Beech Woods near Cambridge

 

Furthermore: June 2005

June 29, 2005

Book Stats part 2

I thought the long tail of the author distribution would be of some interest (to me if nobody else), so here it is. These are all the authors who I’ve read 5 or more times (including re-readings):

• Brian Aldiss - read a whole load of these in my teens. A great SF stylist.


• Greg Bear - also in my teens. Terrific SF ideas - Blood Music was way ahead of the curve on nanotechnology ideas.


• James Blaylock - whimsical fantasy - I liked The Digging Leviathan and The Last Coin. Couldn’t read his recent stuff.


• John Brunner - another SF master - read The Sheep Look Up and Stand on Zanzibar. I was at the 95 Worldcon in Glasgow when he died.


• Raymond Chandler - I love these.


• GK Chesterton - terrific sense of wonder and paradox. Somewhat dodgy politics.


• John Crowley - number 2 in my most read authors list.


• Robertson Davies - complex, satisfying novels with a great depth of humour and wisdom.



• Dan Dennett - I started reading his philosophy at University before I knew who he was. Consciousness Explained is a really good study even if you completely disagree with it (I don’t).


• Philip K Dick - great SF with a huge helping of paranoia.


• Greg Egan - a terrific SF writer who really knows his science.


• Umberto Eco - not so keen on the recent stuff but I liked The Name of the Rose and some of the non-fiction.


• Philip Jose Farmer - read the Riverworld books. Shouldn’t bother with the rest.


• George McDonald Fraser - Flashman of course. Read Black Ajax too. Great sense of history.


• William Gibson - king of cyberpunk. Not sure how Neuromancer etc would hold up now, but they blew me away at the time.


• Frank Herbert - Dune and sequels. A great bit of SF worldbuilding.



• Stephen King - a master storyteller.


• Joe Lansdale - fun crime novels in the deep South.


• Ursula LeGuin - terrific SF.


• Primo Levi - I love The Wrench.


• Armistead Maupin - number 3 in my author chart.


• Robert Pirsig - re-read both his books at least once.


• Anthony Powell - makes it onto the list because A Dance to the Music of Time is in 12 books. It’s worth it though.


• Terry Pratchett - I read no end of these in my teens and 20s - I got the first 3 discworld books as a school prize after reading Dave Langford’s review of The Colour of Magic - “my ceiling is covered in brown spots from where I tried to read Pratchett and drink beer at the same time.”



• Chris Priest - strange, psychological SF and fantasy. Later stuff is actually better - check out The Prestige


• JK Rowling - ’nuff said.


• JD Salinger - especially Franny and Zooey


• Dave Sim - the Cerebus comics were collected in about 6 graphic novels up to where I gave up. The guy is a loon, but the first parts of Cerebus are good.


• Ian Watson - terrific SF imagination. I haven’t read anything by him for a long time though.


• Gene Wolfe - my number one fave author.

June 28, 2005

Book Stats

I just looked at my reading list and I noticed that at the end of 2006 I shall have been logging books I’ve read for 20 years. Since the rate has dropped off to almost nothing I thought I’d pre-empt the anniversary and see what interesting stats I can derive from it.

The numbers are that I’ve read about 700 books - that’s about 35 a year average, but the numbers are skewed as my reading habit has dropped right off in the last couple of years (partly having children, partly not commuting to London). There are about 630 distinct titles, but only 240 distinct authors - so I don’t re-read that much, but I do read more by the same person if I like something.

Top re-reads by Title:

• AEgypt by John Crowley


• Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin

I’ve read both of these 4 times it seems, and funnily enough I was just talking about both these authors recently. I’m not sure they have much in common, apart from both evoking very fully realised characters in a world that seems just a little richer than the one we inhabit day to day.

3 readings:

• Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger - my favourite Salinger. Short, but wonderfully drawn characters.


• Little, Big by John Crowley - start here with Crowley if you have time to read it.



• Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons - I re-read this quite recently and it holds up well. The ending now has (to me) a layer of sad irony since 9/11.


• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig - I read this when I was very unhappy at college and it resonated with me then. I’ve read it again since and it still seems to say some smart things.


• The Mathematical Experience by Philip Davies and Reuben Hersh - I read this first in 6th form and it was one of the books that inspired me to do my degree in mathematics. It bears re-reading, and it gives a real insight into the range and depth of the subject.

The strange thing about the lists above is that they omit my favourite author - Gene Wolfe. I don’t seem to have re-read any of his stuff more than once - I’m not sure why, maybe they seemed too daunting. Also, Wolfe is a lot more prolific than Crowley. If you look at the list of most-read authors though, you get a more accurate view of who I read the most:

• Gene Wolfe - 40 readings


• John Crowley - 18 readings



• Armistead Maupin - 16 readings

The author distribution has a more interesting long tail than the books, so I might post about that later.

June 23, 2005

Reading

I’ve really not managed to read very much at all so far this year, but while I was on holiday I re-read two of the Tales of the City books that I didn’t re-read before: Babycakes and Significant Others. I enjoyed them both a lot - there’s something about the atmosphere that the books conjure that I just want to be there in San Francisco.

Then two things I discovered on the web - Charles Stross’s Accelerando is available for free download. I read the first part - Lobsters - when it was in Asimov’s but the rest is new to me and I’m really enjoying it.

The other is kind of the apex of literary anticipation for me - John Crowley’s new book is out. It’s called Lord Byron’s Novel - The Evening Land. I’ve ordered from Amazon already. There’s a good review by John Clute available. I’ve read pretty much everything by Crowley and I’m really looking forward to this.

Clute suggests that the fourth AEgypt novel may also be done soon (although that’s a bit of a relative term for Crowley) and will be called Endless Things. True Crowley fiends may also be interested in the Little, Big 25th Anniversary Edition - check it out, it will be a tremendous edition if the subscription succeeds.

June 20, 2005

Back from my holiday

Just back from a week away in Watchet (near Minehead). It was really nice to get away from work, email, blogs etc for a while and just spend some time with my family.

I’ll try to work up a post about what we did and where we went, but I’m not really feeling up to it at the moment. I still seem to have the tail-end of a cold that started the week before we went away, and just about lasted through to the end.

I meant to write about going to the London Geek Dinner, which was great fun - everyone I met was really friendly. I got to meet Bob Scoble - ironically he’d been up in Cambridge all day, and I’d just come down from there to meet him in London. I spoke to him about the idea of having a geek dinner in Cambridge but since then my cold and the holiday intervened so I haven’t pursued the idea any further yet. Bob - I will get in touch, and you can tell me if this is a really a good idea or if you were just being polite to me

June 6, 2005

For any newcomers who may have wandered in…

I’m going to the Bob Scoble + Hugh McLeod Geek Dinner in London tomorrow night so I’m unlikely to be posting again till I get back. Since a few people might check out the site as a result, I thought I’d just post a brief intro to what’s going on here.

So, I’m Matt Freestone. I’m married with two young daughters, and I live and work in Cambridge (UK). I work for Sungard as a software developer in their trading and risk group. I don’t really blog about that, but I’m happy in my job - I’m working with some smart people, the company doesn’t mess me around, and I’m close to home. My CV lives here if you are interested in that sort of thing.

I’ve built various websites pretty much since I got a Demon account with some webspace in the early 90’s. Furthermore is the latest incarnation - it’s been going nearly 2 years now. As you can tell, it’s a personal site - I get about 20-30 site visits a day, according to latest stats. Some things you may want to check out:

• Cambridge - posts about living and working here. I’ve been back here nearly 4 years now - I studied my degree here, then moved to London for several years. I’m currently cataloguing Cambridge blogs - you can see my list on Del.icio.us, or there’s an OPML file you can use if you want.


• Book, film, and TV reviews.



• Family Tree - I’ve been trying to get some of the family tree online. This is the tree so far.


• Jobhunting - from late 2003, but it still gets a lot of hits. I was working for a company called Mercator that was bought out. Pretty much all my office were made redundant. These pages are about how I went about getting a new job.


• Existential Horror Song - written and performed by my brother. Just the thing to cheer you up.

Charity Gig - Portland Arms

There’s a gig at the Portland Arms (near Mitchams Corner) on Friday 10th June at 7.30 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Live Aid. The money is going to Comic Relief.

Tickets are �3. Confirmed bands: (don’t ask me who any of these people are)

• Christena Maloney Band


• Quite a Smaller Believer



• Knights of Spring


• Triple H

More details from liveaid20 at gmail dot com

June 3, 2005

Freestone Family Tree

This will be the permanent link page for the family tree of my dad’s ancestors.

Thomas Freestone

b. c1795 m Mary Ann (Mansfield?)

• William Mansfield Freestone b1818 d1819


• Caroline Mansfield Freestone b 1820


• William Mansfield Freestone b1821


• George Freestone b1823



• Charles Freestone b1825


• James Freestone b1825 d1829


• Eleanor Freestone b1828


• James William Freestone b1830


• John Freestone
  

  b1831 m Elizabeth Jane ?





• John William
  

  Freestone b1857 m Fanny Crossley





• John W Freestone b~1878



• Edward Freestone b~1881


• Thomas Mansfield Freestone b~1883


• Elizabeth A Freestone b~1887


• Herbert Freestone b~1890


• Fanny Freestone b~1893


• Alfred Freestone b~1895


• May Freestone b~1899


• Sidney Freestone b~1901





• Caroline Freestone b~1860


• Thomas Mansfield
  

  Freestone b1861 m Ellen Ryalls





• Edwin T Freestone b~1885


• Frederick C Freestone b~1888


• John W Freestone b~1890


• Alfred Freestone b~1893


• Ernest Freestone b~1896


• Walter Freestone b~1898 - my grandfather



• Ada Freestone b~1900




• Charles HM Freestone b1866




• Benjamin Freestone b1833 d1833


• Eliza Freestone b1835

Thomas Freestone of Chelmsford (~1795 - 18??)

Thomas Freestone was my great great great grandfather - see the Family Tree

I haven’t looked at these records myself, but a person from the Freestone mailing

list kindly did this research for me.

Date	Event	References
~1795	Thomas Freestone born in Chelmsford?, Essex
~1815	Married Mary (or Mary Ann) Mansfield(?)
19 Oct 1817	Mary Ann Freestone born in Chelmsford	parish records
31 Dec 1818	William Mansfield Freestone born in Chelmsford (buried 5 Jan 1819)	parish records
28 Jul 1820	Caroline Mansfield Freestone born in Chelmsford	parish records
27 Dec 1821	William Mansfield Freestone born in Chelmsford	parish records
17 Aug 1823	George Freestone born in Chelmsford	parish records
6 Mar 1825	Charles Freestone born in Chelmsford	parish records
1 Aug 1825	James Freestone born in Chelmsford (buried 29 Aug 1829)	parish records
23 Jul 1828	Eleanor Freestone born in Chelmsford	parish records
11 Jul 1830	James William Freestone born in Chelmsford	parish records
5 Apr 1831	John Freestone born in Chelmsford	parish records
3 Apr 1833	Benjamin Freestone born in Chelmsford (buried 9 Apr 1833)	parish records
12 Mar 1835	Eliza Freestone born in Chelmsford (buried 9 May 1835)	parish records
3q1870	?Mary Ann (wife) died age 58	parish records

The family seems to have lived in Union Yard/Barrack Lane. Thomas was

feltmonger/leather dresser.

Other factoids I have from my correspondent’s email:

A Mary Ann Freestone of old Barrack Lane was buried in 1 Jul 1835 age 40yrs. Not sure

who that is.

I could not find a marriage for Thomas and Mary Ann.

There was a girl named Susanna Mansfield who had about four illigitimate children

around this time period. I was wondering if she was a sister to Mary Ann.

Also I could not find John Freestone in the 1841 census, it was so faded

I could not read it.

He was not in 1851 census, but: In the 1851 Census there was the following

Family at Chelmsford.


At 4 Conduit Square Thomas Freestone, Head, Mar, 35, Glover, born in Chelmsford.

Ann Freestone, Wife, Mar, 38, born in Chelmsford

Elizabeth Jennings, Sister-in Law, 40, born in Chelmsford

This Thomas Freestone could be another son of Thomas and Mary Ann. He

would have been born about 1816, but there was no christening record for him.

Thomas and Ann were in the 1861 Census, but Thomas was a widower in 1871.

Thomas Mansfield Freestone (1861-1940)

Thomas Mansfield Freestone was my great-grandfather - see the Family Tree

Date	Event	References
3q1861	Thomas Mansfield Freestone born in Sheffield to John and Elizabeth Freestone	GRO - Sheffield 9c 398 3q1861
3q1882	Married Mary Ellen Ryalls	GRO Sheffield 9c398 3q1882
~1885	Son, Edwin T Freestone born in Chelmsford	1901 census
~1888	Son, Frederick C Freestone born in Grantham	1901 census
~1890	Son, John W Freestone born in Nuneaton	1901 census
1891	Family living in Nuneaton at 6 Seymour Rd near to John W (brother). Thomas M working as skinner in leather factory.	1891 Census
~1893	Son, Alfred Freestone born in Nuneaton	1901 census
~1896	Son Ernest Freestone born in Havant, Hants	1901 census
~1898	Son, Walter Freestone (my grandfather) born in Worcester
~1900	Daughter, Ada Freestone born in Worcester	1901 census
1901	Boarding in Lincoln with son Edwin at 10 St Marks Sq, with Nicols family. Other children with Ellen in Sheffield.	1901 census
1q1940	Died, Lincoln � recorded age 77	GRO - Lincoln 7a1637 1q1940

John William Freestone (1858 - 19??)

John William Freestone was my great-grandfather’s brother - see the Family Tree

Date	Event	References
2q1858	John William Freestone born in Sheffield, son of John and Elizabeth Freestone.	GRO - Sheffield 9c 365 2q1857
3q1877	Married Fanny Crossley	GRO - Sheffield 9c 585
~1878	Son, John W Freestone born in Sheffield	1891 Census
~1881	Son, Edward Freestone born in Sheffield	1891 Census
~1883	Son, Thomas Mansfield Freestone born in Sheffield	1901 census
~1887	Daughter, Elizabeth A Freestone born in Grantham	1901 census
~1890	Son, Herbert Freestone born in Grantham	1901 census
1891	Family at Seymour Road, Nuneaton, John working as skinner in wool factory. Thomas M (brother) also in same road. Children present: John W, 13, Edward, 10, Thomas, 8, Elizabeth, 4, Herbert, 1	1891 Census
~1893	Daughter, Fanny Freestone born in Grantham	1901 census
~1895	Son, Alfred Freestone born in Grantham	1901 census
~1899	Daughter, May Freestone born in Grantham	1901 census
~1901	Son, Sidney Freestone born in Grantham	1901 census
1901	Family living at 7 Temperance Place, Grantham. John W (son) and Edward not present. Tom working as grocers asst.	1901 census
19??	died

I’m looking for the following on John William (father):

• a death record - can’t find one on FreeBMD

I can’t find John W (son) in the 01 census. Edward is present - he’s working as a master baker in Worksop. I haven’t looked at his household record for children.

