lazer-guided commentaries

On Saturday I went out and bought myself a spare helmet, so that I could carry passengers. I took Claire for a ride that afternoon. Everything went well up to the moment I pulled out from the kerb. I got half a metre out and the bike fell over. Can you guess why? (Hint: small, heavy, yellow, iron, attached to brake disc)

Boy, I felt stupid. Still, I guess that's yet another thing I'll never do again. The only consequences, besides the hard-earned lesson and a slightly jittery Claire, were a smashed-up right front indicator (now lovingly swathed in duct-tape) and a brake disc that now needs checking out at the mechanic's, just in case.

We didn't let it stop us: I made sure the brake was OK and we went for a ride anyway. It went fine - great fun! We went up the A12 to Green Man interchange, turned around and came home again.

I went to Japan on the 3rd, for my friend Matthew’s wedding. He’s been in Japan for a long time now, I’m not sure how long except that it’s more than five years.

I'd almost run out of holiday, so I could only spend 4 days there, returning by Monday evening, but managed to pack in a lot. Many of the old crowd from high school made it over [1], so we got to explore Tokyo and Yokohama together, which was brilliant. We also were finally able to meet Tim's girlfriend Elizabeth.

We had a day (Sunday) in Tokyo (Akihabara, Asakusa, Ginza), a day (Friday) in Yokohama (lunch at the restaurant where Matthew met his wife Yumi, a visit to Sankeien Gardens, a trip on the sea-ferry to see the city from the water, a walk through Yamashita Park and Chinatown, Tom Katsu for dinner), a day for Matthew and Yumi's wedding (the Saturday), and the remaining time basically for being drunken crazy gai-jin. We also had an afternoon in the less dodgy side of Shinjuku in Tokyo, the day we arrived.

Matt's wedding was amazing — at the Pan Pacific hotel in Yokohama, with a seven-course formal meal at the reception prepared by one of Japan's most famous chefs, and lots of formal speeches. After the reception we went up to the hotel bar for a few bottles of champagne and then on to an English-themed pub (!) in Yokohama to watch the South African team demolish the All Blacks; quite a strange context for a rugby match.

Toward the end of the day we had in Yokohama, we visited a crazy little darts bar where we got so freaked out at being the only foreigners there (and clearly we didn't know what the hell we were doing) that we left for a more traditional Japanese drinking establishment. After they kicked us out at closing time we went back to the hotel and drank Scotch and played Texas Hold'em poker until 3am, for small bits of paper we ripped out of a notebook and lemon sweets (each worth 10 scraps of paper).

The night of the wedding celebration we didn't get to bed until 6.30am, which would have been fine but for the fact hotel checkout was at 10am. Finally, on the Sunday evening, after exploring Tokyo all day, we had dinner with Matt and went on to a kind of exhibition space that was temporarily acting as a bar, where we met up with Yumi and a few of their friends and went on to a Karaoke Box place! They closed at 3am, we got to sleep around 4.30, and the next morning we had to get up at 7.45 to catch the train to the airport.

Three nights sleep deprivation combined with a massive drunk didn't help at all with feeling bright and chirpy on the train... I was still drunk when I woke up, and sobered up at about 10am while sitting on the Narita Express. Most unpleasant. The flight back was spent nursing my hangover and catching up on sleep, so my sleeping pattern has gone all out of whack what with that and the jetlag.

It was a fantastic holiday; with luck, I'll have copies of all the photos people took soon, so I'll be able to post a few here. Japan seems to be a really friendly country, and the atmosphere is like nowhere else I've been. I'm really looking forward to returning sometime soon.

[1] — namely Tim, Hadyn, Josh, Clayton and me

On Monday and Tuesday mikeb and I took a tour of the south-west of England. Here are some photos mikeb took. iPhoto mangled the anti-aliasing on some of the images; let me or mikeb know if you want better-quality copies.

The plan was to meet in Richmond at 10.30am on Monday. London traffic being what it is, lunch in Richmond at about noon was followed by an early afternoon departure along the A4 (not the M4) south to Southampton, where we took a break for orange-juice tops on the Town Quay.

Given what we'd learnt about how far we travel per half-day, we revised our destination at this point. Originally, we had planned to visit Beer in Devon, but it seemed like a bit of a stretch, and since I'd visited Bridport in early 2004 and liked it, we decided to go there instead. Upon arrival in Bridport, we rode directly to West Bay, found a B&B to stay at on West Bay Road, and walked down to the beach, where mikeb took a fair few photos of the dramatic and beautiful cliffs.

