Alan Godfrey

If anyone is interested XFM recently did a “100 best songs of all time” item.
http://www.xfm.co.uk/onair/shows/xfms-top-100-songs-of-all-time

As usual the list was skewed completely by a) more modern songs and b) songs XFM listeners like. It was also completely swamped with Oasis songs for obvious reasons!

Having said that there were some decent songs in the list. I’ve created a Spotify playlist, so if you have it you can see the songs here: http://open.spotify.com/user/ileafy/playlist/20AlA9S8fajzWdM6kRMgHo

Several of the songs were missing sadly – including all of the Oasis songs! But the rest are worth a listen.

God, give me the strength to change the things I can. The courage to accept the things that I cannot. And the wisdom to know the difference.

Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.

You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.

You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she’s pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age eleven.

A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter is not a nice person.

Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a raindance.

If you lend somebody 20 quid and never see them again, it was probably worth it.

There are two theories to arguing with women, neither of them work.

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure. ~George E. Woodberry

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. ~Leonardo da Vinci

The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. ~Dorothy Nevill

The important thing is not to stop questioning. ~Albert Einstein

When you have nothing to say, say nothing. ~Charles Colton

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer. ~Albert Einstein

The time is always right to do what is right. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. ~Albert Einstein

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambition. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. ~Mark Twain

No time. Saddest words ever spoken or written. ~Og Mandino

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under different conditions. ~Mark Twain

You can accomplish much if you don’t care who gets the credit. ~Ronald Reagan

If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people. ~ Chinese proverb

All good things arrive to them that wait — and don’t die in the meantime. ~ Mark Twain

He who asks a question is a fool for a minute; he who does not remains a fool forever. ~ Chinese Proverb

Don’t worry about what people think about you–the chances are they seldom think about you at all. ~ Unknown

This monologue was in a book that I’ve just finished reading. It made me smile so much I wanted to share it with you:

‘I,’ she told him, ‘can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe.’

‘Really?’

‘I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen – I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledly lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in Drive-In movie theatres from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War Of The Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that Jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian Shaman. I believe that Mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kings of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know if I am alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.’ She stopped, out of breath.

tinyurl.com/leafydragon

Will tell you when I’m busy / free usually kept up-to-date. Book me now )

Is this not the greatest addition to google maps ever!

For those of you who have not seen it go to google maps and drag the little man icon above the zoom control over towards the map. It will highlight in blue all of the places that a van with a 360degree camera on board has driven down and you can now see the images from street level!

They are apparently hoping to soon link this up to SatNavs so that you can actually visualise the turning rather than simply seeing a 2D road view.

I’ve found where I used to live and where I work. I won’t post them on here for obvious privacy reasons but if you are interested let me know and I will send you the links!!

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

Terry Pratchett

If they were really clever they’d have made an advert on Sky by now that looks great when you fast-forward past it at x30!

Britain prefers new Flora Buttery!

(In small print below – Out of 200 people tested 48% preferred Flora Buttery, 45% preferred Lurpack spreadable, 7% indicated no preference.)

Bwahaha.

Genetic algorithm thoughts:

Simple game – Player A thinks of a number between 1 and 10, player B must guess the number within 3 attempts. What is the best way to play the game? If the number is picked at random then there is an optimum strategy involving splitting the range in half each time.

An example of a genetic algorithm is to generate an array of size 10 relating to the weighting behind selecting each number. If the program selects a number and subsequently loses lower the weighting – if it wins raise the weighting. After playing long enough the weighting will centre around the middle. By giving the program different arrays depending on the numbers remaining you can build up a optimal decision tree for the program.

Now – the big question. How do you move from there to a program that can play this game for any size? Clearly you can’t spend time setting up the decision trees for every size. Once an optimal strategy has been found it should be applicable to higher sizes but how do you build an AI clever enough to apply this logic?