Dear Patrons,

The Daily Linguini will now be closed for business until Wednesday 5th January 2005, as all the staff will be taking a well-earned break in the snowy hills of Wales.

May we take this opportunity to thank you all for your valued custom during 2004, and to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year.

Regards,

Pastamasta
Head Waiter

Spent the weekend up in the frosty wilds of Lancashire, where the pheasant and the deer roam free (until they're invariably rolled into wildlife pancakes by a 40-ton petrol tanker), for the occasion of my sister-in-law's birthday. Sarah marked the occasion by insisting loudly that all the shiny, ribbon-girdled objects in the front room were "Sarah's presents" and no-one else's, and also by vomiting quite spectacularly all over daddy during the birthday lunch at the rather posh restaurant. The staff were horrified, in a sort of genteel and butler-like way, although not as horrified as Sarah, who looked at the resulting mess with an expression somewhere between "Hmm, what's that stuff, and can I conceivably play with it" and "Eek, eek, enormous spider on my face", and promptly started bawling. She's had a dodgy tummy for a few days, poor mite, but we really thought she was on the mend. Still, we probably should have expected that one; it just goes to show, a child may ask for "milk" from one parent, and then "oninge juice" from the other five minutes later, but don't expect to go home with clean trousers if you actually agree to their demands.

I'm suffering a crisis of cofidence over my bold and apparently definitive statement in step 4 of my previous post. Thinking about it, I'm not completely satisfied that each sphere is part of 24 tetrahedra; it might be 20, 14 or even just 12. Can anyone else satisfy my burning curiosity on this question?

What I really need is a bunch of ball-bearings.

UPDATE: Apparently I was right about the '24' - and also, according to Brom-man, right about the theoretical ratio! Wow, a boost to my mathematical confidence! Unfortunately, the theoretical value bears no relation to what happens in the real world, as Brom-man has now actually tried it (yes, with a bucket and some water) and the real-world ratio is more like 60-40. Oh well.

The fiendish Brom-man has posed a bit of a mathematical conundrum, which (being the puzzle-loving type) I have found impossible to cast from my mind. I've therefore been scribbling furiously on bits of scrap paper in order to figure it out. This is not what I'm supposed to be doing at 2pm on a work day, but is a damn sight better than writing server restore procedures, so I've been working on this instead. Here's the problem:

If you have a container, say 1 litre, which is tightly packed with small, roughly uniform spheres of about 2mm diameter how much free space remains? You can't just assume that each sphere has "spare" volume equivalent to what would remain if it was surrounded by a cube, as some of that space would be taken up by its closely packed neighbours.

So anyway, I've been cracking away at this and I think I've got it figured. Here goes.

Assuming that the most efficient packing of spheres is the regular tetrahedron (which I'm pretty sure is true) you could calculate a theoretical volume thus (please forgive the shoddy scientific notation):

1. A tetrahedron formed by joining the centre of four spheres of 2mm diameter would have sides of length 2mm.

2. The volume of a regular tetrahedron is calculated as (√2 / 12) * x³, where x is the length of the sides of the tetrahedron.

3. The volume of a sphere is calculated as 4/3 * π * r³, where r is the radius of the sphere.

4. Since each sphere participates equally in 24 tetrahedra (due to the tessellated arrangement), only 1/24 of each sphere's total volume is present per tetrahedron.

5. With 4 spheres per tetrahedron, each with a radius of 1mm, the solid volume per tetrahedron is therefore 4/3 * π * 1³ * (4 / 24), and since the total volume per tetrahedron is (√2 / 12) * 2³, this gives a ratio (after a hell of a lot of simplification) of π / (3 * √2) solid volume per unit total volume. In other words, in a 1 litre container, π / (3 * √2) litres would be the total volume of the spheres, and therefore you could fit 1 - (π / (3 * √2)) litres of water into the spaces between them (about 260ml).

WARNING: The above is almost certainly complete shite, as I haven't touched maths since A-level, which was longer ago than I care to remember. I don't doubt that someone else can come up with the real answer, but hey, try it anyway with a bucket and some ball-bearings; the worst thing you can end up with is wet shoes.

