Observations from a Hill

  Our recent stay in Clun and many visits to The White Horse Inn [blog posts passim] prompted me to ease myself back into my family tree researches after a break of over a year - or is it two? Tempus does fugit without due warning at my age. A realisation struck me about the apparent mobility of family members across the Marches, the Midlands and Wales back in the nineteenth century which, given their poverty, I'd always wondered about; when the penny dropped: the railways. Also, when you look at the map, all the areas of concern to my familial archaeology are within relatively short distances of each other, and connected by what was then a comprehensive rail network. Pictured is my latest little acquisition: a facsimile of Bradshaw's Guide of the 1860s, which I bought to try and flesh out some of the travel background of the time. Using this with some of the other books of railway history I have to hand, I hope to get a better flavour for the movements of people at the time in...

I realised today that I, for the first time in my life, had failed to keep up with current technology: specifically, AI. The move from from chat-based interfaces to multi-modal agentic models over the last few [months, to be honest] has taken me rather by surprise. I've always taken some pride in the fact that I can always [at least cursorily] keep up with things techno-logic-al, and I find for the first time in my life that I've been blind-sided by the breakneck speed of developments in AI and its deployment in real-world situations. I aim to catch up; even at my advanced age there is simply no excuse for laxity in these matters: current knowledge should not be the exclusive domain of the young, don't you know. Anyhow, I decided to dip my toes a little further into the - as yet - little-known waters of agentic AI, and posed a question that models my undergraduate thesis' inquiry [although my dissertation was a good deal longer in the end]: “I need a discursive essay of...

Still feeling a tad jaded and disoriented after our return from the short break in Shropshire last week; yesterday was a long day, and I started today after one of those fevered returns to sleep early this morning which evinced a dream from which I still haven't quite escaped the clutches. However, I opened this week's New Statesman just now to a review of Sebastian Mallaby's recently published book "The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, Deepmind, and the Quest for Superintelligence" [Allen Lane, 480pp £30.00]; and interesting reading it makes, too. Asked by Mallaby if he thinks AI will 'be a bigger change than the Industrial Revolution', Hassabis likens AI more to that most radical human evocation of self and the realisation of such; the making of handprints on a cave wall, tens of thousands of years ago: the very first externalisation of our inner selves; the genesis of human culture and civilisation embodied in an abstraction of self in communication wi...

Just a diary post tonight as I've been on the move since the crack of sparrow's fart today and what with the drive home, unpacking, and generally coming down to earth here in Fairview Heights, I really can't bring any depth of thought or perspicacity of perception to the table tonight. We had a good journey back from Shropshire with wall to wall sunshine for the majority of it, save some mist before we left the vales for the main roads back home. When we started loading the car around 07:00 this morning, the temperature was just three degrees celsius, and the car was white over with frost. By the time we crossed the border into Cymru, however, the temperature had risen to a very balmy eighteen celsius. The rest of the day has been glorious, and the garden has started to make its voice heard in our absence: our Clematis arch has started producing blooms [pictured], and will look an absolute picture in the coming week or so. Much work to do in the garden, but the weather look...

' Clunton and Clunbury, Clungunford and Clun, Are the quietest places Under the sun...' :  A. E. Houseman's much loved poem "A Shropshire Lad" sums up the rather laid back nature of the small Marcher town of Clun in South Shropshire to a tee: it's quiet, all right, and there's no denying the fact. In fact, on some days of the week there is seldom a soul to be seen on the streets. Occasionally, there is a flurry of infeasibly large vehicles passing through Market Square, both commercial artics [sem i- s for our American cousins] and agricultural vehicles, monster EVs and Harley Davidson's in convoy. In fact, on reflection, the place is quite often somewhat less than quiet, these days, vacillating between these two states of quietude and clamour. One thing that is definitely quiet in these times is the river Clun [pictured, from on the old bridge that connects the two halves of town], that flows through the heart of this ancient settlement, overlooked b...

We went over to Bishop's Castle this morning with the intention of getting a bit of food shopping done and maybe grabbing a sausage baguette and coffee from the The Happy Bap, an excellent little eatery specialising in rather fine sandwiches; only to find the entire High Street shut down by an unexpected and very localised power outage. The only two places able to trade - [no electricity, no lighting, no Epos to take payment: all food chillers and freezer cabinets would have to be closed off to conserve low temperatures] -  were Rosie's vintage clothes and curios shop [she takes only cash and the sunshine was providing ample light], and the local filling station, which I assume was either functioning on back-up generators, or fed from a different circuit [unlikely] to the rest of the High Street. A hapless queue was forming at the door of the Cooperative, waiting for the [electric] doors to open, to no avail. Apparently no advance warning was issued, so one can only assume that...