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Thoughts on the Hugo and Campbell nominees
May. 8th, 2007 06:28 pmTo a good approximation I don't read short fiction; indeed, given that all the nominees are available on-line, I demonstrably don't read even free short fiction. On the other hand, I do tend to react to the Hugo nominations by buying those of the nominees that I don't already have, and to the Campbells by picking up novels by the novel-nominated writers.
I have now managed to read these, and might as well review them since I've not received a ballot.
( 650 words of reviews by one not practised in the form follow )
I have now managed to read these, and might as well review them since I've not received a ballot.
( 650 words of reviews by one not practised in the form follow )
Sometimes I worry about Google Maps
May. 7th, 2007 03:17 pm |
 |
I was talking to a friend in Columbus, Ohio, and asked whether he'd been affected by the tornadoes in Kansas, because I thought the middle of America was all one place.
To drive from Columbus, Ohio to Greensburg, Kansas is 1541 kilometres; almost exactly the same distance as to drive from Cambridge to Vienna. People rarely ask me whether my house is dry when they've heard that the Danube's flooded in Austria.
Enthusing about astro-ph
May. 5th, 2007 09:03 pmI've been keen on astronomy since I was six; I think small children go for stars or dinosaurs, I was born the month before Voyager 2 launched and was never that keen on animals. It was clear at school and undergraduate level that I was to be a Mathematician, at the moment I'm on the edge of chemistry, I never quite persuaded myself that astronomer was a practical goal, and after doing the Wrong Doctorate I think it now isn't one. I'm happy, and astronomy is something you can do in spare time.
Anyway, while waiting for compiles, or for processing on five DVDs full of images to complete, I often have a look through the astrophysics preprints. When I mentioned this to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
papersky years ago she said I should write about them; I procrastinated, but now seems as good a time as any. Particularly since I've just told james_nicoll that current astronomy doesn't tend to throw up exciting places to use as story settings.
This week, there are 173 papers. I suppose a paper is about six month's work, so that suggests there are about four thousand active astronomers, and indicates that I'm not going to get to keep up with the field, and might as well start at the top until I find something interesting.
This one is a nice theoretical paper on star formation. In the really early universe (in this case, red-shifts of 10 to 50, so the first couple of billion years) there was nothing heavier than hydrogen around. The way we think stars form involves cooling by radiation emitted by atoms heavier than hydrogen, so there's a question about how these really early stars (called Population III for historical reasons; Baade in 1943 discovered that the stars in the core of the Andromeda galaxy had less metal content than average stars around here, and called them Population II as opposed to average stars being Population I; it was worked out later that Population II was older than Population I, and obviously a set of even-older stars would be Population III) actually formed. Since all the observational constraints on Population III stars are of the form 'we looked for Population III stars in the following way and didn't find any', they are a rich field for speculation.
The authors here say that dark matter is the answer. It seems that the conventional wisdom about dark matter is now that, whilst by definition it interacts very little with normal matter, if you have a dense enough conglobulation of dark matter pairs of its particles start annihilating to produce neutrinos, gamma rays, and energetic electrons. If you have a big cloud of hydrogen mixed with dark matter - say the size of Saturn's orbit - collapsing under its own gravity, it eventually gets to the point where it's dense enough that the dark-matter at the middle is annihilating away, and the cloud is thick enough to stop the annihilation products and be warmed by it. You end up with a huge, incredibly sparse star; they claim it might last to the present day, if dark matter has the right properties. It would be of the scale of an ancient supergiant, but be made purely of hydrogen, and be at best lukewarm by human standards (but I think rather suffused with high-energy radiation) in the middle.
So there's a setting.
Other news this week included a few new transiting extra-solar planets, but the people at Systemic blog about that infinitely more eruditely than I can hope to; their current trick is to simulate the weather on these objects. It's quite exciting; Saturn-sized supersonic hurricanes of rock vapour at blast-furnace temperatures seems to be the normal forecast. The implied lab experiments to work out the albedo of clouds of granite vapour to refine the parameters for the model should be quite entertaining to read about.
Anyway, while waiting for compiles, or for processing on five DVDs full of images to complete, I often have a look through the astrophysics preprints. When I mentioned this to
papersky years ago she said I should write about them; I procrastinated, but now seems as good a time as any. Particularly since I've just told james_nicoll that current astronomy doesn't tend to throw up exciting places to use as story settings.This week, there are 173 papers. I suppose a paper is about six month's work, so that suggests there are about four thousand active astronomers, and indicates that I'm not going to get to keep up with the field, and might as well start at the top until I find something interesting.
