The end of the blog

This will be the last entry on this blog - my calculator has so much to say and is only being held back by my ramblings, so I've set up a twitter account exclusively for his daily numerical wisdom:

https://twitter.com/madcalculator

This solves a couple of problems:
1. My calculator often has more than one mystery number to show me in the morning as I kick its brain into wakefulness, and I seriously can't be arsed to take photos of them all.
2. My attention span is as limited as the display on my calculator's 8 digit screen, so this way I don't have to bother thinking about new stuff to write every day.

So there you have it. Perhaps in hundreds of years time when computers have taken over the world and enslaved mankind, they will look to the daily musings of my mad calculator as a kind of fossilised record of our times - the binary equivalent of Pepys diary perhaps...

Over and out.

. . . . . .0.0

When zero just isn't accurate enough to convey the abesence of anything, there is always zero point zero...

My calculator is revelling in a surplus of decimal points today, and why not? Why only one decimal point in any given number? Why not, just for a change, have more decimal points than digits.

This display reminds me of one of those conversations that never happens - after thinking of something to say for the sake of breaking the silence, what finally comes out is something with an intellectual value of zero point zero. Much like this blog entry I guess...

...anyway. Nice weather today isn't it.

39,9 . .9 0

I don't think the minus has much relevance to the number, if indeed it is a number, and not some strange heiroglyph - it seems to be attempting to squeeze some kind of grammatical structure from its limited space and vocabulary...

I've been doing something similar myself recently, trying to remember how to write stories again after channelling my creativity into weird animations for so long. I went for a walk along Worthing pier to see if some sea air would help me think.

I was trying to understand how we percieve and navigate our way through this world we find ourselves in, and as I scanned the flat blue horizon it suddenly struck me how two-dimensional everything is. We like to think of ourselves as living in a three-dimensional world, but thats not how we see it or move through it.

For our minds, the world will always be flat. We move from A to B in two dimentions. Going up or down does not add any extra depth, it simply provides more two-dimentional layers to travel on. This flat world view is dictated by our dependence on gravity. Up and down are traditionally forbidden in the human world, physical barriers we cannot cross.

As for our perception of the world, well it appears to be three-dimensional, our binocular vision and movement through it helps to confirm this illusion. But at any one time we are only seeing a two-dimensional image of our surroundings. This is why 3D holographic television is doomed to be no more than a wonderous gimmick (if it ever arrives), everything we see is painted on a flat surface in front of us. You might be able to turn and look in any direcion, but the flat surface turns with you, much like being trapped inside a sphere. Anything that is further away than you can reach is not a part of your world, rather it is painted on the inside of a larger sphere that encloses your own, with larger and larger spheres stretching out like the skins of an infinite onion.

So if the way we percieve the world is two-dimensional, I started wondering what it would be like to truly percieve it in three dimensions. The closest I could get to imagining it was some kind of god-like omniscience, where you would be aware of every point in space at the same time.

It was at this point that I started to wonder if I had stumbled on a profound idea or if my brain was just waffling like some dusty old calculator. Science tells us that we are no longer the centre of the universe, but I think in a philosophical, perceptual and individual sense we very much are.

Maybe I should just get out more...

-. . .40 .40

Its been a few months since I updated this blog, to be honest I had run out of things to say - unlike my calculator who is still spewing its demented ramblings on a daily basis.

I've moved home in that time, which was a pain in the arse of mountainous proportions, and I will not bore anyone else with my tales of continuing strife caused by the upheaval. My calculator bore the move well it seems, in fact the change has given it a fresh lease of creative life. I wish I could say the same for myself.

It did serve to remind me how much crap I have accumulated over the years - in mathematical terms, I seem to be forever adding and never subtracting. Even after the amazing number of bin-bags I threw out whilst emptying my old flat, I still ended up taking a lot of clutter with me - some of it still in boxes from when I moved ten years previously.

One thing I will never relinquish is my trusty calculator, who still helps with my sums and amuses me with numerical poetry from time to time. As for this particular display, with its pause and repetition it seems to almost be reminiscing - about happier numbers perhaps.

8,998.1682

If numbers were people then I can imagine crossing the road to avoid this one - it looks somehow demented. High figures just don't look right with lots of decimal places behind them, I'm not sure why.

Unless that decimal point is serving to divide it into two separate numbers... That might make it easier to infer any coincidental significance at least.

So lets take 1682, did anything significant happen in that year? Apart from Vesuvius erupting and Halley's comet passing by, it was a notable year for being the last in which English citizens were burned at the stake for being witches. According to wikipedia:

"They had been accused of speaking in unknown languages as well as practicing knowledge beyond their natural abilities, and acting in peculiar manners."

I expect my calculator would have also been barbequed in those days, for much the same reasons. As for the other number, well... 8,998 americans died of aids in 2001, I'm sure there are some fanatics out there who would condemn those victims with the same religious zeal as the witch burners.

Morbid stuff.

-4

This made me laugh for some reason, after all the reams of exotic and gibberish numbers my calculator has spewed at me over the years, minus 4 seems almost comically mundane.

Unless of course you are an astronaut, in which case minus 4 might signify the number of seconds you have before someone sets light to the mountain of rocket fuel you are sitting on.

That also brings to mind the 4 minute warning. This was a system of sirens and broadcasts developed during the cold war, the purpose being to let us all know that we had 4 minutes left to live before soviet nuclear missiles rained down on our heads.

Since this system was scrapped in 1992, it now falls upon my calculator to alert the entire nation of impending doom. You might just about have time to make one last cup of tea before being vapourised.

Cheerio...

38,000,400

Strange things are going through my calculator's tiny mind recently. Some days there are the endless nines, some days nothing. The other day there was not even nothing on its screen, not even the familiar zero. I thought my calculator had finally died and passed on to some kind of digital afterlife.

But no, a quick press of the 'on' button brought it spluttering back to life, and I am glad to see it is still churning out its daily numerical ramblings. The ghost in the machine has not yet given up the ghost.

Speaking of ghosts, since earlier theories of alien communication are probably just as plausible, perhaps I could entertain the notion that my calculator is somehow possessed by spirits, haunted by the soul of some departed mathematician.

Maybe Einstein is still trying to finish his last unfinished theory by channeling my calculator from beyond the grave. He never completed his Unified Field Theory before he died - its the equation that would explain everything in the universe so you can imagine how keen he would be to finish it. I'm sure he wouldn't let something as trivial as his own death get in his way anyway.

I imagine it would take some time untangling the workings of the universe on my calculator, I expect there are also plenty of other dead geniuses queuing up to use it every night for their unfinished business. I wish Einstein the best of luck in his eternal endeavours, even though the final theory of everything will no doubt prove the impossibility of life after death, amongst other things.