Sunday 1st February - Brain Powers

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Animations_of_fractals

It's like this.

If it involves data, especially complicated data full of variables, and if it involves choices and optimising the choices, then hand the task over to BB every time. Hey, I've (somehow!) got a maths degree, I'm not scared of numbers, I can compare and contrast as well as anyone.

But data "talks" to BB like a piano "talks" to me. It's his thing.


Give me three notes, a chord, a snatch of music, a rhythm, and a world opens in glorious technicolour, full of pictures and sights and smells and tastes. Actually, these words are only a shallow effort at attempting to explain what can only be expressed through the sound itself. It's why I absolutely CANNOT listen to certain recordings, and CAN listen, endlessly, to others. It's why I wait for That Particular Note in the middle of a piece, because it is, of itself, so beautiful I could cry.I have been known to be late for work, because I needed to hear the end of whatever I was listening to in the car as I was driving, to hear "how the story ends".

For BB, I suspect that data is the same for him as music is for me. It makes shapes and patterns and opens worlds in his brain. I'm pretty certain that trying to explain it is like me trying to explain music - not possible.

However, this is why, when he says "this is the best choice", I say "then let's go with it", whether we are talking insurance policies, washing machine purchases, computers, storage layouts, travel routes, whatever. I might add in a few variables "I don't want a silver washing machine", "Could we visit Ludlow on the way?", "What about having 'monkey-tail handles?" (on our proposed double glazing). He somehow incorporates this into the n-dimensional grid virtual grid that twirls inside his brain, and comes up with a solution, and the reasons why it is, or isn't possible.

So, this is how it goes. I play the music, and he plays the data. The reverse would be just plain silly.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Animations_of_fractals