Turning 40

Birthday Meal at the Muse - I stress that it was my 40th, not these two!

This is a blog entry I have been meaning to write for a while, but I kept putting it off. I’m not certain if that means that I’m in denial about the ageing process, or if it just means that I have been silly mad busy over the last two months. I’ll stick with the latter for now. I know that a 40th was the first significant birthday of my parents that I remember!

Significant birthdays become a problem for me, ever since my 30th. Being born on September 11 means that you share the birthday with one of the worst terrorist atrocities ever committed. As I was born in 1971, it means that Al Qaeda’s attack on the twin towers will always have a significant anniversary when I have a significant birthday. 9/11 will always cast a shadow.

Putting that aside, it is fair to say that both my 30th and 40th birthdays were great fun, in no small measure because of Jill. She’s great at plotting and scheming very memorable events. My 40th celebrations were spread over a full month, and the final event was a complete surprise.

One of my pics of the couple

My parents came over to visit a few days before my birthday as my birthday-weekend had become quite complicated due to the fact that some close friends were getting married on Saturday the 10th (Hi Katrina and Tom!) and I had agreed to be the photographer for them. This ruled out any idea of a weekend away from home. The weather was fantastic, and we had a great time. There was a creché for the children during the wedding breakfast so we had somewhere that Nathan and Aidan could stay while I took pictures. Jill had also arranged the wedding cake through her sister Paula, who is superb at such things. Of course, that is to be expected as Paula is a chef in her day job. A great day, with a wonderful couple.

Paula and her fiancé Mark had decided to use the trip to Yorkshire to have a small break and they offered to take Nathan with them for a treat. So he disappeared off on Saturday night, leaving Jill, myself and Aidan to our own devices. As a result, the day of my birthday was quite lazy. We had a very relaxed meal at a local bar restaurant called ‘the Muse’. Aidan was very entertaining as he kept on trying to steal my beer. It’s a habit he shares with his older brother. We had cake and party tea when Paula and Mark returned to Wetherby.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I got a wonderful gadget from my birthday, an Amazon Kindle, from my parents. I love reading, always have, hopefully always will and this is really to carry a lot of books out around at once. It’s perfect for holidays especially with sunshine. The Kindle app on the iPad is good, but doesn’t really work in bright light. However it definitely has the edge in the darkness thanks to the backlighting. The only thing the Kindle is missing is the tactile experience of the book as an artefact.

Jill’s presents to me were experiences rather than gadgets, books or other media. The first was a couple weeks later with a visit to Centre Parcs at Sherwood where we met up with some old university friends of mine; Ceri, Nick and their Daughter Nia, and Jon & Becky.

We went there for a long weekend as there is plenty to entertain the kids. Highlights included my birthday meal as Jill had booked it like a children’s party but with the option of cocktails (Mojitos!), a badminton match between Jon and myself, and a fantastic afternoon at the spa for Jill and I to relax and chill out without the boys. All in all, we had a brilliant time.

The final surprise was possibly the most memorable as I wasn’t expecting it at all. I’ve long been a fan of John le Carré, and Jill had outdone herself by having the small local cinema in Wetherby for a private showing of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”. By “private” I mean the two of us and some close friends. This included my parents and some family friends who had travelled across from Cheshire, plus people from work, the church, and gaming. It was a wonderful experience. The cinema is pretty small and it is of an old-style. But, in reality, it was perfect. The people running the Wetherby Cinema were very welcoming, and even gave us an option of whether we wanted an interval or to run straight through. Unsurprisingly, we opted for an interval with ice creams.

It was a fantastic end to my 40th birthday celebrations and a memory I’ll cherish for a long time. I’m blessed with a wonderful wife, lovely kids, a great family and generous friends. Thank you, one and all. (*)

(*)And, in the light of the weekend’s news of the death of a family friend far too young from cancer, this means more to me than ever.

