Blog: A Day In The Life
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Tuesday, 23 February 2010
ITV Fixers & Absolute Radio
On Sunday morning I was at my computer, surfing the web and doing some programming. I kept an eye on Twitter, noticing that Dave Gorman was tweeting about the radio show he was broadcasting at the time (Absolute Radio). The theme of his show was people's odd routines & rituals; things they do all the time, without questioning. People were texting, emailing and tweeting in saying things like they always put their left sock on before their right, or that they always eat food in a particular order (crisps: large to small; skittles: yellow first; etc.), when they changed the volume on the TV it would have to be even or a multiple of 5, and other things like that. I sent Dave a tweet saying I don't have lucky numbers, but criticise people whose lucky numbers are non-prime..., thinking little of it at the time. A couple of hours later I happened to check my ReTweets (my tweets, retweeted by others) and noticed that several people had retweeted this tweet, none of whom I recognised until I noticed that among the retweeters was none other than Dave Gorman himself, meaning that he must have seen it in his mentions, liked it and retweeted it, then several of his followers must have seen it and retweeted it themselves.By the time I had seen this it was towards the end of the show so I waited for the show to be made available as a downloadable podcast (similar to iPlayer, et al; watching shows after they were broadcast). I downloaded and listened to it when I got home last night, listening out for my tweet to be read out. Unless I missed it, I don't think Dave actually read it out on air, but at one point one of the co-presenters performed a song about the things people had sent in - and he mentioned it! That part went like this:
I'm normal you know. I'm normal you know.The podcast can be downloaded from Absolute Radio (21st February).
I sort out my sweets in an orderly row
In case I end up with too many yellows.
I'm perfectly normal, aren't I?
I'm perfectly normal. I'm perfectly normal.
I have to read an old book at bath time.
I don't have a lucky number but if I did it would be prime.
I'm perfectly normal, aren't I?
Now allow me to explain my prime number thing. I don't have any numbers I would consider my 'lucky numbers', partly because I rarely find myself in a situation where I need to pick numbers in such a way, but mostly because I know there's no such thing as luck and cannot stand people's attitude to sticking to their 'lucky numbers', especially when it comes to things like the Lottery (I hate the Lottery and despise people who play it thinking they have a reasonable chance of winning, but I think I'll save that for another blog post). Being a mathematician, the only method I would use to pick numbers where there was no indication of any difference to be seen between them at the point of selection would be to select mathematically interesting numbers. Usually number selection of the nature to which I am referring is between 1 and 10, sometimes 1 and 20, 30 ... 50 or around that area, so you're looking at relatively small numbers (note that seriously interesting numbers are numbers like 33 550 336, 9 814 072 356...) so the even numbers have little appeal as they're common and have many factors or are factors of other regular numbers, which pushes me to go for the primes. Having said that, 6 is a wonderfully interesting number as it is the smallest perfect number (the sum of its factors 1, 2 and 3 is 6), and 2 is the only even prime.
Recently I was contacted by an organisation called ITV Fixers, which is a project to give 16-25 year olds the chance to do something to help others in their area of interest or something they are passionate about. We arranged for the Manchester parkour group to take part in this to launch a project to promote our view of parkour and show people what we do. They filmed us doing some training last week and we shot some interviews, and the week before, Paul & I attended the exclusive launch event (ITV Fixers has been running down South for some time and is just launching in the Northern areas now) where I was introduced to the regional news reporter Tony Morris who asked me to speak about the project during the official launch.
The main show will be shown next week but the preview (meet the fixers) was shown yesterday (watch from 2:18):
EDIT: Something I forgot to mention; Dave Gorman has to be commended for his commitment to replying to people on Twitter. He makes such an effort to reply to people who mention him in tweets, which is a great thing for him to do. If you remember reading on this very blog almost a year ago, I posted explaining what had led me to start using Twitter (Tweet Tweet); it was due to a blog post of Dave's in which he explained the one-way system of connection (as opposed to becoming someone's friend on Facebook, Twitter lets you follow someone to see their tweets without them having to see yours, only whose they decide to follow). He explained then that he always tried to reply to people who sent him tweets, which made up for him not following people back, and still meant that he could use the service the way he wanted (i.e. following only people he wanted to.
