it is worthwhile attempting to learn a bit more about how the internet actually works.
When it comes to sending information across the wilds of the internet, it is split up into packets by routers and goes from router to router by what is deemed the best available route. This is informed by the feedback on previous packets, so if what was previously deemed to be a best available route is running slow, another route could be upgraded.
This is not intuitive stuff, most people don't understand it at all, it is how engineers might work, but not how most people like to solve problems. We prefer to make the effort of making a decision and then stick to it, we don't want to constantly revisit all our decisions.
But modern technology can just constantly review decisions, there is not a lot of cost to doing this, while there are situations where a flexibility over decisions is beneficial.
What if the transport network operated like this. What if for major journeys by rail, air or road, we were treated as dumb packets of information, and routed from node to node, each node then directing on the best available route from then on. As with the internet the real benefit of this is that it creates a more robust and flexible network. If one element goes down, then alternatives can quickly be filled to capacity, then further altnernatives filled to capacity.
As with air traffic, you would tag and track each individual at each stage of the journey, for example by presenting or swiping some identification, or through RFID tags, or some sort of GPS or positioning device. In air travel each time you touch down would be a node, in train travel you might need to seek your own nodes, receiving mobile phone notification that you should disembark at a station and seek a specific connection, in road travel a combination of satnav and mobile phone technology could perform the function.
This does seem a bit alien treating people as dumb packets, not entitled to make any decisions, but their fate informing the routing of subsequent travellers. It also suggests a network that is more like the internet with a lot of smaller routes, rather than a few great big motorways, but as recent weather problems have shown there are benefits to robustness.
It is a bit of a cliche in the technology press that whenever there is a natural disaster modern internet communications prove invaluable and amazing.
We have just lived through two weeks of disruption from snow, ice and prolonged subzero temperatures I cannot say it happened here in modern Scotland.
My main interest was in getting to work using public transport. Though I also had a general interest in the worsening situation. My family was mainly interested in whether the schools were open.
Neither of these things were exactly state secrets nor difficult to ascertain, apparently.
The media was not much use at all, it mainly focussed on a few big stories, such as political arguments, rather obvious points about the weather, or fatuous statements such as you should get contractors to knock off icicles and pedestrians should not walk close to buildings. In this country pavements generally run close to buildings, so I suppose they might have been suggesting that people should walk down the middle of the road, though who knows. I cannot imagine any "contractor" rushing to come out and knock off your icicles for you either.
The local radio station was excellent, they really come into their own at these times. But they cover too large an area to provide highly specific advice, they did seem to be spot on with things like the Forth Road Bridge closing, they were not much use at reporting on train problems, no media even seemed to really attempt to cover the disruptions to the trains.
The media based websites were pretty much as per their reporting, though more out of date.
The specific websites for schools were problematic. They were often totally unavailable because of high traffic. People would just hit the refresh button to get updates. Schools seemed incapable of making decisions, for example deciding at 8.58 to close a school that opened at 9, turning away any children that arrived. The school had also signed us all up to get text updates to our mobile, but the few we did get were too late to be much use and they did not send out messages that they should of. It was certainly not something that you could rely on. My wife was getting constant phone calls from people with no internet, or no mobiles asking what was going on, when she did not know herself, despite having a mobile and internet.
The trains were not operating to timetables, and the website purported to reflect what trains were running, but was often completely wrong, reporting trains were running when they had all been cancelled. The station announcements when you could hear them tended to be accurate, though stuff on the screens was often completely wrong. In fairness to the railway people they were attempting to run a service that was falling apart around them, but their provision of information was dreadful.
Accordingly you could scour the web and find nothing of any real use, just more and more contradictory information.
The most useful information was other people, people on trains phoning people still at the station, direct first hand information that you could trust. The children tended to use Facebook to discuss school closures and this seemed to work well apart from the fact that none of them actually knew very much or had any authority.
The lesson would appear to be that user generated content is key, there needs to be some sort of infrastructure available for users to share content, and authoritative voices should take part in these discussions, or they should ensure that they maintain authoritative sources of advice across a vareity of channels. Mobile texts will not reach everyone, the internet will not reach everyone, etc etc. Decide on a media strategy and commit to it.
