Something I miss about Minneapolis
Cycling was a lot easier in the US. Off the main routes roads are often pretty quiet, speed limits were a handy bit lower (55 instead of 60 or 70), roads are wide giving plenty of space, and there’s an excellent network of cycle paths. In contrast almost every road is busy here, they’re either main routes that are difficult to cycle on or minor little roads that have little spare space, and the impressive national cycle network comes nowhere near me.

Something to balance that out
Yesterday (11 March) we had the windows open throughout the house. That seems like a simple thing, but we found that in Minnesota it was only an option for a couple of months each year; the rest of the time it was either too cold or too hot. Add in the fact that we don’t need screens to keep out the mosquito plague (something that used to drive me nuts), and I think I can cope with cycling on narrow roads.

I’ve long been interested in centers of population, which as Wikipedia describes it:

“To calculate population centroid, one assigns a uniform weight to each person and zero weight to the land surface. At this centroid, the weights of all the people are balanced over the point.”

For Great Britain the center has shifted gradually south – “in 1901, it was in Rodsley, Derbyshire. In 2000, it was in Appleby Parva, Leicestershire.” If you draw a line between these two it goes through Burton-on-Trent, where Claire and I bought our first home.

Here’s an animation of how the US’s CoP has moved

This is the first car I ever drove on my own, and for me it’s still one of the prettiest cars made. I particularly like the point where the C pillar meets the boot. In fact I find the equivalent part on my wife to be similarly pleasing.

Note also the cheesy background music – although it’s labeled as a TV commercial, it sounds a lot more like a cinema ad.

Ever been to visit your cousin in London, returning home alone while the rest of your family heads off to Leeds, only to discover that the key you brought with you is for your nearby Aunt’s house, not yours, so you have to stay there until your wife can overnight her key to you?

You haven’t? OK, I guess maybe it’s just me.

Update: It has become my habit (to my wife’s dismay) to wear shorts in all weathers. This is fine when you can return home to a warm fire, but not when you return to an unheated office in a relative’s house. I don’t even have a sweater with me.

I’m sat in front of a flickering fire, watching (or at least listening to) The Big Lebowski, and running test cases. Does it get any better than this? Apart from the test cases bit, obviously.