I fell for Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when I was a kid and still consider it to be one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. It features the adventures of a hapless galactic traveler named Arthur Dent after he’s saved from the Earth’s demolition (to make way for a galactic freeway). For Towel Day all you have to do is carry your towel and DON’T PANIC.  As the Hitchhiker’s Guide notes, “any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”

If you’re new to Adams check out The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The audiobooks and radio plays are equally fabulous. There’s a cult classic 1980s BBC television series. Plus there’s a fun and strange Hollywood take with a cast including the likes of Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, Alan Rickman, Helen Mirren and Stephen Fry.

And if you’ve already been moved by the writing of the man who gave us “the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything”—that’s 42—or if you’re just interested in great titles that include science fiction, fantasy, wit, inventiveness, and adventure, here are a few of my favorites to pass on to Hitchhiker’s fans:

The Gates by John Connolly is a little scary, hilarious and  fabulous. It’s the a story about a quirky 11-year-old boy who is the only one who knows his neighbors have opened a gap exposing the gates of Hell.

I absolutely love The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde introducing literary detective, Thursday Next. She’s on the hunt for a criminal mastermind out to kidnap characters from great works, including Jane Eyre.

And I found Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe funny, poignant, and strange. It’s a story of time machine repair, time loops and the relationships between fathers and sons.

- Jessica T., Public Services Head at CADL

I forgot my towel!

]]> http://aslongasimsinging.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/in-remembrance-of-douglas/ Fri, 25 May 2012 11:46:26 +0000 troy P. http://aslongasimsinging.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/in-remembrance-of-douglas/ http://sarah-painter.com/2012/05/25/towel-day-who-knew/ Fri, 25 May 2012 11:38:29 +0000 Sarah http://sarah-painter.com/2012/05/25/towel-day-who-knew/ I was introduced to Douglas Adams at a young age. I remember listening to Hitch-Hikers on the radio with my brother and picking up the books from my parents’ shelves as soon as I was able.

Despite these impeccable credentials, I wasn’t aware that May 25th is Towel Day in honour of the great man.

To celebrate, people are sharing their favourite Douglas Adams quotes on Twitter and I thought I’d join in. This is actually one of my brother’s favourites but it’s so apt for my state of mind today that I’m going with it:

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

So what’s with the towels? Well, according to the Guide itself:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value — you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-tohand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase which has passed into hitch hiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

On top of that, today’s date provides an additional opportunity to point and laugh at fuzzy and arbitrary thinking, something I think Adams would have liked (based on very limited second-hand data):

25 + 5 + 12 = 42

42, in the world of the Guide, is the Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. The Ultimate Question, of course, is

What do you get if you multiply six by nine?

(No-one ever said the Universe made any sense, after all – although it does work in base 13.)

This is pure numerology, which is taken surprisingly (alarmingly) seriously by many people around the world (it’s what the Mayan Doomsday prophecies are based on, for instance). So go forth today, fellow hoopy froods, and spread the word about critical thinking in a humourous way, and don’t forget to bring a towel.

Douglas Adams – portrait courtesy of Wikipedia

Douglas Nöel Adams was born in Cambridge in 1952. At the same time in Cambridge, Crick, Watson and Franklin were discovering the other sort of DNA. Crick and Watson were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962 for their work, but Franklin missed out because she died in 1958, and Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously.

Sorry, that was a digression. I digress a lot. So did Douglas Adams. He is well-known for saying, “I love deadlines. I love that whooshing noise they make when they go past.”

So why towels? Well, the anti-hero of the Hitch-Hiker’s books, Ford Prefect, was a roving reporter for the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. According to Prefect, “a good hitch-hiker always knows where his towel is.”

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels: a towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value — you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble‐sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand‐to‐hand‐combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindbogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

(Adams, Douglas (1979), The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Pan Books, London)

 So towels are, as we can see, extremely useful if not important. Which is why, every year, people across the world carry a towel with them on the 25th of May: just to remember to sass what a hoopy frood Douglas Adams really was.

Atheists don’t rest in peace. Their bodies decompose and their carbon, calcium, nitrogen, iron etc. are all redistributed around the planet. But sometimes, as is the case with Douglas Adams, atheists live on in their work. People remember them, people are guided by their thoughts and words, and although it is not immortality, it is a good start.

Gratuitous Advertising – Buy a towel! It has all the answers!

