F 1 D 0 -- 02 06 28 at 03 30

Full Beige Moon.

I am out of practice. I used to write
this every day for a while. Well, I used
to SAY I wrote this every day, but did it
often. Then twice a week. Then once a week.

I did this last on the 17th, while the
plane was going back home.

Long time ago.

Tonight I had trouble sleeping. Not for
lack of beauty. The moon is very full, and
not its usual fluorescent cool white, but a
fluorescent warm white for a change. Global
warming at work?

Here on the street, from where I'm writing
this, all I see is the quiet street, alight
by sodium lamps. But the back yard is just
as bright with the warm moon light. I could 
have sworn the cat was basking in the window
upstairs with us, making believe it was sun
light.

I have a new distraction. When we were in 
London, there was a small market outside
one of the churches. One of the craft sellers
had these Tantrix tiles for sale. They were
£6 each, or two for 10. I thought, but decided
that they were overpriced for me.

Well, a day or two later, Ann showed up with
a couple of them for me. I've become a bit
addicted. The game itself gets incrementally
more difficult, but that's not really why
it appeals to me. Oh, I'd better describe
the tiles.

They are black hexagons, with three lines
passing entirely through. One yellow, one
red, one blue. There are ten tiles in the
kit, and it doesn't cover every possible
mathematical permutation.

The tiles are numbered, and your first
goal is to make a yellow loop. 



Easy. The next goal is four, and to make
a red loop.



Then you have to make five.



I'm getting these images by visiting
the tantrix web site at

http://www.tantrix.co.uk

If I finish the puzzle, it erases it, and
won't let me capture the screen to show you.

But the play is easy. Drag it around. Click one
of the sides to rotate.

I like how these tiles are letting me
experiment with loops of roadways.



I did this by putting the tiles onto the
glass plate of the scanner.

When you break the rules, I think the
paths taken by the tiles are more 
visually interesting. They are like a
tool set into exploring.

I tried making some of my own.

When I duplicated the style, but
finished the set, all was well.

Ok, at home we just have a nice laser
printer, so I have to fudge the work, but
I've been using Corel Draw 5.0, and it
is happy enough to do the job for me.

I found that the set excluded some
important tiles, which I have made
up for myself.

I also tried to create a similar 
system, but using squares. My square
set had not six, but eight places a
line could go. It just wasn't as
pretty. The system works for six,
and for eight, it is a six set, with
two extra spots. But I was able to
prototype the system quickly, and
that was gratifying.

Tonight we went to see the new Tom
Cruise movie Minority Report. I rather
liked it! It kept me interested in Cruise.
It had a bad guy, someone from the government.
Except that he turns out to be just doing 
his job, and he gets shot shortly thereafter.
It had a certain realism. The department
of precrime had a judge and someone else
as professional witnesses of the things
to happen. I liked that. After you dig
in, you see that the ability to fortell
the future is a side effect of a drug, 
which happens to be criminal, and very
popular. The police reminded me of the
ones in the Bruce Willis movie, Fifth
Element. Anyway, I liked it. I was worried
about being grossed out, but in the end,
I didn't have to be so worried. Go see it.

I've been here in Ontario for a week.

I've had time to think about England.

In Ontario, and most of United States,
when you go out into the countryside,
you may see farms and all, but you also
see a lot of people who are simple, and
like that simplicity. They have no use
for computers. Nor people in cities who
use them, for that matter. 

England was so different. I found the people
who lived in the countryside to be doctors.
People who worked hard for their way of 
life, and had some visible wealth to show 
for it. 

In North America, you don't have to look
very hard to find idiots. Actually, I was
going to tell you that isn't true in UK, 
but I suddenly recall men and boys, eyes
red from drink and maybe drugs, clapping
and shouting to nobody in particular. But
the sense you get as a visitor is that the
signal to noise ratio as regards normal
people in UK is better than North America.
If you ask the people there, they disagree.

What else can I tell you? The clothes line?

That is very high, and required climbing
up something which wanted very much to be
unstable. Well, we overcame it.

I've been to a new music festival. Wow, I
want to find more nice things to say about
that. But it was an awful lot of pop squeak,
POP Squeeeeeeeaaaak. Low piano softly. Highest
violin note, loudly. Hit piano with arms. Bow
violin and cello wooden side of bow. Play alto
clarinet facing a different wall for each movement.
Some of the notes are made by not blowing, but
by fluttering the valve. Other notes are made
by singing into the reed. 

I have nothing but super duper respect for
the wonderful musicians who pulled this off!
They could not go down to the local music shop
and buy a CD to hear this, and give them some
idea about what to do for us, the audience.
Actually, I got to see some of the directions
to the musicians. Often they were instructions
to not follow rules at all, but to "keep the
tone and length of note in flux." One score
quoted Albert Einstein on Mathematics, something
like, "laws of math do not apply to reality.
When they do apply to reality, the mathematics
is flawed." I should have written the quotation
down, huh? 

The percussionist was amazing. He had to be
able to play a drum kit, marimba, vibraphone,
and other percussion. 

Some of the works were better than others. Someone
found a Peanuts comic strip, and pinned it up. 
"Why do they keep changing the music?" asks P Patty.
Marcie answers, "Because they're afraid we might
start to enjoy it."

Vignettes, After pierides, Carol Barnett
Fla, Christian Asplund
Erwin's Playground, Rajmil Fischman
Transformations, Dinos Constantinides
Moon Down, Piotr Grella-Mozejko
Re:pair, Alex Shapiro
Northwest Sketches II, Greg A Steinke

Phaestos Disk A I, Alexander Mihalic
Chronometrics, Robert A Baker
Magritte Variations, J Mark Scearce
Images, Michael Matthews
Bilbies V, David Cleary
Joy, Peter Knell
Lyveden, C Scott Tresham

Hurry Wait, Frederic Glesser
Photographs from the 21, Robert Lemay
Coronae, Virginia Samuel
Laissez une voix, Jean-Sebastien Durocher
Just one More, Timothy J Bowlby
Do you truly love me more than these?, Tony K T Leung
Nula, Chedo Barone
Sixteen Ways, Michael Hynes

Oboe Sonata, Dana Dimitri Richardson
Lac Superieur Apres L'orage, Darlene Chepil Reid
Hammer and Wind, Leonard Enns
From Stillness, Emily Hall
Uncas pocas, Steve Benner
Halcyons, Aris Carastathis

More soon. That's all I know.