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...

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense...