Category: Technology

Train trips in India and China

Posted on adminLeave a commentPosted in Economics, Environment, Politics, Technology, Travel

Christmas and New Year was spent in India attending a cousin’s wedding and a nephew’s thread ceremony. It’s always fun going back to the country of my birth. I love the food, the music, the great value for money and energy of the place. But It’s also depressing seeing how slowly it changes. India’s stagnation was made even more evident, when six weeks later, I visited the beautiful town of Guilin in Guangxi. Arrivals at Mumbai Airport set the tone. The automated fingerprint check, designed to streamline entry into the country, bureaucratically first demanded two thumbs, then four right fingers, […]

Hangzhou and Disruptive Technology

Posted on admin1 CommentPosted in Economics, History, Technology, Travel

Hangzhou is regarded by many Chinese people as the country’s most beautiful city. Its Xili (West Lake) is garlanded by stunning villas that have inspired artists and poets for centuries. Its delicate pagodas are filled with newlywed couples spooning over the water. The lake’s sub-divided waters are criss-crossed by delicate stone and wooden bridges and garrotted by a 3km grassy causeway. Around it but within the city’s boundaries are lovely restaurants, mountains, many excellent museums, rice fields and tea plantations all easily accessed by bus or bike. It’s always been famous within China and was even briefly capital during the […]

What do you call a collection of Teslas?

Posted on admin2 CommentsPosted in Environment, Technology

The first Tesla I saw was wrapped around a lamp-post near my home in North London. The attending, couldn’t-be-more-amused, policeman, said the owner’s wife had taken it out for a spin not appreciating the beast’s acceleration. I couldn’t work out from his poker face whether he was trying to be funny. I took the photo of Tesla’s high speed charging station at the Science Park in Shatin. The power lurking underneath those hoods is astonishing. Each Tesla Model S is packing between 328 and 532 horse-power, my mountain bike parked alongside is just 1/3 hp. Last year 2200 Tesla Model […]

R.I.P. Prof. Sir David Mackay FRS

Posted on admin3 CommentsPosted in Technology

Two days ago my friend David MacKay died. We went to school together in Newcastle-under-Lyme between 1981 and 1985 and sat almost the same ‘O’ levels and ‘A’ levels. We were born one day, and one continent apart, and our lives seemed to dance around one another’s, always slightly out of phase but broadly in the same direction.  We were friends, and to the extent such terms can be used to describe relationships between two prickly, competitive, teenage loners, briefly best friends at school. He wasn’t the easiest person to be friends with. He wasn’t so much socially awkward as […]