sequestering carbon, one Christmas at a time XIII

His'n'hers Christmas presents (including a DVD, for a change)

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CLIII

The latest batch, comprising his'n'hers birthday presents.

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CXLIV

These are some books we bought in York on the way home from our Scottish holiday in August, some undatabased books I discovered when I packed up my office in October, plus a few maths books related to a potential retirement project I'm thinking about.

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CXLII

 Our Inverness bookshop purchases:

travelling back south

We got up at 7am, and, after breakfast at our Edinburgh hotel, we went into the city centre, where we visited three bookshops in a typical book-buying spree: Blackwell's (9 books), Till's (6 books), and McNaughtan's (5 books).  Our tastes are quite eclectic, and so we were intrigued, but nevertheless not tempted, by these:

We then drove down to Bishop Auckland, to attend Kynren.  This historical re-enactment event must be the north of England's best kept secret. Neither of us had ever heard of it (before Googling for things to visit on our travels), yet it was huge: several thousand in the outdoor audience.  It was amazing (we were fortunate with the weather), with a large cast of actors, horses, sheep and geese, telling the history of England from a northern perspective.  

The Kynren staging makes full use of the path, lake, and surroundings.

Their website says "There are plenty of award-winning toilet facilities around the site" and they are not joking! I have never seen such plentiful and excellent facilities anywhere else.  We had a great time, and even managed to get out of the huge car park relatively quickly once it was over.

We then continued our drive south, arriving in York at about half past midnight.  A long day: I clocked up 55 "heart points" and nearly 20,000 steps.  I slept well!

view from two hotel windows

The Inverness hotel overlooks nice greenery, but there is a big dual carriageway on the other side!

We went back to the Tesco's for breakfast, then into Inverness to go to Leakey's second hand bookshop, where we bought 11 books.  We then drove down to Edinburgh, stopping at Aviemore for lunch.

The view from the hotel window in Edinburgh was not as pretty as the one in Inverness:

But at least the advertised EV charger existed.

A rather weird design!

Another evening charge while we have dinner.

A long day ahead of us tomorrow as we head further south.

An unexpected gem

 We got a photo of the "new" Skye bridge this morning before we left our hotel in Kyle.

Then we left to drive up to Inverewe, to visit the gardens there.  On the way, we stopped at Acnasheen to charge the car, via the ChargePlace Scotland app. 

Not sure I'm keen on standing in a big puddle while I hook up an electric charger...

Then off to Inverewe.  Like at Dunvegan yesterday, most of the rhododendrons are over, but that allows the spectacular bark to be seen.

But there are still a few late bloomers.

The woodland walk includes a path down to the loch.

panoramic view of the loch

And there are marvellous trees.

Californian Redwood

After about an hour and a half walking round all the gardens, we had lunch in the garden cafe.  Then time to drive to Inverness.

Just before we got there, we stopped at what looked like a large layby with a Public Convenience.  But it turned out it was the small car park for Rogie Falls.  An information board showed two trails: a half-mile Salmon Trail down to the Falls themselves, and a somewhat longer and "strenuous" Riverside Trail.  It was still early, so we put on our boots and set out on the longer trail.

We took the blue trail

disappearing down the trail

This brought us down to a path along the river above the falls.

an unexpected gem

The path led us to the falls themselves.

We guessed from the name "Salmon Trail" that this is a salmon river, but assumed it was too late to see any.  But no! There was a lot of jumping going on, but we failed to get any photos of fish.  We continued on the trail, back to the car park, and then drove to Inverness.

We chose a hotel that was supposed to have an EV charger associated with it, but it was no longer there.  So we went to a local shopping centre, plugged into a Tesco charger, bought some items in Tesco's to be legitimate customers, then ate in a local diner while the relatively slow charger filled the car.

Off to Edinburgh tomorrow!

Over the Bridge to Skye

After a great time at the Glasgow Worldcon, yesterday we drove up to Kyle of Lochalsh, and today spent the day driving round Skye.  The last time we were here (about 40 years ago!) we had to take the ferry; now there is a bridge, making Skye more accessible, and more crowded.

view this morning from our hotel window

We visited Dunvegan Castle and gardens.  The castle has a fairly standard historic interior.  The formal gardens are interesting, and there was also a pipe band playing. And the woodland walks are beautiful.

Dunvegan Castle

A very well covered pergola

mossy roots

Too late for the rhododendrons to be in flower, but that just makes the twisty shapes more visible

Waterfall, fed from all the water falling from the sky...

We then had lunch in Dunvegan village, and spent the afternoon driving further north around the coast on single track roads, down to Portree for dinner, then back to Kyle for a second night in the hotel.

Off to Inverewe and more gardens tomorrow.

view from a hotel window

We have finished our relaxed journey north, and arrived at our hotel (chosen mainly because it has an EV charging point) by the SEC Centre, ready for the Glasgow 2024 Worldcon official start tomorrow.  We did register this evening, to save some time: it's just a convenient short walk away across a footbridge over the Clyde.

When we arrived, we found our room has a good view of the Armadillo (now its official name!), where some of the con events will be held.  The main convention space is in a less visually interesting, but much larger, building behind it.

The Armadillo by daylight

Later on, after dark, we found the view is somewhat different, due to the interesting alien lighting in the adjacent OVO Hydro building.

Excited for the start of the convention tomorrow!

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[Later: I have added some notes from the convention to my website]

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CXL

 The latest batch, comprising his'n'hers birthday presents.