This one is a nice theoretical paper on star formation. In the really early universe (in this case, red-shifts of 10 to 50, so the first couple of billion years) there was nothing heavier than hydrogen around. The way we think stars form involves cooling by radiation emitted by atoms heavier than hydrogen, so there's a question about how these really early stars (called Population III for historical reasons; Baade in 1943 discovered that the stars in the core of the Andromeda galaxy had less metal content than average stars around here, and called them Population II as opposed to average stars being Population I; it was worked out later that Population II was older than Population I, and obviously a set of even-older stars would be Population III) actually formed. Since all the observational constraints on Population III stars are of the form 'we looked for Population III stars in the following way and didn't find any', they are a rich field for speculation.
The authors here say that dark matter is the answer. It seems that the conventional wisdom about dark matter is now that, whilst by definition it interacts very little with normal matter, if you have a dense enough conglobulation of dark matter pairs of its particles start annihilating to produce neutrinos, gamma rays, and energetic electrons. If you have a big cloud of hydrogen mixed with dark matter - say the size of Saturn's orbit - collapsing under its own gravity, it eventually gets to the point where it's dense enough that the dark-matter at the middle is annihilating away, and the cloud is thick enough to stop the annihilation products and be warmed by it. You end up with a huge, incredibly sparse star; they claim it might last to the present day, if dark matter has the right properties. It would be of the scale of an ancient supergiant, but be made purely of hydrogen, and be at best lukewarm by human standards (but I think rather suffused with high-energy radiation) in the middle.
So there's a setting.
Other news this week included a few new transiting extra-solar planets, but the people at Systemic blog about that infinitely more eruditely than I can hope to; their current trick is to simulate the weather on these objects. It's quite exciting; Saturn-sized supersonic hurricanes of rock vapour at blast-furnace temperatures seems to be the normal forecast. The implied lab experiments to work out the albedo of clouds of granite vapour to refine the parameters for the model should be quite entertaining to read about.
Public service announcement
May. 5th, 2007 09:03 amWhen you assemble a computer from parts, the case comes with umpteen small screws.
Some of these have flanges and round heads, some of them have flanges and hexagonal heads.
The motherboard is attached by screwing little brass hexagonal standoffs into holes in the case, then resting the motherboard on the standoffs, and screwing it on.
USE THE SCREWS WITH FLANGES AND ROUND HEADS.
The screws with flanges and hexagonal heads are one-sixteenth of a wotsit too big, and prone to jamming in the standoffs. Mr Murphy will assure you that this will happen most in the standoff which is most inconveniently located on the motherboard.
Once jammed, the screw and standoff rotate as a unit, and there's not enough give in the motherboard for the standoff to rotate out of its hole in the case; if you could hold the standoff with pliers and unscrew the screw, this would be fine, but the standoff's underneath the middle of the motherboard at this stage.
The way that finally worked to unjam the standoff was to remove all the removable components and all the other screws from the motherboard, then pull very hard with a large pair of pliers on the head of the screw until the screw, standoff and motherboard flew out of the case as a unit. Detach screw from standoff by holding standoff in Big Pliers and turning screw with driver; discard screw and standoff, get new standoff and correct screw from bag of small screws, achieve glorious success.
This scraped some solder-mask off the motherboard tracks, but didn't actually break it. This time.
Of course, motherboards are not that expensive, so even if you break one from time to time it's cheaper to pay for the occasional whole motherboard than to pay the 15% overhead on all the components that your local shop will charge for assembly. But for a dual-core 64-bit high-performance processor to be stymied by a screw one sixteenth of a wotsit too wide is unavoidably irritating.
Some of these have flanges and round heads, some of them have flanges and hexagonal heads.
The motherboard is attached by screwing little brass hexagonal standoffs into holes in the case, then resting the motherboard on the standoffs, and screwing it on.
USE THE SCREWS WITH FLANGES AND ROUND HEADS.
The screws with flanges and hexagonal heads are one-sixteenth of a wotsit too big, and prone to jamming in the standoffs. Mr Murphy will assure you that this will happen most in the standoff which is most inconveniently located on the motherboard.
