House-Hunting in Wales: part 3

This morning we awoke in The Lion Hotel, Builth Wells for our last day of house-hunting in Wales. Pictured below is the Northern Ireland-style mural visible from our breakfast table.

Breakfast view from The Lion Hotel, Builth Wells

Our usual trawl of the High Street estate agents garnered a haul of only three possibles, which we filtered in the car to just one, two miles north of Builth Wells.

Approaching past the station and under the railway bridge we drove through a familiar landscape of overgrown tufted grass, abandoned oildrums, rusting equipment, derelict caravans, gravelled and puddled driveways fronting nissen huts of indeterminate function and ... well, you get the picture. Eventually we found the driveway to the oasis of arcadian loveliness as described by the estate agent. I at least was prepared to navigate the pond outside the driver's door and look down the driveway. Clare had meanwhile lost the will to live.

We turned around and came home, a journey illustrated by the pictures below.

The M4 Severn crossing

Welcome to England

Five hundred miles and perhaps twenty properties seen, none of which was remotely suitable. Our new target to search is the area north of Lyme Regis.

Exasperated in Llandovery

Elaine always claims to find the commentaries more amusing than the video. Here was how we reacted when we discovered yesterday that the estate agents in Llandovery, along with most of the town, close up for lunch.

House-Hunting in Wales: part 2

We hit the Brecon estate agents soon after 9 a.m. this morning and armed with a sheaf of property details, we were soon driving around main roads and mountain roads. Some of the properties were next to A roads (no thanks). Some of them were in new developments (no!). Some of them were suitably inaccessible, up single track roads with hedges higher than a double-decker bus and no passing places (and even then we failed to locate one such property).

Near Brecon: no garden and another house right behind

We next migrated to Llandovery, where we had been told suitable properties were cheaper. To our surprise, the estate agents all closed for lunch so we bided our time and after collecting another bundle of properties we were soon off again. One property was down a rutted, puddled, muddy track next to a river: we rejected a future life of dampness.

The A40 running through Llandovery

Another was high in the Black Mountains National Park with a view of surpassing loveliness. However, it was old and backed into the sodden hillside – damp-fed moss and fungus coloured the rear walls while the front of the property was too small to support a walled garden, which would have blocked the view.

Great view, shame about the damp cottage

We have ended up in Builth Wells (The Lion Inn) and will tomorrow do a similar exercise in this area before moving on to Hay-on-Wye and home. We are beginning to draw some conclusions about the nature of properties in mid-Wales and I guess we will share our thoughts with you tomorrow or Friday.

House-Hunting in Wales: part 1

Having sold our current accommodation (subject to contract), our plan is to buy a house which sits on some high plateau in magnificent isolation, with ample grounds and mountain views and country walks outside our gate.

So far, our search in mid-Wales has proved a mite disappointing.

Rhayader looking south

We arrived in Rhayader at 12.45 today (three and a half hours driving from Andover). After lunch in one of the attractive pubs, we did the two estate agents and after a brief tourist drive to see the reservoirs of the Elan valley (very scenic - don't buy downstream) we took a look at five properties.

To be honest, none of them was particularly inspiring. They were either mini-developments in a nearby village (no 'splendid isolation') or rather undistinguished bungalows fringed by barbed wire in a rural sheep-farming landscape. Somehow it didn't quite capture our dream.

We didn't go for the cottage with this view

Mid-afternoon we abandoned the picturesque, tourist-friendly but tiny Rhayader and drove to Llandrindod Wells, a pleasant Victorian town around 12 miles away which somewhat resembles Georgian Bath. It is however surrounded by valley farms, another house-hunt disappointment. We therefore proceed straight down to Brecon across the mountains, where we saw groups of soldiers being put through their paces. There was a heavy military presence above 2,000 feet.

Clare in this evening's Brecon Chinese restaurant

Brecon has a good feel about it, pleasant shops and restaurants and a cheerful occupied street life. Half-term probably has something to do with it. We ate at the local Chinese which was good, and we're currently ensconced in the George Hotel. Tomorrow we'll be checking whether there are properties for sale nestled in the Brecon Beacons.

Stourhead in October

We were last at Stourhead in May 2009. We agreed then that there was too much to explore in one day and vowed to return. What better than the first day after the clocks went back to redeem such an intention.

Photographing the Autumn

We started our leisurely day this morning with the sky blue and the air calm and warm. The 40 mile drive to Stourhead was accompanied by gathering cloud cover, however, and we thought we'd probably be the only ones there. Nothing could have been further from the truth, the place was crawling with the species National Trust humanity: stout shoes, corduroy trousers, Gore-Tex anoraks, beautifully-groomed but greying hair. The car park was full of meticulously clean four-by-fours.

Clare after a strenuous walk

We walked to Alfred's Tower, two miles through muddy woodland, mostly uphill. We reached the 150 foot tower at 11.50, ten minutes before it opened. The wait and additional height were too much for Clare, whose blood sugar level had plummeted to new depths. We did an immediate u-turn and made our weary way the two miles back to the main buildings and were revived at The Spread Eagle pub.

The view across the lake

We intend to spend a cosy afternoon reading The Sunday Times and catch the last episode of Emma this evening. Perhaps we were not so out of place at Stourhead as we sometimes imagine.

UP in 3D

The new local cinema doesn't do 3D so we had to revert to our previous practice of visiting Salisbury (a half hour drive away) to see the 3D version of "Up".

1. The story

The film centres around a grumpy old man named Carl Fredricksen and an overeager boy-scout Wilderness Explorer named Russell who fly to South America in a floating house suspended from helium balloons (Wikipedia). It opens however with a short, showcasing Pixar's capabilities in 3D rendering, which was impressive and amusing.

