Birthday Boy

Today the Boy Wonder turned 9. I haven't written much about him of late (although that's mainly because I haven't written much about anything), but suffice to say that I am proud of him beyond measure.

Tonight we went out for something to eat and a bit of chit chat, he devoured a sticky toffee pudding (supplied complete with birthday candle by the very nice waitress) in the manner of a Labrador that's found an unattended box of biscuits and told me how many years left until he's allowed to drive. This gave me The Fear and made me feel old.

Happy birthday Sunshine, keep smiling and the road will rise to meet you.

NDC

Il Fait Bon Vivre.

The weekend before last I got my Christmas present from Mrs A, a weekend in Paris sans les enfants and it was glorious.

From leaving The Shire in the early (for us) hours of Saturday morning on the train, to dropping back into our own bed late on Sunday evening it was fascinating and beautiful.

We walked miles in glorious French sunshine and packed in so much stuff over the weekend from the tourist haunts of The Eiffel Tower, Musee D'Orsay, Sacre Couer et al, to some distinctly and delightfully un-touristy cafes (complete with an alarming amount of Gallic sinus-clearing), culminating in a glorious couple of hours in a Breton fisherman's market in Montmatre drinking champagne and eating oysters with the locals on Sunday afternoon before wandering back to Gare Du Nord for the Eurostar home.

To say I am looking forward to our next visit is an understatement.

Oh, and I took a few photos too.

First Among Equals

If you were to ask me, I'd tell you that I am not an overly competitive person. This is a statement that for the most part I feel I could justify with numerous examples of 'it's-more-about-the-taking-part' from my life's meanderings.

However, every now and then something bypasses all the social conditioning that I and my environment have put upon me over the last forty-ahem years and taps directly into the part of my brain that just wants to be the fastest or the strongest or the biggest-woolly-mammoth-killingest bloke in the world. Sometimes it's fairly predictable stuff (see many posts about marathon training), sometimes it's a bit more left field.

This time it's beards.

I started growing one just after Christmas after a bit of cajoling from Mrs A and I have taken to it quite cheerfully, but now it would seem that it has become a source of personal pride. Mrs A tried to tame it this morning with conditioner and I was pleased to note that it paid not one jot of heed to her fancy hair product fripperies, refusing steadfastly to be anything other than bristly.

Later, I spotted a fellow beardy in the supermarket and immediately realised that this was the new focus of my competitive streak. His beard was better than mine and I vowed to out-beard him.

All this would have seemed a lot more manly, I suppose, had I not spotted him putting hummus into his shopping basket whilst I was looking at the olives.

NDC

Technojolity

So here's a little test. I'm hopeful that attached to this post will be a particularly fine example(!) Of DoF, taken using a proper camera (remember them?), and then fired to my phone via the wonders of a wireless SD card (my Christmas present from a particularly nice child) to my phone, which then fired it to the cloud, which then made it available as blog-fodder.

Phew!

This is all because the photog in me wants a bit more control, a bit better quality shot than a camera phone (even a good one) will allow whilst the lazy bloke in me can't be arsed with all the faff of cables and adaptors blah blah blah. First world problems right?

So, to summarise this post:

Photo - meh.
Words - nowt special.
Opportunities for decent pics from upcoming travels to send to blog - priceless.

Oh, and happy new year. I hope 2015 is great for all of us.

NDC

Cotton

Today is the 2nd anniversary of my marriage to Mrs A.

To say that I love her more than ever would be a bit obvious, a bit twee and frankly a bit mushy.

But I do.

Thank you Mrs A for the two years so far, you've made me happy beyond words and everything is better with you next to me. Even the cloudy days.

Not a long post I'll grant you, but from the heart nonetheless.

NDC

The Black Space Behind the Eyes

There's a passage in a book by one of my favourite authors that deals with the human condition as it relates to interacting with others. The book itself isn't very highbrow at all but it had a beautiful phrase in it that really resonated with me - "the only place that anyone is ever truly alone, ever has true privacy, is in the black space behind the eyes".

But I think that concept has had its day. Sure, up until fairly recently we were exposed to a thousand social transactions a day, but these were by and large with other human beings who were in the main barely interested in the stuff coming out of your mouth, let alone the thoughts behind it.

Save for a few loved ones and the occasional skilled negotiator no-one would give two hoots what was going on in my head. But then came big data and now every time I pick up my phone I leave a digital trail that Google and their ilk use to understand not what I might say, but what I'm truly interested in.

My phone knows what I'm doing and where I'm going and makes helpful suggestions. It knows when I'm likely to be leaving the office, what the traffic is like and will suggest the best route home. It knows what music I'm likely to want to listen to at a particular time of day and will magically generate playlists to suit.

Of course I know that the reason that big companies pour so much resource into this is so that they can sell me more crap that I don't need more effectively and up until a few years ago the AI was so poor, the suggestions so inaccurate, that I was quite happy to just turn it all off and keep my thoughts to myself.

The problem is now that it's so damn good its actually become useful.

It's probably even written my next post for me already.

NDC

Education

Tonight I was trying to explain the difference between conscious and subconscious actions. It's surprisingly difficult to articulate whilst also driving along country roads in the dark.

After a couple of stabs at examples I came to rest on the act of driving being part conscious, part subconscious.

The Boy Wonder is now under the impression that automatic gearboxes employ some kind of subconscious technology. I think I'll leave that with him for a while.

NDC