full wall

The end wall is now finished, except for a small wedge at the top to accommodate the sloping roof, which will be added once the glass is ready.  We hear the glass has been delayed ...

more wall

The end wall continues to rise.  A temporary gap is left to accommodate the temporary downpipe.  Rain stopped play for about ten minutes around midday when the heavens opened, leaving a wheelbarrow full of freshly mixed mortar swimming in water.

the wall begins to rise

The end wall, double skin with cavity insulation, has started to be built.  We are having the facing bricks on the inside too, which matches the design in our hall.  The other two walls, and roof, will be glass.

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CXVIII

 The latest batch:

floor II

The beam and block floor is finished, and the brickwork edging is done.  The facing bricks are the same as used for the main house, built 22 years ago.  We were lucky the same bricks are still being made, even if they now cost three times as much.

floor

After nearly four weeks of inactivity, due to delivery days, the beam and block floor for the new conservatory was finally delivered and (mostly) installed today.

seeing isn't believing

Danny Yee’s always-interesting Pathologically Polymathic blog pointed me to a great app by Michael Bach for exploring Syke’s Oblique Grating optical illusion.

Set up a grid:

Add some checkmarks:

Rotate every other checkmark by 90 degrees:

Mind. Blown.

The app allows you to explore the effects of changing checkmarks, changing the grid, and so on.  The illusion needs a very specific setup.

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CXVII

The latest batch:

book review: Middlegame

Seanan McGuire.
Middlegame.
Tor. 2019

The alchemist Reed has had twins Roger and Dodger constructed, so that they can manifest The Doctrine and make him all powerful. They need to be raised apart, one with Maths, one with Words, so they do not manifest too early. But they are stronger than he realises, and connect with each other before he is ready. Reed believes he can control them, but if not, he can always destroy them and start again. But he has forgotten the most important rule of Alchemy. Never create a being more powerful than yourself.

This is a marvellous book. In the acknowledgements, McGuire says that she has had the book in mind for a long time, but waited until now because she didn't have the skill to write it earlier. She certainly has the skill to write it now.

Set in modern day America, yet with a lyrical, fantastical feel, constructed children who are nevertheless very real, weird happenings that slowly begin to make sense, contradictory foreshadowings that heighten the tension, real tragedy and heartbreak, and a stunning finale that is a perfect resolution, yet leaves you wanting more: this is a masterpiece.

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For all my book reviews, see my main website.

A turkey isn't just for Christmas ...

We like to have turkey at Christmas: it’s traditional.  But turkeys are big, and there are only two of us.  A medium turkey (for some reason, there no longer seem to be small ones) typically is advertised to serve 10–14 (or in our case, serve two, 5–7 times).  Although we did eat several turkey meals durng the festive season, the excess was frozen.

Today, we ate the last of the 2020 turkey.  Christmas is officially over!

And we probably got closer to 30 regular servings out of it, without stinting.

book review: Algorithms to Live By

Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths.
Algorithms to Live By: the computer science of human decisions.
Collins. 2016

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This book does several things very well indeed. It introduced a broad range of Computer Science’s fundamental algorithms, explaining them simply and clearly. It shows how we might apply these algorithms in our everyday lives, to help us make more efficient and effective decisions. And it shows that even when we have the provably best means of making a decision, it might not always (or even very often) work.

It covers approaches to searching, and when to stop looking for improvements over what you already have. It discuses sorting, and tradeoffs between time spent keeping things in order, and time spent finding them later. It covers scheduling, and how the best order to do things in depends very much on what you are trying to optimise. It finishes with game theory, explaining why some situations lead to poor outcomes for all, and how understanding this can help you know how to change the situation to get better outcomes. And it does all this, and more, with a light touch that makes it very readable.

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For all my book reviews, see my main website.

TV review: Timeless season 1

Historian Lucy Preston is brought in to a strange case: terrorist Garcia Flynn has kidnapped a scientist, stolen a time machine, and taken him back in time to change the timeline. Lucy, along with soldier Wyatt Logan (the brawn) and time machine pilot Rufus Carlin (the engineering brains) need to take the backup time machine and stop him before he wipes out the future.

One the one hand, this is great, with an exploration of multiple historical vignettes as the team bounce through time trying to stop Flynn, and as the reason for Flynn’s actions is gradually revealed. Also, the racism and sexism in the past are highlighted: Rufus notes that there is nowhere in history where it was a good time to be a black man; Lucy doesn’t fare that well sexism-wise either, but does manage to get away with several snappy comebacks. (There is an implicit assumption that racism and sexism are no longer a problem in the present, but where else did Lucy get those comebacks?)

On the other hand, it is totally bonkers, with the results of changes in the past having essentially only single effects on the future. For example, the first episode has the conflicting efforts of Flynn and the team meaning that the Hindenburg passengers didn’t die. The only visible effect once they get home is that Lucy’s beloved sister Amy disappears from the timeline and her mother is no longer dying of lung cancer; Amy’s father (who turns out not to be Lucy’s father, to her great surprise, and of subsequent plot importance) married a descendent of a Hindenburg survivor in the changed timeline. So Lucy’s mother never married, and never started smoking. But she still lives in the same house, with the same furnishings, as before… In fact, there’s a bit of a running joke of finding out what change to history resulted from their actions each time, like an extra James Bond film, or a different person being the recognised hero of the event. Also, Lucy, apparently involved because of her encyclopaedic knowledge of history, should become steadily more useless as the past moves away from her knowledge of it.

So, don’t think too carefully about the logic of the timelines. Instead, sit back and enjoy the interesting views of historical events.

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For all my SF TV reviews, see my main website.