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Mike’s blog – for his amusement

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  • Cribbage – a loser’s perspective

    I came to the conclusion that the Aces Cribbage app on the iPad cheated and dealt itself high-scoring combinations just a little too frequently. I’m currently winning about 1 game in 3 at the Master level.

    But having recently started playing against my son, I’m starting to wonder….

    Since winning the first two games against him I have not won another game and I’m currently losing 18-2, including suffering 4 skunk defeats (annihilations!). I think I’ll have to find an opponent who is new to cribbage… 

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  • Gardening is for another day

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  • Belated Birthday Book Binge!

    Being well enough to wander into town for a belated birthday book binge, I easily managed to find 8 new paperbacks at Waterstones (previously known as Waterstone’s). OK, so 8 new books is rather excessive, but hey, it was a big birthday.

    The afternoon was rounded off with a couple of glasses of Merlot, with the lad, at a pub. Perfect.

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  • Re-reading books

    On my landmark birthday I decided to re-read Hermann Hesse’s Demian, a book from my youth, when I was still impressionable. It’s one of Hesse’s shorter works. Now, 39 years later and a lot less impressionable, I really didn’t enjoy reading it again and I finally gave up two-thirds of the way through. I recall that The Glass Bead Game was one of my favourite Hesse novels, though much longer and quite difficult. I wonder how I would regard it now.

    Whilst reading Demian I also re-read a text-book, Code (The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software) by Charles Petzold. I first read this in 2000 and, having always been a technical computing person through five decades of rapid changes, I found this book an easy and fascinating study of codes generally as well as codes in computing. Highly recommended.

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  • How my kids see their dad!

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    Two out of three. I’m the greatest and I have bushy eyebrows. But I don’t wear dark-rimmed glasses.

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  • Around Hampton Court

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  • Epsom Downs

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  • E.TED

    cardboardboxoffice's avatarCARDBOARD BOX OFFICE

    Film:E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial

    Be E.T. (Extra Terrific) and vote for Cardboard Box Office in the 2014 Webby Awards!
    http://pv.webbyawards.com/2014/web/general-website/personal-blogwebsite

    ETed

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  • It’s my birthday…

    bcurtainbal[1]It’s my birthday and I have a cold. At my new, landmark age this means that I am incapable of doing anything to celebrate the day.

    I need to start reading a new book and I’ve decided to re-read something I last read way, way back. My first choice was going to be Cornell Woolrich’s The Black Curtain. This has always been a well-loved book of mine, with its dark cover and the yellow-edged pages. But to my dismay, I cannot find it! If you have borrowed it, can I please have it back?

    Other books I might have considered would have been Take a Girl Like You (Kingsley Amis) and The Deptford Trilogy (Robertson Davies), but in the end I decided on Demian (Hermann Hesse). These books, whilst not necessarily my favourite books, are significant books from my youth, particularly the books of Hesse. My paperback copy of Demian is 39 years old and the pages have an aged, rusty brown border!

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  • Big data

    Years in current house: 34 (approx)

    Years with current wife: 42 (approx)

    Years with current body: 65 (exactly)

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