Another visit to Olde Englande

A piece of Olde Englande refers. This time, closer to old home, on the way back from Oxford. GPS trace.

At a turn in the road is a Lychgate that I haven't been through before. It turns out to be for Wilstone cemetery, but it is some way from Wilstone. Indeed it is some way from anywhere.

Inside, we look back out:

All is calm and peaceful. And I feel a surge of feeling for England, the land.

There's even a Proctor. There's nothing particularly old, though. Presumably this is the overflow cemetery.

And then on to Ivinghoe Beacon. How tall it used to be, when I was young.

Ah, time.

My apiary

Hello and welcome to my page about my apiary. This page is mostly here so I can point people at it. The sort of people who might be interested are those who buy my honey. Although you might wish to take "Bismark's" advice. This page is pointed at by tinyurl.com/wmc-bees.

Let's start with a link to my most recent honey-extraction: Bad beekeeping: spring recolte 2022 (2023). And now, a picture of my two (2023: one) hives.

Yes, only two: I am an artisanal beekeeper. Over the years, the number of hives I've had has varied from zero (sadly) to four. Four was a lot to keep going. Two is a good number, I've been on that for a while. Here's some honey:

Recently - spring 2022 - I moved house from leafy Coton into Cambridge where I felt my bees might be less welcome, and so have moved them into the long garden of a friend who also keeps bees. This picture shows the fuller setup: mine are the two central; the far right is theirs; the far left is a spare, currently empty.

Extracting honey

After the frames are removed from the hive and de-capped (the bees will seal the cells with a little wax cap when they think they're ready; to spin out the honey this cap needs removing; I do this with a kitchen bread knife; see this picture) they are then put in the extractor and spun. I have a 1/3 share in a stainless steel "tangential" extractor (which means the frames are placed tangential to the circumference, which means they need to be spun gently, rotated, spun again, rotated, and spun again; which is why the pros prefer radial extractors. Pic showing the inside). Spun off honey then collects in the base of the extractor and can then be tapped off, filtered (in this case via the conical stainless steel filter shown here) to remove bits of wax and undesireable bits of bees, and collected. It is then fit to be bottled.

The archives

There are lots of old blog posts over the years; let's list some:

* Bad beekeeping, spring 2023 and autumn 2023.

* Bad beekeeping: spring recolte 2022

* Bad beekeeping, 2021

* Beekeeping, 2021 (an index page which I failed to find, hence created this one)

* Bad beekeeping autumnm 2020

* Bad beekeeping (spring) 2020

* Bad beekeeping chez M+S (swarm collection)

* Autumn beekeeping 2017

* Bad beekeeping 2016

* Bad beekeeping, 2015

* Les abeilles nouvelles sont arrivees, 2009

* Autumn 2003

Scifi and Fantasy reviews

Inspired by John Aspden and now by RP (too), here are my sci-fi and fantasy reviews, arranged in order of favouritism (for other reviews, see here). I achieved this order by starting at the most recent and going backwards, inserting into wherever they fit. Books of course cannot be linearly ranked in this fashion; in particular literary quality and fun ideas are hard to inter-rank. As I add more you should take the ordering less seriously, the discrepancies grow larger. Books get points for: quality and fun of reading; novelty; interest of the ideas; worldbuilding; being a classic; "must include something by this author"; and more. Note that points-for-ideas does not imply that I agree with them, merely that there are some; you get more points if I agree, of course. But sadly most SciFi authors tend to pick up crap philosophy (hello Plato, I'm looking at you).

This list only includes stuff I've actually written reviews for, which is most of the recent stuff but very sporadic earlier. Stuff I would add: The Deep; more Banks; Blish; more LeGuin; Wolfe; Benford; The Forever War;  etc.

Sometimes I read and review Other Stuff.

I find that I'm quite reluctant to award high marks to anything recent. Either writing is getting worse, or I'm getting stricter in my old age. Nothing in my "top" list is from my past 10 years; my highest-recent is Ann Leckie's the Raven Tower from 2019... oh but there's Ancillary Justice.

The top, but unrankable: The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, The Deep.

* Beasts and Engine Summer, John Crowley
* Foundation, Isaac Asimov
* Icehenge, Kim Stanley Robinson
* The Anome / The Brave Free Men / The Asutra, Jack Vance
* White Queen, Gwyneth Jones
* Neuromancer, William Gibson
* Anathem, Neal Stephenson
* The Iron Dream, Norman Spinrad
* Across Realtime, Vernor Vinge
* Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein
* Divine Endurance, Gwyneth Jones
* Dune and Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
* City of the Chasch / Servants of the Wankh / Dirdir / Pnume, Jack Vance
* Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
* Stations of the Tide / Vacuum Flowers, Michael Swanwick
* Consider Phlebas, Iain M Banks
* Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C Clarke
* Northern Lights, Philip Pullman
* The Mote in God's Eye, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

(those above this marker are "you should read")

