Diversions Manifold

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'

Source: Getty Images via BBC I'm certainly succumbing to the elation surrounding Bradley Wiggins' current lead in the Tour de France; he's looking like becoming a great winner as part of an amazing team. What sums it up for me is the photo of him slipping into a winning reverie as his colleague Chris Froome drives them both up to the mountaintop finish at Peyragude. Such daydreaming can be fatal to a sportsman's chances, but in this case, Froome woke him up again soon enough that he didn't drift off the side of a mountain or simply let the competition drift past him. Nothing is certain until it's over - but it's looking good so far! Allez Wiggo!

It's the end of another series of concerts with the Musikfreunde Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra; one I was very close to skipping entirely. At the end of the previous concert, I'd had enough of orchestra for a while, and overall I was feeling uncomfortably stretched. Orchestra had become another stress raiser rather than reliever and I needed to give myself some breathing space for other things in life (like composing, biking and "just" family, for example). In the end (of the beginning of term), a lack of alternative trombonists meant that I stuck with MFH for this programme, too. Through house searches, potential job offers, overloaded drudgery at work and general family life, I managed to attend most rehearsals - and the three concerts this semester made it all worthwhile. We played in the Neubausaal in Schwäbisch Hall, then at a school concert in the Gymnasium in Neckargemünd and finally in our standard main venue, the Stadthalle in Heidelberg. There was someth

Arithmetic, from University Department of Computer Science Years ago, Dad bought a lovely little book called Figuring, by the arithmetical genius Shakuntala Devi. It's a book on the joys of numbers. According to the rather short Wikipedia article on her: "On June 18, 1980 she demonstrated the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers 7,686,369,774,870 x 2,465,099,745,779 picked at random by the Computer Department of Imperial College, London. She answered the question in 28 seconds. However, this time is more likely the time for dictating the answer (a 26-digit number) than the time for the mental calculation (the time of 28 seconds was quoted on her own website). Her correct answer was 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730. This event is mentioned on page 26 of the 1995 Guinness Book of Records" I am of course light years away from such talents, but I was never really terrible at it. However, I notice more and more that I have given up on trying to work out

A dramatic day in Hannover After what seems like an age, I've been on holiday. And after what seems like an age, I am blogging here again. Loads, and and not much has happened since I last managed to post anything here; drafts started and never completed, a few posts written and published on Engineer Blogs and Canny Engineer, many thoughts thought and not brought to maturity. It was time to enter into the spirit of the holiday refresh; physically and emotionally to slough away the encasing skins of work and immerse myself with the family in discovering the city of Hannover, catching up with friends in Rastede and then off to the beach and onto a fishing boat in Eckernförde were great ways of getting the drudgery of work out of the system. Equally, it was good to get the kids to sleep, leave my wife ensconsced in a book, and to set myself at a keyboard to type. Most of the four thousand words and upwards were written in a holiday diary, offline. But I was able to chip away a

My cycle to work takes only eight to ten minutes. Usually I need it to be that short in order to get to work at a reasonable hour after the long pre-work rituals of getting everybody's breakfast ready, getting myself into some vague semblance of work-like shape and taking the eldest to Kindergarten. But sometimes the commute - to or from work - is simply too quick. Sometimes I feel the need for some sport, for some time to myself between family and colleagues, and for some rather nice scenery. In those cases I ride the long way round. Instead of 3 km I ride 13 km, along the Neckar to Edingen, then up into Grenzhof and through the wheat and barley fields to... Well, Eppelheim can't be described as being the nicest place on the planet, but it's still not work, and that's the main thing. I noticed that the scenery is nicely varied, and riding it often enough makes me realise how the seasons affect the scenery. So I now try to take a camera with me, stop riding and

Stopping for a minute recently from our cross-country skiing in the middle of a snowy Black Forest and listening to the near silence - yes, really listening - was an exquisite experience that reminded me how seldom we get to enjoy the absence of noise. To me it felt strongly of the silence being a clean, fresh and eminently restful pillow for my ears and thence to my brain.   Of course, it was but a fleeting experience and of course we were soon scraping and poking, huffing and puffing, snow-squeaking and technical clothing rustling through the forest, but those few moments of silence, interspersed with the occasional thud of snow falling off the branches and even a timid soundbite of birdsong, provided me with memories that are far more powerful than the photos could ever reproduce.

There was an article in the Economist this week that strongly resonated with me. It concerned the "condition" of synaethsesia , whereby the signal from one sense is interpreted by another. The most famous example is that of seeing sound in colours. The Economist article reported a study into how people link taste with sound. This is something that I have long experienced. Whilst I could never claim to be a good taster, whenever I try to describe a taste, it is usually in terms of a graphic equaliser or in the choir voices - soprano, alto, tenor, bass. The research described in the Economist article ascribes particular taste sensations to types of musical sound - bitterness with the higher strings (I can agree with that on so many levels!), vanilla was most associated with the woodwinds - and brass? Well, they got musk, which I don't fully understand. Photo from  Thara M Flickr  page, Creative commons license Not only that, it worked the other way around to

If there is one principal criticism I would have of my job at the moment, it would be that I do very little thinking at all. Everything I do at work is basically and simply "doing". I feel that I have lost the art of concentration, of battling with difficult problems, of really thinking things through. Photo by Karola Riegler photography Flickr What doesn't help at all at work is that there are too many distractions for me to work effectively. In an attempt to remedy that, I have taken to leaving the phone on its charging station, set to silent, finding an empty meeting room, keeping my email client unopened focussing on a particular task for an hour or two. It seems to work quite nicely, so I'll keep that up as far as I can (or until I get my own office). But the basic problem remains that what I am doing involves very little analytical thinking at all. I am positive that it a good thing to accept back some strain on the brain, something not felt since

On somewhat of a spur of the moment thought over the Christmas holidays, I ended up starting a blog that will focus on my thoughts and observations on engineering; it is what I spend a fairly large amount of my time doing, after all. It's here . Have a look in, though it's fairly unbaked at the moment!

This isn't a deeply thought-through review of 2011, merely a list of a few personal highlights from an eventful year for the family... Meeting up with the family in Istanbul to celebrate Dad's birthday Getting married in the Heidelberg Standesamt Having a second daughter (with complications soon thereafter, but all coming good in the end) Enjoying two months' parental leave during an alas rather insipid Heidelberg summer. Coming along with work, particularly the methods side (drawings change system) and DFMEAs. Not travelling too much or too widely, but still experiencing a blown taxi engine in Romania , seeing a little of Naples , Genoa and Maastricht . Losing my passport just before Christmas. Seeing Saab Cars disappear . Enjoying a wonderfully relaxing Christmas and New Year with the family in Ipswich. Roll on 2012!