pumpkinstrokemarrow

The thought then came to me that now one had touch screen gadgets from Apple, the way was clear to portable digital jigsaws. The screen could be in three parts - naturally of user variable size. Part one contains an image of all, or at least some, of the jigsaw pieces. Part two contains an image of all, or at least some, of the so far assembled jigsaw. Part three contains all, or at least some, of the target image. Perhaps a function to synchronise part two with part three, if desired. One can move the contents of all three around by stroking the relevant part of the screen. Pan, scroll, zoom and so on & so forth. One can arrange pieces of jigsaw in their area, according to taste in such matters. I generally start with grouping by colour mix, moving onto grouping by shape towards the end of the exercise. One can rotate a piece of jigsaw by suitable rotary movement of the finger. One can attempt to place a piece of jigsaw by dragging it from part one to part two. Noises from contraption according to whether placement is successful or not. I think this could be made to work. There would be some minuses, but I am sure with a bit of thought one could come up with some pluses. For example, you could have a library of pictures and a library of jigsaw masks, perhaps graded by difficulty or style. One then chooses a picture and a mask and away you go. I might go for old masters, having this theory that doing a jigsaw of an old master is excellent preparation for going to look at the thing itself. The thing is, has anybody done it? Should I patent the idea? Should I build an app. (or whatever they call them) for the iPhone?

All this, however, is in the future. Yesterday evening no such contraption was available. On the other hand there was a half square metre patch of ice, halfway between the end of the platform 8 canopy and the disused signal box. Of irregular but convex shape and maybe two inches thick in the middle. And I had my walking stick, a bent wood affair about one inch in diameter at the tip, with a flat rubber ferule. So the game is to gradually smash up the patch of ice by poking around at the edges with the tip of the walking stick. What kind of shapes can one make on the way? Most of the time my patch was the head of an animal, first goat then cow. Towards the end of the time it became the map of Africa. How long will it take to divide the patch into two? Will that bit of white ice be easier to smash through than that bit of black ice? It was surprising how hard it was to guess which were the soft parts. How long will it take to destroy the patch altogether?

I was slightly surprised that no busy can to inspect what I was up to. To explain that by tampering with ice belonging to Network Rail, I was invalidating their insurance and opening myself up to suit.

And I started to wonder today whether there is a tendency for patches of ice to melt down to one or more circular discs. Any departure from circularity will attract melting action. How difficult would it be to put together a credible model of ice patch melting? Probably beyond my level of nerdosity.

PS: and the other day, I was wondering what had happened to Danish Bacon. A brand leader in the days of my youth. A warehouse for which used to mark my taking off point on the A30 when hitching from Exeter to London. Hadn't noticed the stuff for ages. Then it turned out that our after Christmas gammon was Danish Bacon and that the butcher in Manor Green Road was full of the stuff. The gammon was good so perhaps I will try the bacon. Can hardly be worse than Sainsbury's Basics, although it could easily be dearer.