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CXVII

The latest batch:

Innominate Eastercon - Friday

This year’s 68th Easter Science Fiction convention saw us driving to the Birmingham Hilton Metropole, next to the NEC, the same hotel as used for Illustrious in 2011.  We left plenty of time for the drive, as the travel-pundits were predicting road chaos.  There was no road chaos. That left us plenty of time for lunch before starting to go to the sessions.

The first session I attended was a two-person panel on Biotechnology and the Law.  Dr Helen Pennington and Dr Colin Gavaghan talked on a variety of aspects of how the law is maybe failing to keep up with scientific advances.  CRISPR/Cas9, a technique to edit out genes from the genome, was mentioned a lot, including the fact that it can be used to produce GM organisms that are indistinguishable at the DNA level from organisms “naturally” bred to have the gene removed.  The consensus was that items should be labelled so consumers could exercise choice: some don’t want to eat GM food, some prefer GM food, as it doesn’t tend to have the trace amounts of natural fungal microtoxins that organic food does. Nevertheless, Scotland and New Zealand have banned the growing of all GM crops, not just food crops, in order to present a clean “green” image; this is ironic, given that Scotland does not exactly have a healthy food reputation!  The current “over the counter” availability, cheapness and ease-of-use of CRISPR led on to discussion of potential dangers; the panellists weren’t too worried, given the difficulty of keeping the GM organism alive: “any back-garden bio-terrorist is likely just to kill themselves, and a couple of neighbours”.  Given the potential untraceability of GM organisms, the suggestion was the most important legislation change is to require registering trials and publishing results, as is now beginning to happen for medical trials, to stop the covering up of “mistakes”.

Victorian times: Dinner in the Iguanodon Model, 1854

Next I went to a talk on Dinosaurs in fact and fiction by Dr Will Tattersdill. Dinosaurs are complicated: there are the “real” dinosaurs that existed in Deep Time, and there is our changing knowledge of dinosaurs since their discovery in Victorian times, to our better but still imperfect knowledge today.  They form a perfect link between the “two cultures” of arts and sciences: you can’t have a dinosaur without scientific activity and physical evidence, but you need imagination and art to “flesh out” a whole animal from a few bones or partial skeleton.  As science advances, our knowledge increases, but our dead images, our wrong images, stay with us, too, in books, in toys.  Arguing that these “old” dinosaurs are wrong is robbing us of our pasts, of our childhoods, in much the same way that arguing Pluto is not a planet does.  We have a nostalgia for outmoded science. In his essay “Dinomania” Stephen Jay Gould writes “When I was a child, ornithopods laid their eggs and then walked away forever.  Today these same creatures are the very models of maternal, caring, politically correct dinosaurs.”  Just look at the tenses and model of time in that quote!  Will speculates that dinosaurs are perfect for SF readers: we have the “cognitive agility” to hold multiple worlds, each with their own rules, and complex models of time, in our heads; this skill is needed to hold all the different “human pasts” of dinosaurs, too.  The talk covered more: history, cultural imperialism, phylogenetic trees, gender, SF stories, … you name it.  Brilliant stuff; I’m looking forward to his book due out end of 2019.

Next came David Allan’s quiz, loosely based on Pointless.  The team of 4 did well, hampered as they were on occasion by one of the options not appearing on their sheets, only on the screen visible to the audience.  Picture round: Name the alien.  Alternate letter round: Fictional planets: _A_I_O_R (Majipoor), _A_L_F_E_ (Gallifrey), A_R_K_S (Arrakis), M_D_E_I_ (Midkemia),  Title of First Novel in Trilogy on Being Given the Second, … When the surprisingly low scores for some of the more obvious options were revealed, the audience demanded to know who on earth the consulted panel were.

Then it was time for the opening ceremony.  As traditional, the Guests of Honour were invited up onto the stage, as were the con committee, for applause.  Afterwards, Dr Emma King from the Royal Institution gave an excellent presentation that involved lots of things going bang.

For the final item of my day, I went along to a panel on Making Money from Art and Craft in the SFF Community.  I am not myself an artist, by any stretch of the imagination, but I have a friend who is, who sells a few fantasy-related items on eBay.  I went to find out if there is more they could do.  In summary, and unsurprisingly, if you want to make more than just your costs back, you are going to have to move from a hobby to a profession, which many crafters don’t want to do.  But I did discover the existence of something called silver clay.  I won’t do anything with this knowledge, other than enjoy the fact that I now know about this.

book review: A Symphony of Echoes

Jodi Taylor.
A Symphony of Echoes.
Accent Press. 2013

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Max and the crew of time-travelling historians are back. We get another series of historical adventures, both of snippets providing scenes of hilarity or tragedy (sometimes simultaneously), and of major events that move the plot forward. Here the snippets include observing the final kill of Jack the Ripper, a team-building exercise with dodos, an expedition to Canterbury Cathedral to record the assassination of Thomas a Beckett, and a trip to the Hanging Gardens of Ninevah. The plot, that of protecting St Mary’s, and all of history, from Ronan, includes a protracted visit to future St. Mary’s, and a trip to imperil Mary Queen of Scots, in order to confound the unhistorical ending of the lost Shakespeare play.

‘Dr Maxwell. Why are you wearing a red snake in my office?’
‘Sorry, sir. Whose office should I be wearing it in?’

The combination of snark, fun, terrible historical incidents, and the tragic fight against Ronan continues. Still compulsively readable.

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For all my book reviews, see my main website.

Bravo, Nicola Sturgeon!

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