You Ought To Tie Those

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For anybody reading who was also at university with me, yes, that really is David Warner signing “So do I” on a Titanic DVD as part of my 40th birthday presents from my sister. Apparently he was quite confused, but appreciated it when explained that it had developed into a university slogan. Ah, memories…

As I write this, it’s 25°C and I’m sitting on a blanket in the middle of Hyde Park as a rather fun weekend draws to a close. Some highlights!

  • Tammy being offered a cup of tea, declining, and then being given a cup of tea “just in case you change your mind.”
  • The 688 song playlist for the birthday party which sadly did not reach the amazing heights of selecting The Reynolds Girls or Transvision Vamp, but did open with the ever-cheery “I Trawl The Megahertz.”
  • My delightfully informative Endeavour-inspired tour of Oxford, with highlights such as “that’s an old building”, “that’s probably a college”, and “oops, this is the wrong way.”
  • Whilst delivering a passioned lecture in the shortcomings of the abomination that is the new Westgate Centre in Oxford, I slapped a woman in the face with my gesturing. I’m blaming it on the poor architectural choices.
  • Bicester Village seems to be gentrifying on a geometric scale. It was high-end when it opened, but now it seems to be approaching “oligarchs and people who like a big Pret” level of excess.
  • On that front, Pret is basically our equivalent of Dunkin’ Donuts in Boston, isn’t it? You can’t go 500m without bumping into one, especially in London. I also spotted the much rarer ‘Veggie Pret’ and ‘Petite Prets’ too!
  • The cats essentially moved out for the days we were there and then came back inside just as soon as they were satisfied that I had really left. A little harsh.
  • I know they warn you, but the 191 steps notice in Covent Garden doesn’t convey just how knackered you are by the time you reach the top.
  • My feeling is that we need to make cannabis legal so we can ban it properly from open area just like smoking. This is in no way coloured by the smells drifting across the Park right now. Although it’s hilarious that the Police have signs up saying “you will be arrested!” and people are literally walking around shirtless using bongs (it turns out that I didn’t realize what day Saturday was, did I?)
  • Indiana is quite flat. And so many wind turbines!
  • Of course, I went to the South Bank. Of course, I went to the booksellers. Of course, I looked at the Pelican books. I did move it up a notch though, as I made another tourist back off the Pelican I had briefly put back down to answer a text message. AJP TAYLOR IS MINE
  • I was in Queen Elizabeth Hall when the Mueller Report dropped.
  • We had an amazing 11-course meal in Roganic that was probably better than Alinea or Next (quite cheaper, too!). Only slightly spoiled by an annoying American family next door that managed to demand massive changes to a tasting menu, hassle the staff to speed up service not once or twice but three times, and made comments about Michelle Obama’s arms. Not exactly the best neighbours.
  • I wore out the soles in Tammy’s shoes. I think that possibly beats the time when I made Richard walk the entire Las Vegas Strip.
  • Honestly, I did not realize before I booked that The Tower Hotel was a brutalist outpost on the Thames. Totally a coincidence, I swear. Would have been nice if the A/C had been working properly, but oh such concrete! Also a place where you can take pictures like this that make you think a Victorian East End child in rags is just out of shot.
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  • Tattooing may take longer than originally estimated!
  • My Mum will never forgive me for willingly going on the picnic in the park.
  • Using Apple Pay around London really feels like living in the future. I’ve barely had to get my actual credit card out. That will all change as we head back to the Land of Terrible Banking Choices.
  • I introduced Tammy to both Pointless and Meal Deals, so she’s much less of a tourist! Though she did walk on the right in the Tube…
  • Cakes & Bubbles was good, but ultimately disappointing, considering what Adria has done elsewhere. I liked the chocolate/yuzu/coconut flower quite a bit, but everything else was a little “…and?”
  • The Underground is just so much better than anything DC or NYC has to offer. Even if Tower Hill was shut for the weekend.
  • I approve of the increased incidence of the 1970s/80s NASA logo that people have been wearing around the city. Down with the meatball!
  • Dishoom’s naan rolls are just as good as we remembered. Once the cookbook makes its way to Cincinnati this autumn, there will be many of them in our future. So so many.
  • In contrast to the ruins and the sold-off, it was nice to see some council houses that are still owned by the people. Balfron, on the other hand, is a total disgrace.

All in all, then, a good trip. Feel like I could do with a few more days, but I think also that Tammy would have killed me if I made her walk even further. She only had light bruising on her feet from her boots, honest!

Tomorrow, we get in a plane and the long flight home. Well, to Chicago, as there’s still a four hour car trip back to Ohio after that!

And upon arrival: my goodness, this house is big, isn’t it?

“Goodbye To All That”

It’s going to be a quiet April here on the blog; I’m not going to have access to my amazing blog-publishing pipeline1 while I’m in the UK, so if you want immediate updates, you’ll need to catch me on either Twitter or Instagram. And by ‘immediate updates’, I of course mean all the photos of the National Theatre and the rest of the South Bank that you can stomach.

This last blog post of my 30s is therefore underwhelming and something of a disappointment.

comedy pause

Actually, no, I think my 30s were pretty good, to be honest. Let’s hope that continues into the 40s.

