[T]o correct a bad sentence satisfactorily is not always possible; it should never have existed, that is all that can be said.

From The King’s English, spotted by Maud Newton.

For instance:

• the datetime class lives in the datetime module; careful with your imports, you will want both!
• the datetime module has a time class, but there’s also a time module
• the documentation talks at different places about “time tuples” and also about “time.struct_time” objects; they’re the same thing
• to convert a unix timestamp to a time tuple representing UTC time, you use time.gmtime(); for the reverse conversion, you use calendar.timegm() (this is the only place you’ll use the calendar module)
• to get now you use:
  • time.localtime() if you want a timetuple
  • time.time() if you want a unix timestamp
  • datetime.now() if you want a datetime object
  • time.gmtime() if you want a timetuple representing UTC time
  • datetime.utcnow() if you want a datetime object representing UTC time
  • a crowbar if necessary
• to build a datetime object from a time-tuple, you can set the fields one-by-one… or you can slice the time-tuple and unpack the list: datetime(*a_time_tuple[:6])

In other words, there’s a lot of fiddly detail to remember. So I made a chart.

Click through for (non-blurry) PDF.

It’s formatted for a4 paper and prints nicely. I used the incredible LaTeX drawing system TikZ. (On my screen the arrows have a little glitch at start and finish, but it doesn’t appear in my printout. Possibly a TikZ bug? Not sure.)

Note that it doesn’t show everything you can do; apart from the more egregious omissions (like timezone handling on datetime objects, which actually seems quite straight-forward but didn’t fit nicely into the design), I didn’t include arrows for nonsensical operations. For example you could feed a UTC time-tuple into time.mktime() (which takes a localtime time-tuple to a unix timestamp), but the result would be nonsense: the number of seconds since a date similar to, but probably not quite the same as, the unix epoch.

I bought it, at the reduced price.² But I didn’t buy it at the full price.

I’m supporting Perfect on Kickstarter (and you could be too — it’s at 30% or so, with 15 days still to run). I made the minimum pledge that gets you anything: $5 for a pdf (its a story game).

This weekend I went on a bit of a games kick; I tried out my Humble Indie Bundle games³ which have been sitting there since May, and I bought and played Osmos. I was tempted by, but did not buy, Gratuitous Space Battles.

I paid $20 for the Humble Indie Bundle (five games, released on a pay-what-you-want basis); the pirate amnesty Machinarium was $5, Osmos was $10. Compare that with the two I didn’t take: original Machinarium at $20, and GSB for $25 (the “Collectors Edition” with expansion packs; $20 for the standard).

Sometime last year I also bought Fallout 2 (a nostalgia trip, as well as a great game) from GOG.com (“Good Old Games”) for $6; on someone’s advice I also bought Arcanum for the same price.

The point of this litany (besides horrifying my mother and my girlfriend) is that all these games are insanely cheap. So cheap that I passed up a fun-looking game for $25, because it was a bit pricey. That’s totally insane.

I think what happens is that sub-$20 prices don’t even register as spending money (for comparison, an average weekly grocery shopping trip costs me about twice that), whereas a higher price (no matter how reasonable) makes me think “Is it worth it?” which starts me thinking “Do I really need this?” (Answer for games: no.)

Judging by what the Machinarium folk are doing, I must be fairly representative of the market, except that I don’t pirate (any more: my Fallout nostalgia is for someone else’s copy). Which must really suck for game developers.

I like creative people making creative games.⁴ So today I’m upgrading my Kickstarter support for Perfect, and I’m buying GSB. Do I need it? No. But I can spare the cash to help support someone’s creativity. And looking at the lineup of games I own and prices I paid, it seems like I owe a bit to the industry.

Notes:

1. All prices in this post are in USD.
2. And then discovered it won’t run on 64-bit linux… ah well, they did warn linux users to try it first…
3. World of Goo was the big hit; I didn’t try Gish and the others didn’t scratch my itches.
4. And I like them releasing them without DRM. That’s part of the Machinarium story, and applies to everything mentioned above.

Here are just a couple of photos; you can find more on her blog.

Bare country for horses.

The road goes ever on and on...

Is she taking the pic herself? Concentrating face...

Spot the people. Keep looking... keep looking...

Check out Olga’s gallery for more fit Greeks, toe-curling alpine views, lovely wildflowers, and for some reason a couple of candid shots of donkey and horse anatomy (parental discretion advised). I’m deeply envious.¹

Notes:

1. Of Olga, not the horse.

Packed into the half-page review are several moments of quality comedy. We learn of George Montagu, “who brought his sense of military discipline, keen observational eye and shotgun to bear on Britain’s birds.” Also of the elusive List of the Birds that have been Observed to Breed in the Island of Arran Scotland, since the year 1835 — elusive because it was never printed, being invented “by an unscrupulous egg dealer” who claimed to be able to supply eggs from the author’s collection.

But these days I hardly bother to post unless there’s something to get annoyed by. And there is.

Sadly, it lacks footnotes, which is a loss to real nerds but in keeping with the New Naturalist goal of accessibility.

Now really. What on earth is inaccessible about the footnote?² I am speaking, yes, as a “real nerd”, but what possible reason can there be to deny me the pleasure (and an educational pleasure, at that) of my footnotes?

I can only presume that the publishers believe that some might be put off by the humble footnote; might be (heavens forbid) even discouraged from reading, overawed by the sheer weight of academic seriousness it implies.

Against this view, in the generous hope of educating the public (and drawing on my many years of academic experience and the still-raw memories of completing a PhD) I’m going to tell you an important, but not often admitted-to, secret about footnotes.

