For those who are just tuning in, this is the eleventh of a series of posts normally (but not this time) occuring once every two weeks. In these posts, I show how long it takes for me to do a Sudoku puzzle with the additional restriction of having to fill in the numbers in top-to-bottom, left-to-right order. Hence the name TBLR Sudoku.

I was contemplating using the loss of my notepad as an excuse to end this series of posts. But I’ve been attaining new personal bests recently. I haven’t gotten to the point where I don’t think I’ll be able to improve upon my times. You’ll know when I get there, because that will be the last post in this series.

Of course, some clever person might be able to improve on my times. Any competition would be interesting.

Here are the times for the last two weeks, shown with the difference between the time and my personal best for that level of difficulty. I don’t remember if I had a new personal best during the previous two-week period

6/17/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
6/16/10 – 3-Star, 19:10, 8:16 improvement on previous personal best, 31% improvement. I was pleasantly shocked by this.
6/15/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
6/14/10 – 1-Star, 24:24, 6:11 slower than my personal best (PB+6:11), and 33% slower than my personal best (PB+33%)
6/13/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
6/12/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
6/11/10 – 5-Star, 1:01:45, PB+30:07, PB+95%
6/10/10 – 4-Star, Fail
6/09/10 – 3-Star, 36:28, PB+9:02, PB+32%
6/08/10 – 2-Star, 32:49, PB+17:42, PB+117%
6/07/10 – 1-Star, 20:40, PB+2:27, PB+13%
6/06/10 – Unknown
6/05/10 – Unknown
6/04/10 – Unknown

1-Star: 18:13, 11/23/09
2-Star: 15:07, 4/27/10
3-Star: 19:10, 6/16/10
4-Star: 28:52, 2/18/10
5-Star: 31:38, 3/19/10
6-Star: 45:09, 2/13/10

Technorati: Sudoku

I wondered who was responsible for this amusing diversion. Some people at St. Mark’s School in the Merriam Park neighborhood informed me that it was a project of St. Paul Public Works. There is a page at the City of St. Paul website on sidewalk poetry. It’s actually a little more complicated than that, because it is a collaboration between the city and a non-profit organization, Public Art St. Paul. The official name of the project, Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk, is the brainchild of Marcus Young, who is being funded by Public Art St. Paul, and who has somehow convinced the powers that be to put poetry in sidewalks, among other things. One could do worse.

I wondered how the poetry got impressed in the sidewalks. When a patch of sidewalk is repaired, for whatever reason, a poetry installation is contemplated. When a poem is selected, a stamp is constructed of that poem, and the stamp is pressed into the drying concrete.

There is a FAQ document on the project, that explains the details. I suppose there are people who don’t want poetry on the sidewalk in front of their houses. What must they be like?

I wondered where the poems were. I saw some on Dayton in Merriam Park, one on Ashland and Fairview, and one on Sheridan, further south. Here is a map showing sidewalk poetry locations in St. Paul.

I didn’t wonder how I could get one of my poems stamped into the sidewalk, until I saw the announcement on local cable access for the 2010 Poetry Contest. I submitted the following poem.

There is a place
A place I love
Where streets are paved with poetry
And named for feelings felt while reading
Verses in concrete

Encouragement
Resolution
Are crossing Thank-You Avenue
Poems surprising, harmonizing
Make my joy complete.

I tried really hard to make it where you could put the two verses side by side, and it would make sense. I saw a picture in my mind’s eye where the two verses would be like the two wings of a beautiful bird. On further review, there is a problem with a couple of the lines, (“Resolution,” “Verses in concrete”) as the rhythm of the line doesn’t line up against the syllable emphasis of the words. I just know there’s a word that poets use to describe that, but I don’t know what it is yet. For now, I shall call it an infelicity, a fancy word for an unhappiness. I believe it would be better if I changed “Resolution” to “Divinity,” but at this point, I got nothing regarding “Verses in concrete.” Is it ok the way it is?

St. Paul Poet Laureate Carol Connolly, whom you’ve met before in this space, was one of the judges. On one hand, I was not one of the five winning poets, neither was I one of the five honorable mentions. On the other hand, they didn’t give me any feedback about my poem, so it’s pointless to speculate about what the judges thought. On yet another hand, if I found something I didn’t like about my poem, perhaps someone else did too. Someone find me a one-handed poet!

