Future Islands

Just a quick one about blog targets for 2019. Last year I posted over 300 times (with the aim of beating my previous highest year of 2017 with 264 posts. This year I want to take the blog over 2,000 posts since day one which means just over 200 required this year, that still requires around two posts every three days so i am going to have to find something to talk about. Given that I seldom see anyone these days it does give me an option to say things that people may or may not listen to, but it's always pleasant when someone mentions something that I have written about.

I'm  still reading "There Is No Map In Hell" and it reminds me of "Fermat's Last Theorem" in that it's almost a gripping adventure , with the will he / won't he on almost every page, getting more and more tense as you near the end of the book.

I've also been adding more CDs to my Discogs store here due to the fact that I play vinyl more than I play CDs and listen to most of my music via various digital platforms such as my phone and Kindle Fire and Home Network.

I have bought a hell of a lot of CDs without really getting to know them, but also some have only required a single listen and it's pointless having them boxed up doing nothing.

Anyway, this is post 1799 so I will share Motorhead's take on David Bowie's "Heroes", and it is more than up to scratch. I've seen King Crimson's take which is great as well, and while I am sure there will be versions that don't cut the mustard, this certainly does.

Friday is almost upon us.

Quantum

I was going to initial just write about dipping into the Bruce Springsteen "Complete 1978 Radio Broadcasts" 15 CD box set but this morning I read a bit more of "The Code Book" by Simon Singh and it has wandered into quantum theory.

Someone said about quantum theory, if you your mind is not bent and you are not confused by it then you don't get it. Well my mind is still bent and confused by it and I still feel that I don't get it. Taking into account possible simultaneous states of quasi matter and the concepts of multiverses and things be the same and the opposite of themselves my mind is a little twisted to say the least.

It's come up because of the concept of quantum computers, which if implemented will wipe the floor with current computers and effectively destroy the sort of digital privacy we currently have, which is based on  DES and  RSA encoding (I won't explain as it doesn't matter). To combat this cryptographers are working on quantum codes and cyphers but as yet do not have quantum computers to actually implement these concepts.

Anyway back to Bruce Springsteen and I listened to the first album and it's just a feed from a radio broadcast so it's like a bootleg and the crowd are fairly prominent but it is a wonderful experience. The opener of Buddy Holly's "Rave On" for me doesn't really work, but by the time you hit the closer of "Thunder Road" you are totally immersed. Absolutely wonderful. I now am looking at another fourteen discs which I am sure will be just as excellent.

Have a great Thursday everybody.

Codes and Ciphers

Why am I writing at 1AM on a school night. I've woken up to prevent another coughing fit, as well as feeling queasy still. Yesterday was spent in bed sleeping so I was expecting to be fit and back to work today, then about 5PM I woke and started coughing again.

I've finished my course of antibiotics, but none of the standard remedies seem to be working for me. The worst thing is I'm sort of able to do things (I can write this) but then when I start coughing, feeling sick then I get out of it and am not fit to do anything and would certainly not be appreciated in work.

When I am trying to occupy my mind I am reading Simon Singh's "The Code Book", possibly his most unassuming title. THhs is third of his books that I have read, the first being "The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets" which is an entertaining observations on why The Simpsons is jammed for of mathematical asides, the second being "Fermat's Last Theorem" which is a remarkable detective story about a conceptually simple but complex theorem and much of the side effects of of that area of mathematics then there is this....

"The Code Book" means to read it and understand it you have to think, it explains the development of codes and ciphers from the beginning of time to the present day, though I am only half way through the book. One of the things the book does explain is the difference between a cipher and a code:

"The difference between a cipher and a code is: a cipher changes a message on a letter-by-letter basis, while a code converts whole plaintext words or phrases into other words or numbers. That’s it, question answered."

Full explanation here. The book has taken me through the story of Mary Queen of Scots and the continual development of more and more complex code/ciphers each time with accompanying examples of how these work up to the Enigma machines and how Alan Turing drove the team that broke it, developing what became the computer I am typing this on on you are reading this on today, and probably shortening World War Two by two years.

