Conceits

Papa's got a brand new bike

2009-12-15T22:43:06Z

We gave M a new bike in the summer, for his birthday. It's a mountain bike, easy to balance and fine for trips along the canal and on muddy paths. The only problem was, it was getting hard for me to ride with him. My bike is a road bike, with 3/4" tyres and no suspension. It's completely unsuitable for any off-road activities. (In fact, in the dark it's not that great for the potholes that litter Edinburgh's roads).

So a few weeks ago I bought myself a new bike. It's a simple hybrid, basically a sit-up-and-beg commuter bike. But it does have wide tyres and front suspension, so it's fine for muddy tracks. And it ignores potholes (more-or-less). So now M and I can cycle forth together.

On the other hand, it's no match for the speed of the road bike. The switch from the road bike to riding the hybrid is how I imagine it would be to swap a sports car for a saloon. (Not that I've ever driven a sports car). I'm in top gear half the time, which I just wouldn't be able to manage on my old bike (and if I did, I'd be going like the clappers and have legs like Chris Hoy's).

Dancing

2009-12-12T15:19:26Z

Tuesday was the end of term dance for our dancing class. Did I mention here that we're learning Scottish Country Dancing? We're still very early beginners, so I'm galumphing around like a hippopotamus while the more graceful Mrs HtC forgets which way is left and which is right. If you combined our best points, you might just about make one reasonable dancer.

The classes are run by the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society and the dance on Tuesday brought together the beginners, intermediate, intermediate plus and advanced classes, with the RSCDS demonstration team along to show us how we should be doing it. You know the standard dances at ceilidhs - Gay Gordons, Dashing White Sergeant, Strip The Willow and so forth? We didn't do any of those (although we have learnt some of them in class). Instead we had Postie's Jig, Flowers of Edinburgh, Robertson's Rant and a range of others. For the dances that we didn't know, the more accomplished dancers would take one of us beginners as partner and gently guide us through the intricacies, making sure that we at least ended up in the right place.

Everyone was very friendly and it was fun to attempt some dances that would have been far too hard for us to have tried on our own. As attendance was restricted to the classes (and the demonstration team), there was a sense of community and noone was embarrassed of upset by our frequent mistakes.

The classes are good fun - I'd recommend them to other Edinburgh folk. The RSCDS need to do some more publicity; they still have room in their beginners' class yet I'm sure there are plenty of people around who would enjoy it.

Return of the Oktoberfest menu

2009-12-06T23:43:36Z

We had some friends around for dinner on Friday, something we haven't done for ages. It's just as well I had the day off work. I didn't spend all day cooking but I did need the time to shop, chop and cook.

For the first course, I used Alex's recipe for ginger soup, or at least an approximation based on my memory of it. If the recipe involves anything besides stock, ginger, a bit of pepper and spring onion to garnish, then I didn't get it right.

For dessert, I essayed Phil's recipe for chocolate and banana cheesecake. This one I had written down, which was just as well because it's a bit more complicated.

Both were complimented, which suggests that I didn't muck them up. Of course, I knew from experience that they are both excellent.

More cat woes

2009-11-21T22:31:37Z

Within 24 hours of the new mattress arriving, one of the cats sneaked past our guard and peed on the bed again.

Both cats are still alive, although this is probably only because we don't know which of them is guilty.

Fortunately we spotted it quickly this time, so Mrs. HtC's cleaning plan (courtesy of the interweb) has more chance of eradicating the smell. We hope.

In the future, at the very least we'll have to be scrupulous about keeping the bedroom door shut. (This is not as straightforward as it sounds, as we often pop in to get this or that from a cupboard). Another alternative would be to get rid of the cats, which has disadvantages of its own. We've even revived our thoughts about moving from the flat to somewhere with a garden. (Not that the cats are the only reason for thinking of a move - if they were, that would probably make them the most expensive cats in Edinburgh).

Denver photos

2009-11-17T22:40:31Z

This final posting of pics from my USA trip shows a few bits of central Denver.

One thing I noticed about Denver is how little green space there was, and how few trees. The land all around is mainly scrubland and the city is mainly concrete. It was a noticeable contrast from rainy Edinburgh. One exception was the area around the state capitol building.

In a very different style, this is the museum of art. There is some good stuff in here. Even the less good stuff is interesting.

And finally, a general cityscape showing Union railway station in the foreground.

Colorado wildlife

2009-11-16T22:07:05Z

We didn't see a huge amount of wildlife and some of it was too small or too fast to photograph. But if anyone can tell me what sort of bird this is, I'd be grateful.