Technorati: sidewalk poetry, St. Paul

Oh my name it is nothin’
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I’s taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that the land that I live in
Has God on its side

There is nothing notable about this house, but there are a couple of nods to Bob Dylan here…

This is the street sign on the corner of 25th Street and 7th Avenue, where the Zimmerman residence is found. You might have seen this in the front view photo, but here is a closer look.

The fact that it isn’t a perfect reproduction of the album cover of one of Dylan’s greatest albums makes it all the more a gift of love to me.

I actually took a picture of the Androy Hotel for no good reason, only to discover later that it was the site of Bob Zimmerman’s Bar Mitzvah.

So now as I’m leavin’
I’m weary as Hell
The confusion I’m feelin’
Ain’t no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God’s on our side
He’ll stop the next war

I took this picture because the plaque on the left, commemorating those who served and died in World War II, was there when Bob Zimmerman went to Hibbing High School in the late 1950’s. The plaque on the right, honoring the victims of the 9/11 attacks, was not.

Again, the plaque on the left was there when Bob went to school, the plaque on the right was not. The plaque on the right honored those who served and died in Korea and Viet Nam, battles in what should be called World War III, but is currently known as the Cold War. The 9/11 plaque honors victims in what will be known in the future as World War IV.

Dylan wrote that the professional wrestler Gorgeous George winked at him when he was playing in this building:

He winked and seemed to mouth the phrase, `You’re making it come alive.’ I never forgot it. It was all the recognition and encouragement I would need for years.

What do I get from that? I get that I can always be encouraging, and that I don’t know the full impact until long after the encouraging happens.

You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy
You may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy
You may call me R.J., you may call me Ray
You may call me anything but no matter what you say

You’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

The building on 417 E. Howard Street once housed the L & B Cafe, where Bob and Echo Helstrom would like, hang out, smoke cigarettes and play the jukebox. Echo Helstrom is the subject of the song “Girl From The North Country.” While the L & B Cafe is no longer there, a bar/restaurant/Dylan shrine called Zimmy’s now occupies the building

Yes, I am a doofus photographer. The picture at the bottom is an enlargement of a portion of the picture at the top, a picture of little Bobby Zimmerman. There are t-shirts for sale with “Come Home Bob” on them.

A little sheet music on the walls…

I’m a little unclear as to how old Bob was in the picture in this picture.

May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

This is on the sidewalk outside of Zimmy’s.

The only thing missing from my pilgrimage is that I showed up at about 7:00 pm on a Saturday night, and the Bob Dylan Collection at the Hibbing Public Library was unavailable to me. I probably should have done some research prior to coming to Hibbing. If I had, I would have discovered the Dylan Walking Tour, which I highly recommend. I’d like to think I caught the high points. I was too late for Dylan Days, which was in late May, the time of the Bard’s birth.

Technorati: Bob Dylan, Hibbing

The phrase has become a template for other prophetic utterances. Numerous wags and pundits have reformulated Godwin’s Law using Warhol’s words: “In the future, everyone will be Hitler for 15 minutes.” My particular variation on the theme is “In the future, everyone will be famous, naked, and Hitler for 15 minutes.”

But it was Instapundit that inspired me to submit this phrase template for banishment when he wrote, “In the future, we will all be Glenn Beck for 15 minutes.”

Technorati: Banished Words, LSSU

Before I go further on this post, I hereby confess that my predictions that the words and phrases “bamboozled,” “hoodwink,” “voting ‘present,’” and “that’s above my pay grade” would be on the 2010 Banished Words List were wrong. I also confess not having written a post on the 2010 Banished Words List. All you had to do to find out the 2010 Banished Words was read Instapundit and look at the one-word post titles (stimulus, transparency).

I recently met someone on Twitter who used this phrase as the opening of their Twitter bio. It once meant someone who contemplates spirituality outside a formal tradition, but it has now become a phrase for someone who wishes to appear like a good and interesting person, but who can’t be bothered with all those oppressive, nitpicky commandments like don’t kill, don’t hate, don’t commit adultery, don’t lust, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t covet, etc. It has now become someone who cries out to the Goddess while committing adultery.

And the clearest indication that the phrase has jumped the shark is when it is given the “mocking by reversal” treatment in the Onion:

Priest Religious, But Not Really Spiritual

BOSTON—Father Clancy Donahue of St. Michael Catholic Church told reporters Wednesday that while he believed in blindly adhering to the dogma and ceremonies of his faith, he tried not to get too bogged down by actual spirituality. “I’m not so much into having a relationship with God as I am into mechanically conducting various rituals,” Donahue said. “To me, it just feels empty to contemplate a higher power without blindly obeying canon law and protecting the church as an institution.” Donahue emphasized that although he did not personally agree with those who pondered the eternal, he had nothing against them.

