How many times have you been in a presentation where the slides were simply read to you? Death by PowerPoint anyone? The Presentation Zen web site is a really good resource for avoiding this in your own presentations.
I’ll be trying to do more visual presentations in future. Keep the text to a bare minimum.
This, as the title suggests, is a parody of The Matrix Trilogy by Adam Roberts who also wrote The Soddit. If you have seen the films, and you are not too precious about them, then you’ll probably enjoy this. It’s not as good as The Soddit, and you have to have seen the films I think to get this, but does have some interesting commentary towards the end on the whole cult of celebrity thing we seem to be immersed in these days.
Blast from the past. Queen’s A Day at the Races was the first album I bought on my own, with my own pocket money. I’d been given A Night at the Opera for Christmas in 1975, along with most of the rest of the UK! I can still remember going into Belfast on the bus to get ADATR. 30 years ago this year. It’s still bloomin’ brilliant and fresh to me. Tie Your Mother Down has to be the best rock song ever written. Been listening to the album for the last hour or so. Marvellous. I’ve had 30 years of joy from the 10 tracks on that piece of plastic. Thanks guys!
Well, not really. But the image composited from different wavelengths captured by several space telescopes certainly looks like one. See image and story at New Scientist.
Nice.
The Edge website asks many scientists and philosophers a question for the new year and publishes their responses. In 2005 the question was What do you believe is true even though you can’t prove it?. This generated a lot of interesting responses and arguments 🙂
The 2006 question is What is your dangerous idea? Responses are now available. Should make interesting reading. Think I’ll start with Richard Dawkins.
I got the complete series of the excellent BBC comedy Coupling for Christmas. This is one of the funniest shows ever. I was laughing so much earlier today watching it the back of my head hurt and I couldn’t breathe. Some of the lines that the character Jeff comes out with are unbelievable. Well worth checking out.
My first experience of Peter F. Hamilton’s work was the opening volume of The Nights Dawn trilogy. I was a few hundred pages into this huge space opera work when it was revealed what was happening to characters. Don’t want to outline it here as it will be a spoiler for anyone who comes to read the series later. For my part I hated the idea and didn’t finish the first volume. I was really disappointed as the book up to that point had been excellent. I recently got rid of them during a clear out.
I was in Waterstone’s in Belfast a few weeks ago and noticed a new book by Hamilton called Judas Unchained. This was billed as the second book in The Commonwealth Saga. The first book in the saga is Pandora’s Star which they also had in stock. Reading a bit of it in the store it looked really interesting. Galaxy spanning space opera. I love space opera that is huge in scope.
I’ve just finished Judas Unchained. I have to say that this has lived up to my hopes. The two books, Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained, are really a single long book that just happens to have been published as two volumes. It’s about 1800 pages long and is huge in scope. The characters are believable, the future galactic colonisation is really well described and the aliens are probably the best I’ve read about in any fiction.
This is a keeper. I’ll be reading it again very soon just for the sheer pleasure and to pick up on anything I’ve missed first time. I can see this book, treating the two volumes as a single entity, joining the list of my favourite books.
There is a description of The Commonwealth Saga here. It has Spoilers!!
I’ve long been an advocate for calling a spade a spade when it comes to the way the fallacies spouted by most religions are demonstrably false and counter to the way the Universe actually works, as shown by the scientific method over the last 400 years. I hear people use the argument that people, especially when addressing the audience in the USA, should be less like Dawkins and more like Miller. I reject this view utterly. Watering down or sugar coating the direct conclusions that arise from discoveries of science is a recipe for disaster. We need to shout from the rooftops whenever something exposed by religions is demonstrably false.
PZ Myers has a nice piece on this very subject over at Pharyngula.org.
I’ve been playing a cheap Westfield acoustic guitar, that I bought to learn on, for the last few years. I decided to buy a good quality replacement now that I’m sure I’m going to continue playing. Doing research into what are good quality acoustic guitars I came across the usual suspects like Martin, Takamine etc. I also kept hearing about a make called Lowden that are made in Northern Ireland. People kept singing their praises and saying that Lowdens were brilliant guitars. Looking into it I discovered that what was the Lowden company had split, with the former company taking the name Avalon Guitars, located in Newtownards, and a new company called Lowden Guitars formed by George Lowden located in Downpatrick. There is also at least one other Northern Ireland based guitar maker with a connection to the former Lowden company. This is McIlroy Guitars located in Antrim.
I really liked the idea of getting a guitar that was actually made here in Northern Ireland. As long as it sounded okay. I wanted an acoustic with a lightly coloured wood top and without any electrics installed. I got the chance to play an Avalon guitar in a shop in Bangor a few days ago and it sounded really nice and looked good as well. But it was from an Avalon range that was made overseas. Not that this would have stopped me buying it, but I wanted to try some of the locally made ones as well.
I went to the Belfast Guitar Emporium to see what they had in stock. Wow. This is a wonderful shop. If you are are looking for a guitar of any type then this shop should be on your list of places to visit. They have loads of guitars in stock and they are very friendly and knowledgeable. At the back of the store they have a separate acoustic room with about a dozen Lowden guitars and a big couch to sit on and try them out. I spent time in there trying out the models available. Four of the guitars fitted the criteria I had. I quickly narrowed the ones I was interested in down to two. An O-32 and a S-12c. I spent quite a bit of time A/B’ing these two. They were both bloody marvelous. One of the guys from the shop said he thought the S-12c was the best Lowden he had heard. He was excellent playing it. He is certainly a better guitarist than I am 🙂 I liked the sound from the O-32 better, though it was a close call. The O-32 had a deeper sound that I really, really liked. Ironically one of the things I told the guys in the shop was that I liked a more treble sounding guitar. The O-32 changed my mind!
