We made 6.712MWh this year. Previous best was 6.658 in 2019. Must have been sunnier than I thought!
Category: Cutty’s Blog
Cutty’s Blog
Books I read in 2024
I really kranked on with the book reading in 2024. I had planned to read at least one book a month and I almost managed two. I rediscovered my local library and have been borrowing quite a few books rather than buying them.
Here is the annual list of books I read in 2024:
- Old Man’s War – John Scalzi
- The Last Emprox – John Scalzi
- Sarum – Edward Rutherford
- The Ferryman – Justin Cronin
- The Happiness Advantage – Shawn Achor
- The Ghost Brigades – John Scalzi
- The Last Colony – John Scalzi
- The Coming Wave – Mustafa Suleyman
- Dirt Music – Tim Winton
- The Turning – Tim Winton
- In Ascension – Martin McInnes
- Eyrie – Tim Winton
- The Riders – Tim Winton
- That Eye, The Sky – Tim Winton
- Shallows – Tim Winton
- The Finest of the Three – Gavin Farmer
- Sapiens – Yuval Harari
- Another Now – Yanis Varoufakis
- Just Don’t be a Dickhead – Kasey Chambers
- Retirement Made Simple – Noel Whittaker
- Ultra-Processed People – Chris van Tulleken
- Warlock – Wilbur Smith
- A Periodic Tale – Dr Karl Kruszelnicki
Books I read in 2023
2023 was a big year for me for reading. I haven’t done that much for over a decade, so, I thought I would list off all the books that I read in 2023 (or at least the ones that I can remember):
- I got right into John Scalzi after hearing him speak on the New Scientist podcast about Starter Villan:
- Starter Villan
- The Kaiju Preservation Society
- The Collapsing Empire
- The Consuming Fire
- The Last Emperox
- The Ulysses Contract – Michael Kemp
- Outlive (The Science and Art of Longevity) – Dr Peter Attia
- The Miracle Morning – Hal Elrond
- Mindset – Carol Dweck
- Aboriginal Myths, Legends and Fables – A.
Happy New Year 2024
What boring old farts we have become when we are in bed asleep at 9:30pm on New Year’s Eve. Woke up briefly at 12:05am to the sound of fireworks then drifted back off to sleep. Welcome 2024, looking forward to seeing what this year brings. Happy New Year everyone.…
Lawson – A life in words and music
Friday 2nd September 2022, Adelaide Festival Theatre. Adelaide Symphony Orchestra + John Schumann and the Vagabond Crew with Richard Roxburgh as Narrator.
Overall I enjoyed it. I’m a big John Schumann fan and I’ve seen this show (without the ASO) three times now. I reckon the Lawson album is some of his best work. That said, the second half of the show was much better than the first. I thought the band overwhelmed the orchestra in the first bit – I was really struggling to pick out the orchestral instruments apart from the percussion section.
Not sure whether they were given a heads up, but pretty sure they turned the band down post interval.…
Music is your art…
“Your music is your art. If you try to please everybody, then it’s just not art.”…
The difference between lies and bullshit.
Philosopher Harry Frankfurt famously drew a distinction between lies and what he termed “bullshit”.
A lie is an untruth, but it is still tied to a fact. It is the corruption of the fact. Bullshit is speech with no basis in fact, in truth. Many of us think we live in an age of lies, when in fact we live in an age of bullshit.
Bullshit is like belief, its embrace affords no room for questioning.
Frankfurt’s notion of bullshit can help us better understand the nature of modern politics, advertising, news and even science (think climate change denial or anti-vaxxers).…
Interface the virtual abstract
I’ve researched this several times now and keep forgetting the results. So, putting it here to record it for next time. What is the difference and usage for c# interfaces, virtual and abstract classes and methods? And where do you use them?
Interface
An interface specifies a contract.
- Interfaces contain only declarations of the members in the class but cannot contain implementation details.
- Interfaces do not have constructors
- All methods in an interface MUST be implemented by the class
- It only contains public access modifier because everything in the interface is public.
- A child class can inherit from multiple interfaces (multiple inheritance)
- [Note that properties in C# are in effect a method, so you can specify a property in an interface, but the property needs to be implemented by the derived class].
If you’re going to be a dick, expect to be treated like one!
Don’t get me wrong, I know I’m a grumpy old bastard sometimes, and one of my character flaws is not admitting I’m wrong. But in the face of irrefutable proof that I’m wrong, I’ll most often accede the point.
However, one thing that gets my goat is when someone says something that is clearly wrong, is then proven wrong by stating the facts, then goes on to continue to rant about being treated disrespectfully rather than admit they were wrong in the first place!
If you’re going to act like a dick, expect to be treated with the same amount of respect as you gave!…
A cloud mind…
Today’s Dilbert calendar strip got me thinking…imagine if it were possible to upload the contents of your brain for offline storage.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a backup of all your thoughts, memories and things you have learned over the years? Just like when your hard drive crashes on your computer, you might be able to restore your brain to a point in time. How useful would that be for people who get dementia or Alzheimers?
Even if you couldn’t restore to your biological brain mass, perhaps it might be possible to access those memories offline. In the Chrysler Club we often lament the loss of knowledge as former workers at Chrysler pass away and that history is gone forever.…