craven.fr

It looks like I can now claim to have had my poetry published in the Daily Telegraph, Britain's leading newspaper.

Actually, the reality is somewhat less. For one, my verses only appeared on telegraph.co.uk, the paper's online site. (Although, since online is in the process of replacing print, that distinction means less than it used to. Still, the word "published" has to be considered an exaggeration.) It gets worse, though. The context of these lines was the World Cup live blog, which runs all day long and, to break the tedium, invited readers to send in their World Cup limericks. Somehow, for reasons I cannot explain, this "seemed like a good idea at the time", and the following contribution was submitted (you can see the lines in context here, at 13.20):

There once was a plastic vuvuzela
So loud it could deafen Methuselah.
How the players kept playing
Through its incessant braying
Took mental, not physical, stamina.

Perhaps I should put together a campaign to run for Professor of Poetry? :-)

Math is fun. It is inherently interesting, and the beauty and symmetry of mathematics reveal far more about our universe than something so purely abstract should ever be able to do. I enjoy learning more about mathematics.

And yet, when you lose the train of thought, mathematics immediately become incomprehensible, frustrating, and hard. I firmly believe that it is because most of us are not truly able to learn mathematics at our own pace that so many of us are turned off it. Once you get lost, in math, it becomes a very unpleasant place to be. Our eyes glaze over before a maze of incomprehensible squiggles, and what should be a simple, elegant proof becomes meaningless gobbledygook instead.

Two things result from this. One is, that following mathematics lectures on iTunes U is in many ways a godsend: you can stop and rewind the lecturer as many times as you want to, and it is simple and easy to go back and listen to any lecture that you haven't totally grasped again. You can have things explained to you at your own pace, and so make progress that you might not have been able to in a traditional school setting.

It also follows, though, that recommending a lecture is a very hard thing to do, since according to the reader's level of ability, the choices range from the the dull and oversimplified to the maddeningly advanced and incomprehensible. But one man's remedial refresher is another man's cutting edge, depending on where our mathematics education stopped, or how much we have forgotten since school.

Matrix operations were one of the areas of high school mathematics that I most enjoyed, back in the day. I remember being fascinated by the interesting properties of matrices and the surprising ways they interacted, and the simple patterns of operations one used in manipulating them. I have not touched them since high school, however, so I did not remember much of anything about them except what they looked like.

Linear algebra may be a topic in high school math (Algebra II, if I remember my high school curriculum correctly), but it is a topic that goes deep enough to merit a semester long course at MIT. There is some cachet to being able to follow a mathematics lecture at MIT, which makes following this course even more fun. What MIT really deserves recognition for, though, is what an incredible contribution they make, through iTunes U and OpenCourseWare, to desseminating knowledge and making so much of their world-class programme availible for free on the internet, to anyone in the world. This will not be the last time I recommend a course from MIT in "Best of iTunes U".

Linear Algebra is taught by Gilbert Strang, a former Rhodes scholar (Oxford represent!) and world-renowned mathematician. His lecturing style is well-suited to watching his recorded lectures: he is clear, his worked examples are not beset by implied steps or other obscuring factors, and he is able to keep us interested both in the material at hand, and in its larger implications.

The only criticism I have to this lecture series is that the video is optimised for the iPhone screen. Which is well and good, since I watch it on my phone and would not like to have unnecessarily large files on it. On the other hand, the video quality is too low to view on an iPad (the chalkboard becomes illegible), which is unfortunate since it would be nice to be able to have the option to view the lectures on a larger screen too. Still, it is amazing and fantastic to be able to view lectures from MIT from a renowned professor and teacher, absolutely free, and I am so thankful to have the opportunity. And it is enjoyable to flex those math muscles once again, after all these years.

The explosion of content available on iTunes U has probably been the single biggest improvement to my quality of life in the last year. Whereas before podcasts were the main thing I listened to, I am now able to enjoy lectures from preeminent professors at Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, MIT, Stanford, and countless other great institutions of higher learning. This is fantastic, not only because it would not have been possible for all but a few to hear these great lectures before, but also because the subjects available are, in their variety and interest, just more informative to listen to than what one can find in the average podcast. I really love it.

iTunes U, however, really has a number of different kinds of content on it, ranging from simple promotional videos (not that informative, unless you are a prospective student), to one-off lectures, to interviews with faculty, and—my favourite by far—sometimes the lectures of an entire course are online. Finding the quality stuff is not always easy, though, so from time to time I want to highlight stuff that I found particularly good by writing about it here.

Donald Kagan's Introduction to Ancient Greek History deserves to be mentioned first of all. It is accessible, even to those who have not studied classics or ancient history. It is complete, with all twenty-four lectures online, giving you the full experience of sitting in on the course. It is coming from a top professor—Kagan is a Sterling professor at Yale and the world's preeminent living expert on the Peloponnesian war. And it is relevant—throughout Kagan is very good at explaining why Ancient Greek history matters to us today, and why we should care so much about the events he is describing.

That is high praise, and it is ironic to find myself writing it, since I nearly turned Kagan off ten minutes into the first lecture.

