Archive for January, 2015

This is the first Oscar Wilde piece I have read. It is slightly shorter than the average novel, making it a very manageable read, as well as being a good story.

It is an interesting concept, the idea that the sin of your life is written across your face. Luckily of course, it is not the case. Elina’s face remains youthful and attractive despite spending almost the past two years “living in sin” as her Christian colleague regularly reminds her.

The response of the emergency services on 7 July was inspiring. But what I found more inspiring was what people did on 8 July. They got back on the buses, they got back on the underground, and they showed that they were no afraid.

Just like people did in the Second World War. Keep calm and carry on. These days that phrase is unfortunately associated with fuck-wit hipsters, to the point where it is easy to forget its important origins as a motivational poster to support the blitz. When the shit falls, you don’t run scared, you don’t get angry, you just carry on and show them you will not be victimised.

This book is rubbish.

I had the audiobook edition and it is narrated by Christine Williams. I did not get along with her voice. Its level, unemotional, snyhtetic none meant it took me quite a while to work out whether it was actually a human reading it or some kind of experiment to see whether a computer could voice an audiobook.

The content was no better. No real introduction was provided and nothing was ever put in context. There was a discussion of Nietzsche’s books, but with no provision for those who are not already familiar with the man or philosophy in general. I could not follow what was going on. Not what I was looking for in a book entitled introduction.

I was in a pub last week when I heard a song Snowy White – Bird In Paradise. Here it is:

If you are a Dire Straits fan, you might notice it sounds uncomfortably similar to Brothers in Arms:

Bird In Paradise came out in 1983, beating Brothers In Arms by two years.

I have not ready that many biographies, so it is hard to judge quality. However, I was impressed by Walter Isaacson. He has spoken to everybody. Well, perhaps not presidents, but most people not only those at Apple and Jobs’ family but also pretty much everyone who ever talked to Jobs, including many business-celebrities.

Isaacson says he hopes he has presented an honest book. You would certainly hope so, as the idea of Jobs being even more of an insufferable dick that he is portrayed in the book is a scary thing to imagine. A great man none the less, but a difficult one to get along with.

It got quite depressed with the first section of the book. There was Jobs, younger that I was, doing something he loved, building a great company, carving out his place in the tech industry. When I compare that to what I am doing with my life, I come off pretty poorly.

I was comforting to know that Jobs’ live was not all work and no play though. I sometimes wonder, when playing guitar or in the rare moments when I am actually relaxing, whether the true winners in this world are so driven they would never waste their time enjoying themselves and thus I am not one of them. However, Jobs has plenty of time for messing around bootlegging Dylan tapes and shouting at waitresses. That is not to say he was not a hard-worker when needed and an incredibly driven human being. But it does show you can you can something great while still having the time to obsess over a washing machine for a month.

I recently bought myself a copy of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Vegetable Cookbook and I have been using the downtime over Christmas to working through some of the recipes. I’ve had mixed results.

Disastrously Sainsbury’s online do not sell Swiss chard – this is figuratively a middle class nightmare. It is also difficult because every single recipe seems to start with “chop and then fry a large onion”…

Chakchouka

Mostly made of peppers and tomatoes, then you bake a couple of eggs in it. The egg was good. It also smells increasingly nice as you cook it.

Pinto Bean Chilli

A bit of a hassle to make because you have to soak the pinto beans overnight. You also need to add plenty of chilli. The first one I did I had deseeded the chilli and it was a bit bland, whereas the second one that included the seeds was much better.

North African squash and chickpea soup

Barely looks anything like the picture.

Pearl barley broth

To really get the croutons right you need to let the bread go stale.

Beetroot soup

Nicer than it sounds. But that is a fairly low bar to beat.

Squash and fennel lasagne

This is also a pain to make. You have to bake the squash while sautéing the fennel and boiling the sauce before combing it all together and baking some more. Very nice though, probably due to the quantity of cheese in it. I think I actually prefer fennel cold.

Last month I took my mum to see The Who at Leeds Arena. It was nice to see a band worth going to playing there. The whole place was packed; I’ve never seen the arena have all of its sections open before. The couple behind us were talking about how they had not seen this band for 40 years.

They were excellent.

I was a bit cold at first as it was just Roger and Pete at the front of the stage, then a wall of amps, and the rest of the band behind almost curtained off. Of course those two are the actual “Who”, but Zak Starkey has been drumming for them for over 15 years now.

However, as the show went on it got better and better. They played for two and a half hours. I do not think I could do that at my age, let alone theirs. Especially Starkey as although he is a lot younger, he has the most intensive job and did not have any songs off.

A lot heavier snow fall compared with 2012 and a definite improvement on 2011.

The Norden is a documentary series where they take someone from the United States to visit Finland, Norway and Sweden and compare the way they do things. With predictable results.

