c4countdown

apterous wrote:To celebrate our second birthday, apterous will be hosting a mystery event this Saturday. No more hints yet, but prepare to be excited!

So who's excited? And what will it be?!

I'm excited, sort of. No idea what it will be. There best be cake though.

My wife's away for the weekend. I'm really excited.

Better not be anything good, I'll be out.

I'm working Saturday evening, will this event start before 5pm?

Aye, I'll be out most of the day too (with Howard's wife but don't tell him, it's our sexy secret). But if there's any way I can still participate in this exciting mystery event, then I will. And if not, well, I'm still excited on everyone else's behalf.

Chris Davies wrote:I'm working Saturday evening, will this event start before 5pm?

The exact nature of the event will be revealed just after midnight on Saturday. I don't want to say too much more at this stage.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Chris Davies wrote:I'm working Saturday evening, will this event start before 5pm?

The exact nature of the event will be revealed just after midnight on Saturday. I don't want to say too much more at this stage.

I've cleared my schedule for the entire 24 hours just in case.

JimBentley wrote:Aye, I'll be out most of the day too (with Howard's wife but don't tell him, it's our sexy secret).

Nah, that can't be right. She said she'll be with someone respectable.

Regrettably, I'll be away from apterous for most of Saturday (and no, not because Howards's hired me as a PI to spy on his wife and Jim). I wonder whether Charlie has planned some kind of 24-hour Duel challenge, one every hour?

I am of course excited on behalf of those who are able to take part.

Charlie Reams wrote:

Chris Davies wrote:I'm working Saturday evening, will this event start before 5pm?

The exact nature of the event will be revealed just after midnight on Saturday. I don't want to say too much more at this stage.

Saturday morning right? "Midnight on Saturday" makes me think Saturday night.

Jon Corby wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:

Chris Davies wrote:I'm working Saturday evening, will this event start before 5pm?

The exact nature of the event will be revealed just after midnight on Saturday. I don't want to say too much more at this stage.

Saturday morning right? "Midnight on Saturday" makes me think Saturday night.

There's always one... Yes, 00:00:01 on Saturday.

Charlie Reams wrote:There's always one... Yes, 00:00:01 on Saturday.

Didn't mean to be picky, I thought it was an important distinction to make. I hope it's not going to clash with the football...

Jon Corby wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:There's always one... Yes, 00:00:01 on Saturday.

Didn't mean to be picky, I thought it was an important distinction to make. I hope it's not going to clash with the football...

I wouldn't worry, you're clearly going to be b& from it now for questioning Charlie's definition of midnight

Michael Wallace wrote:I wouldn't worry, you're clearly going to be b& from it now for questioning Charlie's definition of midnight

I don't think it's a question of definitions really, as what he wrote is probably perfectly accurate. I just wonder if other people share my interpretation. If someone says "I had a wicked time Saturday, I was dancing in my pants in the middle of the club at midnight" I'll assume this to be the midnight following Saturday, not the one starting it. I did also wonder that, if it was going to be some kind of extended event, Sunday might be the better day. What I think is largely irrelevant though, as (among a multitude of other reasons) I probably won't even log on

I tend to think of midnight as the start of the day rather than the end, hence 00:00 rather than 24:00, but I know people are inconsistent about it.

Jon Corby wrote:

Michael Wallace wrote: If someone says "I had a wicked time Saturday, I was dancing in my pants in the middle of the club at midnight" I'll assume this to be the midnight following Saturday, not the one starting it.

Exactly but that's because it has context. Usually I assume it's at the start of the day.

Kirk Bevins wrote:Exactly but that's because it has context. Usually I assume it's at the start of the day.

Sure. I wasn't saying I was right, just that's how I interpreted it. Or I didn't, but thought it was open to misinterpretation.

I wasn't sure. Thanks for clearing that up!

I was with you Corby. Midnight is at the end of the night for me. Thanks for checking.

Matt Morrison wrote:Midnight is at the end of the night for me.

Poor Heather.

Matt Morrison wrote:I was with you Corby. Midnight is at the end of the night for me. Thanks for checking.

Really? I see how it makes sense in a "I've been awake all day and midnight is at the end of the day" kinda thing but if you have 23:59 on a Thursday and 00:01 on a Friday, then the 00:00 in between has always been stated belonging to the Friday, I'm sure. Not sure where I have this notion from but I've never gone:

23:59 Thursday
00:00 Thursday
00:01 Friday.

Kirk Bevins wrote:

Matt Morrison wrote:I was with you Corby. Midnight is at the end of the night for me. Thanks for checking.

Really? I see how it makes sense in a "I've been awake all day and midnight is at the end of the day" kinda thing but if you have 23:59 on a Thursday and 00:01 on a Friday, then the 00:00 in between has always been stated belonging to the Friday, I'm sure. Not sure where I have this notion from but I've never gone:

23:59 Thursday
00:00 Thursday
00:01 Friday.

