the story of bert's blanket

let's take it outside

The weather was unseasonably warm this afternoon, so I took the chance to go for a walk. (I think every man, woman, child, and dog in town had the same idea.) As the shadows started to get longer, I liked the play of light and dark with the sun coming through the trees. It looks even better in black and white:

a winning streak

How could I have possibly forgotten this commercial? It's apparently from 2006, but still... it's a streaking sheep!



Watch other top Super Bowl commercials of the past decade here. (Though I have to say, in 4 of the last 10 Super Bowls, commercials were the farthest thing from my mind.)

a picture is worth a thousand wordles

The following image is a "wordle" which was created based on the frequency of words in the posts below this one:

Go ahead, try one with your own text at wordle.net.  It's addictive!

fun and games

I recently discovered Indigo Puzzles, a great site to play Sudoku as well as other logic puzzles: Hashi, Hitori, and Kakuro.  A free account gets you 12 new puzzles a day, in varying levels of difficulty, which can be printed or solved online.  You can save partially-completed puzzles and return to play them at a later date, or play puzzles from previous days out of the vault.  But the best part about the site is its interactive assistant for solving each type of puzzle.  If you get stuck, you can click the Advice button, and get not only a hint for your next move, but an explanation of why the move is possible.  This means you can attempt puzzles at a higher difficulty than you're used to, or learn a new puzzle type.  I came there enjoying Sudoku but new to Hashi and just learning about Hitori.  The assistant helped with understanding techniques of solving Hitori, a sort of checkerboard game of black and white squares, and gave me tips on Hashi, the addictive puzzle of islands and bridges, so now I can solve harder versions of both on my own.

It seems like the site's motto, "Proudly destroying productivity since 2005," is accurate!

Two other good sites with thousands of free logic puzzle games to print or play online are Web Sudoku and Vegard Hanssen's site for Hashi, Hitori, and more.