Yipeeee! It’s raining and cool. It’s not heavy, just drizzle, but it started a couple of hours ago and should be enough to at least dampen the fires in the hills. The fireys will be relieved! The forecast is for much more rain tomorrow, “heavy” rain the bureau says, but strong winds, up to 80km/h. I think the rain will probably kill the fires today, though.

I was saying to my European friend, this is Australia: at the same time we have big, serious, out of control bushfires, big floods from the 36th parallel northwards, a cyclone and a pandemic, and there’s a huge mouse plague in NSW. What a country.

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Ooops. I think I got away with it, Horace. I had just pulled into the parking area at the Butler shopping centre, fully dressed in my girl-gear of course, and as usual I parked in a group of bays clearly marked for “Elderly” with markings showing a person bent over, pushing a trolley and with a walking stick.

As I was about to get out of my car, a young guy bounded past me and got into his car which was parked next to mine. This was no elderly person! This was a young, fit guy driving a 4WD tray back ute.

Without thinking about it, I got out and just stood next to his door and stared at him. He soon got the message and wound his window down and said, “What?” I said, “You don’t look elderly.” he said, “What?”

I said, “These bays are marked for the elderly.” He just muttered something which definitely included the f… word and drove off.

But what was I thinking? I was talking in my male voice while dressed as a woman, and because it was only a quick trip and I was wearing a mask, I hadn’t bothered to shave. Hah hah hah … I’m lucky he didn’t take it further. Must engage brain next time.

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When I came out, what should be parked next to me but one of these:

I’d just been looking on Carsales an hour ago. I love the styling and almost everything about this car. The only problem is, most of them are four cylinder diesels and according to the reviews, are underpowered.

However, there are six cylinder petrol models, V6s with twin turbos! I want one!

I freely admit, styling and the look of a car mean everything to me. I have to love the looks to want to own a car. Here’s the same model in the sedan form:

I love that too and I’d have one if I didn’t need the wagon.

On the other hand, I’m becoming more convinced that this is the car I should buy:

Why? Out of my two present cars, I like the Honda MDX the most. It really is true, the high driving position and the room inside make it preferable to the Verada wagon for me.

So if I want a car to see me out, what better than the luxury and legendary reliability of a Lexus. I don’t need 4WD, but I do want a smooth, luxurious and above all 100% reliable, low maintenance vehicle. Which means Lexus (Toyota but built even better). A 2004-5 model is about $10,000 used in good condition with low kms.

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Oh, this stupid, stupid Word Press editor. It’s just lost two of the images I’d placed, saying “This block has encountered an error and cannot be previewed.” Grrrrrrrr! This WordPress is a load of garbage but what can I do? I have 12 years of posts – it’s a bit hard to change now, and where would I go?

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I have a cyst on my right temple and it’s been there for more than six months. It doesn’t hurt, much anyway, but it’s about 6mm in diameter and stings a little bit, as well as slightly oozing a foul smelling fluid.

The GP says it has to be either surgically cut out, or he’s prescribed a cream called Aldara which seems to be designed to burn it out. It destroys the flesh and leaves a wound which should heal over. You are supposed to apply it three times, but spaced two days apart, ie Mon-Wed-Fri. And it’s supposed to be done at night, and you have to sleep with the wound uppermost, ie no contact with the pillow. And definitely no contact with eyes or other skin as much as possible.

I applied the first lot last night and it didn’t hurt as I expected. I thought it would burn and sting, but mostly OK so far. Sleeping exclusively on my left side was difficult so I think I’ll apply it during the day tomorrow. I can’t see why not, unless it requires darkness.

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Yum – while in the supermarket, I noticed that McCains have added to their sourdough crust pizza range. Up to now it’s only been spinach and cheese, or Napolitana tomato and cheese. I add other toppings like prawns, anchovies, olives, smoked oysters and so on.

Now there are three new toppings – Italian meatball; salami; and another kind of cheese (can’t remember what). I really do find these pizzas the best I’ve had. At $8 each frozen, I get two meals out of each, so a $4 pizza dinner with wine is good value!

It looks as if we’ve dodged a bullet once again. We (the south west part of Western Australia) have been in lockdown since 6pm last Sunday due to one case of COVID-19 infection of a quarantine hotel worker. He did the right thing and detailed all his movements and contacts, but despite it being the more infectious UK variant, not one new case of infection has been found in the last five days, from tens of thousands of tests. That’s remarkable. How lucky we are.

The result is that assuming nothing bad happens today, the lockdown will end at 6pm this evening. Unfortunately the government is going to mandate mask wearing in public until 14 Feb.

So, in theory, we have a reunion committee meeting at a cafe on Tuesday. I’ve made a booking but I haven’t had any confirmation from the cafe. If the 4 sq. m. rule is in force, they may not be able to accommodate our group of seven. I’ll have to phone them on Monday, I guess.

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Meanwhile, I’m waiting on a visit from a woman from Silver Chain. The appointment was for 10am, but that’s past and I’ve had no advice as to whether she’s still coming or not. They phoned me about it last Monday and said they or she would get back to me, but no-one has phoned since then.