So after playing both for a while I settled on the O-32. I hadn’t asked the price of the two I was thinking off as I didn’t want the price to colour my choice. I wanted to make the choice based on sound and feel. It turned out that the O-32 was the cheaper of the two so that was a bonus. So I bought the O-32. Here is is:
Click picture for larger view
I really like it. It looks beautiful and has a wonderful tone. The top is Sitka Spruce and the back and sides are Indian Rosewood. The neck is Mahogany/Rose and the fingerboard is Ebony. Other woods, in addition to those listed above, like Walnut and sycamore are used for inlay and detail. There are more pictures of he guitar here. It has a wonderful wood smell too.
Hopefully this guitar will last me for the rest of my life and that that will be a very long time.
The intelligent design proponents (or IDiots as they are known) lost big time in the court case about the teaching of ID in Dover. Happy days. The Judge didn’t just rule against them but went out of his way to show that ID is just repackaged creationism. You can read the ruling in the PDF available here. There is a good summary of responses at The Questionable Authority.
Just heard a wonderful album. It’s the debut solo album by Jenny Wilson from Sweden. I first heard her when she was a guest vocalist on You Take My Breath Away by The Knife. Her new album is not available in the UK yet as far as I can see. It can however be listened to it in full via a Flash-based player at her web site. It can also be ordered via mail order. I really like it a lot. She has a brilliant voice. I’ve ordered a copy. It’s on the same label as The Knife so hopefully, it’ll be on the UK iTMS soon as well.
The Knife will be releasing a new album in March 2006. Happy days.
Gotta love the cold, sunny winter days. Well at least the rain is off 🙂
But I do like the crisp mornings. I wrote the following one day driving to work by motorcycle on a sunny, winter day. No radio in the helmet so you have to make your own entertainment!
Winter Sun
The winter sun will show me the way
Help me through these cold hard days
The winter sun will guide my steps
And I’ll be grateful for its help
The time will surely come around again
Long hot sunny days with your friends
Drinking beer and making love
Those are the kind of days we all want
© Ian Robinson 2005
I’ve been listening to The Planets by Holst for a long time. I finally got to hear it live on Friday being played by a real orchestra. Went to a concert in the Waterfront Hall in Belfast to hear the Ulster Orchestra perform the whole Planet Suite and several other pieces. I really enjoyed it. It wasn’t as good as my favourite CD version of the suite performed by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. This is not a reflection on the Ulster Orchestra. They were excellent. I just think it’s easier to get into the music without an audience of several hundred people round you.
Well worth the experience to hear it live though. It was broadcast live on BBC Radio Ulster and I was able to record it via my Radio Shark and Audio Hijack Pro. So I’ve got it in iTunes and on the iPod which is good. It’s also available via the BBC listen again feature as a RealPlayer stream via this link. This link will only work for about 7 days though.
Went for a 5 mile walk around the grounds of Stormont in Belfast today. I haven’t been getting anywhere near enough exercise recently. So it’s back to the long walks with the iPod in operation. Was listening to Roger Taylor solo stuff today. Bloody marvellous. I think his projects outside of Queen are very underrated.
The Darkness return. One Way Ticket to Hell…and Back. It’s good stuff. Musically it’s very good indeed. Lots of layering of vocals and guitars, Ã la Queen. Not surprising since this album is produced by Roy Thomas Baker who did the early Queen albums. I think the falsetto vocals are a bit overdone here. It works better using this a counterpoint to normal singing. Justin’s voice is good enough to sing normally more of the time.
They are playing Belfast on 5th February 2006. Oh Yeah! I’ll be there. Last time they played Belfast they were brilliant. Indoors next time. Probably best given the bloody weather! Be interesting to see if they are still as tight as a live unit with the new bass player.
Been even wetter than usual in Belfast for the last few days. Sometimes its like the air has turned to liquid! I don’t mind rain. You can’t live in Belfast if you mind rain. I have a lot of time for the Rob McKenna character from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. The amount of rain over the last few days however is just taking the piss! I’ve been thinking of buying a new motorbike. It might be more prudent, given the bloody weather, to get a boat instead.
It was George Best’s funeral this morning here in Belfast and it was chucking it down. Really chucking it down. Large numbers of people still turned out to welcome him home and say goodbye for a final time. Football was always second fiddle to cricket and rugby for me. Goalkeeper was my thing when I did play football. However it was impossible to grow up in East Belfast and not be immersed in the legend of George Best. I never saw him play live but from the video that remains he really was something special. Every now and then sport throws up people who are gifted and appear to be just that bit better than those around them. George Best was one of them. From my lifetime the only other person that springs to mind in the same ilk is David Gower when batting. I’d rather have watched David Gower score a stylish 50 runs than other batsmen plod their way to 100 or more. Sport should be entertainment. Gower, and Best from what I’ve seen, provided it.
We could do with more like them.
I had another 6-month checkup today after my TC in 2003. Physical examination was clear, results of ultrasound done a few months ago were reviewed. They were clear. I also had a chest x-ray taken for a clinician to review for any signs of remission. If that is clear, and I expect it will be, then my next check-up will be in a year.
So, onwards and upwards. 🙂