Mister Hugh's World of Randomness

hi all,

So I got a mysterious present the other day.

The only reason it was mysterious was that I got it in the so-called 'secret santa' thing that we did as a house. If you've not heard of it the idea is that everyone buys one other person (chosen at random) a present, so that everyone ends up getting a present, but they don't know who it's from, and have to guess. Much enjoyment is meant to result from this for some reason. Anyway the 'secret santa' concept was OK, but the name turned out to be a bit optimistic; given that we finally got round to exchanging presents (anonymously of course) last week, the 'santa' description was a bit past it's sell-by date, and everyone had more or less worked out who had bought what for everyone else, thus negating the 'secret' part as well.

My present turned out to be a book called '101 things to do before you Die' - fairly self-explanatory, you have a list of tasks which you can tick off when you've done them, and then presumably just as you're in the throes of death, you can pass the time by calculating your final score. I'd heard of it before (it was a lot more popular than the sequel, '2 things to do after you die', for a variety of reasons).

Anyway the first turned out to be 'Write a bestseller' which seemed curiously relevant to me at the moment (not that I think i'll succeed but there you go). This sparked my interest, and I decided to combine it with the lessons of another book i've enjoyed recently, 'The Dice Man' (which explores what happens if you use dice to determine your behaviour and personailty - highly recommended read btw).

So (on a defiantly irregular basis, probably when i'm bored), I plan to randomly choose a number between 1 and 101, and attempt to complete that task in the near future (rerolling if i've already done it). Those attempts, successful or otherwise, that result in an interesting story might get written up in this here blog.

Randomly generating a number right now, i've come up with 34 which requires me to 'Design my own Cocktail'. Seems too easy really. Still, it's a good one to get me started. I'll see what I can come up with over the next few days, and if it's any good i'll give you the recipe, and describe any interesting effects of drinking it that I notice. Wish me luck!