Talking to myself

I've always been deeply sceptical about the utility of voice recognition software. There's always seem to be so much that was a pipe dream about it. The background noise, differences in the user's voices and many other complications such as processing power all combine to make it very difficult thing to do.

My scepticism weakened a little when I tried the free Dragon Dictation application for the iPhone. Although the processing for this was done via the Cloud, the results were deeply impressive when I tried it. Apple's Siri voice detection system and personal assistant also showed great promise. So when I heard that Dragon had released a new application by the App Store, called Dragon Express, which mirrored the iPhone application using local processing I couldn't resist trying it.

I'm dictating this using the internal microphone on my MacBook. There is a stage of about 2 min of training for Dragon Express it adjusts to my voice, the microphone, and the typical background noise. The accuracy of the voice recognition is quite impressive. You do have to speak slowly and clearly, but that actually encourages you to think about what you are saying. If anything, it clarifies your thought processes. There have only been a few stumbles in translating what I've said. An example of that will be the word "free" which could get mistaken for the number "three". Indeed, I did have to manually alter that word to correct it.

The software does suffer from the problem are shown by Isaac Asimov's "Second Foundation" scene involving Arkady where an entire conversation is inadvertently recorded for posterity. If you leave it open and running it will listen to you and assume you're talking to it. However, I could actually see a use for this. Maybe not when the children around, but now it's quite an evening with the kids in bed it means I can be quite lazy in preparing material. All in all, so far I'm impressed. Well done, Nuance, this could change the way I work.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dragon-express/id458613689?mt=12 Requires Lion.

Kindling my reading

I was very lucky for my 40th (more about this to follow) and was given a Kindle by my parents, and some lovely skins and covers by my sister, not to mention lots of Amazon vouchers by a wide variety of people. Whilst I still have a fetish for paper, it’s a great device to read on and reading on is what I have been doing. Here are nutshell reviews of the first five books that I’ve read:

The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Mohsin Hamid)
I heard parts of this and the interesting discussion on it on Radio 4's Book Club and it seemed intriguing. It's effectively a monologue, as you only have the words of the protagonist. It isn't necessarily the most realistic tale, but it sucks you in. Effectively, it's the tale of a Pakistani man who starts by embracing the American dream, but then is slowly repelled by it post 9/11. Well written and a page turner as the protagonist's life and background are unfolded during a meal and a walk with an American stranger.

The Coming Convergence (Stanley Schmidt)
Non-fiction looking how the interaction between different rivers of technological development leads to huge changes. Part of background reading for Singularities.


Rule 34 (Charles Stross)
Stross' latest near future police tale (effectively revisiting the same vibe as the earlier Halting State) set in Edinburgh with a murder investigation. Good stuff - I'll say no more lest I ruin it. You can google 'rule 34' to get a hint at what underpins the plot. Or you can read the first three chapters on Stross' blog.


Zero History (William Gibson)
Gibson wraps up the ideas he's played with in Pattern Recognition and Spook Country in another really strong near-future thriller. Great stuff as you can savour every word. It has forced me to start to re-read Pattern Recognition as it's too long since I last read it.


Hull Zero Three (Greg Bear)
A tale set in deep space onboard a slower-than-light starship. The protagonist wakes to a world of cold and horror with limited memories. His journey is significant to the future of the ships as he rediscovers who and what the mission was and what has affected it. Very good stuff.

Aidan's First Bike Ride

Happy Chap!

We went out on the bikes this afternoon. In my case, it was pretty much the first time this year, which is shocking when I look back to how much I was out with Nathan last year. Once I’d done the maintenance on Jill’s and my bikes (tyres, brakes, oiling the gearing) we reattached the baby seat and tried Aidan in it. He fitted well, and wasn’t bouncing around. Nathan was taking his bike out too, stabilisers and all.

Pausing for breath, Nathan looks back for his mum.

We set off, and ended up on the Harland Way, the old ‘Beeching-ed’ rail line from Wetherby to Harrogate. Aidan was happy as Larry, but Nathan was moaning a little about his legs needing a rest. Nathan was also pretty hard to distract from blackberries in the hedges.

