odditudes-and-weirdities

Another year, another boring summary of that year's trip around the sun. (For those struggling with insomnia, I have a series of these: 2024 , 2023 , 2022 .) Here's this year's picture, meant to suggest that it's been relatively cold here this winter. (I actually do dress like this on especially cold days; the key to staying warm is "layers, layers, layers".) Health : My knee and back continue to cause sporadic issues but they don't normally prevent me from doing much. I somehow managed to hurt my hip. I'm not sure how it happened; my best guesses are pulling stubborn weeds out of the ground or trying to open a sliding glass door that doesn't slide very well. On the bright side, staying away from the door and with no wintertime weed-pulling activities, the hip issue seems to have (temporarily?) gone away. As I'm wont to do, I got flu and COVID vaccinations in the autumn, and (thus far) I haven't gotten sick this season. (I do worry that thi...

Here's the Cornell Lab of Ornithology jigsaw puzzle I recently completed. Although there are 120 bird species in the picture, there are a few cases where, due to sexual dimorphism , they show a picture of both a male and a female, so there are over 120 birds pictured. It's a 1000 piece puzzle. The birds are all indigenous to eastern/central North America, though it's not a complete set.  Some of you have heard this before, so be prepared for a recap. Here are some observations: I don't really have the proper lighting for doing jigsaw puzzles in my apartment. I have those somewhat out-of-date "pig-tail fluorescent" light bulbs, which doesn't exactly emulate natural light all that well. And even during broad daylight my living room doesn't get the sunlight that would be helpful, especially in winter. A couple times I turned a flashlight on some pieces, detected some red or yellow feathering, and quickly found a spot for them. (The flashlight trick waned ...

On the eleventh day of the eleventh month we celebrate This One Goes to Eleven Day! Inspired by a Frazz cartoon , which was inspired by the This Is Spinal Tap movie, this day is about going beyond what conventionally would be a limit. (Admittedly in the movie they changed the labels more than extended their limits, but you've got an opportunity to do better than that!)

Happy Interstellar Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel Day! This holiday celebrates one of the more interesting Star Trek TNG episodes . In it, the Enterprise meets the Tamarians, a race of people whose words translate well but without much meaning. The Tamarians employ a dangerous strategy to achieve a communications breakthrough; they transport Picard and their captain, Dathon, down to a planet where they'll need to coordinate together to survive against a dangerous predator. Picard eventually figures out that the Tamarians use allegory to express themselves, and if you don't know the allegorical references, their speech sounds like gibberish. Although the Tamarian captain dies, Picard's breakthrough in understanding the Tamarians allows the Federation to develop relations with them. The phrase "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel" becomes a new allegory in the Tamarian language, presumably signifying a communications breakthrough or sudden understanding.

As I've (more or less) successfully managed yet another trip around the sun, so lets discuss what happened. This should be similar to what I did in 2022 and 2023 , so if those bored you nearly comatose you should be warned that this will be more of the same. Photographic evidence that I exist. (Almost certainly not an AI generated image of a random old guy.) Health : It wouldn't be a year in review without a passing mention about my left knee. Although I don't recall it swelling up like it used to do, these days I'll sometimes get a fairly sharp pain if I bend it weirdly (which is harder to avoid than you'd think it would be). Still, I go jogging most mornings ... so how bad can the knee really be? I hurt my back this summer. I attribute this to stupidity. At Duke Farms we were cutting down (mostly invasive) plants that were tangling into or just very close to some of their fencing. Since we were cutting on both sides of the fence but were only collecting the debri...

Happy Semiperfect Numbers Day!  While perfect numbers are numbers that are equal to the sum of all their proper divisors, semiperfect numbers are equal to the sum of some of their proper divisors. (Yes, this means that all perfect numbers are also semiperfect numbers.) Similar to perfect numbers, semiperfect numbers don't seem to have a lot of application but are more of numerical oddities. Here are the smallest semiperfect numbers, including a couple that are also perfect numbers: And here's the arithmetic that shows why the smaller numbers are or are not semiperfect numbers. We celebrate Semiperfect Numbers Day on December 18 because 12/18 is the latest (American style) date that can be formed using consecutive semiperfect numbers.