It was 30 years ago today...

 … that my first fully dated item appeared on my website: a review of Clannad’s 1996 tour at the Cambridge Corn Exchange, attended a week earlier.

I blogged about this piece of history 10 years ago.  What's changed since then?

Back in 2016 I was working at the University of York.  I have since retired, although I still have Emerita status there.

To date, on my website I have 623 non-fiction book reviews, 1094 science fiction reviews, and 82 other fiction reviews.  That's about 5 reviews a month averaged over the 30 years, although it had been decreasing, and was particularly low in 2016.  Over the last 10 years, that's a further 189 non-fiction, 250 science fiction, and 7 other fiction reviews, so a reading rate of about 3-4 book per month over that time period.  I hadn't decreased my reading, just my reading of books, as reading research papers took up a lot of my time at York.  There's a visible spike in number of book reviews last year as retirement kicked in, back to the previous rate of 5-6 a month.

There haven't been any major changes in the design of the website, just more material, mostly in terms of reviews, research publications, and solar power statistics.  So, maybe just more of the same in 2036, too?  Let's see!

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CLX

 The latest batch:

A friend was having a clearout, so we got a few old classic computer books.  And the ZWO SeeStar User Guide should help us make better use of that telescope.

reMarkable review

I've had my reMarkable Paper Pro Move for just over 6 weeks now, so how's it going?

It's had a good tryout: taking notes at a science fiction convention, on a couple of plane trips, and on a train journey.

My first serious use was at the science fiction convention.  The note taking went well, but I was surprised at the short battery life (about half a day of full on writing), given it is advertised to last much longer.  However, the convention rooms are typically dimmed to make it easier to see the speakers, and so I needed to use the backlight to see what I was doing, and this does drain the battery quite quickly.  The plane rides and train journey were much brighter, and I could easily take notes without using the backlight, and the battery seeming lasts forever then.  On those journeys I was mainly using it to take notes on a non-fiction book I was reading, and to sketch some diagrams when thinking about some technical ideas.  It's a bit small for sketching, but okay for simple figures.

At the convention, I was taking notes seated without anything to rest the notebook on.  Its small size was helpful here, as it is easily graspable.  After several hours of holding it, however, it does start to bite into my fingers.  On the planes and train, I could use the "table" provided, and it was fine.  The train was a little shaky at times, and so the erase option was put to good use!

There are several pen tools avaialable: ball-point, fineliner, calligraphy, marker, pencil, brush, highlighter, shader, each in different thicknesses, each with a different behaviour.  There are also several page backgrounds: plain, lined, squared.  I played around a bit, and eventually settled on the medium thickness fineliner on narrow lined paper for ordinary writing.  

The writing feel is good, but, despite the advertising, I would not say that it feels just like writing on paper, unless maybe you are writing on a single sheet of thin paper on a hard surface.  It's certainly not like writing in a notebook.  But it's also certainly far superior to writing with a stylus on a tablet.  

One issue for me is that the marker attaches magnetically to the right side of the notebook.  I'm left-handed.  So if I want to take notes intermittently (which I do particularly when reading), I can either lay the marker down and potentially lose it, or keep reaching across the device to attach and detach it.  However, as a lefty I am totally used to the world not being built for me in so many ways that this is a relatively minor inconvenience.

It's easy to add folders, notes, new pages to notes, and to rename and rearrange things.  Having some structure is better than having a bunch of random notes in a heap.

There's a handwriting to text conversion feature.  This is surprisingly good, given I have notoriously bad handwriting.  (I am expecting/hoping that my handwriting might improve after using this for a while, just so that I can exploit the conversion more easily.)  It doesn't always work, but occasionally it works when even I can't easily read what I have written!  But if you use the conversion and it mis-converts things, it can tricky to recover what the reality was.  To get round this, I use the desktop app on my PC.  The notebook syncs with this very smoothly.  On the PC, I go to the handwritten page, convert to text, ctrl-A ctrl-C ctrl-Z, so I have selected and copied all the text then immediately reverted to the handwriting form.  I paste the text into the relevant Evernote or Obsidan note, then lightly edit where needed, referring back to the handwritten version if required. I keep the handwritten form on the notebook.  (If you don't ctrl-Z to undo the conversion immediately, you can't get it back later.)

This desktop app and accompanying cloud storage requires a subscription.  Buying 2 years at a time works out to £2.99/month.  Whether you want this depends on whether you are happy to risk keeping your notes on the notebook without backup.  I, on the other hand, backup my backups.

There are some online tutorials on the product website, ranging from introductory (how to make folders and notes) to more advanced (how to use it in various scenarios, none of which are relevant to me, however).

