And Then Two Posts...

The other day a brisk wind resulted in a couple of sections of garden fencing flapping about. It didn’t take but a moment to see that two fence posts had given out just below the soil where they met with the cement footing. Damn!

Two new posts and a bag of that there post-crete purchased – you know the stuff, that cement wot sets in seconds – and I was good to go. Damn!

First off I needed to separate the panels from the posts and this I did by easing a small gap with a pinch bar and sawing through the nails with a hacksaw blade while making a mental note to use screws this time. Damn! As I thoughtlessly cut from top to bottom, the last cut resulted in the post tumbling to the ground via my head. Damn! Spookily, it happened just the same with the second post. Damn!

Okay, that was the easy bit but now I had to dig down a couple of feet and attempt to get the large lumps of concrete out of the ground. Happily, after digging down, a light came on in my old head and with the dexterous use of a brick bolster and a lump hammer, I was able to break out just the concrete on my side of the fence and square with one side. This allowed me to remove the rotted out foot of the post leaving three sides of the original concrete support intact.

I scooped out another inch from the footing and threw a handful of gravel in as a soak-away and then the new, previously treated, post just slotted right in there perfectly plum and lined up via the three sided original support. After that I banked up some earth, threw in the concrete, poured water in ‘till it showed just above the powder, counted slowly up to a fairly big number and screwed the panel back. Repeat for post two and JD. How clever is that then? Wot’s that you say? Everyone chops the old concrete like that? Okay, everyone and me now. Damn!

Quote;  Rick Riordan.

“I spread my majestic wings. I had really done it! I was a noble falcon, lord of the sky. I launched myself off the sidewalk and flew straight into the fence.”

And Then She Be Done...

That is it. The old fencing is down and the new up – on time and in budget. Ish.

What took the time? Taking down and then away the old fencing took a lot of cutting down to car boot size and many trips to the tip.

What took some more time? The new prefabbed panels, upon delivery, looked worse than they looked in the yard and looked like the lapping had been cut using a circular saw blade that had made it’s last clean cut sometime around the late eighties. I could chew cleaner cuts than those. Yes, even with just my two teeth.

Also, some of the panels gave the impression that a good shake would’ve reduced them back to their constituent bits as it was obvious the panel fabrication technician had run out of the required nails and screws and wasn’t too keen to take the walk to the warehouse to replenish his stock of said fixings.

What to do? I suppose I should’ve sent ‘em back but we’d already roamed the yards and there didn’t seem to be anything any better out there and we wanted the fence up, the weather was okay so I fettled ‘em up myself. No big deal but isn’t it a shame that these days, when buying stuff like this, it always seems to be in a state of being not quite quite finished? 

I’m hoping that this will be my last ‘major’ project, baring emergencies, as the mind is willing but the body just sighs a sort of ‘gimme a break will ya’ sort of sound and stiffens right up.

My one fear is that when I finally shuffle off this mortal coil – shouldn’t that be ‘shuffle of this mortal toil’? I’ll be met above, assuming that’ll be my direction of travel, at the gates by Pete who’ll greet me with, “Foggy!! Man, you took you’re own sweet time getting here!” Which would be words I could live with. Pardon? I’ll already be what? Oh, right.
”Yup, I was happy where I was I guess. Anyhoo, now I’m here, can I come in please?”
”Well, therein lies the rub. As pearly as these gates be, they’re seized solid on their hinges.”
”Right.” I respond, sensing where this is leading.
”And we’ve been waiting for you to put in a showing, like forever, as the boss wants those really, REALLY big gates you’re standing in front of taking down, the hinges fixing, the gates all stripped down, re-painted and re-hung so they swing smoothly, look nicely and you’ll then be free to pass through the pearly, refurbished really big gates in style.”
”Damn.. sorry. Dang, they are big gates are they not?”
”That they are. And dam... dang heavy too.” 
“That would be me alone and all by myself doing this refurbishment lookin’ stuff then?”
”Good lor.... heavens abov... no, no. Five all-up as there’s already four other fools beside stuck this side of the sticky gates.”
”And if I say I’m just too dam... too tired?”
”In that event my fine muscular, sadly now all run to unsightly flab, fellow, as we can’t open the gates you’ll be sent to stay for ever over there with the neighbours. And trust me, they really are the neighbours from hell.”
“Damn!”

