February 17, 2004
Passel o’ Links
Mostly saved from Bloglines
- Muppet Origami - via BoingBoing
- Textile2 plugin for Movable Type - via Crooked Timber
- Books Every Educated Person Should Read - via Crooked Timber
February 15, 2004
Today, I are been mostly running…
Towards Cherry Hinton - I went out along the path off the end of Brookfields, which comes out at the Coldhams Lane development - a surprising amount of buildings have gone up there over the last few months. Through Cherry Hinton, then round the little nature reserve (apparently called The Spinney) and round the Chalk Pit.
Somehow the small wood with the huge alien chalk pit behind it reminds me of Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood - which I heartily recommend to anyone who hasn’t read it.
Back home via Cherry Hinton Park. Total time 38 minutes and a bit.
24 Hour Watches Again
Here’s the link to the AAA Watch Club site where I bought my 24 hour watch.
This is the model I bought.
I think the face looks good, but the strap was pretty awful. Service was good, but if like me you are not in the USA, then the Paypal checkout is quite confusing in that you get to the end and then realise there’s no way to pay for shipping. Don’t worry though, just complete the order and they’ll send you a mail with another link to Paypal that you can use to pay shipping.
February 10, 2004
24 hour watch
My new 24 hour watch arrived last week, but I only just managed to get a strap that fits it. If you’ve not seen one of these, have a look at this one on ThinkGeek. It’s not the model I have, but I can’t find the site for that at the moment - when I do, I’ll post the link as the service I got from them was pretty good.
I don’t know why I like 24 hour dial watches - I first saw one that belonged to a friend of an ex of mine who had got one in Russia. I got my first one from a fleamarket in Moscow - it was a Raketa - but it was always a bit unreliable, and it’s since ceased to work altogether. It’s much easier than you might think to readjust to looking at a 24 hour dial, and it also confuses people when they try to read your watch.
February 9, 2004
Running Yesterday
I did a slightly shorter circuit than usual yesterday. I ran up to the Green Dragon bridge via the route I’d take to work on my bike, then across the common, and back via Parkers Piece and the cycle bridge. Total time about 45 minutes.
I timed myself to the Green Dragon Bridge as I’ve discovered that it’s very close to being the half way point on my journey to work. That took just under 18 minutes, suggesting that running to work would take about 35 minutes. That compares with 20 minutes by bike, 50 by bus, and about 1 hour 5 minutes on foot. I haven’t tried driving there yet, but the traffic to the Science Park area always seems pretty bad, so cycling wins hands down.
February 8, 2004
Parkour
While out walking in Cambridge yesterday, I saw a group of kids doing basic Parkour moves around the back of Lion Yard. For those of you that have no idea what I’m talking about, it’s basically an urban sport where the idea is to move freely through the built environment by climbing, jumping and running across the obstacles that a typical city provides - walls, stairs, railings etc.
There was a jaw-dropping programme about it on Channel 4 a couple of months ago, with expert “traceurs” from France demonstrating their skills on a variety of London landmarks.
February 5, 2004
Sources of Power - Gary Klein
(MIT Press, ISBN 0262112272)
Gary Klein’s book is more accurately described by its subtitle, How People Make Decisions. It’s a description of his investigations into that topic which he developed through interviews with firefighters, paramedics, nurses, and other experts who have to make important decisions under pressure.
On one level, the findings are what common sense would suggest - experts intuitively know what to do when presented with situations. The interest of the book stems from two things - one is that the naturalistic decision making model that Klein presents is strongly at variance with theories of how we “ought” ideally to make decisions - ie by weighing all the options and finding reasons why our actual course of action is the best possible. This suggests that perhaps something is wrong with the rationalistic model, at least in cases where experts are dealing with their domain of expertise. Secondly, Klein is able to analyse the components of expertise into factors that we can all learn from and possibly thereby learn to make better decisions.
The book is full of interesting, real-life examples of decision making - what happens when things go wrong, how people sometimes can intuit the right thing to do even in adverse circumstances. There’s a lot here to think about, and it’s definitely a book I’ll be coming back to for another browse.
February 1, 2004
Reading
I just updated my reading diary with Little, Big and I’m sort of horrified to find that I didn’t manage to finish any books at all in December, and that I only read 22 books altogether in 2003.
I think this must be mainly due to losing my job in October and spending a lot of time trying to get back to work. You’d think being unemployed would give you more time to read, but my last job was in London, so I had 2 hours a day on the train to read in, whereas when I’m at home I have other things to do, and a young daughter to distract me. Still, must try a bit harder this year.
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