Furthermore: May 2005

May 26, 2005

Political Links

Hopelessly out of date as usual. With a surveillance flavour this time

• The Register - UK Automated Number Plate Recognition


• The Register - The Met Chief on ID Cards


• Bruce Schneier - comment on a report on Global Surveillance Infrastructure


• Statewatch - the report on Global Surveillance infrastructure (big PDF)

Cambridge Links

• Cambridge 2000 Project - lots of photos of the city



• John Beardsworth - lots more great photos. I recognised some of his Cambridge ones from our calendar.

May 23, 2005

John Freestone (1831 - 188?)

John Freestone is my great great grandfather - see the Family Tree

Date	Event	References
5 April 1831	John Freestone Born at Union Yard, Chelmsford, Essex to Thomas and Mary Ann Freestone	1881 census. Parish records
~1850s	Married Elizabeth Jane of Gloucester	1861 census
2q1857	Son, John William Freestone born in Sheffield	1861 census GRO - Sheffield 9c 365 2q1857
~1860	Daughter, Caroline Freestone born in Sheffield	1861 census
1861	Census shows family living at Brightside Bierlow, Yorks. Children present John W and Caroline. Also Elizabeth R Cleveland b1849 and Alexander Cleveland b1854 marked as d.in law and son in law (can be step children or other).	1861 census
3q1861	Son, Thomas Mansfield Freestone born in Sheffield	1871 census GRO - Sheffield 9c 398 3q1861
1864	Insurance claim for flooding � 62 Mowbray Street, Sheffield Working as a feltmonger (skinner) for George Mills at Neepsend	Sheffield Uni
2q1866	Son, Charles HM Freestone born in Chelmsford	1881 census GRO - Chelmsford 4a174 2q1866
1871	Lodging in Brightfield Burlow	1871 census
1881	At 8 Wood Street, Nether Hallam, York	1881 census
?	Died

For John, I’m looking for:

• a death record. There’s a possible match at EcclesallB 9c 183 4q1883 but this may be another John. I can’t find John on the 1901 census so it seems likely to be before then.


• census records for 1841, 1851.


• more information on Elizabeth R Cleveland b1849 and Alexander Cleveland b1854 and their relationship to the family.

May 16, 2005

Investing - Introduction

I’ve been meaning to write about this topic for a while, and I haven’t got round to it because there’s too much for one post, and I only really get to think about blogging during the time I’m doing it, so it has to be fairly off the cuff.

So I’ve decided to do this in bits and use my personal experiences to hang the various bits on.

I’m now in my mid-thirties. I left University at 22 and started work on a modest graduate salary with the Woolwich Building Society (as was). Probably the first couple of years I didn’t save anything - I spent what came in on rent, food and going out. So on that basis I’ve been saving for about 10 years.

Once my salary hit about 18k (after I’d been at the Woolwich for a while) I started putting some money into a separate account. In fact that’s probably Lesson One as far as I’m concerned: hide the money you don’t want to spend. Just having it in a different account makes you think about it separately.

I’m going to stick to my small chunks rule: more soon. Probably on IFAs.

May 10, 2005

LibDems take Cambridge

Way too late, but I was pleased to see the end of Anne Campbell’s time as my MP, and her replacement by David Howarth of the Liberal Democrats. This election was the first time I’ve been involved in campaigning for a political party and it was nice that it was the winning one.

I was inspired to get involved after going to the No2id meeting in January. I spoke to a couple of LibDem councillors after the meeting and they gave me the impression that Cambridge was winnable. Since I was well fed up with Labour by then, I started leafletting for them, and I even did a bit of knocking up on Election Day - a slightly nerve-wracking experience, I have to say.

Still, I’m hoping to do a bit more, particularly as youngest Freestone gets old enough not to need a feed at 11pm - that really buggers your evening up (although I am grateful for the fact that she doesn’t need feeding at 2-3am now).

Update on Things to Come

Writing the piece on Henwood below makes me realise I really do want to post a bit more about investing - I have various thoughts on investing and pensions and what I’m trying to achieve, and it would be good to get them out there to see how mad they look when exposed to public scrutiny.

While I’m thinking about my list of things to post about I see I also mentioned redundancy consultations - I think that will have to go on the back-burner for a bit (uh, if there is a burner any further back that is). Touchy subject at the moment.

After tentatively trying to formulate answers for Options, Futures and Other Derivatives into blog posts I’ve given up on the idea - I’m getting through the questions now, so I don’t really feel the need to post.

Updating the site is still on the agenda - just a question of time. I’m also still monitoring my Cambridge blog list so I’ll be updating that at some point with an idea of how regularly the various journals are updated.

Wall Street - Doug Henwood

(Verso, ISBN 0860916707)

Okay, it’s not really a review, but this is so far the only book I’ve read lately, and that only because I heard it was available online for free (via a thread on Crooked Timber). I enjoyed After the New Economy and I thought this was also good.

It’s partly a primer on what the markets are all about, what they’re for and how they work. Since it’s by Henwood, it’s from a left perspective, which in a book about high finance, is kind of a unique perspective. For that reason, even if you know about the markets, you’re likely to learn some new things, or at least have your ideas challenged in an intelligent way.

I thought the chapters on company financing and debt were very interesting - the relative unimportance of raising money in the markets is quite striking, and makes me think twice about getting back into equities.

Furthermore: April 2005

April 28, 2005

Gmail invites

I have a bunch of these, if there’s still anyone left that wants one. Reply here, or to matt dot freestone at gmail dot com

April 26, 2005

The Plough, Fen Ditton

Went to the Plough at Fen Ditton on Sunday for lunch. The food’s not the greatest, but it’s okay - Brewers Fayre I think. The main attraction is to be able to sit outside by the river and enjoy a drink and a meal with friends.

More on Cambridge Blogs

After a little work, I have a list of about 50 blogs that have been updated within the last year at least. You can see my list here:

del.icio.us/crocomancer/cambridge+blog

or if you look in the left column of the main page of this blog you’ll see all the feeds I could find in the blogroll. If you want to use them yourself, I have exported them to OPML here

If you have a blog you think I’ve missed, then by all means post a comment, drop me a mail, or just add an entry to delicious with the tags cambridge and blog - I have a feed for that page so I’ll see it sooner or later.

My plan now is to just sit on the links in bloglines for a couple of weeks or so and see what gets updated regularly, occasionally and not at all. I’ll probably add some more tags to the delicious list after that.

April 19, 2005

LibDems and NotApathetic

Just been out leafletting for the Cambridge LibDems and also for NotApathetic.com. I resisted the temptation to put deliver both sets of leaflets to the same houses - didn’t seem right somehow, so that added quite a lot onto the time it took.

Also just dumped my lazyweb idea for a living will generator onto the mysociety wiki.

Still lots of Cambridge blogs to sort through - I want to put as many of the feeds as possible into my Bloglines blogroll + update the delicious list with a quick comment on each blog.

April 14, 2005

Cambridge Blogs

I’ve been doing a quick (hah - it’s taken much longer than I thought) survey of Cambridge (UK) blogs. By a blog here, I basically mean something with an RSS or Atom feed. I’ve also restricted myself to individual or small group blogs.

So far I’ve found about 35 active sites using a mixture of Google, Technorati, and following other peoples blogrolls. I’m in two minds whether to list the sites here directly or just keep them on delicious. So far I’ve not really added any description for the sites, but I’ll go through the list now and have a go at that as I get some time. I’ll also try to add the rest of the feeds to my Blogroll.

