Monday, March 31, 2008

How To: Cheat on the New Zealand Driver's Theory Test

Google whoring is easy, it's fun and allows you to bask in self-importance with every visit to the slick graphs of your google analytics portfolio. Every now and then, though, you notice that someone out there came to your site due to a serious issue, but your blog let them down. While once I would have been inclined to let such a happenstance slide, I can do so no longer. After my previous post I have come to realise, dear reader, that I have a great power.... and after seeing Spiderman, I know that with great power comes great responsibility1.

Anyway, whilst perusing the various misspellings of the word 'testicle' that people used to find their way here via google2, I noticed the following keyword search: "cheat nz driver theory test".

Whoever you are, oh nameless study-hater, you did not come to the right place then, but damn-it you have now. I will run you through a few obvious strategies.
  1. Make wild guesses. Pros: The probability of passing in such a scheme is not zero. Cons: It's pretty close. If you sat around 6480500300000000 tests, you'd expect one of them to be a pass. It fails in the cost-benefit analysis, I'm afraid.
  2. When unsure of the answer, cunningly rub off enough of the scratchy-coverings of a guess to see whether or not there's a cross or a tick underneath. Pros: There are a finite set of answers, so you'll definitely find the right answer in finite time. Cons: Any question for which any covering is removed from more than one answer is automatically marked wrong. The AA have thwarted this masterly scheme, don't try it!!!
  3. They ask you to hand your bag in, if you're carrying one, but they don't check your pockets. Nor do they supervise the test particularly stringently. Put a cheat sheet in your pocket. There are practice questions in the back of the Road Code book, and if you look up the answers to all of them and write them down you'd be unlucky to get more than three in the real test that aren't near identical to one of them. Pros: I can almost guarantee a pass, here. Cons: There are 250 questions in the back of that book. If you go through each one of them, look up the answer and painstakingly write it down on a piece of paper and haven't learned enough in so doing to pass the frigging test without it you need more help than I can offer here.
  4. Get someone else to sit it for you. Pros: It's not your fault if they fail. Cons: They may not be smarter than you. Also, there's some serious and tricky identity fraud involved that falls beyond the scope of this "how to" guide. Wait for the next one.
  5. Scratch any old crap off of the test and hand it to the marker. While his attention is on the test you thock him over the back of the head with a blunt object and assign your own grade. Pros: You'll "ace" the test. Cons: It's difficult to imagine a scenario in which you can do this and fail to get arrested. It's all down to how important passing the test is relative to how crap you are at memorising a few fecking road rules.
  6. Give strategy 1 a shot but, if it doesn't work out you hand the test in, fail it but dispute the results in a court of law. Pros: You'll get to posture about in a court-room. You can pretend to be Deny Crane from Boston Legal and go through your "case" with Shatner-esque pathos. Cons: There's no way in hell it'll work. You'll get thrown out of court and possibly incur some kind of penalty for wasting its time.
  7. Beg. Pros: .......? Cons: It won't work. What dignity you, who are looking up how to cheat a friggin learner's permit test, can be said to have will disappear like smoke.
All in all, the only strategy I can really recommend is #3. Should you choose to go through it in its entirety, can I just say Congratulations! You have passed the test, even if you do fail as a human being......

1I can only be grateful to the insights of Stan Lee, here. Thanks to him, for me, Uncle Ben didn't need to die.

2I am gripped with a sudden hope that I will see a 'misspellings of the word testicle' in my keyword list at some point in the future. Just quietly, though, Martin... you're the only person I know in Tuscon Arizona ... I'll know if it was you.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

I'm here for you, oh reader.

