20 Posts in a Month!

A blog record, 20 posts in a month. Of course if I am to make 150 in a year then this is really making up for the first few months of this year.

Probably a little too high a target, means a post every 2.5 days compared to 3 of last year.

Also posts like this to make up the numbers are probably dubious, but I thought this was worth mentioning.

Royal Wedding

I am by no means a great fan of the monarchy - but not enough to want to see the back of them or the reduction of their mainly ceremonial role.

But I did watch the wedding coverage, as it is a part of history - and it was a well staged event, everyone commenting on this is something "Britain does well". Well there had to be something ;)

I am amazed that so many crowds turned up for what must have only been fleeting glimpses of the event.

My favourite banner in the crowd was "It's checkmate Kate, you've taken the King".

Says it all really!

Bike ride: Solent Route

12.5 miles, 20.2 km, time 62 minutes

This is my longest route that I have not completed in a few years, probably as many as 5 years. It goes to the next town then across the front of the Solent. A pretty flat route so one for higher average speeds. Interestingly I thought it was a longer route than 12 miles as it always felt more tiring. But today was good conditions not too hot and not too windy to avoid making the front a hard cycle.

The Carriers

Not too surprising but the carriers have their next cost increase exposed by the media:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2011/04/aircraft_carrier_costs_to_rise.html

It looks like to accommodate the version of JSF that the American military are likely to go for - the version that needs catapults rather than VTOL to take off.

So the overrun will only be £1bn if we convert just one of the ships, but we are building two - with one likely being an immediate sale to a foreign Navy, so it makes sense to convert both.

It does seem like we set our sights on a yet unbuilt aircraft rather than building something that could be used with a range of aircraft and now we are paying the price that we were hoping to save by being so specific.

Blair and Brown no Invitation

Both Blair and Brown have been omitted from the wedding guest list. Whereas Major and the now infirm Thatcher have been included.

That does seem a little unfair, maybe it would have been better to have Major/Blair. Is it all down to protocol with Major holding a knighthood title and Blair not?

In some ways thinking back to the death of Diana, and with Blair/Campbell at their spin doctor best, Blair did a lot to bring the royalty back to the real world and saving them from a PR disaster. Maybe those are painful memories and something they could never really thank him for.

Brown: The good points

Gordon Brown really did sink without trace, much as he promised he would if he walked away from politics (actually it was more like hounded out, but I'll try not to split hairs).

So I've been thinking of the good points and maybe doing a series of articles for some time now. The trouble is the good points are few and far between and barely cover one blog entry.

But here goes:

1. Stopping Blair from waltzing us into the single currency. Hard to believe it was ever on the agenda but it very much was in the early 2000s and Blair would have seen it as a defining moment of his time in number 10. Brown devised a few economic hurdles before he would consider it, I am not sure if they ever got much scrutiny - but they were a thinly veiled no.

His motivation here may have just been keeping Blair out of the treasury, or not losing power over the madness of joining the European experiment. But whatever it was it turned out to be the right decision.

And that's it, still it is a big one. I want to talk about his early months of prime minister where he looked steady but that does not stand alongside the first point.

Book read: A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

A book I knew of but have never read before. I had been put off by hearing that it was the most bought science book of its time but the least read.

In fairness I can see why, if this was your first book on this subject then it would be a tough one to read and take in all it was telling you.

It is however a really well written account of particle physics, time, quantum mechanics, and the lifetime of the universe. The best thing about the book is it starts off with the astronomical observations which then led to the esoteric theories which I think is essential in motivating the harder to comprehend physics.

The observational astronomy ranges from the earth orbiting the sun, Hubble's expanding universe, and Einstein's light being affected by gravity.

The other main theme of the book is the still unfinished work of unifying the large scale physics theory of gravitation with the quantum particle world. All this really boils down to is to understanding how gravity works at the quantum level. The best way of thinking of this is that we think on the large scale as gravity as a force that is not conveyed by a particle just an omnipresent force.

The foreword of the book is by Carl Sagan, now sadly dead. The book is very concise and well written, and Hawking is a man who despite his obvious disability has achieved a huge amount in the field - most of it after the time he was expected to have lived, as he was given a couple of years life after diagnosis of his disease.

Windows XP Support Ending

Microsoft are dropping security fixes for XP Service Pack 2. It is after all 10 years old, although many business shops have yet to upgrade since Vista was so clearly a rushed out flop. Microsoft have redeemed themselves with Windows 7, I prefer to think of this as what Vista really should have been had their not being the suits creating huge delivery pressure.

I do not know where this will leave fresh activations of Windows XP (handy for virtual machines at least). But it does present Microsoft with an opportunity, they could just allow XP licences now, since they are saying it's commercial life is now over.

Obviously not a choice we'll see them take, but a nice idea!

Bike Ride: Village Long Route

10.5 miles, 17 km, time 55 mins.

At long last the return to the longer village route, out toward the village, up the steep hill, then a detour around the back of the industrial estates down through the much modified Hunts Pond road.

Then rejoining the medium route, back through the village and returning home through Peak Lane.

A couple of extra miles over the medium route and completed in just under an hour.

Film: Ronin directed by John Frankenheimer

I re-watched this film from 1998 as I remember the great car chase sequences through Paris. I had forgotten the twisting plot, a group of hired guns who are to setup an ambush to recover a "case" whose contents are never revealed before it is sold to the Russians.

In some ways the plot is a vehicle for the car stunts. Robert De Niro plays a very good lead, a shame Sean Bean got such a short role but he plays it well.

