Looking for a little more variety in your daily puzzle consumption? Gregory Gray wrote to tell me about his indie puzzle magazine, Topple. Each issue costs a buck to download and print yourself, and there is a very wide variety of puzzles, many with illustrations which remind me a bit of the Sam Loyd Cyclopedia, […]

Part 7. Through the Looking Glass This is one of a series of posts about my health/fitness journey. The first one is here. It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these, so here’s a quick update. It’s late February, 2017. I’ve been hovering around 180 pounds (plus or minus 3 pounds) since early […]

There’s a snake in my inbox! Bulgarian puzzle constructor Galen Ivanov sent me two collections of interesting new puzzles, Serpentominos, of his own design, which I’m passing on to you, as a Krazydad Christmas present. These puzzles share some characteristics with Pentominos, Dominos and similar mathematical recreations, and are quite different from the Sudoku and […]

Celebrity rankings, based on the number of prayer candles for sale on Etsy, 2016 EDITION 1. David Bowie 2. Drake 3. Prince Britney Spears Adele 4. Virgin Mary Lana Del Rey Krampus Dolly Parton Angel 5. Rihanna Neil deGrasse Tyson Marilyn Monroe Leonardo DiCaprio Kim Kardashian Kanye West Hillary Clinton 6. Zombie Golden Girls Tina […]

So I’m still down about 65 pounds, currently fluctuation between 179 and 183 lbs most days. I survived Thanksgiving and my birthday, both in near proximity, gaining and losing about 4 lbs over a week. A lot of folks have asked “what plan I’m on”. I’m not really on a plan, just a system of […]

My surname, Bumgardner, which comes in a variety of spellings (Bumgarner, Baumgartner, Burgrade (!), Bungarner, Baumgart, and so on) means “Tree Grower” or “Orchard Farmer”. I’ve known this for a long time, and have often taken some delight that my profession, which involves weaving and growing elaborate data structures, is a form of tree growing. […]

This is one of a series of posts about my health/fitness journey. The first one is here. Part 6. Befores and Afters I promised a blog entry on the whole “Endomorph/Ectomorph” thing and it’s coming, but the research is taking me to some interesting places, and it’s gonna take a while to complete, plus I’m […]

This is one of a series of posts about my health/fitness journey. The first one is here. Part 5. Diet Nonsense Of all the aspects of health and fitness, I believe the most controversial is what we put in our mouths. There is just a huge amount of contradictory beliefs out there about food, and […]

This is one of a series of posts about my health/fitness journey. The first one is here. Part 4. Nerdstrong (part 2) The name itself pretty much sold me. These guys are very good at branding. I only had to read a few reviews to understand that I was the target audience. Nerdstrong is a […]

A fascinating piece over at fivethirtyeight describes a recent discovery of plagiarism in the crossword construction world.