Well, that’s a relief. Maybe all those spiritual but not religious folk need people like Father Donahue to keep the ecclesiastical machinery well lubricated.

Technorati: Banished Words, LSSU

1) There are multiple online dictionary entries stating orbit as being the path of an electron around the nucleus of an atom. Therefore, Paula Gamache is entirely justified in cluing orbit as “An electron’s path.” I had a conversation with UK crossword setter Cincinnus about this issue, and he pointed out to me that if I didn’t like this, I had an issue with the dictionary writers, not him.

2) On the other hand, this definition of orbit has been overtaken by events. First of all, the path of an electron isn’t even remotely like the orbit of a planet around a star. The path of an electron is twistier than the flight of a gnat-hungry swallow. With the exception of hydrogen, an electron never goes all the way around the nucleus, on account of it running into another electron, and being electromagnetically repelled back. There are regions where electrons are likely to be, and these regions have been both modeled mathematically and observed experimentally. These regions are called orbitals. Here’s a picture of some of them.

I’m showing you these shapes to show that any connection between the shapes of orbitals, and the shapes of the orbits of planets is tenuous at best. Robert Millikan coined the term orbital in 1932. It was a shortening of the phrase “orbital wave functions.” Those funny-looking things up there are the solutions to orbital wave functions. So even though I don’t like the word orbital because it sounds so much like orbit, since Robert Millikan is a big deal in physics, and he’s the guy that did the heavy lifting, he can call it what he wants.

So even though I don’t have an issue with Paula Gamache and Cincinnus because the dictionary justifies their cluing, I have an issue with Paula Gamache and Cincinnus for making a clue that is clearly untrue, and then using a dictionary entry that is clearly no longer correct to justify their cluing. Got that? I don’t know if Will Shortz has gotten letters about this, but he’s going to get one from me.

But I not only have an issues with dictionary writers and crossword composers, I have an issue with graphic artists as well. Most notably, I have an issue with Apple. It has nothing to do with anything about their hardware or software. I have an issue with the Genius Bar logo.

This image of an atom is an utterly outdated image, and yet Apple, who is supposed to be the brand of innovation, the brand of thinking differently, is using this, this archaic image. My only consolation is that the Genius at the Genius Bar agreed with me without blinking that it was past it’s sell-by date.

I’ve considered when words should be retired for being out of date. But this is a new area of exploration, considering when definitions should be retired for being out of date.

Technorati: orbitals, orbits

For those who are just tuning in, this is the tenth of a series of posts occuring once every two weeks. In these posts, I show how long it takes for me to do a Sudoku puzzle with the additional restriction of having to fill in the numbers in top-to-bottom, left-to-right order. Hence the name TBLR Sudoku.

Here are the times for the last two weeks, shown with the difference between the time and my personal best for that level of difficulty. This was a two-week period where I basically stunk up the joint. I didn’t have a new personal best during this two-week period.

5/20/10 – 4-Star, 36:52, PB+8:00
5/19/10 – 3-Star, 42:00, PB+14:34
5/18/10 – 2-Star, 23:16, PB+8:09
5/17/10 – 1-Star, 31:25, PB+13:12
5/16/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
5/15/10 – 6-Star, Fail
5/14/10 – 5-Star, Fail
5/13/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
5/12/10 – 3-Star, 30:52, PB+3:26 (Not a bad outing)
5/11/10 – 2-Star, 25:11, PB+10:04 (Normally, I wouldn’t consider this a bad time, but now compared to my recent new PB, it looks terrible)
5/10/10 – 1-Star, Fail
5/09/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
5/08/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
5/07/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle

1-Star: 18:13, 11/23/09
2-Star: 15:07, 4/27/10
3-Star: 27:26, 3/24/10
4-Star: 28:52, 2/18/10
5-Star: 31:38, 3/19/10
6-Star: 45:09, 2/13/10

Technorati: Sudoku

For those who are just tuning in, this is the ninth of a series of posts occuring once every two weeks or so. In these posts, I show how long it takes for me to do a Sudoku puzzle with the additional restriction of having to fill in the numbers in top-to-bottom, left-to-right order. Hence the name TBLR Sudoku.