Yes it's pretty fucking obvious if you say "00:00". We were discussing the word "midnight".

Matt Morrison wrote: Yes it's pretty fucking obvious if you say "00:00". We were discussing the word "midnight".

And is midnight not 00:00? (24:00 doesn't really exist)

Kirk Bevins wrote:

Matt Morrison wrote:I was with you Corby. Midnight is at the end of the night for me. Thanks for checking.

Really? I see how it makes sense in a "I've been awake all day and midnight is at the end of the day" kinda thing but if you have 23:59 on a Thursday and 00:01 on a Friday, then the 00:00 in between has always been stated belonging to the Friday, I'm sure. Not sure where I have this notion from but I've never gone:

23:59 Thursday
00:00 Thursday
00:01 Friday.

That's not really what we're saying, like you said above it's contextual. Charlie answered a post from Chris asking if it would be after 5pm on Saturday, to which he replied that all will be revealed just after midnight on Saturday. This is where I could see confusion arising.

Jon Corby wrote:
That's not really what we're saying, like you said above it's contextual. Charlie answered a post from Chris asking if it would be after 5pm on Saturday, to which he replied that all will be revealed just after midnight on Saturday. This is where I could see confusion arising.

OK, thanks.

Kirk Bevins wrote:

Jon Corby wrote:
That's not really what we're saying, like you said above it's contextual. Charlie answered a post from Chris asking if it would be after 5pm on Saturday, to which he replied that all will be revealed just after midnight on Saturday. This is where I could see confusion arising.

OK, thanks.

x

Edit: haha, I was way more polite than MWM

Jon Corby wrote:Edit: haha, I was way more polite than MWM

Haha, yeah sorry, Kirk. Shitty mood today and it's sad to think I could actually be dumb enough to need it explained to me exactly which other minutes 00:00 falls between.

Matt Morrison wrote:I was with you Corby. Midnight is at the end of the night for me. Thanks for checking.

Midnight is at the middle of the night for me.

It's so big it requires a server reboot!

Andrew Feist wrote:It's so big it requires a server reboot!

TMI dude.

Kirk Bevins wrote:

Matt Morrison wrote:I was with you Corby. Midnight is at the end of the night for me. Thanks for checking.

Really? I see how it makes sense in a "I've been awake all day and midnight is at the end of the day" kinda thing but if you have 23:59 on a Thursday and 00:01 on a Friday, then the 00:00 in between has always been stated belonging to the Friday, I'm sure. Not sure where I have this notion from but I've never gone:

23:59 Thursday
00:00 Thursday
00:01 Friday.

My friend has an oven that displays 24:00 at midnight (must be doing so right now)

Whoever wins this marathon thing should get a life as the prize.

To stop all this confusion, the military use 2400hrs not 0000hrs. So 2400 on 2 July is a minute after 2359 on 2 July. A minute after 2400 is then 0001 on 3 July. You can see why then use this system can't you?

So how many conundrums do you all think the winner will get?

I will guess somewhere between 9000-10000.
Really no idea how accurate this will be.

Edit: divide that estimation by something between 2 and 3.

Chris Corby wrote:To stop all this confusion, the military use 2400hrs not 0000hrs. So 2400 on 2 July is a minute after 2359 on 2 July. A minute after 2400 is then 0001 on 3 July. You can see why then use this system can't you?

I'm sure when we had our TV adverts out at work I got the broadcast schedule, and then went well beyond 2400 into 2500s, 2600s and so on up to about 6am (proper time) as these were part of the same day (night) in TV advert schedule land.

Hope everyone's enjoying it so far. You'll be amused to know that we've already nearly doubled the previous record for most conundrums solved in a day, and it's barely 10am. Congrats to those who've already picked up jerseys.

04:00 Ryan Taylor 335

Hats off!

Andy Wilson wrote:04:00 Ryan Taylor 335

Hats off!

Yeah so I stayed up all night, sad bastard I know. Anyway...around 3am time I was no joke exhausted, my eyes had gone and I kept waking up after seconds of falling asleep and waking up to an unsolved conundrum ran out of time. I would then jab enter a couple of times in hope of solving the next one but then the same would happen and when I 'woke up' there would be the conundrum unsolved. My mind was fucked.

By about 4am I had sort of got through this patch and were playing games and completing them all quite alertly and it got to about 6am I remember. By this point I had moved my laptop to my bed and was playing the conundrums from there. The next thing that happened was freaky. I woke up at 07:50 and my laptop was back on my desk and apterous still open, yet I was not in any conundrum game but in fact in a 15 rounder with prune. I have no recollection of starting this and found that in the first round I had submitted the word DREAMS which wasn't valid as it wasn't in the selection. Anyway I've just finished this game by ending rounds to show you this. No joke, what the fuck happened? Did I do it in my sleep or just was awake for too long that my memory completely failed? Either way, thanks Charlie for fucking with my mind!