Once jammed, the screw and standoff rotate as a unit, and there's not enough give in the motherboard for the standoff to rotate out of its hole in the case; if you could hold the standoff with pliers and unscrew the screw, this would be fine, but the standoff's underneath the middle of the motherboard at this stage.
The way that finally worked to unjam the standoff was to remove all the removable components and all the other screws from the motherboard, then pull very hard with a large pair of pliers on the head of the screw until the screw, standoff and motherboard flew out of the case as a unit. Detach screw from standoff by holding standoff in Big Pliers and turning screw with driver; discard screw and standoff, get new standoff and correct screw from bag of small screws, achieve glorious success.
This scraped some solder-mask off the motherboard tracks, but didn't actually break it. This time.
Of course, motherboards are not that expensive, so even if you break one from time to time it's cheaper to pay for the occasional whole motherboard than to pay the 15% overhead on all the components that your local shop will charge for assembly. But for a dual-core 64-bit high-performance processor to be stymied by a screw one sixteenth of a wotsit too wide is unavoidably irritating.
How does one compare index-tracking ISAs?
May. 2nd, 2007 08:48 amThe aim is, in the further reckless pursuit of responsible frugality, to put £100 monthly into an index-tracking ISA. I presume that I can do this despite having put £3000 into a mini cash ISA this tax year.
So I google for 'index-tracking ISAs', and get the impression that these are less well-catalogued by independent sources than cash ISAs; fool.co.uk has a list of index-tracking ISAs consisting entirely of sponsored links. Google is a little better, and I come up with a few fund-management companies and grovel around further.
This would seem to be an easy decision, so I must be missing something. I can't work out what 'dividend type: distributing' means: obviously I want dividends to be reinvested.
On a third hand, given how the pricing of computers and cameras has historically behaved just after I finally decide to buy them, and how the pricing of equities has historically behaved just after I lose confidence and sell everything, maybe I should stay in cash until the unprecedentedly well-correlated set of handbaskets that seem to be making up the international markets proceed up the roller-coaster
to that place where all handbaskets are proverbially destined.
So I google for 'index-tracking ISAs', and get the impression that these are less well-catalogued by independent sources than cash ISAs; fool.co.uk has a list of index-tracking ISAs consisting entirely of sponsored links. Google is a little better, and I come up with a few fund-management companies and grovel around further.
| M&G Index Tracker A | 0.30% annual charge | Tracks FTSE All-Share; "dividend type: distributing"; "regular saving scheme: yes" |
| L&G UK Index | 0.53% annual charge | Tracks FTSE All-Share; doesn't say anything about dividends |
| Fidelity Moneybuilder UK Index Fund | 0.1% management charge | Tracks FTSE All-Share; doesn't say anything about dividends; minimum investment "500, top-up 250" |
This would seem to be an easy decision, so I must be missing something. I can't work out what 'dividend type: distributing' means: obviously I want dividends to be reinvested.
On a third hand, given how the pricing of computers and cameras has historically behaved just after I finally decide to buy them, and how the pricing of equities has historically behaved just after I lose confidence and sell everything, maybe I should stay in cash until the unprecedentedly well-correlated set of handbaskets that seem to be making up the international markets proceed up the roller-coaster
to that place where all handbaskets are proverbially destined.
Ultimate blog of wonder
Apr. 27th, 2007 06:37 pmhttp://hungryinhogtown.typepad.com
The kind of blog to make me feel profoundly inadequate at cooking, at describing, and even at eating. He can write, boy can he cook, and enthusiasm seeps out of every post. Not to be read when hungry.
I guess James will read this at some point: have a look at http://hungryinhogtown.typepad.com/hungry_in_hogtown/2006/03/el_bullis_vanil.html, and ponder quite how logistically crazy it would be actually to get you, me and Marian to El Bulli. It will have to be 2008, of course ...
It will be very expensive, but I notice with some slight embarrassment that in the last eighteen months I've spent nearly three times as much on pizzas at Pizza Express as I have on tasting menus and wine at the Fat Duck. Maybe less crazy would be to get the cookbook, but what kind of cookbook is in Catalan, weighs ten pounds, and costs 80 euros?
[Or is there a second molecular gastronomist in England, and my ears are just in the wrong place to have heard of him? It looks as if the molecular gastronomy city is Chicago, but I'm not willing to have my fingerprints and retina scans sent to the Department of Homeland Security even for canteloupe caviar and hazelnut-and-anchovy chocolate ganache]
The kind of blog to make me feel profoundly inadequate at cooking, at describing, and even at eating. He can write, boy can he cook, and enthusiasm seeps out of every post. Not to be read when hungry.
