Growing up so fast

Big Little Boy - climbing earlier this weekend

Jill, Nathan, Aidan and I had a lovely day out today at Newby Hall. We pottered about the grounds, enjoyed the model ride-on railway, had ice-creams, munched scones, had a picnic and a good explore without ever entering the house. Jill & Nathan even went on a boat ride on the River Ure whilst I enjoyed a quiet thirty minutes on the bank-side reading while Aidan napped. It was a wonderful afternoon; nothing earth-shattering, but great family stuff.

Shattered after a long walk on Sunday

It was on the way home that it hit home that everything is about to change again, and so soon after the adjustment that Aidan's arrival brought this year. My big little boy is going to start school in a fortnight and leave the nursery where he has had 3 delightful years. It makes me feel nervous and excited at the same time. He's ready for it, but am I? It certainly makes you more aware of your own mortality.

Or maybe that's my forthcoming Fortieth birthday?

Meanwhile, Aidan is now sitting up unassisted, rolling over and around the room, and getting ever-so close to crawling. More change.

Misdiagnosis & Treatment

(cc)2011 Laura Anne Chamberlain, on Flickr, some rights reserved

If you live in, or come from, the UK, the last week has been pretty harrowing with rioting and looting spreading from London out to other cities like Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham and Bristol. I found myself glued to the BBC News channel, Twitter and Facebook until after 2am in the morning on the worst night, unable to stop watching as the armies of disillusioned idiots trashed their communities in an orgy of disorder and destruction.

The Police were slow in responding and putting enough people on the street to contain and deal with the problem, but worked damn hard to resolve the issue. I've seen multiple messages from people who have relatives and loved ones who were pulling 20 hour shifts while they tried to get a grip. Generally, the provinces seemed to get control faster than the Met did in London, but perhaps that's because they were forewarned and had far less media focus.

The politicians made up for their failure to realise the significance of the events with their macho posturing when they returned from holiday, and tried to shift the blame away to the police. They also tried to claim that the successful shift in tactics was driven by them, rather than the police, a position that they have subsequently had to backtrack from. Now they've moved into a combination of moral pontification and hanging judge-like behaviour as they want to be seen to 'be doing something'. This is quite repellent, as many of the individuals preaching would have been to have considered as committing fraud had they handled their expenses in the way that they did in organisations outside Parliament.

I find the focus on increasing police powers to deal with such events disturbing, especially as the trouble was controlled using no additional powers but rather by providing the manpower and focus that was needed. Social media was being blamed, especially Twitter and Blackberry Messenger. Strange, as most of the traffic I was seeing was condemning the violence. It's a medium of communication, rather than a cause, and there are other routes that could be used such as SMS, email or private BBS if people wanted to bypass these methods. Interestingly, ordinary people using Twitter were very visible in coordinating the community in clean up operations.

We seem to be forgetting that 20% of under-24s[1] are unemployed and many others forced to stay in education – which has been made more expensive over the last few years – as there is no route into gainful employment in the current economic climate. We have a situation were we are creating a generation with little hope; perhaps even a generation who cannot see a way to equal, let alone match their parent's standards of living. It's a European-wide problem [2] which will no doubt haunt us.

None of this excuses the chaos we saw earlier in the week, not at all, but it does say that perhaps our political masters need to be thinking how they address the underlying disease at the same time as they deal with the symptoms. They may also want to reconsider the wisdom of the way that they are making cuts to some of the services that deal with these areas.

The courts are making examples of those caught, with magistrates regularly sending convicted individuals to the Crown Court for sentencing. This, I feel, is right. However, I'd rather be seeing a combination of custodial and community service in the punishment meted out, rather than just custodial. This gives a chance to the individuals to pay back the damage they have caused to the communities that suffered as a result of their actions.

It's an awful mess, and I worry that the temptation to deal with it in a knee-jerk manner will result in the underlying problem not being resolved and returning to haunt us again. Fundamentally, I don't think new powers are needed but rather a better resolution of underlying issues and flash points. Not a good week, for anyone.

[1] https://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/22/youth-employment-rate-lowest
[2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/8564500/Interactive-graphic-Youth-unemployment-in-Europe.html

Welcome to the Future...

 

I’ve just brought live the webpage for the RPG that I’ve been working on, called Singularities. Hopefully, it will be ready to go to print by the end of the year. Not much there yet, but it will develop.

Singularities RPG

It’s a hard SF veneered universe using the very playable Wordplay engine.

Which Shade of Green?

We were shopping in Sainsbury's when I saw the sign above the soft fruit section which declared how green their green credentials because of the 333 tonnes of plastic that they'd saved by replacing plastic with film lids. That change would also reduce the CO2 generated in transport, as the film is significantly lighter than the plastic lids. It may also have allowed more punnets to the transported in a single lorry.

However, the new film isn't recyclable, which the old lids were. Straight to landfill or incineration as there aren't any other options. If most of the people who bought the strawberries were recycling the lids, then the 333 tonne saving may have little overall effect.

