Diversions Manifold

Timing in music, comedy and writing is of the essence, so it is ironic that I should appear to be posting this in such a timely fashion after the announcement that a team has managed to reconstruct the sound from the wax disc that recorded Alexander Graham Bell's voice from 1885 . All of a sudden, I have a relevant segué to present my old news in a new, refreshed light. Over the Easter holidays, oh so long ago now, but at least this year still, we managed to park the children with the Großeltern for a happy few hours and to drive to the wholly unremarkable Black Forest town of St. Georgen near Villingen. The town is, sorry to say, not much to look at. But it was the centre of two key industries as they rose and fell in waves; clock making, and record players. I'm not that much of a watch connoisseur, but I have always enjoyed audio and hifi, so when I saw the signs for the Deutsches Phonographisches Museum in St. Georgen , it was always going to be a place to visit.

This blog looks to be in grave danger of becoming an orphan; no writer to care for it, only the occasional glance in from human readers and data mining bots as they continue moving swiftly on to other digital destinations, only Google's server farm keeping it from sinking into the digital abyss. A blogging pause has happened here before, of course, as noted in my Blogging State Of the Union post from October 2012.  I've again not posted here for several months, obviously because nothing of interest has happened to me in that time. Perhaps that's right. The day-to-day has been pretty overwhelming and I've found that whilst trying to keep my engineering blog a little more lively, there's simply not been the headroom, or quiet time, or energy to work on this here blog. But what about the content? Has that been lacking, too? Thankfully, I think not. What have I been up to since Shanghai ? Well, I played in another symphony orchestra concert (Gershwin, Shostakovitc

I’m writing this on the plane from Shanghai to Bangkok (fortunately for you, I'm editing it several days later from home). It’s going to be a long post, as it's been a long several days: now, tapping this into my work laptop whilst sat in seat 8D in this Airbus A330, I’m as exhausted as I can remember being in a long time. I’m forcing myself to think and to write so that I can stay awake until we land in Bangkok: I arrive there at around 9 pm local time, which is something like 2 pm home time. I want to make the transition back to European time as quickly as possible, so I’ll wait until the homeward flight from Bangkok to Frankfurt, departing around two hours after I land, before I finally allow myself to sleep. Nearly home So – why Shanghai, why Bangkok and what Business Class delights did I have to eat on this Thai Airways flight TG665 to Bangkok? Well, as the swordfish was unrecognisable as a specific foodstuff, I’ll skip that question and proceed to try

I wrote in my post concerning socks the other day that I didn't like my Sealskinz waterproof socks one little bit. Today, when I ended up taking my daughter and her friend sledding this afternoon, having thought and written about those Sealskinz recently, I thought I might try them out again. Lo and behold - they were fine. The secret this time was to wear a pair of summer ankle socks underneath; quite why I didn't come up with that idea before I don't know, but it helped no end to 'normalise' the Sealskinz to something akin to socks. And the sledding was great fun, of course! (I also notice that the Sealskinz sock range has been refined somewhat since I bought mine all those years ago... worth another shot?)

Like so much in life, there's not, superficially, much to say about socks. They, by and large - and not wishing to denigrate their designers or manufacturers - simply are . We notice them only when there's something not quite right about them, something that makes them stand out, something that takes us out of our comfort zone, and into a state of alertness, like wearing a watch on the wrong hand. Mine, as you might now expect, have been bothering me lately - but in a way that only socks can. It's not that they are uncomfortable; far from it. From experiences both good and bad throughout my sock-buying life I know what I want and have settled on one main source: whenever I'm back in the UK, I stock up on socks from Next. I know that they fit, they're decent quality and - well, they just work. So, what does a sock have to do to work? Well, first and foremost, a sock can't work unless it's one of a pair. Certainly, odd socks can be and often are worn

Mountain biking (an all to rare occurrence for me these days) is not a purely physical exercise; the brain is given a real workout, too. I'll concede straight away that it's by no means an intellectual exercise - I'm not necessarily thinking of anything at all (also a rare occurrence, one to be encouraged). But sometimes I become aware of the sheer mass of calculations that the brain is performing whilst I'm on the bike. It's thinking almost as hard as the legs are pumping. Of the many types of calculations buzzing around in my head, the most satisfying for me is the "hit or miss" question. I'm pedalling along a trail, at best upwards, and there's a rock in the way. Now, I can miss the rock with my wheels simply by steering away from it. But if things are tight and there isn't much room for manoeuvre, I start wondering if I'm going to bottom out with my pedals - which is usually a worse situation than hitting a rock with the wheel. Is t