Jill arrives, having had to shove Nathan up the hill!

Nathan decided that we needed to turn right onto the bridleway heading east, which Jill and I agreed to as we’d never gone that way before. Nathan struggled with the drag from the stabilisers in the grass on the slope up, and Jill bore the brunt of giving him a shove when needed. We got to see the housing estate from a completely different angle, which really showed how it nestled between woods and farmer’s fields on three sides.

Both the boys were shattered when they got home – Aidan actually head-butted me as he fell asleep – as the mile and a half were a quite a distance. Certainly, it’s the furthest Nathan has been under his own steam on the bike.

Spofforth Castle

It’s fair to say that this was the second ‘thing that we haven’t done in the last 9 years’. On Friday, after I dropped Aidan at the nursery I headed home with Nathan, but we took a detour and stopped at the Swings and then at the Castle (really the ruin of a fortified manor house) in Spofforth. Nathan loved exploring it, and then got really excited when a whole string of tractors went past.

It was Nathan’s last chance for a special day without Aidan around before Nathan went to school, so he had a fantastic afternoon with Jill who took him out to a farm and café near Bolton Abbey, plus an ice cream place while I stayed home, did work and picked up Aidan from his first proper day at nursery. He’s doing one day a week now to get him used to it for when Jill goes back to work.

In case you were wondering...

Wikileaks just lost its link from this site because of this.

WikiLeaks has published its full archive of 251,000 secret US diplomatic cables, without redactions, potentially exposing thousands of individuals named in the documents to detention, harm or putting their lives in danger. 

Source: Guardian.co.uk

Although I believe that there is definitely a space for putting things in the open, this steps over the principle of not causing harm where unnecessary. The original releases were redacted to protect individuals who could have been at risk; this release is more like the kind of stunt that Lulzsec or Anonymous pull. Hence no more linkage to the IP address.

Review: 'The Departure' by Neal Asher

The Departure is the latest book from Neal Asher and the start of a new series, 'The Owner novels', which sees him move away from the Agent Cormac / Polity universe that will be familiar to his past readers.

Asher is one of the strongest and most prolific voices in SF at the moment. Along with Reynolds, Stross and MacLeod he has put a new vigour in the genre. His ability to write fast-paced, twisting and interesting stories reminds me of the late David Gemmell's novels in fantasy: maybe not the absolute best, but you can guarantee an enjoyable, well written story that will have you wanting more at the end.

The Departure opens with the protagonist, Alan Saul, waking up on a conveyor into the Calais Incinerator without any clear memories of who he was and why he was there, only knowledge of the fact that he had been tortured in an Inspectorate Cell and the memory of the face of his tormentor. He is accompanied by an voice in his head called Janus, that claims it is an artificial intelligence and that it was created at the same time that he wore up. Naturally, Saul sets off to find out who he is, why he was dumped at the incinerator and how he can have revenge on his torturer.

It's a bleak future, completely different to that shown in the Polity novels. Earth is controlled by the Committee, a bureaucratic totalitarian regime trying unsuccessfully to manage the limited resources of a hugely over-populated world. Life has lost its value and brutality and starvation are common. A resource crash is coming and the only likely way to prevent it is the same as the results that it would engender; the deaths of billions of people. The extrapolation is scary, as it could easily been seen as a logical extension of the ways that population, politics and technology have been going since the 9/11 attacks.

The story ranges from the slums of Earth to the orbital majesty of the Argus station and out as far as the small human colony on Mars. The pace rapidly picks up, and the back story is filled in nicely as the plot races on. It resolves well, but leaves the hooks hanging and the stage set for a sequel.

All in all, a enjoyable, above average read that leaves you wanting to find out what happens next, having set the scene for the further books. Truly the David Gemmell of SF.

PS Shout out to Neil Ford for the chance to read this. Thanks!

Newby Hall Pictures

Some pictures from Newby Hall yesterday:

Aidan & I.

Nathan & Jill

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