Dolphins at Fort Funston

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, June 7, 2025.

Two dolphins in the surf off Fort Funston in San Francisco.

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Book reviews for August 2013

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Friday, February 24, 2017.

iD (The Machine Dynasty, #2) by Madeline Ashby

3/5

Very much a middle book in a series. vN was outstanding, iD picks up where it left off and it's good if you read vN but probably doesn't stand alone. I'm looking forward to a third installment.

Flaggermusmannen (Harry Hole, #1) by Jo Nesbø

4/5

The Bat - recently translated into English. This is the first in the Harry Hole series and it's a very good one. Most of the rest were translated some time ago and it's a little odd that it's taken so long for the initial installment. I was expecting it to some sort of rubbish embarrassment but Nesbo is on top form here. My guess is that the problem was that it's set in Sydney which is probably a hard sell for fans of Scandinavian crime.

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I don't always find droids...

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, June 7, 2025.

I don't always find droids...

I don't always find droids, but when I do, they're the ones I'm looking for.

- Most Interesting Wookie In The Universe (seen at the Lucasfilm campus).

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BBC On Patents

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Thursday, November 12, 2015.

Patently Absurd

"The patent system in the USA is so distorted it's now more lucrative for companies known as 'patent trolls' to sue manufacturers rather than actually make anything. The problem's so serious that President Obama has got involved -- and British companies are targeted if they do business in the US. Rory Cellan-Jones investigates and finds one of the world's biggest trolls in his lair in Dallas."

Patently Absurd is available to stream for the next six days (the BBC never took me up on the offer for a new hard drive).

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Scary Bunny

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, June 7, 2025.

Scary Bunny

Pink Skull Rabbit by Jeremy Fish, photographed in the nick of time as it is now gone.

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Cheek Cells, Methylene Blue Stain

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, June 7, 2025.

Cheek Cells, Methylene Blue Stain

Two of my very own cheek cells, painlessly extracted with a cotton swab and then stained with methylene blue.

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Diary of a Living Room

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, June 7, 2025.

Diary of a Living Room

1,920 frames taken every 45 seconds and stitched together into a single photo. It's a single frame time lapse of 24 hours.

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Syria

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Sunday, November 6, 2022.

Syria

Debate military intervention in Syria on LikeDebate. This is a parallel debate to the Intelligence Squared US debate tomorrow.

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Book reviews for July 2013

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Friday, February 24, 2017.

Doctor Who: Harvest of Time by Alastair Reynolds

5/5

I don't normally do SciFi series books... but this is Alastair Reynolds doing Doctor Who. Jon Pertwee era with UNIT and The Master. If the BBC had a 300 million Pound budget for a Doctor Who story line in the 70's this is what they would have made.

Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing by Po Bronson

4/5

I always enjoy Po Bronson and he's typically on form here with fascinating research and anecdotes around the topic of competition. There is a lot of new evidence on how hormones work that I'd never seen before and an interesting theory that competitive sports are a precursor to democracy. Much of this book is about how competition brings out creativity and drive. I wonder it it's missing a trick here and that the real factor is operating under constraint with competition being just one of many possible forms of constraint. In addition to the studies showing that art was better when a competition was involved I'd like to see how this worked out when one set of artists was limited to using just brown and silver... I'd bet the results would look pretty similar.