This is because that first lecture ventures into a political interpretation of history, and Kagan's own politics, and the interpretation of Greek history that he was propounding to support them, rubbed me the wrong way. Fortunately, this is only really present in the introduction to the course (and even then, perhaps I was hyper-sensitive to it), and frankly, by the end of the course it is abundantly clear that his views in no way impede his presentation of his actual subject matter.

It is an excellent presentation of ancient Greek history, an excellent experience to be able to follow the entire course of one of Yale's most famous humanities professors, and I think it would be easy to follow even for someone fairly new to the subject matter. A great place to start for anyone interested in learning more about Ancient Greece.

I have explained before my reasons for playing the baroque tenor recorder, and I still enjoy playing that instrument. However, over the last few months, I have been drawn to branch out, and so I thought I would share the process I went through here.

As I mentioned in my recorder article, I originally set out to learn to play the guitar. Progress was halted, however, when I began travelling, and found the guitar too bulky, not to mention fragile and expensive, to want to take with me. The recorder became my portable instrument, with the added benefit of not requiring tuning—and my guitar languished unused at my parents' house.

When my parents sold the house, they asked whether I wanted them to try to ship the guitar to me in France, but I said no, they could just sell it—I was happy with my tenor recorder, and anyway I didn't expect the guitar to be easy to ship safely.

Naturally, it was only a short while after that that I began really hankering to play guitar again.

The main thing that had changed was that I had originally given up the guitar because I was moving around too much, from city to city and country to country. But now that I have bought a house and have settled down for what is expected to be a much longer time frame, suddenly that aspect of instrument selection is a lot less pertinent.

The second thing that changed was I ended up on sick leave for a couple days with a throat infection. Sitting around, I wanted to play music, but the recorder was not an option with my swollen throat! Also, although the recorder is easy to play and can play some nice melodies, I have largely acquired the repertoire that I want on that instrument: it is well suited to haunting melodies like "Greensleeves" and "Simple Gifts", but I was beginning to get bored with those tunes and wanted to branch out more musically. Also the recorder gathers saliva while playing, forcing you to stop and clean it out after only about 20 minutes, which takes away from the experience of playing. Finally, the lack of ability to play chords was beginning to get to me. I wanted something I could do a little more with musically—with a chord progression and a good knowledge of scales and modes you can just kind of "jam" on some instruments, but the recorder is not one of them.

Still, I have a lot of hobbies and not a lot of space, so I am very keen not to let the house fill up with junk as a result. Amassing a collection of musical instruments is precisely the kind of thing I do not want to let myself do. So pianos and vibraphones were out, and the idea of something even smaller than a guitar was an attractive one. So I considered picking up a ukulele instead (remember, I have no pretensions of playing in front of people—I'm just a hobbyist musician so I only have to care about how fun an instrument is to play, not what I look like playing it), but very quickly in the course my research the field expanded to four candidates: ukulele, classical guitar, folk acoustic guitar, or mandolin.

The ukulele quickly fell off the list, though: it's primary advantage to me had been low cost (again, since I'm not that serious about my music I'm not going to spend $900 on an instrument), but looking around I was able to find that there were viable guitar options which were not that much more expensive than a ukulele (the Yamaha C40 classical guitar, for instance), and would offer a lot more options musically. The uke is also easier to learn than the guitar or mandolin, but I don't expect them to be particularly hard, either, so that was not a major factor.

The question then became whether I, who previously played a steel-stringed, folk acoustic guitar, would enjoy a nylon-stringed, classical guitar. Ultimately I decided in the negative—after spending quite a lot of time checking out the Yamaha C40 on YouTube, the only piece that I really saw myself playing on a regular basis was the Super Mario Bros. theme (don't laugh, it really is beautiful on a classical guitar!), and I didn't think the loss of easy chord-strumming would be worth it. The one song I really learned to play well from memory on the guitar back in the day was the Ventures' Walk Don't Run, and it requires fast strumming. I think classical guitar is great—there is a great repertoire out there, I just wasn't able to find what I wanted—and that Yamaha is a steal, but it just isn't really the kind of music I feel like playing these days. (And I'm not interested in growing out my right-hand fingernails, either.)

So, in the steel-stringed, folk acoustic category, my attention went to the Yamaha F310, which is not that much more expensive. I would have thought that this is where the search would have ended (and I can't promise I won't end up getting one eventually), but a few factors drew me to continue looking and to consider the mandolin.

My experience in checking out the mandolin was the opposite of classical guitar: it appeared easier to play than I thought, and the music sounded better. Bluegrass mandolin probably requires more skill than I am likely to acquire (at least for a few years), but the instrument is also used in plenty of other contexts. Before implanting itself as a folk instrument, the mandolin was originally popularised in America as an easy violin: the fingerings are the same as the violin, and so a lot of classical music can be played on it, without having to deal with a bow (and with the benefit of frets). In that respect, there is a lot of music that is similar to what one finds for the recorder. Which is nice for beginners, if a bit dull.

The mandolin occasionally appears in pop and rock songs as well, and I was happy to see what good lessons you can find on YouTube. Losing my Religion by R.E.M., for example, should be easy to learn in a short time, and sounds pretty nice to me. Zeppelin's the Battle of Evermore will be another must.

