Yes, a real fairy-tale!

What a lovely chateaux :)

After reading Jill I looked it up on Wikipedia, and finding the article a bit sparse, I added the following synopsis:

The eponymous Jill is Kemp's imaginary sister, whom he invents to confound Warner. Kemp then discovers a real-life Jill called Gillian, the 15 year old cousin of Warner's friend …

Here's the electricity substation near Amboise that powered the train I arrived on. I took it because I know someone who works for EDF (that's you Sarah).

And to continue the theme of photos that are of interest to people I know who work for utility companies, here's a picture …

This film sets a new standard for CGI, it was impossible to tell where real footage ended and CGI began. The story was great too. For me the only problem was that there was a bit too much shooting, in the Starship Troopers mold.

I complained to Janos that all sci-fi is based on feudal societies, dictatorships, monarchies, everything but liberal democracies. So Janos recommended The Prefect, by Alastair Reynolds.

At times in the book I thought, 'Inspector Morse in space'.

Well written, would work as a detective novel without the sci-fi bit. But …

I had a passable haddock risotto at the Watershed restaurant yesterday. We proceeded thence to Screen 2 at the Watershed to see Afterschool.

Some films convey their truth by smoothly omitting the everyday details of life, and some by showing 'warts and all'. Afterschool takes the latter approach. Soon into …

I don't understand formal methods. A group has claimed to have formally verified the L4 kernel. What does this mean? I suppose that this means that specification of the kernel has been written as a mathematical proof. Then it must have been demonstrated that the C code exactly matched the …

Like many others, I read Paul Graham's Lisp essays and thought I should give Lisp a go. I installed Clojure and wrote my first Lisp program:

(defn num_books
 ([dist]
   (num_books dist 0 0))
 ([dist achieved nbooks]
 (if
   (>= achieved dist)
   nbooks
   (num_books dist
       (+ achieved
           (/ 1
               (+ nbooks 2)))
       (+ nbooks 1)))))

(println (num_books …

Here's a painting of E.M.Forster. Note that his head is pointy at the back. This is believed to be source of his literary powers.

I was in a cafe and someone there recommended Forster, so I got Where Angels Fear To Tread from the library. It was his …