It has come to my attention that my blog is not deep, and has too few pictures. Well. In order that you can further appreciate that I'm here for you, oh plebeian post purveyor, I present you with the following. Firstly, a gratuitous picture of an elephant:


Scary legal-type licensing language compels me to inform you that the original source of this photo is here, and that it was taken by nickandmel20061. Thanks nickandmel2006. I have decided I shall name this elephant Gerolamo in honour of mathematics' answer to Che Guevara. Gerolamo is, according to wikipedia, a member of the superfamily Elephantoidea. You thought the Corleone's were a force to be reckoned with? Maybe the Packers? Nuh uh. Elephantoidea is a superfamily. They will fuck you up.
Secondly, it would appear, dear reader, that members of my flock are hurting. Others still, it seems, have developed a nasty strain of mental illness. In this time of crisis I would like to offer my almost-Dr-Phil-like services. Firstly to Dave, I offer two points of advice: 1. No song has ever been rescued by being played on the bagpipes. The best most pieces of music can hope to do is survive the transition. The bagpipes were invented by the Irish, who on behalf of the rest of humanity fooled the Scots into adopting them as revenge for golf. 2. The instrument has yet to be invented that can rescue John Farnam, though at least one instrument exists to rescue us from him. Human ingenuity only goes so far!!! I'm sorry, man. Listen to Chris. Let it go. Secondly, to Anita: there, there toots. Better now? Kthnx.

I hereby further offer my services a-la Agony Aunt to the rest of humanity, or at least those 5 or so of them who are likely to read this.

1 If that is your real name......

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

A Brief Google-whoring Update

These are quirky newish ones. I'm not necessarily going by volume. I wouldn't want you to think that I'm no longer getting large numbers of "rate my " type searches, because I am. Ahem.

  1. Harry Kinsman. Now my second-highest referral search. I was going to say "thanks guys" about this one but closer inspection reveals that I should really say "thanks Martin".
  2. Mc Pooh. Don't kid yourselves, this home-boy has a fan base.
  3. testicles blog. Here's hoping this doesn't exist.......
  4. Rate my ass man. Your ass man? Everybody knows there's only one ass man.....
  5. coffee statistics. My apologies on way-laying your legitimate search, sir.
  6. sexy mathematician(s) :)
  7. "it's high time i" wow, what a disappointment you received....
  8. another name for a frog Might I suggest Ethel?
  9. funny trivia names cumming yeah, right up to the last word I might have been able to help you out, there....
  10. google whoring how very 4th wall.....
  11. i can put a picture on my rate my cock profile Yes, yes you can....
  12. meaning for sole teammate I hope you found it...... I sure didn't.
  13. my cock is located on my back sound byte so, apart from the fact that the word you wanted was "bite" ..... I'm genuinely lost for words. Congratulations!
  14. nondescript blog names Should I be insulted?
  15. ode to someone leaving aw....
  16. petty theft in ca/ forum 2007 hmmm....
  17. testicle boy photo Oh. My. God.
  18. touch nose tell poker meaning Oh, that's easy. It means the player has an itchy nose.
  19. where to put my cock It's a free country, sir, you can put it where you like....
  20. where can you buy a ben 10 wock Given the obvious reasons this came here, it's pretty funny.....
  21. winnie poo and beaver Yeah, he never got any..... he was only ever interested in honey.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

While chasing a Daemon, Fitz inadvertently finds god1.

On a point of business, dear reader, I recently found myself on the homepage of one Peter Gacs. This was, as it turns out, quite a timely visit. I had found myself, you see, at something of a spiritual impasse in my life. I mean, we've all heard the savage barbs in our time about mathematics research being a waste of time and having no relation to the "real" world.... and, well, I suppose we've learned to live with them2. What was beginning to bother me, brothers and sisters, was this gnawing suspicion in the back of my mind that it also had no relation to the "not so real" world, or possibly "realer than real" world (depending on your point of view). The supernatural world. The spiritual world. I mean, sure, maths can teach you how to cheat at cards and pull chicks at parties .... but what has it got to say about witchcraft, magic and saving my immortal soul? I was beginning, com padre, with a deep and abiding sorrow to take the view that the answer to this question was "zilch". My interest was piqued, however, by the list of online publications of Mr Gacs which included the following titles: The Angel Wins, Clairvoyant Scheduling of Random Walks, The Clairvoyant Demon has a Hard Task3. Sadly, however, these just turned out to be cool titles. There were no concrete instructions to be found on how to actually summon such a clairvoyant demon. Via a tantalizing link on the same page, however, one learns that maths and physics can help you find god and rescue your immortal soul after all.


