About
Not that Les Gray. I was never a member of 70s glam heroes (or villains depending on your POV) Mud and am certainly not deceased. A programmer and parent, I’ve started blogging as I’m of an age where a very great deal about the world seems to bug me. Since I abhor social interaction yet still have a need to “vent” in order to maintain some semblance of sanity, the blog seems like a good idea. Just occasionally I do learn something that might be useful to others and this may result in a post of some useful purpose. Don’t count on it though.
I read… Richard Dawkins, Bill Bryson, Autobiographies (I recommend Moab Is My Washpot and absolutely anything else written or that will be written by the incredible Stephen Fry), Zeldman.
I subscribe to…New Scientist; get all the interesting news on a Thursday before the BBC website carries the selected highlights. (Actually, this is no longer strictly true. I still subscribe to New Scientist and it’s still good but it no longer turns up on a Thursday. It mostly turns up on a Friday now, sometimes on a Saturday and occasionally it will go on a bender at the weekend and finally show up bleary eyed on a Monday with lots of by then very old news)
I don’t read newspapers unless I happen across them on a train or waiting room.
I watch Spooks, Top Gear, Heroes, Stargate and just about anything you can catch on the Discovery Channel. I hardly ever watch anything when it’s actually broadcast and wouldn’t see anything in its entirety if not for the powerful magic of Sky Plus.
I hate: Costume drama. Period drama. You can shove it up your D’Arcy.
My favourite film is A Matter Of Life And Death. A 1946 Movie from Powell/Pressburger with David Niven in the lead. A strange choice for an Atheist perhaps. Its visualisation of heaven and the process by which one is ‘booked in’ is my favourite aspect. The love story I can take or leave but the off-the-wall nature of it is fantastic.
Religion: Atheist, since you asked. No wait, you didn’t ask. But you did read this far so you have only yourself to blame. It doesn’t matter anyway. Atheism is no more or less important that monotheism, polytheism or any other belief system. So long as you don’t force it on others, indoctrinate children and the vulnerable, cause suffering or declare war in its name you just go right ahead and believe whatever you want, just as I do. Oh wait… that little lot basically sums up organised religion. Well, let’s just say if you can do religion without doing any of the above, good luck to you, fill yer boots.
I dislike: “The Opposition”. How, whichever political party is in opposition indulge in argument for argument’s sake and political points scoring even when the government are doing just what any sane person would. This is not to say all government policy is sane (in my humble opinion) merely that when it is – when you cannot find anyone in your peer group of any policital persuasion who thinks there is another way and so might reasonably conclude that the policy is sane - the opposition doesn’t support it! The problem is in the name. A political party should be promoting its beliefs in how something should be done better, not simply opposing for the sake of it. The two are not the same.
I find creepy: Peter Mandelson. I’ve never met him, don’t know him, I don’t even believe everything I hear about him. I just find him creepy. I think it might be because he bears more than a passing resemblance in my mind to the childcatcher from the movie of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
I’m obsessed by: Prime numbers and doing manual things in the most efficient manner. Not at the same time you understand, though given that the primes have a hand in just about everything I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were implicated in the most efficient way (ie minimal lifting, filling, tipping, opening, closing) of making one tea black with sugar, one coffee black with sugar, one tea white no sugar and one coffee white with a diabetic friendly sugar substitute. In fact, the modest obsession with doing things in the most efficient way only ever works if effiiciency is defined as minimal action. Were duration to be considered in the efficiency calculation I should most certainly be terribly inefficient as the mental re-working often takes longer than the eventual actions. If I’m making a group of you a drink, you’d better not be too thirsty. I harbour an irrational (pun intended for you math heads) belief that I will one day prove the Reimann Hypothesis and claim the Clay Institute’s million dollar prize. This is clearly irrational because while I was good at maths relative to my peers and perhaps still am, I’m actually not much good at it at all compared to your average A level student. I don’t do advanced mathematics, don’t really ‘get’ the zeta function and can barely construct the simplest mathematical proof. Despite this, Reimann, and more commonly, the search for the formula that will predict the nth Prime Number occupies my rare dreams.