I estimated there to be somewhere between 100 and 200 blogs in Cambridge before I started (guessing 1 in a 1000 are bloggers in the city basically). I haven’t really searched everything yet, so there could easily be as many again that I haven’t found, which would give 70 or so, which is not far off.

Anyway, if you are blogging in Cambridge (UK) and you see this, post a comment and I’ll add you to the delicious list (or just post there with the tags Cambridge and blog and I’ll see it when I next check that feed).

Update: I’ve now got about 45 sites, and I’m starting to see links back to sites I’ve seen already. There seem to be a lot of LiveJournalists in Cambridge. I’ve turned trackback on for this post (it’s going off again if I get a lot of spam) so you can use that too now.

Places to Go

I’ve just created a new category of Places to Go, which I’ll be using for all excursions, holidays, and suchlike. There’s a few pieces there already - Burghley House, Cromer, Wimpole Hall. More soon.

April 12, 2005

Election Links

I seem to have seen a fair number of election-related links, so I thought I’d gather them together here.

• Chris Lightfoot on the polling evidence - lots of interesting stuff, particularly if you live in Cambridge. I’m supporting the Lib Dems here (for this election at least) and there’s at least some hope here that the seat might be winnable, although it depends a lot how you massage the numbers. We’ll see on the night.



• Not Apathetic - one of the MySociety projects. I’ve sorta volunteered through the as-yet unfinished PledgeBank to deliver 100 leaflets in the local area. Blogging should reach at least 3 more…


• Pledgebank - another one I just saw. Mr Lightfoot wants some help comparing reasons for not voting logged on NotApathetic.


• VoxPolitics - just saw this the other day. Politics and social software for the UK


• Make My Vote Count - online petition for fair votes. via Paul Oldham on cam.misc

April 7, 2005

Links

I’m using del.icio.us for links now, and I want to push the feed onto this site, but I haven’t got round to writing the bits of script yet, so here’s a little catch-up:

• Petals Round the Rose - yeah, everyone’s seen it, but it’s still a nice little puzzle.


• Joseph Mugnaini - when I was very little, my dad read Ray Bradbury’s The Hallowe’en Tree to me and my brother. This guy did the fantastic illustrations.


• cam.misc - interesting thread on the workings of Cambridge City Council.



• How ID Cards were abolished - I heard David Howarth tell this story at the No2ID public meeting, but I couldn’t remember the details. Thanks to Richard for posting this.


• British Roads FAQ - via cam.misc. Ever wondered how the roads are numbered?


• How Rich Are You? - rough reckoner for your position in the global wealth list. Lots of quibbles could be made (and are in the CT comments) but it’s still a bit of an eye-opener.

More on Knee Problems

I went to see someone who actually knows about knees, and I’ve been diagnosed with chondromalacia - also known as runner’s knee as it is apparently pretty common in runners. Anyway, I have to rest the knee for a bit, and then I need to look into what might be causing the underlying problem - could be overpronation, although I’ve been using the same kind of fairly neutral shoes for a long time now without any problem.

Furthermore: March 2005

March 29, 2005

Excel Trick - counting lists of things

Probably there’s some neat built in way to do this, but I don’t know it if there is. Suppose you have a list, which may contain multiple copies of each item in it. You want to know how many of each there are.

ie, suppose I have a, b, a, c, b, a, d, c, b - how many of each thing do I have?

Okay, put all the items in a column, then sort it, so that all the a’s are together, all the b’s etc. Call that column A. Now in column B, put a 1 in row 1, then starting at row 2, use this formula: IF(A2=A1, B1+1, 1) - fill down to the end. The successive cells in the column will count up from 1 to however many of each thing you have.

Ah, but how can you extract the highest numbered item of group of identical items easily? Simple: column C - use this formula: IF(B2

March 28, 2005

Things to Come

I feel slightly nervous writing about what I’m planning to write about, but maybe it will give me some impetus to actually get on with it. Let’s check back in a month and see what I’ve managed to do:

• pensions - I’ve just managed to turn my mass of work and personal pensions into something I actually understand, so I figure some notes on what I did might be helpful to a few people.


• redundancy consultations - I was made redundant from a software company in late 2003. I was an employee representative in the consultation, and while there are things I’m not allowed to say about the process, a lot of what I learnt generally would be useful to people dumped into the same situation.


• Options, Futures and Other Derivatives - I’m in two minds about this - my idea is that as I do the exercises, I should blog them. It’ll give me an incentive to actually do them. Or will it just make me nervous? I’m going to give it some thought.



• Site design - I want to tweak the design a bit - I want a right hand column into which I can push my delicious entries. I know it’s only a template away, but it might take me a while to get round to it.

March 25, 2005

Knee Problems

I’ve been having some trouble with my right knee for several weeks now. It aches just on the inside of the joint when I’m running, and it persists after the run, which made me worried about doing too much with it.

I’ve been to the doctor and she said there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it, so after a bit of rest, I’ve started running again with a knee support. I suppose I should be grateful that I’ve had about 10 years without any injuries, but it’s still annoying when something that’s become such an important ritual in my life is suddenly threatened without there being any apparent cause as to why the knee should suddenly start playing up.

March 20, 2005

Wimpole Hall

We went to Wimpole Hall yesterday. Didn’t see the Hall itself, but we saw some of the grounds, which are beautiful, and we visited Wimpole Hall Farm which was a big hit with eldest daughter (3). They have lots of animals to pet, and it was a really nice day out. It’s about �15 for 2 adults + 1 child 3 or over to do the farm. You have to pay separately for the Hall itself, or I think you can get an inclusive ticket.

My only gripe: if the weather’s nice, bring your own food - the restaurant was very overpriced and not much good at all. Apart from that, we’ll definitely be coming back to do some of the walks, and probably see the farm again.

March 8, 2005

For Sale / Free

I’ve got a few things I want rid of:

high chair - good condition, it’s just a bit big for our house and doesn’t fold down much. If that’s not a problem for you then you are welcome to it - free to good home.

Big collection of 2000AD comics. Everything from prog 2 to about prog 750. I think there’s one missing. The early ones are variably well preserved, but all readable. More recent ones (about 400 onwards) are in good nick - �50 ono. These are at my parents’ place, so if you are interested, let me know, and I’ll go up there and bring them back here.

I’ve also got annuals from 1978 to 1991. Make me an offer.

Interzone - issue 27 to 176 (maybe one or two gaps). �50 ono.

If you’re interested in anything, email me: matt at this domain.

March 3, 2005

Amazon Yellow Pages and Keyhole

I love sites that let you zoom into maps or aerial photos, even better are the ones where you can navigate at street level such as the late, lamented DizzyCity.

Anyway, to fill the gap left by DizzyCity, Amazon are now doing Yellow Pages for some of the big US cities. For instance I was pretty impressed with this Yellow Pages link to New York which shows the part of 8th Avenue where the Incentra Village House Hotel is (stayed there last time I was in New York). I think it’s pretty amazing the way you can walk up and down the street. They cover SF and some other places too.

Over at Google, if you have broadband, you can download a trial version of Keyhole. It’s like having a geographical globe you can zoom right into. Coverage is better for some places than others, but I was impressed with it as something to play with - I can imagine the educational value for instance.

Furthermore: February 2005

February 28, 2005

Not Reading

Back after another longish hiatus. I just finished my first book of this year: Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Looking back at last year, I see I only read 19 books altogether, and it looks like I may do even worse this year.

I’m not too happy about that, but I just don’t seem to have the concentrated bits of time in which to read anymore. Or at least, when I do have them, I have other things I want to do more than reading. It makes me uneasy though - I’ve always enjoyed reading, and I think it’s important. What does it say about me that I’m ceasing to be a reader (or at least, a book reader - I still read online sources).

