Ian

OK, I looked at the question, thought that 'maths is about finding the simplest and easiest answer' and said '120 x 1'. I'm kicking myself slightly for not thinking of sqrt(120) x sqrt(120) first :)

JA(7) saw that 120 is a multiple of 20 and worked out that '20 x 6' was 120.

L said '2 x 60'.

Adult visitor P said that seven year olds probably wouldn't know anything higher than their twelve times tables and said '12 x 10'.

You lot had... ( Read more... )

I'm listening to the complete Round The Horne and in an 1967 episode, Kenneth Horne spots an ad for Julian and Sandy's latest venture, the Bona Bijou Tourette travel agency, via an ad in his monthly copy of Breezy Pics incorporating The Leather News and Amateur Paediatrician. I wonder if they lose that last bit in the BBC7 repeats?

Best lines, when trying to talk Horne out of going to Malaga:

Sandy: 'You know he got very badly stung.'
Horne: 'Portuguese man o'war?'
Jules: 'Well, I never saw him in uniform...'

Someone's published a map of how many steps it takes to walk between inner London tube stations:



You'd think they'd get one of the basic tourist gotchas right - it does not take 822+1,275 steps to get from Queensway to Bayswater... That route probably involves walking to Notting Hill Gate, turning round, going back past Queensway and up the road to Bayswater! I'm a bit dubious about Euston to King's Cross St Pancras being under seventy steps less than Euston Square to Kings X too, plus they're ignoring the District / Hammersmith and City version of Edgware Road, thus meaning you can't see what they reckon it would take to walk the Circle Line.

A more useful map would show the number of steps needed to make the changes at the various interchanges. Some are trivial 'cross the platform' ones, others are hikes in themselves.

When I was one of the people running the London Bisexual Group, so oooh fifteen or so years ago, they'd be forty or so people turn up each week including five to ten new people.

One week, someone came back for their second time and was most miffed that I couldn't remember his name from the previous week. So miffed in fact that they declined - no, 'refused' would be a better word - to remind me, and continued to do so ever afterwards. I soon stopped bothering to ask.

Today, I saw them again, with someone rather more sensible and now I know.

Not that I'm likely to remember, mind.

January: PC Pro talks about Microsoft being the 'partner' digitising the entire 19th Century stock of the British Library - "Microsoft and Google have both been digitising books from US libraries and adding them to their rival online services for some time, and the British Library opted to partner with the former. Choosing Microsoft as a partner for any archiving project brings not only a wealth of experience and financial clout, but also a degree of controversy..."

May: Microsoft abandons the entire 'Live Search Books' project (and 'Live Search Academic'). But hey, they will start to "offer users cash back on their purchases from our advertisers", i.e. split ad revenue. If you're in the US.

Yesterday evening was an adaptation of Barber of Seville ("of Saville Row") at Greenwich. There have been some trims of the original, but it could do with a few more, and one of the additions doesn't really work (audience participation policeman's song from Pirates of Penzance!?) but the basics were fine.

Today I semi-randomly saw Happy Now? at the National. It turns out to be the last day, but I hope it's going to transfer because it's very very good. It's been a while since a two hour play had me laughing and thinking throughout.

Contains Violence Lyric Hammersmith

Utterly genius idea - the audience watch what's going on in a building across the square from the theatre's outside balcony. Binoculars and headphones are provided. Rear Window, voyeurism.. how can it go wrong?

Well, I'd seen a couple of reviews which suggested it had, so I went with fairly low expectations, but even so it's the biggest missed opportunity since the last time the England football team were in a penalty shoot-out. The author has managed to make murder and bisexual desire boring, argh.

But remember, it's not over until the penguin tidies up. If you can last that long, which most of the audience didn't.

Into the Hoods

A hip-hop adaptation of the fabulous Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods? Well it was either going to be great or a disaster, so I had to see which.

And the answer is neither, really. If Sondheim and Lapine get any of the royalties for this, they should think themselves lucky - virtually nothing is taken from Woods. The first half is more or less the same as the second, for example.

Having said that the dancing is very good, but then it's basically an 'urban' ballet to an assortment of hip-hop tracks. With the exception of someone who comes on stage at the start to perform a couple of poems, I reckon everyone is miming to a pre-recorded soundtrack.

But the dancing is great, and the kids in particular will be up for awards.

In OpenOffice.org Presentation / MS PowerPoint, many people have

* one line

* appearing

* at a time

rather than everything on a slide at once.

I do this by copying the slide several times, then deleting text, so that slide 1 has 'one line', slide 2 has 'one line / appearing' and slide 3 has the lot.

Is there an easier way?

The announcements and posters at DLR stations today said something along the lines of "services will be suspended between Bank/Tower Gateway and Poplar/Canary Wharf stations on Saturday & Sunday and between Stratford and Canary Wharf stations on Sunday".

[Poll #1147174]

( Answer... )

( Might be NSFW (Latin name for body part mentioned) )

What sort of person do you think the other party was and who do you think the replies have been from?

(The Semagic spell checker wants to replace 'Craigslist' with 'straightish'!)