Posts Tagged ‘love’

The Time Traveler’s Wife is a novel by Audrey Niffenegger, and a rare gift of one at that.

Like most great novels, it is a love story. In this case between Clare Abshire, a normal and well-to-do girl, and Henry DeTamble, a man who suffers from chrono-impairmen, which causes him to time travel randomly and unpredictably, living him to fight for his life in a variety of situations.

It sounds like science fiction, and technically it is. But it’s not for science fiction fans, so if sci-fi isn’t your thing, don’t let that put you off. It’s a love story through-and-through with interesting philosophy thrown in to boot.

I can’t honestly say I was gripped the whole way through. At first, the ideas are novel, which keeps it interesting. But, the middle of the novel dragged for me. I had to put in some willpower to keep reading.

The effort was well rewarded, though. The ending is powerful, moving and bittersweet. I don’t really do crying, but if anything came close, this was about it. If you enjoy fiction, this is well worth a read.

Some people’s day will start with breakfast in bed. In the Worfolk household, this is true also. Venla will be having her breakfast in bed. Our bed, not her own.

As a special Valentine’s Day treat, we may both shower.

Upon returning home, gifts will be exchanged. One gift. Elina will hand me a baby and go for a nap.

Finally, at the end of the day, we will collapse into bed exhausted. But not embracing, because that would wake up the baby.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Roses are red
Like the blood spilled by Xena
Last year we wed
Because I love Elina

Thank you to those who celebrated our Leeds wedding with us! The photos are back and here are a few of our favourites.

Optimal Cupid: Mastering the Hidden Logic of OkCupid is a book by Christopher McKinlay analysing the online dating site OkCupid.

He scraped the site to get data on thousands of profiles and then analysed the data so that he could build the ideal profile. He claims it worked for him, going on 88 dates in three months and is now engaged.

That is all very interesting, although it was not what I was hoping for when I read the book. I bought it thinking it would be an interesting insight into OkCupid, how they do stuff and what interesting information we can glean from a large dataset. That’s not the case at all, it is simply an analysis from a user’s perspective.

It is also a very short book. I polished the whole thing off one evening as a bit of light reading in bed. It will take you maybe an hour, maybe only half to finish it and I have no idea who the foreword is written by, but it feels like he just asked a friend to write a two page ramble.

Therefore I would not recommend the book to anyone, unless finding dates on OkCupid is your last salvation for happiness.

I did apply some of the ideas he suggested to my own OkCupid profile however, so it will be interesting to see if anything comes of it. Seems unlikely though given my profile is very clear that I am happy married and only interested in platonic friendship…

What do you get when you book a party barn and fill it full of Fins and Brits for a wedding? The answer is a damn fine party. I like to think that is down to the excellent team that Elina’s mum Riitta and I make. Riitta organised everything, and I resisted the urge to try and control everything, and everything worked out well.

We started with a champagne reception. Elina and I even had our own non-alcohol tray. We then sat down for a formal meal and then the cutting of the cake, which involved the usual awkwardness of everyone gathering round taking photos. Then we partied.

The barn had seating areas downstairs, including a bar with saloon doors and a dart board, and then an open area upstairs with a poker table, pool table, ping pong table, two table footballs and an air hockey table. There was also a TV with a variety of games consoles and a karaoke machine.

Oli won the book on Kieran’s arrival time after he turned up 2 hours 34 minutes late, beating out Cara’s guess with four minutes to spare.

I don’t have many photos of the day because I was busy being the groom and everything, but some more should hopefully turn up.

Elina and I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who made the trip over from the UK, from Sweden, and from the various parts of Finland too! It was wonderful to celebrate the day with so many special people!

In August we did an engagement shoot, which apparently is a thing now. It was a good chance to get to know our photographer, Dan, droll over his camera gear a bit, and get some practice at posing for non-posed photographs. We’re also using the photos as part of our UK wedding so keep an eye out!

It was a lot of fun. I felt like a celebrity as we were guided round Temple Newsam while a giant camera lens was pointed at us.

Leeds Skeptics recently invited David Frank to present a talk entitled “sex, love & marketing”. It looked at how people market themselves on online dating and what interesting information we can gather from large scale data releases by major online dating networks.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Online dating is rapidly becoming a mature industry with wide social acceptance – most people think it is a good way to meet people and 11% of Americans have used it
• It is predominantly used by middle-class urban dwellers with some university education
• “Do you like horror movies?” turns out to be a really good predictor of compatibility

And some tips for using online dating:

• Get your friends to pick your photos as you will instinctivly try and pick mirror images of yourself rather than the best photos
• Get your friends to peer-review your profile, just like you would a CV
• Use an interesting username that is neither boring nor contains words with negative connotations
• Use pictures taken on DSLRs – whether it is the skill of the user, the higher quality camera or extra care taken, the produce much more liked photos than camera phones
• If you must use a camera phone, turn the flash off
• People love some depth of field on profile pictures too
• Selfies are good for women, but bad for men
• Smile with teeth is best, followed by no smile, smile without teeth. A smirk is the worst thing you can do.
• T-shirts or casual shirts are the way to go for men – tank tops and topless are the worst ways to go
• Showing cleavage works for women, and this becomes even more successful as they age
• Do not talk about god in your profile
• Basically everyone hates misspellings, grammar, and short replies

Overall a really interesting talk. There was also a section on sex and fetishes. The entire thing was well supported by stats and evidence. You can find the full slides on David’s website.

I almost gave up on The Rosie Effect. Sure, I enjoyed The Rosie Project. But it did not make me feel like I had to read the sequel. So I mulled over striking it off my reading list. However, just before I did I went back to Bill Gates’ blog to re-read his post about it. It raved about it, so I kept it on the list.

I’m glad I did. As Gates points out, life through the prism of autism provides a surprisingly identifiable view of the human condition.

It picks up a while after The Rosie Project finishes and tells the story of Don and Rosie as they prepare to start a family.

I also found out that “cross-nursing”, the practice of swapping babies to feed, can be beneficial for the immune system of the child. However, a little research suggests there are serious risks and other complications. Anyway, something to discuss with Elina later…

The Rosie Project is a novel about a guy named Don and his struggles with relationships. He falls somewhere atypically on the autism spectrum, probably Asperger syndrome.

It was a novel I had looked forward to reading, so I was pleased when it made it into my current reading sprint. I identified strongly with the protagonist. He has so many useful ideas like efficient, running his life from a whiteboard and a proper meal schedule. Though with the obvious difference that he is autistic (and doesn’t even realise it) and I’m not.

The ending was predictable and formulaic. Good news, obviously. Have you ever read a novel that doesn’t end like it should? They’re rubbish. Even George R. R. Martin knows deep-down that what he does is awful and wrong. Gripping, but rubbish.