KD^3C^3 - 20250601 Not just for Winnipeg
I like Nonograms. They're logic puzzles in a sudoku-adjacent space, in that there are numbers and a grid, but nonograms stretch a different part of my brain, and you get a cool picture (sort of) at the end. I have an app on my phone with a few thousand of them ranging in size from 5X5 to 50X50 squares. Usually they're designed so you can kind of tell what the picture is supposed to be at the end, ad every one can be completed with logic alone, no guesswork required.
So I was delighted to learn someone made a website with every 5x5 nonogram, and made it collaborative. If a puzzle gets solved for one person, it gets solved for everybody. IT turns out that if you mathematical generate every 5x5 nonogram you end p with 24,976,511 of them. I'm usually able to knock out a 5x5 pretty quickly (well under a minute most times), and in the last 24 hours, when I learned the site exists, I have done about 500 of them. It's.been a fun little internet-only experience and you can jump in and try your hand at clearing them all. I'll warn you though, that any pictures you see at the end will be strictly in your own imagination. We're going for completeness rather than aesthetically pleasing.
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My friendly local library has an annual five dollar bag-of-books sale, which as the name implies means you can pay $5 for a tote bag and you can keep all the books you can fit inside it. The types of books available in the sale vary pretty widely, as they're all donated to the friends of the library, and people read a lot of different books. I usually go in with no particular agenda, because I'm never sure whats going to be there or what might strike my fancy. Often, I will throw a book into the bag, because I already paid for the bag, I might as well. Even If I'm not exactly sure when I'll get around to reading it.
This year's haul includes (In no particular order):
Mike NIchols - a Biography by Mark Harris. Mike Nichols was a director and comedian who made some great movies and that everybody loved working with. You've probably seen at least a couple of his movies, either the Birdcage or The Graduate or Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe. He lived an interesting life and it'd be neat to learn more about him.
The Word - Ann Associated Press Guide to Good News Writing by Rene J Cappon. I bought this book because it fit in the bag. a slim volume of advice, rules, guidelines? on using language in printed news-writing. It was published originally in 1982, although my edition is from 1989. This book is probably not 100% relevant anymore, at least in the specifics, but I suspect the philosophies haven't gone out of date yet.
Comedy - Techniques for Writers & Performers by Melvin Helitzer is, like The Word above probably a little out of date (originally published in 1984), but I like the idea of a manual for writing and performing comedy. The table of contents includes sections on theory and technique of comedy, as well as chapters on each of the major markets for comedy writers like: Speechwriter, magazines, stand-up comics, sitcoms, print cartoons and of course, greeting cards.
How Things Work - An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Technology by... well it doesn't seem to have a single identified author. It's a translation of a German volume with about 250 double page spreads explaining in simple language how things mechanically work. There are entries on a wide range of topics from record players to hovercraft, to quartz clocks. Like the two books above, it is an older volume (copyright 1967) so some of them aren't as relevant as they once were (I don't need to know how a cathode ray tube works very often these days) but it seems like such a cool refrence volume, I couldn't pass it up.
Console Wars - Sega Nintendo and the Battle DThat Defined a Generation by Blake J Harris is a history book about the console wars of the 1990s. Sega versus Nintendo was a huge deal, not just on playgrounds but in the market and I suspect getting to read the whole thing from today's perspective would be interesting. This is also, the last book in my stack with a subtitle, a trend I didn't notice until writing this list.
EverWorld 3: Enter the Enchanted. Techincaly this isn't a subtitle. K.A. Applegate, on the heels of writing Animorphs, one of the most middle-grade book series of all time started writing EverWorld a series that didn't last as long (only 13 installments, to the 54 of Animorphs) but similarly followed a group of teens secretly fighting an impossible situation. In this series a group of teens are sent to EverWorld, a plane of existence where all the myths are true, every time they sleep. I read the whole series as a teen, but when I saw this on the table all by itself, it had to go in the bag.
Mister Roberts by Thomas Heggen and Joshua Logan. It was a playscript, that's all I knew when I tossed it in the bag, but it also apparently won the tony award for best play in 1948. Its about a bunch of sailors in the pacific, during World War II.
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman - Just seems like something that everyone should have on their shelves.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Technically this didn't fit in the bag. They had a table of individually priced books as well, and this whole six-volume set was only $5. I figured it was too good a deal to pass up, so I snagged it too. When I was checking out, the cashier had to check that it was really only five dollars for the whole set, but it was!
There was also a selection of DVDs, so I picked up a few. The DVD selection is always a little eclectic, but this year was even more so. Almost every movie they had was an opera. filmed operas. not a lot of demand for those, but they had probably fifty of them in a box. I only picked up three: La Boheme by Puccini Macbeth bt Verdi and Hamlet by Faccio. I think the idea of adapting Shakespeare to opera is kind of weird, but turning it into a teen rom-com worked, so why not an opera. Hopefully I'll get to watching these soon. I'm not very good at watching opera, but here's hoping I get better.
