Skip to main content

Of no fixed abode

Please excuse the skeletal nature of my blogging at the moment. We are still between houses, so existing on mobile internet, and the occasional opportunity to have the luxury of using a friend's internet connection. Mobile broadband is a great idea, but it's not much faster than dialup... and that's something I have no nostalgia for whatsoever.

The great news is that we will be moving into our new house tomorrow, but don't get a landline until the following Tuesday, and probably several more days to switch the broadband. Until then, things will remain sketchy. I really don't think I could have survived without the iPhone's internet capabilities. Another pat on the back for that most favourite of toys.

Comments

  1. Glad you're still hanging on in there, Brian. I feel your pain - when we moved to Cromer decent connectivity was an issue for nearly a year. Me and Mrs Crox can live without most things, but lack of connectivity makes me want to dribble and chew the carpet, and Mrs Crox goes around in floods of tears as if recently bereaved. Good luck with the big move.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Where are you? Is this an excuse to decamp to somewhere more exotic whilst maintaining a pretence that you're just down the road? Or are the forces of the summer and the efficiency of the telco system combining to provide a study in what not to do to get our Great British Blogger back into the blogosphere?

    All news please on a postcard preferably with photo of your new abode..

    ReplyDelete
  3. I was reading Time.com's top ten stories for the week and came across an interview you did. I was fascinated by your remarks about the "big bang" theory and black holes. I am an amateur astronomer and I love the sciences. I have been following the Genome project for years, and it's scary. I have absolute faith that man will abuse this technology and ultimately destroy all human life as we know it on this planet. I am glad I found the article and will check out your books as well.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks, Thelma - I hope you find the books interesting!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...