Very intriguing too was the fact that the mandolin has been taken up in Celtic music. There are a lot of jigs and reels out there for mandolin, with tabs easy to find on the internet, that I think sound very nice. I would really like to be able to play one of these—and for a fun start, I could begin with Spinal Tap's mandolin riff from "Stonehenge" :-)

Still, the guitar had some advantages that I did not want to gloss over, the biggest of which was its universality. A lot of people have guitars—if I could participate in playing a few tunes at parties or when visiting people, that would be cool. It's also more versatile, with a larger range, less typified voice, and far broader repertoire than the mandolin.

What finally decided me, though, was the discovery of how good the mandolin sounds standing in for the balalaika (itself not a very versatile instrument and so not one of my contenders, even though I like Russian folk music). Adding Korobeiniki and Kalinka to my potential repertoire meant that there were now a lot of things I could see myself actually learning on the instrument—more really than I had in mind for the acoustic guitar—and all this on an instrument that would be smaller, cheaper, and easier to learn—but still able to play chords and improvise on without external accompaniment, and all this while being somewhat unique to boot.

So I purchased a Fender FM-100, and am very happy with it. As much as it is embarrassing to return to tunes like Au Clair de la Lune while I master the basics, I'm already getting comfortable playing it. It's quiet enough to play at home without bothering others, it's portable and easy to store (being the same size as a Guitar Hero controller) and much more versatile than the recorder (having a much larger range and being able to play simple chords and doublestops—not that I'm good enough to incorporate these into my playing yet). That said, I had underestimated how only having four strings limits the mandolin in comparison to the guitar: chords are not as full, doublestop options are not as plentiful. Still, though, it is more than enough for a musician of my humble calibre, and with a repertoire spanning Celtic, Slavic, and American folk music, with a few well-known pop tunes thrown in, I am looking forward to having a long and fruitful time with this instrument.

It's been three years since I started this blog, and looking over the list of all the articles, I can say that I am pretty surprised at how well I have kept it up, and how many and varied things I've written about in that time.

With this milestone I thought it appropriate to reflect a bit on what this site has become, since it has evolved away somewhat from what I originally outlined in the first article.

It is still a site about whatever I feel like writing about, and even though that is what prevents it from ever amounting to anything in terms of popularity, I feel no desire to change that. If I cared about developing a readership—something that sounds more like work than fun—I would have focus on one topic, or else run separate blogs, say one dedicated to video games and one dedicated to classical languages, and one dedicated to expat life in France. As it stands, the intersection of people who are interested in all the different things I write about pretty much resolves to just one person—the guy who's writing.

Which naturally leads one to wonder, why bother writing it at all, then? Originally the point was to let friends and family know what I was up to, since I wasn't keeping up with my e-mail. But Facebook has sort of superseded that use of blogging (although I find its latest redesigns make it far less useful). I still do post most of my pictures and videos here, though, since I prefer to remain the owner of my own content.

That purpose (letting friends and family know what I was up to) only ever explained the articles in the Personal (and, later, Fatherhood) sections, though. But what on earth compelled me to write all those other articles like How to learn Old Church Slavonic or Erlang: The Movie? Things that would not hold the slightest interest to anyone around me?

Simply put, articles like that are an outlet for my own enthusiasm, which often gravitates towards topics that no one in my immediate entourage cares about. My wife is good about putting up with my random lectures to a point, but I try her patience enough as it is! By putting up some of these articles, I can channel some of my own zeal outward—with the added bonus that there is always the possibility that some random visitor from Google will one day chance upon exactly what he was looking for in one of my articles. Besides, I also simply enjoy writing, and never would otherwise have the occasion to do it in my adult life if I didn't keep a blog.

Anyway, enough introspection. I'd now like to celebrate the three-year anniversary of jonathan.craven.fr with three of my favourite memories relating to this site. I'm proud of every article I've published (except maybe that one with P. Diddy), but these three stand out for me:

Unus Pes Præ Altero

This article is the single most popular one I've written, in terms of traffic from Google. Apparently a lot of people are interested in getting tattoos in Latin. My favourite search query that someone used to reach here was "badass latin tattoo". I would never have predicted that that request would ever bring anyone to my site when I started! All those years of studying Latin truly paid off. (Incidentally, my second-favourite search query was "i have indian driving license. can i drive a car in lille, france". That guy was putting a lot of faith in Google to provide him with specific answers!)

Passing knowledge from father to son

It isn't easy to pick a single article about my son, since he has been a regular on this blog since his first ultrasounds, but the photo of me "teaching" him about Cobol (from a book with the unlikely title "Cobol Unleashed", no less) cracks me up.

我的网志

This is easily my favourite moment: it was on this blog that I had my first contact with Jessi, now my sister-in-law—and boy did she make an entrance! This whole thing was such a delightfully convoluted turn of events: my Chinese article is mistaken for Japanese by my Armenian friend, so I decide to reprimand him in Japanese in response. Then Jessi jumps in, commenting in Chinese for one paragraph, then switching confidently into Japanese for the rest! Needless to say, I was impressed!

So, appropriately enough, this top three incorporates one random article, one family-based one, and one very unlikely combination of the two. I take that as a sign that there's nothing wrong with continuing to write whatever catches my fancy without worrying too much about having a coherent plan. So, expect more of the unexpected in the years ahead :-)

(But don't worry, I won't forget to stay on top of posting new toddler pictures and movies as well!)