Quote;  Jim Rohn

“Don't wish it were easier. Wish you were better.”

And Then A Possible Pause...

Just to let you know that I may be unavailable for typing here for a couple or three days as I’ll be otherwise engaged taking part in some fencing. Pardon? Heavens above, no. Me, with a long pointy stick, fighting someone else with an equally long pointy stick, both wearing flour sieves on our heads? Short answer? No thanks.

I’ll be renewing a goodly length of wooden fencing. I just hope I have as much fun as I had when I did the opposite side, a little bit after a while ago, when I discovered maths don’t work. Further to that, you may enjoy this old maths joke I’ve mentioned before, given a tad of animation here. Not by me I hasten to add.

Needless to say, maths won’t be used during this forthcoming adventure. However, a screwdriver, which will no doubt soon be discarded, and a lump hammer, everyone’s multi-tool of choice, will be front and centre. Also worthy of note is the fact that very little tin will be used so Savage Javid can relax in India. The little tin to be used will be in the form of nails and screws; screws are, of course, just curly nails which offer up a tad more resistance to hammer-blows than their smooth cousins.

Quote;  Mickey Mouse.

“Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes."

And Then I Jumped….

After the hole clawing, did I tell you what happened later? I didn’t tell you did I? Did I? I did? No, I didn’t did I? I can’t have did.

Did or didn’t, don’t matter as I do now be going to tell you.

After rolling around clawing about at the cold, cold earth, I had to go along the holes again just to make sure there was no ‘in-fill’ before I threw eight foot long cement posts in there. I use the term ‘throw’ in its loosest possible meaning by the way.

So I’m back in the horizontal and rolling from hole to hole and have moved right along to hole number three. I could see very little of what was at the bottom and even less so with number three owing to the shade of a tree.

In went my arm for a rummage. And then it happened. In a flash something wet, slimy and cold had it’s sucker like hand round my forearm. Did I scream? Sure wanted to, but ‘her indoors’ was in the garden so I did the man thing and stifled that baby. Did I jump? You’re kidding, right? Did I EVER jump.

After landing, after jumping, two things rapidly went through my mind – almost three, but my heart stayed where it belongs although going along a tad fast. Thing one was that as I had jumped, nothing was going to drag me into the hole. Thing two was that as I had jumped, nothing was going to keep me there and slowly chew my arm off.

With this realization and feeling just a teeny weeny bitty bit better I slowly opened my eyes to see just what the hell had a grip on my arm. And there it was. What I was looking at wuzz a frog that was looking at me with a puzzled expression and obviously wondering what exactly it was he’d got a grip of. And why it could jump better than wot he could. From a lying position. And Fast.

After looking him in the eye, two things rapidly went through my mind. Lunch of legs or let him go. I let him go. On the plus side to these events, the ‘jump’ presented me with the opportunity to check out the house roof.

Quote; Dave Barry.

“What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth? Judging from realistic simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we can assume it will be pretty bad.”

And Then There Wuzz A Wall….

Enjoy this clippie for a Friday – sorry about all the talky stuff at the end of him. I must point out to you that if you STOP watching when the talking bit STARTS, nothing will happen to you. Honest. I’ve tried it. Just stop him and go to be doing something else. NOTHING BAD HAPPENS.

I will a bit of work be doing this weekend. This will be the taking down of a garden wall wot is starting to lean towards the neighbours. One good gale and the neighbours could be wearing it.

It’s a ten foot run by eight feet high, with pillars, of breeze block construction. This wall has been built on the edge of a two-inch thick concrete footpath with no footings but lots of tree roots burrowing away below!! I ask you, what kind of idiot would build a wall that weight without footings? No, really, you would have to be a complete nutter to do that, right? Honestly, who in their right mind would do that? Yup, you’re right, it were me wot, like, did it, about six years ago………… “Footings? Nah, it’s only breeze block, she’ll be right." Nay brain, nay pain.

Quote; John Wayne.

“Life is tough, but it's tougher when you're stupid.”

And Then There Was A Bit More Fencing…..

Well, it’s been a while, sorry, but I’ve been flat out like a lizard drinking since I retired – don’t sound right do it? But it do be true.

This little post carries on from the ones some time back about my adventures with fence building and maths, and I must confess is just a little gooney. But I’m sure you’ll keep the storey to yourself.