Update: it’s past 11am and she hasn’t come, and no-one has phoned either. I’m a little annoyed. I can understand not wanting to come in this lockdown, but she might have phoned. I dressed up for nothing 🙂

They said it was to be about “social support”. I don’t know what that means but I was looking forward to talking to her. Silver Chain say that they can provide something like this, “even if you just want a chat”. Well, yes I do. Despite living alone all my life, I do like to talk sometimes. I can go a week without speaking a word except to checkout ladies. The internet has opened up email and that helps, but I would like a visitor.

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My love affair with Wish.com continues and I’ve ordered even more clothes. All these are coming.

I must admit, I’ve become quite addicted to this site. It’s not just clothes, it’s all kinds of gadgets, tools, electronic and electrical components and things I’d never even thought of, didn’t know existed. Being me, I’ve stored them all away in compartmented boxes awaiting the day I need them. But being addicted to this damned PC, I don’t actually get around to doing the finger work any more.

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Sink, sank, sunk,
Who woulda thunk,
That the ABC,
Would feed us such junk!

ABC announcers (Alan Kohler!) say, “The market sunk today.” Holy smoke, it’s not hard to get it right. This is elementary, primary school grammar. They also mix up:
Drink, drank, drunk: I will drink (future); I drank (past); I have drunk (past ?)
Also shrink, shrank, shrunk. (Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Wrong!!)

I talk about the ABC but that’s because they are the ones I see most. All TV announcers and journalists worldwide, including on the BBC, seem to have lost the ability to use these words correctly.

And on this theme, can’t anyone write proper tenses any more? I learnt a simple ditty in my childhood:
Each, every, either, neither, nor.
Each of those is singular.
Every one of those is singular.
Either of the two is singular.
Neither of them is plural.
Nor is any one of them plural.

Last year I started collecting grammatical errors from the web, mainly from ABC News because I read that a lot but also from the Guardian (not so many because they are pretty good), and any other source I read. Wow, it’s been a rich mine of howlers and stupid errors. The list has grown to a couple of hundred now.

I’ve done it in Notepad, the simple text editor, and it’s grown a bit unwieldy. I’ve included a comma after each part of each entry, hoping to pour it into a spreadsheet as comma-delimited data, but my first attempt was a disaster so I’ll have to parse it and try again.

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Speaking of Windows Notepad, does anyone else get fed up with the bug that’s been in the program since about Windows 3 in 1990? The bug is that when you save, the cursor jumps up some random number of lines and you lose sight of it, meaning, it doesn’t show. You have to use the arrow keys to move it so as to find it (the cursor, I mean).

But worse, the Save can actually delete your new entry and part of your previous text as well. It’s unpredictable – you need to do a Ctrl-Z Undo, usually twice, to restore the deleted text, which brings back your new entry.

However, the one thing that is predictable is that this only applies to the first Save after entering new text. Once you’ve got things as you want them again, subsequent saves will be fine.

It amazes me that this bug has been in the program for so long – thirty years! – and hasn’t been fixed, but also that I’ve never seen it mentioned in any computer writings. Am I the only one who’s seeing it?

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Oh, OK then. I’ve been asked for pictures, heh heh. I’ve shot my mouth off so I guess I can show myself now.
These were in 2007:

God I was nervous. I used to sneak to the carport and check that next-door wouldn’t see me. I’ve got over that.
Unfortunately I don’t have those clothes any more. When you’re a cross dresser, you tend to have periodic dumps of shame, purges. But I’m over that now.

These are some of my favourites. I’m lucky I have friends who are pretty good photogs. More later.

Dang, we were going so well in Western Australia. No community transmission of the COVID 19 virus at all, no cases of infection except in incoming travellers, who immediately went into quarantine. No masks, no worries.

But then on Sunday a young guy who has been working casually as a hotel quarantine guard reported sick and was found to have the highly infectious UK variant. Clang! Down came the shutters and we went into a five day lockdown since 6pm last light. No leaving the house except for a limited range of reasons, compulsory wearing of masks. Back to the big quiet. Almost no vehicle sounds, no motorbikes (hooray!!) and no sirens. It’s peaceful.

The guy had been very conscientious and cooperative and had been using the phone app that tells your movements, so they were very quickly able to trace his movements in the previous week. Boy, he had been busy, but mainly in areas of Perth that I never go near, so I don’t feel any danger at all.

And the good news is that as of now, 3.30pm Monday, there have been no more cases of infection found. He shares a house with three others and they’ve been taken to a quarantine place, but so far there’s been no spread of the virus. If this keeps up, the lockdown will be lifted on Friday at 6pm.

I’ve got three appointments this week – the first is my regular Silver Chain cleaner on Thursdays so I’ve phoned them and cancelled that one. I think I can miss a week of cleaning. I have an appointment at the medical centre on Wednesday and I’ll phone tomorrow to see if it’s going to be open. Then on Friday I have a Silver Chain lady coming to talk to me a bout something (I don’t know what), so I’ve said let’s just play it cool. If she still wants to come, good, but otherwise we can postpone. They agreed, saying it’s really her choice. Fair enough.

So after 10 months of virus free life in this state, our record has been busted. Oh well, we’re still streets ahead of the rest of Australia and probably the world. Beautiful climate (38C today), blue skies, warm ocean (23C), it’s paradise.

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I’m still watching the Big Bang Theory TV series. I haven’t exhausted it yet. And I’ve realised that I never saw series 11 and 12, each consisting of 24 episodes, so that’s 48 episodes that I’m seeing for the first time. Bonus.

It’s funny, when it was first aired on free-to-air TV it was on Channel 9. Then while it was still being shown, Channel7 picked it up too and was running it in parallel. That ended a couple of years ago and now Channel 10 are running it again, from the beginning. Wow, this is a popular show. Considering I watched it faithfully on 9 for ten years or so, not caring if I’d seen the episodes before, and now I’m watching it in its entirety all over again, that seems to indicate that it has a certain appeal.

I must admit Sheldon grates a bit. He dominates the show and I wonder sometimes if they could have done without his character. I think they could, but he does serve a purpose.

It’s very moralistic, written to illustrate human behaviour with a huge dollop of lessons in ethics and human failings, but the humour is genuinely good so I can put up with it.

By the way, I’ve long noticed that when I watch TV humour on my own, I laugh inside my head, in my mind, but not out loud unless it’s really good. Only if I’m watching with someone else do I tend to laugh out loud.

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Speaking of watching with someone else, my European friend is in lockdown in a city over there (where it’s winter!) and she said it’s very gloomy. Almost everything’s closed, all the theatres and restaurants and cafes, all the benches have been removed from the parks to prevent people congregating too close together, and it was 10degC and raining during the day, getting down to -1degC and snowing overnight. Boy, I’d find that hard to bear, but they have no choice. “I can’t go on. I will go on.” Just grit your teeth and go on.

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I’ve got to get on with making my Advanced Health Directive, which is the “living will” document to tell people what you want done if you become seriously, mortally ill. As a single person no next of kin (well, not so you’d notice, they don’t seem to want anything to do with me these days), I want it to be clear who does what. When I was in the Mount Hospital last week, they did ask if I had an AHD at one stage, but I had to say no.

As I say, my siblings are not to be relied on and I’d rather my two best mates look after my affairs if I can’t.

But the forms are so complex! One of my best mates is like me, on his own and being a smoker who’s already had a heart event, highly likely to drop dead at any time. Both of us must get these forms done and countersigned. But he’s daunted, as I am. I guess it’s just a matter of buckling down. Wish me luck.

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Speaking of dressing female, as I am, I’m buying a lot of clothes from the Chinese web site Wish.com. I love the clothes they’re offering:

The thing is, they’re all offered as 5XL to 8XL and they fit me! I know it sounds weird, but for the first time in my life, I can dress the way I’ve always wanted to. I have good taste in clothes and I’m proud to be seen in these. I look good, believe it or not.

And they’re so cheap – $8 to $16 – that if something doesn’t fit when it arrives, I just put it into the charity shop bag.

It might be cheap Chinese stuff, but it’s good quality and it suits me better than anything I can find here. Yeah!

I’m getting serious about this, telling friends and almost always dressing female now. In fact I’m going to a brekky with a group of high school friends next week (lockdown permitting) and I’ll definitely be going as a girl. They know in advance and are fine with it. In addition, we have our annual high school reunion scheduled for 17 April and for the first time, I intend to show myself there, to the whole crowd of 30 – 40 that we get. Some know already but there will be a lot of gasps, I reckon. Too bad, this is me. Not too many years left and I’m determined to live them as I want.

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Uh oh, again. There’s a bushfire somewhere near and the sky is totally grey with smoke. I have to put the bins out now so I’ll have a look.

My neighbour has a Vote Liberal Zak Kirkup sign on her front garden. Obviously she likes incompetent losers, fraudsters, conspiracists, nasty party infighters and all round idiots. She thought Trump was great.

It’s a coincidence because on Thursday the local branch of the Labor Party phoned me and asked if I’d do How-to-Vote cards on 13 March. I said I can’t stand for long periods, sorry, so they asked if I would put a Vote Labor sign on my front garden. I said yes. Maybe I might swap my sign for next door’s one dark night, and hide hers. Heh heh.

The McGowan Labor government have proved themselves to be excellent administrators. We have zero community transmission of the virus in the state, the state budget is back in surplus after the disastrous mismanagement of the previous Liberal rabble and the WA economy is not just recovering, it’s booming in the middle of a pandemic. Labor are going to romp home.

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A Little Knowledge Department: in Thursday’s West Australian an article said that a local fast money entrepreneur has bought a ticket on Jeff Bezos’s SpaceX rocket for one of the first sub-orbital flights. It said it will rise about 100km to the edge of space and (I kid you not) travel at more than the speed of light.

I think he’d better get a money back guarantee because (a) you simply cannot travel faster than light – not even close to the speed of light; and (b) even assuming you could, he’d theoretically get back to Earth before he left, so he wouldn’t have done the trip (I’m being very loose with the physics here).

