Cheat

Dad, as discussed, what's wrong with this photo?

Coffee

A day in the office today, made much more enjoyable for being able to step out for a little while for coffee and a catch up with Bec.

Looking forward

As I mentioned, yesterday was 20 weeks until we go on holiday to Orlando, and as always, there are lots of things for us to look forward to, and despite the fact we have been to Florida rather a large number of times already, there's always new things to do.

Things we are planning that are new to us (were already there last time we went):

• A meal out at The Wave restaurant at the Contemporary Resort;
• Maybe trying out the other water park - Typhoon Lagoon;
• Hunting out a new out-of-the-world restaurant to try - maybe Kobe, or a local BBQ;
• Our trip to the coast to chill out for a few days at Vero Beach; and
• Getting up early to watch the sunrise over the ocean.

And then there are things that will be new since we were there last time:

• Checking out the progress in turning Downtown Disney into Disney Springs, and whilst we're there maybe having a game of bowling (as well as playing some pool) at Splitsville;
• A new roller-coaster (the seven dwarfs mine train) at the Magic Kingdom, the first one of those in a pretty long time;
• A new parade to watch at the Magic Kingdom as well - I wonder if it will still be scaring the smaller children;
• More Harry Potter stuff at Universal with Diagon-Alley and the Hogwarts Express open by then (maybe I'll have to admit defeat and actually read some of the books before we go this year); and
• enjoying park-based coffee stops thanks to the arrival of Starbucks in the parks, as well as an exclusive members only "Vienna Latte" from the Joffreys coffee stands.

Crossing off those days!

All green

Today I needed to go to Kingston for work, and decided to go on the train. Three reasons:

• Financial - my car is on a three year lease and I am allowed to do up to 60,000 miles, and anything over that will start to incur an excess mileage charge. Based on current mileage I am projecting to do a bit more than 60,000 in the three years, so this helps to keep the miles down.
• Entertainment - I have been pretty poor with my reading over the last few weeks, and so the six train journeys I had today gave me a good opportunity to get stuck into my book, get through about 150 pages, and get properly into the story.
• Exercise - sitting in the car doesn't count for much by way of exercise, and by taking public transport I ended up doing a fairly large amount of walking, which combined with taking the dog out for a walk in the muddy woods before going, has meant that I have a record-breaking day in terms of steps (since fit-bit records began) of over 12,800. In fact I am all green for the key stats, not just steps: distance - 10.3km, active minutes - 85, calories burned - 2,960.

As I say, I didn't head off first thing this morning, but did a bit of work at home before going, and whilst doing so was listening to my favourite radio station - Z88.3 of Orlando (20 weeks today until we'll be there) and, in case I needed a reminder of why it's my favourite, heard these two songs.

For the record

As mentioned in a blog post near to the beginning of last month (and occasionally subsequently) I decided that I would cycle 0.5km x the day of the month for each day in February. Well, I can confirm that I did it, meaning that over the course of the month, I cycled:

0.5 + 1 + 1.5 + ..... + 13.5 + 14 = 203km.

Not bad I think, not bad.

In conjunction with some healthy eating, it meant that by 1 March I was onto 2 pounds away from my target weight, but unfortunately due to enjoying a nice meal out on Saturday, plus birthday lunch on Sunday, plus a weekend of no cycling, by this morning I was actually back to being 4 pounds away!

So, a little cycle today, plus back on the green tea, sushi snack pack, fruit, nuts, and so on today.

I'll get there eventually!

Also, in a quick update on yesterday's blog, finding a solution to a 30 x 3 rectangle is proving elusive so far!

Pentominoes

Anyone, who like me, spent an inappropriate amount of time in their younger years playing Tetris will be familiar with tetronimoes, as they are the shapes that are used in the game. Each tetronimo is made up of four 1x1 squares joined together to make a shape. Any Tetris player worth their salt will recall that there are seven tetronimoes:

• the 4x1 long thin shape - useful for slotting down the sides to complete a "tetris" (getting four lines to disappear at the same time);
• the 2x2 square;
• the 'T' shape;
• the two 'L' shaped pieces - one that is more of a 'J' than an 'L'; and
• the two (for want of a better description) wavy-line pieces, which also came in two versions like the L and the J.

Now, if you allowed reflective as well as rotational symmetry, then the L and the J would actually be the same piece, as would the two wavy lines, and the total number of tetronimoes would actually be five. But as any Tetris player will recall, it was possible to rotate your pieces to make them fit together, but reflection wasn't an option, so there are seven.

Well, what if we extend by one 1x1 square to make our tetronimoes into pentominoes? Then there are 18 different shapes that can be made. Of these 18 shapes, 6 are like the first three tetronimoes listed above in that they don't come as a pair (as they are their own reflection), whereas the other 12 come as pairs, one the reflection of the other. So if we allowed reflection then (where the number of tetronimoes would reduce from 7 to 5) the number of pentominoes would reduce from 18 to 12.

But, we aren't going to allow reflection, so we will stick with 18.

The total area made up by the 18 pentominoes is (given that each is made up of 5 1x1 squares) 18 x 5 = 90. If we want to make a rectangular shape with area 90, we have the following choices:

• 90 x 1
• 45 x 2
• 30 x 3
• 18 x 5
• 15 x 6
• 10 x 9

Now, if we wanted to cover the rectangle exactly by fitting together our pentominoes (a bit like a game of Tetris) then it is clear that the first two are not possible, as after all, some pentominoes are three units long by three wide (e.g. the cross).

However, I think that the rest of the rectangles can be filled using the pentominoes (although I haven't found solutions for all of them - note - self control required at this stage to avoid asking Google to check! - that might have to be a challenge for another day), and in particular, I have a wooden puzzle which asks you to complete a 10 x 9 rectangle.

And here is a solution.


(Note - solution posted here for posterity, but also so that when I have tipped all the pieces out, and it is really starting to annoy me, I can at least look back at the picture so that I can put the pieces back in again!)

Coast

First task of the day today was to take the cats over to the vets for their post op checkups, and all was well, so we can let them out any time from now. All we need to do is build up the courage to actually let them out.

Once the cats were safely returned home we went over to Oaks Dene for a session of sanding and painting of the doors and frames on the landing. That project is coming along very well, although some second coats will definitely be needed.

This evening, in celebration of a birthday, we went to the Coast to Coast restaurant for dinner, and very nice it was too.