I get no kick in a plane, flying too high with some guy in the sky is my idea of nothing to do

“I Get a Kick Out of You”, Cole Porter

It’s not my idea, though! In fact, I think it sounds rather fun!

Last week, when I was in Palo Alto, Patrick (who has a private pilot’s license) took me flying around San Francisco. It’s certainly worlds away from flying commercial.

Some pictures:

Readying the Diamond DA-40 we’d be taking up.

Flying between Palo Alto and San Francisco. The Golden Gate Bridge was shrouded in fog but we got some great views of the city.

Flying past San Francisco Airport and laughing at all the people flying commercial (well, I was, Patrick was too busy flying). It’s really cool that we’re two youths in a four-person Diamond, flying in the same airspace as 747s coming in from Japan.

Clouds flowing over a mountain.

All in all, flying was an amazing experience that I can’t wait to repeat.

Oh, by the way, August already? With everything that’s happened in the last 12 months, I can’t believe a year’s gone by so fast.

This pic was taken back in 2008, the day before I started secondary school. He was teaching me how to tie a tie :)

Mum’s the one who provided encouragement, support, cajoling and the occasional nag when I need it to continue whatever it is I’m doing. She gives selflessly of her time, knowledge and determination to help out in any way she can, and I’m definitely not as grateful for that as I should be. I think that we have a good relationship, and I’m quite appreciative of that. Friends might come and go but so long as my Mum and I can sit down in the evening and wrestle it out on the Scrabble board, I’ll be okay.

Thanks, Mum. :)

I do remember a couple of times diving into a world where Lisp wasn’t a speech impediment and C# wasn’t a musical note. Where Pearl wasn’t something you gave your girlfriend and Python wasn’t wasn’t a member of the snake family. Where Java was something to do with coffee and PHP wasn’t- actually, PHP was the same.

When I ventured into that world, I never really took it seriously or indeed, was very good at it. I learnt the basics Mac OS X’s Terminal, getting it to ping me back ‘hello world!’ when I inputted the pre-programmed command. Later on, I threw together a random number generator in Python one Saturday morning.

Last Christmas Day I was playing Chess online and thinking of how many ways I’d improve the Chess.com playing experience. I began to wonder what it’d be like to make my own Chess website and Patrick began teaching me basic HTML.

I often think that my brothers and I are quite similar in ways, and very different in others. One of the ways we’re wildly different was shown to me (and to Patrick, probably) when I began learning HTML. In my mind, this was a hugely difficult job that would take a long time getting the basics down before I could begin programming something so complicated as a chess board.

To Patrick, everything is more clear cut. What is a chess board? A table of squares, 8 across and 8 down. Together, we programmed that, working out that a reasonably thick border was needed too. OK, how about a checkered board? Well, all that consists of is every second square being black. That’s easy enough too. However, what happens then is you have columns of black and white, and that isn’t right. What we need to do is separate the board out. Looking at the rows, 1,3,5 and 7 need to have a black square first, while rows 2,4,6 and 8 need to have a white square.

To experienced programmers, all that probably seems very simple altogether. To me though, it was amazing and I was impressed not only by Patrick’s prowess with HTML, but his thought process.

I have the utmost respect for logical people. The amount of logic and ‘well, let’s look at it another way’ that I came into contact with when programming that chess-board really opened my eyes. I’d love to think that I could take some of the logical thinking that I learnt that Christmas and transplant that into my other hobbies, it’d be fantastic.

What prompted this post was that I found an old T-shirt that belonged to Patrick ages ago. I asked him about it a while back, and I realized that if there are two things that my brothers and I have in common, it’s computers and nerd jokes.

The “P” at the end of the sentence, as Patrick explained to me, is Lisp’s way of asking a question. The “T” (not pictured) on the back of the T-shirt is Lisp’s way of saying “True”

I’m thinking of going vegetarian for a while — I’m not going to be as strict about doing it for the whole year, instead taking it week by week. At the end of each week if there’s no reason to go back to meat-eating, I’ll continue with the veggie diet.

Photo owned by Jay Tamboli (cc)

I tweeted my plan (to go veggie) last night to see what people thought and found that I had a lot of vegetarian followers who I can get tips off as to what’s the best meat substitutes or how to get the best balanced diets etc.

Because I’m only doing this as an experiment, I’ll have no qualms stopping and starting eating meat if the situation comes up. If I’m at someone’s house and they don’t know I’m a vegetarian, I don’t want (or expect them) to go out of their way to cook a veggie-friendly meal, and so I’ll just eat the chicken or whatever. If I’m at home and cooking my own dinner or at a restaurant, I’ll choose the non-meat option.

I’ve heard a lot people with stories of having no energy and not getting enough of the nutrients that they need so I’m being really careful that I don’t suffer any adverse effects from this. My Mum’s really interested in nutrition and the like so I should have a good shot at doing this experiment with no adverse affects!