There is a strong Irish terrorist link with the handler Deirdre having a thick Irish accent. The end of the film with the main protagonists killed had a radio clip of the IRA agreeing to ceasefire terms, although that is a little tenuous.

Microsoft article

An interesting article about the problem with Microsoft:

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/29/the-problem-with-microsoft/

It is an interesting subject, that multi billion dollar research budget - they often are years ahead on prototypes for example with tablet computing. Some successes for sure like Kinect, but constant failure in media, mobile, and amusingly the best tablet device they made was a stock control checker for warehouses (there is an app for that?)

But as with any company that size the politics dominate the deliverables. So power struggles and internal wrangling ends up sapping most of their creative direction and energy.

The shareholders would not put up this forever in any sane market economy.

Future King

I suppose it is something most of the nation must be thinking, but tonight on the news talk of the throne going straight to William rather than the misunderstood/tarnished Charles.

There is something in it, but I cannot see Charles ever agreeing to it. Maybe there is some compromise with Charles coming in for a cameo innings of a few years to steady things after the death of the Queen.

Actually that is not a great analogy, since cameo innings in cricket can be as much as 30 runs ;)

Ebook read: The Sign of Four by Conan Doyle

The second of the four main Sherlock novels, published a couple of years after the first. Holmes and Watson now presented as established companions and some strong hints of Holmes' self destructive nature for stimulants and drugs to fuel his over active brain.

The case he has to solve is actually presented as a break from such behaviour. The client Miss Morstan also appears to be a rather weak romantic link for Watson - Holmes being far too clinical to ever consider a client as anything other than a part of the puzzle.

The story of a murder as with the first novel unravels to far away places, this time India - probably a much easier subject for the author to write about compared to America in the first novel. The novel is well paced, but you can see some bits coming given the subsequent ubiquitous nature of Holmes in later stories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sign_of_the_Four

Ebook read: A Study in Scarlet by Conan Doyle

I used the guttenberg site to download the original short story to feature the legendary Sherlock Holmes. I had read it many years ago and it was interesting to read again. Conan Doyle was only 27 when he wrote this work in three weeks, while working as a Doctor in Portsmouth Southsea.

The book is both an introduction to the central characters of Holmes and Watson, really their first meeting as well as a description and solving of a crime. It has quite a tirade against the Mormon religion, and one part of the book is devoted to describing the background of the murder over in America.

I imagine that at the time this would have been quite difficult to research and write about, and America must have seemed like an exotic and far away place.

Wikipedia has a good summary of the books' background:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Study_in_Scarlet

Bike Ride: Abbey Route

My shortest route 3.80 miles, 6.12 km, time 20 minutes

Round the back of the abbey and then the steep hill back toward home. The hill is really tiring and takes a lot of effort to climb even in low gear.

Kindle Purchase

After thinking about it for a long time I've purchased an Amazon Kindle. Mainly because I managed to convince myself I could get enough use out of it and also to have a reader on which I could read out of print books or books that I would not want to take up space with in my house.

Initial impressions are good, the display is very crisp and paper like - the experimental browser is also ok - good enough to download a book from Guttenberg. I did not get the 3g version, the wireless version was good enough for my needs. Setting up the networking was also quite painless.

I am a little wary of Amazon becoming like Apple in their device lock in and increasingly using it as a channel into which to sell things. I will certainly try purchasing a book to read on it, but I cannot see it being my main use of the device.

As a company I like Amazon, the least evil of the big commercial corporates - but time will tell on this.

Bike: Village Short Route

Bit of a gap between rides this, so just the short route.

6.4 miles, 10.3 km, time 32 mins.

This is my short village route, that skirts around the outside but still uses the Peak Lane route home.

The time was good despite not having ridden for a while.

Tuition Fees

The cut backs in University funding are now coming to a head. Whilst the government had said that £9000 per year fees would be the exception rather than the norm, it seems that a large percentage of institutions are going to be at the higher end of the scale.

It seems like a power struggle between them and the government where the student loses out. Eventually the government themselves might be the loser, many of the loans they back will never get repaid. Also the universities make the claim the tuition fees need to be that high to support poorer student access.

What a mess! What would really sort this out is more flexible access to higher education, shorter compressed courses - more affordable. Stop trying to keep to the old way of doing things when more flexibility might benefit the country more.

I look back at my student days, where the tuitions fees were paid. I can just about kid myself that it was worth £3000 a year. But in no way was it worth £9000 a year.

Book read: A Mathematician's Apology by G H Hardy, Foreword by C P Snow

A short book that contains a long foreword about the life of G H Hardy the English mathematician and his essay written in 1940 discussing what mathematics is about and asking the question what purpose does it serve.

The foreword was particulary interesting for me, as well as discussing his life and decline it also discusses his collabration with other mathematicians. One such collabration was the discovery of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan a self taught genius number theorist. I had heard about this man in a documentary but it was interesting to recognise him described in more detail.

McDonalds

I set foot in one of these places about once every 5 years, maybe a bit more. Clearly I am not their core customer.

My friend, on the other hand, is a veteran of these establishments having once worked there and continued as a customer. I am not sure why since he complains that even having put so many thousands of pounds their way over his lifetime he has never once been asked if his food was ok - the place lacks any sort of customer service beyond the point of sale. I think it is just the wrong sort of place for that expectation, but clearly I am no expert.

But my problem is why do I find it so difficult to order something? I'll be part way through ordering something mundane and basic, and I get interrupted and asked "is this a meal deal?". I want to say "I've not been to one of these places for x years, how would I know?". Still the till staff were pleasant enough but why needlessly complicate the deals?

I appreciate it is probably me at fault, must do better next time. It is just a shame I have to wait until 2016 for my next shot.