Ransen's Blog

Well, one immigrant gave me half my DNA. My dad came to the UK from "the continent" at the end of Second World War and met my mum – and here I am. My parents were told by the teachers that I was not quite good enough to get into Grammar School. I would not pass the Eleven-Plus which was the exam which determined, in the UK, in those times, whether you went to a "good" school (Grammar School) or not. (Why someone's fate should be decided at 11 years old I cannot tell you.) Anyway, when my parents (one native English and one a refugee immigrant), heard this, they sent me to a maths teacher to learn how to pass the IQ tests. And this maths teacher was a Polish immigrant. He taught me how to pass the 11+. This immigrant taught me how to pass an IQ test. And I did. So, one immigrant gave me half my DNA, and another got me into a good school.

- You just can't shut up can you Owen? - No. - Even when no-one is listening? - Even when no-one is listening.

Would you miss the blog? I've noticed that a large proportion of "viewers" are actually automated system trying to get me to click back to see where the link is coming from. So I have even fewer viewers than I imagined. This blog is a good way for me to put down ideas and experiences, but if nobody is out there I may as well just talk to myself. Talking to myself I can be more honest about some things... So, leave a comment if you would like me to carry on writing.

I used to work for a company that designed and made graphics cards. In those days, the 1980s, there was a lot of competition. When you bought a PC you would, if you wanted to use play the latest games or use "high end" CAD, choose a better than standard graphics card. There were maybe 30 makers of graphics cards all competing on speed and price. And magazines, like PC World and Your PC, and so on would run benchmark tests on graphics cards to see which were the fastest, which had the most colors, which cost the least and so on. But above all, which graphics cards were the fastest. The results would be published in explicit tables of glory and shame. In these days of high frame rate 3d animation it seems ridiculous. But in those days the speed of a graphics card it was important. It was what made your screen zip along and allowed you to work faster. We could not understand how a competitor could always be rated fastest in one of the magazine's tests. We

I like Sam Harris's books. He's an aethistic neuroscientist/philospher who writes plainly and clearly. I was curious about Tim Ferriss's podcasts. I did not know that the two were slightly connected. In one of the Ferris podcasts Sam Harris mentions that he wishes he could do all or some of the stuff recommended in "The Four Hour Work Week". This connection seems strange to me... One of Tim Ferris's ways of working less (according to Ferriss himself) was to set up a brain supplement selling site. The supplement is called BrainQuicken. Hmm. There have been no tests which proved it work. Ferriss claims to have made $40,000 a month from it. Those claims have been disputed. So, Sam Harris support of Ferriss is a sort of testimonial. A testimonial of a person who claims to make money selling worthless pills. Is it worse or better that he makes $40,000 a month? Because if it is true then he is taking $480,000 a year from the gullible, some of wh

...I stopped planning my own funeral. (And listened, with a smile on my face, to Andy Narell's "Tatoom".)

I went for a walk the other morning, quite early, and had another of those "moments". The straight town road was in front of me, and at the end of it a cloudy horizon. Above me the sky was clear, slowly brightening. And behind me at about 40° elevation, a nearly full moon. The road ran East-West. There was a scattering of small long clouds just above the denser ones on the horizon. And there was Venus, above and to the right of where I imagined the sun would rise shortly. The light from the hidden (to me) sun hitting the moon's surface. The moment that I had was that if we were not used to such sights (if we would not take them for granted), it would feel as if we were living on "another planet", or in a science fiction film maybe. And inside that moment was another feeling of what I was really looking at. From space, and not to scale, it was this: From space, and more to scale, this: (I don't know