Around ten o'clock on Friday 26th November 2010 it started to snow. I did not notice, but a friend who had intended to play golf the following morning did. On Saturday I headed over to Glasgow to visit the Apple Store and regretted not taking my camera as the whole country was covered in snow and looked fantastic.
This was the start of two weeks of snow and sub zero temperatures.
This cold snap has come earlier than usual, but more importantly it included a substantial amount of snow. Where I live there was over two feet of snow. When you get that kind of volume of snow it is not just a case of sweeping it to one side, the sheer volume of the stuff becomes a problem. Some people have cleared their driveways but created impassable mounds of snow on the pavement. Tractors have been used to clear car parks and create mounds of snow several metres high. A roundabout near me has several such mounds.
There have also been sustained periods of subzero temperatures. That means that the snow does not thaw, it just compacts down a bit more. We have had day time temperatures of minus 8, and when snow has thawed from the roof, it has frozen again into icicles or as soon as it hit the ground.
Scotland's infrastructure is not really designed for this sort of sustained weather. There have been icicles a metre long hanging off buildings everywhere, and the weight of ice has taken down countless gutters. Roofloads of snow and ice have slid down suddenly demolishing whatever lies beneath. A friend says a pile came off her tenement roof destroying some teak outdoors furniture. Non main roads have been hidden beneath snow and ice for weeks with no indication of where they were beyond any car tracks that were upon them. Even main roads have struggled to stay at all clear with the motorway between Edinburgh and Glasgow being closed for a number of days. There was sustained heavy snow on the afternoon of Monday 6th December and Lothian Buses suspended all services in Edinburgh for four hours, and then only ran buses till 9 in the evening. The trains have been operating without a timetable for a fortnight, our service being completely cancelled on Friday 3rd, most of Wednesday 8th and all of Thursday 9th. We were even frozen out of the station shelter when the door froze shut. The Forth Road Bridge has been closed a number of times because of the snow and accidents.
At times the shops have run out of food, petrol stations are running out of petrol. The schools were shut for the first week, which was not actually as bad as the second week when they were open.
It has been a nightmare using public transport, I've even had to stay over in a chilly B&B one night as there was no way to get home.
Thankfully the daytime temperatures are now enough for the snow to start thawing and it feels like we are past the worst of it all. A few observations.
Sustained temperatures below zero are extremely exhausting to endure, you burn up a lot of energy very quickly, waiting for public transport is exhausting in cold temperatures. You just want to eat carbohydrates and not fruit!
When snow thaws and instantly freezes it is very dangerous, very heavy, unpredictable and not where you want it to be, such as poised above your head.
When you have over a foot of snow it is a whole different world, clearing your path is virtually impossible and the volumes of snow quickly become unmanageable.
Flat roofs are dangerous. Snow will steadily accumulate and can either collapse your roof, many farm animals have died this way, or suddenly slough off in an avalanche.
You don't want anything to be underneath an avalanche that comes off a roof. It could kill you.
Our trains and carriages were apparently designed for mediterannean climates and cannot cope with sustained periods of snow and ice. They can accumulate tons of ice underneath. Many essential items are on the underside of the train, such as brakes, and with a ton of ice, they can just stop working. Ideally you would want to thaw out the whole train, like you would defrost a fridge, but where or how could you do this to hundreds of trains?
Our train points are not designed for prolonged periods below zero, they freeze. They can put electric blankets over them as a bodge.
The modern super interconnected world does not really deliver useful information in an emergency situation.
On a more positive note, I am not aware of anyone in Scotland dying directly as a result of the recent cold snap, which is actually really surprising and a testament to peoples good sense.
The gas, electricity, phones all continued to work, the post got through sporadically though delivery services gave up for a week.
While some people have been selfish and inconsiderate, for example making sure their drive was snow free while stacking a mountain of snow onto the pavement making it totally impassable, most have been good humoured and helpful once you get speaking to them.
If I were ever to be wealthy, I would like to be stealthily wealthy.