I happened to mention Dave in a tweet a couple of weeks ago ('Googlewhack' was trending at the time), without demanding or expecting a reply, but one came. I replied back and so did he again. The next day something else came up and he replied again. This was actually the day before I saw him do standup at Sheffield City Hall, and that night I mentioned him in a tweet saying the show was great and I'd really enjoyed it - he sent one out thanking everyone who'd tweeted about the show, that he was glad they enjoyed it. Then this week he retweeted my prime numbers thing during the radio show, and after I posted a link to this blog post (mentioning him) he replied saying:
@Ben_Nuttall Just so you know... it definitely was read out on air. Sometimes a link doesn't get into the podcast for tech reasons.He's actually followed the link and read the blog post and replied to me to assure me that he had read it out on air! How brilliant is this guy!? As I said, Dave has to be commended for his commitment to replying to people.
Labels: Featured, Internet, Maths, Parkour, Twitter
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 14:34 
Monday, 4 January 2010
MMX
Another new year, in fact a new decade. I was born in the 1980s so it's the fourth decade I've lived to see. Astonishingly, my maternal grandparents have lived to see eleven decades! They were born in the 1910s (1914 and 1916) and have lived through the 10s, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and the 10s again! They're 93 and 95 now and doing very well, although starting to slow down the last couple of years.2010 is MMX in Roman Numerals, 7DA in Hexadecimal, 11111011010 in binary...
Speaking of binary, I noticed that since the last two digits of the year are '10', the date, in DDMMYY format, can be in binary nine times this year - on the 1st, 10th & 11th of the 1st, 10th & 11th months of 2010. By this I mean that when concatenated, these six digits can be made up of only ones and zeros, such as 1st January 2010 = 01/01/10 => 010110 which is a binary number which can be expressed as the decimal number 22. I tweeted this and got into a discussion with a fellow mathematician and twitterer @peterrowlett about the interesting properties of this. I pointed out that since it would always end in '10', the number would always be even so it could never be prime (which would be very cool, obviously) and said maybe in 2011. Peter replied saying that the binary dates in 2011 are prime more often than not (primes: 23, 31, 43, 47, 59. not: 27, 39, 55, 63.) Boy - that provides us with five prime binary days to celebrate next year! I can hardly wait!
The reason I mentioned Peter in this was our common interest in interesting properties of numbers, particularly interesting sequences of numbers in dates - which became apparent on 7th August 2009 at precisely 12:34:56 (at which time the time & date could be written as 12:34:56 7/8/9 or 123456789). An even more interesting occurrence along these lines is in the year ending in 89 (1989 or 2089) when the zero can be included: 01:23:45 6/7/89 or 0123456789, or even 1990/2090: 12:34:56 7/8/90 or 1234567890.
Numbers are brilliant, aren't they? Don't forget π day on March 14th (at pi second at 3/14 1:59:26pm) or square root day (the last one was last year - 03/03/09 - the next not till 04/04/16! They get more rare and spread out as time goes on!
Unix Timestamp
Unix time at the strike of midnight on 1st January 2010 was 1262304000. That's the number of seconds since 1st January 1970, which is what computers use to keep track of time. There will be a problem tantamount to the Millennium Bug which will occur at 03:14:08* on 19th January 2038, whereby the timestamp (currently a signed 32-bit integer, will be reset to 1901 as the signed bit will make the number negative, being expressed as a negative number of seconds since 1970, taking it back to 1901 as you can see:
*I don't think the 3.14 part is related to π at all, just coincidence...
However, don't all go jumping out of the window just yet - as we get closer to 2038 we'll start using higher bit types (it's more complicated than that but you can read a full solution explanation on wikipedia).
