The Family Trade, by Charles Stross

Charles Stross is one of my favourite current authors, but I’d shied away from this one because it had a “fantasy” label on it. I should have known better.

Some people can move from one universe to another when they look at particular patterns. The universe that the heroine travels to (and back from) is developmentally medieval. That’s the fantasy part.

Part of the plot is the a re-run of a character realising they were born to some massive destiny. The rest is politics, economics, violence and romance mashed together into a thriller. I’m not really one for thrillers, and this probably hampered my enjoyment of the book; the plot tangles were getting a bit thick for me to follow in places. Still, Stross’s normal exciting pace is kept up almost throughout, and the book is littered with intriguing ideas.

If you’ve read Srross before, you’ll probably like it, although it’s not as good as The Atrocity Archives or Singularity Sky. If you haven’t read any Stross yet, and you like scifi full of impressive ideas, I suggest you first start with Accelerando, which is available online for free.

Division of Labour

I’ve just moved my Oracle stuff over to a separate new blog, Learning Oracle. Only suitable for the seriously technically inclined!

The Gym in January

Or, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, “How did all these people get in my gym?”

I’ve been going to the gym three or four times a week for the last six months or so. I expected that January would be bad, and so it is. At peak times there’s no room on the mat, no spaces on the cardio machines, and the free weights area is crowded. During the week I’m trying to go before noon or after two thirty, or after seven thirty in the evening. I’m off to the gym as soon as I’ve finished this post, since I figure the resolutioners won’t be out at the weekend.

I expect it will be back to normal in a month or less. I’ve never seen any figures – and I imagine that the people who have them don’t want to publish them – but I reckon that a lot of gyms make a killing from signing people up in January who stop coming after a few weeks. I don’t know what the marginal cost is to the gym of a single visit (although at my gym guest passes are a ridiculous £15) but I bet they’d have problems if all of their members started using the services they’d paid for.

Weight Control

My first resolution for this year was, “Get to a weight of, at most, 11 stone or 10% body fat, whichever is the sooner.”

A few months ago my weight was heading towards 14 stone (89kg). That was where I snapped and decided to get back into shape, even if I can’t run. I’d been at the gym several times a week, but I was still eating badly, so that was where I started. I calculated my basal metabolic rate as about 1800 kcal / day, and cut my diet back to that. Simultaneously, I increased the amount of aerobic exercise I was doing (mostly swimming), after which I started losing about 2lb / week.

I’ve lost about a stone and a half right now, and feel much better for it. I’m not sure what the right end point is for this diet, but if I can get to either of 11 stone weight or 10% body fat I’ll be happy. If I stay on track that should be in about three months’ time.

Resolutions

I made a handful of New Year’s resolutions last week. Apparently publicly committing yourself to them is helpful, because it’s then embarrassing to abandon them. So here they are:

• Get to a weight of, at most, 11 stone or 10% body fat, whichever is the sooner.
• Blog or otherwise write for one hour a week, no matter the subject.
• Get up at 6.30 am during the week.
• No more than six units of alcohol in an evening.
• Continue learning Spanish.
• Stick to a budget.

What’s not on the list, that might have been, is playing piano and going to the gym. These are just habits now; I enjoy doing them and they don’t take any extra effort to keep doing. As for the things that are on the list, I’ll explain why over the next few days, as part of fulfilling the second resolution!

No BritSalsaFest

It’s just disappointing. I enjoyed it in 2006, but it was amazing in 2007 – easily the best congress I went to in the UK that year.

Whoever ends up with the ball, please let’s do it again in 2009.