I guess James will read this at some point: have a look at http://hungryinhogtown.typepad.com/hungry_in_hogtown/2006/03/el_bullis_vanil.html, and ponder quite how logistically crazy it would be actually to get you, me and Marian to El Bulli. It will have to be 2008, of course ...
It will be very expensive, but I notice with some slight embarrassment that in the last eighteen months I've spent nearly three times as much on pizzas at Pizza Express as I have on tasting menus and wine at the Fat Duck. Maybe less crazy would be to get the cookbook, but what kind of cookbook is in Catalan, weighs ten pounds, and costs 80 euros?
[Or is there a second molecular gastronomist in England, and my ears are just in the wrong place to have heard of him? It looks as if the molecular gastronomy city is Chicago, but I'm not willing to have my fingerprints and retina scans sent to the Department of Homeland Security even for canteloupe caviar and hazelnut-and-anchovy chocolate ganache]
This is what those mighty towers of blasted-forth pumice that you see in Dante's Peak look like from the top; the little brown smudge is about fifteen miles across.
There's also a gorgeous one of the whole of Scandanavia under beautifully clear skies - Murmansk top-right, St Petersburg middle-right, the Harz mountains near Hannover bottom left, the great North European plain across to nearly Kiev in the bottom right, and the whole of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Kaliningrad Oblast, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia laid out in front of you - here.
Look who came to the party
Apr. 22nd, 2007 12:15 pm
There was a special offer on lemons at Sainsbury's, and I remembered that various of my friends had expressed various levels of irritation at the way that all lemonade in shops contained artificial sweeteners, so I made up a large quantity of lemonade and threw a party.
[one coffee-cup full of sugar, one coffee-cup full of water; put in a pan on a gentle heat until all the sugar has dissolved; add one coffee-cup full of lemon juice, which is the juice of about six lemons; pour into a jug and allow to cool; pour a bit into a cup and add water, fizzy or not, to taste]
The party seemed to work fairly well; it was a lovely night, so I set up my telescope and we admired the moon, and
beckyc saw our visitor above while wandering indoors to pick up binoculars. After a little while, the hedgehog moved into the next-door garden, where she engaged in an uneasy, though hard to photograph, stand-off with the district cat.
So far this spring, I've planted
I've still got a bag of lobelia seed, a bag of dahlia seed, and half a bag of broad-bean seed in case the first half-bag is devoured by squirrels. My Google history includes 'getting rid of squirrels', 'squirrel poison', 'humane squirrel trap' and 'tasty squirrel recipes', though I have taken no actual action yet.
By Summer, assuming that I successfully add 'water everything' (which now takes three cans-full) to my daily routine, this should be looking very much like a garden. Truly, the gastropods of Cambridgeshire have a series of glorious and varied meals in store for them.
Today I dug up a three-foot length of cast-iron guttering, and the bolt from a door. Last week I dug up half the bottom left jaw of a set of false teeth. Last month I dug up a clothes-drying rack. Last year I dug up a whole Hoover cylinder vacuum cleaner. I'm not altogether sure why these things are buried in my back garden.
- The far end of the middle main bed with Assorted Orange Seeds
- The left near bed with Assorted Mediterranean Seeds
- Five geraniums in the little bed by the shed where the bricks are missing from the path
- Two broad-bean rows in the long rectangular bed along the shed
- Two carrot rows and a fractal-broccoli row in the far end of the left main bed
- A large purple mutant geranium at the near end of the left main bed
- A potato row, sprouting enthusiastically already, all of the right main bed
- Ten marigolds and two fractal-broccoli rows in the near end of the middle main bed
- The near right-hand wilderness with grass seed
- Ladybird-attracting sage, mint and thyme around the bottom of the aphid-ridden rosebush
- Two blue flowers and a fancy nasturtium at the front of the right near bed
I've still got a bag of lobelia seed, a bag of dahlia seed, and half a bag of broad-bean seed in case the first half-bag is devoured by squirrels. My Google history includes 'getting rid of squirrels', 'squirrel poison', 'humane squirrel trap' and 'tasty squirrel recipes', though I have taken no actual action yet.
