cathedral sounds

Location: flight from Seattle to Fairbanks, Wednesday evening. The engine noise level is high and it distorts in my ears. I imagine I can hear - no I really can hear - rich, majestic chords descending, always descending, in minor scales. How can a musical key keep descending?

It is past midnight, I can't sleep ('cos my body says it is daytime) - and now its getting lighter in the north - hang on, my subconscious says, the sun can't be in the north...

Meg in-cider

The vet has just phoned to say no broken bones inside her: the prognosis being rest and antibiotics. Well, that's a mercy at least.

Wild flowers

These pictures were taken at home today as my final fling before going to AK. The weather here is so glorious.  I hope that it is not too far fetched to call my daughter a "wild flower"!  Oh and, following the accident on Sunday, Meg is at the vet having X-rays: her back leg is very swollen.

Meg cider

Meg, the one and only, star artist in this video, got knocked by a car this afternoon. It wasn't the car's fault - the driver was aware of Meg and was going slowly: it was the fault of yappy dogs who frightened Meg whilst she was inspecting their smells, and she shot out from the kurb just as the car was passing slow. I think, I hope she will be OK - no bones appear to be broken, no obvious wound, probably just a bad bruise or two. I guess we'll see tomorrow.

Alaska and N.E.

A trip to Alaska coming up - this may mean more than my usual only very occasional posts - or it may mean the opposite if my family keep me busy!  But there will be a post coming up on N.E. - more than that I cannot yet divulge.

Yesterday I managed most of the day barefoot, starting with mulching nut trees in the morning, then the forest route run with the dog in the afternoon. Remember I said forestry machinery had churned up the tracks? - they have calmed down a bit since then but still uncomfortable under barefoot. I'd like to meet these people who claim they can barefoot on any surface without pain!

Lake drive

The circuit around the Blessington lake via Ballyknockan and Lacken is known as the "lake drive" and was this afternoon's short bike trip: 17.6 miles, maximum 32.9 mph, average 13.2 mph. Meg was looking peeved when I got back so I ran with her the 3.5 mile Tulfarris loop. Then a large dinner to offset all the good done.

Two runs barefoot

Almost 11 miles

About 8 miles

Last weekend I was a bit more adventurous. The forestry tracks which, I mentioned recently, were churned up by machinery have thankfully become a bit more manageable barefoot. The lake is still very high though.

Prince Rupert Drops

I have been reading the novel Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey - and discovered Prince Rupert Drops for the first time in my life. How could I have missed such a bizarre phenomenon?  None of my friends here had heard of them either. Check it out for yourself with this video clip.

Meteor

The green meteor I sighted last night could have been the same as or associated with that seen in the UK see here.  Another source puts the time at 2150 which was about right.  Nothing in the Irish news though.

Iron man

Went to see Iron Man 3 this evening. Predictable amounts of action and nonsense. Entertaining I suppose but not really my sort of movie.  I preferred Avatar - why? - not for the plot, but because it had that wonder element, because I could imagine myself there, because it could have happened, because it was extremely beautiful, because it was a worthy benchmark in 3D technology.

On the way back I caught a glimpse of what might have been a meteor - it was green and larger that any I have seen before.

Five miles

Tuesday morning I woke with the sun so, being that time of the year, I increased my normal first-thing-in-the-morning-3.5-mile-run to the boat-house-lake-shore route which is exactly 5 miles.  The lake is high-ish which means wading in places, but is doable. I passed a couple fishing that early - they think me mad to be running with no shirt and I similarly cannot understand what would possess a man to sit shivering by the lake shore holding a line in the water.

What with the high lake level which makes my full lake route not feasible, the council's work on the local roads which has left them strewn with sharp stones, and forestry work which has churched up the tracks and made them most uncomfortable under barefoot, I feel like my habit is being compromised!

That time of the year

At last it is beginning to get warmer. Which means less excuse for short runs. Today, after planting out tomatoes in the morning, I did the Kings River loop plus a bit, so about 10 miles. Gasp!  So good to come back to a hot shower and a mug of tea.

Repetition

C S Lewis, story teller par excellence

No I am not doing a pep talk on C S Lewis. There are too many others out there doing that, and doubtless better than ever I could.  Suffice it to say that his fiction had a significant part in moulding my upbringing.  In this post I am merely using his insight.

Although repetition can be used to good effect, for example in education or to convey a superlative in poetry, some things are too good to be repeated in too small a timeframe.