Ofne very frightening part of this is that if the authorities that be had known of his homosexuality, Turing would have been jailed and Britain would have lost the war, remember that when someone is not the same as you. Society still drove him to suicide after the war.

Essentially this is another excellent Simon Singh book, and the work of Turing is leaving my tiny intellect floundering and I am only half way through.

I was trying to think of an accompanying piece of music for this and thought maybe something from Public Service Broadcasting's "The War Room" and a tribute to another major contribution to Britain's War Effort, "Spitfire".

Right now time to try and get some sleep.

A New Low

Yesterday I did about 1100 steps, that's 2K under the national average and the lowest I've done since starting my rolling three month Million Step Challenge. For the first time since I can remember I never left the house, and virtually never left  my bed apart from to have a hot bath the ease my aches. For the last three days I've been suffering from cold and 'flu' like symptoms. It's not real 'flu' because I can actually move.

It's three AM and as yesterday was spent sleeping and resting I thought I could just write a blog post to say what has been happening to me.

I was looking through my digital music collection and noticed I hadn't ripped any of my Cracker albums so I will extract them from the box tomorrow and ad them to my digital collection, so I have shared the brilliant "Teen Angst" with you for this post.

I am finding Simon Singh's "The Code Book" extremely interesting about the history of code making, code breaking and the ingenious ways of passing secret messages from the time we actually started to write.

It is amazing how much time we spend online these days, when I switched the computer on it was 2.22 it is now 3.02, and I will soon be going back to bed, though I really do hope that getting up and writing this doesn't knock me back, but it's Saturday morning so I can have a day of relaxation, though hopefully won't hit another all time low on the step front.

Morning Darker

Looking out my window the sky is full of grey clouds scudding across the skyline. Yesterday I was feeling very down, I'm not sure why, but I'd run out of some of my tablets unexpectedly and they were are related to blood pressure so maybe that was something to do with it. Also valious friends are suffering from physical and mental pain and barring supportive texting there is absolutely nothing I can do for them.

Added to this I had various meetings and things that needed to be sorted at work and an, at times, painful hacking chesty cough.

When I got home I got by drugs stash replenished and loaded up with chocolate to ease my throat and started watching "Spectre", which is rather enjoyable but the title song is half decent but ruined by the strangled cat vocals of Sam Smith. Still that was just a couple of minutes at the beginning.

I also finished "The Fourteenth Letter", the debut novel by Claire Evans, I didn't think it was my cup of tea, it wasn;t it was the whole teapot, highly recommended despite recommendations on the back cover from Heat and Good Housekeeping which would have put me off. I suggest to you get yourself a copy.

That's been replaced by "The Code Book" by the excellent Simon Singh, the choice may have been influenced by me watch the brilliant "Imitation Game" the incredible story that showed how the British Government drove the genius Alan Turing to suicide and it's the sort of thing that would happen under today's US and UK governments.

Looking out of the window and there is now blue sky appearing and the clouds blow away.

Spo what to play, maybe Jonathan Richman's "I'm A Little Dinosaur" which is a cuteness injection for a fairly downer post, but I know today wiill be an improvement on yesterday for me, I hope it is for all my friends.

Have a great Wednesday.

Talk Talk

It's always good to talk and chat with peopla about non essential things. Today I was in a shop discussing the merits of Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" (wheich everyone should have and at least try to read and understand) and Simon Singh's "Fermat's Last Theorem" which while educating you about mathematics is also a brilliant cliff hanging detective novel.

Then I held the door open for a girl with amazing hair braiding / dreadlocks and mentioned a Facebook post by my friend Kaz which brought a smile to many people's faces., about her encounter with a Jamaican "bruddah", (see image).

The thing is encounters like this definitley make youy day better and it's always good to talk.

In my work environment I encourage lots of social talk and interaction, because that makes it much easier  to  then talk work when it matters. Social interactions remove inhibitions about whether you can actually speak to people.

I still see a lot of cliquery but often that's induced by familiarity and inhibitions about straying outside your box. Maybe my problem is that I often go way outside the box and end up tripping over my own feet, but more often than not it is a good end result.