By Summer, assuming that I successfully add 'water everything' (which now takes three cans-full) to my daily routine, this should be looking very much like a garden. Truly, the gastropods of Cambridgeshire have a series of glorious and varied meals in store for them.
Today I dug up a three-foot length of cast-iron guttering, and the bolt from a door. Last week I dug up half the bottom left jaw of a set of false teeth. Last month I dug up a clothes-drying rack. Last year I dug up a whole Hoover cylinder vacuum cleaner. I'm not altogether sure why these things are buried in my back garden.
Gratuitous exercise, part 2
Apr. 10th, 2007 09:19 pmIt became Saturday, and my knees didn't fall off, even after swimming a kilometre; I know swimming's good for me, but there are few sights more tedious than the bottom of the middle-speed lane at Parkside Pool for the thirty-eighth time. I went to Charles' halfth birthday party at rmc28's house, and watched simont's amazing videos of animated Newton Set fractals; it's an idea that I too had had some years ago (see here), but I'd run into the limitations of video compression and lost interest, whilst Simon had treated it as an exercise in choreography and executed it wonderfully. I think you can just about generate the fractals in realtime in high definition on a Playstation 3, but a PS3, particularly since you'd also want an HDTV to plug it into, is a little expensive to get one on spec just for that purpose.
Sunday was also sunny, so I got myself and my bicycle on a morning train to Thetford, and proceeded to Lynn, wishing everyone I passed on the way a happy Easter. This is a nice mix of landscapes, sandy heathland in Thetford Forest with the sound of smallarms fire coming from behind fields full of happy sheep - lots of Thetford Forest was taken over by the military just before the first world war and is still used - and then green rolling fields from about Watton, and a new 14-megawatt wind-farm at North Pickenham before reaching the flint houses of Swaffham in time for lunch. I cannot recommend eating at the Red Lion on Swaffham marketplace; their 'steak baguette' has a filling of the consistency of kebab-meat, cut insultingly thin. On past Narford Hall, a map-reading error took me half way to Castle Acre where I met a nice elderly couple who had their own map, and finally a sweep down the A1076 from Gayton into Lynn. There are some silly road names here.
Sculpture outside the police station in Watton:
Narford Hall unfortunately turns out (according to Google) to be the ancestral home of one of England's more virulent contemporary fascists; but you can't really blame the house for that:
rmc28's house, and watched simont's amazing videos of animated Newton Set fractals; it's an idea that I too had had some years ago (see here), but I'd run into the limitations of video compression and lost interest, whilst Simon had treated it as an exercise in choreography and executed it wonderfully. I think you can just about generate the fractals in realtime in high definition on a Playstation 3, but a PS3, particularly since you'd also want an HDTV to plug it into, is a little expensive to get one on spec just for that purpose.Sunday was also sunny, so I got myself and my bicycle on a morning train to Thetford, and proceeded to Lynn, wishing everyone I passed on the way a happy Easter. This is a nice mix of landscapes, sandy heathland in Thetford Forest with the sound of smallarms fire coming from behind fields full of happy sheep - lots of Thetford Forest was taken over by the military just before the first world war and is still used - and then green rolling fields from about Watton, and a new 14-megawatt wind-farm at North Pickenham before reaching the flint houses of Swaffham in time for lunch. I cannot recommend eating at the Red Lion on Swaffham marketplace; their 'steak baguette' has a filling of the consistency of kebab-meat, cut insultingly thin. On past Narford Hall, a map-reading error took me half way to Castle Acre where I met a nice elderly couple who had their own map, and finally a sweep down the A1076 from Gayton into Lynn. There are some silly road names here.
Sculpture outside the police station in Watton:
Narford Hall unfortunately turns out (according to Google) to be the ancestral home of one of England's more virulent contemporary fascists; but you can't really blame the house for that:
Good Friday ride
Apr. 10th, 2007 09:06 pm
I have finally realized that trains can take you to and from the start of cycle trips, and exploited this to the full over the Easter weekend. I'd initially wanted to go to the Norfolk Broads, but the line to Norwich and Yarmouth was being fixed; so I contemplated Ipswich, and remembered what was near there.