As I understand it, there are no sub-editors at the West these days, since cost cutting started, so tripe like this gets through. Their grammar is atrocious too. There are a few good journos there trying to do serious work, but the paper is a rag. I buy it to read with lunch at the shops, but mainly for the ads and local news. I knew nothing until Thursday of the violent attacks at City Beach earlier in the week, for example, even though I read the internet/national news avidly.

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I must add my hearty praise for several women here. The first is Amanda Gorman, the 22 y.o. black woman who read out her poem at President Biden’s swearing in. What a powerful, moving performance that was. She’s going to be a star, and she’s only 22. I was very impressed.

Next was our own Australian of the Year, Grace Tame. Groomed and repeatedly raped by her maths teacher at age 15, he only got a 2yr 10month jail sentence and boasted about his exploits on Facebook when he got out. But Ms Tame was prevented by law from speaking about her experiences! She fought to get the law changed and won. What a woman! I admit I find her incredibly attractive in the physical sense, but also for the sheer power of her presence. I think she’s got a bright future ahead.

And third, it looks as if Tanya Plibersek might have overcome her misgivings about being a possible future leader of the federal Labor Party, and hence a possible second ALP woman to become PM. I think she’s outstanding and I would love to see her replace “Albo”. I’m sure he’s a good bloke, but as a leader, he’s embarrassing.

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I finished Fermat’s Enigma by Simon Singh. I think what I said previously here about Andrew Wiles finding the link between elliptic equations and modular forms via the Taniyama-Shimura hypothesis was as hard as the maths got, so although I don’t pretend to understand it, at least that was the crest of the hill. The rest of the book was just about Wiles’s further search for the missing link to finally nail the proof.

It’s a good book but like the next one, is padded out with long, detailed biographies of every mathematician who ever had any bearing on the result, dating back to Pythagorus. It got a bit tedious.

My next read is Prime Obsession: The Reimann Hypothesis and the author admits that he does the same, provides long, detailed biographies and descriptions of the lives and times of all the characters. At least he tells us that almost all the non-mathematical stuff is in the odd numbered chapters and all the maths is in the evens, so he is a bit apologetic about it. However, I’m in chapter 3 at the moment and I’ll keep going.

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Phew, it’s ‘ot! I’ve been out to the shops for lunch and to buy the paper and a few groceries and I burnt my fingers on the car when I closed the boot. There was no breeze and the sun was on the back of the car, despite the shade sails.

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It’s a bit over a week since my heart operation and I’m noticing a subtle improvement. It’s a bit easier to move around and I don’t tire so easily. No more chest pains, either. There’s a psychological lift too, a result of the physical improvements. It makes me want to walk a bit more, which can’t be a bad thing.

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I got my new pension card in the mail last week and it included a reminder that I’m entitled to one return or two single direction free trips on state government transport each year. I used my entitlement for a trip to Kalgoorlie on the Prospector in 2019 with my friend but didn’t do anything last year. I think I might do it again this year, like, soon. I think this time I’ll go for two nights instead of just one. I see the York Hotel in Hannan St is offering a room for $104 so it looks good. I’ll do the same as we did, rent a car for the two days as well. I saw all the old shops in the main street and I want to do some photography of them.

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I’ve said before that I enjoy, no, prefer dressing as a woman and it’s becoming my way of life now, every day in other words. Therefore my trip to Kalgoorlie will be 100% en femme, no male clothes at all. It will be easy and fun. I’m totally comfortable this way now, no nervousness, no embarrassment, just enjoyment. I don’t leave the house as a bloke any more, only as my female self. Why? It makes me feel happy! It’s so enjoyable. So there!

I’m back at home after a couple of days in the Mount Hospital for an angiogram (angrygram, geddit? I hardly need one of those). For most of the past year or so I’d been noticing little twinges of angina in my upper chest, and late last year I thought maybe I’d better do something about it.

Well, lucky I did, because the angiogram yesterday showed a heart blood vessel was 90% blocked. I heard the surgeon say the word severe while I was on the table, so he put a stent in, my seventh. It looks as if I was lucky, “dodged a bullet” as they say. It was easy and I feel fine. This was the third stent operation I’ve had and just another of many of these heart probes. This one was through the arm, thank goodness. I’ve had several through the groin into the femoral artery and I don’t like those because of the pain when the local anaesthetic needles go in down there.

Not to mention the difficulty one surgeon had in finding the artery, occasionally. I remember one procedure where the surgeon was grumbling and muttering as he couldn’t find it. Thank goodness he wasn’t too proud to say so and called for another surgeon to assist him, successfully.

Brrrr, those catheter lab rooms are cold. I don’t know why. Possibly so that the surgeon doesn’t perspire? I was on the table being prepped (by those lovely nurses – so competent) and this guy came in wearing what looked like a Hawaiian shirt, all floral patterned. He mumbled something like my name as he brushed past but I didn’t quite hear him. He came closer and repeated the greeting, and as I was seeing him upside down and in that shirt, I still didn’t immediately recognise him. It was the right surgeon though, so I let him go ahead. Heh heh.

Then it was back to the ward with a plastic pressure strip on my right wrist artery where he’d gone in. No problems, no bleeding.