Anyway today's music can only be "Talk Talk" by Talk Talk, which is a break from the recent proliferation of Alice Cooper, David Bowie and Rolling Stones.

It's Friday, it's the weekend and it's still sunny. Enjoy everyone

Meli Fluence

It's wonderful how one unrelated thing can lead to another giving causality to discovering things that you didn't know were there and generally enhancing your quality of life. On Staurday I visited Kazbat's Den where someone told me about Stay Free Records which I hadn't heard of, and when I got there I saw signs for Meli Cafe on the third floor, which I hadn't heard of, but is where Whistler's Cafe used to be.

I had a quick nip in and spoke with the manager who was very welcoming and told me what they were up to with lots of vegetarian and vegan options, as well as great views over Northumberland Street, This is an excellent selling point of the place which has a lovely light and airy feel to the place and is worth visiting for the views alone.

On Sunday I returned and this time tried a cafe latte and some lemon / coconut came which was lovely, and I manged to scam the best seat in the place after a couple cvacated it. The guy said people always try and gram that seat. My instagram images of my visit can be viewed here and their cups don't have handles but still look cool.

Look Mum No Handles

So definitley get yourself down there to enjoy this wonderful place, It's above the antique centre in the Alley opposite Haymarket Metro next to boots and near Sergeant Pepper's.

In other news I finished "Fermat's Last Theorem" by Simon Singh and while I had been reading it ten or twenty pages at a time, at the end I couldn't put the the thing down so that last fifty pages done in one sitting. This is a book about a mathematical theorem that is actually exciting, not the theorem , the book.

Next up is Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" which should keep me occupied for a while thanks to my friend Lyndsey and that has started very well, although I have seen the TV series so I have some idea of what might be coming.

I was trying to think of some Greek Music and basically was stumped , I suppose I could have gone for Aphrodite's Child, Vangelis, Yanni, Demis Rousos or Nana Miskouri but decided on the fictional Greek island of Navarone immortalised by The Skatalites.

Clock Mathematics

I was completely unaware of (or had forgotten about) the concept of clock mathematics. We all use it every day and when used in applied mathematics it can apparently be very useful. Basically its working with a  limited series of numbers which rill over when you get to the end. So an example that we may use every day is that if you say that you will see someone in four hours at eleven o' clock you both know you will meet at three o' clock. Therefore 11 + 4 = 3 not 15 because after 12 we roll back to 1. Apparently it's useful in Elliptical Theory. This is another concept that I have been (re) introduced to in Simon Singh's brilliant "Fermat's Last Theorem" ,and another reason why I love reading books.

As I'm writing this the sun has really come out and it's looking like a definite walk into work today.

Yesterday I put Half Man Half Biscuit's "Trouble over Bridgewater" and it has some great titles that maybe the songs don't quite live up to such as "Uffington Wassail" ,  but "Irk The Purists" is good and then I got hit with the absolut classic "Gubba Lookalikes" which is followed by the excellent "Mathematically Say" but then we are hit with the totally brilliantly funny "With Goth On Our Side" plagiarising Bob Dylan's "With God On Our Side".

The opening line is:

"Oh my name it is Dai Young"

And that is a brilliant play on words when the song is based in Wales and it's subject matter.

But I will share "Gubba Lookalikes" with you before I set out for work.

The Numbers Universe

I'm currently reading Simon Singh's "Fermat's Last Theorem" which I picked up after reading "The Mathematical Secrets of The Simpsons" and it's probably the first book that I've read where I immediately reference the footnotes and appendices as soon as they are referenced in the book. I'm not sure what my fascination with numbers is but I do enjoy exploring the concepts to some of the ideas may cause people to say so  "So What?".

The value of Π (Pi) for instance is essential to be right for all sorts of calculations and engineering constructs. The mechanical clock would not work if Π were not adhered to and more importantly neither would the wheel.

Fermat's Last Theorem is basically:

In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem (sometimes called Fermat's conjecture, especially in older texts) states that no three positive integers a, b, and c satisfy the equation aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ for any integer value of n greater than 2.