Yay team nerd!!!!!


1Yeah, it occurs to me that this title makes the post sound a lot more interesting than it really is......

2Being mathematicians, we always come up with the wittiest of responses. "Your mum's pointless" I replied once. "Yeah, well ..... QUICK!!!! LOOK!!! BEHIND YOU!!!" is another favorite. Well, actually, Busty's wasn't bad.

3 Also on the list we find On playing "twenty questions" with a Liar. Another cool title, but I couldn't work it in to the current post angle, unfortunately.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Random Ramblings on Wellington Part 1 of at least 1.

My first note will be, rather boringly, on the weather. I was informed, before leaving for the place that I should make good my farewells to the sun due to the fact that, if Richard Dawkins was born here, there might currently be a bestselling book on New Zealand shelves titled The Sun Delusion. I was also informed that Wellington is a very windy place. Now, I will grant you I've only been here a brief time in, well, summer but while I can certainly attest to the latter fact, the former one is bullshit. I've seen plenty of sun and there is good reason to believe that, given the truth of the latter fact I will continue to do so. I have, in point of fact, seen rain clouds racing across the sky that I like to think were having the following conversation1:

Cloud Leader: Looks like we're going in full throttle!

Cloud one: Target's coming up.....

Cloud Leader: STAY ON TARGET!!!

Cloud one: We're coming in too fast!!!!

Cloud Leader: STAY ON TARGET!!!

Cloud one: Rain's away!!!!

Cloud five: Did you hit?

Cloud Leader: Negative. Just. Scratched. The surface.

My second note shall be about coffee mugs. This relates to Victoria University in comparison to UQ. More specifically, the tea room. The tea room at Victoria is, unlike that of UQ, furnished with the following:
  1. Coffee beans, free.2
  2. A coffee ginder, functional.
  3. Tea, milk, sugar, etc.., long list thereof.
  4. A fridge, frosty.
  5. A boiling water dispenser, hot.
  6. Plungers and coffee pots, aplenty.
  7. A stove, also hot - but only when you want it to be.
Given that all of this is the case, I can find it in my heart to forgive the following omission:

8. Mugs, in large supply.

Now, up until now I had taken a similar attitude towards coffee mugs as I had to pens, umbrellas and wine knives. These aren't things you buy. There's just a common pool of the things. More are constantly being injected into the system as gifts and promotional items and people are constantly losing them, then subsequently finding another one someone else lost. But I needed a mug. Being forced to buy one, I resolved upon getting a good one. This was not, it turns out, an easy task. I wanted the kind of mug where, when pulling an all-nighter to meet the kind of deadline that, if missed, could result in your left testicle being fed to wild pigs, you could look down at it and develop the pleasing delusion that everything is going to be O.K. This was, it turns out, no easy task. I looked, and looked and looked but to no avail. Having failed to purchase a mug I then resolved upon stealing one. I would find a quirky cafe with interesting cups and make good my escape post-haste. Unfortunately, while I could find plenty of quirky cafes, they all had dull cups. I lost hope. I trudged dejectedly back towards uni, when I chanced upon a strange little shop. There were numerous flowers on a sign which read:


Fancy World
It becomes a dream....


Barely daring to hope, I made my way around a store filled with various Japanese Hello Kitty style objects. Finally, I saw it. It had a pig on it. In answer to the question on one side of said mug I answered, weeping tears of joy, "No, I do not know the story of cute pig 'lulu'." Wiping away the tears and presenting my stiff upper lip, I continued "But the tale of this pig intrigues me. I am hungry to know it. Tell me more, Oh muse......". Sadly, there was little in the way of hard facts to be had on the other side of the mug save to say that the pig was crying in that Japanese cartoon type stylised way that just screams Waaaaaa!!! at you. There was, however, a speech bubble which said "Why she don't like me?" along with a squiggle reminiscent of a pig's tail. It would seem that our unfortunate lesbian pig had taken a sadly non-reciprocated liking to another sow3. The sorrow of Lulu touched me deeply, dear reader, and I made good my purchase. It came also with a lid that doubles as a saucer and a porcelain spoon4! Having wasted an entire morning on this search, I took the directest route back to uni5.

