My friend Michiel sent me a link to the Kat's Whiskers the other day. How gorgeous is this kitty? I haven't read too much of this site yet because it was difficult to pull myself away from this lovely kitty. I did, however, make a brief stop to see the kittens. Adorable.
Earlier this year I posted about Matthew Eastmond's gallery. My favourite pic is obviously the one with the teddy bear. You can now get a teddy bear wearing the teddy bear t-shirt! Very cute.
As I wrote in my previous post, Peter and I rode the London Eye yesterday.
When 135 metres above the River Thames, what do most people do? They do things like take lots of photos and say 'oh, look at that!' and 'what a great view'. While I was very much enjoying the view, I thought it would be cool to do a solve or two. Remembering the photo that Dan Harris had posted of himself cubing in the Eye, I thought I'd better get one too. When mentioning this Peter, he reminded me that his digital camera had video capabilities, so we decided to video a solve as well.
Click here to download the video of me solving the cube on the London Eye (~13.7 mbs).
Peter and I and a friend went on the London eye this afternoon. Despite having lived in London for over 9 months, this is the first time Peter or I had been on it.
The London Eye is currently the largest observation wheel in the world and stands at 135 metres (443 feet). 1,700 tonnes of steels was used in the construction of the Eye, and it has 32 capsules which can carry 15,000 passengers per day.
Here are some of Peter's photos.
Check out this picture of several hundred dominoes all stacked on a single standing vertical domino! And if you think that's amazing, have a look at this domino stack!!
One of the many blogs I subscribe to is that of the Annals of Improbable Research. In case you don't already know about this highly amusing organisation, then take a look at their tagline:
"News about research that first makes people LAUGH, and then makes them THINK."Anyway, I was reading a recent blog entry which referred to something they posted last May: Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.
"Overall, the results showed that incompetence is even worse than it appears to be, and forms a sort of unholy trinity of cluelessness. The incompetent don't perform up to speed; don't recognise their lack of competence; and don't even recognise the competence of other people."Hmmm. Interesting.
I broke my average of 10 record last Wednesday. Here are the details:
Average: 28.40s
Fastest: 22.64s
Slowest: 32.60
Individual times: 29.08, (22.64), 25.66, 32.46, 26.87, 28.99, 28.88, 27.72, 27.23, 25.84, (32.60), 31.28. Note that 9 of the 12 solves were sub-30s! Woo hoo!
For scrambles and timing I used Doug Reed's iCube iPAQ cube timer on my iPAQ hx4705.
Mona Lisa as you've never seen her before... through the medium of Rubik's Cubes! Pretty cool, huh?
When looking at the Crazy Cat Lady action figure online, I came across a crazy cat keychain. I love the description on the website:
"We don't know what they were thinking when they made the Crazy Cat Keychain. When you press the kitty's belly, it doesn't just go "meow." Instead, it sounds like some truly insane individual pretending to be a cat."
I broke my average of 10 record last night at the Camden Lock puzzle meeting.
Here are the details of the average:
Average: 29.08s
Fastest: 25.80s
Slowest: 34.07s
Individual times: (25.80), 30.08, 32.41, 29.13, 26.21, 28.65, 28.08, 27.96, (34.07), 28.94, 30.68, 28.67.
For scrambles and timing I used Doug Reed's iCube iPAQ cube timer on my iPAQ hx4705.
Tonight I went to the monthly puzzle meeting at Lockside Lounge bar at Camden Lock. I'd been meaning to get along to one of these puzzle gatherings all year, but hadn't yet made it to one. When I heard that the theme for this month's meeting was Rubik's Cubes I knew that I just had to go!
The monthly puzzle meetings are organised by the nice people at Villages Games. Villages Games is lovely little puzzle store in Camden Lock. They sell lots of different types of puzzles, and also board games, books about puzzles, cards and card games, etc. If you're into puzzles and in London then you should definitely visit this shop.
Most of the speedcubers from the UK speedcubing weekend came to Camden tonight too. The only one we were missing was Duncan! We had a little friendly competition during the evening. Obviously Dan won (18.xx average). I was pretty happy coming second with a 30.xx average. Paul came third with a 34.xx average. Paul did some really fast solves during the competition, but he also did some very not-so-fast solves which really killed his average.
It was definitely a fun night and I plan to go to more of the Camden Lock puzzle meetings, even when they are not cube themed! :)
How awesome is this? It's the Crazy Cat Lady Action Figure! Peter is a big fan of Accoutrements' Action Figure series and has made several purchases from this range, including the Jesus action figure, the Shakespeare action figure and the Librarian action figure (with push-button shushing action!).
When I saw the Crazy Cat Lady Action Figure I knew I just had to buy her. Have a look at Stupid.com for some more excellent pictures of the Crazy Cat Lady and her kitties.
I switched to Firefox as my primary browser earlier this year when IE corrupted on my machine.
I came across Puzzling World a while ago when Googling puzzle sites. It was not quite what I expected, but looks kinda cool anyway.
Puzzling World is in Wanaka, New Zealand. It has a variety of puzzles and mazes, including a maze which is two storeys high and has 1.5 kilometres of passages (for my American friends, 1.5 kms is a little under 1 mile).
I've never been to New Zealand*, but if I do I shall try to make it to Wanaka so I can visit Puzzling World. If there were ever a New Zealand Rubik's Championship, this would be a great venue for it.
Five little kitties were accidentally FedExed from South Carolina to Vermont. The poor little kitties spent two days in a hot stuffy box! Amazingly, they arrived in Vermont alive and are actually doing fine.
According to the news article, the person who FedExed the kitties was just careless. Apparently he had sealed up the package without properly checking what was inside.
Everyone who knows kitties knows that they like to hide in boxes. Hopefully these kitties will protest loudly next time they are packaged in a box!