Interestingly, Unix time passed 1,000,000,000 seconds on 9th September 2001 at 01:46:40 and 1,234,567,890 seconds on 13th February 2009 at 23:31:30.
Twenty-Ten
I'm sick of hearing people say 'two thousand and ...' when referring to years 2010 onwards - it's only because the years 2001-2009, as an exception, were pronounced that way because they didn't sound right in the usual format (although I don't think it would have been too bad to have said Twenty-Oh-Five). Now it's 2010 we can go back to the normal format we've always used. We 1999 as 19-99, 1901 as 19-01, 1066 as 10-66, and so on. There's a website devoted to promoting the correct pronunciation: http://www.twentynot2000.com/.
Burj Khalifa
Oh and the new tallest building in the world was officially opened at the start of the year. The Burj Khalifa in Dubia stands proud at 828m, meaning falling from its height would have you reaching a speed of about 285 miles per hour by the time you hit the floor, which would take 13 seconds!
Labels: Computers, Internet, Maths, New Year
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 22:35
Friday, 10 October 2008
A Fresh Start
I'm now at the end of my third week of university. I've moved away from home and now live in halls of residence in Manchester, which is a completely new experience for me. I can cook and generally fend for myself but it's still very different from being at home. I'm having a wicked time out here and loving the whole Manchester scene - the parkour's awesome, the bars and clubs are pretty cool, my flatmates are a great bunch of people and I've also joined the canoe club which is brilliant.
There are ten of us living in my flat - five boys and five girls - which sounds a lot but I think it works fine. We've each got our own room on the corridor and we share a sizey kitchen which we all use at different times so there's only ever a maximum of two or three of us cooking at once. I couldn't have asked for a nicer group of people to live with. We're all from different areas of the country (even one girl from France) and we're all completely different in person which makes us gel in that we all have something to bring to the group and there are plenty of questions bouncing off each other about all our hobbies, interests and ways of living. We all went out together the first few nights and got to know each other and the city, but now we're tending to do our own thing in smaller groups (a few of us joined different union clubs) and we're all settling in to our own ways.
In Freshers' Week I had no lectures, just introductory sessions. So after two weeks of lectures I'm feeling like I'm definitely on the right course; it's exactly what I was hoping for and I can see it being challenging enough to be worth doing, I feel like I'll be learning useful things rather than stuff that's pointless. My degree title will be BSc (Hons) Mathematics and Computer Studies - I opted for the Combined Honours programme where you pick two separate subjects and do the core modules of each rather than a single course where you do lots of extra modules. This was because I wanted to keep my options open by doing a combination of two subjects and develop a wide range of skills in two fields. Interestingly, the Maths course at my uni is very computer-oriented, and the Computing course is very Maths-oriented, so they'll go together very well.
I'm having to learn two new programming languages; M-Code for solving complex mathematical functions in an application called MATLAB (Matrix Laboratory), and Java for writing and executing programs.
My modules this year are:
- Mathematical Fundamentals
- Programming (Java)
- Discrete Mathematics
- Linear Algebra
- Programming (MATLAB)
- Computer Platforms
- Statistics
- Learning & Employability (lol)
I have the option to select a major and minor next year (i.e. do more Maths modules and fewer Computing, or vice-versa) or just leave it at 50-50. I'll see how I get on.
Maths started easy (C2) on Day One, then zoomed ahead to FP3 on Day Two, which is way more advanced than I did at A-level, but I understood the lectures and managed to do the questions afterwards so that's good. I did ICT at GCSE and A-level and learned nothing of any real use to me - everything useful I can do on computers has been self-taught. Schools just don't teach anything that's useful to people today. I'm glad to say that so far the Computing lectures and practical classes have been interesting and I can see me getting a lot out of the course.
Yesterday evening I had the best midweek parkour training session for such a long time! There were about 15 of us out, and even Sam Corbett had come over from Sheffield to see a Swiss guy called Tobias who he had met in Lisses who was staying with Scott McQuade. We did some great training for about three hours, we chatted about parkour and there was a brilliant atmosphere within the group. Then Sam departed for his train home, which he missed and so ended up staying the night at mine. We did some more jumps on Oxford Road on the way home and chilled out with a pizza and watched some Futurama! Unfortunately Sam had to set off first thing in the morning to make it back for his lectures but it was nice to have him round. The first overnight guest at my "pad".
