Tuesday, April 17, 2018

A 100031-digit Leyland prime

In February I explained the status of my current Leyland-primes search, hoping therein to have scored my first Leyland prime with more than 100000 decimal digits by this summer.

Today I achieved that milestone with 23406^18781+18781^23406, which contains in its expanded form 100031 decimal digits.

Saturday, April 14, 2018

Lost in conversion

I thought I'd give the Netflix reboot of Lost in Space a go just now. To be clear, I'm old enough to have watched the mid-1960s original and I didn't think much of it. Three minutes into the first episode of the remake, the starship is losing altitude:


I've enabled the subtitles in the screen grab so that you might comprehend my objection. I decided not to watch any further.

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Ancestry

I got my ancestry-by-populations chart from 23andMe today:


No real surprises. My father's family is the German component. The Netherlands and Denmark matches just serve to regionalize which part of Germany (northwest) that family lived. Poland is there, of course, because that was my mother's mother's place of birth. We had always thought of my mother's father as Russian and the match for Ukraine is a nominal step in that direction, as one mustn't take these countries literally.

Somewhat more surprising is the 8.7% British and Irish component. It doesn't mean, I'm sure, that I have an ancestor that hails therefrom. Rather, some British and Irish populations share a common ancestry with me.

Wednesday, April 04, 2018

California dreamin'

Yesterday morning I noticed a couple of small plastic STUCCO advertising-signs nailed to the hydro utility pole in front of my house and — sure enough — two more on a pole up the street. I've been waging war on these signs for a good number of years! So I surveyed the immediate neighborhood (some six streets) and found two more pairs, on Lippincott St. W. and Edmund Ave. In the afternoon — wearing my high-visibility safety vest, a hammer under my belt and a small ladder on my shoulder — I took them all down.

In my survey I discovered a "medical marijuana" dispensary on the northwest corner of Weston Rd. and Lippincott St. W. (The only time I might find myself at this intersection is for the across-the-street Dairy Queen, which is closed in the winter.)


This is the first such business (of which I am aware) in Weston, albeit the south end thereof. Apparently, it is a concern.