Photo owned by missmeng (cc)

Thanksgiving was as I imagined it would be — the dinner forming the centerpiece and quality family time either side of it. It really was like a lot of Irish Christmases and you can see why they see it as a dress rehearsal for December 25th. Indeed, Americans see it as the beginning of the Christmas season — carols are now the soundtrack of your shopping and I even caught someone wishing their friend a “Merry Christmas” the other day.

The family itself were hugely welcoming of my Mum and I (Dad was at home) — two total strangers that joined them. That’s the spirit of the day and they treated us no different to family. It was both odd and enjoyable to be around a family in such an intimate setting such as this, having spend the last two months with my parents 98% of the time.

I’ve been here for both of the Americans’ big holidays at this stage -this and the 4th of July- and I really enjoyed them both. From experience, Americans are great for their hospitality.

The start of Christmas though: are you ready?

[1] Read more

[2] Learn Dvorak

[3] Get back in contact with the people that I used to talk to more

[4] Get back playing Chess

All of these are long-term goals as opposed to something that has a definite endpoint but that’s ok because I’m happy to report that I’m working well at all of these goals. I thought that as such, I’d do a review of the books that I read. There won’t be a definite schedule to these review posts and I hope that I can keep up my good reading mojo when I’m back in the hustle and bustle of the real world. Without further ado…

The Queen’s Gambit — Walter Tevis

Ken Armstrong recommended this book to me after I tweeted about getting back into Chess while I was in America. I’d recently discovered the wonder that was the Hennepin County Library, so that’s where I picked it up.

The term ‘chess book’ probably conjures up thoughts of studied openings or analyzing Capablanca’s greatest games, but that’s not what The Queen’s Gambit is — it’s more a book with chess as a feature throughout.

The Queen’s Gambit is a bildungsroman[1] about chess follows Beth Harmon from childhood (where she battles an addiction to tranquilizers) to adulthood (where she battles an addiction to alcohol). She overcomes all these hardships to become a chess Grandmaster and winner of the U.S. Open Championship.

Called “Rocky for smart people”, it’s not surprising that some could non-Chess players could be turned off reading this book because of the central role that Chess plays. What they don’t realize is that this book would work just as well if Beth was working to become a checkers or dominoes Grandmaster. Tevis achieves this by never delving too deeply into the chess games, past a couple of moves.

What singularly makes this book worth the reading is the originality of the protagonist and the unique way that the author writes her. While stereotypes are used in the cast of supporting characters, Beth is unlike anything I’ve come across.

Tevis struggled with social isolationism and alcoholism prior to writing The Queen’s Gambit and one could almost guess it in the way he writes, in the same way it’s obvious that the man was a chess player. There’s a fluidity that comes with naturally knowing something that it always present in the novel.

There was nothing that I actively disliked in this book, but if I was pushed, there was a slight slump in the middle when Beth’s alcoholism really takes hold. It’s as if Tevis, devoid of chess to write about, is at a loss for words. This section doesn’t last but it is long enough for the reader to consciously slog through it.

Available from Amazon

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[1] bildungsroman — a lovely German word I learnt recently describing a novel that follows the protagonist’s moral or psychological growth from childhood to adulthood.

That’s a first edition Green man on a wood background that’s currently housed under top security in my aunt and uncle’s house… on the underside of their kitchen table.

So Leonardo Da Vinci’s first recorded work was the “Adoration of Magi“, and Michaelangelo’s was “Pieta“. Shall we have a vote? :)

Arrived into London last night and stayed at a Holiday Inn beside the Airport. Going through Airport Security on two crutches is quite different than one cane, surprisingly. I can get by with just a cane, but I’ve taken to using two crutches recently to A) put as little weight through my surgery (right) leg as possible and B) people give you a lot more leeway, even than a cane.

I think it’s to do with the fact that some people who see the cane seem to assume it’s not needed or ‘an accessory’. I’ll never understand those people, but they do exist. The crutches never get that — it’s immediately (and correctly) assumed that these are indeed required to allow me to walk.

So when I arrive at Airport Security, they’re always very obliging to me. No, you don’t need to take off your shoes; here, let me help you put your stuff back in your bag, and so on. Some people think that I shouldn’t be doing this: taking advantage of people’s niceness. Nah, I always say — Airports are tiring as hell for me, I’m going to take what I can get. Especially since many Airport officials won’t give you the time of day any more.

Anyway, we had an amuuuuuhzing Chinese dinner at the hotel last night. We don’t often eat Orient-style, and it’d probably been over 12 months since I’d been somewhere like that. I’m aslo proud to report that I ate the entire thing with chopsticks. Chow Mein in the Holiday Inn of M4 J4 is excellent, so as you know.

Our flight should be called at some point soon, so I’ll wrap up. LHR ✈ MSP this afternoon. Don’t wreck the place while I’m gone!

The weather here has been rather shocking for June in the South of France – rain provides an almost constant pitter patter soundtrack to our holiday and clouds are like an ever-present companion. That said, the temperatures are usually around the low 20s – as someone who dislikes blisteringly sunny weather, I’m really happy here!

Since we forgot to bring Scrabble with us (a time honoured tradition for Collisons in France), Dad yesterday set about making one, using cardboard and copious amounts of nail varnish: