Made you look

You know, you may not believe me (and at this point in proceedings, who could blame you), but there is 2000 words, mostly about cricket, just sitting in my Blogger account waiting to coalesce into a proper post. At some point, and that point should be soon, I will take the requisite number of hours to add to them, make them more coherent, and get the resulting post, you know, posted. This is important, as I have fielded queries from overseas of a 'hey, are you still alive?' nature.

To this I have a two part answer:

1) Yes.

2) Still yes now.

I'm sorry I've been so completely slack blog wise in the past two months or so, and not much better in a longer period before that ; it's been a combination of ennui, a surprising amount of things to do for an unemployed person, and a rediscovery of PC games / mucking about on the Intertron, but I AM going to to better in the near future. In fact, I declare my intention to posting every day for a week to get things rolling, beginning as soon as we see the giant as yet unposted post. (Target completion date: 2014).

Hopefully we can then put all this current unpleasantness where I come on here once every 3 or 4 weeks and make a post about how I'll be properly posting any minute now behind us.

Not right now, however.

To elevate this post above the normal 'posting soon, honest' efforts of recent times though, and to signify my actual intent, here's a passage (for the sake of actual interest, and making it worht your while to read this far down) from The 13 and a Half Lives of Captain Bluebear, the book I am reading at the moment, which is a sort of very whimsical illustrated fairytale for grown-ups (anyone know any I might give it to?). It has whimsy in spades, and is so far good for a giggle. This bit comes from the book-within-a-book 'The Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms, and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs' by Professor Abadullah Nightingale, which has been taught to the eponymous main character Bluebear (a, er, blue bear) by the author (a 7 brained Nocturnomath) earlier in the book, and memorised by him word for word during the course of his education. It pops up in the text providing explanations for things as he comes across them and recalls the appropriate entries, pretty much in exactly the same manner as guide entries in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (which the book resembles in some ways, but not really in others). At one point Bluebear falls into a dimensional hiatus (convenient, as at the time he has just run out of energy after running away for 7 hours from a 25 foot high Spiderwitch which is intent on dissolving and eating him .)

When one falls into a dimensional hiatus of course, one finds oneself in multidimensional space, "...following a trajectory known as the Nightingalian octaval loop...the Nightingalian octaval loop should be conceived of as a double loop in the shape of an eightfold figure of eight of which one-eighth is situated is space, one-eighth in time, and the remaining six-eighths in the other six dimensions. This means that while falling, you're everywhere in the universe at every point in time."

So, Professor Nightingale's volume attempts to paint a picture of the concept:

Multidimensional Space: It is really quite easy to picture a square yard of multidimensional space - provided you have seven brains.

Simply picture a train travelling through a black hole with a candle on its roof while you yourself, with a candle on your head, are standing on Mars and winding a clock precisely one yard in diameter, and while an owl, which also has a candle on its head and is travelling in the opposite direction to the train at the speed of light, is flying through a tunnel in the process of being swallowed by another black hole which likewise has a candle on its head (if you can imagine a black hole with a candle on its head, for which you will require at least 4 brains). Join up the four points at which the candles are burning, using a coloured pencil, and you'll have one square yard of multidimensional space. You will also, coincidentally, be able to tell the time on Mars by the clock, even in the dark, because - of course - you've got a candle on your head.

Sicne then he has escaped the dimensional hiatus and wandered the sugar desert with the Muggs, succeeding in trapping the wandering city of Anagrom Ataf, which is inhabited by transparent imps who only speak backwards.

It's that kind of book.

Anyway, up for loan probably when I finish. Will let people know when that is sometime in the torrent of posts to shortly follow...

Bide your time.