This is the best shot I could get with our basic camera. It is zoomed in a lot.

We saw a few elk. This one was close to the road.

This is the nearest that we got to a bear. It's at the Denver Convention Center.

Rocky Mountains

2009-11-15T23:08:34Z

Here are some photos from my recent trip. More to follow. (If I've got this right, the images should be under an LJ cut).

On the Monday, we had a trip to the Rocky Mountain National Park. This is a picture of the mountains from just outside the park.

We stopped briefly at the Stanley hotel, which is the setting for "The Shining".

From there, we went for a short hike in the hills.

Followed by a drive to a viewpoint...

... where the pass was closed for winter.

Then home as night fell.

More cat woes

2009-11-15T21:15:28Z

One of our fine feline friends has peed on our bed!

On Friday night we climbed into bed and gradually noticed an unpleasant smell. Climbing back out, we inspected the linen and found a suspicious stain on the sheet. It was dry and we reckon that whatever chemical is is that stinks in cat urine must have reacted to the heat from our bodies. Bleeurghh.

So for now we are sleeping on the futon. The linen has been laundered, the quilt is at the cleaners and a new mattress is on order. The four-legged inhabitants of the household are felices non gratae.

Lessig on copyright

2009-11-06T01:30:45Z

I've just been to an excellent talk by Lawrence Lessig, the Harvard law professor who has been active in setting up the Creative Commons licence, the idea of Science Commons and the Open Access movement. He is a really good speaker and he set out some of the problems with the current hegemony of one particular view of copyright.

One interesting issue is that of preservation, for example of documentary films from the 1960's. In order to duplicate the film onto new media for preservation (and ideally distribution as DVDs), the archivist has to get permission from a huge number of corporates, for each clip of newscast or other material that has been assembled into the documentary. This is clearly a case where the current legal framework has an unsatisfactory effect.

Lessig isn't against copyright for those artists and others who want it. He does note that other communities (including some artists and most academics) have different goals, of promoting sharing. He didn't mention provenance tracking, which is an important issue in this space.

He also discussed the Google Book agreement and expressed dissatisfaction with the approach to works that are out of print. In practice, it is pretty much impossible to get agreement to make these books available, because copyright ownership is not tracked and once a book is out of print, nobody is sufficiently motivated to keep track of who owns the copyright.

The Creative Commons, Scientific Commons and Open Access movements are all doing significant work in these areas. More needs to be done, especially by academics changing the way they publish papers and data.

I'll stress that Lessig is a really good speaker. I'm going to practice some of his techniques. In the meantime, if you ever get the chance to hear him talk, take it.

Rocky Mountain High

2009-11-04T05:03:43Z

Yesterday a bunch of us piled into three cars and headed to the Rocky Mountain National Park. After driving for an hour and a half, we arrived at the Stanley Hotel, a hundred-year old building that gleamed white on the side of a hill, with impressive views towards the mountains. (Apparently this hotel was the setting for Stephen King's The Shining, which would have had more impact on me if I'd actually read anything by Stephen King). We stopped here for coffee, or in my case the previously mentioned milkshake.

From there it was a short ride to the Lumpy Ridge trailhead, where we split into groups of varying ability and did a little hill walking - nothing epic, just 6 or 7 miles. The views were superb. The weather was clear. Most of the snow had cleared from where we were but the mountain tops were still snow-capped.

Next we drove into the National Park proper and up to a viewpoint. It was cold up there, around freezing, and there was a bit of ice on the road. The road through the pass beyond the viewpoint is already closed for the winter. At that point, we were about 9,000 feet above sea level. Denver calls itself the "mile high city", so we'd climbed quite a bit as we drove into the mountains. The views were fantastic. We even saw some wildlife - elk grazing, a marmot or something like that running through the woods and a blue bird with a distinctive looking crest.

I can see why people like living around here, although it must be pretty bad in the winter. I took loads of photos. I don't have the means to upload them from here but I will attempt to put some on the web when I return home.

A dietary mistake

2009-11-03T16:32:45Z

When in America, do as the Americans do, I thought to myself. Well, sort of. Everyone else in the party was ordering coffee, which I don't drink, so I thought I'd try the milkshake. I was a bit hungry so I wolfed it down.

I think that perhaps people need training programmes to learn how to cope with this amount of milk and fat. Maybe starting with rich ice creams and working from single to triple cones. Then accompanying them with flavoured milk. To keep in practice between sessions, they might smother otherwise reasonable meals in Monterey Jack pseudo-cheese.

