Some years ago I got into the habit of having regular baths.  Stop sniggering - I shower daily.  Baths are different.  Bath time is reading time.  The books that I would not normally read ( Read more... )

The MSXR209 (Mathematical Modelling) residential week was last week.  90% great, 10% torture ( Read more... )

I read Paradise Lost some months ago.  These notes have been sitting on my desktop ever since.

Book III:
God: I need a volunteer for a suicide mission.  Humanity is about to do something stupid, and they're going to suffer for it.  Someone has to go in and take the punishment for them.
Angels:
Son of God: I'll do it.  It's OK, 'cos you'll bail me out ( Read more... )

Two things have consipired to stop me getting more done with the FPGA: too much study as I attempt to get ahead of the calendar to make room for the residential week in August, and the perception that it's all really hard and will take ages and be very disappointing.  And a stressful patch at work. Three things ( Read more... )

In a mild fit of insanity I ordered an FPGA development board last week (Xilinx Spartan 3AN).  It arrived yesterday.  It had actually tried to arrive on Monday, but of course I wan't home.  My request to deliver it to work finally filtered through the system on Wednesday ( Read more... )

Great Lake Swimmers "The Man With No Skin": not a good idea.  Might as well kill myself now.

Mogwai "Burn Girl Prom Queen": excellent.  Stick it on repeat and go for days.

One of those "100 books you should feel guilty about not having read" things was going around a little while ago.  Or is it "100 books you should feel smug about having read more of than the average person"?  Or is it an attempt to create a modern canon ( Read more... )

A very pretty sight on the way home from work tonight: a thin crescent moon a little above the horizon, with the disc clearly visible (even through the glare of streetlights).  And Venus perched just above it.

Two errors in the same function that cancelled out most of the time.  "Most of the time" of course included every value for which I had the right result from Sloane.  So it tested perfectly.

Fortunately, both errors were easily-spotted idiocy.

Problem 225 was fun.  In that strange masochistic way ( Read more... )