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I’d been allocated a shared room and a guy was brought in about 5.30pm for the other bed. Holy smoke, the noise for the next three hours or more! He was the same age as me but had not much idea of his medical history and present complaint, or what medications he was on. The resident doctor had to prise it out of him, with his wife there too (all behind a curtain) not being much help.

Finally the noise quietened down and the people left, but then the coughing started (or continued, I suppose). Loud, hacking coughs every 30 secs or so, sharp, unrestrained. I thought, help, is this going to go on through the night?

Finally about 8.30pm I asked the nurse if there was another room available and she was very nice, went away and came back and said “Follow me”, so I was moved to another room, a private one with a great view out big sliding glass doors to a balcony overlooking the Narrows Interchange Gardens with all their leafy trees. Aaah, bliss. The nurse came back with all my things soon afterwards and I had a good night. The food was dead boring – I must remember not to say diabetic diet next time.

I had a reasonable night’s sleep, interrupted three or four times for a pee. Looks like prostate might be next on the agenda. I awoke right on sunrise, 5.30am, to the sun flooding in through the trees and those big glass doors. Lovely. Australia Day, 26 January and perfect weather, 28C, balmy breeze. Keith gave me a lift home, thank goodness. I caught the train in yesterday and taxi from the city centre to the hospital, but I felt a bit weak and tired this morning so didn’t want to walk too much today. Nap time now, quite sleepy. More later.

Phew, bit hot. No sea breezes, apparently due to a big, very slow moving high pressure zone over the eastern part of south west WA, directing easterly winds and blocking the westerlies. I’ve had to use the aircon at night two or three times recently, which is not normal. I can only tolerate an hour or so before having to get up and turn it off, by which time my bedroom is like a cool-box.

I was talking to a friend yesterday who’s very into home automation – lights, alarms, door locks, that kind of thing. I said I’m not much interested, but I’ll admit I’d like to be able to switch the bedroom aircon off with my phone without having to getup and go out to the dining area. It might actually be possible. But would it be worth the effort?

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I read an item in The Guardian today, describing the Trump presidency and the list of his transgressions made my eyes widen: “… savage occupation, butchery, usurpation, religious massacre, civil war, regicide, chaos, theocracy, military coup, foreign intervention, mass migrations, colonial genocides, and a constant cycle of rebellions and repressions.” Worst president in US history. A thoroughly bad person. Vicious, vengeful, selfish, untrustworthy – almost any words you can think of are applicable. He has 400,000 COVID deaths to his name. He deserves to be assassinated, torn limb-from-limb in my opinion, erased from the face of the Earth, like Adolf Hitler. A disgusting person.

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Up to now, electric cars are not selling well and apart from their high price, one drawback has been the time required to recharge the batteries, akin to refuelling with petrol or diesel. Most electric cars need between 30 minutes to two to three hours to charge up. That’s a long time to be sitting in a service station cafe waiting.

Well, a company has developed batteries with five minute charging. That’s not a full charge but it’s about enough for 200km or enough to get you to the next charging point.

The great thing is that it’s not some exotic new technology. All they’ve done is change the way existing materials are used and they’re confident enough that they’ve released manufacturing samples for testing. These are not rare engineering samples with long lead times – the article said manufacturers are being offered details to begin manufacture. And they’re supposed to be no more expensive.

Unfortunately this all sounds too good to be true.

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WHAT??!! Ordinary lake water, with all it impurities and amoebae and viruses but blessed by a “cleric” is considered holy and pure? To have special powers of protection and healing. Goodness gwacious – there are some easily tricked people in Vilnius. I think I might head over there with books of tickets for the raffles for the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. What a load of bollocks!

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From my favourite photo dog/blog today: Idle diversion: what do you think was the greatest artistic accomplishment of the 20th century? In any art. Define it however you’d like.

I added my comment: I nominated the first thing that came to mind – the dawn of the New Millennium on 31 December 1999/1 January 2000. [I still gnash my teeth at the error in the dates but all the TV networks worldwide fell into the same mistake so it couldn’t be helped. The real change of millennium was 31 December 2000/1 January 2001!]

Anyway, I’ll never forget staying up all night to watch the TV coverage, starting with the first dawn from the Chatham Islands (?) east of NZ, the first place in the world to see the new dawn. Then we saw New Zealand’s dawn, followed by the Sydney/east coast dawn and the didgeridoo player standing on the top of the Opera House sail. Haunting. Combined with Midnight Oil and Yothu Yindi, moving on to Uluru – wow, the hairs still stand up on my arms. I stayed up all night, aided by copious quantities of champagne and saw the slow dawn on the east side of my house. I’m ashamed to admit that I was far gone enough to think I would drive down to the beach to see the sunrise over the ocean. Er, wrong side of the continent!

Then the TV coverage moved on to the rest of the world but I think I was too tired and went to bed after that. But that’s what I would nominate as the greatest artistic event of the 20th century for me. I’m so glad I was here to see it. I have a DVD of the TV coverage but the quality was so poor in those days that I don’t think I’ve ever watched it.

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My current book is Fermat’s Enigma by Simon Singh. If you don’t know, the 17thC mathematician Pierre de Fermat left some writings about the deceptively simple equation:

There are no solutions to x^n + y^n = z^n, where n = any integer greater than 2.

I say deceptively simple because you already know this equation – when n = 2, it’s Pythagoras’s solution to the sides of a right angled triangle a^2 + b^2 = c^2. The usual numbers are 3^2 + 4^2 = 5^2 or 9 + 16 = 25. We learnt this in primary school. Other numbers are 5, 12 and 13 and 10, 24 and 26.

However, Fermat postulated that there are no solutions for n >2. None! None to infinity, which is the required standard of proof. In other words, not x^3 + y^3 = z^3, not x^4 + y^4 = z^4 or any other power. But infuriatingly, he wrote a note in the margin of his notebook saying he had found a “marvellous proof, but there is not enough space to write it here.” Unfortunately he didn’t write it anywhere else either, and so for the next 300 years no-one knew if he really had found a solution or not.

And it has proved an extremely difficult proof to find. The greatest mathematicians, including Gauss, Euler and Hilbert tried over the centuries but were unsuccessful. So it remained. Part of the problem was that mathematicians questioned whether the amount of effort, the years of work, justified the result.

Until the 1980s. A British guy, Andrew Wiles had been obsessed bythe problem since he read about it at 10 years of age, and after gaining a PhD in maths from Cambridge, when he moved to Princeton University in the USA and a pair of Japanese mathematicians made a breakthrough in another area of maths, he decided to dedicate himself to the work.

I’m about 3/4 of the way through the book and I must say that although Mr Singh explains things very well, I’m struggling to keep up. The Japanese breakthrough was the Taniyama-Ochura conjecture, but if you asked me to explain it, I don’t think I could. It’s something about linking elliptic equations with modular forms. Wiles realised that if he could prove the Taniyama-Ochura conjecture, that would prove the Fermat theorem. Simple, eh?

Anyway, Andrew Wiles finally announced that he’d succeeded in proving the Fermat equation problem in about 1987 to great acclaim. But a few years later, an error was found in his work and he had to spend more years fixing the problem (don’t ya hate that? 🙂 ). Finally, he released his new solution in 1991 and entered the history books as one of the greatest mathematicians ever. He hasn’t received a Nobel yet but I’d say it’s a certainty. His mentor and maths coach at Cambridge was an Aussie, by the way, Dr John Coates.

I’ll finish the book, but the going’s getting hard.

My next book is Prime Obsession: The Riemann Hypothesis, about prime numbers. Nothing like maths books to put you to sleep.

I mean ain’t it nice to be free of COVID fear, free to do anything, go anywhere (within the state, that is) and I’m looking forward to the vaccinations in a few weeks. What a contrast with what we thought were the pillars of democracy, the USA and the UK. Exemplars of competence and common sense. NOT!

Both Trump and Boris have hundreds of thousands of deaths on their consciences through their incompetence and denialism. Trump I expected, but not the UK government. I’ve always admired Britain for its leadership and competence but not any more. They’ve crumbled into an amazing pile of stupidity under this Tory government. Boris was always known to be a liar and a fool, yet people voted for him. Well, your vote may well cost you your life in Britain. It’s clear that my dream of visiting Croft Castle is on the back burner indefinitely. It probably won’t happen in my lifetime now.

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No sea breezes lately either. It’s very noticeable. I went down to the Jindalee Beach walkway yesterday around 4.30pm and what breeze there was was mostly warm easterly. The ocean was almost calm and the sand was broad and flat, beautiful. This was looking down from the walkway high above. I’m frustrated by this beach because to get to it requires descending an 80 step wooden staircase. Going down is not too difficult but getting back up again is a lung burster.

I’m very hopeful (yes, full of hope) that a new aquatic centre will be built at Alkimos this year. That’s five minutes drive north of me. I really, really need this as I can’t swim in the ocean any more, unless it’s a very sheltered beach. Boy, I miss being able to ocean swim but I can’t risk it now unless it’s very calm.

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Which reminds me, I’ve been having a small amount of angina recently and so an angiogram is scheduled for Mon 25th. I’ve had these many times before and I’m not worried, especially as the cardiologist says he’ll go in through the arm rather than the groin (apparently I’m too fat down there, harrumph!) It’s at the Mount, so I’ll have to take the train in and taxi from the station. It’ll be an overnight stay. That’s fine with me, I like the food and I seem to sleep well in hospital.

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The guy organising the Facebook Channel 7 History project has renewed his call for submissions. He says 147 people registered their interest but only 10 have submitted, which includes me, of course. He’s pleading for more.

Even though I wrote 8,500 words I could have written a lot more and I’ve been tempted to do a second submission, a fill-in-the-gaps Chapter 2. But I really should direct my efforts to my own history.

I made a good start a few years ago but I’ve been bogged down by a lack of knowledge about who’s who in our early Sydney relatives. However, the My Heritage web site has allowed me to build a very comprehensive family tree, complete with many photos to go with the names, so I’m much better equipped now. It’s not just Sydney either – I now know much more about the Arnold side.

As well, I’m very pleased to have received a USB stick from my cousin in Rhode Island, USA, with scans of all the documents and newspaper clippings his mother, Yvonne, amassed. There are 141 pages! Most of them have more than one document, too.

Unfortunately he’s not very computer literate and many of the scans are of very poor quality. But it still gives me links between people with many birth, marriage and death dates to add to the MyHeritage tree. Wow, it takes up time.

I paid for one year of access to that site to gain access to their photo enhancement facility but I’ve done just about all the photo enhancements I need so I don’t want to pay another $230. I wonder what will happen when I say goodbye to them. Presumably I’ll lose access to the tree, so I’d better get a good printout before roughly September or whenever is the expiry date.

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Speaking of books, a former workmate at Ch.7 has done a picture book:

He said he found a book publishing broker who handled the printing and ordering side of it. I’ve bought two copies $25 + pp each) and I plan to visit him in Mundaring to collect them. Asap. When the weather cools down. I’ll ask about this broker. Interesting. http://www.thepossumwhisperer.net/ if you’re interested.

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Wow, it’s hot. Yesterday 41deg, the day before 39deg, today 37deg. Thanks to air con in house, car and shops it’s not a problem but it’s not good for the lawn and garden. I pity the birds and wildlife. I’m not hearing any birds lately. I hope they’re just away on holiday and sending tweets 🙂

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Holy smoke – trust Sony to pull a rabbit out of the hat. Who thought Sony was a car builder? They make hi-fi and PlayStations, yes? Well, look at the video above. What a thing of beauty. I want one!

Unfortunately, it seems it’s just a concept model, a demonstration of what they can do, not meant for production. Well, I haven’t been much interested in electric cars up to now. Teslas are not bad but I wouldn’t pay their price to get one. Most of the other makers’ electric vehicles are just weird looking re-hashes of their existing models.

But this Sony car excites me. If it was available and I had the money, I wouldn’t hesitate.

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This is a reminder of how pathetically weak Australia is at encouraging our take-up of electric vehicles. It’s absolutely vital to combat climate change, yet there are no government incentives to change over. Three state governments have even discussed imposing a tax on EVs! Why? Because the governments don’t get any excise tax from petrol sales as they do with normal cars.

I despair at this country. We have so much talent in science, engineering and manufacturing, yet we stuff up every big project we undertake due to political interference and ineptitude. The NBN is the prime example. As originally proposed by the Rudd Labor government, we would have had fibre to every house and building in the country, allowing speeds up to 1,000Mb/s. But when the Turnbull Liberal government came to power, they put politics first and had to have a point of difference, even though it made no sense. As a result we’ve got a dog’s breakfast hodge-podge of a scheme which, now that it’s complete, has to be rebuilt at massive cost to somewhere near the original idea. Malcolm Turnbull, the man who single handedly crippled the NBN. What an achievement.

Similarly, there are many companies busting to build solar and wind energy projects, yet the federal government puts obstacles in their way. The funding for the alternative energy council is always being reduced and gas is promoted as the way of the future, even though LNG (gas) is a major polluter. Why is gas promoted? Because the Liberal government is mates with the big gas companies and executives.

Oh, I could go on and on but it’s too depressing. If there’s a right way to do things, expect Liberal politicians to take the opposite path.

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It was the same when I was working – I was appalled and frustrated at the way management behaved, and because I was interested, I used to read books and articles about the best managed companies in the world, mainly US companies of course. And I used to think, it was as if the management of the company I worked for had read these books and said, “Right, you managers, this is what we will not do.” It was so glaringly obvious that our management were determined to manage badly (and hadn’t read or understood these books).

In particular, their rule seemed to be, “Keep it secret, don’t communicate, don’t tell your staff what’s going on.” Oh, I’ll write a book about this one day. I kept a diary at one stage over about a two year period because things got so bad that I felt I would need to have a record. I’ll publish it one day.

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I think I said I’ve been using a free substitute for Microsoft Office due to problems I was having with it. I found WPS Office and I’m finding it’s marvellous! It’s so good that I’ve paid the $40 annual fee for the Premium version.

Well knock me down with a feather but in the list of Chinese companies that the US (Trump) has banned from the New York Stock Exchange was a company called WPS Office. It even showed their logo, which is the same as the one for this software.

This is annoying – it’s a Chinese company. I’m very disinclined to buy or use anything Chinese now, in view of their authoritarian government’s jackboot-on-the-neck approach to international relations.

I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve looked in the Help-About for any indication of their base but didn’t find anything. I’ll have to do some web searching.

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I’m listening to Amazon Prime Music, as I said and although it’s good, there is one very annoying thing and I wonder if it’s deliberate. At the end of each track it suddenly cuts off, either early or just drops out for about two seconds, before resuming and going on the the next track. I wonder whether it might be deliberate to stop us recording tracks, ie to make it annoying to build up our own collections. I don’t know.

Phew, day after day in the mid 30s, definitely a heat wave. It’s not too bad at night, thank goodness, down to 18C last night. I still have the fan on all night but I must admit it gets a teensy bit chilly in the early hours.