So, overall, I am definitely happy with this.  It isn't perfect, but then paper isn't perfect either.  It's very light and portable, easy to use, a good feel to the writing process, and the handwriting recognition means the end of transcribing notes.  I will continue to use my laptop for taking notes in seminars and lectures (I can type faster than I can write legibly), and ordinary paper for sketching larger diagrams at home.  But for notes on the go, this is the device for me.

view of the Rhine

The weather has been glorious here at the workshop in Bad Honnef, so I went for a short walk this lunchtime, down to the Rhine.

close to the Rhine

As you can see in the above photo on the right, there is a spit poking out into nearly the middle of the river.  Walking out on the spit gave me this beautiful view down river:

On my way back to the venue, I passed several other workshop attendees with the same idea.

view from workshop accommodation window

I arrived in Bad Honnef, near Bonn in Germany, yesterday evening, after a flight to Cologne airport followed by a 30 minute local train ride.  I'm attending the New Opportunities in Physics‐based Computing workshop at the Physikzentrum there.

The view from my window in the Physikzentrum is down to the Rhine:

The venue itself is very impressive, both outside:

and inside:

from the top of the stairs on the second floor, leading to accommodation wings to the left and right

The workshop itself is being held in a modern lecture theatre attached to the back of the building in a very symapthetic extension.

There have already been some very interesting talks.  I'm looking forward to the rest!

deficient

Late March was our 50th reunion for college.  One of the old friends I met there was chatting about her vitamin D experience: she had discovered she was deficient, and had needed a booster course to bring her back up to normal levels.  She mentioned some of the symptoms: fatigue, bone pain, muscle weakness,... 

I recognised some of those symptoms, although I hadn't realised the pain near the top of my pelvis I was having might be bone pain: I didn't know bones could hurt! Muscles yes. Joints yes. But bones themselves?

The conversation stayed in my mind; the fatigue was getting me down, and the (bone?) pain seemed to be getting a bit worse.  Mybe it wasn't just the decrepitude of old age.  I don't get a lot of sunshine (I'm in the UK, after all), but I have been trying to eat food with good vitamin D levels, such as oily fish.  But maybe that's not been enough.

So I booked a blood test, and I had a blood sample taken on Tuesday morning.  They said I should get my results in a week.  But Wednesday (yesterday) morning my doctor phoned: I was vitamin D deficient, and she was prescribing me a "loading dose" to bring me up to a better level. 

I went online to look at the actual test results. I was at less than 25 ("deficient"), where 25-50 is "inadequate", 50-70 is "adequate", and (presumably not too much) over 70 is "optimal" (units are nmol/l).  So yes, clearly a problem.

This morning I picked up my prescription: 6 capsules, each with a dose of 50,000 IU ("international units"), to be taken once a week.

Since the typical maintenance dose is 400 IU a day during winter, that loading dose is nearly 20x the maintenance level!  Wow!  Let's see how it goes.

I'm not sure when in the day I should take it.  The NHS site says "with your main meal of the day", which for me would be evening dinner.  Other places say to take it early in the day.  Also, to take it with fat to maximise absorption (despite being recommended a low fat diet).  Hey ho.  I'll take it at lunchtime then, with an oily fish dish.

Anyway, from blood sample to prescription in hand, less than 48 hours.  NHS FTW!

Jupiter pinwheel and moon

More fun with the SeeStar telescope this eveneing.

A nice shot of the moon:

An overexposed Jupiter and four moons:

clearly, we need to learn more about adjusting the exposure

The Pinwheel galaxy, M101, 11 minute exposure:

The same image with some simple postprocessing:

clearly, we need to learn more about postprocessing

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CLIX

The latest batch:

excursion to Segesta

The conference has been wonderful, as usual.

This afternoon was the excursion, to Segesta, where we went four years ago.  This time I was not recovering from Covid, so managed the various walks without needing to stop to catch my breath.

Everything was as impressive as last time.  

We didn't get to go inside last time.  The people certainly give a sense of the sheer scale.

trying for a fancy shot

After the temple, we hopped on the shuttle bus up to the amphitheatre.  We did the tour the other way round last time, but the main difference between the visits was due to the time of year: a parched October in 2022, and a glorious spring April now.

wild flowers: vibrant, pervasive, and glorious

On the walk back up to the Erice venue from where the tour bus dropped us at the car park by the walls, I was saying that I found the town map very unhelpful, and kept getting lost.  One of the other conference goers pointed out the reason: the town is triangular in plan, and there are two different maps in two different orientations.

this one, sensibly, has north at the top

this one is rotated 120 degrees

Aargh! I hadn't noticed this, so whenever I looked at a map (copies of which are scattered helpfully throughout the town), I had been assuming a consistent orientation, and hence was getting hopelessly confused.