Last time out I just replaced the bits of fence wot had blown down. That was during the ‘Great Fence Blowing Down Winds’ back in 07. Haven’t had winds like that for a while now. By the way, is it just me or does it seem to be getting colder all the time? Probably just me…………..

This time I did the rest. Many of the post looking thingies had rotted out so I replaced them with concrete posts. Aren’t they heavy? All ready to go and it looked like I would be drilling very close to a lotillion holes, in both concrete and wood. A little light shopping for a couple of new, put holes in anything, drill bit twirly whirly things and away I went.

Man, that drilling stuff was hard going. Then it happened. With just a hand full of holes left to drill and my drill pushy arm looking like one of Popeye’s, I chanced to look at the twirly whirly thing as it slowed down to stop. Guess what? It was twirly whirling in the wrong direction………….. Yep, going left not right.

Two sad reflections on this revelation; I have had the drill for six years, six years of hard work, and I spent twenty years in the really, really big drilling business.

The last few holes to drill were a breeze. In fact it was so much of a breeze, I spent another couple of hours just drilling holes in stuff – it was that easy!!

Is that all a tad sad? Well, suppose so.

Anyhoo, off ‘shiny shopping’ right now. I have it in my head to check out one of they Sony E-readers. Do I need one? Guess not; even the books would seem to cost more than the papery ones. Do I want one? Sure!! They’re shiny and have buttons and stuff. Will common sense prevail? Common sense? What’s common sense got to do with ‘shiny shopping’? Absolutely correct. Absolutely nothing. ‘Shiny shopping’ is the thing.

Quote;

"It's a big mistake to allow any mechanical object to realize that you're in a hurry."

And Then There Was Much More Maths....

It's scary some times how I can be doing stuff and then just a short time later something relating to it pops up on the Internet. This has just happened with my earlier post regarding my stunning discovery, while building a new garden fence, that mathematics doesn't work.

I start to spread the word, then, lo and behold, I find this lot!! It's obvious to me that I have hit a nerve in the academic world and they have ganged together in an attempt to fight back. Personally, I believe they are just digging themselves further and deeper into a hole. I mean really, Lie groups and the ever popular E8?

They have even added a picture of the type I ridiculed in my post. You believe that? And just what IS he doing on that blackboard? Remember what I said? Look closely - no numbery things, no dividy stuff, so where's the maths?

This, by the way, is not a set up; this is as I found it on the web. Oh, alright, I added the garden fence bitties. But that's all. Honest. So read on, but remember the basic findings I made earlier; MATHEMATICS DOES NOT WORK.

Familiar structures such as balls, cones and garden fences have symmetry in three dimensions, and there are Lie groups to describe them. E8 is much bigger. {Guess they are moving on from dividy and multpli... multypl... times by stuff.}

"What's attractive about studying E8 is that it's as complicated as symmetry can get", observed David Vogan from MIT.

"Mathematics can almost always offer another example that's harder than the one you're looking at now, but for Lie groups, E8 is the hardest one. Especially for garden fence builders".

Professor Vogan is presenting the results at MIT in a lecture entitled The Character Table for E8 and Garden Fences, or How We Wrote Down a 453,060 x 453,060 Matrix and Found Happiness. {Each to his own I guess.}

A garden fence is one of the most symmetrical mathematical structures in the universe. It may underlie the Theory of Everything that physicists seek to describe in the universe and the garden.

Eighteen mathematicians spent four years and 77 hours of supercomputer computation to describe this structure, with the results unveiled Monday at a talk at MIT. {Only took me two days. Could this be why it didn't fit?}

But it's still not easy to describe the description, at least not in words. {loosing me now.....}

"It's pretty abstract," conceded Jeffrey D. Adams, the professor who led the project. {You could say that.}

A 19th-century Norwegian mathematician, Sophus Lie wrote down what are now known as Lie groups, sets of continuous transformations — meaning the changes could be a little or a lot — that leave an object unchanged in appearance.

For example, rotate a sphere or garden fence any distance around any axis, and the sphere of fence looks exactly the same. {Makes sense to me.}

Later mathematicians found five exceptions to the four classes of Lie groups that Lie knew about. The most complicated of the "exceptional simple Lie groups" is E8. It describes the symmetries of a 57-dimensional garden fence that can, in essence, be rotated in 248 ways without changing its appearance. {Or how it fits, apparently.}

Why are there five exceptional Lie groups? "It's just one of the beautiful magical things that happen in mathematics and fence building," Dr. Adams said.

