Tony Locke

First evening in new house

2012-02-14T16:05:00.001Z

This the first evening that I moved in. Helen and Toby were staying with me for a couple of days. We watched an episode of House and had some Bailey's. It was really cold, and I hadn't worked out the heating properly, so we were bundled up in blankets and duvets. I've just noticed that their photo of me is much better than my photo of them!

Helen and Toby

Me with House MD on the DVD

Helen and Toby stayed at my house in Trowbridge from 2nd Jan after they came back from travelling. They cooked all the evening meals. Here's a photo of some chopping. My chopping board had rarely looked so properly used.

Chopping Board

Things I threw out

2012-02-14T16:00:00.001Z

I find it difficult to throw things out. This first photo is of a wind-up radio that my parents gave me years ago. It's been broken for ages but I couldn't bring myself to throw it out because it's one of the few things that connects me with my mother. It's gone now, and she would probably have been pleased because she was all for throwing things out.

Wind-up radio

This is a bag of material for curtains that my mother gave me a long time ago. I didn't like the material, so never used it, but it was a precious gift so I kept it. But you can't keep everything for ever, so hopefully this photo will preserve the memory for a bit longer.

Curtains

House In Bath

2012-02-14T15:50:00.000Z

On 4th Feb I moved in to the new house in Bath. I took some photos as soon as I arrived:

Western end of downstairs main room

Eastern end of downstairs main room

Door to the outside on the right, and door to cupboard on the left

Door to downstairs loo

Top of the stairs

Upstairs bathroom

Upstairs small bedroom.

Upstairs big bedroom east

Upstairs big bedroom west

Courtyard outside

Net of a Satsuma

2012-02-14T15:28:00.001Z

This is how Louisa at work peels a satsuma.

Train Full To Overflowing

2012-01-31T21:49:00.001Z

When the train is full to overflowing, I send off a letter to the Department for Transport. Here's one of their replies:

27 January 2012 Dear Mr Locke, Thank you for your email of 10 December 2011 to General Enquiries at the DfT about your journeys from Trowbridge to Bath Spa on First Great Western trains. First; I apologies for the length of time it has taken to reply to you. I am also _sorry to hear about your unpleasant travel experience. In your letter you highlighted your concerns about overcrowding on FGW trains when you travel in them from Trowbridge to Bath Spa. I recognise that this does not address your specific complaint, however, you may never the less be interested to hear that the Government has looked afresh at earlier plans to increase rail capacity by acquiring new trains. The Government has a programme under which additional rolling stock to address over crowding is funded. This programme has led to new rolling stock being ordered, and allowed other rolling stock to be made available to train operators elsewhere. The Department has recently concluded HLOS deals with FGW which will provide additional rolling stock to strengthen the busiest local regional services including the Bristol area. Correspondence from the public does form an important part of our understanding of how rail franchises are performing and I am therefore grateful that you have taken the time to bring your concerns to our attention. Yours sincerely,

Field Of Lights

2012-01-08T13:24:00.000Z

Before meeting the others at the Boater, Bill and I went so have a look at the field of lights.

Quite alien.

Why Doesn't The Taxpayers' Alliance Attack ALL Energy Subsidies?

2012-01-02T22:33:00.000Z

I had a look at the Taxpayers' Alliance report Ending The Green Rip-Off. It seems to advocate removing subsidies for renewable energy. I agree, but at the same time the subsidies for all types of energy should be removed too. The report says:

it seems very reasonable to expect that scrapping the Emissions Trading Scheme and allowing other sources such as nuclear energy to fulfil the Renewables Obligation could cut electricity bills by 10 per cent or more

But says nothing about the subsidy that is given to nuclear power by making the taxpayer responsible for paying the cost of any nuclear incident above £140m. The recent Fukushima incident will cost Japanese taxpayers at least $13bn. Does the Taxpayers' Alliance think the tax payer should continue to subsidise nuclear power in this way?

Another energy subsidy that's ignored in the report is the taxpayer's subsidy of electricity generated from coal. A recent paper shows that:

Accounting for the many external costs over the life-cycle for coal derived electricity conservatively doubles to triples the price of coal per kWh of electricity generated.

