Books read in 2012

 Personal, Reading  No Responses »
Jan 032013
 

This year’s reading achievement definitely has to be finishing all of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels. I had them all downloaded on my Kindle so whenever I finished a book and couldn’t think of what to ready next I would randomly choose a Vonnegut book and ready that. They also make a nice change after epics like Game of Thrones and Hyperion due to their short length and light heartedness.

The standout book of the year is probably Ready Player One. I didn’t really know what to expect beyond the geek and 80s references everyone talks about so the engaging story and likeable characters were a nice surprise.

Next year I want to start reading a bit more horror. I love horror movies but I’m not very knowledgeable on horror novels at all so I think I’ll try and change that. I’ve just finished The Rats so that’s a start.

  1. Slapstick (or Lonesome No More) by Kurt Vonnegut
  2. Batman Year One by Frank Miller
  3. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
  4. Neuromancer by William Gibson
  5. God Bless You Mr Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut
  6. Mass Effect Revelation by Drew Karpysyhn
  7. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
  8. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
  9. Childhood’s End by Arthur C Clarke
  10. Foundation by Issac Asimov
  11. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
  12. Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
  13. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
  14. The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett
  15. A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
  16. Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut
  17. Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan
  18.  M is for Magic by Neil Gaiman
  19. Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut
  20. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
  21. Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut
  22. The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
  23. Death by Black Hole by Neil Degrasse Tyson
  24. Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut
  25. The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard
  26. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
  27. The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke
  28. The Rats by James Herbert

Roman Holiday

 Personal, Travel  No Responses »
Nov 092012
 

So better late than never I thought I just post something about my weekend in Rome back in September. My girlfriend Jordan and I spent two and a half days wandering around the city looking at old things, eating nice food and resisting the temptation to stroke the many stray cats.

Our flight out ended up being delayed by two hours (yay Easyjet!). We had already arrived at the airport nerdishly early so we ended up with a four hour wait. We then missed the train into Rome by a minute due to a weird ticket machine so the journey ended up feeling a lot longer than it should have been.

The morning of the first day was spent looking around the Colosseum, Forum and Palentine Hill. We were given a great tip for buying tickets to the Colosseum. If you walk 200 metres up the road and you can buy a combined ticket for all three sights at the entrance to Palentine Hill. You can then straight into the Colosseum skipping the massive queue.

I won’t list everything we saw that day otherwise we would be here all day. That evening we found a small family run restaurant for dinner called La. Vecchia. Conca . It ended up being some of the best Italian food I’ve ever had. Even the simple bruschetta starter was amazing.

The next day was mainly spent trudging around the Vatican Museums. I’m sure they would have been very beautiful and quite interesting if we were able to actually stand and look at anything. We were swept along in a huge group of tourists until we got to the Sistine Chapel where everyone stood around taking photos and talking loudly (two things explicitly forbidden).

We ended the day by finding a small pizzeria in town and having some decent (although not fantastic) pizza. We walked back to the hotel past the Forum and Colosseum all lit up as the sun had gone down which was a rather breath taking sight.

Our flight home wasn’t until the afternoon of the next day but we didn’t really do anything productive.

Rome is a stunning city and I would definitely recommend that everyone visit. You can’t quite believe the amount of Ancient Roman stuff they still have lying around everywhere.

 

 Posted by at 6:30 pm

Freedom of speech (or hassling your MP)

 Personal, Views  1 Response »
Oct 122012
 

I’ve been watching in horror over recent months as people are fined and jailed because they’ve made an offensive comment or joke online.

This is a worrying direction in which we are heading. Freedom of speech should be protected at all costs. I decided I would write to my MP expressing my worry and asking if this subject could be raised. I think you should do the same. If I get a response I will update this post or make a new one.

Dear Iain Stewart,

I hope this e-mail finds you well.

I am writing in response to the recent spate of heavy handed sentencing in regards to statements and jokes made on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

I hoped that the overturning of Paul Chambers’ conviction in the ‘Twitter Joke Trial’ would set a precedent in regards to to this subject but instead it seems that judges are continuing to hand out sentences that are grossly out of proportion with the supposed crime as a knee jerk reaction. Sentencing should not be affected by ‘public outrage’.