I don't want to wear flashy clothes that draw attention to me, or drive a big car. I want to travel standard class and not get annoyed with the other passengers.
I don't want to go on expensive holidays, or have a big house. I just want to know what the best films are and have a chance to see them.
I don't want a big heavy gold watch, or all the latest gadgets. I want a Mac laptop, or two, that connect to the internet and work fine most of the time.
I don't want to mix with all the best people, and be seen dining out. I want to keep up with old friends and meet some new people.
I would like enough money to invest, that I did not need to work too hard, and had enough to look after my family. And when I am all gone, it can buy some land to plant trees on.
some early gift suggestions for the geek in your life,
bagpipe wii controller - use the miracles of our tartan bluetooth to play the Scottish pipes on your Scotch wii along with all your favourite bagpipe stars, features many popular classics. Does not function as a bagpipe. Not for use by children under 36 months. Ear defenders are advisable but are not provided.
wax cylinder usb convertor - is your house full of old wax cylinders that you would love to listen to on your iPod, or MP3 player, then buy the wax cylinder usb convertor, connect it to your Unix computer using the scsi cable provided, and then load up the handy punched cards into the attractively styled punch card convertor which easily connects to your Mac or Windows PC by usb. Does not work on OS versions above Mac 7.1 or Windows XP. An ideal Christmas gift. Not available for export or suitable for children due to high lead content.
wifi powered humping dog - use the free power provided by wifi, to power this amusing plastic humping dog model, on a warm day may provide nearly enough power to work. Has been known produce freestyle microwaves so not to be used in close proximity to women of child bearing age, or near groin areas.
There is certainly something happening, though I am not sure that it is exactly the death of the middle class. I suspect that it might be the death of the meritocracy. Because we broadly live in a meritocratic society, we tend to assume that things have always been meritocratic and will always be meritocratic. But look back a few hundred years and you were born to your station in life, and there was virtually no potential for social mobility. Those 'middle class' type jobs that might exist for those not born to the landed gentry, required substantial capital and expertise. The sheer amount of very specific and expensive equipment required to be a printer or a miller put those occupations beyond anyone not borne to it.
There were very substantial barriers to entry for these occupations.
I grew up in an era when if you were bright enough and did well at school you could go to university and about 10% of the school did. In theory with a degree you were capable of one of the more skilled but not highly specific jobs that existed and with luck you could obtain one. Now about 50% of the school go to university, accumulate a significant debt, but the chances of obtaining a job have diminished significantly. Currently 17 teaching students are chasing every job, in a profession where the supply and demand are pretty much entirely controlled by the government.
A lot of formerly graduate level jobs that required intelligence and flexibility are now disappearing. IT is allowing processes to be streamlined, Amazon replaces thousands of stores, algorithms replace expertise, banks don't really need 'bank managers' anymore.
There is a gap opening up between the superstar jobs that require brains, and the generic jobs that are not difficult to fill, the call centres and salespeople.
We need to think carefully about what sort of society we actually want to live in and figure out how to get there. By merely blundering on we risk returning to a very unequal society with no social mobility.
Just an assorted mish-mash of things that have caught my eye lately.
Interesting article in The Times yesterday about Generation Zero, young people who are trying to reduce down their physical possessions to the bare minimum.
A few thoughts arising,
this makes most sense if you do not own a house, once you own a house you rapidly start to accumulate vast volumes of stuff. I think a lot of this stuff really belongs to the house, rather than to you as an individual.
this makes more sense now that you can live a lot of your life online, you don't need to keep letters when you have emails, you don't have to keep physical photos when they are on your hard drive, ...
this makes more sense if you have gone digital with your media, so a downloaded album does not count as a possession it is just more bits on your hard drive.
just because you do not have a lot of physical possesions does not mean that you are living some ascetic life. You could be living in Starbucks, downloading material from iTunes in bulk, running an expensive mobile phone and subscribing to any number of online cloud services.
It does all rather paint a picture of someone with a laptop in one hand, an iPhone in the other, living in rented accomodation ready to move on at the drop of a hat but more at home in the online world.
