I'm ashamed to say it, but we got absolutely spanked by the real estate agent who let us the flat where we're now living.  He talked us into higher rent, a longer lease and dropping the six month break clause.  During the process of leasing it, he would hurry us …

Bice and I agreed that for this post we'd discuss our thoughts and reflections on the Alphabet Supremacy project so far.  Here's mine, which mostly date from about the end of March.

Writing process

• Knowing that I'm going to write something every week means that I'm somewhat okay with writing …

When I was child, I never really thought of vanilla as a flavour.  Chocolate, strawberry and triple swirl were all obviously real flavours, but vanilla wasn't really.  It didn't even have a colour.  It's just the flavour of ice cream you use when you don't want to be too distracted …

Seven ways I'm lazy.

Busyness as excuse

I've been meaning to go to the gym to do some strength training.  I've been thinking about it, planning for it, and talking about it for weeks, but I haven't actually managed to go regularly. Why?

The thing that I've been telling myself …

You might remember a few weeks ago, I wrote that I wished I learned more about logic at school, particularly applying logic to prose arguments about complex and messy topics.

A tour of a few keepsakes I have.

Lizzie

When my sister Lizzie came back from her honeymoon, she brought me a small wooden carving of a man sitting down, his head tilted to the side and resting on the palm of his hand.

He doesn't have any facial features …

How would we live if we knew that sometime in our life, all of our debt would be cancelled? If there was a known date in the future when everything we owe to anyone else would be forgotten, and when we would be obliged to forgive anything anyone owed us …

I think most readers of this blog have already heard of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It's a long-running Harry Potter fanfic where our hero isn't the slightly dopey jock aristocrat of Rowling's books, but is instead a hyper-intelligent bookish kid with a penchant for logic, reason, the …

Arnold the Wanderer reclined back in his chair, hugging a hot cup of tea with his hands.  It wasn't as he normally liked it, but it was hot, and that was an important thing. "It's not that I'm at all ungrateful for your hospitality," he said, "but what or who …

If I were to be marooned on a desert island and were allowed a single physical object to console me in my exile, that object would almost definitely be underpants. Should my captors show me mercy and treat clothes as a given, then I would probably ask for my Kindle …

I've been fascinated by English history since I first watched Ivanhoe as a young boy.  They've got knights and barons and druids and archers and juries and parliaments and roses and Roundheads and Romans and Robin Hood.  They've nefarious hunchbacks and mad kings and warrior queens.  Who could ask for …

Well, it sort of looks like Homer Simpson, only more dynamic and resourceful

It seems a silly thing to write about, doesn't it? I'm not entirely sure why I picked it actually. Perhaps it's because both Bice and I have gone through stages of growing our hair out, and I …

On Friday, Joliette and I went to see a performance of Macbeth, directed by Jamie Lloyd with James McAvoy playing the doomed Scotsman mentioned in the title. It was a disappointing production, much like the only other staging of Macbeth I've seen, which was by the Bell Shakespeare Company in …

I've been feeling pretty rubbish for most of today, and thus won't be posting "Guard" for the Alphabet Supremacy today. Will be in touch with Bice about the necessary forfeits.

I'm sitting in Gladstone's Library, a residential library established by the former British prime minister in Hawarden, Wales. There are comfortable chairs, and if I look out the right window I can see snow covered valleys bathed in winter sunlight. Jolie is next to me sketching the room. What better …

I am not watching a game of football now, but instead watching men and boys, sometimes women, shuffle toward a stadium in brightly coloured scarves. The weather is cold, bitterly and unseasonably so, but they would wear them anyway.

I live near Stamford Bridge, so their scarves are blue and …

A long while ago I complained a bit on this blog about how difficult it was to find good fantasy books to read. It's still a problem for me: I still like fantasy, and I still struggle to find examples of the form that I actually enjoy.

Take Wise Man's …

I'm not entirely sure exactly where I've announced it already, but in February I finished up my employment with Canonical.

I do a ridiculous amount of exercise. I don't say that to brag (well, maybe a little), but like a lot of people, my standards lag quite a lot behind my behaviour, and by the standards I had five years ago, I do a ridiculous amount of exercise.

Back then …

Last year, I read a heap of books. Way too many, probably. One big chunk of this reading was what I like to call a "rationality binge". Spurred by the excellent Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and by Straight and Crooked Thinking, I've long wanted to get a …