Simon Singh makes the story of the 300 year search for the solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem sound like Indiana Jones is searching for a great mathematical, lost treasure. Detailing the history of famous mathematicians such as Pythagoras, Eular and Fermat himself and how their work contributed to the creation of the riddle and the Andrew Wiles’ eventual solution, Singh paints a gripping picture.
This excellent history of the solution doesn’t go overboard on complicated maths but the appendix is full of theorems and proofs if you want to extend your knowledge, it’s a fantastic read.
One of the best selling books ever, third only to the Bible and Shakespear, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History Of time was written to help nonscientists understand the questions being asked by scientists today: Where did the universe come from? How and why did it begin? Will it come to an end, and if so, how?
Hawking attempts to reveal these questions (and where we’re looking for answers) using a minimum of technical jargon. Among the topics gracefully covered are gravity, black holes, the Big Bang, Quantum theory, String theory, the nature of time, and physicists’ search for a grand unifying theory.
A fantastic introduction to a myriad of scientific concepts, well worth a read as an overview of the physics of the Universe!
According to Steam, I spent 13 hours playing the latest Tomb Raider game, which cost me about £4.99 in the Steam Christmas sale including all the extras, and it was 13 hours well spent!
It took a bit of a deviation from the Tomb Raider games I’d played before, for one it felt more like a linear RPG, as you could get experience which you could use to level up stats and weapons as you progressed. Also, there was a lot of in game swearing.
It ran really well on my MacBook Pro, played with a Sony Dualshock 3 controller via USB. Apple appear to have nerfed Bluetooth support for the Dualshock, which is a shame.
The first FPS I’ve played and completed in years, I was really impressed with the reboot and look forwards to the next instalment!
Last weekend to take a break from training and have a bit of an adventure I arranged a snorkling trip so the Similan Islands through Phuket Dive Tours. There was an offer on at the time and the cost of the trip was 2700 Baht (£53) and included transfer to the boat to the Similans, breakfast and lunch! Snorkles were supplied and fins were 100baht (£2) to rent, I bought my own though, as did a few others, but the gear they supplied was good enough and also in great condition.
We were picked up at 5:30 in the morning from outside Phuket Dive Tours, which is about 200 meters from Tiger Muay Thai, and then visited 2 other hotels to collect other people who were visiting Phuket from Italy and China. We then did the 2 hour drive to Koah Lak on the mainland arriving at about 8:30 am. By 9:30 am we were onboard the speedboat to take us on a snorkling tour of the Similans!
On the way to the Similan Islands we briefly saw a Whale shark and some whales breaching the surface, but it was so quick it was impossible to catch on camera! When we got to the first island though the highlight of the day was definitely swimming with 2 beautiful turtles who were very curious of us and would swim right up to us before flipping over and diving back down to the sea bed to feed!
We visited about 4 different islands in the Similans and there were lots of little reefs full of fish for us to swim with which was amazing.
We also had the opportunity to spend time on the beautiful beaches there and do some sunbathing and just relax. They were very busy though, as there were probably 8-10 speed boats out, doing similar trips, each with 60+ people on board.
At around 5pm we started the journey back to Phuket and eventually made it home, very tired, around 8pm!
One tip for people considering a trip like this, most people on board were wearing bikinis or simply shorts and going topless, applying sunscreen non stop which would be washed off as soon as they entered the water. As I’d spent the previous day on the beach I was a little red so wore a long sleeve rash guard the entire time to protect myself from the sun. This meant I really only had to apply sunscreen to my face and made the trip a lot easier for me. Considering we probably spent 8 hours straight in the sun with no real shade I imagine there were some very sore people the next day! Due to the rash guard protecting me I was completely fine.
The Code Book traces the history of cryptography from its recorded inception in Roman times up through to the current applications as of it’s publication date circa 2000. All of the chapters held my interest and were riveting other than the, necessary, latter chapter on the the effects of encryption on US politics but it was Simon’s chapters on deciphering the Enigma code and ancient languages such as Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Linear B that I found most interesting.
Simon didn’t just discuss how different methods of encryption or encoding worked, but also used historical events to demonstrate their use and importance, adding an extra dimension to the book and making it thoroughly entertaining as well as informative.
Iain M. Bank’s second Culture book, The Player Of Games, was much more enjoyable than the first one, to the state that I read the last half in just one day! Unlike the first Culture novel, the protagonist this time is part of the Culture society allowing Banks to expand on the universe in greater detail.
The story is compelling, I could hardly put the book down, and the premise intelligent and unique. I was curious the entire time about the various agendas and motives of all the characters and the plot was gripping. It was very entertaining and I’m looking forwards to reading the 3rd in the series shortly.