* Emphyrio, Jack Vance
* The Raven Tower, Ann Leckie
* The Dragon Masters, Jack Vance
* Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
* Grass, Sherri S Tepper
* Uprooted, Naomi Novik
* City of Illusions, Ursula LeGuin
* The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
* The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein
* Look to Windward, Iain M Banks
* The Enemy Stars, Poul Anderson
* The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun and The Robots of Dawn, Isaac Asimov
* Out of the Silent Planet / Perelandra / That Hideous Strength, C S Lewis
* Heroes and Best Served Cold, Joe Abercrombie
* Big Planet, Jack Vance
* Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
* The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson
* The Martian, Andy Weir
* The White Mountains, John Christopher
* The Cadwal Trilogy: Araminta station; Ecce and Old Earth; Throy, Jack Vance
* The Languages of Pao, Jack Vance
* Narnia: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Silver Chair, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and The Magician's Nephew, C S Lewis

* Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik
* Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne
* The Crucible of Time, John Brunner

(those above this marker are "worth reading")

* Mickey 7, Edward Ashton
* The Long Tomorrow, Leigh Brackett

* Red Sister, Mark Lawrence          

* Blindsight, Peter Watts
* Wyrms, Orson Scott Card
* Ender's game, Orson Scott Card
* Confluence: Child of the River / Ancients of Days / Shrine of Stars, Paul McAuley
* Blood Music, Greg Bear
* Space, Time and Nathaniel and The Canopy of Time, Brian Aldiss
* The Undercover Aliens, A E Van Vogt
* A World Out Of Time, Larry Niven

* Eversion, Alistair Reynolds          

* The Memory of Earth, Orson Scott Card
* Neptune's Brood, Charles Stross
* The Lions of Al-Rassan, Guy Gavriel Kay
* Rosewater, Tade Thompson
* Star King, Jack Vance
* Involution Ocean, Bruce Sterling
* Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir
* Fifth Planet, Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle
* Dark Light, Ken McLeod
* Tenth Planet, Edmund Cooper
* Sabriel / Lirael / Abhorsen, Garth Nix
* Shikasta, Doris Lessing
* H G Wells anthology; The War of the Worlds
* The Book That Wouldn’t Burn, Mark Lawrence
* Redshirts, John Scalzi
* Sundiver, David Brin
* Blue Remembered Earth, Alastair Reynolds
* Rotherweird and Wyntertide Andrew Caldecott
* The Ten Thousand Doors of January Alix E. Harrow
* The Owl Service, Alan Garner
* Utopia, Thomas More
* Glory Road, Robert Heinlein
* Revolt in 2100, Robert Heinlein
* The Witches of Karres, James Schmitz
* All the Colors of Darkness, Lloyd Biggle

(those below this marker are "meh")

* Anthem, Ayn Rand
* Feersum Endjinn, Iain M Banks
* The Gift / The Riddle, Alison Croggon
* Daughter of smoke and bone, Laini Taylor
* Toyman, E C Tubb
* The Green Odyssey, P J Farmer

* The Alchemaster's Apprentice, Walter "Captain Bluebear" Moers   

* Daughter of smoke and bone,  Laini Taylor     

* Transition, Iain Banks
* The Brightness Reef trilogy, David Brin
* Artemis, Andy Weir
* Nemesis, Isaac Asimov
* The Narrow Land, Jack Vance
* The Forge of God, Greg Bear
* Something Coming Through, Paul McAuley
* The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
* Ringworld, Larry Niven
* The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan
* I, Robot
* With a Strange Device, Eric Frank Russell
* The Centauri Device M. John Harrison

(those below this marker are "you should not read")

* In Ascension, Martin MacInnes

* The Atlantic Abomination, John Brunner

* The Million Year Hunt, Kenneth Bulmer

* The Martian Missile, David Grinnell

* Raising the Stones, Sherri S Tepper
* Wherever Seeds May Fall, by Peter Cawdron
* Three Body Problem Cixin Liu
* Light, John Harrison
* Ancient Light, Mary Gentle
* Proxima, Stephen Baxter
* Bones of the Earth, Michael Swannick
* The Exiles Trilogy, Ben Bova
* Heart of the Comet, David Brin and Gregory Benford
* On the steel breeze, Poseidon's Wake, Alastair Reynolds
* Seveneves, Neal Stephenson
* Fractal Noise, Christopher Paolini

See also

* Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985-2010

Diary of an injury: my back #4

A post from 2016 refers. I don't think I did a post for #2 or #3, which were both on the erg. #2 about 6 months back, #3 about 2 months ago. #2 was me doing a 10k, and at the first stroke something felt wrong, or odd; but it is very hard to describe what. I stopped at... I forget. Perhaps after 7k. Having vainly dropped the split in order to complete. I should have stopped earlier. For #3, I did stop earlier, but not early enough; after 2k. #4 was just lifting that stupid heavy bulky black ceramic junk round the side into the bin.

Motto: be more careful.

On HeiaHeia: #4; #3; #2 (probably).

Holiday list

2021: Saas Fee and Zermatt solo

2020: Ecrins with D+E

2019: Chamonix, including Mt Blanc with D+E and to a lesser extent, M

2018: Dolomites with M+E+D

2017: Ecrins with M+E+D

2016: Norway with M+E+D (UNFINISHED) and Ecrins (solo)

2015: Peloponnese, with M+E and Stubai with D+Jamie (UNFINISHED)

2014: Peloponnese, with M+E+D and Stubai solo