Have just been out into town to buy a "Secret Santa" present for this year's randomly-selected hapless colleague. Shopped around in various joke shops, the Post Office, Woolworths etc., and have come to the sad conclusion that small, jokey gifts ain't what they used to be. What happened to the itching powder, the giant rubber feet, the bags of small plastic spiders that you used to be able to buy at every corner shop when I was a youth? Where now are the water-bomb catapults and the rubber band-launched cardboard Spitfires? Whither the cap-gun and the silly putty? They have all sailed west to the Undying Lands, along with the Slinky and those little troll chaps with the radioactive hair. In the end, I bought him a tatty leopardskin G-string, on the grounds that it would be the most embarrassing thing for him to open in public. I don't doubt for a second that he'll be immediately forced to wear them. Muahaha.

Have been out of my regular work digs visiting the charming and hospitable Stevenage office, a place which has been likened, not without justification, to a large mental hospital populated with traffic roundabouts. Upon my return I have found the server room to be in something of an appalling state; specifically, piles of boxes have been left in the middle of the floor, various CDs and floppy disks have been scattered over the work surfaces, a chair is perching precariously on top of a table (because someone has been fiddling with the air-conditioning, although not, I suspect, in a manner which would meet with the approval of Health & Safety), and what appears to be a small hoover bag is lying sideways on top of one of my mail servers, and is leaking fluff and pencil shavings all over it.

This simply will not do. I have visitors arriving tomorrow morning, who will expect to see the smoothly-functioning hardware environment of an IT project under perfect control. (Fat chance, chaps, but here's hoping.)

So what action should I take? Should I send round a stern note, reminding people not to litter the server room and to clear up their bits and bobs once they've finished with them? Should I drag the culprits (for I have identified them by their sheepish grimaces) into the room and force them to clean it on pain of being strangled with CAT5 cabling?

No. I'm just going to pile the whole lot into the biggest cardboard box in the office, write "PLEASE RECYCLE" on it in nice big letters with a marker pen, and stick it next to the door. Anyone who wants their media can damn well sort through that.

I can't be doing with lack of consideration. Can you tell?

Ah, the joys of Christmas shopping for your younglings. Behold the increasingly tall stack of presents under the tree, draped precariously with the fairy lights which Sarah has managed to pull off the tree despite our best efforts. Behold the slowly-dwindling free space in the lounge, as it fills up with rolls of wrapping paper, sellotape ends, sticky ribbons and bits of cardboard. Behold the sight of Sarah running full tilt through Mothercare, knocking bewildered toddlers left and right and yelling "SEESAW!!!" at the top of her little lungs, before jumping onto a small, red, thoroughly undeserving plastic horse and leaping up and down on it like a tiny woolly kangaroo.

Behold the bank statement, oh God, the bank statement, the little piece of paper which might as well just say, "You have no money until March, get used to it."

The difficulty of being organised, and buying all her presents early, is that she wants to open them now. Instead, we must restrain her from attacking the neatly-wrapped boxes every morning for the next two weeks. It might just be time to invest in one of those comfy-looking straitjacket things.

Sarah was inadvertently introduced to the manifold joys of bubble wrap yesterday evening, when The Missus unwrapped an early Christmas parcel from a distant relative. As she neglectfully left the sheet of protective wrapping in Sarah's view for over half a second, which always guarantees maximum interest when one subsequently tries to hide the object in question, we were forced to show it to her and demonstrate its amazing powers of hypnosis. She's pretty good on "don't touch" and "dangerous" (we don't want her playing with plastic bags and the like), but of course this didn't stop her from demanding that we should pop the damn stuff for her. Over and over and over again. For half an hour.

So beware, folks! Bubble wrap may seem harmless, a mere packaging for fragile goods, but it is primarily a form of entertainment for the easily pleased or the very bored. Moreover, popping bubble wrap is highly addictive and can be a sign of a dangerous lack of sensory and social input. Statistics (which I have received from helpful statisticians, and which therefore you should trust implicitly) show that 71% of habitual bubble wrap users go on to try harder drugs such as cocaine, heroin and home shopping channels.

As the ever-vigilant Adrian pointed out to me a while back, this blog is not particularly friendly to web browsers other than the dreaded Internet Explorer. This is probably has something to do with the fact that I am a SERVANT OF SATAN. No, wait, it's because my Javascript knowledge is shite, and I've been mostly using VBScript, that staple of Microsoft proprietary nastiness, to do any funky web stuff. Shame on me.

