No, not that one, although it’s a perfect example. No, this one:

A pentagon only has to have five sides. It doesn’t have to be symmetrical.

Anyway, a bright guy has discovered that the above shape can be tiled so as to completely match up and cover a plane, voila:

It seems there are only 15 pentagons that can “tile the plane” as above, with no gaps. The search is on to see if 15 is the final number. There are no hexagons, septagons, octagons, nonagons or higher sided shapes that will tile a plane. Fascinating.

Once again all this is courtesy of that marvellous on-line newspaper, The Guardian. As you can tell, I’m a big fan. I am an on-line subscriber – you can read it for free, but I feel I should pay so I paid about $100 for an annual subscription. Good value, in my opinion.

_______________________________________

I have the Navman MyVue Drive GPS navigator. The web site and literature say “free maps for life”. Oh yeah? What is this??

See the fine print?

Lifetime Free Maps. Only $129.

How the bloody hell is $129 free? What bullshit!

__________________________________

What a rotten, sleazy, dishonest, untrustworthy government we have oppressing us at the moment. Federal or state? It doesn’t matter, it applies to both. Both Liberal-National coalitions, both as bad as each other. Both make any kind of promise or commitment that they think voters want to hear at election time, both never intend to honour their pledges. How can anyone seriously believe Abbott or Barnett? They tell lies! Neither intends to stick to his promises!

I’ve said before, but I’ll repeat, I don’t care about same sex marriage, it’s of no importance to me. But when 60-70% of the population are in favour of changing the law, Abbott blocks it because of his own personal prejudice. What a prick.

Barnett: he’s wrecked the WA economy. It will take decades to undo the damage he’s done to the state’s finances. This is not just my opinion – read the articles in the press. Now he’s refusing to release reports on the proposed new highway through wetlands on the south of the river. Why would he refuse? Draw your own conclusions.

The good thing is that, like the Republican Party crash and burn in the US, it’s making it more and more likely that this will be a one term federal government, and that Labor has a good chance in WA in the next election. Look at the WA Liberal Party – they simply do not have anyone capable of being the next premier. Hah! Ha ha ha. They do not have any quality ministers capable of taking over from Grandpa Barnett. What a joke.

Ah, enough of this. I feel sick at the injustices being done in our name. Australia is being labelled a “don’t care” country in the global warming mitigation drive. Abbott wants coal – why? Because the coal and mining industries pay bribes, that’s why. Big bribes. Draw your own conclusions.

______________________________________

I posted the faulty Yamaha tuner back to the dealer in Sydney today; a real shop, by the way, found on-line but a real Australian shop. I spoke to them on the phone.

As I suspected, it cost me $35.40 for postage. I said to the guy on the phone that I wasn’t keen on paying this cost, and he sounded glum as I think he saw it as wiping out his profit. He didn’t say no, but … However, because I paid by PayPal, it looks as if I can get a refund of my return cost from them, PayPal. That’s handy. Let’s see if it works.

We had discussed the colour of the tuner on the phone – black or “silver”, i.e. brushed aluminium. I thought I’d ordered silver, but black arrived. No problem, either was OK. But the guy in Sydney said he has lots of sliver in stock but no more black. OK, send me a silver.  While I was boxing it up, I noticed that one end of the box has Silver printed on it, and the other end has Black. Huh? No wonder there was a mix up.

I’ve emailed them to say it’s coming and included the following:

so far, in the past 12 months –

• Postage of this item [the Yamaha tuner] at a cost of $35.40

• Postage to return a failed OCZ Vector SSD drive to OCZ in Taiwan $56

• Postage to return a faulty (2nd hand, sold with warranty) model train loco to UK firm $18
• Postage to return a wrong fit Metabones lens adapter to Hong Kong $26
• Return of a Pioneer BluRay player to JB HiFi Clarkson twice due to intermittent failure to turn on.
• Return of three failed coffee capsule machines – two to Woolworths, one to Coles.

Am I jinxed? It seems to me that quality and reliability is slipping in manufactured goods. Obviously due to the pressure on manufacturers to keep producing newer models faster, and because everything’s now made in China, to lower standards. That’s the problem – we keep wanting newer, shinier models faster and cheaper, and we’re suffering the consequences.

_________________________________

Re the missing TV antenna, one of my mates raised an interesting point yesterday: there’s no TV antenna because the whole suburb is fed from a master antenna via a cable! Now that he mentions it, there does seem to be an absence of antennae in the streets around me. I hadn’t thought of it before. This is a planned suburb, I guess.

Well, if that’s the case, where’s the master antenna and how is it distributed? How do I find out? Who do I talk to? I don’t know. More work needed.