February 7, 2005

Timisoara cathedral

Another old picture, this one is from August 1999, when I went to Timisoara in Romania with some friends to see the solar eclipse. I stayed with a Romanian family and it was a great experience.

February 1, 2005

Letter to Anne Campbell MP

Thank you for your prompt reply to my somewhat intemperate letter. I amvery pleased to hear that you are unhappy with the idea of detention without trial.You’ve made a number of points that I feel I should respond to.

Firstly, on the question of the existing detainees at Belmarsh: I actually take the view that law governing their detention that was recently ruled unlawful by the Law Lords actually sidestepped the difficult issue which we now confront quite neatly.

Obviously, I would prefer nobody to be detained without trial (we all agree that it’s a Bad Thing), however, in the case of the existing detainees we are dealing with foreign nationals who we would normally deport (I assume).

The reason we don’t do so in these cases is the threat to their human rights in their countries of origin. However, as I understand it, the detainees are free to leave at any time if they choose to return home, or can find a third country that will take them. I don’t mean to be flippant about the difficulties that they face in this, but they do have options.

Conversely, because the law applies only to foreign nationals, I don’t see it as a threat to the freedoms of UK citizens. I’ve tried to give the Government this much credit: that the measure imposed was as limited as possible.

Now the Law Lords have taken a higher stand on principle, but the Government’s response to this seems wholly disproportionate to me.

I feel sure that you understand at least as well as I do the idea that we are free people, and that the Goverment is our servant. Central to that is the idea that if we’re accused of something, we get a day in court to argue our case before our peers.

The current proposals undermine that fatally - Governments cannot be trusted with the sole power to determine who shall be detained. Nor can a secret review process be trusted to uphold the rights of the people detained. It’s not a question of the goodwill or integrity of the people entrusted with the power. It’s just a fact of those kind of systems. Only openness ensures justice will (eventually) prevail.

I’ve read the summary on Abu Qattara, and he sounds like a dangerous fanatic. You ask how we should deal with him - implicitly I suppose you mean if not by detaining him without trial? If I see someone in the street doing something dangerous, and I tell them to stop, I don’t think I’m actually obliged to offer them an alternative occupation.

The Government has access to much smarter people than me, and I can’t believe this is the best they can do. If you want my opinion, then I would say there seems to be plenty of scope for prosecuting Mr Qattara with, say, receiving stolen money, or perhaps incitement to racial hatred.

In the more general case, I appreciate the difficulty of exposing secret operations in the course of prosecutions, but I think it’s wildly overstated - we know that phones and emails can be intercepted (the Government must be the only people still pretending not to know what Echelon is) and that evidence should be admissible in court. Everyone has a right to a fair trial.

I would appreciate it if you would pass my concerns on to the Home Office. I’d also like to know whether your distaste for detention without trial would extend as far as voting against the current proposals.

Furthermore: January 2005

January 26, 2005

Grand Arcade

I just saw the Grand Arcade project website the other day. If you hunt within it, you can find some pictures of what the new mall will look like when it’s finished.

Nine Wells

I discovered this site the other day, which has a variety of walks around Cambridge. Since I’d recently been reading about Hobsons Conduit, I decided to do the Nine Wells walk as a run. I enjoyed it (although my right knee started playing up - probably a sign I need new trainers) and it looks like I can extend the run by going up the hill past Nine Wells towards Shelford.

January 24, 2005

Ancient Cartoon

I’m hoping to do a some new cartoons, but as everything in my life is currently undergoing tiny-baby chaos, I thought I should at least put down a marker for my efforts. I have a few of these old ones, which reflect being a maths student when the Farside was very popular. Not sure what new cartoons might look like yet.

January 19, 2005

New Baby

The reason I’ve not really managed to blog anything for a while is that Mrs Freestone and I just had our second baby, Eleanor. She’s just starting to go crazy in the baby carrier strapped to my chest as I write this so it looks like I’m not going to get anything more done this evening either.

Piccy for those who are interested.

Furthermore: December 2004

December 27, 2004

Fentimans Ginger Beer and Orange Jigger

One more while I’m in blogging mode. Fentimans Ginger Beer has long been a favourite in our house (although often rather hard to get for some reason - it seems to come and go at Sainsburys, although I’ve also sometimes seen it in one of the off licences on Mill Road). So when I saw Fentimans Orange Jigger in Sainsburys, I thought I should give it a try.

Verdict - it’s okay, but probably not worth a pound a throw. Mrs Freestone described it as being like a “weak St Clements - not orangey or lemony enough”. That seems to about sum it up I’m afraid. Buy another one of the Ginger Beers instead.

Hotel Felix and Loch Fyne Restaurant

While I’m in catch-up mode, I went to both of these places recently. The visit to Hotel Felix was for a work Christmas do. I thought the food was good - and there were good alternatives to the standard turkey. While I wouldn’t say there was not enough food, you also couldn’t accuse them of being over-generous. I think this was mainly about style rather than stinginess, but it depends on your taste I guess. The hotel itself is nice, although the modern extension looks a bit jarring to my eye. A good place for a special occasion, although I’d take the Crown and Punchbowl over this any day.

Loch Fyne is a nice relaxed place to go - we went as two couples with two small children + another grown-up and nobody felt at all out of place. I’ve always had good food there - this time I had kippers followed by bream, all of which was delicious. The service was very friendly and overall it was a lovely occasion. Be prepared to pay accordingly though - not much change out of 200 pounds for 5 adults and 2 children once you include the tip.

St Ives

So, no post for a while - been busy with work and other stuff. Anyway, today we had a drive up to St Ives, which I’ve not seen before. To be honest, it’s not that exciting, plus the weather was absolutely freezing. We had lunch at the Golden Lion in the High Street - kind of generic chain pub food, but it was cosy, and the food was fine.

Then we walked up to the Ouse and I saw the Dolphin Hotel (may be called something else now) and I realised I had been to St Ives before. When I was a student and secretary of the CU Humanist Workshop, I had lunch there with Gerd Sommerhoff. I remember the food being good (although since I was a student, I was hardly accustomed to eating in hotel restaurants) but I’d totally forgotten about the meal until I saw the hotel again. Quite a strange deja vu experience really - uncovering a little bit of lost past.

December 7, 2004

ID Cards

I’ve become involved in the No2id campaign to prevent the Government from introducing ID cards and a national identity register. The local group here in Cambridge had its second meeting last night, and managed to rather overwhelm our chosen venue of The Old Spring. This was partly my fault as I posted the time and place to cam.misc, from where it reached Indymedia. Anyway, the upshot was that from a first meeting of 3 people, we had a second of nearly 30.

We had a good mix of backgrounds and views, and the current plan is to organise a public meeting for early next year. If you are interested, do drop me a line, visit the No2id site, or subscribe to the local group email list.

Furthermore: November 2004

November 25, 2004

The Crown and Punchbowl

Just a quick one. Mrs Freestone and I went to the Crown and Punchbowl at Horningsea last week. I’d been once before - it was the only time I went out for lunch at my last company and I heard so many bad things in an hour that it was one of the things that clinched my decision to leave. Anyway, the food was very good and the staff seemed pretty knowledgeable, and also willing to work with my wife’s dairy intolerance to produce something interesting. Wine list was also good - I had a glass of 3 different wines and they were all very good selections (and this was from the cheaper end of the list).

Anyway, nice place. Nice evening out. Bring a full wallet though. We spend 60 pounds without really pushing the boat out. I could see a blow out costing 80 to 100 without too much trouble.

