OddThinking

I introduce the game of Captive Queens, explain the rules, analyse the tactics and determine the chance of winning.

To decide who is “it” (or “in”) first, in a playground game, such as chasey (a.k.a. tag), a fixed algorithmic process is used to make a pseudo-random choice.

Of course, this is a deterministic procedure, and we can, with diligence, careful calculation, computational power and just a little bit of luck, reverse engineer the algorithm and determine who will be eventually selected.

Progress Bars haven’t progressed much for over a decade.

Let me tell about the Progress Bar component that I will definitely one day develop, with the one proviso: I will probably never develop it.

How many Australian locations have repeated names, like Wagga Wagga, Woy Woy and Curl Curl?

Here is a software analysis anti-pattern I have seen many times in my career. It is popping up in my current project, and I am trying to work out how to subvert it early.

“But, Julian,” I hear you ask, “What words in the English language have the most anagrams?”

A random memory from when I was a kid on holidays in Murray Bridge just occurred to me. I was listening to a local radio station that was running a promotion with a baby food manufacturer. They called their listeners at random, and if they could read off the serial number from a can of [...]

Today, I am justifying a particular personal coding standard rule. If I explicitly argue the case, I hope I will conform to it more.

A friend referred to sugar as “the white death”. That made me wonder what other colours there were. Here is the resulting reference chart. Where there were choices to make, I made them. Colour Death Black Bubonic Plague White Simo Häyhä, Finnish sniper,White Sugar Red Cocktail Orange This spot available. Yellow Macaroni and Cheese (unreliable) [...]

I have an hope for a resolution in the Oatmeal versus FunnyJunk and/or Carreon case that probably reveals something about me.