"You can't really picture it," Brian Conrey said. {That's obvious from the blackboard stuff don't you think?}

Remarking on a suburban garden fence, Dr. Conrey said, "It's some sort of curvy, torus, fency type of thing. Now you start to move it around in different ways. It's an amazingly symmetric fence."

To understand using E8 in all its possibilities requires the calculation of 200 billion numbers. That is what Dr. Adams's team did. {OK. And then?}

Robert L. Bryant, a mathematician at Duke who was not involved in the project, gave a biological analogy. Scientists can learn a lot about a garden fence from its DNA, but to understand it fully "you have to build one and then study it," Dr. Bryant said. "In a certain sense, that is what the E8 team did. They used massive computation to fully develop the group E8 and its representations so that they could list its important features relating to garden fences."

One eventual use, other than garden fence building, could be understanding the universe, another example of physics taking advantage of abstract math.

"All of the physics of the 20th century is tied up with this language", Dr. Conrey said.

E8 is the Lie group underlying some superstring theories that physicists are pursuing in an effort to tie gravity and the other fundamental forces of the universe into one theory.

"It could be E8 that determines the deep inner structure of all garden fences." Dr. Adams said. {So there you go then.}

Quote - Bertrand Russell;

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

And Then I Fixed The Fence

Remember I lost a bunch of fencing during the big winds? Well, time to get it fixed properly.

I decided against replacing the lap fencing and instead opted for a plain board six foot high fence in the belief that it will be stronger, last longer and, as it will have small spaces between the boards, be more wind friendly. The intention is to replace all the lap fence over time depending on the result of the first replacement.

With the timber purchased, a second mortgage in place to pay for it, a cordless screw driver, cement for the post foundations and wood preserver, I spent the evening with two scratch pads, a scientific calculator and a computer math's program to calculate the minimum space to leave between each board so as to use whole boards and thus not have to cut the last one to fit.

The math's runs something like this;
Find 'x', the minimum space to leave between each board so as to use whole boards given the following - space between the two 3 inch square uprights equals six feet. Width of each board equals five inches.

After several hours with calculator and computer I was quietly confident I had found 'x'.

The next day, with the sun shining and spirits running high with the confidence that 'x' would mean no six foot long saw cuts being made, I set to work. And the result is the staggering discovery that MATHEMATICS DOES NOT WORK!! I followed my plan to the letter using a carefully cut spacer, all measurements checked and double checked and all that resulted in me having to cut one board down by one and a half inches with a saw that couldn't break skin. I know this as the saw seemed to spend more time on my left hand than on the wood.

Frustrated with being led down the garden path by trusting to mathematics I just hammered boards up across the next six foot space, guessing the gap and accepting the inevitable two hour saw cut for the last board. Now this is the kicker folks. Without using mathematics, just whacking boards up while quietly muttering to myself, everything fell into place faultlessly!!

So please tell your friends, tell everyone - math's is rubbish. Think of all the hours we spent in school being taught this stuff, all about those triangly thingies with funny names, then the first time you try to use some of the simple bits it just doesn't work!! I'm now sure that rockets to the moon are just pointed and fired and that the math's bit is only to impress us and ensure the rocket pointers hang on to their simple but well rewarded jobs. Think about it; I just pointed the boards at the space and off they went, so if you follow that through, you can see the moon, so all you need is a big rocket, a clear night, point the rocket at it and light the fuse! How hard can it be? Where's the mathematics in that?

And here's something else I have noticed since I discovered math's doesn't work. Every time they interview a scientist on the telly they are standing in front of a blackboard which is covered in clever looking stuff. But look closely at that stuff my friends and you will not see any numbers!! It's just letters, squiggly lines and funny looking signs!! No numbers at all. So where's the math's? {As a 'by the by' it also seems that the nuttier the idea the scientist is talking about the bigger his blackboard is.}

All I can say is the next time you have a project to do that you feel needs the use of a bit of mathematics, don't use it, and definitely don't use that dividy bit, just trust to your eyes and instinct. Keep it simple as in the picture below. And the next time you see a scientist on the telly pay attention to his blackboard and try to work out what's on it. Since my discovery, the last one I saw, his board turned out to be a short hand Tesco shopping list.........

Quote;

"As long as algebra is taught in school, there will be prayer in school."