I instead leave you with a picture of a cat holding onto some socks.

See you later in the month!

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  1. Basically Hugo and a set of terrible scripts while every time I upload, I whisper to myself “I should put this all onto S3, you know”, which I normally spend an hour looking into every April when the hosting bill comes around. On the other hand, I’ve been with this hosting company since 2002 and inertia is such a powerful thing… ↩︎

“The Blake's 7 Anti-Cat Device, and Frank”

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Yes, it has got a little ridiculous, but the cat has to be kept out of the basement at the moment until it relearns that it’s not supposed to go to the bathroom on the carpet, so of course we created something that looks like it came out of Series B of Blake’s 7 to keep Helvetica out. You’d be surprised how well it works.

And Frank. So Being Frank was released in the UK this weekend, but in a twist of fate, it’s already out on Amazon Prime Video here in the US. And it’s…well, you know everything that I hold on to about Britain in these times of fascists walking the streets and Brexit? Frank Sidebottom is that. Britain: “it’s crap in a funky skillo type of way.” There’s something about Sievey and Sidebottom that could really only happen in Britain. This absolute lunacy was given free rein on Saturday morning TV, touched so many of our lives and we never really appreciated just how lucky we were to have that craziness touch us until he’d gone.

And Panic On The Streets Of Timperley is better than Panic. Less racist for a sodding start.

It’s silly, I know, but Being Frank is everything I love about my country and everything I miss, even though most of it doesn’t exist any more. A world where a papier-mâché man-child sent you hand-written sheets of A4 via SASE, a world of Little Frank and Little Denise, insanely indulgent sets on Yorkshire Television, and a staple of all the shows you only watched because Going Live and Live & Kicking had terrible cartoons on in the 90s.

And yet it was never weird? It was just Frank Sidebottom. You never gave any real thought that it was strange to have this character jumping about the TV screen. He was just…there? Part of the country. Until he wasn’t.

Also, I had forgotten, until Jon Ronson pointed it out, that I had contributed to Sievey’s funeral. A time when Twitter was less of a nightmare device where everybody takes cover in the morning during Fox & Friends

“A Lost Week”

Psoriasis flares are fun. Inverse psoriasis flares even more so. Without being too graphic about it, it took me until Wednesday to sit down comfortably. Which has meant something of a lost week, to be honest, in both work and non-work avenues. Admittedly, I did make around 10 desserts last weekend, so a come-down period might have been necessary. Just wish it was one that was not quite as painful.

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In happier news, we finally got to visit the Gold Top Dairy Bar this week! In addition to having a website that looks like it has stepped out from a GeoCities account in 1997, it’s a charming old-school soft-serve ice-cream parlour that has no time for your fancy Vietnamese Coffee flavours or what-not, but it will dip your cone in chocolate. And the staff are almost all teenagers that look like they’ve stepped out of 1977, just like the signage. And of course there’s a drive-thru option.

(I’m given to understand that Cincinnati has quite a few of these type of places dotted around, so maybe I’ll explore a little further when it warms up some in the months to come)

And just one week of March left. And about three weeks left of being in my 30s.

“Beginner's Guide To Using PyTorch For Deep Learning”

Beginner’s Guide To Using PyTorch For Deep Learning

I have my own O’Reilly animal! Work continues on the book itself, but we’ll be delving into basic architectures, transfer learning (in images using ResNet architectures, in text staying right-up-to-date with BERT & GPT-2), TorchScript, and more besides! Coming to Early Access soonish, I think…

“Night Terrors”

Night. 1am

THUD

scritch-scritch-scritch

door opens

And that is how Helvetica Black managed to jump over a wall constructed of tall cardboard boxes, worked out how to open doors, and walked all over me at 1am before falling asleep. I’m a little concerned.

In less terrifying news, we had a boardgame night this weekend! And I made desserts. A couple. A few.

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I topped out at 10 different items when you counted the hot caramelized white chocolate. And that was after nixing the sous-vide cheesecake, crème brûlée, pâte de fruit, and popcorn ganache. I may have a problem.

Putting aside the vast quantities of sugar, we had a good time! I discovered another fan of Shut Up And Sit Down and we played Mysterium, Avalon, and The Insider. Fun was had, and Tammy was indeed mostly evil. You can never trust her when she’s playing Avalon!

Short blog tonight as I’m in considerable pain, but there will be a bite-sized update following this one.

“Old Durham Town”

It was interesting coming back to Durham. Given how white-hot the area still seems to be (apparently some houses in the street next to where I lived are now going for $0.5m. That’s a bit of an outlier, but everything seems to be inching into the 300k range in East Durham), I was surprised at how little change there’s been. Yes, the ugly tower of glass is finished and there’s a few shops in there, I guess, but the Cupcake Bar has been closed since…around June last year and yet in a prime area of Durham downtown, it stands vacant and with the old signage still up. Feels like there might be a slight softness in retail in the area at least.

Then there’s this absolute unit.