If "the man who published a book without an index ought to be damned ten miles beyond Hell, where the Devil could not get for stinging nettles", then whoever decided to rotate one of the maps should join them.

Anyway, we found the very nice gelatto shop (as opposed to the merely nice gelatto shop), so that was a bonus.

Last day of the conference tomorrow (yes, it is scheduled over the weekend!)

view from an Erice accomodation window

I flew to Palermo this afternoon, for the third workshop on unconvnetional computing (the previous ones were in 2022 and 2024).  I drove to Stansted airport, to what my SatNav called the "Stansted short. Stay green car park"

The weather while queuing to get on the plane was significantly better than the last time I flew, in February.

The plane right next to the one I am boarding, with another plane in flight behind it, all against a lovely blue sky

It was dark by the time I got to Palermo, where I was fingerprinted and flash photographed at passport control for the EU's new EES (Entry/Exit system).

It was even darker by the time I got to Erice (although it was nowhere near as late as the first time I came here!), but the view from my room window was all the more beautiful for that.

The workshop starts tomorrow.

view from a Birmingham hotel window

We arrived in Brimingham for the 2026 Eastercon yeaterday, and settled right in, as we have been here before.  I have been using my new reMarkable notepad, and it seems to be working well so far.  Let's see how it stands up to a whole long weekend of use.

Here's the standard hotel window shot:

Not exactly beautiful!  However, even if the outside of the back of the hotel looks a bit like a tin warehouse, the inside is perfectly cromulent.

Now off to another day of talks and socialising.

new solar PV and battery charging strategy

We have solar PV and a battery.  If sunny, we can use the PV during the day and export any excess.  We can charge the battery overnight on cheap rate (6.4p/kWh) for use during cloudy days and in the evenings, when power is more expensive (24.2p/kWh).  We can also charge the battery off any excess production during the day.  And we have an electric car, which we can charge off excess production, or off the grid.

Up until now, we have been trying to balance things so that we minimise our import from the grid.  This means charging the battery as much as possible off excess generation during the day, only topping it up overnight if needed, and even using it all through the night if it has enough charge.  In the winter, this means we have been charging it overnight, but in the summer we have been using it all through the night, and charging it off excess during the day, therby having essentially no grid import at all.

This is all well and good, but there are two issues.  First, and most complicated, is that we need to know how much sunshine there will be tomorrow in order to know whether to charge overnight or not.  We have been making this decision manually, because the automatic system is not very good at predicting the weather. This is better than the automatic system, but it doesn't always work, and in early March this year we didn't charge one night when the weather forecast promised sun the next day, but the sun never appeared.  This meant the battery went flat mid evening and we had to import from the grid at the expensive rate.  This cost us about £1, so, more irritating than anything else.  

The second, and more economic point, is that overnight grid power on our current tarrif costs 6.4p/kWh, whereas we are paid 15p/kWh for export.  This means that it makes financial sense to charge the battery (and the car) on cheap overnight electricity, and export all the excess during the day.  That feels wrong, somehow, because we are using more grid electricity than we need to.  But, presumably, the electricity company prefers to provide us electricity at night, and use ours during the day.  We can timeshift, at a profit.

So we have started a new PV/EV strategy.  From late March we have started charging the battery and car, and using grid power, overnight, then exporting all surplus generation during the day now that we are no longer charging the battery off the PV.  We'll try that for the rest of the year, and have a look at the various bills to see if it makes any significant financial difference.  It is certainly easier to "program": we just set and forget.

reMarkable new toy

I've been thinking about getting a device that allows me to input using handwriting for a while now, as I like to take notes while I am reading non-fiction, and a laptop or other keypoard device is too clumsly for this use in places like on a train.  I've tried stylus-on-tablet a few times, and never liked the feel.  Also, they too are a bit big.

A collegue of mine used a reMarkable notepad, and liked it very much, and said the writing feel was good.  But those are also a bit big: fine for meeting, but not so much for casual note-taking.  Then I came across the reMarkable Paper Pro Move, with a much smaller footprint.  I dithered for a while, then decided to give it a try, as it has a 50 day trial period.

Here it is, against a mass market paperback book for scale:

I haven't gone for the cover (as the point is to have something I can use easily), or the fancy marker with an "eraser" on the end.

I'm off to Eastercon in a couple of days.  I'll use that to try out how well it works.  Review to come!