For example, I refer you to the recent case of Matthew Woods whereby a tasteless and insensitive joke has landed the 19 year old a custodial sentence. This sets a dangerous precedent. Should we really be legislating against bad taste humour? Who decides when the line has has been overstepped?

I also refer you to the recent sentencing of Azhar Ahmed. A young man who expressed an unpopular opinion regarding several dead British soldiers on Facebook. A comment on a website has got him a fine, 240 hours community service and a criminal record. Would the sentence be as tough had the soldiers been foreign nationals and the defendant white?

I can quote several other similar cases from the past year if required.

I am not defending the view points of these people. I am, however, defending the right to express a view that others may dislike or be offended by. Surely you agree that free speech should be a basic right of any British citizen? On a related point, is this seriously an appropriate use of police time in this era of austerity?

As my member of parliament I would greatly appreciate it if you could discuss this subject with fellow MPs and raise the debate in the house of commons.

Thank you for taking the time to read this e-mail.

Yours sincerely,

Louis Houghton

Pale Blue Dot

 Personal, Reading, Views  1 Response »
Jul 252012
 

Last night I finished reading Carl Sagan‘s book Pale Blue Dot. It’s almost 20 years old now so it’s not exactly the best book to read for up to date details on the subject of astronomy or space travel but I wanted to read it after stumbling across an extract from it a few years ago. In the passage in question, Sagan describes his feeling when looking at a picture of the Earth taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from the edge of the solar system. I suggest reading it. It’s really quite beautiful.

I couldn’t help feeling slightly depressed once I had finished the book. Of the predicted advancements covered in the book we have achieved very few (the International Space Station being the main exception). We are no closer to visiting asteroids or Mars than in 1994. In fact it could be argued that we’re further away considering the US doesn’t even have the means to put a man into space now that the shuttle has been retired.

What is really shocking about reading the book is how little we’ve come on politically and environmentally. Sagan described how in the future (in terms of 1994) global stability would help us work together as one planet to achieve goals such as settling Mars. 20 years on however and we’re still spending vast amounts of money blowing up people in the middle east instead of funding space programs.

We also still seem set on destroying our clement climate through pollution. Promises made in Kyoto are being broken and politicians continue to ignore the impending doom that awaits us on this path in favour of short term gains in popularity. People complain about wind farms (both on and offshore), tidal power and nuclear power when these are the only hopes we have. In the nearly 20 years since Sagan wrote Pale Blue Dot and discussed the impact we are having on the Earth we’ve only gotten worse.

Sagan describes how we must eventually become space faring to survive as a species. Human colonies on other worlds are insulated against extinctions on Earth. It seems to me though that we are working ourselves into a corner. Governments seem intent on destroying the planet but refuse to fund our only escape route – space exploration.

 

Open University Past Exam Papers

 OU Degree  No Responses »
Jun 102012
 

Tomorrow I’ll be taking my final exam for the module M255 – Object Oriented Programming with Java. I’ve really enjoyed the module. I had never used Java before and now I think it’s one of my favourite languages that I’ve used.

In preparation for the exam I bought a couple of past exam papers from the OU online shop. I did this last year and I found it really useful. However I have come to discover that the module I did the exam for last year (M263) was an anomaly in that it supplies answers for the exam papers. Most other OU modules do not. Now this is a bit strange. Why take a mock exam if you can’t grade yourself afterwards? You might be really confident about an answer but actually you’re completely wrong.

Now the OU party line is that you can get answers to questions by asking in the module forum or reading back through the literature. The problem is that whenever someone posts in the forum they get a load of conflicting answers just like you see on a popular Stack Exchange question. The difference is that Stack Exchange has a voting system so crap answers are down voted and the best answers are (in theory) voted to the top. And reading back through the unit text sounds good in theory but sometimes you can spend ages looking for a single sentence to answer a one mark question. It’s not really a good use of time when you’re studying part time and trying to fit everything else in. Googling can sometimes be quicker but you can sometimes be marked down for not using the approved method so it’s better to go with the module texts.

