Sunday 14 August 2016

No Rest for the Bottom of her Foot

I barely survived writing my own blog this week, so naturally the time and dedication that I was able to put into reading and commenting on other people's was a lot more limited than I'd been hoping. I still did a little, though, so this here's my weekly highlight reel, followed by the usual Sunday shenanigans.

Here's my highlights from the second week of Blaugust 2016:

Blaugust Prime: Luvapuzzle


Unbenownst to me, my darling mother has been posting daily on the internal workings of cryptic crosswords, explaining all the tools in the crossword compilers kit and giving us all hints on how to solve them. If any of you have ever wanted to give them a try some time, this is as good a beginner's guide as I've ever seen, and now that we're getting into some good stuff listing abbreviations, even people with a few cryptics under their belt like myself are wont to learn something.

I'm mostly just chuffed that my dear old mum has got in on the Blaugust act. Reading her blog is one of my great pleasures in life, as she writes just like she talks, and it's almost like being there sharing a cup of tea and a crossword. Bliss. Presumably it won't have exactly the same effect on those of you not crippled by homelessness, but I'm sure that you can get something out of it.

Blaugust East: The Ancient Gaming Noob

Wilhelm is one of the Blaugust stalwarts, and has posted daily in each interation of Blaugust East as well as an awful lot besides. He's one of those stalwart types that just irritate you with how damn reliable they are. Prolific, that's the word.

Each time I read one of his posts about EVE online I get urges to install the game, even though I am certain without a shadow of a doubt that it's not the sort of game I'd enjoy. He writes excellent propaganda and I love allowing myself to be carried off in the flow of it. I also love the screenshots, but know that if I could ever get the thing to run on my machine it wouldn't look quite that nice.

Blaugust MTBOS: Kelly O'Shea

My MTBoS blog for this week isn't actually from someone who's participating in Blaugust, and it's from quite a while ago, but this post from 2012 is still inspiring those maths teacher folks to try out different teaching methods in the classroom, and I've seen it linked a couple of times in MTBoS discussions this week.

I have to say this mistake game seems fascinating, I want to be back at school just to participate! Once again I find myself just wishing that many of my teachers had the dedication to their craft that these twitter maths peeps do. I liked many of my teachers and appreciated their effort, but I am certain that my peers and I would have been more engaged in learning back at school if some of these more elaborate methods had been at least tried on us.

And then on to the main event. The Up-Goer God Book is my nemesis Dan's project to translate the King James Bible into onto the ten hundred most common English words. I help by making graphics based on public domain art of randomly selected verses:

Beginnings 8

1 And God remembered the man who made the water car, and every living thing, and all the food animals that were with him in the water car: and God made a wind to pass over the world, and the waters went down; 2 The water ways also of the deep and the windows of the place where God lives were stopped, and the rain from the sky was stopped;


 3 And the waters returned from off the land again: and after the end of a number of days as many and animals you used to be able keep in a ball the waters were gone. 4 And the water car rested in month seven, on day ten and seven of the month, upon the large rock place called "Are are at". 5 And the waters went down again until month ten: in the month ten, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the large rock places you can climb seen. 6 And it came to pass at the end of four tens of days, that the man who made the water car opened the window of the water car which he had made: 7 And he sent out a black flying animal, which went forward here and there, until the waters were dried up from off the land. 8 Also he sent out a white flying animal from him, to see if the waters were gone from off the face of the ground; 9 But the white flying animal found no rest for the bottom of her foot, and she returned to him into the water car, for the waters were on the face of the whole world: then he put out his hand, and took her, and pulled her in to him into the water car.  10 And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent out the white flying animal out of the water car; 11 And the white flying animal came in to him in the night; and, check it out, in her mouth was one of the leaves of a tree that grows food which is also a colour sometimes used to talk about skin, which it had picked: so the man who made the water car knew that the waters were gone from off the world. 12 And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent out the white flying animal; which returned not again to him any more. 13 And it came to pass in the year six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the land: and the man who made the water car took off the covering of the water car, and looked, and, check it out, the face of the ground was dry. 14 And in the second month, on the day seven and two tens of the month, was the land dried. 15 And God spoke to the man who made the water car, saying, 16 Go out of the water car, you, and your wife, and your sons, and your sons wives with you. 17 Bring out with you every living thing that is with you, of all kinds, both of flying animal, and of food animal, and of every quietly moving thing that moves quietly upon the land; that they may have children lots in the world, and be full of babies, and have children upon the land.


 18 And the man who made the water car went out, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons wives with him: 19 Every animal, every quietly moving animal, and every flying animal, and what so ever moves quietly upon the land, after their kinds, went out out of the water car. 20 And the man who made the water car made a table to the god; and took of every clean animal, and of every clean flying animal, and offered burnt bodies on the table. 21 And the god smelled a sweet smell of burning bodies; and the god said in his heart, I will not again throw down the ground any more for man's reason; for the thoughts of man's heart is bad from his child time; also not again will I again kill any more every thing living, as I have done. 22 While the world remains, the time to put trees in the ground and the time to take the food from the trees, and cold and hot, and summer and not summer, and day and night will not stop.

Blaugust Writing Prompts

1) Have you discovered anything new and exciting this Blaugust?
2) Seen any good motivation posters lately?
3) Hypothetically speaking, if you could 'accidentally' not save a species from extinction if it were your job to save them all, which would you pick?

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