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Interesting article the other day about Google doing a survey that reckoned that the online economy was now seven percent (I've not checked, this could be rubbish) of the total economy. Not sure that this is entirely credible, I suspect that it must include some mobile phone stuff etc that you would not really think of as internet, and that not much of the big money is actually being earned by UK companies, but interesting nonetheless. All part of the gradual process of people stopping seeing physical shopping as a passtime and using online for more and more of their shopping.
At the moment my online shopping is getting a bit annoying, a few orders still not arrived after over a week. Maybe the internet commerce is reaching another of those step change moments where capacity needs to ratchet up by a significant amount in order to meet demand.
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In terms of growing my investments I think I need to work to orders of magnitude, so that once I have reached one milestone in terms of orders of magnitude the next target is to aim for the next order of magnitude, even it it is something that is going to take years. Once you have got to 100, getting to 200 is less of a challenge. Probably something that might apply to growing a business too, otherwise you make the mistake of just thinking in terms of too many little baby steps, rather than really growing the business.
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My Amazon reviewer ranking has now leapt to 5997, though rising through the ranks is increasingly more mysterious, a few additional reviews make no difference to the rankings, and then suddenly I have rising a big chunk up the ratings.
Normally I think that there is no point to hundreds of reviews of the same product, but I actually found myself browsing through the reviews for the iPod Classic, and I was appreciative of the large number of reviews just to guage how much of a problem hard drive reliability actually was. Obviously for a book or a film, there remains little point to hundreds of reviews.
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Blogs are getting a bit tired, but I am not sure what there is to replace them, just where is the cutting edge at these days?
I've not been doing much blogging of late. However I have been distracted by writing Amazon reviews. In a fine piece of social engineering Amazon ranks their reviewers. I tend to rely on Amazon reviews for making purchasing decisions, so in the past where there have not been many reviews online, I've posted the odd review. A few longstanding reviews attracted helpful votes over the years and I had a reviewer ranking of around 11,000.
Intrigued and feeling competitive, I decided to try and up my ranking. Simply by posting reviews of recent purchases, it was relatively easy to get above 10,000. It took a more concerted effort to advance beyond that. Posting a batch of reviews over a weekend initially managed to raise me a thousand points in the rankings, but lately I seem to be sticking in the seven thousand range. Posting additional reviews now does not seem to make a huge difference.
Amazon has secret algorithms for ranking purposes. To be honest I suspect that calling them 'secret' probably covers for the fact that they get changed around from time to time, and are not applied in a terribly systematic fashion.
I suppose the variables that apply to rankings could be number of reviews - more better helpful votes - more better unhelpful votes - less better product ratings offered - higher better date of posting - more recent better
also possible factors, other Amazon activity, number of people viewing your reviews, tracking of those who vote, etc
In terms of devising a strategy, it would appear that 'you would be a fool not to...' post reviews regularly and often post reviews likely to get favourable votes, review items that do not have a lot of reviews review items that attract a lot of viewers obviously the above two are difficult to meet at the same time, plenty of obscure products have no reviews, few popular products have no reviews look at those in the rankings to see whether they are doing something that you are not
Logically, getting up the rankings will get harder, the higher ranked you are. That said, the more reviews you have out there, the more you are likely to be attracting positive votes. It is interesting to note where you are on the rankings and the relevant statitistics for those around you. Presumably if you are posting more reviews than them, then you should eventually rise above them.
Amazon re-ranks people every 24 hours, but from observation the higher you rise up the rankings, the less dramatic any changes will be.
Amazon has introduced a Vine programme, whereby highly ranked reviewers can be offered free material for review. I suppose if you were on the Vine programme, you could always sell off stuff that you had got for nothing. That said, the number one reviewer, Peter Durward Harris has been unemployed for some time, so a high ranking is not the passport to riches and fame.
Personally, I like the idea of reviewing products as a way of promoting things that I think are good, and hopefully drawing people's attention to things that they will like, but might not have been aware of. I tend to review things I know about, so as my tastes are not mainstream, I will never be getting thousands of helpful votes for anything. However, hopefully my reviews are helpful to people.
An awful lot of people say that they want to write to reach out to people, and in its way writing reviews for Amazon does this in a very direct way, albeit limited to how they might choose to spend their money.