So I am not going to say RIP Douglas. I’m going to say I hope your atoms are redistributed in an interesting way: may some of your carbon be in a Playboy model. May some of your calcium end up in a rock star’s fingerbones. Maybe some of your nitrogen will end up in a grumpy old blogger sitting in a library?

Maybe it will. Douglas Adams lives on in me: I know where my towel is.

Last year, I carried a small coloured hand towel around school with me, prompting a few questions. This year, I’m on study leave and therefore am at home for most of the day. However, a cream bath towel is on the table next to me as I revise, and I will also be carrying it with me to my Friday evening activities – archery and band.

What’s more, I’m filming a video to submit for a fan music video thing, and though it’s unrelated to Hitchhiker’s, I’ll be carrying my towel.

Why is it such a big deal? Well, it’s said in the Hitchhiker’s Guide that the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have is a towel, so a day of reminding people to carry one can be no bad thing. But that’s not why I personally do it.

Many fandoms have a place to congregate – for the various incarnations of Sherlock Holmes it’s Baker Street, for Torchwood fans there’s the tower/monument thing in Cardiff under which the Hub was supposed to be, and so on.

Since most of the Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy (of five) takes place off planet, on account of the Earth having been destroyed, there isn’t somewhere people can go to show their appreciation for the books/radio show/film, not really. And save for a habit of telling people not to panic, it’s not that easy to tell a Hitchhiker’s cosplayer from any other guy in a dressing gown.

Thus, Towel Day is an opportunity to remember Douglas Adams’ genius, to share your love of the series. It’s a chance to introduce people to it when they ask you questions, but it’s also a chance to find your fellow froods. They may not be the people you were expecting.

So carry your towel with pride, hitchhikers. Explain to any strags you meet why you’re carrying it. Greet any fellow travellers with a friendly message of support. Answer 42 to any question asked to which you do not know the answer.

And most of all, DON’T PANIC.

She is staying with her Towel today and changing her name for the day to Lottie-Dent! As a massive Hitchhikes guide to the galaxy, she is going to be keeping an eye out on some of the great towel related celebration on towelday.org and encouraging everyone here at Hospiscare to grab their towel!

Lottie with her towels

Hopefully you’ll celebrate Towel too! And will have been lucky in our lottery, as someone with a number starting with 42 has been!

DON’T PANIC!

… a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.  Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is one of my favorite books, I re-read it probably once a year and laugh out loud several times.

Share and Enjoy

Mostly Harmless

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

This was basically just a meaningless post meant to fill the void of internetness and remind you about Towel Day. I hope you’re a hoopy frood and know where your towel is today!

#towelday #DONTPANIC #42

Brown leaves wafting down

Sadness floating to the ground

Mother lost her child.

Ok, onto less depressing things now.

I would like to share my love of xkcd, especially The Race series, and the Every Major’s Terrible one. They’re awesome. My friend can memorise Every Major’s Terrible and loves singing it all the time to annoy us. I can memorise most of it.

Speaking of singing, WE GOT TICKETS TO COLDPLAY! My friends and I, I mean. I’m very excited, since this is my first concert (unless you count Mozart’s Requiem), though I’m very apprehensive about going into a crowd. I have problems with being near people… Not to worry though, we’re going to stay near the edges of the crowd, so I can escape if need be. 

Apparently one of my friends’ maths teacher told their class “Ok girls, I have something very important to do…” *goes on the Ticketek website and buys tickets to Coldplay*. I wonder if we’ll see the teachers there (three of our maths teachers are going).

And in other important news, today is Towel Day! I hope all you hoopy froods know where your towels are. Towels are very important. I carried a face towel around with me today (because my mum thought it would be weird for me to carry a big bath towel), though V actually keeps a bath towel in her locker at school all the time, because she’s just that hoopy.

Anyway, that’s it for now. I’m off to watch Iron Man 2 again (because it’s the only Avengers lead up film I haven’t watched a gazillion times already). If only Loki were in all the films. I love Loki… Though Tony Stark’s not too bad.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

From Wikipedia: The original quotation that explained the importance of towels is found in Chapter 3 of Adams’ work The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)^[3]

—Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Not me.  I’ll be “working”–uh, sure–today, then about 4:30 PM, local time, I’ll be on the interstate doing the Indiana 150 with hundreds of idiots looking to get out of town.  Or maybe not.  Maybe the roads will be nice today because so many people will have gotten the jump on things, and all I’ll need to do is watch for cops.  And keep my towel close by.