In the absence of such acclimatisation, the shake made me feel rather ill for several hours.

At least the Mexican meal we had last night was pretty good. Unfortunatley it wasn't to the taste of everyone in our party - perhaps they lacked the proper training regime.

Things to do in Denver

2009-11-02T05:03:42Z

I'm spending a week in Denver, Colorado. This is a work trip but several people from the UK arrived early in order to save money by staying over the Saturday night, which means we have a couple of days to look around. Today was sunny and noticeably warmer than we were expecting, given that the place was two foot deep in snow last Wednesday. About 12 of us looked around the downtown area and the state capitol, which was pleasant. After that I had a look around the Art Museum, which is pretty good.

Tomorrow the plan is to drive out to the Rocky Mountains National Park and wander around there for a bit.

This approach to travel makes a change from my previous job. Then, I went on so many trips that I usually tried to minimise the time away, even if it cost more (in any case, there was usually a fixed budget that had to be used up). This time, I think for most of the people here it is there only trip of the year, so they're taking advantage of the journey to have some time to look around.

Jet lag is kicking in, which means that it's time for bed.

Catch 'em while they're young

2009-10-25T21:16:06Z

This afternoon we played another game of 1825 (that's one of the board game themed about buying shares in railway companies). The difference this time was that Jim and I played with our 11-year old sons. We all enjoyed it: The kids were beginning to flag at the end but the game finished just in time. We'd each played two-player games with them before, so they knew how to play. With four players, the game lasted maybe half an hour longer and there were longer gaps while other players had their turns; given that, the kids did pretty well.

Two weekends: one game, one hike

2009-10-19T21:56:55Z

We took the opportunity offered by the mid-term break (and therefore no weekend football) to go for a short hike in the Pentlands. We parked at Swanston village, which we'd never visited before, and then walked up Allemuir to take in the views over the city to the north and the hills to the south. The day was clear and, unusually for Edinburgh, almost without breeze. On the way back, we got lost, but only for a little while before finding the right path again. It was only a short walk, but given that we were all out of practice, the distance was about right.

The previous weekend, I had some friends round to play Steam Over Holland. This was fun, especially it turned out to be a game of skill and judgement on this occasion (i.e. I won). M had friends around to play Pokemon, and Mrs. HtC was left with time to catch up with work, so everyone was happy. We should do this again.

The truth about cats

2009-10-19T21:17:42Z

Feorag claims to be building a cat-harassing robot out of lego. There are definitely times when I would like such a device. Often this feeling surfaces when I find yet more damage to our hall carpet. It is less than a year old and some corners are completely shredded.

I'm also not keen when they bring various bits of wildlife into the flat. The frogs are usually still alive and can be rescued. The mouse and the bird were both dead. We have put bells on their collars, which may be reducing the toll, but they still manage to catch some prey.

We also have to leave the flat door open while they're out in the back green. We do have cat flap on the back door of the stair but not on the flat door. This occasionally makes me nervous (although of course we only do this while we are in the flat!) and always lets in a cold draught.

Our cats don't even cuddle up like proper cats.

On the other hand, M enjoys their company a lot, so they are good for something. And we haven't seen any mice in the flat since the cats arrived (except the dead one they brought in themselves). And they can be cute.

You can tell we live in a middle-class area

2009-10-18T09:21:40Z

It's the school mid-term break this week, which means I have a break from helping out at chess club on Monday nights and P7 football on Saturday mornings.

(For anyone reading this down south, that P7 is not a misprint. In Scotland, kids have 7 years of primary school and (up to) 6 of secondary, instead of the other way around).

Numbers were down for the last two football sessions. I only realised why when another parent told me. The private schools have been having their open days, so some families were off seeing what they have to offer.

Not that we're immune. Mrs. HtC spent some time last year investigating which high schools offered the best special needs support for aspie kids. (The answer, not surprisingly, was the state school). So the only reason we're not joining with the crowds is that we've already had a look.

Family visit leads to computer withdrawal symptoms shock

2009-10-02T22:08:07Z

My father-in-law came to visit for the weekend. Unfortunately he fell ill on Sunday, with a viral infection in his ear that meant he couldn't balance properly. So he stayed a few days longer than planned. This was pretty fortunate, really, because he'd have been worse off in his own house by himself, while here we could look after him. In any case, he probably needed the sleep that the combination of illness and medicine brought on.