Reviewers tend to be helpful and positive about products, although Amazon does have some quirks, you cannot mention prices or cite external weblinks, they don't mind publishing damning reviews. To be honest I don't suppose anyone at Amazon head office ever reads most of them. My reviews are mostly posted instantly, a handful appear the next day, and where I have fallen foul of the rules they are not published at all.
Amazon is really in the information business, it tracks what you look at, what you buy, it is not just when we post reviews that Amazon is benefitting from our opinions, decisions and clicks. It could be argued that reviewers are working for nothing, and that it would be nice to get some recognition.
Part of the appeal of doing reviews is that it is the ultimate flexible work, do it if you want, don't if you don't. It does not take a lot of effort for the most part, unless you are only reading a book so that you can review it!
I think that paying reviewers opens up a can of worms, most reviews have clearly been dashed off, no print publication would ever publish them. We understand the transparency of a freely offered review, we can discern what sort of person wrote it and why.
Frequent reviewers could be offered minor discounts, but I think that anything beyond that gets into difficult territory. It is the old argument about mixing apples and oranges. If most reviews are freely offered opinions, and some have been paid for, can you trust any of them.
The upside for Amazon is that they have designed the site so that you will keep on getting offered something else to buy, or to look at, so that you are in effect bound to get something. You will never leave Amazon saying, I just didn't see anything I wanted.
In a few years there will probably be textbooks setting out all this stuff in turgid detail, until then we will just have to try and figure out for ourselves how the modern world works.
At time of writing I am Amazon New Reviewer ranking 7104 Classic Reviewer ranking 44233 helpful votes 89% (39/44) with 35 customer reviews
In the news this week, a woman has defended herself from a marauding bear with the aid of one of her pet dogs, the other two pet dogs more sensibly scarpering, and a well aimed courgette.
Thankfully there seems to be no end to the uses to which a courgette can be put. Our half dozen courgette plants are still producing, I have harvested another three decent sized courgettes today, with more flowers and baby courgettes still there. I suspect that come the first decent frost they will be gone, but they are still going strong.
I have been taking surplus courgettes in to work for weeks now, and managing to keep half the office amply supplied with courgettes.
Finally, last weekend I did go out looking for wild bears heavily armed with a courgette and with my trusty dog.
Anyone who has ever tried their hand at growing fruit and vegetables will have observed that although getting the stuff to grow is challenging, getting it all eaten afterwards can be near impossible.
One year I grew garlic, but in my ignorance I did not realise that what you actually planted for growing on was the little clove inside each, so instead of having a single dozen garlic plants to harvest, I ended up with several dozen. I like garlic, but no one likes garlic quite that much.
Of course even when we know what we are doing, the retailers will confound us. If you buy a packet of courgette seeds you might get thirty seeds. Unless you are running a farm this is far too many to grow. Growing courgettes this year I have six plants actually in the ground and they are cropping a couple of decent courgettes a day!! Every day!!!
When it comes ready it all comes at once. You might like what you have planted, but most crops require to be used fairly briskly. You can only really store perfect specimens, if it is a bit bashed about you really need to use immediately. A lot of crops won't store at all.
The art of effective gardening is getting round all these problems. For example, effective storage, making jams and chutneys, or finding ways to shift produce.
For our six courgette plants, I have bought my wife a courgette recipe book, and started taking in courgettes for my colleagues at work. It is better to see them eaten than left to wither. In fact it is actually quite satisfying to see folk all excited about the odd free courgette.
We do have a Damson tree, a stocky little fellow, that currently boasts a personal best crop of two damsons. However I do have great expectations, there are quite a few damsons growing round here, so it should eventually get to the stage of cropping away happily.
My wife is a keen jam maker and Damson Jams is a perennial favourite. You can pick up damsons in the shops now and again, and with a little bit of chapping on doors it would probably be possible to source some informally. However this year we got our ration of Damsons at the Newburgh Orchard Group Plum Market. This is a wonderful scheme to record and use the vast number of fruit trees in a quiet Fife village. These apparently date back to the local Benedictine Monastry which supplied the royal court at nearby Falkland Palace. Obviously not terribly recently, the Abbey is now a ruin. But as is the nature of these things, a fruit orchard is a long term thing.
