home > miscellany

other miscellaneous links

[factoids]
factoids
I collect trivia, but never knew where to store it ...
and then I discovered the Web!
And what doesn't fit there ends up in my Commonplace Book.
 
[music]
music
I like Classical, Gaelic, and Meat Loaf.
Can you spot the common properties? No? Neither can I.
[a previous eclipse]
eclipses
what I saw on 11 August 1999 (and at other times)
[Dilbert]
programming
for a (blackly) comic view on life as a programmer, try Dilbert,
or for a more upbeat view, try Microserfs or User Friendly
[triffid nebula]
short thoughts on scientific beauty
• Starry Starry Night
• The Reasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics

[*]
unrelated Susan Stepneys on the Web
I have had former lives, as an astrophysicist, and as a formal methodist, before becoming a non-standard computation scientist. I am also an SF fan. I have no middle name. I am not • a Welsh Cob breeder from Canada• a Valedictorian Essex County College student • long dead

Cambridge
(because it's where I live, even though I work in York...)

Cambridge is was a great place for bookshops. My favourites includes Forbidden Planet, Heffers, Galloway & Porter, and Waterstones, to name but a few. Plus loads of second hand bookshops and market stalls. Many of these are no more, and I do most of my browsing and shopping on line nowadays.

Nov 2002: Stephen Eldridge kindly reminded me of the old Cambridge bookshop song (TTTO Frere Jacques):
Heffers bookshop, Heffers bookshop,
Bowes and Bowes, Bowes and Bowes,
Galloway and Porter, Galloway and Porter,
Deighton Bell, Deighton Bell.
But, as I said, times have changed: Bowes and Bowes is now a Cambridge University Press bookshop; Deighton Bell was taken over by Heffers, and, after Heffers was taken over by Blackwells, closed down, the site currently being a branch of Laura Ashley.

May 2010: And now, even Galloway and Porter is no more.

Dec 2011: John Deutsch asked if I knew the history of the song (I don't). He first heard it in 1958 (when the first line was "William Heffer, William Heffer"), so it's been around a while! He and his wife Ann have their own take on reworking the tune, their "Northern Line song":

Finchley Central. Finchley Central,
Woodside Park, Woodside Park,
Totteridge and Whetstone, Totteridge and Whetstone,
High Barnet, High Barnet.

A place that I personally have found good for buying computer kit in Cambridge is World of Computers