April 23, 2004
Phoenicians
When I lived in London I was part of a smallish SF group called the Phoenicians. The leading lights were Jonathan Cowie and Tony Chester, and we had links to Romanian SF — which meant I got to go to Timisoara for the eclipse (it rained, but we saw most of it). Anyway, I used to do the website for the group, and I’ve been meaning to turn the files into the latest XHTML doodah but I’ve decided I’m never going to get round to that, so I’ve just uploaded them as is. The index page is here.
A lot of the material is actually hosted at Concatenation but the links still seem to be fine. The stuff that isn’t is mainly the fiction and more fannish stuff.
Good god - there’s even a juvenile story I wrote.
April 18, 2004
Medical Privacy
I’ve been meaning for ages to write something about this. It seems the Government wishes substantially to erode the confidentiality of our medical records without any real consultation and with only a very dubious case for the benefits we would get.
- this Times story is a good general introduction
- Ross Anderson has written about this topic in great detail
- Depressing stuff from the USA about where we will likely end up
Burghley House
We drove up to Burghley House on Thursday - it’s a magnificent Elizabethan house in Stamford, Lincolnshire (the town itself is also very handsome). It was a nice day out - the house is fantastic (more interesting if you have someone like my wife to tell you about the history of the Cecils, who built it). The grounds are also beautiful - landscaped by Capability Brown. There’s also a modern sculpture garden.
Marathon Day
Watched some of the marathon this morning - I used to live in Blackheath and it’s always interesting to me just for that reason. I do want to do it myself, but I just haven’t been disciplined enough to sort out the application - partly because I could never quite figure out when I was going to do all the training. I’ve done the Great North Run twice, which was good fun. I will do the marathon though - although not next year now (for reasons I won’t go into at the moment). Maybe I’ll aim for 2006.
I’m not going running today I think - I’ve managed to go twice this week in the morning, which is a new experience for me. I used not to like getting up and setting off, but with being off work, it’s actually been quite a pleasant thing to do. I’ll try to see if I can continue to do it after I start work again. I’m starting at Sungard tomorrow - I have to go down to London for an induction day - it’s the first time I think that I’ve joined a company that has an induction when you join, rather than six months later when it’s redundant knowledge. Bodes well in my opinion.
April 12, 2004
Design of C#
An interesting article on the language design of C#
April 11, 2004
Food near Cambridge
Very useful cam.misc thread about pubs doing good food near Cambridge.
The main recommendations are for the King William IV at Heydon, the Pheasant at Great Chishill, the Cabinet at Reed, the Anchor at Sutton Gault, and the Crown and Punchbowl at Horningsea.
April 10, 2004
The Crisis of Islam - Bernard Lewis
(Phoenix, ISBN 0-75381-752-7)
This is a fairly short guide to the relationship of Islamic and Western civilization, with a focus on trying to explain the current situation in terms of the historical context.
I’m not an expert on history, but Lewis seems to be quite even-handed in his criticism and praise, and he stresses the faults on both sides in terms of the breakdown of trust between the Islamic countries and the West, particularly the USA.
Put in it’s most basic form: he accuses many of the Islamic states of lacking respect for human rights, and the West of supporting these dictators at the expense of their people in the name of political expediency.
Overall, it’s a worthwhile read (even if you disagree with it) because it makes you see the conflicts of today as part of the historical story.
Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About - Donald Knuth
(CSLI Publications, ISBN 1-57586-326-X)
I bought this on something of a whim - I wanted to read something by Knuth, he being the greatest living practitioner of computer science and all, and I thought it would be interesting to hear his views on the subject of religion.
Unfortunately, I didn’t really check carefully enough before buying, as Knuth has also written a book called 3:16 in which he examines the meaning of chapter 3, verse 16 of all the books of the bible, and TACSSTA is largely a “making of” for that book.
While 3:16 sounds really interesting, and there is therefore some interest in (for example) the way that the calligraphic samples that Knuth commissioned of each verse were prepared, that wasn’t really what I wanted out of the book.
There are some interesting insights into religion in here - and into Knuth’s attitude towards his Christian beliefs. I thought the idea of randomly sampling the bible was very clever, and Knuth is able to follow through with the intelligence to analyse the verses for many levels of meaning.
Overall though, I was disappointed, although I do want to read 3:16.
April 7, 2004
Latest News
I left Autonomy and I’m hopefully starting a new job with Sungard Risk in Histon in a couple of weeks. Because I had holiday, I have a bit of a gap before I start, so I have two weeks to do stuff in.
Yesterday I went for a run in the morning, which is pretty much unheard of for me. Somehow though, because I’m off work, it made it much easier to get up and go out - perhaps it was the feeling that I was only wasting my own time if I didn’t by staying in bed. Anyway, I did a run round the city which was meant to be a bit shorter than normal, but ended up as 51 minutes, so not really much of a saving.
I like to go running when I visit cities on holiday - I’ve run in Edinburgh, New York (yes, in Central Park) and San Francisco, and the nice thing was that this run managed to remind me of some of the time I spent in those places. Also, it was the best time of day — after the early morning it rained on and off all day.
Hey, it’s my 100th post to this blog.
April 6, 2004
Links
Great piece about Google on the Topix.net blog. Oh, and I just saw this piece in Wired about Issey Miyake’s new process for making clothes - no, really, it’s very interesting.
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