I absolutely love the location of my accommodation. It's a maximum of five minutes away from where my lectures are, ten minutes from a massive ASDA and ten minutes from the parkour meet-up spot. Oh and canoeing takes place every Wednesday evening at the Aquatics Centre across the road. I love how I can nip home in between lectures for food or if I forgot something, it's so convenient. I can't imagine any other way now! I went on a beginners' river trip in Bury with the canoe club last weekend to get the freshers started (in fact, sue to my experience and qualifications they asked me to help lead the trip) and I'm going on an advanced trip this weekend! They've also asked me to take one of the three places on a BCU Event where you learn how to run a uni canoe club, which should be really informative and exciting! Tomorrow I'll be showing prospective students around the halls of residence (like I looked round last year).
I can see it's going to be a wicked three years. Watch this space.
Labels: Computers, Kayaking, Maths, Parkour, University
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 22:45
Thursday, 3 July 2008
New Everything
- New computer stuff from Ebuyer!- New blog template (in fact an entirely new website) in the making!
- New Firefox out last week! Version 3!
The night before last I bought some stuff from Ebuyer:
- Hannspree XM New York 19" TFT widescreen Monitor
- Western Digital Elements 500GB External Hard Drive
- Extra Value All-In-One Card Reader
- Labtec USB Webcam
And they all arrived this morning at 9:00! I got free delivery and they were here within 36 hours! How amazing is that? I first saw the external hard drive in the ebuyer edeals email (I get it every week and take a look for good deals on things I want/need but have never gone ahead and bought anything from looking at the email) because it was such a vast amount of storage at such a low price! Half a terabyte (500GB) for £50! Compared with the last external hard drive I bought for £60 in 2006 (60GB), with both storage/cost ratios measured in gigabytes per pound (GB£-1).
Therefore, based on my purchases:
In 2006 the cost of external hard drives was 1GB per pound = 1GB£-1
In 2008 the cost of external hard drives is 10GB per pound = 10GB£-1
To measure the rate of change in cost over time, we can use a simple calculation used to measure acceleration, which similarly is the measure of changing speed over time:
Acceleration = (Final Speed - Initial Speed)/Time
a=(v-u)/t
Therefore, the rate of change in cost over two years is (10-1)/2 = 4.5
So we can say that, based on my purchases, the ratio of storage to cost in external hard drives is falling at a rate of 4.5GB per pound per year! (That one's for you, Woollard!)
Anyway, I thought I'd treat myself to a sexy new monitor and get rid of the bulky old one that takes up half the desk. I'm well pleased with it already - I have a huge resolution (1600 x 1024) and I can now watch 16:9 films without huge black space at the top and bottom!
I thought it was about time I bought a webcam, especially seeing as I'll be moving to Manchester soon and won't be seeing much of my friends - and it was dirt cheap, like the cardreader.
So here's my setup showing my sparkly new monitor, webcam blue-tacked to the edge, my awesome mouse (the Logitech MX 1000 Laser Cordless Mouse - also bought from Ebuyer):
You can see a preview of my new blog template on my monitor in that photo! I've been working on it today and I overcame the problem I was having last week with it not rendering properly in Internet Explorer. Seriously, if it wasn't for IE, web development would be a walk in the park! This is one of the many reasons why everyone in the world should use Firefox! There was a new version out last week and there have been some amazing changes and really useful additions! If you don't use Firefox, why not give it a try and see for yourself what all the fuss is about? It's safer, faster and the all-round better choice when it comes to doing everyday tasks on the web! Download it now! http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/
I'm hoping to have the new site up some time next week. Watch this space! It might be a bit bluer next time!
Labels: Computers, Firefox, Maths
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 12:12
