17 – 30 Aug
Being on holiday stops you blogging, who knew!:-) Anyway, I will catch up, but I’m doing it monthly for the rest of the year.
Doing:
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The main event was my prize trip to the Belgium Formula 1 GP, that I had won earlier in the summer from Shell. I’ve already written this up, for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the race.
- I was out with both some F1 friends and Wine Club for dinner during the week. One of those was slightly more boozier than the other, I’ll leave you to work out which was which!
- There was a lot of fun and games with the Gas Board/National Grid/whatever they’re called. They are slowly replacing all the gas pipes in the area, which includes the pipes into the home. Which means you need to be in for them to come and change the pipes. One complication is that the pipes to the upstairs’ neighbour go through my house, so we both need to be in to have the replacement. But he hadn’t got the message, so the replaced mine. We then spent the next 10 days trying to arrange a time we were both in and the fitters were available to do the final bit of pipework.
I bought the last of the Disc World novels. And then let it sit there for a few days, because once I started, it would be finished quickly, and then there would be no more. And that made me sad.
- I went to the Notting Hill Carnival, or at least the Sunday version! I’ve never braved the full on Monday show, just the slightly quieter Sundays. It was good fun. The Full photo set is on Flickr.
Reading
- 4 Myths about the Calais Migrants Debunked. On Mashable. One little story at least trying to put some facts in place and drown out the Daily Fail rhetoric.
- The Coddling of the American Mind. I’ve been reading a fair bit about this. It is scary how debate and intellectual challenge is being pushed out in the name of political correctness. Yes, the white male view point has been the predominate one in western culture, yes, there is more opportunity for more people to have different viewpoints and the cultural norm to change, but that does not mean that debate should be stopped because it may ‘trigger’ people. People always playing the victim is not culturally healthy. Believing that a viewpoint is not valid or ‘less’ because of the person saying it (rather than the idea or viewpoint being challengeable) is not culturally healthy. This attitude and campus atmosphere will take a long time to change and pass.
- So, Yalla Bye. On the Foreign Office. A fascinating account from a diplomat leaving his station in Lebanon.
- Move over Turing. An experiment looking at how good AI is at recognising images.
- I stopped counting! 1 definite, with the last of the Terry Pratchett books. I downloaded 7 Kindle books in this time and guess what, 2 were actually non-fiction!
- The Time In Between by Nancy Tucker. A memoir of a teenage girl’s experience with anorexia.
- The Mechanic’s Tale by Steve Matchett. A autobiography of an F1 mechanic.