Prisons

Police

Guns are a terrible idea; go Norway.

Religion

I think the paster here does really well. He is down with the Heavy Metal Mass, and it feels like with the room 666 they are just teasing him. Plus the Bible does hate gays. I do not agree with that, but it is in there.

Another year has flown by. One of the things that shocked me while summing up 2013 was that I used the phrase “celebrated ten years” more than once. This was the year I failed to make it into the 27 Club, so time really is ticking on.

In January I started working with full time with Knight Analysis. When I wasn’t playing Rocksmith that is. Almost all of the time I wasn’t working, I was playing the guitar. The lovely Sherlock returned and we visited Tropical World, which is not big news but something we do not do enough. Meanwhile Google started displaying ratings for the Leeds Restaurant Guide.

There were the usual holidays of Darwin Day and Galileo Day in February. I was still spending all my time playing Rocksmith, but finally finished the 60 day challenge at the end of the month. I was also saved from suicide by the addition of a dishwasher. There was lots of sport too with Super Bowl XLVIII and Leeds Tornadoes practices.

After working my fingers to the bone on guitar practice I got a well-earned reward in March in the form of a Fender Telecaster. I also won the Leeds City Toastmasters speech contest. There were some old school times with a post-Wendy fry-up and my speaking at Leeds Atheist Society. I also hosted a Sunday Assembly Leeds that nobody came to. The Foundation launched its new website.

In April I was elected the Toastmasters Area 15 governor. Duncan Dallas sadly passed away and the Leeds Restaurant Guide published its second edition. Louis Theroux returned to our screen and we celebrated Fonze’s birthday.

Conchita Wurst stormed Eurovision in May. There was some kind of other vote too. I earned my Competent Leader award with Toastmasters, ran 10k and started seriously doing Parkrun too. Toastmasters held their division contest with me as Chief Judge and a large part of Leeds burned down. Craig and Zoe got married and Worfolk 18 celebrated a decade of publishing by holding a porn party. I also put together a photo montage of the past ten years that I was rather proud of.

That brings us to June, a month in which the Leeds Restaurant Guide published its third edition and Britain was ranked as having the best healthcare system in the world (by a probably biased source, but who cares). I correctly predicted the demise of Wendy House which turned out to be the last ever one. The results of the British Social Attitude survey came out and showed that the non-religious now outnumber of all the religious put together.

It was an insanely busy month in July. I ran the Leeds 10k and fixed HSBC’s website. We celebrated Higgs Day and Leeds hosted the Grand Depart. I began my year as Toastmasters area governor and held my first area training. Having achived Competent Communicator and Advanced Leader Bronze that also earned me a trip crown. We visited Darlington to see my sister’s new house. I wrote about the best places to live in Leeds, independence days, and published the first Finn-Global Development Index. We went to the park to play mölkky and my blog turned 10 years old.

After all that is was nice to spend some time relaxing in August. With relatives visiting from Canada we visited Whitby and Temple Newsam for the Finnish picnic. There were also trips to Warwick and Cardiff. We partied for Leeds Pride and I ate a bear. Robin Williams sadly left us and we remembered 100 years of Tove Jansson. More research came out showing that wine tasting is nonsense and I even spoke up in defence of social science. I finished the month by handing over Leeds Skeptics after five years at the helm.

It was all about Norman’s birthday celebration in September. We went up to Ullapool in the Scottish Highlands for a week, where we saw stars and dolphins and managed to convince the Scots to remain part of the Union. I also got engaged to Elina. Back down south there was an area speech contest and we visited Flamingo Land to see the hippos. Gijsbert and Weili became parents when baby Samantha arrived. Isaac was christened, Michael Mosley tried to eat himself to death and Google decided I was a woman. I also decided that if I was going lead a truly evidence-based life, I had to start drinking. We visited Llandrindod Wells in Wales for the Loony Party conference and attended Yarndale 2014.

In October I completed probably the greatest achievement of my life by finishing War & Peace shortly before turning 28. Anxiety Leeds moved venues to the LGI and began fortnightly meetings. James became Dr Murray, we partied for Halloween and I launched a new website for guitar strumming patterns.

We felt like we were in a horror movie in the November fog. Luckily it did not decent until after we had seen Alan Davis. Huffington Post published the results of their survey on religion in which “60% of people described themselves as non-religious” and “over half believe that religion does more harm than good”. I ran the Abbey Dash and finally arrived in the future as fibre was rolled out to Leeds city centre. West Yorkshire Humanists hosted a stall at Summat New.

Most of December was taken up by the Humanist Action Group’s Holiday Food Drive which raised nearly £5,000 worth of donations for local homeless shelters. The holiday season takes up time too, but not too busy to see The Who rock out at Leeds Arena. As usual, we finished the year out with a party.