I also liked the start of the film proper, which reprised Mr Fredricksen's life from a small child, most of it shared with the love of his life, Ellie who finally dies leaving him a widower. But I was always a sucker for sentimentality, of which this film is somewhat overfull.

The main story retains interest although it's overlong and sags in the middle. The characters, who are not entirely stereotypes, achieve their just desserts in the end ... but that's a kid's film for you.

2. 3D

Polarized spectacles are distributed in a cellophane wrapper at the ticket-check point. These fit over ordinary glasses. The 3D effect is quite real and initially impressive. It's not, however, immersive - at least not on a regular-sized cinema screen.

3D added little to the story however, really coming into its own in action and landscape sequences. Seems that film makers have not yet learnt how to use 3D to illuminate subtle, more relationship-centric scenes.

3. Rendering

It's been a long time since I've seen an animation. The people were rendered as caricatures, but the backgrounds were quite impressive. There were scenes where I could have believed that we were seeing real footage of the waterfall in South America, or picket fence suburban America.

There must be actors today who will never die, because they will be digitally rendered in the years to come. No tantrums and a lot less bucks.

A First Course in String Theory

"A First Course in String Theory" by Barton Zwiebach has arrived courtesy of the Amazon courier. This is my OU 'closed season' reading - although flipping through the contents it's pretty daunting: a full year's course for senior undergraduates at MIT.

After sniffing "I thought you were off String Theory" Clare has written a dedication in the cover. It says "Happy Christmas" which I read as faint irony.

Solicitor Days

Down to Stockbridge this afternoon to meet our solicitors (Brockmans). I guess we're around four weeks from exchange of contracts.

My review of "Superfreakonomics" was posted on the Amazon.com website this morning at 9 a.m., only a few hours after US publication. So it was the very first review. There's a minor achievement for you! The book is mired in pre-publication controversy over the pond as it has been tagged as "climate-denying".

Still, at time of writing everyone else has given it five stars and I gave it three. I must be doing something right.

Whither WiFi hotspots?

I was at the Newbury Hilton this afternoon with a colleague to review a Business Process Transformation pitch. As I arrived first, I powered up my laptop to check out the Internet access. I guess I was hoping and expecting a free WiFi service: no such luck.

The entry browser page was to the BT Openzone portal, and the current price there is £5.88 for 90 minutes (there are other buy-plans where more purchased time costs less per minute).

Naturally I backed out of that and plugged in my Vodafone 3G USB modem instead. The deal here is that £15 buys you 1GB of data - that's 30 hours surfing, 650 emails and dozens of downloads according to the website. I guess that checking my email, sending a Skype message to Clare and looking at a few pages probably cost me much less than a pound.

I think the economics of WiFi hot spots are starting to look very dubious. Perhaps I should say even more dubious than they have in the past.

Review: Superfreakonomics – Levitt & Dubner

In Chapter 1 we read a prurient but entertaining account of Chicago prostitution. We learn the benefits of having a pimp, the relative cost of different sexual services and why the police go easy on the ladies (this last explanation is unconvincing). Then we move to the high-end ‘escort’ market and consider the case study of “Allie”.

Economic concepts: commodity good, price discrimination, inelastic demand, principal-agent problem. Plus a “how-to” guide on being a successful courtesan.

Chapter 2 is organised around the concepts of data mining. We learn about the financial transaction profiles of Islamic terrorists, the disutility of hospitals and the relative performance of doctors in dealing with different kinds of illness and injuries.

Economic concepts: data analysis.

Chapter 3 is about altruism. The core of this chapter deconstructs a 1964 murder in New York City which was apparently witnessed by many people, none of whom intervened or even reported it to the police. This leads to an appraisal of economics experiments which purportedly showed people to possess an intrinsic core of altruism (leading to Nobel prizes in economics for the researchers). Such an appealing conclusion is debunked as you might expect. The murder story is also debunked.

Economic concepts: limitations of behavioural economics.

Chapter 4 is about perverse incentives and specifically how powerful interest groups succeed in bringing about outcomes which disadvantage society overall. In the sights are doctors and auto makers. It is shown repeatedly that the hero who correctly points out that the emperor has no clothes is subsequently uniformly reviled by said interest groups

Chapter 5 is the part about global warming. Or is it cooling? Or is it something which just happens anyway? A long piece centred around Nathan Myhrvold’s company Intellectual Ventures shows that assuming global warming is actually the problem fashionable opinion claims, there exist a number of technological solutions which for a modest amount of cash would deal with it. Alas, such ideas are anathema to Green lobbies.

In the epilogue, we learn that economic concepts of monetary value and exchange can also be taught (and internalised by) capuchin monkeys. I was not entirely clear why we were being told this apart from the monkey prostitution link back to Chapter 1.

I am torn two ways about this book. In its favour it makes intelligent points about a number of topical issues, it correctly undermines various shibboleths of political correctness, and it’s compulsively readable – I was able to finish the 216 pages in a day.

On the other hand, the sycophantic writing style is gratingly folksy-humorous. Subtle flattery throughout confirms the authors and reader as equal partners, intellectually superior to the idiots the book so delights in debunking. The book is somehow less than the sum of its parts.

So if you are looking for an upmarket Reader’s Digest type book which will confirm you are an important mover and shaker, that you are fashionably dismissive of political correctness to an acceptable degree, and that won’t force you to engage with any difficult concepts, I guess this book is for you. Otherwise get it from the library or read the Sunday Times serialisation.

Our house sale - an offer accepted

Yes, at ten to six this evening Clare got a phone call from the estate agent.

An offer of £345,000 (our guide price is £350k).

Clare accepted.

So we hope to be out of here by Christmas.

Did all that mathematical modelling help? I'd like to think so!