You don’t have to read them.

Notes:

1. Seriously, Books and Naturalists reads like someone in the PR department decided, “We are marketing this book to Tikitu.” Why oh why would you change something so perfect?
2. The endnote, I’ll grant you, is inaccessible — although only in comparison to the footnote, not to the absence of any referencing whatsoever, which seems to be what the review implies. My spine comes out in shivers at the very thought.

The chappy on the right is my ex-officemate and ex-yoga-teacher, whose place I was staying at. Beside him his girlfriend, and the other two are flatmates.

Notes:

1. I failed to take any good wedding shots; haven’t yet sorted through the Tübingen walking tour ones but my expectations are not high.

• A serpent. These seem to turn up quite often, but sell for rather large amounts of money.
• “Large quantity of Phillips London auction musical instrument catalogues.” Because what you need to buy at an auction is the catalogue for a different auction. Which has closed.
• A fife and piccolo. “Old” (which seems to be code for “broken-down but not antique”), went for 32 quid.
• “Fourteen various cast-iron flute key presses.” … For … pressing the keys on a cast-iron flute?
• Twenty cases: one hard cello case, three double-bass cases, and sixteen (sixteen) soft cello cases. Useful, I imagine, if you plan to bid on:
• Lot 206, six cellos;
• Lot 207, six 3/4 size cellos;
• Lot 208, another six 3/4 size cellos; or
• Lot 209, three 1/2 size cellos.
• Five trombones. Which sold, collectively, for 30 quid.
• Four basoon crooks. (—I bought five trombones, what about you? —Well, I bid on the “quantity of various bassoon sections” but lost. So I’m left with these. Fancy a bassoon crook?)
• A sousaphone.
• An ophicleide (which I honestly thought was a made-up instrument).
• A marching lyre.
• A marching lyre.

There are also some fine examples of the cataloguer’s art. Savour this one, for instance:

Early 20th century brass adjustable music stand, the shaped spindle ledge supported upon a circular column terminating in triple curving legs and pad feet; also a ukulele banjo, case.

Or the crisply implied distinctions between a “quantity” of bows and a “bundle” of bows, both as distinct from a “small bundle” of bows. (One bow, incidentally, sold for 1500 pounds. The small bundle, for in the region of 12.)

I have to say, I’m tempted to try to pick up a sousaphone or ophicleide. Although I can imagine some difficulties with RyanAir on the way back to Amsterdam…

Can I do that? No I can’t.

Presumably they’ve got their privacy settings locked down so non-friends can’t contact them. Smart move… except Bookface doesn’t make an exception for replying to a friend request.²

It’s probably a bug. But a cynical little voice keeps reminding me that this is yet another source of social pressure to accept yet more invitations, just what Bookface wants…

Lucky for me, I can presume this person will see this post instead. Or that they’re not a human. Problem solved.

Notes:

1. Assuming it’s a human being, of course. Oh I am cynical today.
2. There’s a “Send a message” link, but when the message window pops up it needs the recipient filled in … which has to already be a friend.

Which brings me to the pigs. Apparently London was so filthy (ditches but no sewer system; slaughtering of animals all over the city; bucket-based toilets for much of the populace) that it was infested not just with rats but also with dogs and pigs. The first in a succession of moves to clean up the city is “the establishment of a mechanism for appointing official swine killers, who are paid 4d for every pig they remove.” (And in 1311 “the flaying of dead horses is prohibited within the city walls”, which I imagine improved the atmosphere.)

In closely related news, very likely the first thing you would notice on arriving in fourteenth-century London would be your nose shutting down in protest. Or possibly falling off.

The Rambling Urchin, a letterpress production by Alan Brignull of the Hedgehog Press

The Rambling Urchin is his periodical, printed on an Adana letterpress machine (presumably something like this). There are issues of pure whimsy (“Numbo-jumbo / Mind Dribble”), type showcases (“BRAVE BADDIES GIVE ROTTEN STINGO [...] relates to the illegal brewers of Adanaland [...] It also uses every letter of 72-pt Albertus owned by Henry Morris of the Bird & Bull Press.”), poems, quotations apposite or otherwise, and little texts on (mainly) print-related issues.¹ He’s a clever man with an ornament (see his virtuoso display for the August 2009 Letterpress Exchange Group, but also his cunning volcano). And his selections and writings have a gentle wit to them that complements his artistry wonderfully.

The package arrived announcing that it was “Real mail: certified not junk”, on a perforated strip bearing a six-digit serial number.² As well as the Rambling Urchin issues, he sent me stamps from the Perfect State of Flatby (as seen here) and from Adanaland (including something like this one, although not overprinted and thus presumably less rare).

As you might guess from my linking all over the web, he doesn’t have a website. But googling will very likely turn up a few more gems; the Rambling Urchin has been running (in various formats) for more than 20 years and lots of other people have appreciated it along the way. Of course it’s not the same as the print version³ but it will have to do until you visit Adanaland.

And to Alan: thank you again for the tourist visa. I hope I’ll come back someday.

Notes:

1. But not only printing. November 2007, the “Tuvan Edition”, gives the national anthem of the Republic of Tuva, along with a banner which “is supposed to say ‘Rambling Urchin’ but it could be ‘Nomad Spit-cunning’ as Tuvan dictionaries are hard to find”.
2. The post office had rather disrespectfully gummed something machine-readable over it, but thankfully it came off without causing any damage. Probably it read “Real Mail: certified not junk”, in some encoding or other.
3. Also included in the package: some wet ink, for the full sensory experience: the smell of letterpress!