Everyone that recommended the series to me was right!
The first game I bought, played and completed on this trip was Diablo 3, though it took a bit of effort to eventually buy it!
I played Diablo 1 and 2 when they were originally released and loved how you could tweak your character and manipulate your attributes to create vastly different skill sets.
Diablo 3 didn’t feel like those games at all, other than visually. It’s a very forgiving game, you can move points between skills and change your mind etc. It very much felt like Diablo Arcade Mode.
Visually it was gorgeous and it performed well on my Mac and I had a fun run through. Due to the spotty Internet connections I just played it single player, not online. Unlike Diablo 1 and 2, which I completed on Nightmare mode over and over again with friends, I won’t be revisiting Diablo 3 any time soon I think, but it was definitely enjoyable.
I’d never played any of the Zelda series before, despite having a NES as a kid and my brother having The Ocarina Of Time on his N64 so I decided to dive in and play the first one.
Man, this was one hard game, even using a walkthrough and OpenEmu’s memory save feature. It was kind of fun, but not really as it was so damn hard.
The game is split in to two stories, I only completed the first one and have no intention of replying it to complete the second one as it uses the same level data, things are just moved around.
I have honestly no idea how someone could complete this with out using the walkthrough!
There’s an awesome game console emulator for the Mac called OpenEmu which lets you play games across a dozen or so old school consoles so for Christmas my parents bought me a Sony Playstation 3 Dual Shock controller as they work with Macs and one of my mates bought it up when I went to visit Chiang Mai!
I’ve always wanted to play Silent Hill as it’s supposed to be extremely creepy. The OpenEmu lets you emulate Playstation games, and Silent Hill was flawless. I like old school games and consoles (before they were just PCs in a box) so over the last month bought a PSOne, Silent Hill and a bunch of random other stuff off EBay as investments. They were all sourced well under market rate and should only go up in price. They’re also pretty awesome!
Fortunately I wasn’t disappointed. Some of the puzzles were incredibly hard and I had to refer to a walkthrough several times and after my second time playing in to the night I definitely slept with a light on. The 2 Silent Hill movies also made a lot more sense now and I noticed tons of little things from the game in them that I hadn’t realised before.
I am now jonesing to play Silent Hill 2 on the PS2, but haven’t managed to get the PCSX2 emulator to work yet.
It’s now been 5 months since I left the UK and 2 months since my last update. I’m currently in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, for 10 days.
Weightloss
I went to the hospital for a routine check up last weekend and weighed in at 84kg. I’ve lost 6kg since my last update 2 months ago and 16kg in total since I got here. That’s 35lbs or 2 1/2 stone for people that like the Imperial system. I lost most of that 6kg in the last 4 weeks as my training and diet have been impeccable. 0 days off and 0 cheat days. Looking to the future, after I am back from Vietnam I’m going to keep that up and see if I can lose at least 10kg more whilst I still have the opportunity to train at Tiger.
One of the things I’m really appreciating is how my posture is improving again with the weight loss and bodybuilding.
Reading
I’ve now read 12 books since I left the UK, 6 in the last 2 month period. Not quite hitting 1 book a week, but getting there. I’ve been alternating fiction and non-fiction and it’s been working quite well. I mostly read during breakfast, lunch and dinner, when I’m eating, which I think is helping keep to the routine.
Business
In the 2 months since the last update I’ve managed to triple sales, and profits. From $10k sales to $30k sales this January. I’m pretty pleased. Product number 5 and a new brand should be on Amazon by the end of February and then I should be ramping up to 10 products hopefully by my April.
Shopify
Around the 20th January I started to accidentally get sales on my Shopify store, this was a little unexpected and very untested, so I had to quickly iron out some bugs but it seems the site is ranking for some organic keywords. As a test I’ve joined the Google Merchant Center and am now paying for Google Product Listing Adverts and in the last 2 weeks have definitely made a profit.
As I’m putting together a new brand, I’m working on a brand new Shopify theme to go with it, which will convert better, so I’m holding off on going all out on paid traffic for my first brand. When the new brand an second Shopify site launches, I will reskin my first Shopify site and then plough some serious cash in to adverts.
Education
I completed my PADI rescue diver, which was awesome and I did some of my Matador travel writing course. I’m a bit bummed about the writing course though as it appears to be geared more towards helping people that are proficient writers tackle travel writing, so I am hitting lots of hurdles not covered in the course regarding writing style and technique that I don’t understand.
Blood Pressure
My blood pressure has continued to reduce and now I am out of the red and in to the yellow Prehypertension category. Hopefully within the next 3 months I will be solidly in the Normal category
