Andrew MacLaren-Scott's Blog, page 46

The lads live on...

"Imagine exploring the workings of a computer," said Macrig. "I think Adrig has put it like that before. At one level all you see are charged particles moving around governed by the forces of attraction and repulsion among positive and negative electric charge. And so you think you understand a computer, for it is just a machine in which charges move, all governed by simple physical law. But you have missed something. The purpose of it all… the software coded into the initial state that makes the moving charges fulfil a higher purpose that you have not glimpsed. The pattern that was set in the structure to govern how it developed. You have not really understood a computer at all... Now consider life, and see the atoms and molecules and ions all bumping and bouncing around, all governed by physical law, and all destined, or doomed, to make the life evolve into versions that are increasingly more adept at making more of themselves - at reproducing. But are you missing the purpose of it all? You see what I mean? ... Edrig... Do you see what I mean?"

"Eh?"

"You have not been listening at all, have you?"

"I try not to," said Edrig, "because it is all.... what's the term they use? Oh yeah, because it's all pish."

"You may be missing something," muttered Macrig.

"What I am missing," said Edrig, "is half of my beer. The half that was in the top of the glass but is now no longer there."

"A top up?" Adrig suggested, rousing from his dreamy doze.

"Yes, a top up!" affirmed Edrig enthusiastically, while Macrig shook his head, giving, and not for the first time, an impression of mild contempt.

Cumbriality

Low tide

Relax

The sun goes down on Whitehaven

View from the Beacon

Technical problem

This is what can happen when teleporting goes wrong. Fortunately the cat was reuinited with her head eventually, although the wrong way round for a while, but all back to normal now.


Although a sceptic suggested she was just drinking from a pool of rainwater accumulated on the lounger, but sceptics will pooh-pooh anything astonishing.

The rise of the Ome

First there was the "genome", the entire complement of any organism's genetic material; then came the "proteome", the entire complement of proteins encoded by the genome; then "metabolome" arrived - the entire suite of metabolic chemicals in a cell; and now in my real life persona I have had to write about the "secretome", which I had never heard of and briefly thought may be a person's entire complement of secrets, but is actually the entire array of chemicals secreted, ie released, from a cell. The spread of the "ome" must surely break out of science soon... As a beginning, I have just contemplated my lady's outfitome and realised she has a much larger outfitome than me; but my moanome is larger than her one, because I do tend to moan more about the trivial things of life. My worryome is enormous, although I have managed to shrink it a bit from the ridiculous size it had about ten years ago. Now I need to cast aside this nonsense and do some work, otherwise my cashome will begin to wither.

Cat watches the lady beaming in

The cat was puzzled. I am used to it.

Further Firth of Forth

Visits to the Hawes Inn and the Cramond Inn are proving habit forming, and remind me how good it is to have my office in my laptop, with a meeting in Edinburgh to justify the journey. This way a one hour meeting takes a whole day, with work done by the water on the way in and then again on the way back.