Fuddland
Happy Saint David’s Day everybody, particularly those of a Welsh persuasion. I had a most excellent weekend at that party I mentioned; in the end I opted for the stupid Craig Dave David “jawline beard” and ridiculous tea-cosy hat, but so many people said, “Hey, Badly Drawn Boy, very good!” that I might as well have not bothered trimming my beard at all.
Aside from Dave David/BDB, we had a few Spice Girls [including two Poshes, although one suffered from a similar problem to myself, and eventually it was decided she was P. J. Harvey]; a Justin Timberlake; two aged, grey-bearded ZZ Toppers; a Betty Boo; a David Brent [in his If You Don’t Know Me By Know video outfit]; a Mutya from The Sugababes; and a Justin Hawkins from The Darkness, who I think won the Best Outfit contest by unanimous vote. And lots of drinking.
A nice easy journey back on Sunday, during which I finished reading [at last!] Eats, Shoots and Leaves [highly recommended] and read about a third of Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure. [By the way, if you’re reading this Mr Gorman, your definition of a googol at the beginning of whatever-chapter-it-is is wrong: you’ve put 101 zeros after the 1 — there should be only 100.]
Comments
imogen | 2004 / 03 / 01 – 14:24
happy name day, david. : )
Daisy | 2004 / 03 / 01 – 17:05
you’ve put 101 zeros after the 1—there should be only 100”
You counted them?
David | 2004 / 03 / 01 – 17:32
Re #2: Heh, no I didn’t count them. Here’s how I noticed:
A googol is 10 to the power of 100 — so it’s a 1 followed by 100 zeros [to check this is correct, notice that: 10 to the power of 2 is 100, i.e. a 1 followed by 2 zeros; 10 to the power of 3 is 1000, a 1 followed by 3 zeros, etc.]
Since [a] we separate our digits into groups of three by using commas and [b] the closest multiple of 3 to 100 is 99, there should be only one 0 between the 1 and the first comma to make up the 100th zero. But there were two. QED. :)
Daisy | 2004 / 03 / 02 – 13:06
*whoooooosh*
David | 2004 / 03 / 08 – 16:08
Update: I’ve just realised it’s a googolplex that’s defined at the beginning of the chapter [Chapter 6], not a plain old googol. A googolplex is 10 to the power of a googol, which is a 1 followed by a googol of zeros! That’s a lotta zeros.
Since there are only about 10-to-the-80 atoms in the universe, there aren’t actually enough atoms in the universe to write down the number of zeros in a googolplex, even if one atom represented one zero. So the definition in Chapter 6 is even wronger than I thought!
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