It demonstrates how being 'green' is not easy, as the different challenges and principles are in a dynamic tension. There's no easy way to address everything at once, and it's so easy to accuse people of greenwash when they genuinely think they're trying to achieve something.

The Adjustment Bureau

Jill and I just managed to watch the DVD of The Adjustment Bureau, which is an adaptation of a Philip K Dick short story, The Adjustment Squad. Actually getting the time to watch it was no mean feat in itself, as we have a ninety minute window between the boys all falling asleep and Aidan waking up wanting a milk top-up. We ended up watching in two sittings over consecutive nights, but it didn't ruin the effect.

It's a romantic SF thriller which revolves around free will. The two protagonists, a politician (Matt Damon) and a Dancer (Emily Blunt) seem to be made for each other, but a shadowy organisation called The Adjustment Bureau is trying to make sure they are kept apart because it will upset their plan. Although that should probably be Plan with a capital P.

It's a quiet, thoughtful movie with doses of the sinister and action and good chemistry between the leads. We enjoyed it and I will watch it again. Four out of Five.

Great Yorkshire Show

We had a lovely day out today at the Great Yorkshire Show on the outskirts of Harrogate. Nominally an agricultural show, it has long expanded to include a celebration of the best of everything from Yorkshire and beyond, and in doing so it has become the biggest such show in the UK. Along the way it avoided the fate of the Royal Show, which failed to adapt to the changing world and has since disappeared.

Of course, with a tractor-mad four year old, this was always going to be a good day provided we could manage his excitement and tiredness. Nathan had a brilliant day, visiting every stand that sold tractors and pretty much every tractor toy in the show. He went on the big show ground wheel ride which gave a view of the whole place, something he used to plan his visit to the tractors, identifying which ones he wanted to see first.

We visited some of the food stands, the Black Sheep Ale Tent and the ever entertaining Sheep Show (in reality Sheep Show III). It was a lovely family day.

Aidan seemed to be happy too, but he appears to have his first cold, the poor mite.

The journey home (usually takes ten minutes) took an hour, thanks to the traffic, but we didn't notice it in part because Jill was entertaining me with comments on a Facebook comment war that had broken out on one of her friend's walls. It was a classic case of someone arrogantly and stupidly making a sweeping statement on something that would affect maybe 90% of their audience, and then not knowing when to let it go and kill the thread.

All in all, a lovely day!

--
I realise I haven’t posted for a while, but holiday and exams intervened. I’ll post some more as time permits to fill in the gaps.

Brothers in Arms

I love this picture of Nathan and Aidan. Sure, the resolution is poor (the iPhone 3GS camera struggles in lower light) but, as the saying goes, the best camera is the one that you have to hand. The expressions are delightful: it almost looks like Aidan is bigger than Nathan!

They're both very different characters: if anything, Aidan is more relaxed and chilled out than Nathan. He does amuse me no end when he sees Nathan messing around and gives him a look as if to say, "You're so full of it", amd shakes his head. Aidan also sings when he's had milk and is happy and doesn't want to go to sleep! The nicest thing is the way that Nathan is really protective of his 'little brother' and also comes up to him and says things like, "Who's a cheeky little fella?!”

Of course, it's dreadful when they both decide that they can't sleep and tag team us, but let's not mention that!

That's Going to Hurt in the Morning [updated]

Rainbow over the Millennium Field in Wetherby while I walked down to the Leisure Centre.

I just went swimming seriously for the first time in a couple of years. By seriously, I mean that I was there to do lengths of the pool for exercise rather than being a launching platform and co-conspirator for a four year old boy.

To add to the fun, I walked there and back as well gaining an extra 2,000 steps for my Global Corporate Challenge(*) Pedometer. Hurrah! I did 20 lengths in two 10 length blocks, plus another couple winding down. Not as far as I used to, but I worked hard and decided not to overdo it. Anyway, half a kilometre isn't bad for a first go(**).

I've got that good achey feeling around my joints now, with muscles that haven't been used in a while reminding me that they're there. I'm sure it's going to hurt tomorrow, but for now the buzz is enough.

All of us went swimming today: Jill & Aidan also did Water Babies and Nathan went to Knaresborough for his lessons.

(*) This is my third year participating in the GCC, which is a health promotion set up that work gets involved in. It's driven about walking 10,000 steps a day (you also get credits for swimming and cycling) and raising your health awareness. Last year, I managed an average over 11,000 steps a day – not bad for a desk jockey – which was about a thousand up on the year before that. I'll be happy if I get above 11,000 this year. Nearly two weeks in and not quite where I want to be yet. But there's time to pull it up yet!

(**) 15,937 steps today if you wanted to know!

Update: It did hurt. Ouch.

Think I'm happy about this

Poll comparing Guardian reader and Daily Mail reader responses (via Ben Goldacre on Twitter). 

[Link removed as dead May 2021]