Over the last couple of days I’ve been settling back at my place after the Christmas break. One thing I needed to do was install a new television, replacing an analogue TV with a digital one that also has an inbuilt DVD player. Here are some pictures:
Old.
New.
Some interesting links, followed by some personal news.
Over the Christmas break I’ve rested from the task of gathering interesting links to publish on this blog, but here are a few that I couldn’t resist.
I’ve also written two posts [one, two] about the rotary drawing game from “Parlour Games for Modern Families” by Myfanwy Jones and Spiri Tsintziras, which I got from my parents for Christmas. This post makes it a trilogy,
Other things my parents gave me for Christmas include a hat with a built-in net to keep the flies out, a small “optical illusion” jigsaw puzzle (took me one afternoon), and a $500 gift voucher towards a digital television (what with support for analogue soon to be terminated). Bought one for $749 (this model), as yet still in the box.
On the evening of New Year’s Day, there are fireworks at Port Vincent. Also food. Here is a short collection of photographs from the 2010 celebrations.
[See previous post for context.] On New Year’s Eve we played another round of the same game with a different group of people, and my favourite excerpt is reproduced below.
Just in case you have your own copy of “Parlour Games for Modern Players“, other games that we’ve tried out over the two nights are: The Mirror Game (p24), Mafia (p118), and Who’s Closest? (p229).
One gifts I got for Christmas was a copy of the book “Parlour Games for Modern Families” by Myfanwy Jones and Spiri Tsintziras. I might post a more thorough evaluation of the book at a later date, but this is not that post.
With my uncle’s family here today (hence good numbers), we tried out two or three of the games, among them the rotary drawing & captioning game from page 31/32. In this game, each person draws a small picture within a designated region on a sheet of paper (one sheet per player), and writes a caption above it, the sillier the better. Having done that, they fold over the caption so that the picture but not the caption can be seen, and then pass the paper around the table. Each person thus receives a picture, and must write a caption for it (the original caption being hidden under the fold). They then fold over the picture so that the caption but not the picture can be seen, and pass the paper on. Each person thus receives a caption, and must draw a picture to go with it. Repeat until the sheets of paper are full. Finally, unfold and review the results of the collaboration.
We prepared each sheet of paper by cutting A4 sheets longwise, and then sticking the two halves together the other way to create extra-long strips with room for eight A7-sized panels each (a picture and a caption on each panel). Below are some excerpts that I’ve selected to represent the highlights of the game. (more…)
A short post, as befits a holiday.
Using my mobile phone, I decided to record a series of videos of the Christmas tree being selected and decorated. You can watch the playlist on Youtube and post comments here.
For high-resolution images of the individual decorations, see the photographs I’ve posted of our Christmas trees from previous years.
This is my final collection of interesting stuff for the year. It’s followed by some personal notices.
Astronomy:
Anthropology and Geology:
Biology:
This collection of interesting stuff is short, in part because I’ve been devoting more time to gathering information for the quiz that I’m compiling on the history of science within my father’s lifetime. Of which, more at the end of the post.
Astronomy:
Biology:
Oh, and by the way, I’ve started a list on Twitter. I don’t follow people because when I’m writing my own tweets I’d rather be looking at only my own and not everyone else’s, but the lists feature gives me a way to circumvent that problem. I don’t check it very often, though.
Here are some things I posted in previous Decembers. Feel free to comment on them if you want to.
In 2008 I linked to a number of articles as part of my Interesting Stuff series.
Originally, my Interesting Stuff post also included a stream-of-consciousness ramble about my struggle to comprehend the basics of general relativity. I never did get an answer to that, and I’ve decided to delete it from the original article and repost it below, edited for clarity.
