David Chart's Blog

Month: February 2008

  • Daniel Deronda

    Daniel Deronda is George Eliot’s last novel. Middlemarch, also by Eliot, is a strong candidate for my favourite novel, and it’s certainly in the top five. It’s generally agreed to be the best of her works, and I think I agree. Nevertheless, Daniel Deronda was very good. There are two main stories, both concerned primarily […]

  • Passport

    Yesterday I went to the British Embassy to renew my passport. I’m pretty sure that trying to live in Japan without a valid passport would be asking for trouble, and I might need to go abroad on short notice, so I decided to get it done before it expired. The countersignatory ended up being less […]

  • Changeling: The Lost

    Changeling was the 2007 game for White Wolf’s World of Darkness. It was, I gather, a rather larger hit than the publishers expected, which is always nice when it happens. This is a contrast to their last attempt at Changelings. Changeling: The Dreaming could be (slightly unfairly) described as “hippies fight librarians”. Changeling: The Lost […]

  • Busy With Work

    Sorry about not keeping the blog up to date; work has been busy. Actually, what’s happened is that I’ve had a bad couple of days for getting writing done, so work has piled up. Today I finally got a decent amount written, but I think I’m going to have to work over the weekend anyway. […]

  • Mood Swings

    OK, so “mood swings” may be a bit over the top, but there have been very noticeable changes in Mayuki’s mood over the last few days. From Wednesday to Friday she was in a bad mood, not sleeping during the day, complaining when left alone, and even complaining when we were there are playing with […]

  • The Happiness Hypothesis

    This book is about happiness. It’s based in psychology, and draws on both ancient philosophies and modern empirical findings to discuss what makes people happy. Most of what the author comes up with are things I already do, which might explain why I’m happy. It’s a very interesting book, with a couple of things that […]

  • Computer Irritations

    Yesterday was a national holiday, so a couple of Yuriko’s friends from work came round, to see Mayuki and Mayuki’s Hina dolls. One of them brought her daughter, who is a couple of months older than Mayuki. It gives us some idea of what Mayuki will be like in April. While they were there, I […]

  • Another Long Gap

    Sorry about that, I’ve been busy with work. On the bright side, I’ve now got most of my work up to the point I wanted it to be; I’ve caught up with all the editing that was left over from last year, and dealt with what arrived this year, and got my reading up to […]

  • Mayuki Miscellany

    A few of the brilliant things that Mayuki has been up to recently, apart from complaining loudly when at least one of us won’t come to play with her. Oh, she’s doing it again; Yuriko must be cooking. A couple of days ago she was playing with Yuriko, sitting in her lap and looking at […]