New book

Yay, my new book has arrived. Let me tell you a little about it. I call it the bible according to Conway. Which is wrong in many different ways. I am (obviously) mixing two ideas: the Gospel according to X, and the Bible. Not only that, but this book isn't written by Conway - he only co-authored it. But, like the Bible, it is a collection of many different pieces all together in one hardback volume. It contains lots of lists and data on the best known results in many unsolved problems, some of which are already out of date. (Most notably, the status of the face-centred-cubic packing has changed from "the densest lattice packing and probably the best packing" to "the densest packing". But it's a great book and I am going to enjoy reading it.

It has already reminded me of the kissing number problem. In three dimensions you can fit 12 identical spheres around another sphere of the same size so that they all touch it. You can't do the same with 13 spheres touching the central one. This second fact has been suspected for centuries, but it wasn't proved until 1953. And the proof is quite simple, once you have developed your spherical geometry toolkit. I am tempted to look it up again.

This is Conway from the 70's (I suppose). When I did maths talks, I liked to use colourful props to distract from my lack of preparation. I am fairly certain that is an Escher on his shirt, surely used as a distraction from his hair. Nice beard though.

Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

SATA is one of those occasions when a new technology comes along that is better than its predecessor in every possible way. For those not in the know, SATA is the thing that is replacing (some of) those massive ribbon cables that inhabit computer cases. It is faster, and importantly smaller, meaning that air circulates more easily and computers run cooler. I am quite a fan.

And the little connectors are much easier to maniuplate than the huge ones on IDE cables.

I had no problems fitting my new hard drive, but it hasn't cured my BSoD like I expected.

Spring Greens


I discovered a new vegetable this week. Little did I know that I was eating it out of season, I guess the clue was in the name.

So many options how to cook them.