So I haven’t done as many mock exams to prep for tomorrow’s exam. I’m fairly confident anyway. It’s nice because a lot of the material is relevant and just sinks in when you’re writing a lot of Java. In the mock exams that I have done I’ve answered everything without too much trouble… although I suppose whether I actually had the right answers is anyone’s guess.

Voting in the Local Elections

 Personal, Views  1 Response »
May 032012
 

So the local elections are upon us and with them come the first time I have to actually choose a party to vote for. Previously I would have voted Lib Dem but since forming the coalition and going back on several key election promises I’ve lost all faith in them. I know local politics are fairly separate from state politics but the association is there and I’d like to show Cleggy how pissed off I am at him.

So this leaves me with the choice between the other lefty parties – Labour and the Greens. I reckon I probably will vote Labour when the next general election rolls round because it’ll be the only way to oust the Tories but in the local elections I feel I have a bit more choice.

I’m seriously thinking about voting Green. I support a lot of what the Green party stands for in regards to the environment but I’ve never voted for them before. Partly because it was always seen as a wasted vote but also because I fundamentally disagree with their stance on subjects concerning science. Today I saw this Reddit post in which someone with exactly my thoughts voted Green but then e-mailed the party to explain their stance. In the e-mail they write that whilst they agree with many of the Green’s policies, the party’s stance on nuclear power and GM crops for example is ‘naive and dangerous’.

This sums up my thoughts exactly and I’m leaning towards doing the same thing.

On a side note I thought I better add how disappointed I am with the amount of information available on the people we’re voting for here in Milton Keynes. All we get on the council website is a list of names next to the parties. I have no idea what these people stand for. I tweeted the @MKCouncil twitter account to find out if any of the candidates blogged or used Twitter but 5 hours later I’ve not heard anything. Googling their names doesn’t bring up anything interesting either.

It just means that people end up voting based on their ideological views of each party as opposed to proper policies. For all I know the Green candidate is opposed to a load of stuff I support. Maybe the Tory candidate and I have very similar views (I doubt it somehow). There’s no way to tell because there seems to be nothing about these people online.

Anyway, hopefully the rain will hold off long enough to walk down to the polling station.

Future Energy Wolverton

 Personal  No Responses »
Apr 012012
 

Yesterday I went over to the Future Energy show in Wolverton like the good (future) citizen I am. I didn’t get to stay that long as I was going out later in the afternoon but still I managed to see a few things.

The main reason to go was to find out more about the E-Car (PDF warning) pilot that Wolverton is in the running for. It’s an car club that’s designed to help people get rid of their second car. You pay a yearly membership fee (at the moment it’s planned to be £50) and then you can book the car and pay an hourly charge (currently planned to be £5.95). The most interesting thing about this one is that all the cars are fully electric. Jordan is possibly going to be looking for a job in London once she’s finished her masters so possibly won’t need a car for commuting. If we could get rid of one car and use the E-Car for the few times when we both need a car at the same time it would save a fair amount of money and the environmental benefit would be a bonus.

They’re planning to run the pilot in four or five areas this year from a shortlist of eight so hopefully it’ll come to Wolverton. Apparently interest has been better than the average so that’s promising.

I also signed up for information from a local veg box thing called Growing People (warning. The website is absolutely horrible). Last year we gave Able and Cole a go. They’re one of the biggest veg box companies in the country so we thought they’d be good. We cancelled after a few weeks because the produce was really bad quality and in some cases was already over ripe. They also imported a load of stuff. The reason I like the idea of getting a veg box is to reduce my food miles. This one in Wolverton is all grown locally. You can have it delivered or pick it up and the place you pick it up from is less than a minute walk from our house so that’s a plus.

There was also a good bit of information on solar panels. They’re still maybe a little too expensive for me to justify but I reckon once they get below £2000 for 6 (currently around £3500) they become very interesting. I have quite  bit of technology so being able to partly power it all with green energy would help my conscious a lot.