(Before I even start this article let me make clear that whatever the title may suggest, it is in no way a criticism of my native state, and in any case minor league ball is 100% worth following too: Lord knows I'd love to have a minor league team to follow around here!)

What occasions this article is that, thanks to the miracle of the internet, I recently came across a fascinating map of the blackout restrictions of Major League Baseball. This is a fascinating map to study, because it in effect is showing the territorial fan bases of all the Major League teams, so by understanding the map you can get a good grasp both of some of the dynamics of baseball, as well as learning something about the way America is put together.

How interesting for me to note that my home state, Iowa—rarely considered unique or important apart from presidential primary season—really occupies a special position on this map—one that I can immediately relate to, having grown up there:

The unique thing about Iowa is that the whole state is blocked out for an unprecedented six Major League teams: it is a crucial crossroads in the fan bases of teams all around it: the Twins, Brewers, Cubs, White Sox, Cardinals, and Royals! Along with southern Nevada, no other part of the country has so great an overlap of fan bases, and the Iowa overlap is much larger.

The map also is interesting to read in comparison with the expansion and movement of teams: you can see why the Colorado expansion made sense to the league, despite having such a poor climate for baseball early and late in the season (it's a good thing the Rockies started on the road this year, since their stadium was buried in snow!), since it gave the league a fan base anchor in a very empty part of the country. In contrast, you can also see why the Nationals moving to Washington from Montreal was fiercely opposed by the Baltimore Orioles, who previously held sway over a significant portion of the East Coast uncontested.

Getting back to Iowa, while the diversity of fan bases made it interesting to grow up there since not everyone supported the same team (I had friends who supported pretty much all of the teams covered by the State blackout), it also implies that there is no way that Des Moines will ever get a Major League ball club: Even if the city were far larger, six other team owners would have reasons to oppose a club moving there, which in the context of baseball politics makes it beyond impossible.

Of course, no article about Major League blackout restrictions would be complete without a complaint that the restrictions are stupid, outdated, and should be done away with. Luckily for me, though, since I'm watching all my baseball from Europe I'm never affected by them anyway, so for me this map is little more than an informative look at the patterns of fan geography, one that I found quite interesting.

So, on that note, go I-Cubs! (Heck, with so many MLB teams blacked out, AAA is probably easier to watch in Iowa anyway!)

We had a nice relaxing Easter holiday (Easter Monday is a public holiday in France), visiting Emilie's family, getting the garden in shape, and having a nice Sunday roast, which will be the subject of an upcoming cooking article. On daycare on Friday they had an Easter egg hunt; in France this is done by hiding chocolate eggs in the yard (they are dropped there by the bells as they return from Rome—no Easter bunny here!). James did a good job crawling through the grass and finding eggs—which he promptly crushed and shoved into his mouth, wrapper and all, before the daycare ladies could stop him! Emilie also put baby chocolate powder in his bottle on Easter morning, which he thoroughly enjoyed.

I spent the evenings enjoying mlb.tv, which is really a great service to have for an expat like me. Besides being able to watch the Red Sox on NESN, and the Cubs on WGN (both of which have a lot of nostalgic value for me), I'm also getting the opportunity to discover some announcers and teams that I would not otherwise know about.

In particular, I've watched a couple of Dodgers games, and in the process discovered the amazing broadcasting legend Vin Scully, whom I would not have known about otherwise. Until I looked up his name to write this, I didn't know anything about his amazing history with the Dodgers—I was just impressed at the way he calls a ballgame, dropping in lots of interesting statistics and keeping things interesting despite being all alone in the booth. Every game is like a master class on baseball, and I really enjoy listening to him.

I could tell from his voice that he must have been a long-time veteran announcer, but I would never have guessed that he's been the voice of the Dodgers since they played in Brooklyn! It's no wonder that he knows so much baseball, given that he called the play-by-play for the likes of Jackie Robinson and Sandy Koufax. And yet even at an advanced age he's able to call the games as well as anybody in the business, and to be able to tie in so many statistical and historical tidbits while doing it. I am in awe.

So although the Cubs are still my team in the NL, I think I'm going to be watching a lot of Dodgers games this year as well, just to get a chance to hear such a legendary broadcaster while I still can. Plus, having lived in the Midwest and on the East Coast before, following a West Coast team will give me the chance to get to know a lot of teams and stadiums that I don't know as well as those in the eastern two-thirds of the country.

I am quite taken with the latest internet meme, the erudite ferrets, of which a few examples can be seen here and here. For those not in the know, this is a counter-meme to the LOLcatz phenomenon, which you can read about here.

Searching around, though, I didn't find a lot of material out there yet, so I decided to try my hand at it myself. All the ferret photos I used below were found on flickr under a creative commons license permitting derivative works. These photos are therefore under the same license; I link to the original picture for those looking to trace the source or for full details.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amagill/300788893/

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/schlongfield/112614443/

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/59953422@N00/1421808777/

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elzey/2975883749/

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/schlongfield/112611286/

Amateur astronomy is one of the most rewarding scientific hobbies out there, although when one becomes serious enough to be ready to buy a telescope, it can also be quite expensive. It is a fortunate thing, then, that one can purchase a quite satisfactory astronomical bookshelf with only five volumes—and get decades of use and enjoyment out of them. So, in this article, I outline the five books that make up my astronomy bookshelf, and explain why (supplemented with magazines and the internet) I think that they are all I will ever need to own.