Political Links

• Crooked Timber - interesting links and discussion on Putin’s power grab after the Beslan tragedy. Should have posted this months ago of course.



• Spy Blog - National Identity Register and Citizens Information Project


• Spy Blog - Childrens Bill


• Spy Blog - Civil Contingencies Bill

There we go, one global worry, and three pieces of truly dreadful local legislation. The thing that bothers me here is that most people have only the vaguest idea that there even is a Children’s Bill never mind what it says. I have to admit I’d only heard of the Civil Contingencies bill in a snippet on the radio before I read about it on Spy Blog. Bit late to complain now. Oh well, there’s still ID cards - more on that soon.

November 23, 2004

Links

• via James Tauber - Dragon Optical Illusion. Very cool cut out and make illusion that works by making you think something is convex when it’s really concave.


• Jabberwocky Translations - what it says on the tin.

Getting Things Done

I recently read Getting Things Done by Dave Allen and I thought it was great. I guess it’s been blogged to death by now, but I thought I’d just add my tuppence worth.

It gives you a system for managing all your tasks and projects. It’s lightweight, works from the bottom up (ie you don’t have to define your life goals before you start) and I’ve found it really works for me. I have a much clearer picture of what I want to get done, and mainly for that reason, I’m actually doing it.

It’s fair to say that I’m in a bit of a stock-taking phase of my life at the moment anyway, so perhaps I would be doing these things without the book (or, perhaps the book attracts me because it chimes in with what I want to do) but I’ve found that applying the system at home and at work has really given me a lot more control.

I think I’ll be writing some more on this when the first enthusiasm dies down, but I also kind of expect that once the mountain of small stuff is out of my head, it’ll give me more time to think and do the things I’ve been putting off by saying I have too much other stuff to do - ie the things I want to do, but which frighten me a bit.

November 13, 2004

Wha’ Happen?

So what happened to the blogging I was going to do? I had several things lined up and then I just haven’t got down to doing it. The main reason is that I found (for various reasons) that I’d become addicted to my feed reader. Not in a crack-cocaine sort of way, but it became apparent to me that I was using up time reading stuff in there when I should have been doing other things.

I’m not normally susceptible to this sort of thing I think, so it was interesting to me that I’d got sucked into a kind of irrational behaviour. The main reasons I think were firstly a desire to escape from what I should be doing (for reasons I won’t go into at the moment), and secondly, the way feeds are presented attracts the obsessively tidy part of me - once I see an unread item I have to read it or at least decide that I don’t want to read it. Hence, the more often I check the feeds, the more stuff I have to read.

The thing that became apparent to me since I stopped is that there’s also a really strong (but largely fake) sense of community in the blogosphere. I don’t mean that there isn’t a community of people who are genuinely communicating with each other - of course there is. But for me, I realised that I had found myself thinking that if I read the things those people read, and made the odd peripheral comment, then I was part of it too. Crazy. But it’s always attractive to think you’re part of the in-crowd.

Anyway, I feel I have a better handle on how I need to act to get the best out of feeds and blogs now. I’ll maybe talk a bit more about that another time.

Rice Dream

Okay, this is dumb, but I’ve been trying out different non-dairy alternatives to use instead of milk on my cereal in the morning (I’m not allergic, I just want to cut down on dairy a bit). Finally I can announce that the winner is Rice Dream. It’s not quite like milk, but it has a very similar sweetness and generally functions as a good substitute. Just thought I’d mention it - share and enjoy.

Furthermore: October 2004

October 18, 2004

Links

• via Crooked Timber - John Crowley on Pogo



• Juggling Lab - cool Java app to perform juggles based on the standard notation.


• via Slashdot - Techworld on the hardware behind the Echelon surveillance system.


• Juan Cole - interesting piece of analysis of the Pentagon spying scandal. No, not the Plame thing, the other one.

October 16, 2004

A few local items

Just a quick plug for the local Tumbletots which my daughter has been going to for a few weeks now. It’s very professionally run and she has a great time. It’s really helped her develop her co-ordination too. Bit pricey, but I recommend it if you want something physical for your 2-3 year old.

For grown-ups, I just saw Cambridge pubs guide - they have a kind of tube map of the city, with the pubs along different routes. Quite up to date, and amazingly comprehensive - I’m sure I wouldn’t dare go in some of the places at all. Naming no names.

Oh, totally unrelated, but I got a big nostalgia hit from Ultimate Wurlde and which led me to Sabre Wulf PC - ah, many hours I spent, mapping that damn thing as a kid.

October 8, 2004

Links

• Crooked Timber - Zen Judaism (well, it made me laugh anyway)


• via CT - interview with Michael Marmot. He did some very interesting studies on the effects of status on health.


• Gilmore vs Ashcroft Homepage - the US seems to have a secret law that requires you to produce ID to fly internally. This guy wants to fly without showing id, but the Govt doesn’t want to show him the law that says he can’t.


• New York Review of Books - Terrific piece on Abu Ghraib reports.



• The Reg - Andrew Orlowski on the music industry and DRM. Most of it seems pretty sensible.


• via BoingBoing - cool app that overlays a virtual train onto real track. You can see and control the train via a PDA.


• Scoble - thoughts on how to keep up with the information flow that is enabled by RSS and similar technologies.


• Gothamist - text is about the anniversary of September 11. What I thought was interesting was the visualisation of the proposed Freedom Tower.


• CT on the US budget deficit - I liked the quote from CBS Marketwatch, “Get out now while there’s still an ample supply of fools.” I’m long gone.



• The New Yorker - on Kirkuk.


• The New Yorker - on Russia’s declining population and impending AIDS crisis.

October 4, 2004

New York 97

Not sure why I feel moved to write about this. A lot of the details just kind of popped back into my head. Perhaps it’s because I seem to have something of a continuing obsession with the place, even though I haven’t been there for 4 years, and I’m not likely to go back for a few more years yet.

Anyway, I was single, and needed a holiday - i’d always wanted to go to New York and it seemed like a good opportunity. I grabbed the Rough Guide and found a cheapish hotel in Manhattan - the Westpark (308 W 58th Street, 246-6440) just off Columbus Circle (I partly picked it because it was near Central Park, and I thought I’d like to do a run round there).

Since it was late September and quite chilly in Blackheath where I was living, I dressed for autumn, so I got a bit of a shock when I got off the plane and walked into what seemed like a heatwave. The sultry weather only let up the day I was due to leave.

Anway, I did the usual tourist stuff - the Empire State Building, the Metropolitan Museum, MoMA and the ferry. I did some sketching of the skyline from Liberty Island - I’ll see if I can scan that in.

[Update: pretty bad scan, but I did it with my webcam just to see how it would come out]

What else? I got a Big Apple Greeter tour from a guy called Larry - he walked me half way down the City from the Flatiron Building down to the World Trade Centre - and he was in his 70s. He showed me the big Barnes and Noble on Union Square - this was before every bookstore had a coffee bar - I was impressed. We also stopped by the Gourmet Garage and got sandwiches. I recommend Big Apple Greeter highly - it’s free, and the people really know what they’re talking about.

The main dilemma of the week came on Wednesday - I could either see Morrissey play in Central Park, or I could go to an SF reading downtown (Dixon Place, somewhere off the Bowery I think) where as luck would have it, Michael Swanwick was reading from Jack Faust which I’d just read on the plane over in proof form after my friend Tony gave me a copy. I chose downtown, and I met some interesting folks.

Then later in the week I went out to Long Island and met up with some people at the University of Stony Brook who I’d been talking to on the internet as they had a science fiction group out there. We had dinner and they put me up for the night. They had their own newsgroup, where I make a brief appearance.

