Presently, I am in Dorking on day job stuff.
It is unlikely – between a fairly intense few days, peppered with occasional wordcount – that I will have a huge amount of time to post.
Trying to remind myself that not everyone gets my snarky sense of humour. Not entirely succeeding.
What personality pitfalls do you try to avoid?
I see my friend GLP is also braving the direct-to-audience model.
Having a copy of Future Bristol I can assure you “What would Nicholas Cage do?” is indeed worth a donation in order to read and in this case I am clearly a little biased but hey: that’s what friends are for. However, you don’t have to take my word for it: Gareth’s first novel is out next year, he has been published in Interzone more than once and kicked arse in their readers’ poll for best short story in 2007.
Go on: you know you want to.
PS – There is a degree of cross over between our sites and so this is aimed at readers who don’t know GLP’s work. I’m assuming the rest of you already know about this…
My parents have been down (or I guess up and slightly to the right like) visiting.
The last couple of times they visited my mum has wanted to go to Chartwell and this time we finally got our shit together and went. Chartwell, of course, was the home of Winston Churchill and his family from 1922 until his death in 1965. It’s been maintained by the National Trust ever since as part historic house and part museum to Churchill’s life. Located in the Kent countryside it’s about sixteen or so miles from my house making it a quite easy afternoon out.
The house itself is set in amongst a small set of hills and a generous sprawl of gardens populated with a range of plants and water features. The house rises up on a raised flat that gives a series of breathtaking views across the rolling fields of Kent that, reportedly, was part of the reason Churchill fell in love with the property and bought it, against the advice of friends and, indeed, his own wife. It is an odd red brick Victorian building that, taken in another setting, I’m not sure many would care for, in spite of the changes Britain’s most famous Prime Minister wrought on it.
Thankfully, no one really comes to look at the architecture: they come to look at the grounds – beautiful – and the interior – strange but fascinating – and therein is its charm: for the interior is more or less preserved as it would have been when Churchill lived there. I’m not sure what I expected but walking through the house produces a weird, not unpleasant, presence of its famous owner, as if he just stepped out for the moment to walk in the garden, perhaps enjoying a cigar. Perhaps its the relative closeness of the period in which he lived, the furnishings are after all not that out of date really – not to my tastes but certainly not Victorian or Edwardian – and that adds a false familiarity of time if nothing else. Or maybe, in spite of the scale of the house, the distinct sense of family about the property.
The point is it was a more intimate kind of history that the building gave off and I thoroughly enjoyed exploring the house. Not least because nearly every room had a bookcase of some description, crammed with books, and a library room filled with rather more books. I managed to resist making off with some. Just. I remain somewhat in awe of Churchill’s own literary output and wonder – in spite of the servants – if he ever slept. It was a pleasant few hours, take a look next time you’re passing.
The rest of the weekend has been just as pleasant and a welcome break at the end of a crushingly paced week.
I am delighted to shamelessly plug myself by letting you know that my story “The Room” will appear in the Valentine’s Day issue of Tales Of the Moonlit Path. This story was written some time ago and given a final tweak at last year’s Arvon course and I am thrilled it’s found a home.
While I’m at it: a quick reminder that my story “Crunch” will be appearing this year in the Autumn (and final) issue of Ballista.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given posting frequency, my blog stats have dropped off a cliff recently.
However, I’ve been blogging for quite sometime now and I’ve been through blips in output before and they’ve never been this severe: i.e. where the stats have essentially dropped back to the level they were at when I first started this experiment. It’s also sudden: like someone flicked a switch.
At present I have two theories:
1. For some reason I have fallen out of, or been dropped down, Google’s index.
Or…
2. WordPress.com have either had problems with their servers (leading to 1.) or their stats engine has encountered some problems.
My secondary stats engine (sitemeter) does show a fall, albeit a less severe one, and so presently I am leaning towards number one although the support forum for wordpress does suggest that several other people are having problems. Ditto Google Webmaster tools – I can’t see anything obvious other than them taking away my ability to request a given crawl rate (annoying).
Is anyone else seeing a problem? Have you had any issues getting to the site?
Of course there is a silver lining, if I am unable to resolve the issue then I may well use this as a prompt to go self-hosted because my historical traffic was a big part of why I haven’t done so already. Being self-hosted gives quite a large range of options, the possibility of proper analytics when trying to sort out stuff like this and the option of generating some income.
It’s a thought anyway.
G has some photos up on her site of Bristolcon.
Regular readers will know that my better half is a talented photographer. Pop over and take a look round.
The Bristolcon photos are here: http://www.gmorgan-photography.co.uk/portfolio72059.html
In my experience non-fiction books come in two categories: mind-blowingly fascinating or eye-wateringly crap. There is very little in between. Thankfully, Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw’s book is squarely in the fascinating camp.
The concept of the book, unsrprisingly, is to take the question Why does E=MC²? And why does it matter? as a starting point for explaining why Einstein’s famous theory is so important and – as the authors are at pains to stress – why it is so elegant. This involves a tour through the history of physics and some of its most important theories on the way to General Relativity. It’s a slim volume with a tight goal but does it succeed?
This is one of those science books you wish you got given when you were in school, written with a clear passion for the subject and a gentle, clear prose style that complements the author’s goal of illuminating Einstein’s theorem. The principle challenge of the book is to stay on subject because, due to the nature of the theory, it is possible to go off on lots of interesting tangents. An admirable job is done of avoiding this trap whilst still including plenty of interesting asides that add to the understanding.
It is the nature of physics that it is extremely difficult to refer to more interesting theories and laws without referring to formula and mathematics. This is troublesome as mathematics is usually the aspect of physics that turns most people off and this provides something of a quandary for the writers. For the most part they handle this well with a series of well-crafted explanations of the mathematics involved but I’d be lying if I said I followed all of it, particularly the Standard Model of Particle Physics. It should be noted this may say more about my mathematical ability than the authors’ explanatory skills.
I thoroughly enjoyed Why does E=MC²? As a basic primer on Einstein’s theory of relativity it serves its purpose and moreover is an enjoyable read. I recommend it for anyone with a desire to understand a little bit more about physics.
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Utilitarian headlines
1 10 2009I was dismayed, for various reasons, to see the Evening Standard’s headline the other day: “Pregnant Woman Raped By Burglar”.
Whilst I understand the reasons why the paper chose to draw attention to the victim’s pregnancy it is rather troubling, implying, as it does, that this is somehow more newsworthy – or worse – than the alternative “Woman Raped By Burglar”. This somewhat utilitarian view doesn’t really stand up to analysis because, of course, rape of any kind whether the victim is pregnant (or female for that matter) is totally unacceptable and making value judgements on the newsworthiness (or evil quotient) of such an act is repugnant.
Headlines are an attempt to capture the attention of us – the audience – and so to a certain extent reflect the writer’s opinion of the society around them. In this context the headline above – unwitting or not – is deeply troubling.
I think too much. Anyone else find the headline odd?
Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: ethics, Philosophy
Categories : Press commentary