24. Baldy Nov 24 Wed

(3:43 pm Wed Nov 24, 2010)

[ Fri Nov 19, 2010 - morning ]

To start the day with tired eyes is not a good thing gentle reader. It does not bode well for this day's effort much less this day's output.

I had thought that perhaps I would give myself the day off from working on this novel as a little treat. A little self indulgence.

But then I reconsidered and thought to at least give it a go. To take a stab at it. To plod along for a bit and seek for some inspiration. Some spark that will make the words flow with ease and more importantly for me today, flow with speed.

*** Tuple ***

Tuple. An ordered list of elements. And we find a spelling mistake from a bygone year and correct it.

Tuple. A row in a relational database table.

Tuple. In some contexts immutable.

Tuple. A collection of name-value pairs.

Tuple. N-tuple.

Tuple. Not Tiple and not tipple either.

(3:54 pm Wed Nov 24, 2010)

(7:16 pm Wed Nov 24, 2010)

Sorry gentle reader, my eyes just couldn't take it. Back to the Two Knights and a Day part.

***

They two knights looked around themselves in amazement. What city was this? What world was this?

I mean, how would you react if you were suddenly taken from the middle ages to modern times. I know that sounds like a time travel question and I have already assured you that there was no time travel in this story so I will say again, they did not travel in time, other than as you and I do throughout our whole lives. Unless of course some of you readers actually do travel backwards in time and / or forwards in time at a faster rate than the rest of us do. Hmmm, would it be considered time travel if a person were to travel forwards in time at a slower rate than the rest of us do? What would the implications of that be?

Now, can you imagine the surprise on the part of the modern city dwellers on seeing two knights come up out of a manhole in a busy street. Now you might be thinking that modern city dwellers would take this all in stride as they see strange things every day.

Yes but these Knights were only three feet tall in this modern world. Fully kitted out in shining armour and weapons but tiny. Make no mistake, these Knights were tall and strapping men where they came from but when they came up onto the street, not so much.

The knights were dazed, what was this place? Some land of giants they had never heard of before?

A policeman came up to them and began speaking, "OK buys, why are you not in school today? Playing hookie are you?"

The Starry Knight looked up to him and replied, "I pray thee Sir Giant, tell us, what land is this?"

The policeman could barely understand the Starry Knight's accent. "Stop fooling around guys. Tell me which school you go to and I will take you there."

"Kind Sir Giant, we are Knights on an errand for the red queen and not children still in school." replied Sir Higgi.

(7:49 pm Wed Nov 24, 2010)

*** Venn ***

Mr. Diagram.

Venn. Sets. Union. Intersection. Exclusion.

Eulerian Circles?

Maths. Was that Form III or Form IV?

***

"Come on guys, stop fooling around. I don't want to have to take you in and cause you a lot of trouble. Just let me take you back to school and we can leave it at that," said the policeman. "and stop calling me Sir Giant, I am Constable Gareth."

"Ah, Constable Gareth is it? A fine Knightly name I might add. We cannot let you take us to this school you wish us to accompany you to but it would be very kind of you if you were to help us on our way," said Sir Higgi.

"Look boys, I am not going to tell you again, stop fooling around and come with me. What are your names anyway?"

"I am Sir Higginthorpe of Blatherdash,you may call me Sir Higgi and this is Sir Reched of Aimless, also known as the Starry Knight." replied Sir Higgi. "Can you take us to your King or Queen?"

The policeman was at the end of his patience with the two. "Sure, I can take you to my leader, Come with me to my car."

"Good. Thank you kind Constable Gareth," said Sir Reched, "what is this car you speak of?"

"Just follow me," said the policeman, exasperated,"right this way."

And so the two knights had their first ride in a police cruiser and were taken to the police station. On the way, the policeman had made one final effort to get them to tell him which school they attended, trying to save them, and himself if the truth be told, some trouble. They kept insisting that they were not children and so he saw no other choice but to follow procedures.

When the three walked through the front door of the police station they were greeted to laughs and teasing. Mostly directed at Constable Gareth but some at the little knights. Things like, "Hey boys, Halloween has passed," and "Are they filming a kids movie in town this week without permits?" None very funny.

The Starry Knight was nearing the end of his patience and looking around and making plans for what to do once he drew his sword.

In case you are asking how the policeman could have left the knights in possession of their weapons in this day and age, both while transporting them in his cruiser and how he and the other policemen could have let them armed into the station, don't. The answer is simple, he assumed, as did the other policemen, that they were toys. It never occurred to anyone that they could be deadly weapons.

(8:49 pm Wed Nov 24, 2010)

*** Matrix ***

Matrix. A rectangular array of numbers.

Matrices. More than one matrix.

Matrix. Matrix multiplication is not commutative.