So we fired up the Satnav and headed up to Newburgh, which does not seem to have changed much in the last thirty years. One of those places that progress seems to have forgotten about. It also seems to have a thriving community spirit with plenty of places to stop and chat and a host of voluntary societies. There were a few trestle tables with Damsons, plums, various apples and pears. My wife quickly stocked up on plenty of produce and compared notes with fellow jam making enthusiasts.
Also worth mentioning a fabulous garden centre come coffee shop just along the road at the Jamesfield Farm, the home of the Bellfield Organic Box Scheme.
Finding a home for your surplus crop can involve dipping into the wider community, but surely it is through sharing that we deepen and better our communities.
Having said that, I think we do need to rethink our notions of what being green is effectively about. There is huge list of misconceptions that we should rethink, but I'll just focus this blog entry on the one.
My generation grew up with the notion that to be green you had to aspire to become Tom and Barbara Goode, live the Goode Life. According to the popular sitcom of the time, even if you lived in Surbiton you were to give over your garden to vegetables and livestock, opting out of the twentieth century to become entirely self sufficient. A host of similar examples could be quoted to conform to this archetype.
But being green and treading lightly on this world is nothing to do with being self sufficient. In the past, even human gatherer societies depended on links and ties beyond the family group. To be human is to be part of that larger whole that is society.
Thinking about the Swiss, Swissmiss the popular blogiste posted a photo of a Swiss farmers log pile stating how they could not help but be tidy and thorough in everything they did. While a book on the architects Herzog and de Mueron pointed out that although the Swiss aspired to their rustic farmhouses, their society was based on leading financial institutions. There is no contradiction here, you can tread lightly on your land but be entirely of a modern economy.
Whatever we do, in being green we should remain part of this world. Despite their separate notions, the Shakers were renowned in the wider world for the quality of their seeds.
We may not choose to adopt all the norms of society, but we should not disengage, instead we should engage productively with it.
We dream in absolutes, but live in compromise.
We should live like the Swiss and the Shakers, treading lightly upon the world and like gardeners imposing our own green vision upon some land, how it should/could be. But we should also make money and a contribution to the wider world where we can.
It is the outliers who affect where the norm is. Some outliers manage exert a pull over people's perception of what is fashionable/possible/desirable/normal and pull others over in their direction. A neighbour of mine grows vegetables in their front garden, treating it like an intensively farmed allotment. I think that this is tremendous, it brings the reality of food in front of us.
It is possible to split up all your time into either
consuming
maintaining, or
creating.
recently statistics have demonstrated that we each spend some incredible amount of time each day consuming media. We also consume food, clothing, etc etc. In fact anytime that you are not actively doing something, you are probably consuming resources in some way.
The next stage up from this is maintaining. The bible for maintaining is How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand. Architects might create buildings, but it is the day to day maintenance chores that keep them alive. You maintain whenever you water a plant, or mow a lawn, polish shoes, or clean your house, paint your railings or clean out your gutters.
The next stage up is creating. This is the pinacle, though it is debateable what exactly is included. Is it bringing up a child, or planting a tree, writing a book or telling a joke. But it is bringing something new into being, creating something that would not be there but for you.
This all goes some way to describe my discomfort with green consumerism. There is nothing wrong with using your retail choices to make a positive impact on the world. I like to spend my money in shops that I think are worth keeping. I like to buy thoughtful and long lasting products. But the greener option is to maintain things, rather than buying new, and even better is to grow your own, knit your own or make your own.
We become greener by doing less consuming, more maintaining and more creating.
Axis of Awesome are an Australian comedy rock band. They are currently playing at the Edinburgh Fringe, for their third year.
My oldest daughter was adamant that we had to go see them, so as I was off anyway, we all went over to see them. The show lasted for one hour, and the small venue at the Gilded Balloon, Teviot (next to the Edinburgh University Buildings) was packed. We were probably the oldest and youngest people there, but we all loved it. Be advised there is some bad language, but it is all so good natured that it would be hard to take offence. There was of course the famous four chord song, coming up for nine million hits on youtube, but mostly new material that I had not heard before. There was a little riffing between songs, and when a back-up CD failed, they totally charmed and amused the audience.