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CLVIII

 The latest batch:

21 today

We've had a friend visiting for the weekend, and she's into birds, so today we went to RSPB Minsmere.  It's a lovely place, many different habitats, well marked out routes around the site, and numerous hides to stop and watch all the many species of birds (and some other wildlife).  I saw 21 different species (mostly identified for me by my friend, including several I had never even heard of before):

• near the start around the shop and restaurant:
• robin 
• wood pigeon
• pheasant 
• large birds on the water: 
• greylag goose 
• mute swan 
• black headed gull (millions of them!)
• smaller birds on the water (mainly ducks, often in pairs)
• shoveler duck 
• teal 
• shelduck 
• garganey 
• gadwall 
• mallard 
• coot 
• waders
• avocet (about 10 of them standing in a neat row)
• oyster catcher 
• redshank 
• turnstone
• in the reed beds 
• little egret 
• heron 
• bittern 
• circling lazily above the reed beds
• marsh harrier (several of them)

50 years on

Today was Commem, and my year group's 50th anniversay of matriculation.  A group of us went along to to meet up, and see all the changes.

It was great to see old friends (with maybe not too much emphasis on the "old"), and how the buildings have changed, and not changed, over the years.  I was amused to find that my first year room has since been converted into ... a student kitchen.  (The student in the kitchen at the time was somewhat bemused to be descended upon by a group of old ladies :-)  

This specific change is somewhat ironic, given the amount of cooking I did at the time (zero).

round and round and round it goes

I saw a strange bent cloud out the window, and when I looked closer, it looked even stranger:

Strange that is, unless you've spotted the aeroplanes flying in circles in the sky around here, which is a common sight (even more common recently, for some reason...)  

I've never seen them leave circular con trails before, however.

seeing Uranus move

Last Wednesday, as well as getting a SeeStar photo of the Crab Nebula, we also took a picture of Uranus.

5 minute exposure : can you spot Uranus?

The problem is, Uranus looks like a star at the resolution of this telescope.  But, planets wander; it's there in the name.  So, we took another picture on Saturday, when we were also looking at the Orion Nebula.  Putting the two images side by side makes it clear which spot is the wandering planet, and which spots are the fixed stars.

 18 March, 5 minute exposure                                     21 March, 2 minute exposure

Blinking between the two images shows the movement well (but also shows that one image is very slightly rotated with respect to the other).

So how far across the sky does Uranus move in 3 days?  Well, its orbital period is 30,688.5 days, during which time it travels once round the sky, through 360 × 60 arc minutes.  In 3 days, it will therefore travel about one ten thousandth of this, or just over 2 arc minutes, or about 1/15th of the angular diameter of the moon.  So definitely enough to be visible.

M42 photo

 Another clear night tonight, another great SeeStar photo, this time of M42, the Orion Nebula.

3 minute integration, no post processing

The SeeStar takes several shots, and stacks them.  This 3 minute integration comprises a stack of 18 shots, each itself a 10 second exposure.

magnolia

The magnolia tree that had just started blossoming at the end of February a couple of days before meteorological spring, is now in spectacular full bloom, the day before astronomical spring (equinox).

M1 photo

Tonight was quite clear, so we played with the SeeStar telescope.

We got a nice picture of M1, the Crab Nebula.  You can even see colours!

10 minute integration, no post processing

We tried Jupiter, but it was over-exposed, even with the exposure turned down as much as we could.  We need to try playing with the settings a bit more.  We could see the moons, though.

A too-bright Jupiter and four moons. Must try harder.

spots and birds

The sun is very spotty today.

15:54 GMT, taken with out SeeStar telescope with solar filter

The SeeStar allows us to take videos.  The sundoesn't change much, but a short video showed something rather fun.

Blink, and you might miss them.  Here's a still frame:

16:29 GMT.  Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It's ... a bird.

(The wobbly shadow at the bottom is a tree.)

too soon?

 Seen today in a nearby garden, a Magnolia tree already in bloom (just).

It's still winter!  Well, it is technically meteorological spring (if not astronomical spring) in a couple of days, but nevertheless: February!

golden boughs

The rising sun snuck round the side of the house and illuminated our neighbour's tree, whilst leaving out apple tree (on the left) still in shade.  A surprisingly beautiful contrast.

7:35 am GMT, looking north

tubular woes

The second day of Astrofest was as good as the first (better, taking into account I had significantly more sleep last night than the night before!)

Today we heard about: 

• ESA/NASA’s Solar Orbiter mission and its view of the solar poles
• Searching for micrometeorites in piles of dust
• ESA’s Science programme in general
• An interview with Gary Hunt on his 50 years in space science, including his Voyager experiences
• Interstellar magnetic fields, including a description of how the Pillars of Creation ‘fingers’ are pointing at the star forming area, with shock waves from star production pushing on the material, bending magnetic fields to form the fingers
• J-P Metsavainio’s stunning astrophotography, including a mind-blowingly detailed image of the Milky Way (zooming in to which showed lots more ‘fingers’ pointing at star formation)
• How large telescope mirrors are made
• NASA’s Psyche mission to a metal asteroid

Excellent!