My last note relates to the results of a survey widely publicised here. According to Durex, New Zealand women are the most promiscuous on the planet. It seems, then, that perhaps the time is ripe for an "irresistible force vs immovable object" type of experiment: Will New Zealand women sleep with mathematicians?

Only time will tell.

1I am aware, of course, aware that there is at least one person who regularly reads this blog and hasn't seen the original Star Wars movies. Let us all take a moment to reflect in sadness on the reference they're missing here....

2 A footnote is in order here about coffee generally in Wellington. It's good. There are, you are informed, more cafes per square unit of area here than in New York (assuming of course that your unit is not sufficiently large as to include all of New York). The thing is, though, they all know what they're doing. There is actually a distinction in ordering a flat white and a latte here, other than the type of cup you get it in, for instance. I recall once being thrown behind an espresso machine at QPAC when someone ordered a takeaway latte. I picked up the take-away cup, stared at it for a while and turned to my colleague quizzically: "What" I asked "is the difference between a takeaway latte and a takeaway flat white", to which my colleague replied "hmmm.... I guess there isn't one".

3 I have since devoted a good deal of thought to the 'why' question with which Lulu seemed so concerned. Possibly, of course, the sow in question just likes boar. Possibly she has various objections to Lulu's poor grasp of Syntax. Maybe, Lulu, you're just too whiney.....

4 I suspect it may have been intended for children.

5 This involved a staircase. A big one. Oh fellow Brisbane-ites, you have no idea about what a big staircase really means. Wellington, being on a fault-line has bits of the city which are just suddenly much higher than other bits, and the university is on a hill. There are staircases on which, while climbing them, you expect to see the skeletal remains of people holding flags who just didn't make it. It was just such a staircase I was forced to climb carrying my piggy treasure.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Here Breaketh the Drought

There has, I will admit, been something of a dearth in posts on this here website of late. I have been aware of this and no amount of reminders, gentle prodding or rocks being thrown through windows on the part of you, the readership1, was ever going to change this. It is now the case, however, that, were I Adam West playing batman, I might find myself tempted (or possibly contractually obliged by virtue of it being in the god-damn script Adam ... would you just for once drag your pathetic B-grade actor's arse off of the booze long enough to learn your fucking lines?) to say that the purpose for this pusillanimous posting paucity is past, my post-perusing pal.

You see, I was always aware of what many people would have been thinking sniggeringly behind my back when I left Australian shores last month: "He'll be back. Sure he's thinks he's going to do a PhD and all, but let's face it to get that far the son of a bitch is going to have to enroll ...... Oh, chuckle, chuckle chuckle, tee hee hee, hee hee hee." Now, while I was at least a little tempted before now to post about my administrative peccadilloes on that front, well, I was always just that little bit frightened that you might actually be right and hence I thought I'd just hide quietly in a corner2 for a while. Anyways, I am now pleased to announce that I am now officially enrolled and, perhaps more importantly, am as of today able to actually log on to the fucking computer on my desk3. It is from said machine that I write this seminal post.

Having left Brisbane airport at 9:00 on a 3 hour flight which arrived in Wellington at 15:00 local time, I was feeling a little cheated. Assuming that I do so during another period of daylight saving, however, I suppose I will get to make that up on a subsequent return journey and take a 3 hour flight into a city 3 hours behind my point of departure - thus achieving the giddy thrill of feeling like I am arriving at the same time I departed. Anyway, perhaps because I was bitterly knawing away at this thought, I didn't just go straight to the university as it turns out I should have done - resolving instead to do so on the morrow. Let me explain why this turned out to be a terribly bad idea with a little aside, yes?