Musically they are very accomplished, but the humour comes from their interaction. Well worth seeing, it would not surprise me if they go on to be absolutely huge.
Teeshirts, CDs, and DVDs were available on the night.
It is a bit difficult to know what to expect with this book, the author was slated for a Nobel, but died before he could be awarded one. The reviews suggest that it relates to a walking tour of Norfolk, while the rings of Saturn are frozen debris floating in space. It consists of endless discursions on seemingly random topics.
However what should be mentioned is the charm of this work. For me, it captured the pedantic, eccentric but utterly charming tone of the Peter Greenaway shorts like Dear Phone and Water Wrackets, narrated by Greenaway and Colin Cantile respectively.
The Rings is not a shaggy dog story in the way that some books are, there is no story to get going, or promised resolution that we are seeking. It is like sitting listening, late at night, in a comfortable old chair, to someone who seems to know everything, telling their gently rambling reminiscences, and if sometimes the stories seem a little to good to be true, perhaps they are.
One of the most purely enjoyable and charming books that I have read in a long time. Like Pevsner, he describes an England that fascinates him, without ever quite understanding it.
After what seems like forever without taking more than just the odd day off, I am now/finally off for a whole three weeks. I am taking a staycation, or as we say in Scotland Haimyll-daemee.
The weekend was a bit more relaxed than usual. Frankly I am amazed at just how much I generally squeeze into a weekend, between walking the hound, IT geek for the house, paperwork, housework, garden work, and family time. Knowing that I was off this week, I did not attack the list of things to do with the usual gusto, so there are still a few things left over that I would normally have tried to do at the weekend.
Things did get knocked slightly astray by the dreich and undecided weather. I normally use google weather, but lately it seems to be marking up pretty much every day as having a chance of rain. I live in Scotland. It is hardly a forecast to say that there is a chance of rain. To be honest though the rain was pelting it down yesterday, but mostly it has been cloudly with just a little rain. My flymo lawnmower packed in yesterday. After years of abuse the motor now requires considerable gentle coaxing. So we headed off to get a new one, and dropped in at a fruit picking farm on the way back. This was one that I had not been been to before, and it was really excellent. Coffee and cake, and some nice organic-ey type food in the farm shop. Had a look at their free-range chickens, who were pecking about a couple of rows of blackcurrents, and a few more rows of healthy looking damson trees. I do love my fruit trees and bushes, and love to see them wherever they are.
Today I was attacking the garden with considerable gusto. There are so many shrubs and trees, that the brown bin of garden waste is filled up in no time. So I was hacking away at trimming hedges, and overgrown bits, and testing my new lawnmower. The problem with the last mower was that it was not powerful enough, the motor must have been around 1,000 watts, so I went for something much more powerful. Although the new lawnmower seems to weigh twice as much, and it a complete pig to lug around the garden, it just needs to look at the grass and it has it trimmed down to the requiste length. It does not like banks or edgey bits, but it just breezes over the main areas. I might get a more lightweight mower for the banks and edges, but the new one is most impressive.
After a day in the garden the brown bin is now virtually full. I have another day before they come to uplift it, so I should have it well filled by then.
Currently in the garden we are harvesting courgettes, a great thug of a plant, a few strawberries left, plenty of loganberries but they are a bit too bitter to use, rhubarb if anyone wants it, and the usual herbs. This will be a bumper year for the apple harvest, but not quite ready yet.
We have tried to come up with a decent mix of things to do over the next few weeks, some outings, some house stuff. Like work, I suppose the problem is not that you are bored with something, just that you have been doing it for too long, and it is time to do something else. Hence coming up with a mix of things.
I like having the chance to just sit and read a book, or a paper, and not feel that the clock is ticking away, and after all, that is what a real holiday is.
I have been struggling through this book for quite some time. Had I read the reviews, I probably would not have bothered to buy it, but I had a half price voucher so I just got it as a book about Google, which sounded good.
