My #2 son likes reading books. Although that’s a touch inaccurate. Really he likes sitting on someone’s lap and getting them to read a book to him. He’s only 18 months so I think that’s forgivable.
I am pretty sure that he knows something that we don’t though. Whenever I get to the last page of a book he keeps trying to find another page. He scrabbles at the cover and tries to prise another page open. Now normally these are board books and so he can be forgiven for thinking there is another page, but I just ownder if one day a new page will open and create more of a story for him. I’d consider that magic.
Lego 9 Model 4208
Uncle Jase will be proud. A fire truck from Lego City.
Lego 8 Model 4432
Here’s a rather cool rubbish truck from Lego City. Ran out of superglue! Have to rebuild it in a few days!
Testing Heaven And Hell
In my last communication I stated that I thought the difference between my two relative frequencies was not significant. I think I have now performed a test, but whether it is valid or not can be up to you.
If Heavy Metal focuses on the dark side of life then there should be many references to to Hell in the song title. Conversly, there should be only a few references to the term Heaven in song titles. If this is the case then it could be expected that the frequencies of each would be independent of each other, assuming the subject matter for songs is random and the use of words follows this.
My Calculations follow, but essentially I have found that, at a 5% significance level, the distribution of Hell and Heaven is random and that the frequency of hell is close enough to the frequency of heaven for this to be so.
I am fully aware that I have really pushed the limits of my significance test and it probably doesn’t even work properly for this type of problem. But, my happiness about this communication remains about 75% (+- 3% for 95% confidence level).
Heaven and Hell
I’ve been thinking about the dark nature of heavy metal music and I am not sure that the reputation is deserved!
My hypothesis is that heavy metal music and hard rock is not at all as bad-ass as people think. I predict that the number of song title references to Hell will be fewer than those that reference Heaven. At the time of writing this is just a confirmation bias speaking.
Assuming that my music tastes for heavy metal and hard rock are reasonably consistent with the music genre and assuming that I have a random collection of this type of music in my library I will perform a count of the words in the song titles of my library.
This really is being done live. I don’t know the results at the moment. Here goes:
Heaven:
- Heaven’s Dead
- Heaven Sent
- When Heaven Comes Down
- In Heaven
- Heaven Can Wait (Gamma Ray)
- Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
- Heaven Can Wait (Iron Maiden)
- Stairway To Heaven
- Heaven Help
- Heaven For The weather, Hell For The company
- Heaven Can Wait (Meatloaf)
- Good Girls Go to Heaven
- Christmas In Heaven
- I Wish U Heaven
- To Be With You In Heaven
- South Of Heaven
- Heaven’s Gate
- Super-Charger Heaven
- Heaven and Hell
- Heaven Tonight
- Heaven Beside You
So that’s 21 song titles that include the word Heaven out of around 5000 songs in my library.
Now for Hell:
- Cold Day In Hell
- Right Next Door To Hell
- Highway To Hell
- Go To Hell
- Heaven for the Weather, Hell for the Company
- To Hell We Ride
- Hell Child
- Bat Out Of Hell
- Into The Lungs Of Hell
- Green Hell
- Hotter Than Hell
- Help Me I Am In Hell
- Hellraiser
- Run Like Hell
- Come Hell Or High Water
- To Hell And Back Again
- Hell Awaits
- Hellbound
- Hell Raisers
- Heaven and Hell
- Hells Bells
- Hell Ain’t A Bad Place To Be
- Hell Or High Water
- Private Hell
- Hell To Pay
- Earth On Hell
So that’s 26 references to Hell in a song title out of about 5000 songs in my library.
Now, I have no idea if that a significant statistical difference. It doesn’t seem so to me. It also appears from the titles of some of these songs that perhaps the context in which the title is used might be more important. A couple of the Heaven songs seem more to do with the dark side that good stuff and some of the Hell songs come from sayings.
I don’t think any conclusions can be drawn from this initial study. Perhaps with a research grant I’d be able to investigate the context of these words within the Heavy Metal form and get a good answer.
Rock On!
Angel
Here’s a picture of the guardian angel I have looing over my Christmas tree. We have a non-religious star at the top of the tree and this chap is standing to attention just below that. It’s nice to consider him overlooking the children and keeping an eye on them. Much like Obi-Wan in this comminication.
Bargain
I can’t believe it’s nearly Christmas. I’ve just seen a bargain in Tesco. It makes me want to buy many many bottles!
Bring The Noise
The latest fashion for drinking water from a bottle with a “sports top” has caused an epidemic of slurp sounds as people release the bottle from thier lips and air rushes into the bottle.
As an aside, I would have to say that the bottled water industry is an utter con. In the UK practically all tap water is potable. It is such a waste of resources and CO2 that water is put into plastic or glass bottles and then moved around the country by truck to be sold in shops as an alternative to the (often purer) water that is supplied into every home by the kitchen tap. Bottled water should be taxed greatly to compensate for the waste. The marketers of bottled water have done a marvellous job and the environment is going to suffer. I can’t think of a single argument for selling bottled water in the UK.
So, the prefered delivery recepticle for bottles of water at the moment is the sports top. A bottle top that doesn’t have to be turned to open the bottle, just pulled with the hands and teeth. This, in itself, is not a problem. The problem is the small aperture for the movement of water into the mouth. When squeezing the bottle to force liquid refreshment into the mouth the bottle compresses and sometimes crackles as it does so, this is reasonably noisy. But the most annoying part is when the lips are removed from the bottle and the air rushing back into the bottle causes an awful slurping sound. The gust of wind pushing past the lips and teeth and through the aperture can make a sound that just grates.
When bottle tops were screw tops there was plenty of space for air to enter the bottle IF you chose to have a small gap for air at the top of your lips, just under your nose. Now, apparently, this is an incovenient method of bottle top. Everyone should be using the sports top but not everyone is doing sport. I think it should be renamed the common top for lazy people. Let’s have a new design top for proper sports people.
To stop the slurp you just need to blow air into the bottle and allow the water to flow out into your mouth without creating the negative pressure in the bottle. Simple.
Table
I was called to the front room the other day as son #1 wanted to show off his handy work. He had set up his play crockery set as a tea party on the little table. I was very surprised by the symmetry and neatness of it all! Quite pleasing to the eye. What have I created?
Meme
One of the standard explanations and examples I use when teaching the mechanics module of A Level is to consider driving a car around town. Most pupils have experienced, or are aware, of people thier age who drive circuits around the local town trying to get noticed. I used to just talk about this practice but a few months back a friend was talking about his teenage experience of this form of behaviour and he used the term:
Barry Laps
This term didn’t really need any explaination as I already knew what it meant. I’ve never really partaken in the the Barry Lap experience. I think the closest I got was riding around Bishop’s Stortford on my Honda NTV 650 with Daryl on his Silverwing just after we had set up radio communication between us. We went around town a few times chatting to each other on the way. Being able to easily communicate between different bikes was far more of a novalty than trying to get attention from onlookers. This was in 1999 and quite before either of us owned mobile phones.
Anyway, I hope that with my continued use that the term Barry Lap might one day make it into the OED!
Testament – KoKo
Went with my best man and best pal to watch Testament at KoKo in Camden on Fri 30 Nov 2012.
They were good and very good fun to watch. Not a great front man but the music was hard and fast.
Liked the venue. Small and intimate.
Here are my photos:
