Thursday, February 10, 2022

Matrix

I was very much looking forward to the new Matrix - Resurrection movie, and I hate to admit it, but I was extremely disappointed with it. It's not often that I think about walking out of a movie, but I was prepared to make an exception this time. Even the person I was watching it with - who had been looking forward to seeing it even more than I, contemplated leaving. So what was it? The characters were familiar - Neo, Trinity, Morpheus and others - but the plot was slow and there were too many fight scenes with little reason or rationale. True, they were pretty amazing, but since they weren't integral to the story - well, not all of them - It reminded me a little of The Lord of the Rings movies - walk, fight, walk, fight, ethereal lady ... and continue. Of course, there is no ethereal lady in the Matrix - unless you count Trinity - but, did I mention, there was lots of fighting!

Python

Who knew it would be so interesting to type random words, numbers, and symbols into an application and have it do stuff for you? And who knew that Python would share some similarities with Excel? Yes, I have finally done my first bit of coding … using the Python programming language and I enjoyed it very much.

I was a bit surprised when I didn’t sleep/dream in Python last night. I remember when I was learning to type at school, I used to type in my dreams all the time - want to say something … type. Funny stuff, but I have spoken with others who had the same experience.

Monday, February 07, 2022

Wordle

Is Wordle “new” or just an old game in a new format? Wordle, of course, is the word game that has taken the internet by storm. One (only) Wordle is available each day. The player has 6 attempts to determine the Wordle of the day, getting feedback at each attempt. If they have a letter in the correct place, it turns green. If they have a correct letter but not in the correct place, it turns yellow. Letters not in the word show as grey. By deduction and reasoning, and some luck, the player then has to work out what the Wordle is. There has been screeds written about choosing your first words to give you a better chance of getting the Wordle out in six tries - although the fun is trying to get it out in as few tries as possible - to score bragging rights. You can share your Wordle result without sharing the words although some folk have been known to Tweet screenshots of their working - which is a bit mean giving there is only one Wordle a day.

Wordle has recently been purchased by The New York Times so it will be interesting to see if they monetise it or whether it remains free to play.

 

Wednesday, February 02, 2022

Popular?

Australia's most popular barista made coffee. Hmmm.
Who determines the meaning of the world "popular"? Because I would have bet - contrary to what their sign would have me believe - that the most popular barista-made coffee in Australia does not come from Maccas! And if Maccas, or a disinterested third party, had conducted a survey would they have put the names of other popular coffee franchises on the list? And if they did, would it have been representative given that most coffee chains are not Australia-wide and even food franchises that are nationally available rarely have a dedicated cafe area? So ... what is their definition of "popular" and how representative was their research?