1. The National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Night Sky. If you only buy one book about astronomy, this should be it. Contained in this handy volume is everything the beginning or binocular astronomer needs: star charts (both comprehensive and according to the month and which way you're looking—very useful when you are just learning your way around the sky), data on the planets and eclipses, as well as an overview of all that the night sky contains (what open cluster, globular clusters, planetary nebulæ, etc. all are), and even a great deal of historical information about the constellations, important stars, and planets. For a long time this was the only astronomical book I owned, and it served me well, and continues to do so even now. It is an excellent one-volume source for all things astronomical.

2. Sky & Telescope's Pocket Sky Atlas. Where the Audubon Society's guide can let you down, is when you are hunting for an elusive binary star or Messier object in your telescope. Its charts are only intended for naked eye or binocular star gazers, and don't provide the level of detail that it takes to really get your bearings in a telescope. In consequence, finding deep sky objects that were too far removed from brighter landmarks was pretty hit or miss.

This is where the Pocket Sky Atlas comes in. It is a brilliant, astoundingly economical little star chart, that is perfect for amateurs with small or mid-sized telescopes, and wire bound for easy use in the field. Until the day when I get that 12" Dobsonian, this is all the star chart I will ever need, and it makes finding one's way around the night sky with a telescope so much easier. (More and more, telescope's are being sold with motorised computers that promise to direct you automatically towards any object in the night sky. To me, this is "cheating"—knowing one's way around the night sky, oneself, is to me one of the primary goals of amateur astronomy. I would sooner just look at pictures of the Messier objects than resort to using one of these devices.)

3-5. Burnham's Celestial Handbook in three volumes. Just as the Pocket Sky Atlas deepens and improves the maps in the Audubon field guide, Burnham's Celestial Handbook gives deeper insight into the encyclopædic information. Indeed, one might best describe these books as a three volume encyclopædia of astronomy. Information about constellations, stars, and deep sky objects is given in much deeper detail than in the field guide, and it provides the perfect resource for reading up on a night's observations.

Beyond the bookshelf. These books provide me with all the reference material I think I will ever need. But regular contact with Sky & Telescope magazine, or their website skyandtelescope.com, provides the necessary link with current happenings in astronomy and astrophysics. Nebulæ, galaxies, and globular clusters are only interesting if we are aware of the physics involved in their functioning, and the mysteries science has yet to explain about them. Hence it is essential to keep in touch with modern science in order for amateur astronomy to remain interesting.

In addition, software programs provide us with an important "astronomical clock"—showing what is in the night sky, and allowing us to better plan an evening's observation. ("Oh look, I didn't realise that Saturn was visible again.") For me, living just off the English channel with what seems like nine out of ten nights being overcast, this is essential for keeping track of the night sky over time. I can by no means refer you to an exhaustive list of what's out there, but the best astronomy software I have personally used is KStars for Linux; on the Mac I use the Starry Night widget, which sits on the dashboard.

Astronomy is one of the only hobbies I have where I am now satisfied with the 'completeness' of my bookshelf; it is very satisfying to feel that one has all the material one needs on a given subject at hand.

I'm finally getting old enough to realise that there is no point in me making a New Year's resolution, since experience shows it will have no chance of success beyond the first couple weeks, or at the most, months. However, this year I'm trying a different tactic: instead of resolving to change some habit like I did before, this year my resolutions are going to be based on goals: projects that I'm giving myself until the end of the year to complete. This should greatly improve my chances of success. Not only that, but I'm going to set the bar pretty low—low enough that in theory I should be done by June. But then, taking into account how easily I am easily distracted, factoring in a six month buffer is probably a good idea!

So, without further ado, here are my two 'resolution' projects for 2009:

Finish reading Cæsar's de Bello Gallico. I've already read book I and more than half of book II, so that leaves five and a half books for next year, which is quite doable, but will require me to keep at it. Ideally I'd like to also read all of Nepos' Vitæ this year too, and get started on Cicero, but I doubt that that is realistic.

Finish reading Books I & II of the Iliad. I'm near the end of Book I already, so this really amounts to Book II over most of next year, which I don't think will be too burdensome. Ideally I'd also like to read Lysias XII and Demosthenes' On the Crown, but Greek has to take a backseat to Latin for me (because my Latin needs more work), so I know it's almost surely not going to happen.

There's plenty more I could challenge myself with, like running a certain number of miles, having a more succesful garden, finally getting around to reading Двенадцать стульев, or getting through the second volume of my Chinese textbook; but I know that these are closer to things that I wish I was doing rather than things I can confidently say I will do. So in the interest of setting achievable goals, I'm only going to hold myself accountable for those two 'resolutions'.