These external costs are ultimately borne by the taxpayer. One of the external costs is the damage to human health caused by mercury emissions from coal fired power stations. Quoting from the same paper:

Direct costs of mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants causing mental retardation and lost productivity in the form of IQ detriments were estimated by Trasande et al.22,23 to be $361.2 million and $1.625 billion, respectively, or 0.02¢/kWh and 0.1¢/kWh, respectively. Low-end estimates for these values are $43.7 million and $125 million, or 0.003¢/kWh and 0.007¢/kWh; high-end estimates
for these values are $3.3 billion and $8.1 billion, or 0.19¢/kWh and 0.48¢/kWh.

Again, the taxpayer has to bear these costs. Why doesn't the Taxpayers' Alliance speak out against this subsidy of coal?

I'll send this post to the Taxpayers Alliance, and I'll let you know their reply.

Film Licensing For The Internet Age

2011-12-30T22:22:00.000Z

Have you seen Sintel? Apart from being an excellent short animated film, it's licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution licence. That means that it's an Open Source film, nobody holds a monopoly over it. I hope and expect that this type of licensing will become more popular, as it has with software. Hurray, licensing for the internet age!

Birthday Balloon

2011-12-17T14:41:00.001Z

It was my 40th birthday on Wednesday. I went out for a meal in the evening to Yak Yeti Yak. Julia brought this helium balloon, and made me close my eyes and sprinkled glitter in the shape of '40' all over the table! I got a brilliant card, and excellent presents. Thanks everyone!

Science Cafe: What Happens When We Run Out Of Oil?

2011-12-17T14:32:00.000Z

On the 12th December, we went along to the Bath Science café, to watch Prof. Chris Rhodes give a talk on What Happens When We Run Out Of Oil? We actually managed to get a seat, these events are always packed out. Perhaps it should be moved to bigger premises? Anyway, this isn't an objective summary of the talk, it's infused with my own strongly held views!

Two things stood out in the talk. Rhodes explained that not all oil is the same. Light oil has low viscosity, and heavy oil has high viscosity (bitumen being the heaviest). On another axis, sweet oil is low in sulphur, and sour oil has high sulphur content. Rhodes reckons we've used about half of the total oil in the earth, but most of the stuff we've used is light and sweet, and most of the oil left is sour and heavy.

The thing is that light and sweet oil is easy to extract and use. Heavy and sour oil is hard to extract and refine. In the worst case (bitumen) it takes 3 barrels to extract 4 barrels.

The other thing that I hadn't properly realized was that wind turbines need rare earth elements (REE) in their manufacture. Rhodes says that China has 97% of the REE in the world, and they need all of that for their own turbines. He opined that scarcity of REE would be the thing stopping the expansion of wind turbines. Is that true?

Cream Tea

2011-12-17T14:12:00.000Z

The greatest sight in the world, a cream tea waiting to be eaten! This is at Charlotte's, with Lou in the background.

Redemption Ark

2011-12-17T14:09:00.000Z

If I had regular readers, they'd know that I think that Alastair Reynolds is a genius. I read his series all out of order. Reading Redemption Ark, I gradually realized that I'd read the succeeding book in the series, Absolution Gap. I'm not very good at navigating around the country by car. As a passenger, I'm aware of gradually recognizing the destination. I got this feeling as I got to the end of Redemption Ark, gradually recognizing the beginning of Absolution Gap. Most people are horrified that I read books out of order. It's not out of choice, I'm just not organized enough. Please don't hate me for it!

Glossy Black

2011-12-17T14:01:00.001Z

At the work pre-Christmas drinks evening, Emily painted the nails of my right hand black! Very glossy.

Bloodmind

2011-11-15T22:41:00.001Z

I picked up a random book from the library. Bloodmind by Liz Williams. The book appealed to me, and I'm trying to work out why. Whether or not it would appeal to others in the same way, I don't know. I think the atmosphere that Williams creates, a kind of tone of the senses, a feeling, that I find I'm in tune with. I think it was just what I needed at the time. I'll come back to Williams again, I'm sure.

For now though, I'm on to Alistair Reynolds' Redemption Ark. Awesome!

Cooker Cleaning

2011-10-08T17:19:00.000+01:00

I used some powerful spray stuff to clean the cooker, and it started to strip the writing from the surface, so I stopped and took a photo.

I've written what I think it should say on the photo below. I'll refer back to this if I get confused when cooking.

Preserves

2011-09-18T13:51:00.001+01:00

Andy's starting a new venture involving various preserves. It hasn't officially been launched yet, but here are a couple of preview photos:

Room for rent

2011-09-18T13:47:00.002+01:00

I've posted an ad for a room to rent in my house. Here are a couple of the pictures I took for the advert:

Really I need to take some photos of the room itself!

