The other problem with teaching at 5pm is that I spend the whole afternoon beforehand thinking about my lecture.
Statuses
I’m on my colleague Brian Keating’s Into the Impossible podcast discussing The Random Universe. Please listen! (Apple Podcasts; YouTube; Spotify)
5pm Fridays is not the best time to lecture.
If you’ve read — and learned from — The Random Universe, please consider leaving a rating or a review at the site of your choice.
First undergraduate cosmology lecture in about 13 years. Too many slides today, but looking forward to 25 lectures of good old-fashioned chalk-and-talk.
Holiday buns. Finally perfected with the third batch of the season. (6/12)
Our first sourdough…
We want to make sourdough. Should I buy starter, or try to make my own?
Thrilling to see The Random Universe in the real world.
Listening to A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs on the Richmond origins of The Yardbirds while riding the 65 London bus through Richmond.
Podcast appearance: listen to me talk about The Random Universe (the book, and the Universe itself) on Sean Carroll’s Mindscape. We cover epistemology, probability, quantum mechanics, cosmology and more. Sean and I were cosmology grad students at the same time, and it was a pleasure and an honour to spend time with him online.
The Random Universe is out! Buy it or borrow it, read it and review it!
The Random Universe isn’t out until tomorrow (November 11), but the Kindle edition is on sale in both the US and in the UK. (And if you look very carefully, you’ll see that it has broken into the top 100 UK cosmology bestsellers…)
Apparently I am the subject of an unauthorised biopic.
I made a thing.
Surprised that Taylor needs to promote her latest with an A4 poster at the Imperial College elevators (lifts).
Last year was a sabbatical, so today I’ve got my first proper teaching in a full year and a half — a two-hour lecture to start my Information Theory course.
Feeling a bit nervous!
R.I.P. George Smoot, experimental cosmologist, Nobel prize winner and one of the discoverers of primordial fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, a colleague and mentor back when I was a postdoc in Berkeley, always curious and enthusiastic.
macOS Tahoe/Safari complaint: in sidebar showing Tab Groups, current group shows tab list as if the disclosure triangle clicked.
Bad enough. But worse: old group in the sidebar stays open even when I click to a new one!
This seems so wrong that there must be a setting — but I couldn’t find it.
This seems like a whole mess of bugs. (Trying to update to macOS 26 Tahoe. Perhaps this is telling me it’s a bad idea?…)
PASSWORD_ALERT_TITLE_WITH_USERNAME_OSX_REBRAND_SERVICE_ICLOUD
PASSWORD_ALERT_MESSAGE_WITH_USERNAME_OSX_REBRAND
FOLLOWUP_RENEW_CREDENTIALS_TITLE_RERAND
FOLLOWUP_RENEW_CREDENTIALS_MESSAGE
SU_FOLLOW_UP_TITLE
And more…
Yesterday, someone walked into the café I was sitting in wearing a Primitives t-shirt. Today, their wonderful “Crash” came on my random streaming mix, so it seems appropriate to share one of the great pop songs of all time.
The amazing Lisa Lucas’ latest for the NY Times, on hunting the autumn leaves in Japan — 3 Days of ‘Momijigari’: Experiencing Japan’s Fiery Autumnal Foliage.
You can pre-order The Random Universe, get a 7% discount, and support local bookstores, all at the same time.
Back — home — to London after 386 days away.
A highlight of our road trip through Western Europe has been my daughters singing along to Lucinda Williams’ “Car Wheels on a gravel Road”, the Mekons’ version of “Wild and Blue”, and Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” as well as songs from “Hamilton” (along with, yes, Katy Perry and Ed Sheeran).
Spent the night with the family in the Frassenhütte at the top of an Austrian Alp…
… followed by our trek down the mountain in pouring rain, hail, thunder and lightning (and inappropriate clothing).
Spent the night with the family in the Frassenhütte at the top of an Austrian Alp.
Cornhole is “American pétanque”.
