As the digital age makes it easier to access and share information, does the value in physical embodiments of these things reduce? Who would buy a 26-volume encyclopedia today when they could search wikipedia in an instant?

A common sentiment at BookCamp and beyond is that you can’t replace the experience of holding a book. Whilst 1000’s of people may read a book, few will read the same book, the same physical embodiment of the text with all of its history and experience worn into its patina.

There are many sites that help socialise the experience of reading a book – I have recently started to use bkkeepr but have also tried out LibraryThing. They are good for keeping a record of what you’ve read and what your friends have read but I can’t help feel they are missing something when it comes to the physicality of books. More on this, maybe, another day.

For now, here’s what triggered me to write this today. Whilst books are important, sometimes ‘progress’ is inevitable.

…even the quiet village of Lyddle End was not immune. When the Church was forced to sell the property due to its own financial collapse, it was bought by one of the few international retailers remaining. However, it did not last.

People had been badly affected by the collapse. It led to a huge backlash against faceless corporations and many people turned to the more traditional, local, retailers. When the Holy Trinity store proved to be no longer financially viable it was shutdown.

The village council decided to leave the site untouched as a reminder of the hubris of an earlier age.

The thought that caught my interest was how graphs can be represented with paper – not on paper, but with paper.

To cut a rambling story short, I’ve written a tool that takes a set of pie-chart data and produces a series of outlines that can be cut out and assembled to create a 3D model of the chart.

Having a physical embodiment of the raw data means you can touch it, feel it, grope it; whatever helps you understand it.

I think I’ll leave it there for now; it’s late, I have an early train to catch and I’ve used the word grope.

Update: as I mention in the comments, you can get your own custom paper pie chart from here.

Ben, a 7-year old: What do you call Darth Vader kissing Luke Skywalker?
Me: I have no idea.
Ben: Luke Darth Vader
Me: What?
Ben: in complete hysterics
Me: What?!
Ben’s Dad: Don’t ask. It only gets more random from here.
Me: What?!!

Here are today’s stats:

• 3 packs bought – initially I bought 2, but when Jo went back to the till to buy another book, I added another pack.
• 18 puzzle cards and 3 ‘warm-up’ sudoku and hitori cards.
• 15 cards solved – particularly pleased with #161.
• 4320 points gained.
• Ranked 1124 at the time of writing.
• Close to solving the 16th card (#164) – I know the reference, just not sure how to get an answer to fit.
• Unsure where to begin with the 17th card (#235).
• 18th card available for swaps (#004).

This is an addiction. I am an addict. I need more cards.

[ update: for a list of my available swaps, check out the list. ]

I can imagine the scene. Gordon has dictated the letter to a civil servant who has duly typed it up for him. It has then been presented back to Gordon to sign, who, being the busy man he is, signs it with whatever he has in his hand.

Given the look of his signature, I really do wonder what he was doing at the time… perhaps trying very hard to keep the colouring in-between the lines?

^[1]Specifically, it was the fact that the inflation rate was 1% above or below the target rate of 2%. ^

^[2]Gordon got to respond in his role as Chancellor, not PM-in-waiting. ^

^[3]The letters are link to from the BBC News article. ^

Seen in a bookshop in Norwich; I always like a cup of Surrealism with my Soup.

Why do pier’s tend to burn down? True they are often made of wood, but they are also usually surrounded by sea.

Southend’s pier maybe the longest pleasure pier in the world, at a leg aching 1.33 miles, but I wonder what’s a pier thats not for pleasure? A business pier?

When arriving at the sea-side, do you get stopped and asked if you are there for business or pleasure and then get directed to the appropriate pier?

This may seem a random post, but at least it proves the hook-up from flickr to this blog works.

My name transliterated to Arabic is نيكهولاس Ùˆ’ليار.

Thanks go to Rob’s transliteration tool.

update: weirdness abounds. The trackback to Rob’s blog has worked fine, however the trackback on Roo’s post has broken the URL. All three blogs are running Wordpress, and Roo’s is hosted on the same machine as this one. Odd.

The ‘official’ photographs were taken by my Dad who did a great job of sticking around to the very end. Jo and I have been poring over a couple CDs worth of images he has since sent us to try to put together the official Wedding Album. In particular, we wanted to find the image of us that we could send with christmas cards to all the aunties and uncles who didn’t come to the wedding.

For quite a few of the photos, I have had to spend some time in the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program; the linux equivalent of Adobe’s Photoshop) touching up the images to make them just right. This has including doing minor things like removing red-eye to quite major jobs like swapping around heads from different photos to get everyone looking the same way with ‘nice’ smiles and no grimaces. I am particular happy with the results of our main portrait.

Below is a side-by-side comparison of the before and after images. Play spot the differences – there are 8 to be found. (With apologies to Meg and David for having removed them so callously – oops, thats give away two of the differences.)