There is something, I think, rather endearing about the working habits of mathematicians. These being, to my eye, not dissimilar to that of composers or artists generally. In between sometimes feverish fits of work, they often find themselves just kind of tossing ideas about, taking long naps, coffee breaks, three hour lunches, wandering around and generally waiting for inspiration to hit them. Sometimes, for instance, they just need to up and go surfing on the south island for a couple of weeks or so. Funnily enough, this is precisely what my own principal supervisor found himself doing as of the day after I arrived - as I discovered upon checking my in-box on the 28th. There are a few more points which I feel are relevant to our discussion at this juncture:
  1. Australian students are here treated as domestic - and thus have to enroll in person.
  2. I discovered the above after sending all of my forms over in November 2006. Not to worry, though, the relevant documents (including required certified copies of academic transcripts, degrees and what-not the originals of which I was to subsequently leave in Australia) were, I was told, forwarded to my principal supervisor for safe-keeping, and all could thus be made well on my arrival.
  3. Even if I had all relevant copies (which I was cautious enough, in point of fact, to bring with me), and acquired minty fresh new forms to fill in on arrival - I still needed my supervisor's signature on one of them.
  4. The terms of my scholarship contract clearly required me to be enrolled by March 7 else there would be "no dineros for me".
  5. My supervisor was to return on March 11.
As it happens, the scholarships office people were surprisingly (given my past experiences with administrative types) quite prepared to ignore point 4. Further amusement, however, was to be had on my endeavours to open a bank account into which the dineros mentioned in point 4 should be payed. I'd opened an account with HSBC Australia before leaving with a view to conveniently subsequently opening an HSBC New Zealand account on arrival here - having been assured that they did, indeed, have branches in New Zealand and would in the mean-time be able to access the Australian account through ATMs anyways. It was, on reflection, a mistake to assume that "branches in New Zealand" meant "branches in Wellington, the fucking capitol". Happily, however, there are three branches in Auckland through which, being the bloody minded son of a bitch that I am, I resolved to set up said account. To do so, I required various certified copies of various proofs of identity and of address. Of all the various options for identity proving, the only viable options for me were a passport and a New Zealand driver's license. To prove address, I essentially needed an official letter from a New Zealand employer to a New Zealand address4. My next step, then, was to acquire a New Zealand driver's license. To do this, I required the following:
  1. My passport
  2. My Australian driver's license
  3. A proof of address5
  4. To pass the theory test you do to get a learner's permit.
The proof of address could take the form of a utility bill, a bank statement, or some other ambiguously worded letter of proof the exact wording of which I do not remember past to say that the meaning of said wording was not remotely clear. The utility bill one was clearly out. Thus, it seemed, I needed a bank account to get the driver's license and a driver's license to get the fucking bank account. Yip-de-fucking-ha. Not to worry, though, it turned out that any official-looking computer generated letter correctly addressed would fall into the third category. Not knowing, at this point that they wouldn't even keep a copy of the letter, it is a source of deep regret to me that I didn't simply invent a bogus company and letter-head and write the damn thing myself. Instead, I got my Aunt (who currently works as a policy adviser to the police) to write a bogus letter on official New Zealand Police letter-head instead (note that I was doing this before the actions of footnote 4). Note that the address in question also happens to be her own address.

Anyways, I am officially posting again, and shall write more anon.

1The little people

2 Some might say that this is an apt characterisation of what not just myself, but the entire population of New Zealand finds itself doing.......

3This is not to say that I wasn't happy with the various fulfilling pastimes I was able to enjoy with my nerd-machine. Why, I could make the keyboard go "click, click". I could rest hot beverages on it and play with the log-on screen for, oh, hours at a time. I just felt that it was time to take our relationship to the next level is all....

4This last was achieved in a quaint manner via a conversation with Rob (my administrative supervisor) which went a little something like this: Me: "Ah, could you possibly just write a letter on official letter-head addressed to me at this address?" Rob: "What should the letter say?" Me: *shrug* Rob: "Why don't I just write to confirm you're doing a PhD here?" Me: "No, I don't want it to sound like I asked you to do it....." Rob: "How about I just inform you you were allocated that office I showed you to yesterday, and that you should pick up at the school office that key you have in your pocket?" Me: "Perfect."

5Seriously, though, what the cock is with all of this address-proving crap you have to do here?