Shortly after I ended up in France, I started playing the lottery regularly. Euro Millions, to be exact, which is the European equivalent of North American Powerball. No habit-forming scratch-and-win with the occasional 100€ take-home for me: for me it was just taking the one chance a week at the life-changing tens of millions that interested me.

Of course, like anyone with a good grounding in probability and statistics knows, I have a better chance of getting hit by lightning, twice, than ever winning. What I discovered though is that just the fact that there was a chance, however remote, allowed me to fantasize about what I would do if I did win, and those fantasies were easily worth 2€ a week. (Most forms of entertainment allow us some escapist fantasy, after all, and the lotto ticket had at least some connection to reality, however improbable.)

Eventually my fantasies coalesced around a plan that I think would be the most enjoyable, the most interesting over a period of time, and yet which I can't justify doing now, what with the cost/benefit preoccupations of a working father: I would do a doctorate in Classics at Oxford, thereby providing me with a goal and drive to work towards (a lottery winner still needs a reason to get out of bed in the morning), and pursuing something that I enjoy at an institution I've always wanted to study at. The downsides for me (years of lost income to obtain a qualification that would offer no corresponding benefit to my career) would no longer be in the picture as a lottery winner, so it would be great.

The thing is, though, that this lottery-winning fantasy of mine would primarily amount to studying the same kinds of Greek and Latin books that I still enjoy reading in my spare time now. Hopefully I'd write an insightful and important thesis in the process, which isn't something I'm able to produce outside the university for lack of resources (access to books, journals, not to mention a community of fellow academics), but at the end of the day appreciating Cicero is appreciating Cicero, whether it's done in my living room or at the Bodleian library. And once that major goal were achieved, I'm sure I would go back to computer programming.

A lot of personal advice authors advise looking at the major goals you're passionate about, and then adapting them to a realistic path that you can try to pursue with your life. For instance, someone who's passionate about baseball but comes to a dead end as a player can still find fulfilment as an umpire or coach, a phys ed teacher, a sports journalist, etc., depending on his actual abilities and interests.

So by that metric, I guess that I'm on the right track in having a career I find interesting and making plenty of time to pursue other passions like classics, microbiology, and video games. Still, I do find it kind of disappointing that my goals for winning the lottery aren't a little more dramatic. (After all, Homer Simpson's plan was to be the biggest man in the world and be made out of solid gold!) Realising that winning the lottery wouldn't actually change all that much makes playing the lottery a lot less fun. So, in addition to the peace of mind of not having to worry about responsably taking care of my family, and the intellectual pursuit of a classics doctorate, I decided that my lottery-winning fantasy needed something more to make it a little more exciting:

Licensed blimp pilot. Many wealthy people go for private jets, and often take flying lessons themselves. This lacks originality and flair; it's been done. But a private blimp? Now that shows some style! Besides the fun of driving my own luxury blimp, it could lead to all kinds of side activities like selling advertising, taking schoolkids on joyrides, and anti-submarine warfare.

And that is a fantasy worth spending 2€ a week to keep alive!

Before anyone gets up in arms about the title of this article, let me first make clear that this is the second article in a series, following up on the first part which is called Reasons to play the recorder. In that article I gave all the reasons why one should consider playing this under-respected instrument; now I would like to go on to address some of the objections. In so doing I mean only to address the objections that someone might raise who would otherwise be interested in playing the recorder. Obviously if none of my reasons to play the recorder spoke to you in the first place then simply addressing a few concerns here is not going to change your mind.

Hopefully you will be able to weigh these arguments with your own preferences, wants, and needs to decide whether the recorder is what you have been looking for. In my own case, the recorder's portability, quietness, and ease of use have allowed me to play music for a number of years when I would not otherwise have been able to play an instrument, because I was travelling or lived in an appartment. Now with a deeper-sounding tenor recorder I am even less put off by the sound. I hope that if you do decide to give the recorder a go you will get as much enjoyment out of it as I have.

I am not a particularly talented musician (I have too many hobbies to allow me to concentrate as much time to practice as that would require, not to mention a truly miserable sense of rhythm), but I do enjoy playing music. I do so most often on a baroque tenor recorder, and I thought I might put down here some of the reasons why one might choose to play this instrument (and the recorder in general), since it's not the most popular thing out there, despite being one of the most accessible.