I also had an interesting evening out with a guy from Japan - Keiji san, who I met by accident. I’d gone up to the Rainbow Room to have a drink and watch the sun go down (I know, very touristy but also quite spectacular) and I just met him at the bar. He was having a holiday in New York much like I was, so we had a few beers and it was a good evening.

The last day the weather cooled and I took in the annual Bookfair which closes off 5th Avenue (uh, I think it was 5th). I found a Japanese shop and got a terrific book on modular origami.

Anyway, it was a great holiday. I’ve been once again since then, which was even better (it was my honeymoon) but I’ll write about that another time maybe.

A History of God - Karen Armstrong

(Mandarin 0-7493-0692-0)

This is a fantastic book. I’ve been meaning to read it for quite a while, but I just had a course in London so I’ve been reading it on the trains in and out.

Armstrong considers the responses of Christians, Jews, and Muslims to the concept of God by looking at their beliefs through the ages. Personally, I found the first chapters looking at early Jewish belief the most fascinating. Abraham’s encounters with his God are almost those of peers, and Armstrong notes that when Moses meets God, He is at pains to point out that he is the god of Abraham, though He now seems much more angry and unapproachable.

The book traces this history forward through to the theology of the present day, giving a clear guide to the ideas that shaped belief in different ages. Along the way, Armstrong brings out the tensions inherent in the idea of god: the philosophical god who is so remote that he cannot be considered personal or perform actions in time. The mystical god who can only be apprehended by our own acts of creativity - an interesting parallel to the atheists view of god as purely an imaginary friend, or projection of our qualities. The personal god who at his best can be a source of inspiration and a link from humans to the transcendant, but who too easily becomes a idol, lacking mystery.

My personal beliefs are mainly atheist/Buddhist, but I found this book very useful in locating my non-belief in its historical context. I’m sure the same would be true for any thoughtful person whether believer or not.

Furthermore: September 2004

September 21, 2004

Browsable Paris

Just happened to see this as I was checking out what happened to a site I used to like - dizzycity.com. They had photos of practically every street intersection in Manhattan, plus loads of shops and restaurants - you could really browse the city. Anyhow, it’s gone, though there’s a shadow of the original in the Internet Archive.

Anyhow, there’s a similar site for Paris, that runs from their Yellow Pages site. It’s quite amazing. I put in the address of the hotel (good, but I wasn’t paying) I stayed at when I won a weekend break there back in December 2000 and you can go from there up to the Champs Elysees. Awesome.

September 14, 2004

Oliver Sacks

Two pieces I recently saw about Oliver Sacks. I’ve been fascinated by his books since I discovered “Awakenings” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat” back in the early nineties.

• Wired - The Fully Immersive Mind of Oliver Sacks


• LiveJournal - Oliver Sacks and the Iridium Ingot

September 13, 2004

A Mathematician Plays the Market - John Allen Paulos

(Penguin, ISBN 0-141-01203-X)

I have to admit to being a little bit disappointed with this book. I think I probably expected too much of it. To be fair, it’s a perfectly good introduction to some of the ideas in modern financial theory - portfolios, valuations, risk and the like. It has plenty of anecdotes - mainly about Paulos himself losing money on Worldcom, despite his mathematical knowledge - and the coverage is aimed at the intelligent layperson. There are one or two equations, but the maths is generally treated at the conceptual level.

I think my problem was that I thought the coverage would be deeper - more on the specifics of valuing different kinds of instruments, or on types of risk, or that there would be more mathematical speculation of the kind that say, Tom Koerner does in his “Pleasures of Counting” (Koerner on finance - that’s a book I’d like to read). Instead, I found the book paddled through the shallows that I was pretty familiar with already.

So, good fun, and if you are new to this topic, you can learn quite a lot, but it’s not for you if you are looking for any deeper treatment. Back to Bodie, Kane and Marcus for me - if only there was something in between.

September 4, 2004

Guided Bus Letters

I got a letter from the County Council containing various bumf and responding to my objections to the Guided Bus scheme proposals. I suppose it’s good that they’re responding to us, but I think it’s a bit cheeky to ask me to withdraw my objection now: I don’t think the documents answer my objections anyway, but it seems like just a cheap trick to make some of the objections go away now the public enquiry has started.

I shall be reading the stuff they’ve sent (some of which I already know anyway) and responding in kind - maybe I can offer them “sufficient comfort” to withdraw their scheme by writing to the Secretary of State. Unlikely you say? Then what on earth would make them think I’m going to withdraw my objection?

Bike Ride

Bit late as I actually did it last Monday, but it was quite a good circuit, apart from the intermittent rain. Anyway, I headed out south down Perne Road, as far as Addenbrookes, left at the roundabout there, and then right onto one of the roads that takes you over the ridge and down to the Shelfords. I thought there might be a good vantage point on the hill, but I couldn’t find a good place to stop there.

Anyway, through Great Shelford - couple of nice looking pubs, but it was kind of soon to stop. Through Little Shelford and then out to Hauxton. From Hauxton I took a bridleway west to Haslingford. No problem even with my street bike. Haslingford north to Barton. Stopped at a pub there - can’t remember the name though - it was on a main road. Not bad if you could sit outside - inside didn’t look too terrific though. Cut back on a path from just north of there towards Grantchester - over the M11.

Rain came down a bit strong at this point, and I realised I should probably have skipped the Haslingford pub and gone to one in Grantchester - they looked nicer. Anyway, missed my turn in Grantchester and ended up following the road back to Trumpington. Passed the Unicorn, which looked quite good. Then back from there along Long Road to Perne Road and home.

September 3, 2004

What am I Like

I did the BBC What Am I Like quiz last night and came out as somewhere between a realist (ISTJ) and a resolver (ISTP). At the end of the quiz though, they whizzed through the list of categories so fast I couldn’t see it. Went to look on the website, and it took me a while to even find links to the different categories, and I can’t find a keyed list (ie from the different personality dimensions to the types) anywhere.

So, here’s my version. I’ve also added the standard Myers-Briggs type codes after the descriptive names. You should be able to look those up from Google to find out more.

Update: Actually, try this site which seems to have a bit more detail on all the types.

Extrovert	Facts	Head	Planner	Supervisor	ESTJ
Extrovert	Facts	Head	Spontaneous	Go-Getter	ESTP
Extrovert	Facts	Heart	Planner	Provider	ESFJ
Extrovert	Facts	Heart	Spontaneous	Performer	ESFP
Extrovert	Ideas	Head	Planner	Leader	ENTJ
Extrovert	Ideas	Head	Spontaneous	Big Thinker	ENTP
Extrovert	Ideas	Heart	Planner	Mentor	ENFJ
Extrovert	Ideas	Heart	Spontaneous	Innovator	ENFP
Introvert	Facts	Head	Planner	Realist	ISTJ
Introvert	Facts	Head	Spontaneous	Resolver	ISTP
Introvert	Facts	Heart	Planner	Nurturer	ISFJ
Introvert	Facts	Heart	Spontaneous	Peacemaker	ISFP
Introvert	Ideas	Head	Planner	Mastermind	INTJ
Introvert	Ideas	Head	Spontaneous	Strategist	INTP
Introvert	Ideas	Heart	Planner	Counsellor	INFJ
Introvert	Ideas	Heart	Spontaneous	Idealist	INFP

September 2, 2004

Links

• New Yorker and Crooked Timber - interesting pair of views on wine.


• via Kottke - The Vice Guide To Everything - pretty funny list of things you should and shouldn’t do. A sort of modern manners guide?


• via Scoble - Google and the Semantic Web. Only a hundred years after everyone else read it. Very interesting ideas about what Google could expand into.



