.

But a bit later, while she was cooking food, I came into the kitchen, saw her from behind, and burst out laughing.

( See why! (310K picture) )

RIP Irony.com

For a long time, there was a site at irony.com that hosted tools for role-players, such as calendar generators for a variable number of months with a variable number of days each and a variable number of moons; random city map generation; dice rolling; and similar things.

After a while, it seemed to have stopped updating, but many parts of it continued to work. This state continued on for several years as well. (I'd look at the site, especially the "on-Web RPG Tools" section) every now and then, perhaps once every year or two.)

However, that period seems to be over now; when I had a look just now out of nostalgia, I saw a very different site: "Social Satire for the Masses". Ah well: sic transit gloria webi.

Hm. The newest entry on the Wayback Machine (from June 2006) still has the old site, in case you want to take a look. So the takeover can't have been that long ago (less than a year). Strange, then, that the current site advertises "Online since 1993". (Presumably, then, not always at that URL.)

Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast

(A misquotation from William Congreve)

When I put Amy to bed for her afternoon nap, it usually goes something like this. The curtains in her room are closed and a path is cleared on the floor (if necessary) from the door to the window on the other side of the room.

I take Amy into my arms so that she lies on my right arm with her head cradled in my elbow and her feet hanging down, with my left arm between them and holding on to my right to help support her weight. Then I hum sungs while carrying her through the room: back and forth and back and forth and….

She's usually quiet as soon as I pick her up. After three to five minutes, her eyes are usually closed; after three to five minutes more (to give her time to fall asleep properly), I put her in her bed. She'll often roll over or open her eyes briefly but will resume sleeping almost immediately, and will wake up again after about two hours.

On the other hand, when Stella puts her to bed for her afternoon nap, it usually involves at least half an hour and lots of screaming, so I'm told. (This usually only happens when I'm away; if I'm there, I'll usually be the one to put her to bed.)

What also sometimes happens is that one of us will put her straight to bed, and she'll be quiet… then later get up out of bed and play in her room rather than going to sleep by herself. (This sometimes happens at night as well, where she'll sometimes get up again and play by herself before going to bed when she's tired enough—or falling asleep on the floor, as has happened occasionally. But she usually stays in bed in the evening, while if I don't sing her to sleep, she'll get up more often than not if put to bed at noon.)

Singing or humming also tends to calm her down in other situations, too.

I'm not sure why she'll let me carry her around humming to her in order to fall asleep but won't let Stella do so: apparently, whenever Stella has tried this, Amy will twist around and try to escape, or try to get under Stella's pullover to have a drink, or otherwise vehemently display a complete lack of interest in falling sleep.

Which number is the "most random"?

Please fill out the poll first, then read the link if you want.

[Poll #961998]

( link, behind a cut because the URL might give away what I'm trying to reproduce )