I’m sleeping quite well since I dropped that medication (yes, it was an antidepressant) and I fall asleep within 10 minutes or so. That’s a complete contrast to when I was taking it. I was seeing four or five am every night before I finally succumbed to exhaustion and dropped off. I was fearing going to bed, whereas now I look forward to it.

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I’m doing a fair bit of reading before lights out and I’ve just finished The Surgeon of Crowthorne, by Simon Winchester. I’d heard of it for a long time and now I’ve finally found out what it’s about.

In fact it’s the story of the Oxford English Dictionary, and the surgeon is an American, Dr William Minor who found himself in Britain in the mid 1800s. Unfortunately, due to a predisposition to mental illness, exacerbated by service as a doctor in the American Civil War, he developed a fear of Irish immigrants fighting in the war. He had to carry out some horrific acts as a surgeon, including branding a man as a deserter, and became unemployable by the US Army. As he was a man of means with an army pension, he moved to England.

Unfortunately in his deranged state one night, he shot and killed a stranger, an innocent man who he thought was an Irishman. He was found not guilty by way of insanity and sentenced to imprisonment in Broadmoor Hospital for the Criminally Insane, which is is just outside the village of Crowthorne, hence the title. It’s an hour by train from Oxford.

Dr Minor finds out about a new attempt at a comprehensive English dictionary being compiled starting around 1880. He happens to be an intelligent and learned man, despite his delusions, with a large library in his adjoining cells in the asylum. He writes to the man in charge of the OED project, Dr James Murray, and his help is eagerly sought and accepted. Yet Dr Murray doesn’t find out for more than 20 years who this man is or what his address at Crowthorne means. In that time, Dr Minor contributes tens of thousands of entries to the new dictionary, all on small sheets of paper laid out in a specific way for the checkers and classifiers in London, and later in Oxford.

Finally, curiosity by Dr Murray leads to their meeting, in the asylum, of course, and a firm friendship develops, despite the circumstances of Dr Minor. This continues for another 20 years or so, when Minor, by now very frail in his eighties and having lost most of his mental faculties, is given permission to return to America, where he dies a few years later.

I enjoyed this book very much. It’s a Penguin, so not expensive, and expanded my knowledge quite a bit, not just about the dictionary but also about the American Civil War and mid century London. Highly recommended.

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Speaking of words, I’m peeved!

Pre-prepared. This is ridiculous. If something is prepared, there’s no need to say it again as pre-prepared. This is a tautology in a word.

Lay is the past tense of lie. I do not lay down to sleep, I lie down. Chooks lay eggs.

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Woolies has Easter buns (hot cross buns) on sale already. Good Friday is 2 April this year, three full months away! But I realise I’m being ridiculous – if people want to buy and eat these fruit buns, why not? I’m very partial to them myself.

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I shouldn’t support Amazon, that huge anti-union, anti-competition company, but I admit to buying a few things during the COVID restricted times last year and, in order to save on shipping and postage as well as expedite deliveries, I joined their Prime scheme. It costs about $8 per month, i.e. $96 per year, but I reckon I’ve easily saved that in shipping and postage costs already. As well, delivery times really are fast. That new big tripod wasn’t scheduled for delivery until this week but it surprised me by arriving last Wednesday.

In the Prime deal you also get Amazon Music, access to ‘free’ music streaming over the internet. Boy, I’m hooked. The big deal for me is that it allows me to try a much wider range of music than I’ve had access to before. I think I’ve said, I’m a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to music. I made my choices in the past but when it comes to forking out $20 or so for a new CD that I can’t pre-listen to, I hold back. Consequently, although I’ve got more than 1,000 CDs on my hard drives, I wasn’t listening to them much.

But now I can wander anywhere in the recorded music landscape. Usually I just listen, but if I particularly like something, OK I’ll search out the CD and probably buy it.

One CD I’ve ordered this way is by a group called Liquid Mind. I know nothing about them but this is ethereal meditative music with a subtle beat and I’m hooked. They have several CDs so I’ve chosen a cheapish entree. Recommended (if you don’t want your music to interrupt your thoughts too much).

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I’m pleasantly free of urgent things and able to choose what to do next. My first priority has to be the Croft History volume 3, 1955 to ?? Unfortunately I was boarding away from home at Northam in the early 60s, then moved to Perth in 1965 and I didn’t have a camera, so there are very few photos from then. Dad took a lot of their Beverley life so that’s OK, but I have very few of me growing up then. It’s not all about me, though, and I have the words to write clear memories of that time.

In fact I have two quite long illustrated articles I wrote for our school 50th reunion in 2014, so I can just incorporate those. Must press on with it.

I nearly forgot, my cousin Stephen in the USA sent me his file, 60MB of it, of all his scanned family history documents. Holy hand grenades, it is huge. There are 141 A4 pages. I’ve hardly had time to start on it yet, although I’ve looked at every page.

So much of it is scans of official documents going back to the mid 19thC, all the marriages, births and deaths, old photos and newspaper clippings. His mother, my aunt, apparently collected all this stuff – I had no idea.

The immediate benefit is that I can finally put definite dates to so many people, and work out who they were, what relation to me. There’s months of work here. Months? Hah! Years!