That's everything i picked up, so I hope at least one or two turn out worth the five bucks I paid for the bag.
So I was delighted to learn someone made a website with every 5x5 nonogram, and made it collaborative. If a puzzle gets solved for one person, it gets solved for everybody. IT turns out that if you mathematical generate every 5x5 nonogram you end p with 24,976,511 of them. I'm usually able to knock out a 5x5 pretty quickly (well under a minute most times), and in the last 24 hours, when I learned the site exists, I have done about 500 of them. It's.been a fun little internet-only experience and you can jump in and try your hand at clearing them all. I'll warn you though, that any pictures you see at the end will be strictly in your own imagination. We're going for completeness rather than aesthetically pleasing.
----
My friendly local library has an annual five dollar bag-of-books sale, which as the name implies means you can pay $5 for a tote bag and you can keep all the books you can fit inside it. The types of books available in the sale vary pretty widely, as they're all donated to the friends of the library, and people read a lot of different books. I usually go in with no particular agenda, because I'm never sure whats going to be there or what might strike my fancy. Often, I will throw a book into the bag, because I already paid for the bag, I might as well. Even If I'm not exactly sure when I'll get around to reading it.
This year's haul includes (In no particular order):
Mike NIchols - a Biography by Mark Harris. Mike Nichols was a director and comedian who made some great movies and that everybody loved working with. You've probably seen at least a couple of his movies, either the Birdcage or The Graduate or Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe. He lived an interesting life and it'd be neat to learn more about him.
The Word - Ann Associated Press Guide to Good News Writing by Rene J Cappon. I bought this book because it fit in the bag. a slim volume of advice, rules, guidelines? on using language in printed news-writing. It was published originally in 1982, although my edition is from 1989. This book is probably not 100% relevant anymore, at least in the specifics, but I suspect the philosophies haven't gone out of date yet.
Comedy - Techniques for Writers & Performers by Melvin Helitzer is, like The Word above probably a little out of date (originally published in 1984), but I like the idea of a manual for writing and performing comedy. The table of contents includes sections on theory and technique of comedy, as well as chapters on each of the major markets for comedy writers like: Speechwriter, magazines, stand-up comics, sitcoms, print cartoons and of course, greeting cards.
How Things Work - An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Technology by... well it doesn't seem to have a single identified author. It's a translation of a German volume with about 250 double page spreads explaining in simple language how things mechanically work. There are entries on a wide range of topics from record players to hovercraft, to quartz clocks. Like the two books above, it is an older volume (copyright 1967) so some of them aren't as relevant as they once were (I don't need to know how a cathode ray tube works very often these days) but it seems like such a cool refrence volume, I couldn't pass it up.
Console Wars - Sega Nintendo and the Battle DThat Defined a Generation by Blake J Harris is a history book about the console wars of the 1990s. Sega versus Nintendo was a huge deal, not just on playgrounds but in the market and I suspect getting to read the whole thing from today's perspective would be interesting. This is also, the last book in my stack with a subtitle, a trend I didn't notice until writing this list.
EverWorld 3: Enter the Enchanted. Techincaly this isn't a subtitle. K.A. Applegate, on the heels of writing Animorphs, one of the most middle-grade book series of all time started writing EverWorld a series that didn't last as long (only 13 installments, to the 54 of Animorphs) but similarly followed a group of teens secretly fighting an impossible situation. In this series a group of teens are sent to EverWorld, a plane of existence where all the myths are true, every time they sleep. I read the whole series as a teen, but when I saw this on the table all by itself, it had to go in the bag.
Mister Roberts by Thomas Heggen and Joshua Logan. It was a playscript, that's all I knew when I tossed it in the bag, but it also apparently won the tony award for best play in 1948. Its about a bunch of sailors in the pacific, during World War II.
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman - Just seems like something that everyone should have on their shelves.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Technically this didn't fit in the bag. They had a table of individually priced books as well, and this whole six-volume set was only $5. I figured it was too good a deal to pass up, so I snagged it too. When I was checking out, the cashier had to check that it was really only five dollars for the whole set, but it was!
There was also a selection of DVDs, so I picked up a few. The DVD selection is always a little eclectic, but this year was even more so. Almost every movie they had was an opera. filmed operas. not a lot of demand for those, but they had probably fifty of them in a box. I only picked up three: La Boheme by Puccini Macbeth bt Verdi and Hamlet by Faccio. I think the idea of adapting Shakespeare to opera is kind of weird, but turning it into a teen rom-com worked, so why not an opera. Hopefully I'll get to watching these soon. I'm not very good at watching opera, but here's hoping I get better.
That's everything i picked up, so I hope at least one or two turn out worth the five bucks I paid for the bag.