Permutation City Blog

This book was definitely "more scenes". I suspect the original "scenes" would have been a more interesting book. It deals with life and events in a small agricultural family. It's about planting things, clearing hedges, draining, taking the pigs for slaughter.

By "games" it means any activity that is not direct in it's intent, e.g. giving a complement in the hope of getting a complement in return. I'm not sure what I think of this. Psychology as a hard science has to face the problem that people are complex beings who aren't as simple as sub-atomic particles. The book makes some interesting points but, for me, doesn't deal with uncertainty or multiple motivations well.

Pulled this out the shelf in Borders and gave it a go. I'm told this isn't the best place to start with Hellboy. It has a number of stories playing with mythological elements. Although the ideas that might appeal to me in another form this doesn't pull it off for me.

Someone's dream of building a new ecological home. It must fit in a tiny plot without damaging the tree that's already there. This doesn't tell you how to build *your* ideal home, just how he built his. It has a number of ideas and company address that might be useful though.

How to get rid of your dependence of stuff. Our lives depend on countless things and for some people they end up living to work instead of working to live.

An odd one. Story of a team of explorers racing another to reach the most remote part of the planet still remaining. I suppose it's historical science fiction because it's set in the past in a very similar but different world from our own. I shouldn't say much more about it, it's something you need to read for yourself.

This science fiction piece dealt with a number of people who were individually impaired but together could become something more. There are some disturbing sides to this because of the disabled or disadvantaged aspects of the individuals and what they become. Overall I enjoyed though.

This chief takes a scientific approach to cooking food. He takes a number of typical dishes and reinvents them to make them as good as possible. It was interesting to read but the dishes do tend to involve a lot of effort. The TV series was a more enjoyable look at the same subject.

After my own experiences of what management do I read this book with great interest. It deals with how to manage people within the software industry and how most of the time people get it wrong.

I don't think I get the depths of Tai Chi. This had lots of "insights". Aside from that Tai Chi is mellow and I'd recommend anyone who's interested give it a go.