tired fools

got back at 10pm and realised all i’d had to eat all day was a sandwich. but remembered that, at the weekend, we had to drive past wing yip i stocked up on good stuff. currently eating char sui buns, steam for 10 minutes. happy to be alive.

the guardian has been running a serialisation of 1000 books that should be read. aside from finding out i’d read only 208, it did introduce me to robert graves’ “count belisarius”, which i’d not heard of before. i’ve read ” i claudius” and remember seeing derek jacobi in the tv series in the late 1970s when i was shorter (zac’s age, i think - hard to imagine zac watching this sort of thing now). and i like belisarius, from reading gibbon. the beauty of the net is that i can read the first page, which is just great.

we’re looking for some office space in the city. i trawled around the web and stumbled on a site that contained a couple of properties that might be interesting. i enter a couple of details, including name, email and phone number. within a second i get an automated mail. then a call 30 seconds later. while i’m speaking i get another mail, this time personal, from a colleague of the person i’m speaking to. i then get another 5 mails from other property agents, a call. i go to a meeting. when i get back there are 6 voicemails from property agents, another bunch of emails. i take another call. enough already.

what’s the state of the commercial property market? desperate.

i’d heard a lot about The Wire, that it was the best TV show ever made etc. etc. I bought series one and, behold, it was good. I bought series two and, lo, it was still good. then i got back to normal life. but i’ve begun to get cold sweats, damp palms. I’ve just ordered series 3. hooked.

aside from being brilliantly written and superbly acted, it’s the nearest that video has come to the novel (in my experience). If only the dvd didn’t show the title credits every episode. with a novel you don’t read the front and back covers at the end of every chapter, after all. i even watched it like reading a novel. 20 minutes here, 30 minutes there. in looking for an image for this post I came acros a critic that called The Wire “the best book he’s ever watched”. i’m not alone.

nice article on quantum biology, via njr0.

reminded me of Kauffman’s “investigations“.

google map of where V2 rockets hit london, some details. great to see this kind of thing.

celebration.

as terry was saying, billion is the new million.

we spent a very fine new year’s eve at a party. i, having drank too much, sat in the passenger seat watching the world go by. Ita, having drunk nothing, navigated the way home, despite the traffic snarls due to central london festivities, very well. until, that is, we hit a parked car, at speed. ouch. all human beings fine. our car is a write-off, as is the car we hit, as is the car parked behind it. it so happened that the guy whose car it was we hit was cycling behind us. he was very understanding and helped us push the car so that it wasn’t a hazard to traffic. it was close to home so we walked back in a bit of a daze. happy new year.