Three deuces: the decimal number 62 is written 222 in base 5.

I wonder if I’m a “whole brain” or a “nut”? Don’t forget Randy (we know which category he belongs in). Randy is an OPML star!

Congratulations to Kiltak and the entire [Geeks are Sexy] Technology News team on moving to their new blog digs at geeksaresexy.net, running WordPress 2.1 on their own hosted domain!

Robert Hruzek recently made a similar move. Congrats on adopting “shitty software” (but that’s not meant in a bad way).

And congratulations to Maryam and Robert Scoble on their new venture. Mini-Scoble?

Shelley Batts pointed me to the Blog of the Gods where God apologizes for his bounced check, which has led to some loss of credit. But today’s post is the best so far. Subscribed.

Hrafn Thorisson on A.I. in everyday discussions.

Like a complete unknown. Thanks, Assaf.

Congratulations on the book deal, Jessica! You rock!

Widget watch: The Hair Loss News Blog uses my tag cloud widget to track their hair-raising (or hair-razing) topics.

Quote for the day:

My karma ran over your dogma.

Just upgraded both Tips and Quips to WordPress 2.1.2, with almost no problems (so far, knock knock). Please let me know if you experience any unpleasantness other than my usual disagreeable spirit that inhabits the site.

The only plugin that failed to operate as expected was my own OPML blogroll widget, which needed a couple of tweaks.

I don’t like the way version 2.1 combines the erstwhile “Links” (now “Blogroll”) groups with the post categories. They’re not the same thing!

So far I’m only seeing a few cosmetic changes from version 2.0, but I’ll be sure to post an “Oo…Ah!” when I run into something really cool. Mostly I’m just glad nothing’s broken.

This morning I accompanied my son’s class on a short field trip to watch a set of traditional Japanese comedy plays called Kyogen. These were performed in English, but the actors tried to capture the flavor of the original by pronouncing the words in very thick and exaggerated Japanese accents. They also threw in quite a few ancient Japanese words for exclamations and so forth. As a result, my son (who is more visual than auditory, like me) didn’t understand much of what was said.

Most of the humor went over the heads of the audience, I thought. My son did get a good laugh out of one scene in which two servants were alternately stealing a bowl of honey from each other while the other’s eyes were closed in the bliss of tasting it.

Between the plays they performed two traditional dances, with singing in Japanese. It seems to me that these dances focus very much on precision and control rather than effect. Which speaks well for the character of Japanese culture but doesn’t go down the Western entertainment gullet with much gusto. American second and third graders probably aren’t the demographic most capable of finding enjoyment merely in experiencing cultural diversity. But they were polite.

Afterwards, I turned to another child sitting by me and asked how he liked the show.

“Good.”

“Did you understand anything that they said?”

“No.”

But it was good to take the morning off to be with my son and his class. That was the plot — all the rest was setting.

Drop it: Harry Truman and Richard Nixon were each 61 years old when they decided to drop the atomic bomb and the presidency, respectively.

Fear motivates the selective enforcement of regulations. One more step towards learning to love the Big Brother who peed in our collective pants.

Digging for linklove: a Digg post where you can add a comment promoting and linking to your blog. Then digg the post. Don’t forget to digg your comment, too! Link-hungry bloggers should be jumping on this like the last helicopter out of Saigon. (thanks, Greg).

Nick Douglas provides some Ambrosian definitions of today’s technical terms.

Put this on my WordPress to-do list. Thanks, Doug.