I used to watch a lot of auto racing, because I used to follow the sport closely, going back to the late 1960′s.  Memorial Day Sunday used to be a big deal for me.  I’d get up early to check on the status of whatever F1 race was scheduled (usually the Monaco Grand Prix, like this weekend), then I’d watch the Indianapolis 500, and after that was over, I’d check on the Coca-Cola 600.  Lots of time spent watching cars drive around on a circuit, you betcha.

These days I don’t have the interest.  Part of it was realizing I had more fun with my computer simulation games, driving around fast, racing other players or AIs, and hoping I didn’t wear out my tires too quickly.  Part of it was realizing that, for the longest times in races, just like in most sports, nothing is actually happening.  Just ’round and ’round and ’round, with an occasional wreck to keep you awake.

Anymore, where I have some free time, I’m writing.  Or editing.  Or doing research.  Or a combination of the three.  I can follow a race on the Internet while I’m working on the computer, so I don’t need to be in from of the TV watching spots going fast, and hearing commentators droning on about nothing.  That’s my gig these days.  One day I hope to make it the gig, but for now it’s more the thing I’m trying to do while I’m paying the bills doing something else.

I have a few goals for this weekend.  Query letter:  check.  It’s getting done this weekend, for sure.  No, really.  I’ve been sitting around with a thumb up my butt for too long, and it’s time to get with it.  So, tomorrow–research, editing, writing . . . sending.  You’ll see.

Either Saturday or Sunday, I believe I’ll start Diners at the Memory’s End.  It’s gestated long enough, and my Scrivener cork board is looking at me, going, “What?  You made me, so aren’t you going to do anything with me?”  Pesky cork boards.  They can nag you more than your significant other at times.  But since that board is up and ready to go–and since I’m very close to finishing the final edit on Her Demonic Majesty, I should go for it.

And Sunday . . . I might just start up another story.  About?  I already stated in one blog post an idea I had for a story, and I think I’ll look at that on the Big Cork Board.  If nothing else, it’ll get the mind going, maybe get some other ideas going.

Eleven hours to go before I’m on the road and heading home.  Can’t wait to get out of here.

Just remember:  Don’t Panic, and keep your towel close.  You never know what’s coming your way.

Least of all today.

Towel Day was probably officially started on May 25th 2010 in recognition of and tribute to Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. If you’ve read The Guide you’ll know that Ford Perfect and Arthur Dent carry their towels everywhere, and they come to good use too.

I’ll be honest, I only discovered Towel Day on May the 24th 2012. I’m ashamed because I consider myself a Douglas Adams fan and lover of The Guide. The Guide, although a comedy, is a great lashing of humanity and its perceived superiority in the world. This is what I loved most about the books. Everyone should read them to stay grounded. Here’s an explanation of why the towel and Towel Day is so important:

Always know where your towel is.

How to celebrate Towel Day.

Towel Day is an international commemoration of the mind-boggling Hitchhikers universe and other works of the famous and now deceased British author and radio-show and computer games  writer Douglas Adams. He died in 2001 from a sudden heart attack at the age of 49, in the middle of writing a novel. Some of his unfinished works and letters were published posthumously as “The Salmon Of Doubt”. I love his work, so ever since I found out about towel day, I’ve been wearing a towel in his honour of the 25th May. Towel day is called that because the common towel was made an icon of Adams’ work over the years, as he wrote in his books that if there is one thing a hitchhiker needs, it is a towel.

“A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”

quotation from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

There is even a website dedicated to towels! (Visit it here) However, in the wild regions of New Zealand (i.e. Auckland Central), nobody knows about this author, nor the festival, apart from a couple of teachers…

So every year, I find myself explaining who Adams is, what the froody hell I am wearing a towel for, whether I said it was Towel Day or not, and so on, to my ignorant classmates. Incidentally, did you know that 25th May is also when the 1st Star Wars came to the cinemas for the first time and broke the box-office records, which were only beaten 22 years later with the Titanic?? Pretty cool, I reckon.

But, to get back to my original entry – Towel Day. As it was English week this week, the department finished it off with a ‘dress as your favourite book character from a fantasy, horror or classic book’ day – yay for me! I got to dress up (or down, as I wasn’t really wearing clothes) as Arthur Dent, the protagonist of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy trilogy in six parts. This is what Arthur looked like in the movie adaptation:

Martin Freeman as Arthur Dent in the Hitchhikers movie adaptation, made in 2005. A brilliant movie – very funny. Watch it!!!!!

