My wife is an ultra runner and I’m a plodder, so in our schedules it’s good to do some cross-training. To this end we cancelled the gym membership and bought a Keiser spin bike, which arrived today. It’s very good, had an hour long session on it. And before anyone says ‘get out there’ – we do get out there a lot, but sometimes eg when you’re looking after a child, or can’t be arsed to face the rain, being able to do something indoors is just what you need.

went for a short 5 mile run with my wife to celebrate being back from India. These wind turbines are on Mynydd Maerdy, and unusually you can get up right next to them (if you can move the sheep)

Steel construction, water and the petrol driven car. But which is best? Only one way to find out … fight!

is having the right dongle. I have a MacAir now and for two consecutive presentations I have turned up and been unable to present from my machine. So I now have two dongles – one HDMI, one VGA, that form part of the essential travelling kit.

Third (and second) law in action

Rather belatedly in life I realised that _everything_ is about energy (in the physics sense, not the mystical sense). Society, food, evolution – it all comes down to the transmission of energy. Jared Diamond is very good on how the move to farming freed up time to start developing specialist roles such as priests and soldiers. Everything we have in society follows from that. And that was all about getting energy more efficiently. So although we often bemoan electricity pylons for messing up the landscape and as representative of our desire for power that is driving global warming, perhaps we should also see them as symbols of this endless struggle to gain energy.
And kinda pretty from a certain angle too.