And a lot of people will say "So What?" to that but it is an intriguing puzzle that certainly fires my imagination and Simon Singh's presentation of the story certainly keeps my interest up at 100% as it's mixed in with a whole slew or other theories and conjectures taking in Pythagoras, Euclid and of course Andrew Wiles who finally proved the Theorem.

I've also installed Grammarly to see if it can improve my blog writing. It has spooted the odd mistake but also has flagged the theorem aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ as an error so I will see how this progresses. Though this post seems relatively free of howlers.

One of my favourite TED talks ever is a twenty minute talk on prime numbers by an Australian DJ, Adam Spencer. And Grammarly just flagged up an error then so it's just proved it's worth.

Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam as he is now) released an album in 1975 called numbers which was in a nice package which is not available digitally but I will close this post with "Banapple Gas" from the album.

The Case of The Mutilated Chessboard

Still not thirty pages into Simon Singh's "Fermat's Last Theorem" and he throws in another conceptual gem of a problem apparently first propsed by a guy called Max Black in his book "Critical Thinking" in 1946. It sounds like the title of an Agatha Christie or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novel (who incidentally met up in Sky Arts' "Urban Myths" series here). The Wikipedia entry for the Mutilated Chessboard problem is here but basically it's this

"Suppose a standard 8×8 chessboard has two diagonally opposite corners removed, leaving 62 squares. Is it possible to place 31 dominoes of size 2×1 so as to cover all of these squares?" 

Here's The Problem

... and basically it is actually impossible because each domino must cover a black and a white square and the board is left with thirty of one colour and and thirty two of the other. There are conceptual solutions but you cannot solve it in reality. Itn the book this was introduced when talking about the concept of mathematical theory against scientific theory. Science always has doubt because it is based on observation whereas mathematics demands absolute proof and until that happens it's always just a theory.

So suitable music for this, Elvis Costello's "Watching The Detectives" , something from "Chess" but I'm going for Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" as it mentions a chessnoard and it is sucjh a perfect piece of music. Enjoy your Thursday everybody.

Anvil Music

Twenty pages into to Simon Singh's "Fermat's Last Theorem" and I'm finding out how Pythagoras determined the principles of music based on mathematics with the helm of a couple of blacksmithsand the simple defintion of perfect numbers and the spin offs from that. This is twenty pages in. Three hundred pages to go. Will I finish it? You bet I will, I just finished Bob Dylan's "Tarantula" so any book directly after that will be a breeze.

I think everyone should take a stab at "Tarantula" and try to avoid throwing it through the window or lighting a fire with it. I enjoyed the dense but sparse volume.

Yesterday I was feeling extremely demotivated, not wanting to work, walk or do anything, feeling in a very black mood for some reason. Today I tasked byself with some hefty mathematical work and it ended up taking most of the day pushing my PC way over the edge of it's capabilities but eventually getting what I wanted in the end.

Then I felt like actually setting up some meetings o sort some improvements to working practices. The problem is that very often things are not a one off and have to be maintained, and most people are not really interested in aftercare.

Any way given all the talk of music and anvils we can only have Steve'n'Seagulls' cover of AC/DC's "Thunderstruck". Watch the video and you know why.

Good night and God Bless. 

& the lumberjacks are coming

It's the final few words of Bob Dylan's "Tarantula" described as Bob Dylan's only fictional novel although if you think of fiction you tend to expect a coherent storyline, Reading "Tarantula" is like looking at a Picasso or Dali, I was thinking Pollock too but maybe that's too free form, maybe Stockhausen and Zappa too. "Tarantula" has recognisable sententences and even chapters with titles that make sence, but it's the dense mix of text interspersed with poetry forms , and those paintings are like that , you can see the forms even though they may be bent out of shape, cut up or re-assembled.