• via Ken McLeod - War Nerd on South Ossetia. Not heard of this site before, but I thought this was quite a good overview of some of the issues behind the conflict, told with a unique style.

September 1, 2004

Making the most of Summer

We managed to have a barbeque a week or so back - the week leading up to it the weather was bad, but miraculously it cleared on Saturday, and lots of nice folks showed up, so we had a good time.

Last weekend - the Bank Holiday - didn’t manage to do all that much. We did go out to Shepreth Wildlife Park though. It’s really close to Cambridge - 2 stops on the Kings Cross line, and right next to the station. Little bit expensive, considering that it’s pretty small - I think it was �6.50 for adults and �4.50 for children of 2 and over. Yes you read that right - once you’re past your second birthday, you have to pay. Extra also for the bug world display (which we skipped).

They do have quite a good selection of animals - tigers, monkeys, wolves, a snake, an iguana, etc. It’s about the right amount for a young child, probably a bit boring for an older one. There’s a good playground too, though again, aimed more at little kids than big ones.

We went in the afternoon, so we had lunch out at the Live and Let Live on Mawson Road in Cambridge - good food and good beer. Highly recommend.

Furthermore: August 2004 Part 2

August 24, 2004

Windows Problems

Joel on Software - interesting forum thread on prevalence of viruses and worms on Windows boxes. Scoble has been talking about this quite a bit too.

August 20, 2004

Links

• via Crooked Timber - online Well-Tempered Clavier site with analysis etc - sounds fantastic but I’ve not had chance to delve into it.


• via Joi Ito - Extreme Democracy (extreme in the “extreme programming” sense I think. Again, looks interesting but no time to read it at present.



• Searchblog - on capturing Searchstreams, stories, and the Memex.


• BBC - UK Information Commissioner on dangers of surveillence society.


• Back To Iraq - very thoughtful piece on the stand-off with Moqtada Al Sadr


• via Slashdot - interesting interview with John Gilmore. The stuff about secret laws in the US kind of fills me with horror.


• via everyone [PDF] - EFF wins Grokster appeal



• via BoingBoing - Bruce Sterling’s speech at SIGGraph. The interesting stuff is more towards the end, where he looks at what could happen to consumer products in the future. That said, my wife found this completely unreadable. Caveat lector.

GMail

I just got a GMail account through one of my work colleagues. I haven’t really decided what to use it for yet. I’m thinking of putting my mailing lists and whatnot in there to make them easily searchable.

What would be nice would be if I could upload my existing mail archive (which is only a few meg, even after 10 years or so) and have it all searchable online. RSS feeds for particular streams of mail would be good too.

Useful BoingBoing post on GMail notifier apps.

Update - just discovered this via Slashdot. This chap has written a program to upload your mail to GMail.

John Kerry and BCCI

Just saw a great piece at Crooked Timber on the fact (which I was unaware of) that John Kerry led an investigation into BCCI. There’s also another link on there to a long talk and Q&A with a chap called Gary Webb about CIA-backed drug smuggling to fund the Contras and other matters. The site it comes from is a bit tinfoil-hat, but the material itself looks sound. Depressingly, I’m not at all surprised by what I read there.

August 18, 2004

The Validation Failed - Typekey problem fix

I know I’m slightly repeating myself, but I thought this was worth pulling out into a separate post as I’m sure I won’t be the only person with this problem.

If you’ve activated Typekey for comments, and then when you try to login, you get a message saying “The validation failed”, then the following fix may be for you:

There’s a long thread about this at the Movable Type forums, but the short version is this:

• edit lib/mt/Util.pm, replacing this line:
  
  if ($has_crypt_dsa && 0) { with this:
  
  if ($has_crypt_dsa) {


• you now need the Perl module Crypt::DSA to be available. You can run mt-check.cgi to see if it is already there. If not, your admin should be able to install it for you.

At this point I should just put in a plug for my hosting provider 34sp - I reported that the module wasn’t there at about 3pm, and by about 4.30pm it was sorted. I am extremely impressed.

Movable Type 3.0 problems

Having played with it for a few days, these are the things that are still not working in MT3.0.

• builds seem to hang half way through. I’m not sure if they are working but just not reporting that fact, or really not working. I lean more towards the former, as I haven’t seen any actual problems. I understand there’s a template setting you can change for this somewhere.



• Typekey registration - I have it all set up by the book. When you try to comment though, the Typekey site says I don’t have the feature turned on. I’ve seen a post about this on the MT forums, but no solution as yet.
  
  Update - I’ve followed the advice on there, and I’m now getting a “the validation failed” error after I try to sign in at Typekey so I’m making progress at least.
  
  
  
  
  Update - This also seems to be a known problem - lots of info here
  
  that I need to digest before I try to do anything.
  
  Update - I’ve tried changing util.pm along the lines suggested, but no joy. mt-check reports I don’t have Crypt::DSA, so that may be why. Apparently I may need my hosting provider to do that, so I guess the next stop is the 34sp forums and see if I can get some more information there.


• Buttons not working - I’ve had problems with the delete button for instance. It seems to be button controls that are the problem, rather than link type buttons.



• Blogroll - my bloglines exported blogroll has disappeared, to be replaced with a message saying “The user name you are using does not allow sharing of subscriptions”. I suppose that could be from Bloglines rather than MT, but I only noticed it since the upgrade.

If I get any further with these problems, I’ll let you know.

August 13, 2004

Running Windows with least privilege

Just saw Aaron Margosis‘ blog, which is all about running Windows without being logged in as admin all the time. This is something that should be really useful - at home I run Mandrake Linux, and I almost never need to use root.

Debugging CoCreate failures

Probably every developer in the world knows this except me. I just had a dll containing a COM class that wouldn’t load, and no clue what was going wrong. I found I could use OLEView as the executable to start the debugger from, and that enabled me to track down problems in the DLL without worrying about the caller. Pretty obvious really, but it took me a while to think of it.

August 12, 2004

Tales of the City - Armistead Maupin

I first read this series in 1993 after seeing a BBC documentary about them. I thought they were fantastic then (I was 21 to put things in context) although I’d never been to SF at that time, and I’ve re-read them on several occasions since. Most recently I just re-read the first and last books in the series.

The things that struck me most this time around are firstly how modern the books still seem - even the first one, which dates from the mid seventies, doesn’t seem particularly dated. Perhaps SF is just ahead of the curve, or perhaps its Maupin’s ability to write universal characters, but many of the situations, particularly the relations between the gay and straight characters, could have been written yesterday.

On the other hand, both books have a definite flavour of their time - the 70s and the 80s respectively. The last book (Sure of You) is much more sour than its ancestor, and the effects of AIDS on the gay community are clearly on the mind of the author and his characters.

I do wonder a little in the last book whether Maupin hasn’t let a kind of “all guys together” sexism creep in. It’s hard to say - Mary Anne’s character has become quite dislikeable, and she’s the only straight woman in the books (to a first approximation) so it’s perhaps unfair to make her bear the weight of Maupin’s attitude towards women. I prefer to think that what happens is just the working out of themes that had been present from the start.

Anyway, an excellent series. Do read them if you haven’t already. I always get nostalgic for SF when I do. I feel I don’t want to leave the world Maupin creates. When you feel that, you know you’re reading the work of a master.

Cambridge Links

A couple of useful things found on cam.misc over the last day or two:

• Cycle route to Ely - looks quite good. There may be more useful stuff on that site too I would think. cam.miscers recommend the Fish and Duck pub as a place to eat.



• Graduate Union Forum - quite a lively board for grad students.