This, on the other hand, is what I looked like:

An okay-ish imitation, I think, although I changed the colour scheme. Actually, I look nothing like him, but it was worth a try. On another note, my hair is growing quite fast, isn’t it?

The only problem was, nobody recognised me! Every 30 seconds or so, someone would ask who I was, and then I would have to explain who Arthur was, and who Douglas Adams was, and what the series was, and why I was in my PJs wearing a dressing gown. And they still didn’t get it. It was sad. Now, my throat is hoarse from repeating the same thing again and again, but hopefully some curious girl will google one of the words I mentioned and be drawn into the world of Adam’s imaginings. Or learn about towel day. If you can’t be bothered, here is a site that tells you all about Towel Day and what you can do.

So;

and remember

is THE ANSWER.

Jamie Braithwaite’s cut some lilac to wear. He’s got a hard-boiled egg and treacle sandwiches in his packed lunch, which he’s going to eat at the cenotaph with Hugh.

ᗡႱ will be modeling his dressing gown and carrying his towel all day. He’s going to read the latest anthology of Vogon Love Poetry to JD later.

As for Ivy Newbrush, she’ll be playing Angry Birds at every opportunity.

Just what it said in the title;

• 35 years ago today, on May 25th 1977, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope was released.
• To commemorate the life and times of Douglas Adams, and his amazing Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, it is also Towel Day. You should have a towel with you. just in case.
• In celebrate Terry Pratchett and his Discworld series, it is also a day to remember The People’s Revolution of the Glorious 25th of May, the topic of my favourite of his novels, Night Watch. Fans should wear lilac. Or a lavender sprig, if possible!
• It is also Geek Pride Day, in honour of all of the above, and of geekery in general. Unleash your inner (or outer) geek!
• With any luck, today will also mark the docking of Dragon, a SpaceX cargo shuttle, with the ISS. That’s kinda geeky, right?

Oh, and it’s my 33rd birthday. Just saying.

Have a great day, folks.

Coding period has already started and I’m a bit behind my schedule. Here’s a basic task list that I’ll follow.

Task list:

• Get https://github.com/gnebehay/OpenTLD this up and running on your machine
• Learn how it works, what variables can be tweaked and decide if any of SimpleCV’s functionality could be used to improve it
• Port it directly to SimpleCV

So, I got Georg Nebehay’s OpenTLD version up and running on my machine with Ubuntu 12.04 and OpenCV 2.3.1. I tried installing it via Ubuntu Software Center, but it showed me there were some conflicts and few libraries missing. I removed all the conflicts and installed libhigui2.3, but it still asked me to install libhighui>=2.0.
I tried installing it manually. First of all, I had to install cmake.
sudo apt-get install cmake

cd ~/Downloads/gnebehay-OpenTLD-b1c1e88 # to the directory
cmake
make

Since this OpenTLD version is made for OpenCV2.0, it gave me error because all the headers included were of OpenCV2.0 and I have OpenCV2.3.1. So, I manually changed all the header files to OpenCV2.3.1 header files. After successfully building from the source, I tried it. It’s working well.

To get more details on OpenTLD version of Georg Nebehay http://gnebehay.github.com/OpenTLD/ .

P.S. Always keep your towel with you. Digital watches are appreciated. Thanks for everything, Douglas Adams.

“A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.”

- A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Towel Day was first celebrated in 2001, two weeks after Douglas Adams’ death at age 49. Today, the celebration has gone global with participants worldwide (check here for a partial list of activities). There’s only one requirement for today: carry/wear a towel. Of course, lots of people also celebrate by reading a book by Adams, watching the Hitchiker’s movie, having a party, or just saying geeky quotes all day long!

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.

Psalm 19:1-3

Most Towel Day participants may also want to join in for International Geek Pride Day. Thirty-five years ago today (May 25, 2012) “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope” was first released. International Geek Pride Day celebrates Star Wars and all things “geeky” (you can check here for celebration ideas!).

Not just Towel Day, but—as Remigius reminded me—Super Towel Day! 25+5+12=42.

So here's a spiffing little ditty from Neil Hannon. Have a good day, and remember: make sure you always know where your towel is!
—Daz