benzado

psa

nicolemarietherese:

chrysilla:

The next new decade starts in 2011, just as the new century started in 2001. 2010 is the last year of this decade.

The more you know…

It does not matter how many times people explain either concept to me, it will never make sense until someone draws a diagram.

Nicole, you’re thinking like a programmer!

Cris thinks 2010 belongs in this decade because approximately one thousand five hundred years ago, a couple of monks decided to number the years starting from the birth of Jesus Christ as year 1. (Remember that, although she works in a math library, she is first and foremost a librarian, and to her, numbers are just a different category of letters.)

A decade is a group of ten years, so the first decade consisted of the first ten years: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. The second decade, the next ten: 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. The third: 21-30. The fourth: 31-40. If you keep following the pattern two hundred times you get to our current decade: 2001-2010.

Because we started counting at 1, the last year in every group of ten is always the odd one out. The first decade seems OK, but the second… what’s 20 doing with all those teens?

Nicole and I, because we think like programmers, know that things would make much more sense if we started counting at 0. If we had, then the first ten years would be 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. How nice, they are all exactly one digit! The second decade would have been: 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. Again, these are all the two-digit numbers starting with 1, how tidy! The third: 20-29. The fourth: 30-39. And so on to this decade, 2000-2009.

Programmers like Nicole and I know that when you need to assign numbers to things, it is most sensible to start at zero. When you do that, an item’s assigned number is the same as it’s distance from the first item. Because a bunch of librarian monks numbered the years, Jesus Christ will be celebrating his 2,008th birthday on December 25, 2009. If programmers — like Nicole — were running things, Jesus would have been born in year 0, had his first birthday in year 1, and in less than two weeks would be turning 2009.

Aside from making Jesus’s age easier to figure, counting from zero also conveniently makes a datum’s numerical index and memory address offset identical. But that’s only interesting to programmers like Nicole.

So, even if librarians want to tell us that 2010 is still part of the old decade, I will soon be celebrating — along with programmers like Nicole — the once-in-a-decade New Year’s Eve when the carry flag is set!

A Question for My Improv Friends

sherrypop:

I have a question about teams and team member relationships. In order for a team to be good, do all the members have to be good friends? Do they even have to like each other or is simply respecting differences enough? Also should they have similar tastes and sensibilities?

I know this might seem like a stupid question, but it’s just something I’ve been wondering for a while now. So many indie teams I like seem to have real mojo off-stage as well. But maybe that’s just how it seems…

This same question was asked when The Apiary interviewed a pair of idiots about improv over a year ago:

How did Fat Penguin get started? And what is it that keeps you together?

BEN: We all started taking improv classes around the same time and frequently performed at Improdome, the open jam at The PIT. I think most indie teams are formed from a preexisting groups of friends or classmates, but in the beginning we didn’t know each other very well. We got together simply because we admired each other as performers. The result has been a very diverse group, which I believe is our primary strength.

Do you have to be good friends to be good improvisers?

BEN: At the beginning I was actually worried that we weren’t close enough as friends. Then I decided to stop worrying about it. As long as we were committed to the group, it didn’t matter. At some point after that, I realized we had become close friends. So I guess the secret to friendship is to focus on some other aspect of your relationship.

ALAN: The thing that keeps us together is our chemistry and our friendship. Every member of the team brings something different and amazing to the table. Each member of Fat Penguin is vital to the team’s success. We’ve had shows where we were missing people that were good but not complete. Also there have been ups and downs throughout the team, but we come back together.