Monkeyshines

Author: James

  • Toby’s Hit Parade

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    The musical landscape at the time of one’s birth is fun to muse upon, and the quality of the song that’s at number one in the hit parade seems disproportinately significant. I got Mull of Kintyre by Wings, which isn’t terrible, but it’s hardly Sir McCartney’s finest work; and the top 40 that week is…

  • Everything a Baby Needs to Know

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    In the weeks before the arrival of the Little Monkey, I encountered the same Kurt Vonnegut quote twice, independently, as I bimbled around the internet. I wasn’t even looking for anything to do with Vonnegut or babies, and yet here was a wonderful quote that captured my feelings almost exactly. It’s from God Bless You,…

  • The War-and-Peace-O-Meter: Week Five

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    Previous weeks: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 I finished the first volume this week, just as Mrs. Monkeyshines was going into labour. Twenty-four hours later, our first child was born, a Little Monkey called Toby Charles. Things are going well so far, and I might have a chance to snatch a few chapters over the…

  • The Arrival of a Little Monkey

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    Toby Charles Allen (whose intellectual close friends get to call him T.C.), was born at 9:03am, on Wednesday 29th June 2011 (just missed Tau Day…) He’s a sturdy 8 lbs 10 oz, and is happy and healthy, as are both his parents.

  • The War-and-Peace-O-Meter: Week Four

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    Previous weeks: 0, 1, 2, 3 Pretty much bang-on the 20% mark this week. I had hoped to get through it a bit quicker, but while it’s eminently readable, it’s not the sort of book you can churn through at a rate of knots. And, since I’m only going to read this book once, I…

  • LyX: LaTeX, the Easy(ish) Way

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    Introduction I’ve resisted learning TeX/LaTeX for years; I appreciate the principle, but I baulk at the idea of learning another language, particularly one which requires a bunch of opaque commands at the top of each file. I like a nice GUI, and Word, for all its faults, does give you lots of control if you…

  • Tree Comparison

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    Throughout the course of my degree I have found it useful to write summaries of the various aspects of phylogenetics and biology that I have learned. That these will be useful to others is perhaps a vain hope, in both senses of the word, but I thought I might as well publish some of them…

  • The War-and-Peace-O-Meter: Week Three

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    Previous weeks: 0, 1, 2 The battles in War and Peace have been good reading this week, although my progress has been somewhat stymied by the BBC. They’ve adapted Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie novels (two of which I have previously reviewed: Case Histories and One Good Turn), which Mrs. Monkeyshines and I have enjoyed settling…

  • The War-and-Peace-O-Meter: Week Two

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    Previous weeks: 0, 1 Well into part two of volume one of War and Peace, and the men have gone off to war. Although as yet there’s been no actual fighting; I suspect that the marching, waiting around, and wonderfully frantic retreat are more typical of the realities of war. More pragmatically, I’m on page…

  • The War-and-Peace-O-Meter: Week One

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    Last week I explained that I would be tracking my progress while I read War and Peace. I think I’ve done quite well in this first week, although I do feel like a bit of a lemon pulling it out of my bag on the bus. I’m getting to grips with the characters and their…