Here's the route; I thought that it would be impossible to miss the bridge at Woodbridge, I was expecting some mighty arc of steel forged by an East Anglian Brunel. This is not the case - the river Deben becomes suddenly unexciting just off the top of OS map 169, and the bridge is a pathetic little thing, so, looking for a Pont-du-Gard, I found myself most of the way to Wickham Market (and cycling down one junction's worth of the A12) before deciding I had made a mistake. Found a lady gardening in Campsey Ash who told me how to get back, and the return route was through Rendlesham, which is of course appropriate for visiting Sutton Hoo.
It's a pleasant museum, with a reconstruction of the contents of the burial, lots of interviews with the people who'd made the reconstruction trying to give an idea of how fiddly it was to make such elaborate cloisonné items, and one or two of the real artefacts borrowed from the British Museum; for some reason I'd thought that the whole of the British Museum's collection of items from the tombs had been transferred to the National Trust for display, though on reflection the idea of the British Museum deaccessioning that many pieces should have been up there with Ian Paisley calling a press conference in Tel Aviv to announce his conversion to Islam.
This one's for
hilarityallen who was complaining in the pub about the inadequacies of Saxon ribaldry: she's right.
A little multiplication exercise
Apr. 4th, 2007 05:25 pmWhy not multiply out
1907145664709063958354268537876114943171 * 2282249079063136761889376337454791894323802478621 * 1327437030532454031084789475205826920108788207304808616927065055833914814194080582426819377847
[the hardware and software state of the art is such that factoring 130-digit general numbers, or 180-digit numbers of sufficiently special shape, takes about a week on a 2007-vintage desktop computer using free software; there are various bits of the software you can tweak which I suspect can get that down to four or five days]
1907145664709063958354268537876114943171 * 2282249079063136761889376337454791894323802478621 * 1327437030532454031084789475205826920108788207304808616927065055833914814194080582426819377847
[the hardware and software state of the art is such that factoring 130-digit general numbers, or 180-digit numbers of sufficiently special shape, takes about a week on a 2007-vintage desktop computer using free software; there are various bits of the software you can tweak which I suspect can get that down to four or five days]
On the limits of self-deception
Mar. 31st, 2007 08:39 pmTo convince myself that there was nothing wrong with my left knee, and because the sky was blue and the sun warm, and to try to blow away the mathmo's-block that's been afflicting me at work for the last two weeks, I decided to walk to Ely.
This raised five issues:
I got to Ely, trains to get back existed (their absence has been an annoying common factor of many of my trips to interesting places too far to round-trip on foot or by bike), I'm back home now; it was a rather pointless trip to Ely since I got there at seven, well after the cathedral closed to visitors.
I weigh about ten kilos more than I'd like to, which cannot be good for my knees, but know of no calorie-burning exercises which don't significantly involve the knees; can any of my readers help me on that?
I think I'll have a nice hot bath now.
This raised five issues:
- The walk to Ely is essentially twenty-five kilometres along a meandering raised flood-defence bank
- Except that it's been rerouted and five kilometres of it are now a straight line through a series of uninteresting fields, so there isn't even the hope of herons
- The last place you can get a drink is Cleyhithe, about six kilometres in, and I hadn't brought a water-bottle
- A strong and other-than-warming wind blew essentially from the direction of Ely for the entire day, though this did mean there were some kids in sailing dinghies clearly having enormous boom-swinging fun practicing tacking just downstream of Bottisham Lock
- My left knee is not in fact as excellent as could be hoped for, and after 25km I found it was quite painful to walk up Castle Hill to go home; more specifically it's quite painful to bend the knee for the first few degrees from straight if I've put any weight on it. Does anyone know a good Cambridge physio who takes non-sporting patients?
I got to Ely, trains to get back existed (their absence has been an annoying common factor of many of my trips to interesting places too far to round-trip on foot or by bike), I'm back home now; it was a rather pointless trip to Ely since I got there at seven, well after the cathedral closed to visitors.
I weigh about ten kilos more than I'd like to, which cannot be good for my knees, but know of no calorie-burning exercises which don't significantly involve the knees; can any of my readers help me on that?
I think I'll have a nice hot bath now.
I have just finished a box of particularly superb green tea that some Chinese colleagues of my mother gave her as a Christmas present; it was refreshing and gloriously smooth, and I would like to get some more.
Unfortunately, the box was clearly brought from China, presumably from Dalian in the north (a relatively obscure port with only twice the population of the Birmingham metropolitan area, formerly known as Port Arthur) since that's where the researchers came from, and its one concession to the script of the Western barbarians is the cryptic text 'JING ZHI CHA LI'. I am perfectly illiterate in Chinese; I fear all my readers may share this deficiency, but I know some of them know a great deal about tea.