"Now he had come to a part of the wood where great globes of yellow fruit hung from the trees... He picked one of them... Then by accident one of his fingers punctured it and went through into coldness. After a moment's hesitation he put the ' little aperture to his lips. He had meant to extract the smallest, experimental sip, but the first taste put his caution all to flight... It was like the discovery of a totally new genus of pleasures, something unheard of among men, out of all reckoning, beyond all covenant. For one draught of this on Earth wars would be fought and nations betrayed. It could not be classified. He could never tell us, when he came back to the world of men, whether it was sharp or sweet, savoury or voluptuous, creamy or piercing. 'Not like that' was all he could ever say to such inquiries. As he let the empty gourd fall from his hand and was about to pluck a second one, it came into his head that he was now neither hungry nor thirsty. And yet to repeat a pleasure so intense and almost so spiritual seemed an obvious thing to do. His reason, or what we commonly take to be reason in our own world, was all in favour of tasting this miracle again; the child-like innocence of fruit, the labours he had undergone, the uncertainty of the future, all seemed to commend the action. Yet something seemed opposed to this 'reason'. It is difficult to suppose that this opposition came from desire, for what desire would turn from so much deliciousness? But for whatever cause, it appeared to him better not to taste again. Perhaps the experience had been so complete that repetition would be a vulgarity - like asking to hear the same symphony twice in a day."  Lewis, Perelandra.

I concur wholly with this principle.  Sometimes even a long interval may not validate a repetition - I would love to repeat the walk I described in Euphoria but I doubt if the magic would work again even after so many years. Somehow forced repetition does not satisfy. The thrill in listening to Rachmaninov's second piano concerto wears thin if repeated too soon. The ecstatic first few bites into a crisp rhubarb crumble served with clotted cream dull in that unnecessary second portion (memories of last Sunday).

Without doubt we were created to enjoy delight to the full. But perhaps forced repetition is the divide between delight and lust.

Obedience

George MacDonald, fantasy writer par excellence

I said: “Let me walk in the fields.”

He said: “No, walk in the town.”

I said: “There are no flowers there.”

He said: “No flowers, but a crown.”

I said: “But the skies are black;

There is nothing but noise and din.”

And He wept as He sent me back –

“There is more,” He said; “there is sin.”

I said: “But the air is thick,

And fogs are veiling the sun.”

He answered: “Yet souls are sick,

And souls in the dark undone!”

I said: “I shall miss the light,

And friends will miss me, they say.”

He answered: “Choose tonight

If I am to miss you or they.”

I pleaded for time to be given.

He said: “Is it hard to decide?

It will not seem so hard in heaven

To have followed the steps of your Guide.”

I cast one look at the fields,

Then set my face to the town;

He said, “My child, do you yield?

Will you leave the flowers for the crown?”

Then into His hand went mine;

And into my heart came He;

And I walk in a light divine,

The path I had feared to see.

Obedience - George MacDonald

Such gut-wrenching poignant truth in economy of words! How I wish I could encapsulate what I want to convey in a similar manner rather than blather on and on...  (I come from a church background where multiplicity of words is almost a dogma.)

I suppose I was led to MacDonald by Lewis, possibly in his reference:

“Turning to the bookstall, I picked out an Everyman in a dirty jacket, Phantastes, a Faerie Romance, George MacDonald. Then the train came in. I can still remember the voice of the porter calling out the village names Saxon and sweet as a nut—‘Bookham, Effingham, Horsley train.’ That evening I began to read my new book.

“The woodland journeyings in that story, the ghostly enemies, the ladies both good and evil, were close enough to my habitual imagery to lure me on without the perception of a change. It is as if I were carried sleeping across the frontier, or as if I had died in the old country and could never remember how I came alive in the new” (Lewis, Surprised by Joy).

Finding a paper copy of Phantastes took many years - now it is available for free download on the internet. Of his other fantasy stories I suppose I love At the back of the North Wind the best as discussed elsewhere.

Macdonald was not accepted by the Christian status-quo in his time - this alone has tended to attract him to me. Some paint him with the heresy of universalism but this in-depth treatment seems to say otherwise. MacDonald is said to have burst into tears when the concept of predestination was first explained to him. Interestingly I, too, recoiled from the idea as explained to me by someone at college who took a hard, Calvinistic line.

Lewis regarded MacDonald as his mentor as is evident in his The great divorce.  In his preface to "George MacDonald. An Anthology" he says "I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master; indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him."  And of Phantastes he writes “After this I read Macdonald’s Phantastes over my tea, which I have read many times and which I really believe fills for me the place of a devotional book. It tuned me up to a higher pitch and delighted me.”

I could go on and bore you with my favourite passages from MacDonald's writings. Maybe another time...

Euler

Euler, mathematician par excellence

In spite of what people say, I am not a mathematician. This is evident in that I can't play a decent game of chess. I enjoyed and excelled at O and A level maths but became unstuck at college level with divs and curls and wot-not.  And so I cannot eulogise over Euler as befits him.  A statement attributed to Pierre-Simon Laplace, another master in mathematics, expresses Euler's influence on mathematics: "Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all."

