Ever since Martin Gardner passed away in 2012, his fans have held an annual gathering in various places each year; our local gathering is the one at Stanford, organized by Stan Isaacs. It wasn’t in one of the few places I know on the Stanford campus (such as the art museum, the math building, or…
Author: cjbickford
Who is Bob Henderson?
Last year, Neil decided he wanted to design the world’s most difficult 4 x 5 sliding block puzzle. To that end, he wrote a program to design sliding block puzzles, which he called SBP. You can get all the technical details of the program, and the puzzles he built, on Neil’s blog. We also discovered,…
The Mystery of the Inconsistent Ginger Beer
Some time ago, when Neil and I were doing experiments to make our own ginger ale, Neil’s friend and mentor, Bill Gosper brought over a few bottles of Bundaberg Ginger Beer, which he said was the best ginger ale he had ever tasted. He was right, and it soon became a special treat in our…
The New Landry’s Morton’s
Yesterday, Peter and I went to our local Morton’s restaurant to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. One unadvertised fact about the chain is that they give you a lot of little unexpected perks when you go there for a special occasion (we used to just go there, so we only discovered this on our 18th…
Psycho Saturday
After leaving Peter at the hospital, I went home to catch a few hours of sleep before I had to get up at 3:30 am and rouse the kids to take them to the San Francisco airport. Neil had an early flight to catch to visit his grandparents on the East Coast, and he was…
Peter’s Friday Night Grand Emergency Room Adventure
We had an exciting Friday night, with the best ER experience I’ve ever had. To put it into context, Peter’s a tough guy; and I do mean that. Just recently, he’s plowed through physical projects even with a hand injury and through agonizing pain, but no amount of cajoling or pleading could get me to…
Neil and the Davidson Young Scholars
Back when I was butting up against teachers and an administration that refused to let Neil work at the level he’d already proven himself capable of, we took him to audition for a television show called Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? More than anything, I was delighted to meet the other families. There…
The 2012 Julia Robinson Math Festival at Stanford
This is the fourth year I’ve taken Neil to the Julia Robinson Math festival at Stanford, and I came pondering if maybe this might also be our last. We’ve come a long way in the last four years, and Neil is now high school age. He’s finding his own clubs and activities with his peers,…
Remembering Tom Rodgers
I had no idea that the first time I met Tom Rodgers would also be the last time. We met him the Monday evening before Gathering for Gardner 9, the 2010 version of his biannual event that united creative thinkers who like to challenge rules and perceptions. To get us there, Peter had turned the…
The Re-fi of the Damned (aka Happy Happy Lenderman’s Revenge)
In 2010, Peter and I had managed to get our finances back on track after the great crash of 2008, and mortgage rates were at a (then) historic lows. We figured we could save quite a bit by refinancing, but as we soon discovered, it would be a painful, long-drawn out process that would take…