Brett Hutley's Blog

Quite a nice short film...

To kick off Helly's birthday week, I took her to Coombe Abbey in Coventry. It was originally a 12th Century Cistercian Abbey, that has been restored and turned into a hotel. It was great arriving at the Abbey at night, and walking into the foyer of the hotel which looks like something out of "The Name of the Rose". Our room, which was apparently one of the old rooms in the Abbey, had a view stretching out over the sculptured gardens. We spent many hours exploring the grounds - 500 acres of gardens, woodlands, lakes and marshes.

Here's a Nouvelle Vague clip that I found on YouTube:

Today I mooched around the new flat. I took the morning off in order to let in some gas safety inspectors. The gas company rang around lunchtime to say the inspectors were outside the apartment and no-one seemed to be home. I informed them that I was in fact inside, but no-one was ringing the buzzer. Eventually I realized that they were standing outside my old flat in Covent Garden *sigh*

I found a bunch of interesting podcasts while googling around tonight. The podcasts seem to be mostly about internet-based business models.

Last weekend was spent back in Amsterdam. The highlight was probably Tony's Lame SuperHero Birthday Party. Helen has more photos on her blog. Tony messaged to say that everyone was meeting in Dam Square, and when we arrived there was a crowd of superheroes standing around - capes billowing. Tourists were coming over and asking to have their photos taken with the group. It was all too funny. I went as Pi Man, a super hero who's special power is the ability to recite Pi to 2 decimal places. I also had the lamest costume.

Optimization problems are all the rage in finance, because they occur so often (or should occur often, as long as you're on top of the basics of pricing your trades). Enter the IBM DeveloperWorks article on GNU Linear Programming Kit.

Here's a list of some good minimalist Wordpress themes.

CoXis has a list and slide-show of his favourite wordpress themes, and there's definitely some nice ideas there.

Historian Scott Trask of the Mises Institute has published a great article on 10 economic falacies that have permeated their way through public thinking. Myth #1 was the broken window, which is basically the idea that a disaster has a positive effect on the economy. He also discusses the myth that war is a boon on the economy. The basic idea behind the myth is that a disaster like an oil spill gets double-counted when calculating GDP, because there is the initial outlay in the oil and also the cost of cleaning it up.

What could be better? Stretching out in the beer garden of the Edinboro Castle in Cambden on a nice sunny day. Burgers and beer and friends. Helen even tried to keep me cool by spilling beer on my lap!