Thursday, January 11, 2007
Blusting
Soaked yesterday - for the first time since I restarted regular cycling - and blusted today. This last can be a bit unnerving when a cross wind catches you about the same time as something decided too pass you a bit too close. All testing the resolve for proper bread but holding out so far. Chelsea buns now in vogue at the baker. Been there every day for the last few days now - and the tray is getting bigger so hopefully somebody besides me likes the things.
Got two posts in at the allotment. With all the rain easy going and was able to knock the posts in the last six inches although I wonder whether I am going to be able to compact the holes properly as the ground dries out. They are also in deeper than I expected and will now have to attach extensions to carry them from 5 foot 4 above ground (2 foot 8 below) to 6 foot 9. But the posts are the right weight at 3 to 4 inches diameter and the next length up - 12 foot - would have been far too long and awkward to handle, even when cut down a bit. So not unhappy with the extension solution - even though it is rather grotty sawn two by one from Champions. Hopefully it will do the business. Will have to tie the line wire onto the extensions - they are not man enough to take the sort of staples that will be needed. Boy scouts rule again. Will be using some of the willow branches for intermediate posts - the proper posts being at 8 yard intervals. I wonder if they will grow, having been cut now for some weeks?
Interesting Soduku outcome a few days ago. Got stuck with lots of binary choices. Gazed at it for near an hour and got nowhere. Looked again in the morning and still nowhere. In desperation I checked what I had done against the solution and found that what I had done was OK. So then went for guessing a suitable binary and carrying it forward. Either it would work or error, in the latter case then rolling back, a possibility which meant that care with recording the solution was needed. (Maybe I will get around to an Excel gadget to support Sodukuing which has built in roll back amongst other helpful features). As it turned out, after about 15 moves the chosen route failed, so I did roll back and the other choice then worked. Not a proceeding I have been reduced to before.
Afterwards I thought that checking was a bit unecessary. If you have made a mistake there is too much information on the grid and you should be able to move forward quite quickly, even if wrongly. So if you can't move at all, it seems unlikely that you have made a mistake. A theory borne out by the few days following when I moved very quickly, having in each case made a mistake.
Now finished Pakenham on the Anglo Irish treaty of 1921. A great pity that both sides had got into a position where one wanted a symbolic something very badly which the other was very concerned not to give - a something which these days would not be thought worth getting into a state about and which in the event withered away pretty quickly anyway. And without knowing much about British parliamentary circumstances at the time and what would have been practical politics, it seems a great pity that Lloyd George with his superior negotiating team was able to drive so hard a bargain, a bargain which the Irish kept but only at the cost of the civil war.
Now finished Galbraith on Iraq. Leaving aside the catalogue of errors, his recipe seems to be to leave a weak central government in place and let more or less autonomous regions - one Kurdish, one Sunni and one Shia - grow and mature (the Kurds have had such a region for some time now) within that weak framework. This doesn't do much for the Baghdad and Kirkuk problems - both places being very mixed - but the Iraqis have to sort something out for themselves on those fronts. Hopefully Turkey and Iran will get used to the idea of some Kurds at least having their own place. And leave in place the compromise deal whereby the central government keeps existing oil resources and shares them out somehow and regional government get any new ones they might come across. And get out fast: we are no longer welcome. As he says, not a great solution but maybe the best we can do given where we have got to.
Got two posts in at the allotment. With all the rain easy going and was able to knock the posts in the last six inches although I wonder whether I am going to be able to compact the holes properly as the ground dries out. They are also in deeper than I expected and will now have to attach extensions to carry them from 5 foot 4 above ground (2 foot 8 below) to 6 foot 9. But the posts are the right weight at 3 to 4 inches diameter and the next length up - 12 foot - would have been far too long and awkward to handle, even when cut down a bit. So not unhappy with the extension solution - even though it is rather grotty sawn two by one from Champions. Hopefully it will do the business. Will have to tie the line wire onto the extensions - they are not man enough to take the sort of staples that will be needed. Boy scouts rule again. Will be using some of the willow branches for intermediate posts - the proper posts being at 8 yard intervals. I wonder if they will grow, having been cut now for some weeks?
Interesting Soduku outcome a few days ago. Got stuck with lots of binary choices. Gazed at it for near an hour and got nowhere. Looked again in the morning and still nowhere. In desperation I checked what I had done against the solution and found that what I had done was OK. So then went for guessing a suitable binary and carrying it forward. Either it would work or error, in the latter case then rolling back, a possibility which meant that care with recording the solution was needed. (Maybe I will get around to an Excel gadget to support Sodukuing which has built in roll back amongst other helpful features). As it turned out, after about 15 moves the chosen route failed, so I did roll back and the other choice then worked. Not a proceeding I have been reduced to before.
Afterwards I thought that checking was a bit unecessary. If you have made a mistake there is too much information on the grid and you should be able to move forward quite quickly, even if wrongly. So if you can't move at all, it seems unlikely that you have made a mistake. A theory borne out by the few days following when I moved very quickly, having in each case made a mistake.
Now finished Pakenham on the Anglo Irish treaty of 1921. A great pity that both sides had got into a position where one wanted a symbolic something very badly which the other was very concerned not to give - a something which these days would not be thought worth getting into a state about and which in the event withered away pretty quickly anyway. And without knowing much about British parliamentary circumstances at the time and what would have been practical politics, it seems a great pity that Lloyd George with his superior negotiating team was able to drive so hard a bargain, a bargain which the Irish kept but only at the cost of the civil war.
Now finished Galbraith on Iraq. Leaving aside the catalogue of errors, his recipe seems to be to leave a weak central government in place and let more or less autonomous regions - one Kurdish, one Sunni and one Shia - grow and mature (the Kurds have had such a region for some time now) within that weak framework. This doesn't do much for the Baghdad and Kirkuk problems - both places being very mixed - but the Iraqis have to sort something out for themselves on those fronts. Hopefully Turkey and Iran will get used to the idea of some Kurds at least having their own place. And leave in place the compromise deal whereby the central government keeps existing oil resources and shares them out somehow and regional government get any new ones they might come across. And get out fast: we are no longer welcome. As he says, not a great solution but maybe the best we can do given where we have got to.
# posted by Jim @ 2:44 AM 
