Oxford Blog

I've been very happy with my old three-speed over the last three years and it's still a fine bike for getting around Oxford, but I'm thinking about buying a new bike. more

Our new house was somewhat overlit when we moved in: if all the lights had been working and turned on at once, they would have drawn nearly 1.5kW. There were twelve lights that weren't working, because of dead transformers or blown bulbs, but such was the redundancy that replacing those didn't seem urgent. It did, however, give me an opportunity to switch a huge variety of halogen bulbs to LEDs or compact fluorescents. more

It's early days yet, but I'm starting to look at the options for moving Helen around by bicycle. The basic choices seem to be a front-mounted child seat, a rear-mounted child seat, a trailer, or some kind of front-load cargo bicycle or tricycle (bakfiets-style or modern variants on that). more

When you spend five hours in A+E (Accident and Emergency) to get something looked at, or have to wait two hours after a scheduled appointment for an ultrasound, it's easy to get frustrated with the National Health Service (NHS). But one of the other sides of that is having access to an obstetrician and assistants, an anaesthetist, paediatricians, and assorted midwives for the delivery of a premature baby. more

Three weeks ago I went to a lecture by Gary Kasparov, one-time world chess champion, on "Reviving the Spirit of Innovation". more

A cosmopolitan city, Oxford has a religious diversity to match. more

outside the house, with colleagues (?)
the front aspect hasn't changed in fifty years

One of the things we inherited with our house was a folder of photos and documents of an owner from the 1950s, in one of which the house carries a sign "J. E. ASTON PRACTICAL CHIMNEY SWEEP". more

A decade ago, M.A. Orthofer at the Complete Review found that only 13% of his reviews were of books by women. Some sampling of my reviews suggests that my fraction is a bit better than that, but not much - still under 20%. more

This post is just for comments on the photos of Helen which I'm putting online elsewhere (I hate all the WordPress gallery options, because I want to edit text in a real editor). more

Camilla made Pavlova to celebrate Australia Day, Madeleine visiting and Rosalind's birthday, and that went down a treat. And Helen slept peacefully through the whole event. more