Sorry for length and utter pointlessness of this post but seriously, it freaked me out.

Ryan Taylor wrote:

Andy Wilson wrote:04:00 Ryan Taylor 335

Hats off!

Yeah so I stayed up all night, sad bastard I know. Anyway...around 3am time I was no joke exhausted, my eyes had gone and I kept waking up after seconds of falling asleep and waking up to an unsolved conundrum ran out of time. I would then jab enter a couple of times in hope of solving the next one but then the same would happen and when I 'woke up' there would be the conundrum unsolved. My mind was fucked.

By about 4am I had sort of got through this patch and were playing games and completing them all quite alertly and it got to about 6am I remember. By this point I had moved my laptop to my bed and was playing the conundrums from there. The next thing that happened was freaky. I woke up at 07:50 and my laptop was back on my desk and apterous still open, yet I was not in any conundrum game but in fact in a 15 rounder with prune. I have no recollection of starting this and found that in the first round I had submitted the word DREAMS which wasn't valid as it wasn't in the selection. Anyway I've just finished this game by ending rounds to show you this. No joke, what the fuck happened? Did I do it in my sleep or just was awake for too long that my memory completely failed? Either way, thanks Charlie for fucking with my mind!

Sorry for length and utter pointlessness of this post but seriously, it freaked me out.

Hahaha, brilliant.

I was really hoping that the endurance element would bring out some ridiculous shit. Excellent.

Just passed 10,000 conundrums total for the day. Awesome!

Charlie Reams wrote:Hope everyone's enjoying it so far. You'll be amused to know that we've already nearly doubled the previous record for most conundrums solved in a day, and it's barely 10am. Congrats to those who've already picked up jerseys.

Hugh's total in the 16:00 hour is phenomenal.

JimBentley wrote:

Charlie Reams wrote:Hope everyone's enjoying it so far. You'll be amused to know that we've already nearly doubled the previous record for most conundrums solved in a day, and it's barely 10am. Congrats to those who've already picked up jerseys.

Hugh's total in the 16:00 hour is phenomenal.

It seems the hourly totals are for games finished in that hour because my 883 is from a single game that probably took about 3 or 4 hours to complete.

Early request for some cool graphs and/or stats from Charlie. Would like to know some of the most heavily solid conundrumming periods - Kirk said he did 400 in 1hr40.

Matt Morrison wrote:Early request for some cool graphs and/or stats from Charlie. Would like to know some of the most heavily solid conundrumming periods - Kirk said he did 400 in 1hr40.

This would be cool. Yeah I wanted to get up to 2000 and I was about 310 conundrums away so I set 400 conundrums, 10 second rounds, and since I was doing quite well I banked on me doing the 310/400. Turns out I did as I got up to 2009. I started at 8pm and did all 400 by 9:40pm - bloody tiring.

Oh, and then I did 1 more conundrum so I had 2010 - the year of the first apterous marathon

Matt Morrison wrote:Early request for some cool graphs and/or stats from Charlie. Would like to know some of the most heavily solid conundrumming periods - Kirk said he did 400 in 1hr40.

I would also like to know just how low my percentage was for solving attempted conundrums and how many times I missed the same conundrum on 3 or more occasions combined with the ones that I solved once but then somehow missed again.

Oh and maybe some investigation into my mysterious game with mr Prune. Not asking much there.

I want to thank Jim for playing me when we were 20th and 21st with an hour to go for the craic, and Ryan and Oliver for playing their last game of the day against each other when they were fighting for the bronze medal!

Trying to keep up with the race for bronze as it played out was difficult (cos they is awesome fast innit) but what was way cool was that the scores on the homepage updated with every new conundrum scored in the game rather than afterwards. As they finished their game after midnight, the points from that game were then deleted so we had this cool back to the future moment!

What is crazy is that Oliver said he made it 14 seconds past the hour when the game finished. The game ended with him 14 points up and the final standings have Ryan ahead by 14, so we may as well call it a draw!

What's the probability of that Dimitry?

Nice one Charlie for the second birthday present and special mention to James Doohan for talking me out of spending my whole evening doing conundrums!

Andy Wilson wrote:I want to thank Jim for playing me when we were 20th and 21st with an hour to go for the craic, and Ryan and Oliver for playing their last game of the day against each other when they were fighting for the bronze medal!

Yeah, this was great! I didn't even realise I was on the leaderboard at all at the time and Andy did a really good comeback in our game (OK, maybe that's not so impressive since he was only playing me) to snatch it at the last.

If there's ever a numbers version of this, I'd be quite tempted to start at midnight and see how long I could last before going insane.

Here's the only diagram you need.

Matt Morrison wrote:Early request for some cool graphs and/or stats from Charlie. Would like to know some of the most heavily solid conundrumming periods - Kirk said he did 400 in 1hr40.

I got most of mine between about 6.30 and 9, think I was maybe close to a jersey in the quiet hour around then, but my percentage was just too low.