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From what I can tell, the place has been gutted inside. The ceiling has been ripped out, the floors taken out (but they were in good shape and original!), the HVAC system lying by the side of the house, the vinyl siding all completely removed, and every window replaced. Even the new ones I put in. They’ve even made the house a tiny bit smaller by reducing the size of the storage space in the front bedroom to recreate something of a wrap-around porch. Which I guess is appealing, but the problem with that wrap-around porch is that it wraps around two sides of a busy crossroad, so I’m not sure how much of a selling point that actually is.

Oh, and the unit has gained another chunky boi next to it. Behold!

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One plot, two houses. Not exactly where I would have placed house #2, but there you go. I might have set the house back just a little so it wasn’t right next to the bus stop, but again, what do I know?

I do think it’s funny that the tape holding the small front window together is now almost six years old.

Anyway, so that’s the main changes in Durham. I did get to meet up with many of the people I wanted to during my flying visit: Paakow, Andy, Elizabeth, Christa, Stacie, Kathy, and Luke amongst others. Perhaps strangely, although there was a sense of nostalgia walking through Durham, I can’t say that visiting made me miss the place. It’s alright! It has some things that Cincinnati doesn’t! Although Cincinnati has Jungle Jim’s and Kentucky just over the river. Admittedly, it doesn’t get to —20-30ºC in Durham. But! In Ohio, I can actually go outside in the summer for more than 10 minutes without my skin burning off. So there’s trade-offs…

Tune in back here next week for (hopefully) some news on the book front and other shenanigans.

March?

Well that was fast. And so, all of a sudden, I have a month left of my thirties. I don’t think the mid-life crisis has started yet, or maybe it has and I just haven’t realized. Meanwhile, I have spent the week sorting out how to transfer my former 401(k) funds and begin the work on this year’s tax return. All the adult things. Of course, as I type this, I have discovered I’m wearing my top inside out, so there’s that…

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Again, a quiet week. Starting to panic a little about the book, as I’m starting on the most involved chapter and it’s somewhat intimidating. Of course, it’s likely to be less intimidating when I properly get started, but there’s always a distraction.

Being extremely online since 2016 is not helping either. Yesterday? Yes, I should have been writing. But instead I took an hour and a half out of my day tracking down statistics of how the UK minimum wage tracked with RPI/CPI from 1999-2010 in order to fight an exasperating battle with leftists calling the minimum wage a betrayal of socialism. It was important dammit. I am getting increasingly fed up with adherents of a New Jerusalem wilfully blaming all of Labour’s ills on 1997-2010, as if Attlee et al weren’t Men of Empire and Callaghan was the one who brought in monetarism.

And of course the 2020 primaries are starting to ramp up, so more fun and nasty arguments to come when you question the idea of introducing a Medicare-For-All bill with no details on how you are going to pay for it (and it’s not hard! Taxes! But there probably needs to be a discussion on where those taxes fall, eh? Instead of just calling people ‘centrist sellouts’). So looking forward to that.

Anyway, back off to NC this week for the first time in almost a year. I’ll only be in Durham itself for under 24 hours, but it’ll be interesting to see what’s changed since I’ve been gone. I guess the tower that replaced @greenwalldurham will finally be open…

I'm From Ohio. Vaguely

Things I learnt this week:

  • Meeting veteran Apache Solr committers is awesome. Stalking their online presence afterwards to find out they’re even more awesome is even better.1
  • Buying a Clipper card makes using BART (or more precisely, buying a ticket and continuing to be able to buy tickets/credit) achievable. I do not understand why I have so much trouble with the BART transit system when I don’t anywhere else in the world. But hopefully I’ve solved that now, providing I don’t lose the card.
  • Whilst I don’t bring it up first, apparently I will go on an 30 minute rant of how my country has developed political vCJD and gone crazy if the subject arises.
  • I always feel I need to completely avoid alcohol for a month after I visit San Francisco for some reason.
  • People like bourbon gifts! (somewhat related to the previous note)
  • Why, oh why did they build a city on what seems like all the hills in the world?
  • Sure, it makes sense before you go that you could book a hotel out by the airport and it won’t matter. But…
  • Yes, there really is a tiki bar with a pool and a boat in the basement of a hotel. My first SF tech party!
  • I turned up at the wrong location on one day of the week and ended up only being 30 minutes early to where I was supposed to be instead of over an hour.
  • You can’t just say “I’m Ian, from Ohio,” because saying it out loud means that people have a lot of follow-up questions. But I guess it means I still have the accent…
  • Unless you make firm plans out there, it’s not going to happen (totally my fault). Next time, Drew!
  • This was my first trip using compression packing cubes. I have finally tripped over into the dark side. And I’m not even a consultant anymore!
  • I definitely missed not having Andy around during the days and nights (sadly, he was ill this week).
  • Getting stuck in Dallas, turning the return journey into a harsh 18-hour affair was probably not the best ending. But at least I’m back!

  1. Allegedly. ↩︎

Back In The Bay

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When I see public transport systems, I must ride them.

Back in the Bay Area for a week. There have been whiskey bars and watching Endeavour at high altitudes. Tomorrow I’ll be heading back to San Francisco proper for all the meetings and whatnot.

I am already so tired I could probably sleep for a week.