One of the lullabies that I sing to our daughters has, by necessity, developed over the years. When our eldest was old enough to express her thoughts and consternations, it became clear how the original lyrics of Rock-a-bye baby (originally not intended to be a lullaby, I believe) were deeply worrying to her: Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree-top When the wind blows, the cradle will rock And when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall And down will come baby, cradle and all It sounded very much like at least a big "Ouch" for the baby, and L was uncomfortable with that. Now, I know that there will always be howls of protest at how traditional childrens' songs are being softened, made more "correct" and in a way neutered - but English childrens' songs in particular are a strangely brutal bunch with lots of head choppings and smashings to pieces and I'm not totally at ease with that. So, over the years, our version of Rock-a-bye baby changed and gained a

In the spirit of catching up on some drafts , I felt I had to get this one out sooner rather than even later. The impressions left upon me by Bruckner's Eighth Symphony, though very much attenuated by time, still resonate, amplified a little by completing this post - which is, of course, one of the key points of a blog. It was on the 22nd May 2012 that we left our daughters in the capable hands of Oma and Opa and cycled down to the Stadthalle in the warm evening sunshine to (watch? Hear?) experience the symphony played by the Heidelberg Philharmoniker under the baton (and hair) of  Cornelius Meister  in his final series of concerts before leaving for the richer delights of Vienna. The symphony is an enormous, programme-filling late romantic beast of a piece, very much on the cusp of a new era. Written between 1884 and 1887, when Mahler was hitting his stride and starting to redefine symphonic performance, with Stockhausen and his ilk were not far behind, it feels like th

I think, after more than 18 months of maintaining this online presence, I can now confirm that blogging is not a trivial activity. Translating thoughts to series of words that have both meaning and flow can be surprisingly hard work. Perhaps I make too much of a meal of it, revising and editing my posts to the point of never finishing them, but neither am I comfortable with the splash and dash method: a blog is a document of some permanence, and is therefore worthy of being done correctly. Whilst blog posts can (and, really, should) be edited after publication, I still hold to the old concept of the publishing date bearing some relation to the date of an particular thought or event. Still, jamais être content is a burden (umm, that's content  in the sense of satisfaction, rather than information). I can see eight unpublished drafts listed behind the scenes of this blog, plus another two or three on my On Engineering blog. It's manageable, but there are strong indications t

Shanghai. From words-chinese.com So, after a totally manic Monday, racing around Bürgeramts, HR departments, getting signatures from executive directors, answering technical questions during a telecon and then driving up to the Chinese Consulate in Frankfurt, only to arrive after their 11:30 am closing time... I don't have a visa. And, thankfully, I don't need to go. Not yet, anyway. The main justification of sending me to China this week was to pacify the customer and to show that we have people who know what they're talking about, technically. However, I am present in nearly all of the meetings via telecon, so they know who I am and that my company has me on board. The benefits of standing back a little and waiting to do things better are now clear. Firstly, somebody realised that by the time I arrived in Chongqing early next week, the people I'd need to talk to would be on holiday, leaving me with not much to do other than some sightseeing. And parts that

I'm in a strange sort of limbo this Sunday evening. On Friday I was directed to go to China this weekend to help our colleagues who are in a bit of a technical pickle. The trouble is, I need a visa and the normal application process takes two weeks. S o I'm sorting out my travel to see when I'll be able to get there. View Larger Map There is a procedure for obtaining an express visa, but this entails heading up to the Chinese consulate, which I will do tomorrow. However, the application itself involves a paper chase that isn't yet complete. Currently - I need evidence of health insurance (which the company should provide on Monday morning - I don't know what time). I need an invitation letter (received) and a letter of urgency (not yet), plus a travel itinerary from my colleagues in China - again, hopefully that'll be waiting for me when I wake up on Monday. I need my "Anmeldungbescheinigung", Registration certificates, which I couldn'