I phoned Hadyn to skite about the fact I'd made it to Bridport before he had (it's a long story). This backfired: Hadyn was there that weekend also! We met up for a pint at The George in West Bay, and then called it a night.

We were up next morning for a full English breakfast, over which we chatted with a couple who were taking their summer holiday driving a classic MG around the southwest. We rode on to Beaminster and then took some minor roads (which were outstanding!) to the road ("Sandy Lane") leading back south to Cerne Abbas, where we saw the giant! Amazing! Then we turned North again to Yeovil and Bath, where we stopped for lunch. Continuing on in the early afternoon, we took the wrong road out of Bath (toward Trowbridge and Salisbury instead of toward Chippenham) and stopped to look at the map. mikeb came off his bike and broke the gear-change lever, rendering the bike unridable. We called in the RAC, who carried his bike back to Bath. I followed the truck. There, an engineer repaired the lever by drilling out the snapped peg bolt and putting in a fresh makeshift peg. We managed to limp home via Marlborough, a White Horse at Cherhill, Newbury, Thatcham (for dinner at a roadside pub), and the M4, with me arriving home exhausted finally around 11.30pm.

Biking in London is truly painful for someone who doesn’t know the roads. Yesterday mikeb and I spent the afternoon buying equipment for our tour of Sweden. He was travelling by tube; I was travelling by motorcycle. He consistently beat me to every place we travelled to. It was a miracle I got to stay in one place long enough to buy anything at all.

For instance, take the trip from my place to Decathlon outdoor-supplies in Surrey Quays. After we'd been to Infinity Motorcycles in Holborn, I returned home, only to drop the bike (smashing the right indicator housing, breaking the front brake lever, and scraping the fairing). After repairing the right indicator (with the magical duct tape!), I headed for the Rotherhithe Tunnel under the Thames.

It looked so simple on the map.

Here (marked in bright green) is the route I intended to take. Note the simplicity and elegance, not to mention concision.

Here (marked in red) is the route I took by accident instead. Note the triple crossing of Tower Bridge, induced by a heady combination of panic, ignorance and right-turn-prohibitions.

I arrived at Decathlon five minutes after they closed.

Fortunately, mikeb had already searched the store for the equipment we needed and was in the process of checking out when I arrived. He bought us

• a 3-man tent, weighing ~3kg (only £80, too!);
• a tiny gas cooker and a gas cylinder for it;
• a maglite torch </ul>

  which means there are only trivia (a coil of wire, a roll of duct tape, a set of mess tins, a spork) remaining on the shopping list before we're ready to go. The ferry will cost £144 one-way from Harwich to Esbjerg for the two of us together (two people, two motorcycles, one two-berth cabin); we haven't booked yet because we haven't managed to collect all the required travel documentation yet and so don't know when the earliest we can leave is. I am starting to get a bit nervous.

I am the proud owner of a 2000 Suzuki GSF600S Bandit (faired). A few weeks ago, I took out a provisional driver's licence and took the Compulsory Basic Training (CBT) course that let me drive a 125cc motorcycle legally on the road with L plates. The week before last I sat and passed my driving theory test. Last week I extended this with a five-day training course that built up enough skill to tackle large bikes. By the end of the course I was a confident rider of 500cc Honda twin-cylinders. On the Wednesday I took and passed my practical, on-road driving test. Three days later and I'd tried out and bought my new bike.

It's heavier than the Honda (208kg dry weight!), and it's a four-cylinder where the Hondas are twins, making the bike more responsive at higher revs but less quick getting away from a standing start.

Here's a picture of the model — mine's black, though.

So far, I've taken it the 400km round-trip to Birmingham, for Noel and Bree's housewarming party, and there's a plan for a weekend in Brighton when mikeb and I return from Sweden in a few weeks time.

