Jan. 3, 2015
Feersum Endjinn is one of Iain Banks’ few non-Culture sci-fi novels. Like the Culture novels, an existential crisis drives the plot: in this case the action takes place on Earth in the far future and the sun has aged to a point where it will grow and swallow the earth. This is referred to as the Encroachment. The characters are divided between the good guys who seek to find a solution for the greater good and bad guys who use the Encroachment to consolidate their power and influence.
Tags: Iain M. Banks, Books, Science Fiction, Fifteen
Jan. 1, 2015
Just a brief message to wish everyone a happy new year. Getting my flat connected to the internet continues to be a trial so it’s still not as easy to post as I would like. However, I have some workarounds now and I hope to write (and post) more often from now on.
Like everyone I make resolutions at this time of year, though as the years pass I realise that the best resolutions are to apopt a new way of being rather than a new way of doing.
Tags: Happy New Year, Fifteen, Life Experiences, Time Passing
Dec. 30, 2014
Overlong reflection upon the past is one sure way to make yourself unhappy so I try to avoid it. Nevertheless it becomes unavoidable at this time of year, especially if, like me, you are somewhat prone to reflection.
At this time last year I was, as detailed in the most recent report of my South American adventure, in La Paz, Bolivia. I think I felt as lost then as I do now, though back then I had the novelty of new places and good friends to steer me through.
Tags: Writing, Blogging, South America, Fourteen
Nov. 14, 2014
I recently started a new job and moved in to a new flat. This means I’m too busy to write any long blog posts at the moment. Also I’m still not quite at home there, so I tend to spend my evenings tidying up or setting up new things. It’s a shame because I have plenty of things to write about (even without observations on moving, starting a new job, etc) but I guess the writing will happen eventually…
Tags: Writing, Blogging, Fourteen, Self Improvement, Life Experiences
Oct. 24, 2014
This is a longer form post about artificial intelligence inspired by reading a little bit of “The Pale King” by David Foster Wallace and putting a picture of a “ghost” up on Instagram. This might be the last of these that I’m able to write for a while.
On Not Reading “The Pale King” “The Pale King” is the third and final novel by American author David Foster Wallace. He was working on it when he committed suicide in 2008.
Tags: Ideas, AI, Fourteen, Programming, Internet
Sep. 30, 2014
Album Digest September 2014 contains four amazing albums, including the long-awaited return from the Aphex Twin, and an album from Cymbals Eat Guitars released about a week after I wondered what had happened to them. Spooky. Rounding out the selection this month are a cool punky-disco album by The Juan Maclean and a truly remarkable offering by Vessel.
Aphex Twin SYRO SYRO is the sixth album by Aphex Twin and his first official Aphex Twin release since Drukqs in 2001.
Tags: Album Digest, September, Music, Aphex Twin, The Juan Mclean, Vessel, Cymbals Eat Guitars, Fourteen
Sep. 25, 2014
This post deals with how to generate random numbers in R. It is good to know how to generate random numbers with a particular language or software package for at least one of the following three reasons:
You want to test something that depends on a particular distribution. You’re running a stochastic process of some kind (Branching process, random walk etc) and you need random numbers for deciding whether an event occurs.
Tags: Maths, Stats, R, Fourteen
Sep. 2, 2014
I recently finished reading All The Birds, Singing, the second novel by Evie Wyld. It’s about a woman called Jake who lives alone on a farm with a dog called Dog on an island somewhere off the coast of Britain. She has sheep to look after but something keeps coming in the middle of the night to kill them.
Meanwhile, as the narrative on the island moves forward in the present, a second narrative peels off backwards to explain her past.
Tags: Evie Wyld, Books, Novel, Fourteen
Aug. 31, 2014
The album digest returns with five albums by four artists.
Karl Hyde & Brian Eno Someday World & HIGH-LIFE Lone Reality Testing FKA twigs LP1 Mogwai Come On Die Young: Appendix Karl Hyde & Brian Eno Someday World & HIGH-LIFE I’m a big fan of both Karl Hyde’s work with Underworld and of Brian Eno’s stuff so Someday World seemed like a dream collaboration to me when it was released last May.
Tags: Music, Album Digest, August, Karl Hyde, Underworld, Brian Eno, Lone, FKA Twigs, Mogwai, Fourteen
Aug. 24, 2014
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki And His Years Of Pilgrimage is the latest novel by Haruki Murakami. It comes with free stickers. Perhaps that tells you everything you need to know about this book, which is slimmer than Murakami’s recent efforts. The plot begins with an intriguing premise. Tsukuru is part of a group of close friends and is one day expelled from the group for no reason. Unfortunately, the development of the plot is uncontrolled and by the end of novel too many holes have developed for it all to hold together.
Tags: Haruki Murakami, Books, Novel, Fourteen
Aug. 21, 2014
What it is Ulysses is a markdown editor for the Mac. It has a simple drafting model that makes it easy to organise ideas and move between them. Pieces of writing are represented as sheets that can be tagged and grouped together - the grouping can be made manually or using filters. There are no files, the sheets are entries in a single database that is synced with iCloud. Because everything is plain text it won’t eat up your storage space.
Tags: Writing, Software, Blogging, Fourteen
Aug. 19, 2014
I have already given some of the personal background to why I love this album and now it’s time to give a bit of love to the music itself so I’ll stick to giving a track by track account of “A Ghost Is Born”.
If you are familiar with Wilco’s first few albums, you’ll know that A Ghost Is Born is on the line of best fit through Being There, Summerteeth, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
Tags: Understated Classics, Music, Wilco, Fourteen, Rock