Patent encumbered codecs in the UK

2011-09-18T13:22:00.000+01:00

In Ubuntu I installed the H.264 and MPEG-4AAC decoders in the belief that this is legal since the UK doesn't recognize software patents. Despite searching, I couldn't confirm this, so I've decided not to use them. It's difficult to uninstall the codecs so I'm simply going to not install them when I install Ubuntu from scratch next month. If you know the legal position on using patent encumbered codecs in the UK, please let me know.

Another vine mess!

2011-09-17T18:13:00.002+01:00

The latest news in the vine saga is that I've planted all three vines against the wall:

The two on the left (Alastair Reynolds and Iain Banks) are a black grape (vitis cabernet sauvignon bp), and the one on the right (Peter Watts) is a white grape (vitis chardonnay g p). I know there's not much to see, but crane forwards and you can make out three canes with the vines at the bottom. Hopefully we'll see some green shoots in the spring.

The Severn Estuary

2011-09-13T13:34:00.000+01:00

The other Saturday there was off-road karting for a stag day. I got a lift to the karting with two geo-caching devotees, and they stopped off by the Severn Estuary to find a cache.

I took a photo of the karting track just as we were about to leave. I know, I should have got some photos of the actual racing :-)

Helping dad clear out his garage

2011-09-13T13:23:00.001+01:00

I helped my dad clear out his garage before he moved house. We found a pentagonal box that I'd made for him and my mother when I was about 13. We used it as the family's laundry box for years.

Father has recently shaved his beard off. He's growing it back again now.

Here my father holds up a tile. A long time ago, he made a table with those tiles forming the table-top. It was a good table, and when the family needed some money, he sold it. I can just about remember the table.

3 microseconds?

2011-09-05T22:24:00.003+01:00

Ben sent me a BBC article that contained the following paragraph:

Spread Networks has been building one such fibre-optic connection, shaving three microseconds off the 825-mile (1327km) trading journey between Chicago and New York.

I thought it's got to be 3 milliseconds, not microseconds. Doing some searching seemed to confirm this. I'd have contacted the author about it, but these days I'm reluctant to contribute to anything that has a proprietary licence, as opposed to an open content licence. The reason is that if a digital thing is of value, then there shouldn't be an artificial monopoly on it, anybody should be able to use it for any purpose. Society as whole benefits, not particular monopolists. That's why I'm in favour of Wikipedia, Open Streetmap, Wiktionary etc.

This only applies to things that are digital and can be copied at near zero cost, ie. non-rivalrous goods. It does not apply to rivalrous goods such as food, cars, one to one guitar lessons and electricity, for which the conventional exchange of money for the good or service is the best solution.

Chasm City

2011-09-05T21:25:00.002+01:00

I'm reading Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space series in a bit of a random order. I've just finished Chasm City. As I read, I find myself thinking that the characters are humans in an unusual setting. Whereas I think that our future is that we'll become less human. Our brains haven't changed dramatically for thousands of years. That's going to change, and change rapidly.

In sci-fi books, people tend to have bodies and brains and move around. Why do people move? A person's brain doesn't leave its skull (unless something horrible has happened). People move around so that their sensors can gather certain information, in other words, to experience things. If those sensations can be transmitted, then there's no need to move.

Some people will want to augment their evolved capabilities. At the moment such people use laptops and mobile phones and enormous data centres run by Google etc. A future person may choose to extend their intelligence and emotional intelligence by perhaps inhabiting several data centres around the world. This takes up a lot of resources, space and energy. This mode of life would only be available to the rich. Who would become rich? Why, those who have extended their intelligence and emotional intelligence of course!

Wikimedia Image Filter Referendum

2011-08-25T22:31:00.002+01:00

Now and again I make an edit to Wikipedia and Wiktionary, which makes me eligible to vote in the Image Filter Referendum. I read the debate that's going on, but I don't really have strong views. I suppose I don't really see the need for an image filter. I'm sort of in the 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' camp, and I'm vaguely concerned about creating a system that could be used for censorship, even though Wikipedia would only use it for self-censorship. Well, I've voted now, and I've been given a receipt. It's actually a PGP message, and I'm not sure what it means because I don't have the private key to decrypt it.

Grape Vine

2011-08-17T20:49:00.003+01:00

On Saturday I went to the garden centre in Bath and bought a grape vine which I took home on the train.

Here's where it's going to go.

First I've got to get to grips with the double Guyot method.