One non-medical side effect was that I couldn't use my computer during this time. This showed me just how much I use it, for keeping in touch and for mucking about with game designs and such like. Now that he's safely home, I can pick up the various threads that I've had to let fall over the last week.

Ow!

2009-09-26T14:16:06Z

I sprained my back this morning...

Last weekend was a bank holiday

2009-09-26T14:15:24Z

And I meant to post something inconsequential about what we did but I was too relaxed at the time and too busy afterwards. M & I picked blackberries - that is to say, I picked them while M accompanied me - and we brought home enough for two blackberry and apples pies. M went round to a friend's house for a day while we pottered about at home. I got lots of mundane chores and other stuff done, which was quite rewarding in a non-momentous kind of way. Sometimes the chores just pile up and it's good to make some time just to sort them out. Then we went for a bike ride along the canal and the Waters of Leith. If we're going to keep doing that, I'm going to need a bike that it better suited to rougher paths. I don't know where we'd keep it though!

New gamers

2009-09-21T10:45:10Z

M has made friends with a new boy in his class at school, who has just moved back to Scotland from Australia. It turns out that his Dad is another 1825 player and plays it with M's friend. M is quite chuffed to find someone else his own age who knows the game. Meanwhile I will invite Jim around next time we play a game with the grown-ups.

That vintage car experience

2009-09-17T21:12:59Z

Yesterday I flew back from a conference with some colleagues. One of them offered us a lift home from the airport, which we gratefully accepted. He escorted us to his 1968 Jaguar Mark II and we climbed in. It brought back memories of how motoring used to be (although not, in my family's case, anything as posh as a Jaguar). You had to slam the doors shut. The seat belts were adjusted manually rather than having inertial reels. The dashboard had fewer controls than a modern car, and the windows had to be hand wound.

That was all well and good, but when we got to Balerno, the engine died and wouldn't restart. So we got the entire 1960's driving experience of getting out and pushing, trying to bump start the car, having a momentary success that quickly faded, and finally pushing the car to the side of the road and calling the AA. The only concession to modernity was that we used a mobile phone, although it was fortunate that I'm a bit of a luddite on that front because mine was the only one with any charge left, my colleagues all being keen on mobile e-mail.

Once we were sure that help was on its way, us passengers phoned a taxi and proceeded home in comfort, if not in style.

Some stages of the recruitment process can be rather dull

2009-09-10T23:26:08Z

I've just finished working my way through 60 CVs. That was quite tedious (but important to do fairly, of course).

The advert for this job was only on the web site for 2 weeks. There seem to be a lot of IT people looking for work at present.

New job!

2009-09-07T22:04:32Z

Not for me - Mrs. HtC has a job for a few months, hacking middleware code for the School of Informatics (or, in plain English, writing programmes for the Computer Science Department) of Edinburgh Uni. This is good, as she was getting bored and wanted something to engage her mind. It'll make domestic arrangements slightly more complicated but that's a price worth paying.

Firefox 3.5 is broken

2009-09-02T09:37:40Z

I've been using Firefox as my web browser for a couple of years and I've been pretty happy with it. I particularly like the Adblock Plus add-on, which blocks adverts from cluttering up the screen. However, I recently downloaded the new version, 3.5, and it really didn't behave well at all. It would completely mess up the display of web pages, failing to format them, failing to render images, or often simply timing out altogether. For an upgrade that was supposed to be faster, this was a disaster.

I've just uninstalled version 3.5 and reinstalled the previous version (3.0.12). Mozilla will have to sort out the problems with 3.5 before I try again.

School camp

2009-09-01T09:16:47Z

M is away on a school camp this week. It's at Lagganlia Outdoor Education Centre, near Aviemore. (Which is similar to the one my brother runs on Dartmoor). The kids should be having lots of fun as they try kayaking, archery, gorge walking, and other outdoor activities. Fortunately, the weather forecast seems to be improving - it looked for a while that they would be imitating drowned rats for much of the week but now I'm seeing the sun symbol on the Met Office charts.

For Mrs. HtC and me, his absence means that we can go out in the evening without having to arrange babysitting. So last night we went to see the Michael Clark dance group, tonight we'll be going to the pub and tomorrow night we'll be going to a Bryan Friel play. I've taken a few days off work too, so that we can potter around together during the day. It's a shame that the Festival Fringe is over but we plan to visit some of the art galleries, which are still exhibiting.

In the morning, we will mainly be sleeping late.