1. The recorder is cheap. For the casual player, this is a major argument in favour of the recorder over nearly every band and orchestra instrument. Even my tenor recorder, which is about the same size as a clarinet, only costs around $65 and is from a reputable brand. Buying a trumpet, saxophone, or mandolin would cost many times that even for a student model. More out there instruments like the bassoon can cost thousands. If you are not sure that playing an instrument is for you, or just don't want to spend too much money, the recorder has a real advantage here.
2. The recorder is easy to transport. Ordinary soprano recorders are only about a foot long, and even my large tenor model can be taken apart and stored in a small carrying case. I used to play the guitar, but had to stop when I first came to France, as the limited amount of luggage I could take on an airplane made me unwilling to try to transport it. Some instruments, such as the vibraphone, take up so much space that one must seriously consider whether one's house or apartment can accommodate them, especially for a casual player.
3. The recorder is a chromatic instrument. This means that it can play every note on the scale, including sharps and flats. Although there are many other cheap instruments besides the recorder (such as the ocarina, Irish tin whistle, and harmonica), most of these are not chromatic, meaning that an individual instrument is only designed to be played in one key. To be able to play a song in a different key, you need to buy another instrument. Some people like this "collection-building" aspect, but I prefer the simplicity of having one instrument that can play any tune I care to learn.
4. The recorder does not require tuning. For a casual musician whose ear for pitch may be far from perfect, the need to regularly tune string instruments such as the guitar can become a chore. This was the thing that bothered me the most about the guitar, and I'm glad not to have to bother with it any more.
5. The recorder is not deafeningly loud. I used to play and enjoy the trumpet, and have always wanted to get back to playing a brass instrument (probably a flugelhorn or a cornet)—but not unless I have a house that puts me far enough from any neighbours so as not to drive them nuts! Brass instruments and saxophones are designed to be heard from a long ways away, out of doors, in situations where there is already a crowd and lots of commotion. They are completely unsuitable for apartment living or town houses. (Yes, you can play with a mute, but what's the point of paying hundreds of dollars for an instrument you only ever play muted? Practice mutes are great for those who play in a band to practice at home, but for the casual musician playing alone it just makes more sense to opt for a quieter instrument—or a bigger/more remote house.)
6. The recorder requires nearly no care. No valves to oil, no strings to resin, no reeds to take care of: a recorder (especially a plastic or Bakelite one) can be neglected for years without damaging the instrument. I'm not saying that neglecting your instrument is a good thing, but this is at least reassuring for those who are worried about whether they will be able to take proper care of an instrument.
7. There is a lot of music available for recorders. Just because I am recommending the recorder as a casual instrument does not mean that there is not a lot of stuff out there in case you ever do discover that you have a real gift for playing it. In fact, although we say "recorder" in English, in French and many other languages this instrument is simply called the "flute", and what we in Engilsh call a flute needs extra qualification (la flûte traversière). Related to this is the fact that nearly all flute pieces written from the eighteenth century backwards were actually written for the recorder. There are heaps of early classical music, as well as lots of folk music, to chose from. Also most modern pieces written for the transverse flute can be played on a recorder, and I've read sites that recommended trying oboe pieces with the tenor recorder I use. There are also recorder ensembles for those who enjoy playing in groups, and recorders are always welcome in renaissance fairs and early music festivals.

Those are in brief the main reasons I chose for going with the recorder. Before I decided to play this instrument, however, I also had to deal with some of the counter-arguments against playing it. Stay tuned for the companion article to this one, "Reasons not to play the recorder", in which I will treat some of these objections and talk about why I was able to live with them.

This was a busy week, since earlier this week the movers arrived, bringing with them all our possessions which had been in storage in Canada since 2004, and at long last closing the book on that chapter of my life. It is a huge relief to have all our stuff in one place (and on one continent) again, even though we're just starting to work through the boxes (and worry about where we're going to put all this stuff!)

Moving stuff across oceans is no simple matter, but I would not hesitate to recommend Westmount Moving in Canada and White & Co. in England for doing an excellent job of getting everything across in perfect condition. They did a great job.

Most of all, big thanks go to mom for finding the movers and setting things up for us. I'm so happy to have all my books again!

Hosting Christmas at our house went extremely well. From five people sharing a bathroom to having twelve people over for Christmas dinner, all the logistical things I was worried about turned out to be nothing. Instead we had a great time with mom, Tom, and Jessi visiting Lille and playing Wii.

I call this post "Christmas in space" in reference to my haul of loot for the holiday, which had something of a running theme, since I got two space-themed video games (Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid: Prime Corruption), a star atlas for use with my telescope, and the DVD Apollo 13. I also got an excellent guide to the protozoa (so hopefully I'll have some more microbiology posts up soon), and tons of other stuff besides.

Mom spoiled us silly, making us a Thanksgiving dinner, chocolate chip cookies, a cherry pie, and countless other great meals. It was great to have her here with us!!!

For those with a password, photos are up of our New Year's Eve. We were at Rosine's house and had a great time. I had made a bet with Emilie that she wouldn't be able to stay up until midnight (pregnancy makes her nap a lot) but she made it and then some :-) (Tom has all the Christmas photos, so I don't have any of those to show.)

UPDATE 14.01.07—New photos added to gallery.

This weekend I put together a hide-a-bed in our office, which is nice to have because our iMac makes a pretty good second TV for watching DVDs and such, and so having a couch in the room is a lot better than sitting in the office chair.

As for what I've been watching, it's the sci-fi series Babylon 5, which a co-worker loaned me. I had heard lots of praise for this series and its incredible five-year pre-planned story arc (making it basically a 110-hour long movie), and so when I got the chance to borrow the whole series I jumped at it. The first two seasons were alright, but I was already thinking it wasn't that special. But now I'm in season three and watching more episodes every chance I get, so I guess it does ramp up pretty well.

Oh, and another source of entertainment: now when I put my hands on Emilie's belly I can feel the baby moving around sometimes! So that's pretty crazy. (Hopefully we'll know the sex in mid-December.)