Most of Dylan's songs are far more coherent than "Tarantula" and some have reasonably straightforward narratives, if sometimes slightly surreal, some songs are lists, streams of consciousness a la Dylan Thomas, so a lot less challenging than "Tarantula"  although sometimes Dylan's voice does grate on people, so if you want an easier introduction to his songs check out The Byrds "Sing Dylan" compilation.

My next book is Simon Singh's "Fermat's Last Theorem" which I have mentioned before and is a heftier tome. You know this book is importent when you have read twenty pages and are on Page 3 (foreword and preface!!) and the calculations in the Apeendices will probably be essential to my appreciation and understanding of it. Simon Singh is also an excellent and accessible writer, you couldn't include "Tarantula" in the latter.

Another beautiful Monday morning so I will leave you with The Byrds covering Bob Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom"

The Audacity of Psi Power

I finished "The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets" by Simon Singh and now I am embarking on "The Catcher In The Rye" by JD Salinger, which is one of those books that everyone has read apart from me, I'll let you know how it goes.

Today I also managed my first multi track recording using Audacity and managing to deal with teh Windows Latency issue. It involved a little lateral thinking and switching off the sound pass through for the recorded track in Audacity. This basically means letting the recorded tracks play through the computer sound system while listening to the track being recorded through the U-Phoria box which feeds into Audacity via the USB connection. This means I can actually start building songs on my computer, they won't be sophisticated but will end up on Soundcloud here.

Over the last few days an odd thing has happened with my listening, normally I listen to album once or twice at the most but I have had an album on repeat and have listened to it four or five times so far. When I first put on I though the production was a bit lacklustre but the songs were more than listenable. Each song was excellent and slightly influenced by the punk ethic at the time. The album is the debut by the Hawkwind alter ego band Hawklords, and almost every song has a two word chorus refrain., the album is "25 Years On"  and clocks in at just over half an hour.

It opens with "Psi Power" (using the title as the catchy refrain) segueing into "Free Fall" with a slight lull for the short "Automaton" before hitting the title track. "Flying Doctor" is great an it's refrain is "Cabinet Key" and that's the song I will share with you.

The fact that I only gave it a cursory listen when it first came out but now I feel I know all the songs intimately shows just how good it actually is. Definitely another on ethat every one should have.

Surreal Kilo

"Q:Why do Computer Scientists get Halloween and Christmas mixed up?

  A: Because OCT:31 = DEC:25"

I had to think a few seconds about that one then it made me smile. Another Mathematical Guffaw from Simon Singh in "The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets" a book I contue to enjoy so much I've ordered a couple more of his books, although I am intending to enjoy some more fiction in between servings of Simon Singh.

Today has been bitterly cold, walking down the West Road the wind almost took my face off, a couple of times I had to shelter and contemplated finishing my journey by getting the bus, but I perservered, and walked in.

Work has continued to be challenging but I am on top of things though prefer actually doing things rather than ticking boxes to say that I've done things, and finding that in IT still a remarkable number of people work manually rather than using the numerous tools at their disposal.

I'm looking forward to a weekend in Edinburgh, one of a few coming up, though snow is forecast. Still I'm sure I will have fun walking round , taking pictures and finding presents for friends.

Last year I was told about the Two Together Railcard. For £30 a year you get 30% of rail tickets if two of you travel together. This means if you go say Newcastle to London and the tickets are £210 , you would get the ticket for £150 and even accounting for paying for the card you would still be £30 in pocket on that one journey. If you plan to use the railways this could be useful for you.





So before I sleep I will leave you with Bob Dorough's "3 Is A Magic Number" given the mathematical introduction that I introduced the post with. Sleep well.

Apathetic

I wanted to write something this morning but could not bring myself to do it. There is nothing wrong but it has been one of those days when I felt I should have been doing things but just couldn't motivate myself to do anything..

I am reading the Simon Singh book and he has a chapter about about a guy called Bill James who is an expert on Baseball statistics and the connection with the Simpsons in that Lisa teaches Bart scientific ways to succeed in Baseball using these statistics. Incidentally I have a friend who is also called Bill James who works with finance so similar area , all numbers.

There are some great quotes, obviosly Mark Twain's

"Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics"

The there's

"The man who drowned crossing a stream with an average depth of six inches"

And

"The average human has one breast and one testicle"

Statistics can be useful but only if the are used with extreme care.

I actually managed 15K steps today, that's about six miles, and I have got round to actually writing this. I have also updated some web sites and watched an interesting documentary on HP Lovecraft called "Fear of The Unknown" but still feel I could have done more.

Anyway using a tenuous Baseball link I'll leave you with Babe Ruth's take on Willam Bell & Judy Clay's "Private Number" which still sounds great today.

It's National π Week

As you can see I've reached for "π" in the Simon Singh book . Did you know there's a law in waiting in Indiana that defines "π" as 3.2 (Three Point Two see here) to make life simpler. I'm just waiting for the Republicans to draft this into law. The stupidity of many people in power never fails to flabbergast me, and they have such conviction that they are right with absolutely no evidence to back them up.

It's also National Pie Week in the UK. The thing is we've already had a Pie Day this year and at this rate we're always meant to be celebrating something and this week it's Pies. I remeber as a lad going to the back door of The Saddle Inn in  Lea and getting Meat and Potato Pie with peas and gravy, and it was lush and may explain why I am so porky these days.

Today I hit 18K in my steps so I think I might hit my target for March.

So really there's only one song that I can play and that's The Sutherland Brothers gorgeous song "The Pie". It is perfection introduced by a lovely acoustic guitar riff, and they wrote and performed the original of Rod Stewart's "Sailing", and I do prefer their version.

Kwyjibo

From the title you may have guessed I'm reading something to do with The Simpsons , it's with "The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets" byd Simon Singh. as mentioned in my last post.

"Kwyjibo" is a word played by Bart in a game of Scrabble. When challenged by Homer , Bart retaliates by defining it as "A fat , bald North American Ape with no chin".

The book is excellent so far, but for me suffers from two faults, the print is too small and too faint making it difficult to read unless under a very bright lights, but that's just a sign of age. If I had it on a Kindle then I could enlarge the font and make the screen brighter but I do like real books.

I managed over 12K steps yesterday so managed to hit my daily steps, but not made much inroads into my step deficit and it is raining today, but I should  be able to walk in today as it is not too windy so I will need an umbrella.

I thought I would continue listening to live Bob Dylan and decided to go with "Budokan" and I am not impressed. The songs are smoothed down almost sounding like some Saturday night family entertainment version by some second rate TV host. The production is damned near perfect, but maybe the rearrangement of "Shelter From The Storm" actually works. The Byrds introduced me to Bob Dylan with "Mr Tambourine Man" and they and Manfred Mann polished up Dylan songs turning them often into things of beauty, but there's a difference in polishing something up and smoothing it out of existence which is what happens on "Budokan".

I found a TV performance by the Byrds of "Mr Tambourine Man" with an introduction by David McCallum (secret agent Illya Kuryakin in the television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. ) referring to "Turn,Turn,Turn".

Anyway it's time to get my umbrella and get off to work.

Books and Sounds

I've just finished "The Sunshine Cruise Company" by John Niven and although the plot has a lot of holes and is totally unrealistic, the concept is brilliant and it's an excellent and fun romp of taking on several systems and I'd recommend it to everybody.

Next up I'm going into more scientific territory with "The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets" by the alliterately named Simon Singh. I'll see how that goes, but I've heard lots of good things about him and he has a large back catalogue for me to delve into.

I'm certainly not going to run out of books to read as I have a huge pile next to my bed.

It looks like the big thaw is happening so the only thing that will stop me walking into work is if it's too slushy to use the paths, I certainly need to do a lot of walking this week, and I would like to be back up to speed by the end of Friday, but we shall see.

It my limited walking I listened to "Shelter From A Hard Rain" a live album from Bob Dylan from a 1976 broadcast. It sounds bootleg quality but ut is a great live album, I love Dylan's live recordings when they're a bit ragged and this is, in my opinion, perfect because it isn't perfect. I love every song on it. I'm not sure if this is from the same gig but it has the same feel, enjoy.