Here are the times for the last two weeks, shown with the difference between the time and my personal best for that level of difficulty.

5/06/10 – 4-Star, I didn’t Fail, but I did quit trying to do it TBLR, and just did it the normal way. So I’m going to count that as a Fail.
5/05/10 – 3-Star, Fail
5/04/10 – 2-Star, 24:41, PB+9:34
5/03/10 – 1-Star, 33:29, PB+15:16. Yecch.
5/02/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
5/01/10 – 6-Star, Fail
4/30/10 – 5-Star, 38:20, PB+6:42
4/29/10 – 4-Star, 34:22, PB+5:30
4/28/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle. Actually, I think I did do the puzzle, but I didn’t have my watch with me when I did the puzzle.
4/27/10 – 2-Star, 15:07, new PB, 5:17 improvement over previous PB (this is not only a PB for a 2-star, this is my new PB for all Star-Tribune Sudokus)
4/26/10 – 1-Star, Fail
4/25/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
4/24/10 – 6-Star, 48:21, PB+3:12 (Not a bad outing)
4/23/10 – 5-Star, 37:00 (It was actually 36:something, but I somehow lost the number of seconds) PB+5:22

1-Star: 18:13, 11/23/09
2-Star: 15:07, 4/27/10
3-Star: 27:26, 3/24/10
4-Star: 28:52, 2/18/10
5-Star: 31:38, 3/19/10
6-Star: 45:09, 2/13/10

Technorati: Sudoku

For those who are just tuning in, this is the eighth of a series of posts occuring once every two weeks. In these posts, I show how long it takes for me to do a Sudoku puzzle with the additional restriction of having to fill in the numbers in top-to-bottom, left-to-right order. Hence the name TBLR Sudoku.

Here are the times for the last two weeks, shown with the difference between the time and my personal best for that level of difficulty.

4/22/10 – 4-Star Sudoku in the Star-Tribune, top-to-bottom, left-to-right, Fail
4/21/10 – 3-Star, 39:24, 11:58 slower than my personal best (PB+11:58)
4/20/10 – 2-Star, 26:13, PB+5:49
4/19/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
4/18/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
4/17/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
4/16/10 – 5-Star, 45:02, PB+13:24
4/15/10 – 4-Star, Fail
4/14/10 – 3-Star, Fail
4/13/10 – 2-Star, 26:19, PB+5:55
4/12/10 – 1-Star, 31:44, PB+13:31
4/11/10 – 5-Star, 56:08, PB+24:30
4/10/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
4/09/10 – 5-Star, 38:46, PB+7:08

The personal bests haven’t changed from the last post. This is the first time in eight weeks that I’ve gone for 2 weeks without a new personal best.

1-Star: 18:13, 11/23/09
2-Star: 20:24, 1/12/10
3-Star: 27:26, 3/24/10
4-Star: 28:52, 2/18/10
5-Star: 31:38, 3/19/10
6-Star: 45:09, 2/13/10

Technorati: Sudoku

For those who are just tuning in, this is the seventh of a series of posts occuring once every two weeks. In these posts, I show how long it takes for me to do a Sudoku puzzle with the additional restriction of having to fill in the numbers in top-to-bottom, left-to-right order. Hence the name TBLR Sudoku.

Here are the times for the last two weeks, shown with the difference between the time and my personal best for that level of difficulty.

4/08/10 – 4-Star Sudoku in the Star-Tribune, top-to-bottom, left-to-right, 43:57, 15:05 slower than my personal best (PB+15:05).
4/07/10 – 3-Star, 36:55, PB+9:29
4/06/10 – 2-Star, 18:42, 1:42 improvement on my personal best (for a 2-Star) from 1/12/10
4/05/10 – 1-Star, 19:16, PB+1:03
4/04/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
4/03/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
4/02/10 – 5-Star, 45:46, PB+14:08
4/01/10 – 4-Star, 33:48, PB+4:56
3/31/10 – 3-Star, Fail
3/30/10 – 2-Star, 29:57, PB+9:33
3/29/10 – 1-Star, Fail
3/28/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
3/27/10 – Didn’t do the puzzle
3/26/10 – 5-Star, Fail

Here are the updated personal bests:

1-Star: 18:13, 11/23/09
2-Star: 20:24, 1/12/10
3-Star: 27:26, 3/24/10
4-Star: 28:52, 2/18/10
5-Star: 31:38, 3/19/10
6-Star: 45:09, 2/13/10

Technorati: Sudoku