It was a nice change to read something lighter for a change, disappointingly I had forgotten that not only had I read this before I had also watch the film adaptation.
Still it is a good story so it was enjoyable to reread it.
Monthly Archives: November 2015
[tech] We are living in the future
Today the Raspberry Pi foundation gave away their new computer, the Pi Zero on the cover of a magazine! A computer on a magazine! that is amazing.
Ok, The magazine has sold out basically everywhere but still the only things that came on magazines when I was younger were rubbish.
[health] Not pregnant
Had an ultrasound today on my damaged shoulder, the good news is:
a) It isn’t pregnant.
b) I don’t have any major tears, so I won’t need surgery to stick it back together again.
Annoyingly they had no mechanise to share the pictures with me, so I can’t just share them here.
So it looks like there will be a lot more ibuprofen in my future and maybe some physio or some injections..
During the mean time I will just have to man up and try and take it easy.*
* Not cycling to work is really annoying, even if it does mean I get to read more.
[Tech] Not what I expected to come out of his toolbox..
I have just had a very nice man fix my boiler* with a bicycle pump.
No really, the expansion vessel had lost pressure which was causing the pressure release valve to empty the heating system into my back garden.
The fix to this is to repressurize the expansion vessel with a bicycle pump.
As a geek, this is somewhat disappointing, as I could have done that.. if I had known. Ok I didn’t know, and while I did do some research on the web that was one of a few potential solutions so it was best for me to hire someone who has had the required training.
* No he wasn’t from the AA but Centrona Gas Services.. **
** This isn’t much of a plug, more so I remember them for next time..
[Life] Let there be toast.
This evenings other achievement was re-wiring up the ring main in the kitchen..
So I can have toast for breakfast.
Which is a very good thing. I managed to do it without fusing the house again, so that also counts as an achievement.
[Push] Back out on the road..
I went for a run this evening..!
I didn’t run far it was only 2.1 miles, and I didn’t even time myself as I was taking it easy and not pushing myself as this was my first run since July.
Anyway it went well, so dead pleased with that..
Which is good as I’m signed up for a half marathon in April.
[Home] When the music stops..
This weekend has not been my finest, I had a couple of DIY jobs to do and some other jobs to get on with..
The short version of the story is me drilling through my ring main, and having to knock a rather larger hole in the wall than I was expecting..
Everyone is fine this is a tail of ineptitude not of mortal perils or bloodshed..
This means that I have been spending rather a lot of time trying to put that right so not looked at anything else that I was supposed to be doing.. arg.
In the longer story, I was fitting a new plug socket in the kitchen, and patching up a small section of wall which had been behind the cupboards which I took down, (or rather I had help taking down), so we could have a new fridge.
That should have been not that hard, I have done similar before..
Only I had miss remembered the exact route taken to get to the other kitchen sockets and quite neatly drilled through the ring main..
I knew what had happened, as the drill stopped and more importantly so did the radio and everything else..
So to fix that I had to chase out a section of cable so I could replace the damaged section, and move where I was going to site my new socket..
All of which resulted in me hacking quite a large amount of plaster off the wall..
Now the wall behind the new socket location was unstable, so I couldn’t drill into it to mount the new socket, so I had to mix up some morter and try and fill it in..
After leaving that over night to dry, I was disappointed to discover that it had failed to go off and was basically just sand.. which crumbled at the slightest touch.
So I had to hack that all out again, go buy some fresh morter and start again..
I now have a more solid looking wall behind the socket, I will have to leave it a bit longer before I am willing to drill holes in it to mount the socket back box..
Once that is in, I will be able to wire everything back up again and turn the power back on..
Oh and slowly start filling on the rest of my gigantic hole..
I will get it fixed, it is just going to take rather a lot longer than I was hoping..
Overheard..
Waiter: Would you like white wine sir?
Guest: No thank you, I don’t drink..
Waiter: Very well sir,
Guest: Would you please remove the glasses, so that I am not served accidentally.
Waiter: Certainly sir.
– The waiter returns to remove glasses
Guest: Leave the port glass, I do like port.
I am in admiration.
[book] Anathem by Neil Stevenson
I have really enjoyed reading this book, it has been nice to read something that is a little bit challenging. Neil is good at grand ideas and weaving in a lot of scientific ideas and big concepts, somehow in all that he manages to leave enough space to actually tell a story.
Now fortunately it is a lot shorter than The Baroque Cycle, but it still very much a Neil Stevenson novel. It just has he same texture somehow, it was very comforting.
It is a book that I will have to read again, something that I knew very early on in the book, there is a lot going on, and I was well aware that I wasn’t catching on to all of its cleverness.
I am still to read the ancillary maths which is part of the appendix, I will also have to read the very long references website.
I’m oddly looking forward to this extra homework. It will be good to get a better understanding of the concepts and ideas.
It has also triggered the idea that I want to make myself a clock..
[Book] I am normally quite a calm person…
But there is a special place in Hell for people who put stickers on books that don’t come off..
People who use stickers that damage the book, there is no punishment strong enough..