A Bit About Work

Upon request I have put a couple pictures here from work. Actually I don't usually look that thrilled, but I enjoy my work. It is sort of too bad that it will all be over soon and I will go back to school. Of course I am also a little excited about school.

While I am making a post about me, I thought I'd mention the highlights from the passed week in chronological order.

1- Turkish Language Meetup was great. Really nice people. Had lots of Rakı.
2- Saturday morning breakfast with Safiye. Cooked sigara böreği. mmm
3- Hiking, ice cream, and... corn of all things with two additional friends, Mike Susie and Ferit. By the way I have to remember that we have a rain check for mini golf.

And what I am looking forward to these next couple of weeks:

1- getting back into regular-ish communication with Pınar after her travels to northern Spain and Eastern Turkey.
2- going to chill with Safiye and finally get around to having an Avrupa Yakası marathon. What a hilarious tv show (the theme of which gets stuck in my head all the time).
3- weekend get together with some friends at a lakehouse.
4- sister coming for a visit before moving to Holland. I lost a bet to her back in June over a soccer match and so as agreed I will take her out for some Turkish food in Boston. Actually, the bet was rigged because I agreed regardless of the outcome of the game. Anyway, really looking forward to that.

The Rarest Dates in the Next 50 Years

Remember all that hype from back in the year 2000? I'm not talking about the y2k stuff, but just the fact that it was going to be the year 2000. Everyone was freaking out because for the first time in a thousand years, the date's fourth digit from the right changed. The 1 in the 1000's place became a 2. That digit would not change again for 1000 years.

...But then I got to thinking. What is the real significance? As with any counting system, the three things that determine the number are:

1. when you start counting (in this case sometime within half a dozen years of Jesus Christ being born)
2. how much you count by (one year, every year)
3. which base you count in (base 10)

I am going to talk about the third one. The year 2000 looks pretty sweet in base 10, but look to the right to see what that year was in other bases. Some of them are still interesting, such as 5, 7, and 10, but most of them are boring. Right now it is the year 2008, in base 10. In base 11, it is the year 1566. In base 12, it is the year 11B4. However...

I went ahead and made a list of the 18 most rare or special looking dates in different bases for the next 50 years and sorted them in chronological order. As always, click to enlarge.

Notice that I included a ranking for rareness.
Ranks 1-14 are all more significant than a century.
Ranks 1-11 are more significant than a bicentennial.
Ranks 1-3 are more significant than a millennium.
And rank number 1 is more significant than a bi-millennial.

So in the end we can see that the year 2000 was exciting, but we don't have to wait until the year 3000 for a similar celebration.

The Map 2

Shown here is a map upon which is drawn a polygon of the largest area where the points are places I've been. It is more informative and more colorful than my previous attempt at displaying the range of my travels.

A Rather Revealing Map

So I thought to get back on the subject of interesting maps...

Notice the ENTIRE CONTINENT OF AFRICA there around Kentucky. Anyway, I think this map send a clear message to the rest of the world: "Hey, you can probably get away with polluting a lot more, cuz even then you won't be half as bad as us." Ok, I'm kidding, but seriously you have to ask yourself why we let this continue.