Can anyone help me find more tea?
[trying to find in Wikipedia the name that Chinese people use for the Chinese script, I came across the beautiful fact that the obsolete character for 'verbose' is the character for 'dragon' written four times in a little square. 'Dragon!' is one of the few exclamations I can easily forgive being repeated four times ...]
Unfortunately, the box was clearly brought from China, presumably from Dalian in the north (a relatively obscure port with only twice the population of the Birmingham metropolitan area, formerly known as Port Arthur) since that's where the researchers came from, and its one concession to the script of the Western barbarians is the cryptic text 'JING ZHI CHA LI'. I am perfectly illiterate in Chinese; I fear all my readers may share this deficiency, but I know some of them know a great deal about tea.
Can anyone help me find more tea?
[trying to find in Wikipedia the name that Chinese people use for the Chinese script, I came across the beautiful fact that the obsolete character for 'verbose' is the character for 'dragon' written four times in a little square. 'Dragon!' is one of the few exclamations I can easily forgive being repeated four times ...]
Perfide Francais!
Mar. 16th, 2007 05:15 pmAccording to the sign at Cape Trafalgar, the defeat of the Franco-Iberian fleet was entirely caused by the French commander losing courage and turning his part of the line-of-battle around in mid-attack.
Though the Spaniards also consider Francis Drake to have been a state-funded terrorist, so this sort of difference of opinion over the regrettable events of 1500 to 1900 is probably to be expected.
It's a nice walk from Conil down the beach to Trafalgar; all kinds of shell that you could possibly desire, and we saw a baby turtle about the size of a macaron.
Though the Spaniards also consider Francis Drake to have been a state-funded terrorist, so this sort of difference of opinion over the regrettable events of 1500 to 1900 is probably to be expected.
It's a nice walk from Conil down the beach to Trafalgar; all kinds of shell that you could possibly desire, and we saw a baby turtle about the size of a macaron.
I am in the flat that my brother and his wife are living in at Conil de la Frontera, half an hour by bus from Cadiz. It's in the first row of flats facing the sea, I can look out of the window to a blue sky and a line of foam where, even in the calm, little waves are coming in from the ink-blue Atlantic. The house is all stone floors and white walls and full of light, and has a balcony on which you can eat your breakfast. Every high tide, the sea brings new cuttle-fish shells to the beach. There is a small marsh between here and the sea, in which a local farmer grazes his small family of goats.
Life is relaxing.
Life is relaxing.
Two observations of Seville
Mar. 13th, 2007 07:38 pm1. The fruit of the municipal orange trees found all over the city is unaccountably bitter, with something of a taste of marmalade. Perhaps they´re just not ripe ...
2. The Plaza de l´España, a semicircle a quarter-mile in diameter with a paved plaza, huge fountain, five towers, and six-foot by four-foot panels in painted tiles describing each of the 71 administrative districts of Spain, may be the most excessive administrative building ever. Somehow I´d feel a certain reluctance to take the advice of a Chamber of Commerce located on the third floor of a vast-vaulted pigeon-haunted pavilion covered with iridescent tiles, though I´d take its photo.
Seville is a little less self-servingly excessively filled with majestic buildings than Paris, but at least as fun to amble around - many more shady parks, though I suppose they´re compulsory given the climate.
2. The Plaza de l´España, a semicircle a quarter-mile in diameter with a paved plaza, huge fountain, five towers, and six-foot by four-foot panels in painted tiles describing each of the 71 administrative districts of Spain, may be the most excessive administrative building ever. Somehow I´d feel a certain reluctance to take the advice of a Chamber of Commerce located on the third floor of a vast-vaulted pigeon-haunted pavilion covered with iridescent tiles, though I´d take its photo.
Seville is a little less self-servingly excessively filled with majestic buildings than Paris, but at least as fun to amble around - many more shady parks, though I suppose they´re compulsory given the climate.
Pierre Herme sells patisseries from a minimalist shop just next to the metro Pasteur; I tried some macaroons (which are four centimetres in diameter and a centimetre thick) and his fabled Isfahan Pastry. My plan was to lounge in the Jardins de Luxembourg and eat them but, even given the Tour Montparnasse as a six-hundred-foot landmark, I got thoroughly lost and found the Jardins de Luxembourg just as they were closing, so ate them in my small hotel room instead.