Usually, at the end of the Saturday of Astrofest, we dash off to catch a train home from Kings Cross.  But it's always a rush, and the train is always packed.  This year we decided to do something different: go back to the hotel, have dinner, then proceed more leisurely to Kings Cross for a later, hopefully less full, train.

On buying tickets, we discovered there were no trains home from Kings Cross that night, due to engineering works.  The app suggested a cross country route, but we decided to travel via Liverpool Street instead.  Slower than the Kings Cross train, but not slower than the cross-country route, and on a direct tube line from High St Kensington.

So, we had dinner, collected our luggage, and proceeded to the tube station.  Only to be regaled with announcements that there severe delays on the Circle Line.  There were complicated instructions of what to do, but we instead took the District line to Earl’s Court, then the Piccadilly line to Holborn, then the Central line to Liverpool St.  So, not direct, but we did catch the main line train we had been aiming for, although with slightly less leeway than we had hoped!  We arrived home not too late, well fed, and full of great astronomy.  So we’ll probably try that approach again next year (well, eating first, not the grand tour of the underground, hopefully).

view from a London hotel window

I had a very productive and enjoyable time at the ALICE workshop in Copenhagen, working with a great team, modifying and using a system that modifies its own programming language.  We hope to get a paper out of it.  Watch this space!

Unfortunately, the last day of the Workshop clashed with a prior engagement in London: Astrofest 2026.  So I left Copenhagen on the last flight out on Thursday evening.  I knew this was a risky decision at the best of times, and then it started snowing...

The flight was delayed by two hours.

In the queue to board.  Brrr.

That meant I missed the last train from Stansted to London.  Saved by National Express!  I got a coach to Paddington.  I felt very 21st Century as I sat on the coach and used my Greater Anglia app on my phone to cancel my rail ticket and request a refund, for which I was charged £5.

I got to Paddington after 2am: the tube was shut, and there were no taxis.  I downloaded a taxi app (not Uber), and summoned a black cab.  That took me to my hotel off Kensington High Street (and cost more than my coach fare from Stansted).  

I arrived at 3am (4am Copenhagen time), but I arrived.  Five hours sleep, then breakfast (and a photo out of the window) ready for a day of astronomy talks.  

no snow!

The talks were very good, covering the JUICE mission, the Herschel telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (and its relationship to K-Pop; yes, really!), landscape astrophotography (marvellous photos), the history of Guillaume Le Gentil's tragi-comic failure to witness two transits of Venus, and galaxies in 3D (I thought the Hubble Deep field photos were mind-blowing enough; seeing them in 3D takes that experience to another level).

Well worth the travel hassle.  And more tomorrow!

view from a Copenhagen hotel window

I arrived in Copenhagen last night for the ALICE (Artificial Life, Intelligence, Complexity and Evolution) workshop. I'm staying in the same hotel I stayed in 18 months ago, for the Artificial Life conference.  This time, I asked for a room without a staircase up to the bed, since I did not enjoy descending it (particularly in the middle of the night, in the dark, half asleep).  I got a room without a staircase, but still with a slight obstacle course:

The bathroom door is where I am standing; the bed is up the step and round the corner.

I arrived last night an hour later than scheduled, as it is windy (and snowy, and cold) in Copenhagen, so my flight was delayed waiting for the one runway still in operation.

The view from my window this morning illustrates the cold.

Most of the snow has been cleared away, leaving a good walking surface, and it is only a 5 minute walk to the venue.  I have brought extra layers, a hat, scarf, and gloves.  I will survive.

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CLVII

The latest batch, including a few belated Christmas presents that were ordered well in advance, but delivered less so.

sunrise

 

7:46am GMT, looking west

pretty complex

It didn't snow again last night, but it did freeze.  Some rather pretty ice crystals formed on the (outside, fortunately) of our conservatory window.

 

on a technicality...

Today is Twelfth Night, or the twelfth day of Christmas, so it's still (just) Christmas season.  So does this mean it's technically a white Christmas?

8:08 GMT, looking north

9:29 GMT, looking west

Despite it now being clear sky and full (if low) sun, we have very little solar PV generation.  It has to get through an inch of snow covering the panels first!

Happy New Year

 Presumably, there are lots of delighted shepherds celebrating this New Year's sunset.

16:10 GMT, looking west