So, I took advantage of the long All Saints' weekend to install Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on our iMac. Beforehand I had read through the ridiculously detailed in-depth review over at Ars Technica, and this skewed my perceptions somewhat. So I was actually surprised at how nice I thought the new dock actually looked, and my overall impressions so far are universally favourable. Although I do deplore the non-inclusion of Java 6, but I'm sure an update will be pushed out soon.

The best thing about Leopard is Time Machine, which actually makes backups painless and easy. I sort of wish there were more options (like being able to tweak its schedulng), but I have to admit that it probably isn't necessary as the defaults are quite sane.

On Saturday we went to Paris (a present for Emilie in return for her letting me go to New York last month without her) to see the French production of the Broadway musical the Lion King, Le Roi Lion. It was an impressive production, with more set changes than I've ever seen in a musical, and the entire play including all the songs were translated into French. (Although the woman playing Rafiki had a hilarious portion in Zulu!) The venue, le théâtre Mogador, was also impressive.

On the way back from the theatre I was able to reconnect with, and introduce Emilie to, an old friend, who amazingly enough was also the girl I sat next to in high school French class back in Des Moines, Iowa! What were the odds that we both have ended up living in France!? So all in all Saturday was a great day.

For someone who's been in Europe for the past three years it is, anyway. I was all enthused about being able to watch an NFL game when I was back in the States last weekend, and so I tuned in to the Jets-Bills game on Sunday... and saw a truck commercial. Then another. Then another. Then there was a play. Then a truck commercial. Then another play. Then a truck commercial.

It didn't help that I tuned in right before the two minute warning and before the end of the half there was a turnover and a timeout, but still: Back in the day I know there were not this many commercials, and definitely not for a regular season game. I know this because I actually stopped watching the NBA like seven years ago because I was so disgusted by how many commercials they had (the whole "last minute of a playoff game takes 45 minutes" thing—which is especially disgusting in basketball since giving the players so much rest time changes the physical nature of the sport).

Tom explained that this was because sports were one of the few things people still watched live, so they put in as many commercials as possible. But man, talk about killing the goose that lays the golden eggs! Why can't they just charge ten times as much for 1/10th the commercials?! For the second half we ended up queuing up on the DVR to be able to make the game watchable. As Tom manipulated the many controls required to make the game play at something resembling the rate it would've gone on at in pre-commercial timeout days, I thought of how I was using Madden NFL '07 on the Wii to get my American football fix while in France, and realised that watching the real thing took almost as much interaction as the video game.

I may always prefer baseball and American football to soccer and rugby, but in being able to watch the entire game with no commercials except at halftime, Europe definitely has the advantage.

I had a great long weekend in New York visiting mom. I made the most of the chance to play on her PS3 (costing over $900 in Europe, there's no chance of me getting one of my own any time soon), and although the high definition graphics and Blu-Ray were beautiful, it's still clear that it doesn't yet have games that live up to the standard set by the PS2 games we had on hand (viz. Final Fantasy XII and God of War II). We also saw Monty Python's Spamalot, which I loved, and even the Simpsons movie, which was a great bonus as I didn't think would still be showing in theatres. (I hadn't seen it in France since it was only available dubbed, and comedy loses a lot that way, especially when they change/omit jokes they think people wouldn't get!)

Add to all that some delicious meals (and some great restaurants, but mom's own cooking was the best) and great weather, and it was a wonderful trip (if short, but I couldn't leave Emilie all alone in France for too long).

After going to Le Quesnoy (south of Valenciennes) for a wedding this afternoon, we returned home to some of the clearest skies we've had in months, so this evening I got out the telescope for a spin around the solar system.

This is only the second time I've used the telescope since we've moved into the new house, and the first time was more of a shakedown run to make sure everything was in working order. This time the aim was to see how much detail I could discern on Jupiter and to take a more serious appraisal of what the view of the night sky was like from my new backyard.

One of my coworkers is a serious amateur astronomer (he even runs an astronomy club that is building an observatory), so I've gotten a lot of tips from him and we talk about what there is to observe, and he had warned me that the view of Jupiter this year has been disappointing. Still, I was able to clearly see two bands running across the disc of the planet, and the four moons lined up in a row around it.

The moon is in a waxing gibbous and so there was no chance of doing any deep sky observing. I did take a bit of a look around the moon; I am very bad at lunar geography so I tried to learn a bit more by matching what I was seeing to the charts, but it just doesn't interest me enough for it to stick.

What I was able to get a good view of, between Jupiter and the moon which were about 45° apart, was what kind of a view I had of the ecliptic. This is the most important thing for an amateur astronomer, as the constellations of the zodiac change every month, and provide a lot more variety and interest than the northern constellations, which are pretty much always the same. (Lyra, Cygnus, and Altair in the summer and Orion in the winter, plus the circumpolar constellations.)

In Boston, we were at about 42° north latitude, whereas Lille is about 51° north, which means we have much longer days in the summer and nights in the winter, and also that the ecliptic (the line the sun, moon, and planets run across in the sky) sits that much closer to the horizon. Luckily, this line still clears the treeline behind my house, and there are even two fairly large gaps in the trees (that would each take a constellation at least two hours to cross) where I can see below the ecliptic.

That didn't matter tonight, when the moon kept me from chasing any Messier objects (galaxies, star clusters, and nebulæ), but it's definitely good news for future stargazing!