I’ve just started The Golden Notebook, by Doris Lessing, and have just found an image (p.68, the description of Anna’s room, which mentions the typewriter and what Anna uses it for) which caused an interesting thought. The way I see typewriters — and mid-twentieth-century room layouts in general, with their rotary telephones and old-fashioned everything — is very different from the way I see computers. Typewriters, rotary telephones, gas stovetops, all these are machines at which one performs some task. Typewriters, of course, are aids in writing, which is a fairly abstract task, but nonetheless well-defined. Computers, on the other hand, don’t really exist at all as separate objects for me: the moment I start thinking about the computer, I cease to see its external form and instead experience it as a separate realm of sorts. It takes a conscious effort to see the computer as a machine, as a tool, as a typewriter, and when I do, it’s novel and interesting, like an alien taste or a poem. The notion of what a computer is good for is so deeply embedded in the way I see the world that it’s as if there’s some bridge between where the (self that sits in a chair and has a physical body) is, and where the (self that interacts with the computer) is. The way I see typewriters doesn’t involve that kind of connection. Perhaps if I used typewriters every day I’d see them differently, perhaps no longer consciously seeing the distinction between the machine and the writing. In fact, perhaps that’s what’s happening with computers: perhaps I am not seeing the distinction between the computer and the computation. Or perhaps I’m seeing interaction with a computer as a conversation, almost as if with another person. One doesn’t converse with typewriters: they don’t talk back.

One nice thing about the depths of winter is that you’re quite comfortable staying in, hermiting with a good book. I’ve been reading quite a lot recently - mostly books I’ve bought. Blyss left me £50 worth (!) of book vouchers as a thank-you present when she left at the end of 2003, and so far I’ve gotten round to spending only £25 of them.

Huh, I've just realised it could be a bit tricky writing even brief reviews of these books. They've served well as a means of passing time, but I'm embarrassed to say I probably haven't paid them the attention they deserve as I read them.

• American Gods, Neil Gaiman. I'm still only halfway through this one, but it's entertaining enough. I have yet to grasp the book's central metaphor, if there is one.
• The Other Wind, Ursula Le Guin. A fifth Earthsea story. I'm going to have to reread it, since I was coming down with a cold as I read it the other week.
• The Mystery Of Capital, Hernando De Soto. I'm not sure about the thesis of this one, but it's certainly offering me the occasional little bit of new insight into the economies of the world.
• Zorba The Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis. I started this but (I'm ashamed to say) I got pretty bored. I'll give it another go, though, since Hadyn swears it's fantastic.
• The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie. I've read it before, and absolutely loved it. Second time through is harder, but that could just be my general mood, I suppose.
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter. An amazing book. Every time I open it up I see new depths to it. Each time a chapter is reread another layer of meaning becomes clear.
• The Collected Stories Of..., Vernor Vinge. Great science fiction. There's a story called The Blabber in here which ties into the universe invented in Vinge's two major novels, A Fire Upon The Deep and A Deepness In The Sky, both of which I think are fantastic.
• Modern Compiler Implementation In ML, Andrew W. Appel. Readable, concise, practical - it's an excellent resource, summarising current best practice in compiler construction. Since I'm a bit of a fan of the subject, I'd even call it an exciting read for me. Lots of concepts I'd picked up piecemeal over the last ten years have come together more clearly after having read this book (and some of the papers it references).

Once I'm finished with American Gods, I'll probably make a start on Speed of Dark, by Elisabeth Moon, and The Golden Notebook and The Summer Before The Dark, by Doris Lessing. I've still to finish my second read-through of The Satanic Verses, too.</li>

On Monday I attended some of the workshops at Concur 2004. I’ve written about it, including my lecture notes, on mikeb’s and my new less-personal blog:

I'm sitting in the foyer of the Royal Society in London. This is the venue for Concur 2004, a conference on Concurrency Theory. I'm just attending a couple of the workshops — specifically BioConcur '04 and, next Saturday, AVoCS '04.

See here for the rest of my introductory story, and here for all my notes from the workshops.

Two experts, to explicate Meaning,
Penned a text called "The Meaning of Meaning",
        But the world was perplexed,
        So three experts penned next
"The Meaning of Meaning of Meaning".

— Douglas R. Hofstadter

I really must re-read Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. Michael Wilson's notes on G:E:B are interesting.

This (courtesy of IP) is revisited 50s gee-whiz techno-utopian optimism. In the future, we’ll all be driving nuclear-powered cars! Holiday trips to the moon will be commonplace by 1973!

The problem is not so much with the predictions — although most will certainly appear laughable in hindsight — but with the irrelevance of the prediction game itself. "Tomorrow's robokitchen": who cares? This myopic obsession with artifacts ignores any wider context: the kinds of technological baubles discussed in the piece really have no bearing on what it is to be alive. An improvement in toasters does not translate into a change in human nature.

[Update:] Just found this slashdot comment which puts a different spin on essentially the same ideas. Another thought: the original article is so bad that it makes me wonder if it might be satirical in some way, rather than straight. I remain unimpressed.