Item, the first :: CBS Sunday Morning has moved the segment on Mr. G from this Sunday, November 1 to (tentatively) Sunday, November 8. More as it develops.
Item, the second :: Thanks to reader Tony McFee and Audible.com's director of direct marketing, we have the NYC subway ad!
Item, the third :: Reader Aurora RuPert carved Death into a pumpkin:
And then there was the mailbag:
In honor of the many Graveyard Book Halloween parties being thrown this weekend, Emily P. submits her own goblin variation, journal as an algorithms problem set:
Between the hours of 11pm on Friday October 30th and 11pm Sunday November 1st, 15 bookstores will be hosting Graveyard Book Halloween parties. Mr. G would like to visit as many as he can in these four hours. Assume you can model these bookstores as a connected graph G(V,E) where each vertex v corresponds to a bookstore. Positive edge weights w(u,v) denote the time (in minutes) it takes to travel between bookstores u and v.
a. Give an algorithm to calculate the maximum number of bookstores Mr. G can visit in four hours by traveling along the edges of this graph.
b. Give the run time of this algorithm.
c. Assume each bookstore also has a weight B(v) which tells you how long you can stay at that bookstore. Mr. G does not want to play favorites so on a given path p of n bookstores, he will stay k minutes at each bookstore where k = min(B(v1),B(v2),...,B(vn)). Given this constraint, give an algorithm to determine how many bookstores Mr. G can visit in four hours.
If anyone manages to provide a suitable answer set, they shall have an imaginary cookie.
Brittany H. writes:
Hi Lorraine!
I just wanted to say thanks for the link to BDFAR in Durham! I've lived in the area my whole life, but somehow how I had never heard of it. I am G-mapping directions there as we speak and now have a fruitful occupation for my afternoon.
1.) I'm not Lorraine. (She's far more fabulous.)
2.) You're welcome! I hope you liked it. I picked up some incredible used books there over the years, as well as the comics and music.
Teresa J. writes:
Any chance of you posting a photo of yourself before you hand the reins back? I'm sure the ladies would appreciate seeing another staggeringly good-looking, funny, and smart gentleman over whom they can swoon. :)
I'm sure they would, but I thought you were asking for a picture of me? *rim shot*
I like my quasi-anonymity. The closest you're going to get is this:
This is Eben, my spirit animal.
Apropos of nothing, except that Mr. G has been known to mention his Android phones, I'm playing with the Motorola CLIQ this evening. It's fun and cute, but I don't think I'll be trading my (deliciously modified, optimized) G1 in for anything short of a significant upgrade in processor and RAM.
I am feeling serious gadget lust for both the Motorola Droid and the Nokia N900, but the former is only on Verizon (and possibly, next quarter, AT&T), and the latter has a great deal going for it (including, but not limited to, my love for my N810 and the superiority of Maemo judged purely on the bases of openness and linux-completeness), but I've become rather partial to Android and its Google apps. I can only hope that T-Mobile quickly gets on the ball and announces something on par with either. (Surely Google won't bring out an inferior ADP2, or switch carriers?)
National Novel Writing Month begins Sunday. I've been participating successfully since 2005, and recommend doing it at least once if you have any sort of writerly ambition. It's a good deal of fun, and completely mad.
I've received several queries about where else I may be found online. I'm willing to go as far as re-stating that I have a largely neglected livejournal.
Labels: computers and gadgets and things, G1, like Eben I wear pince-nez, NaNoWriMo, timeshifting Gaiman, too busy to internet is the new too big to fail