Matrix. Element. Vector. Tensor.

(9:16 pm Wed Nov 24, 2010)

Well gentle reader, I don't know if I am going to be able to make it tonight. Perhaps if you can help me some. Any thoughts on what I can do tonight to increase the quantity of my word output? I mean, this temporal black hole and these mental chains or mental goo is it are making things tough. Perhaps it is a mental daze. Perhaps this is the daze that has been infecting the red queen's realms.

And again, we have not made any progress on the actual story, we have spent all of the time on the story within the story.

I am here clicking away watching nothing while trying to write. How silly is that? How whacked? Divided attention. Multiplied problems. And so it goes. Plodding. Pushing. Struggling. Hurting. But at least the eyes are not hurting like earlier. At least not yet.

How is it that sometimes words come so quickly? You write for a while and then save and do a word count and there they are, a hundred words or more is a short time. At other times, you write and think you have made a good amount of progress only to count and see very little. It doesn't seem possible that you have made such little progress so you save and word count again, just to be sure. But there is no mistake, You have made very little progress. Still other times, you know for sure you haven't made much progress and you haven't.

***

"Is the chief in?" asked the policeman?

"Yeah, he's in his office with a reported from the paper about that shooting yesterday," replied the officer at the desk.

"Come on boys, let's go back this way and wait, you can give me a statement in the meantime."

The knights followed and sat down on the chairs that the policeman indicated. He sat behind the desk and took a notebook from the middle drawer of the desk.

"OK, names and addresses, who wants to go first?"

"We have already give you our names Sir Giant," said the Starry Knight.

"OK guys, seriously, enough fooling around now. I want your real names this time and your addresses and while you are at it, take of those helmets and let's see what you look like," said Constable Gareth, "and cut it with the Sir Giant already."

"As I have already told you," said Sir Higgi, "I am Sir Higginthorpe of Blatherdash,you may call me Sir Higgi and this is Sir Reched of Aimless, also known as the Starry Knight. I am twenty eight years of age and you will have to ask the Starry Knight his age as I have no knowledge of that."

(9:52 pm Wed Nov 24, 2010)

Almost to the last quarter now gentle reader.

*** Sine ***

Well, you can see by my introducing my last key word that we have now reached the last quarter. It has certainly been a long haul so far though.

Sine. Arcsine. Cosine. Arccosine. Tangent. Arctangent. Secant. Arcsecant. Cosecant. Arccosecant. Cotangent. Arccotangent.

Is your head hurting yet? getting any flashback memories?

Sine, sine, all around you sines.

Sine me up.

Sine on the dotted line.

Sine it over.

Sine of the times.

Sine off on it.

So this sine comes into the bank and asks for a loan. The manager asks if he has a knick-knack? The sine says no he hasn't had a knick-knack in years. So the manager tells him he will have to get a cosine before he can be approved for a loan. So the sine starts talking about this and that and asking about the managers family and more this and that and about what a great business idea he has and could he have the loan please? Well, the manager tells him to stop going off on a tangent and to just go an bring in a cosine. So the sign gets up and leaves the bank but says he will be back in a secant with a cosine.

(10:23 pm Wed Nov 24, 2010)

Well, time is still moving forward. Not much to be done about that. That famous easy button will not stop time for me now will it?

***

Well, the officer was about to lose his temper and was beginning to stand up when the Starry knight raised his visor to reveal his bearded face. The beard took the officer by surprise. The Starry Knight then proceeded to remove his helmet completely revealing his manly features. The officer dropped his pen in surprise.

"Hey guys, take a look at this. Whoever is putting on this movie or play is going all out hey? I mean, fake beard and everything. This must be more than a school play, the makeup is way too professional for that level of production."

The other officers came around for a closer look. Sir Higgi decided to remove his helmet as well and in doing so, he to revealed a man features.

All of the police in the station gathered around and one even tried to touch the Starry Knight beard to see if it was real but Sir Reched knocked his arm away and stepped out of the way.

The officer was one of those who did not like to be thwarted and lunged forward to have another go. Now this officer was a large and powerful man and he worked at it in the gym regularly.

Sir Reched grabbed his hand and forearm and squeezed with each hand. The officer went to his knees, wincing in pain.

When the officer went to his knees, Sir Reched eased his grip enough to lessen the pain. The officer looked at Sir Reched from his knees, a look of profound surprise on his face. Surprise and wariness.

Now you may be wondering how some tiny knight from wherever could be so powerful in the face of a large police officer. A part of it had to do with the hard life knights like him lived and another part had to do with the native strength of all the people of his world.

(10:42 pm Wed Nov 24, 2010)

Well gentle reader, I guess that does it for the day. Thanks for understanding. It has been a tremendous comfort.

(10:43 pm Wed Nov 24, 2010) 54836