The prose is dull, the book is badly edited, there are not even photos, the book uses Google to talk about new media, but is not particularly insightful. This is a book by someone who earns his money in old media, and it shows.
The book does get slightly better in the second half, but I would advise people to avoid this, it is a real clunker of a book.
This is one of those Taschen published books with a lot of pictures and parallel text in English, French and German. All told it only took about an hour to read, so there is not a lot of text, and frankly the text is not up to much either. However that is hardly the point of the book. It is a resource of photos of some aspirational or not so aspirational houses with an environmentally friendly element. However this is environmental friendliness with concrete, larch cladding and lots of glass walls, so nice to look at but not a lot of chickens scrabbling around strawbale walls.
Worth a look and really not very expensive for what it is. You can always have a look through it and dream of being able to afford one of these houses.
Workwise, things are really busy, but in that steady sort of way, where you work away, and make decent enough progress but certainly never run out of stuff to do. I'm still enjoying the new job, it is challenging, and makes you think, but that is good. I really like the people I am working with, so I'm keen to avoid getting too stressed and snarky and falling out with them.
I have accumulated a massive amount of annual leave and excess hours, so the current plan is to take three weeks leave. Nothing much planned, but just vegging out, catching up on some DIY, and some family time, sounds good. It may be necessary to eat into the leave, either heading in to work if anything super urgent appears, or family stuff, but the principle of me not being there for a few weeks seems to have been accepted. It will be the longest chunk of leave I have taken in years!
Computer wise, the new iPad is proving a big hit. I am hankering after a new laptop myself, my current white MacBook with only 80Gig of hard drive is a bit pokey. On the one hand I am tempted by something more powerful, on the other I might like a bigger screen, on the other I am tempted by a solid state drive so I can use it with impunity when travelling. However I really don't want to go above £1k for a laptop, so I'm not sure what I'll do. The smart thing to do might just be to get an iPod classic for watching the TED talks on the train, and get a MacBook in a year or two. I don't like the idea of not having FireWire but it is not worth paying hundreds extra just to get it.
The rest of the family have all upgraded their phones, but I like my old flip open phone and all I use it for is phoning, so apart from the battery running out every other day, there is nothing that bad about what I have now.
I have recently moved onto the paid version of Evernote, so I am trying to get my head round how it works and make better use of it. No substitute for actually using the thing of course.
Not much else being going on lately. Took eldest daughter in to work with me for a day, a few weeks ago. I was keen to show that I did not just sit at an office desk all day, so I took her to an event we were running. A lot of interesting people there, so some talks, and workshops, with a bit of networking thrown in. Probably useful for her to see me in a different environment, though her take on my networking was that I just spoke to all the pretty girls! Showed her our press room when we got back to the office, and she had a chat with a comms officer I've worked with on stuff before, so a pretty good day for her. Of course mostly I do just sit in the office, but if something interesting comes up, I'll see if I can bring her in again. It does make you look at your own day, and work, differently if you are showing it to a member of your family. I do actually like my job, and I think that I am pretty good at it!
The weather has gone to a perpetual cloudy/rain on google weather now. Seldom quite as alarming as the forecast, but I was rushing this weekend to get the grass mowed, and fill up the brown recycling bin with hedge trimmings before it gets emptied. There are so many shrubs and hedges, that I really cannot afford to miss a fortnightly uplift. In terms of harvesting we had a bumper redcurrent crop, what a useful fruit bush, had some gooseberries already, strawberries been good, but fading now. The red onions should be ready soon, and the courgettes are currently flowering so the courgettes should be ready soon. I've planted out some curly Kale. The apple trees are all fuller than I have ever seen them before. While the damson might manage a single damson this year, another record crop! Fruit trees and bushes just seem to get steadily better year on year, the first few years don't really tell you anything.
I just feel like one last push on with work stuff, and then flop into a well deserved rest.
This is my blog. There is no end of random stuff here that I have written over the years. My collection of stories about imaginary cities, called 101 Quiet Cities is now available on Kindle. I'll post new stories here from time to time.