But I do remember my fascination on meeting Euler's famous formula for the first time in PSS days



which brought together so many threads in the A level maths syllabus - convergent series, imaginary numbers, trigonometry, logarithms and exponentials - just as the diverse characters are in the last chapter of a crime novel.  Substituting  pi for x we have the identity shown in the bottom right of yesterday's Google doodle:

Second use of new bike

Distance 35.2 miles
Maximum speed 29 mph
Average 10.9 mph
Route - not very interesting*, but some nice daffodils
Weather - supposedly high 15'C but windy so felt like zero
Highlight - hot bath on return home
Pictures - none
Track - HTC gave up half way, new battery is ordered

* Dunlavin / Baltinglass

Spinc and Glenealo Valley

Spinc from Upper Lake

Today I hiked the Spinc and Glenealo Valley trial (White Route) barefoot - with a group of youngsters (not barefoot) I had difficulty keeping up with. Scary signs of age.

And it was cold and very wet.  We walked through that white stuff in the picture.

Summer day

I found this poem whilst following a LinkedIn link and liked it...

The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

Running (barefoot) and hiking answers for me - at least when it is warm it does. But how can life be all holiday? For most of us it takes the major part of our lives working to pay the bills so that we can work.

"Don't aim at success--the more you aim at it and make it (your final) target, the more you are going to miss it. For true success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself. Listen to what your conscience commands you to do and carry it out to the best of your knowledge." -- Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning.

Occam's razor

Eric Isaacson programmer par excellence

Occam's razor in the vernacular might be "Keep It Simple Stupid!".  William of Ockham was a 14th century logician and Franciscan friar. He wrote in latin but, roughly translated, Wikipedia has it as a principle of parsimony, economy, or succinctness used in logic and problem-solving.

I try to apply the principle in my work as an electronics design engineer. I often use Microchip PIC processors in my designs, mostly 8-bitters, and typically code in assembler. Recently I have tried my hand at 'C' (just the ANSI flavour) - apparently it is the "way to go" and, anyway, one's hand is forced by the need to use C-friendly libraries.  But I hate the verbosity and obfuscation of 'C'. What requires little thought and a few simple statements in assembler can consume hours of research and require far more typing in 'C'. In short it contravenes Occam's razor.

OK - I like the way 'C' encourages good structure and offers ready made functions to save one having to re-invent the wheel. But couldn't these good things have been provided in a simpler, more intuitive way? So I figured I would create a new language and call it 'Occam' - but I am too late - Occam already exists but is not at all the 8-bit job I was looking for.

'C' poses itself between low level (i.e. assembler) and high level languages. It's not that I have anything against high level languages - they have their place - just that I hate unnecessary verbosity, and not only in the field of programming.

Long ago in the heyday of MSDOS I purchased and used A86, an assembler for the PC. The author Eric rightly claims that A86 "is the finest assembler available, at any cost under any terms, for the Intel 86-family of microprocessors". No painful setup red-tape is required - you write your assembly statements, assemble and, hey presto you have an executable.  That's as good an example of Occam's razor as you'll get.


Shalom is often translated as 'peace' but means much more - well-being, completeness, wholeness, health, soundness, tranquility, prosperity, fullness, rest, harmony, the absence of agitation or discord. How is 'shalom' encoded in brain neuron-patterns?  Similarly, a high level programming language command like "draw a 3D cube with rendering" – who cares how it is encoded? Except that you do care at the hardware level I work at. I care about every bit and every micro-second and, for some applications, only assembler will fit the bill.

Analog

Robert A. Pease, analog designer par excellence

They say we live in a digital age. This age was dawning when I started in electronics and I had the privilege of being involved in some of the early work on digital TV and radio at Kingswood Warren.

The world we live in may be actually digital (quantum and all that) but for most purposes our senses interface with it, and electronic circuits emulate it, in an analog way. One notable exception - if you are young with good hearing and the night is quiet, you can just about make out the hiss caused by the random motion of air molecules hitting your ear drum. The ear is truly remarkable.

Electronics is increasingly digital. Just about any custom design I carry out will involve one or more micro-controllers.  A micro-controller is essentially a complete computer on a chip.  Some come as small as 1.3mm by 2.7mm and cost as little as $0.30. But at some stage most designs have to interface with humans or the world around us, and that generally means analog. Unless it is very high speed, designing digital is relatively easy - you just bolt functions together. Designing a good analog circuit is much more demanding.

Much honour is thus due to such gurus as Bob Pease and Jim Williams both, sadly, passed away.  Here's an example of Bob's writing style: I like the way he uses an ordinary phenomenon to explain a principle in electronics design.

I guess my inertial train controller was my first good analog design.  'Good' in that it was dead simple and very effective.