However, never let it be said that I am reluctant to improve myself for the good of mankind. I've therefore spent a few hours sweating my way through a few online manuals, and have tweaked a few things here and there in the hope that it will fix the previously stuffed bits of functionality. Specifically, commenting should now work for pretty much anyone. If it doesn't, please feel free to contact the management (and hurl abuse, chairs or leftover calzone as you see fit).

I'm now off to rejuvenate my brain with the help of several large jugs of espresso and a mince pie.

There's a new reality-TV series starting on Channel 4 tonight called The Heist, the apparent premise of which is this: a bunch of reformed criminals with assorted skills (the Channel 4 website describes them as "gangsters, jewel thieves, extortionists, robbers and hackers") get together and try to pull off various thefts, such as stealing a valuable painting from a museum, smuggling a stolen million-pound car out of the country, and kidnapping a racehorse. At any rate, these chaps are all experienced tea-leaves and will be giving all of us the opportunity to see inside the operations of a criminal gang.

Hmmm.

Now call me cynical, but hasn't anyone noticed that this will give a very large number of unreformed criminals access to a hefty wodge of information on how to carry out successful, lucrative crimes? I mean, someone out there (because there's always one) is going to look at this programme and say, 'ere, Bozza, that looks easy dunnit, let's round up Chazza and Dazza and knock over the local bookie's. You know it's going to happen. I'm not suggesting that it will incite non-criminals to commit violent larceny, just that it's transparently a bad idea to give existing scallies more data to work with when planning their jolly capers.

I shall be buying myself a crossbow this weekend.

Have spent several tedious hours of slavish drudgery this morning knocking together a small piece of software for a chap down at the Stevenage office. Chap has been nagging me, every twenty minutes since 8am, to get the aforesaid software finished, despite the fact that these regular conversations have themselves been significantly delaying the piece of work in question, in strict accordance with Pastamasta's First Law of Problem-Solving. Chap also inexplicably seems to be under the impression that he's suddenly been elevated to the exalted position of Boss Of Me. Chap is sorely mistaken. However, chap is oblivious both to Laws of Problem-Solving and to his proper place in the office pecking-order, and has therefore left numerous voicemail messages of a peremptory and impatient nature.

Have just spoken to chap, having mailed him the required software, and have been told that he's buggering off home early and therefore won't be testing the software until Tuesday, as he's got Monday off. Which means that I could have spent this morning doing something more productive. Picking fluff out of my navel, perhaps.

Quel wankeur.

As River Selkie has accurately observed, it's been a long time since I posted any pictures of wee Sarah. Here are a few selected recent snaps to rectify that shameful omission:

I'm a rock and roll star	Wild drinking party	Eat your heart out, Elton

She's a cheeky little beggar, isn't she? Gorgeous, though, of course. And she knows it, too.

I really can't believe it's December already. This year has gone by so ridiculously fast. I've been looking at some of the family photos from last Christmas, and the difference in Sarah is quite astonishing, really. Only a year ago she was still this tiny, cherubic pudding who sat smiling at everyone and making gurgling noises; now she's a thumping great toddler, with the stubbornness of a stone mule and the iron will of an Eastern European dictator. (Okay, so she'll still smile at everyone cherubically if she figures it'll get her a biscuit.) We had another titanic battle of wills yesterday, which went like this:

Sarah: Daddy...
Me: Yes?
Sarah: Lolly please.
Me: Sarah, you've just had one.
Sarah: Lolly please. Please.
Me: No Sarah, they're all gone.
Sarah: No all gone! [stamps foot]
Me [looking serious]: Yes, all gone.
Sarah [pointing at freezer]: Want it!
Me: No more lollies, Sarah. Do you want a book?
Sarah [pouting]: Meany.

I don't even know where she learned "meany" from, but it was far too funny and cute for me to get upset about.

Oh well, at least we're a bit more organised on the Christmas pressies this year. Only another eighteen to buy. I figure it'd be quickest if I just arrange to have my salary paid directly to Marks & Spencer.

My, my, what a wonderful day it is when the wee village which I call home, after over a year of pestering BT, finally gets its phone exchange enabled for broadband. Yes, I have a spanking new 512-kilobit line, which is blisteringly fast when you've been used to dialup for the past 10 years. If I'm not mistaken, it's even a tad faster than the office LAN connection. Of course, being the shameless technophile that I am, I've purchased (at no small expense) a wireless router so that I can access the connection via my laptop from the lounge, garden or even bathroom, should I so choose. Ooh, it's all so very sexy. ;)