One macaroon was coloured an interesting shade of yellow, and filled with a chocolate ganache flavoured with enough passion-fruit to overwhelm the taste of the chocolate and leave only its colour and texture. One macaroon was filled with a salt-caramel cream which filled your mouth with the caramel and the salt tastes in succession. And one was decorated with applique'd purple glitter (which got everywhere, as glitter does), filled with a dark-green perfectly smooth pistachio cream, and in the centre an unexpected sour cherry. The macaroons were smooth on top, but not in the slightest crunchy; they posed a slight obstacle to the teeth before dissolving in the mouth.
The Isfahan Pastry was topped with a rose-petal, with the traditional glinting dew-drop provided by a drop of sugar syrup. Under this was a wafer of rose-water macaroon, a blatant pink, smooth on top and macaroon-texture at the bottom even if no more than a millimetre thick.
And under that was a tart-case of a crunchy shortcase pastry dark with butter, filled with a lychee cream and raspberry jam, and topped with fresh raspberries and artfully-cubed parboiled lychee.
I'd forgotten to have lunch, but this really didn't matter.
Aside from gastronomy, I've seen the exhibit of Afghan gold at the Musee Guimet - a dense queue of people at a line of display-cases stretching round a corner, getting more splendid with each case. This was six presumably-royal burials; bracelets in massive gold, deep-relief gold sculptures of Cupid on dolphin-back decorated with commas of jade, necklaces whose beads were tooled-gold balls the size of walnuts, an enormous crown of gold leaves, and hundreds of little pieces of gold which had been sewn along the hems of the garments the bodies were found wearing; you ended up sick of gold and turquoise. Also Paris from the top of the Arc de Triomphe.
I leave Paris tomorrow evening on the overnight train to Madrid; I'm just googling 'meilleurs millefeuilles de Paris' for the afternoon, and le Cafe de la Paix at the place Opera seems recommended. Culture will be the Pompidou Centre, and then either Lalique at the Musee de Luxembourg or the new ethnic-art museum at Quai Branly. Ah, it'll be Luxembourg; Quai Branly is fermi le lundi.
I don't think I'm quite getting into this whole Lent business.
One macaroon was coloured an interesting shade of yellow, and filled with a chocolate ganache flavoured with enough passion-fruit to overwhelm the taste of the chocolate and leave only its colour and texture. One macaroon was filled with a salt-caramel cream which filled your mouth with the caramel and the salt tastes in succession. And one was decorated with applique'd purple glitter (which got everywhere, as glitter does), filled with a dark-green perfectly smooth pistachio cream, and in the centre an unexpected sour cherry. The macaroons were smooth on top, but not in the slightest crunchy; they posed a slight obstacle to the teeth before dissolving in the mouth.
The Isfahan Pastry was topped with a rose-petal, with the traditional glinting dew-drop provided by a drop of sugar syrup. Under this was a wafer of rose-water macaroon, a blatant pink, smooth on top and macaroon-texture at the bottom even if no more than a millimetre thick.
And under that was a tart-case of a crunchy shortcase pastry dark with butter, filled with a lychee cream and raspberry jam, and topped with fresh raspberries and artfully-cubed parboiled lychee.
I'd forgotten to have lunch, but this really didn't matter.
Aside from gastronomy, I've seen the exhibit of Afghan gold at the Musee Guimet - a dense queue of people at a line of display-cases stretching round a corner, getting more splendid with each case. This was six presumably-royal burials; bracelets in massive gold, deep-relief gold sculptures of Cupid on dolphin-back decorated with commas of jade, necklaces whose beads were tooled-gold balls the size of walnuts, an enormous crown of gold leaves, and hundreds of little pieces of gold which had been sewn along the hems of the garments the bodies were found wearing; you ended up sick of gold and turquoise. Also Paris from the top of the Arc de Triomphe.
I leave Paris tomorrow evening on the overnight train to Madrid; I'm just googling 'meilleurs millefeuilles de Paris' for the afternoon, and le Cafe de la Paix at the place Opera seems recommended. Culture will be the Pompidou Centre, and then either Lalique at the Musee de Luxembourg or the new ethnic-art museum at Quai Branly. Ah, it'll be Luxembourg; Quai Branly is fermi le lundi.
I don't think I'm quite getting into this whole Lent business.
