Entanglement, a story of high-tech espionage set in the Middle-East was sent off to Interzone today. We shall see.
Getting this into shape has somewhat derailed my systematic study of "A First Course in String Theory" by Barton Zwiebach. His first chapter is a general - and excellent - overview of string theory: where it came from, its intellectual history and what problems it's trying to solve. The second chapter gets down to it, straight into tensor notation.
I know that's vital for GR, which is the real driver for string theory anyway so I'm detouring to work on tensors. The notation is very compact but to really unpick it in your head you do need to have done the homework and worked through lots of examples. Unfortunately, it's not that intrinsically interesting...
We had a couple of removal people come by yesterday to assess our house-moving-and-storage task and quote for the job: the third candidate is due with us in about half an hour. Meanwhile our search for a new abode continues tomorrow when we'll be checking out the estate agents in Yeovil, Dorchester and Chard (time permitting).
Clare's desire for a large garden she can work on seems to have trumped all her other requirements. Yesterday she said to me demurely,
"How would you feel about a Victorian semi? They have particularly large gardens."
"I'd rather die."