 

House update

 Personal  No Responses »
Mar 242012
 

A few people have asked me recently about how the house is getting on so I thought I’d do a post showing some of the things that have changed since we bought the place back in October.

When we first bought the house the old owner had some fairly awful fireplaces in the living room and dining room. One of the first things we did was replace them with something a bit closer to what would have been there when the house was first built. Here is the living room fireplace – before and after. The after picture is pretty old. It’s now been smoothed out and painted around it.

 

In the dining room we’ve replaced the fireplace with a wood burner. The wood burner is plumbed into the heating so during the winter months we can get a fire going and it’ll heat water for the radiators and baths/showers. We’ll also have a boiler so we don’t have to do it if we’re feeling lazy.

 

The next major change is the addition of the shower room upstairs. We stole a bit of space from the middle bedroom which is going to be my study so doesn’t need to be very large. The main bathroom is going to be downstairs so having a toilet upstairs is a huge bonus.

 

As the on street parking in Wolverton is pretty competitive we’ve turned the end of the garden in a place for cars with access by the alley.

 

And this is what the garden looks like at the moment. The concrete slab for the extension is down. We also have a big pile of soil if any keen gardeners need any soil.

 

Considering the current frequency of my blog posts I imagine the next house post will be when it’s close to finishing.

 

Books Read in 2011

 Reading  No Responses »
Mar 202012
 

A week or so ago someone posted on Reddit a picture of their granddad and a list of every book he had read in his life. I’m trying to find the post but searching Reddit in the evening is painful. I think the list consisted of around 6000 books.

Now I know I’m a bit late but I’d like to start making a note of what I’ve read. Luckily I’ve spent the last year reading on a Kindle and move everything I finish into a collection. I only read one paper book so that’s pretty easy to remember.

So here’s 2011′s list in the order they were read…

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson
The Road by Cormac Mccarthy
Cat’s Cradle: A Novel by Kurt Vonnegut
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Deathworld by Harry Harrison
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dune by Frank Herbert
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
Fahrenheit 451 by Rad Bradbury
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Piano Player by Kurt Vonnegut
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Not a bad list. Before I got my Kindle I was barely reading at all. I’d stand in front of the book shelf and not see anything that took my fancy. Now I have a virtual book shelf of thousands of books that I can download in seconds.

My goal in 2012 is to finish reading all of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels… I’ve already read three more this year :)

On the ladder

 Personal  No Responses »
Nov 292011
 

Continuing the resurrection on this blog (two posts in two weeks!) I thought I better write a quick note about probably the most important thing to happen to me in the past few years and that’s getting on the housing ladder. Back in October Jordan and I completed the purchase of our first proper home together.

It’s in Wolverton – one of the old towns that was assimilated into Milton Keynes in the 1970s. We wanted an old house as they have a bit more character and history than a lot of the new builds as well as a lot more space. There seems to be a greater feeling of community in these old areas that you just don’t get in the rest of Milton Keynes. You actually see people walking around in the streets which is pretty rare in Walnut Tree where we are now.

The lady that lived in the house before us had been there since 1965 and from the looks of things very little has been done in the last four and a half decades. It made the place pretty horrible to look at when we first saw it but it also means it has a load of original features intact like cast iron fireplaces in the bedrooms and quarry tiles in the back room (hidden under some lovely carpet – pictured right). We’re also going to have the floorboards exposed throughout most of the house. Half because they’re nice and half because we have a cat that seems intent on murdering anything we can get his teeth round which tends to make quite the mess of carpet.

There’s a whole load of work to be done so we’re not going to be moving in for quite some time. The house doesn’t even have central heating. It’s quite daunting when you think about all the things that need to be done and all the things that need to be bought. In fact, we made a spreadsheet of everything we needed to buy and the total was rather shocking. It may have to be Super Noodles for dinner from now until next summer. And I’m sure every time I look at the kitchen sink I’ll think to myself “that was £250 well spent… I could have bought a PlayStation Vita with that”.

 

 

 

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